"Don’t worry, Saul," Susan said. Saul gritted his teeth when she called him Mr. Evans, which he preferred.
He imagined that there was a trap door and a modified duty room automatic control equipment at the bottom of their carpet. Before it appeared, it was to put maintenance materials for signal lamps. Like a teenager, he smugly concealed such a room from them. It felt like hiding part of his thoughts from their experiments. Besides, if these two people were as insightful as they believed, they should have realized the reason why the end of the stairs suddenly became narrow.
Seeing that they had settled down and were unlikely to disturb anything, he nodded to them and left halfway. He seemed to hear the sound of the building breaking, and the sound was not repeated. He hesitated for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders and continued walking along the spiral stairs.
When you get to Lousuoer, you are busy maintaining the ground and cleaning up the mess shed. Pedestrians who pass by here are often surprised that there is a caretaker near the lighthouse, as if he is a hermit crab without a shell, but in fact, there are many maintenance workers here to do. If you are not careful, storms and salty gas will erode everything. Summer is especially hard because of the summer heat and biting flying insects.
When he looked at the boat behind the Tibetan shed, the girl named Gloria sneaked to him. There was a causeway made up of broken shells and mud, which was parallel to the coast and extended in a series of sea rocks. When the tide rose, seawater flooded in, making the tidal pool full of anemones, starfish, blue crabs, snails and sea cucumbers full of vitality again.
She is nine years old-"nine and a half years old!" Look at her, she is quite tall and strong. Although Gloria sometimes wobbles on the rocks, her young mind rarely shakes. Saul appreciates this very much. Middle-aged people occasionally have a little problem with his own head.
When he finished repairing the boat and wheeled the compost back, she appeared strong again, standing on a rock and wearing a winter costume-jeans with a hooded coat and a pair of thick boots at the bottom. She came to talk to him about a year ago and often talked to him.
"You know, my ancestors lived here," she said. "My mother said they lived here in the lighthouse." She was so young, but her voice was deep and steady, which sometimes surprised him.
"My ancestors were little guys," Saul told her, unloading the things in the wheelbarrow to the fat pile, but in fact, his mother’s family base was composed of a group of bootleggers and religious fanatics. He often said in the bar that "they came here to escape religious freedom."
Gloria thought for a moment about Saul’s statement and then said, "My ancestors came first."
"Does it matter?" He found that he had forgotten to mend the gap in the boat.
The child frowned and even felt her expression on his back. "I don’t know." He looked back and saw that she was standing on a dangerous reef instead of jumping around, and kept her balance as if she thought it was more meaningful. This sight made his stomach twitch, but he knew that although it looked dangerous every time, she never slipped, and every time he woke up, she paid no attention to it.
"I think so," she continued. "I think it’s important."
"I’m part Indian," he said. "I used to live here and part of me." No matter what the significance is, a distant relative told him that there was a vacancy for lighthouse management staff, but no one wanted to take the job.
"So what?" She said as she jumped to another rugged rock, waving her arms briefly at the top to keep her balance. Saul moved closer to her out of concern.
She often annoys him, but Sol still says that her father lives in a bungalow on the coast of her mother in central China and works two jobs. Her mother needs to drive to distant Briks town at least once a week. She may think that her children can live independently once in a while, especially with the help of a lighthouse keeper. Gloria seems to be fascinated by lighthouses, even though he always does some work such as tidying sheds and transporting compost.
But in winter, she is often alone anyway-poking a crab hole with a stick in the mud beach in the west or chasing a semi-tamed doe or observing coyote and bear droppings seems to contain secrets, so I can do anything if I have the chance.
"who are those weirdos who come here often?" She asked.
He almost laughed. There are many weirdos hiding along this forgotten coast, including himself. Some are hiding from the government, some from themselves, some from their spouses. Some people believe that they are building their own country, and there are still a few people whose identity is illegal. People here may ask questions, but they don’t expect frank answers. Just be creative.
"Who are you referring to?"
"Those with pipes?"
Saul thought for a moment and imagined that Henry and Susan were smoking hard while sprinting along the coast with their pipes in their mouths.
"pipe, oh, that’s not a pipe, it’s something else" is like a huge roll of mosquito-repellent incense. Last year, he asked the "light cavalry" to put those pipes in the first floor room for several months, but how did she see it?
"Who are they?" She asked, at the moment, she balanced two rocks, so Saul could breathe smoothly at least.
It’s true that they are from the northern coastal island-their base is still on the "Lost Island" and there are dozens of permanent residents "testing". This is a popular saying in the village bar that the government approves private researchers to measure data, but the smell also implies that scientific seance has a more evil purpose. People in the bar really like to listen to interesting stories. What causes this smell? Is it because some of them are precise and neat or because others are out of order? Or just talking about retired drunks coming out of the trailer and making up a story?
Frankly speaking, he doesn’t know what their island is doing or what they are going to do with the equipment on the first floor. He doesn’t know what Henry and Susan are doing at the top of the lighthouse at the moment.
"They don’t like me," she said. "I don’t like them either."
This made him chuckle, especially when she picked up her arms and looked contemptuous as if she regarded them as permanent enemies
"Are you laughing at me?"
"No," he said, "it’s not that you are a curious person. You always ask questions, so they don’t like you, that’s all." People who ask questions don’t necessarily like being asked.
"What’s the point of asking a few questions?"
"Nothing" is a big deal. Once the question appears quietly, the original certainty will become uncertain. The question always brings doubts. This is because his father told him, "Don’t let them ask questions. You have told them the answer even if they don’t know it."
"But you are also curious," she said.
"What do you mean?"
"You guard the signal light and you can see everything in the light."
He may see everything in the light, but there are still a few things he forgot to do. He needs to stay outside the lighthouse for a while, which makes him unhappy. He pushes the wheelbarrow to the gravel beside the van. He has a vague sense of urgency. It seems that he should go to see Henry and Susan. What if they find out what the trap door has done? Like falling and breaking their weird necks? He looked up and saw Henry looking down at Fang from the railing at the top of the tower, which made him feel stupid, like a paranoid Henry waving his hand or something. Sol felt dizzy and the dazzling sunshine made him uncomfortable. He turned his back quickly.
However, he saw something shining in the grass-vaguely blocked by a plant and surrounded by a circle of weeds. A few days ago, he found a dead squirrel glass there? Keys? Dark green leaves are roughly arranged in a circle to cover the surface. He kneels to block the sunlight and observes carefully, but the flashing object is still covered by the plant leaves or is it a part of the leaves? On what this is, it must be more exquisite than that, but he thinks of the four-ton heavy lens group at the top of his head.