Ernie’s Long Night
Mark Stewart
Copyright: Ernie’s Long Night by Mark Stewart. All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the author. This story is fictitious and a product of the author’s imagination. Resemblance to any actual person living or dead is purely coincidental.
Smashwords edition license notes.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Five months had passed since seventy-two-year-old Ernie Perryman had turned the calendar page over to 1926. He was Cape Shank’s only Lighthouse keeper. He was a tough broad shouldered man who wore a large anchor and a woman’s name, ‘Rosie’, tattooed on each forearm. Standing five foot ten, he made claim to living through many a mighty storm.
Fearful of nothing, Ernie would tell anyone who’d listen to his tales of the sea.
Under grey bushy eyebrows, Ernie reviewed the charcoal sky through the back window of his two-room weather beaten cottage.
“The stars won’t be out tonight,” he mumbled, concern sweeping his wrinkled face.
Several small black clouds had arrived hours ahead of the main storm front. They warned the land dwellers of things to come.
The storm front, scudding across the sky towards the coast from the south extinguished the last shards of the mid-afternoon sun. Only a solid black angry sky remained.
Unexpectedly the storm had picked up pace and lightning arcs were countless. Some blue flashes remained flat, but many were vertical. Blackness stretched across the land like a blanket.
Deep rumblings in the heavens scared and scattered all living things on the land. The once peaceful tepid sea had turned treacherous smashing twelve foot white crested waves against the near vertical cliffs directly under the Lighthouse.
A ship traveling parallel to the shore, smoke billowing from its only smoke stack, disappeared before Ernie’s eyes. Before she was completely camouflaged by a wall of hail and rain, he noted her name; ‘Yorston.’ The ship was Australia’s newest merchant vessel. She had been launched six months prior from the shipyard in South Australia and was looking more like a ghost ship every second.
She was late, very late. She had been expected at Williamstown docks the previous morning. Her cargo of tobacco, herbs, medicines and building materials from England would be safe so long as the lighthouse light remained shining.
Ernie’s wrinkled brow deepened. He didn’t want the rocky outcrop of submerged rocks to claim another victim. There had been too many ship wrecks and lives lost along this stretch of coast in the last one hundred years.
“This storm’s the season’s first,” he whispered. “Fear is escorting this storm. I can smell it. I can feel it. Could it be the mother of all storms?”
His thoughts, turbulent as the wind, mixed and tumbled over one another in his mind.
A sailor’s life, a girl in every port, wasn’t for him. He was a one-woman man. He became a lighthouse keeper five years ago after losing his wife Rosie. Forty years of wedding bliss. He lost her to a storm looking half as bad. He sees her every night in his dreams or at the bottom of an empty whisky bottle, wearing her favorite long yellow cotton dress with a white collar. She would wear it only when he was home from the sea.
The wind rattled the glass windows making his knees ache and his face twitch under his long grey beard.
Ernie knew he had only a minute at best to reach the lighthouse door before the heavy rain drenched the cliff top plateau.
Turning from the window, he walked to the small wooden table, picked up an old kerosene lantern, lit it and grabbed a large glass bottle and tucked it under an arm.
Wearing black trousers and matching shoes with rubber soles, Ernie pulled tight a worn brown cow hide cap over his head. Wearing no coat over his black and red long sleeved flannelette shirt rolled up to his elbows, he opened the back door and stepped outside into the howling wind. Debris twisted around him like a tornado.
Without a walking stick Ernie started to hobble the short distance to the lighthouse door on bent knees and buckled legs hoping not to be hit by overhanging branches being tossed about by the wind.
The wind that refused to relent.
The lantern’s small flame danced wildly inside the protective glass dome. Ernie lifted his eyes to the sky and cursed the storm for dealing an all nighter again.
The lighthouse door was located on the wayward side of the storm. Ernie estimated the wind had to be already close to eighty knots. His thoughts brought a sea dog smile to his thin, dry, quivering lips.
He easily opened the lighthouse door, stepped inside, and quickly slammed the door shut, happy to be out of the wind. Through dim hazel eyes he lifted his head and gazed up the hollow tapering shell toward the top.
Ernie muttered in a dry whisper, “Good, the light’s still shining.” He placed his left foot on the first step, and groaned, “102 steps to go.”
He pulled a match from his pocket, scraped it down the wall, lit his pipe and inhaled the loving smell of the smoldering tobacco. The scent reminded him of his dearly beloved Rosie, God rest her soul. Together they’d watch the stars on warm summer nights. He’d smoke his pipe and stroke her long cinnamon hair, while she lay on his lap singing a love song.
A tear formed at his eye’s edge, threatening to drop. Till his life’s end he’d guard his tough exterior. He blinked, and the tear was gone.
Ernie exhaled a smoky sigh and stood for a moment watching the grey smoke from his pipe starting to rise up the metal twisting staircase.
Gripping the pipe between discolored teeth, lantern in his right hand, a large glass bottle of ‘Old Number Seven’ in the other, he started his climb.
Ernie knew the whisky would keep him warm and help refresh his memories of Rosie on this long cold night.
It always did.
To the reader of Ernie’s long night thank you for reading my short story. I hope you enjoyed it.
Other books I have written.
Kiss on the bridge. Romance young adults
The perfect gift. Romance young adults
He stepped from my dreams. Romance
Kate and Ben. Romance
Crime series the Kendal chronicles. Heart of a spider. I know your secret.
A Troglian knows. Children’s
Luke’s cubby house. Children’s
email. mark_stewart777@hotmail.com
3