The Counterfeit Lighthouse
The
Counterfeit Lighthouse
Navajo Footsteps in Korea
Book One
Lisa Shea
Copyright © 2017 by Lisa Shea / Minerva Webworks LLC
All rights reserved.
Cover design by Lisa Shea.
Book design by Lisa Shea
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
- v1 -
strive
The Counterfeit Lighthouse
Chapter 1
First knock on the stone bridge before crossing
~ traditional Korean proverb
Amber clutched the small stainless-steel urn against her chest, the brisk salt air whipping her long, auburn hair into her eyes. Just behind her, an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of a mermaid, weathered to a sea green, looked in desolation out over the starlit Sea of Japan. Amber knew exactly how that mermaid felt. Alone. Abandoned. Just wanting to go home.
Amber’s thoughts flitted the thousands of miles back to Arizona, back to the Navajo reservation where she had been born. Where her father had been born.
She wanted her father back.
She blinked away the tears and stepped forward to the dark water, unscrewing the metal lid. The powdery, gray residue within was all that remained of her father. Amber’s shoulders hunched in. She was only thirty – far too young to be facing this loss. But life wasn’t about fair or even. It piled burdens on your shoulders and either you bore them or you broke.
Her father had taught her that.
She glanced up and down the rocky beach, but there was nobody in sight. It was why she had come out so late, when only the sliver of a crescent moon cast a pale light onto the wave-lapped shore. She wanted this one, final moment with her father to say goodbye. To wish him peace. To pray he found solace in the world to come.
She lifted the urn.
She slowly turned it upside-down.
The wind picked up, and a stream of silver-gray particles swirled across and out over the water, streaming east, east, toward Japan. She imagined those winds lifting her father up over the island and continuing past, over the countless miles of the Pacific Ocean. Then swirling, spiraling, and coming to rest in her rural village in northeastern Arizona. To the small two-bedroom house which she, her mother, and her father had shared for her entire life.
Home.
Tears did come, now, as she thought of her mother sitting alone at the dingy Formica kitchen table, undoubtedly with a glass of bourbon before her. Her parents had been happy once. Amber knew it from the smiling photos which cluttered the mantle alongside a trio of kachina dolls in turquoise and clay-red. But those days were long in the past. Her father had spiraled down into an obsessive search for his long-lost father. Her mother had salved her loneliness with drink.
And Amber had been powerless to pull either from their path.
The last wisps of the earthly remains of her father drifted from the urn, and she looked down at it. It seemed unnaturally light now. She hadn’t thought of what she’d do with it at this point. She didn’t want to bring it back to the reservation. There seemed no point in putting an empty metal jar on the mantle alongside those smiling photos of better days.
She pulled the small copy of Robert Frost’s poems from her jeans pocket and flipped through it. She found the poem she wanted. The phrase.
The woods were lovely, soft and deep …
She ripped the page from the book and stuffed it into the metal urn. She sealed it back up.
And then she lobbed the urn as hard as she could, arcing it high, high, out, until it landed with a small splash in the rolling waves.
A bob, a twinkle, and it was lost to sight.
She ran a hand through her hair, emptiness draining her. It had been a long month. Her father’s diagnosis of lung cancer from his three-pack-a-day smoking habit. The rapid decline. The funeral. And then the discovery, in his will, that he’d asked to be cremated and have his ashes brought to Korea.
His widow – Amber’s worn-down mother - had finally put her foot down. She adamantly refused to go. She’d lost her husband to this foreign land years ago. She would not allow him to drag her even further, now that he was dead.
And so it was left to his daughter to honor his final wishes.
Amber turned and looked up into the mournful, salt-flecked eyes of the mermaid. Local legend was that, long years ago, she had been taken from her home-across-the-seas by the King of Mungungnara. All his riches could not soothe her desolation. She clung to the topaz bead which symbolized her lost homeland.
Amber’s hand went to the turquoise bear pendant which hung around her neck. It had been her father’s. He had worn it every day of his adult life. The symbolized carving featured an onyx eye and a high, curved back.
Her fingers stroked its smooth surface. She knew the pendant was one of a pair. Her father had been given it when he was four, when his father left for the Korean War. The departing Marine had held his own pendant against that of his son’s and instructed his young son to take care of his mother. To be strong. That he would come back home as soon as this war was over.
He had never returned.
She moved up to the path and began making her way back in the direction of the hotel. The cool breeze lifted and turned her long hair. She had never seen so much water before. She’d never left the region of the four corners until now. The wide expanse of the ocean reminded her of the endless deserts at home. But here the landscape rolled and changed, lifted and fell. Where she came from, the world was certain and stationary. Petroglyphs carved into rock hundreds of years ago presented their same message today. Cliff dwellings built by the Anasazi retained their post-holes and meeting rooms.
Here, the world was in constant flux. The ocean’s surface altered and re-altered, never showing the same scene twice. A person could step into that giant expanse and be swept away in a heartbeat. Lost forever.
Like her father.
The lights of the town drew nearer, she made her way back up to the street level, and it was only a few more minutes before she was stepping into the hotel. It was off-season and only a few people lingered in the lounge, staring at smartphones or nursing a drink at the small marble-topped bar. The latter reminded her of her mother and she wearily dropped her head. She moved toward the elevator –
A high, lilting voice called out, “Miss Hayou?”
She glanced around.
It was the slim attendant at the front desk, her face beaming with the desire to be helpful. Her dark hair was cut short in a bob. The smile showed a line of perfectly straight, pearl-white teeth.
The girl nodded. “Miss Hayou, you have a message.” She held out a slim white envelope.
Amber’s brow creased. She doubted her mother would spare one thought of her until she returned home. And perhaps not even then. Amber half-expected her mother to fade away, sustained solely by drink, until her earthly body became a mere wisp of her former self.
And then she, too, would be gone.
Amber stepped forward and took the envelope from the attendant. She turned it over and slid her finger beneath the flap. The note within was written in neat letters and held only two lines.
I can meet you at the Dong Baek Park lighthouse tomorrow at 5pm.
Staff Sergeant Charles Atene.
Amber stared at the lines, reading and re-reading them. It was as if she were sitting at a bar and Mr. Darcy came over and introduced himself. A fictional, imaginary character sprung to life.
But she had the note in her hand.
Her grandfather’s best friend, the one her father had been searching for all these years, was still alive.
He was here in Korea.
Her breath stilled.
She might finally find out, after decades of her family being ripped apart with grief, the truth behind why her grandfather had never returned home from the war.