A Man Comes Down - Inst. 12

1.

The flat light of a gray early morning—Rowena lies naked, half covered by a blanket. She is awake, thinking. Her gaze falls unfocusedly upon the small southern window to the back room.

The thick glass brings in the vivid greens of the creepers and ferns from the far side of the little stream's steep gully, dotted by the bright orange, red, and yellow splotches made by the wild nasturtium flowers, coming through faintly visible on the rough plaster of the opposite wall, like a later Monet painting. She has browner areas on her skin which suggest that she finds this freedom from time to time, even if only in the presence of the sun.

She gets up slowly, holding her blue dress bunched in hand, and walks to the front. The stones that heated the water on previous mornings are, of course, cold. She locates a bucket of water and washes first her face and then her groin before quickly pulling the dress over her head. A shot of the cold stones, a shot of cold ash in the cold hearth.

The scene is a counterpoint to the bathing scene from day three, which is, in a way, "properly" sexy: withholding nudity languorously paced, literally steamy and hot, with a cold plunge at the end. Here we have something hasty, prosaic, and even a little furtive and seedy, as well as more "authentic." In the first case, Rowena is empowered and in control. In the second, some of her autonomy is lost, and there is a sense of camping in her own house.

Ezekiel stands in fog with his duster and hat and rifle, up on the promontory. He is looking into the obscure distance, trying to see through it to the edge of the trees. Below, Rowena comes out of the house, wearing her jacket and looking uncomfortable and unhappy.

Ezekiel hurries down to meet Rowena. Belatedly, he turns what would have been rough handling into something somewhat more gentle as he encounters her. But clearly his only goal is to get her out of the open as quickly as possible.

"Get back inside. You can't be outside. He could appear any moment."

As they enter the door reaches back to hurry her through it.

Despite her efforts to remain calm, she is viscerally irritated by his attempts, however gentle, to shepherd her. On account of the gentleness, in a way, they add to her sense of being managed. She shrugs him off. She can't abide that he is wearing his duster, or especially those absurd gloves, so soon after their intimacy. She makes him stop with her in the doorway and keeps calm with an effort. "How can this be any different from what you could have expected?" she demands. He is more inside the darkness of the doorway; she is against the corner of the entry toward the outside and the light. It reverses their shepherding dynamic. "I appreciate your concern, but I was always going to face extreme danger under this course that you've taken, or didn't you consider it?"

He stifles a protest. "I should bring you back to town. It's safer for you there."

"That's ridiculous. We can't go back to the town—Harry and his people will just be waiting for us there." She brushes him aside but returns quickly and earnestly to her main point. "I can't go back to town the way things are with Harry and his people"—she faces him squarely—"When I was there in town, I made arrangements such that I could take ship with Michael, one of the smugglers, to somewhere to the south or west across the water. I see no reason, if you have gold..."

"I do, on the beach."

"...that you couldn't go with us."

"He'll come after us."

"We can go as far as we need."

Shaking his head: "We would never be safe. And I wouldn't be free. Look"—he takes her by the shoulders—"this is a good plan. When can you leave?"

"Today's evening tide. But why would you not come? That, it seems to me, is cowardice. I need to be alone." She steps outside.

"I can't let you be alone outside!"

"It seems to me you're going to have to get used to it if you stick to your plan. It seems to me that you've forgotten he's my husband."

"I haven't forgotten..."

"I'm making a full break. It's not easy. We have a chance to start something new."

"I can't. I have to finish this. It could be soon. We could meet soon. Why would I wait?" Ezekiel turns back in the fog and leaves her walking away.

"Selfish man!" Looking toward us as she walks quickly down the path.

12.2

Moisture reflecting off the stones that cover the promontory where the makeshift lighthouse is. Rowena is scrambling through the rocks toward it. We see her again from the perspective of the lighthouse itself, through a glass darkly. Rowena stands gazing off down the coast to where the town lies covered in mist.

12.3

The fog hangs iridescent, infused with light, close over the surface of the water, moving rhythmically just beyond the pier. The pier is covered with dew and fog. George appears, an early riser despite the activity of the previous night. He sets down a carpet bag heavily and walks to the edge of the pier and signals. Distantly, through the muffling fog, we see a small boat heading into the pier. They answer his gesture with a hail, dimmed and muted.

George embarks in the small boat with the two fishermen from the previous day, settling himself and his large carpet bag in the narrow bow. He takes out his guitar as the boat is sculled in a wide circle in the shelter provided by the pier. They head out towards a ship getting underway, but still at anchor. George's face has the haggard but alert expression of someone who has stayed up all night but is very aware of the significant moment this day represents in his admittedly shiftless life. He squints out through the spray and the half-broken mist. Lines of slightly embittered amusement crease around his eyes as he scans the pier a final time. He picks up his guitar and plays for himself.

12.4

Ira leans against a fence post of the corral at the way station, looking out to the west. A group of riders appears and strings itself out across the skyline. It's Eric and his party, after riding through the night. In addition, the recruits appear guiding the stolen cattle—a dark, lumbering line of shapes, turning their proper, ruddy color as they crest a hill and come into pale, brief sunlight. Their hooves drum on the sandy soil. Ira moves forward. Harry comes out of the way station door to Ira's left.

"Give us a hand. Before we take care of the horses, make yourself useful and open up the cattle corral. Let's keep the new beasts out of sight."

As Eric breaks away from guiding the herd and comes riding up:

"How many? Barely a dozen! I could have got more just by asking politely. What on earth have you been up to?"

"Well, perhaps you should have thought of that earlier. One of the new men was injured in the scuffle; we'll have to pay him extra."

"You mean you will. It was your mismanagement!"

Harry looks more closely at the new cattle as they are brought around the building toward their pen.

"The first thing is to mix them in with the rest of them. Also, take some pitch and see if you can't muddy the picture of their brand a little—maybe turn that 'T' to an 'M' or an 'I.' We have some Isaacson..."

Harry stands at the side of the corral gate as they come in.

"As you get done, just turn off your horses with Ira and come on in..."

He turns for the lodge. "That's alright, Mr. Court. I can do my own," says one of the new recruits, trying to show initiative.

"That's alright," Harry says. "You fellows already did the hard work, took the risk. Good for the boy to do something. Besides, as you'll see, he is quite capable. You would never guess his father was a soft-handed Jewish tailor." Anton flinches at the callous insensitivity of this and surreptitiously begins to help Ira manage the horses as the rest of the men leave them and troop inside to the warm fire.

Anton steps in, trying to help, and he does so with efficient hands. "You shouldn't listen. He's speaking for the men. Excuse him. He cares for you—you know that."

"He's always harping on the same," Ira searches for the words, "self-deception," he says, "and never mind the insult to my real stepfather, who cared for me all these years and was a good man. It's the inability to admit that I might actually be his son while treating me like a damn servant."

12.5

The oil lamp casts a sickly glow in the deep fog, even inside, at Rowena's "kitchen" table. Ezekiel sits calmly and immovably there in the circle of greenish light, like an iron sculpture, head bowed, while Rowena moves around him, packing. His stillness antagonizes her.

"So, your plan is to row over to the beach with me to see me on my way, but then not to come with me—but to stay and 'finish your fight.' Forgive me, but I fail to see nobility in that! Only stupidity, and lack of imagination, and cowardice when it comes to myself."

Ezekiel says woodenly, "I'm sorry you should think that..."

Rowena comes close to him in his circle of unpleasant light. She hoists a small carpet bag full of her belongings up onto the table. "You know people are right to call you a shadow, even haunting the place of your ghost, unnecessarily bringing doom down upon yourself, manufacturing it out of the air, giving life to the miasma around you. Like the twisted tree the old woman spoke about, but walking—you bring your doom with you from place to place."

Rowena picks up her bag in disgust and moves it to her small pile of things by the door, then moves back to the light, taking a drink from the pitcher of water sitting on the bare table.

Ezekiel continues, as if she hadn't spoken, but quietly and wearily, without antagonism:

"When you get to the beach, you can use the gold I brought there. I have it piled in that little cave..."

"I have my own money."

"I haven't repaid your hospitality. I won't likely be using it for anything else—the stones and the waves will hardly have a use for it."

"That too is the ghost's," Rowena says.

She stands by the door amidst her things, picks up her tinderbox from beside her dark hearth, and keeps it half concealed in her hand as she turns toward him.

"There is one more thing I have to do, then we can go..."

12.6

Rowena, with Ezekiel behind, come out the front door, with some distance between them. The fog is showing gaps here and there, the wind has come up, yanking the short grasses by the gate.

Rowena turns to Ezekiel: "Leave me alone. Let me walk out to the light. There is something I must do."

"In order to meet this boat, we'll have to leave soon. Within the hour."

"Alright. I'll be there. I must go now."

They head in opposite directions. Rowena hurries along the path to the light. Ezekiel pauses to light his pipe and then turns to fetch the boat from across the river.

Flashback: Rowena, a few years ago, coming up from the bay wood toward the light, looking the same. She faces it with the artificial formality of ceremony. She frowns to herself. "You'll be back soon," she says quietly. She shakes her shoulders and squares them to the light to take up a more formal stance, feet spread apart. It is summer, and her feet are bare in the soft, green grass. She intones in a clear voice, "I light this light each day for your return." Reaching up to where the lens of the light itself sits, she takes a ring made of grass and thistle flowers from her finger and places it gently beside the lens.

The present:

• Song: "Devil's Spoke" by Laura Marling

Rowena stands before the familiar, angular shack. She walks forward. We see her, as we have done before, from the "perspective of the light"—her shape approaching, dark and blurry. She bends down and, with all her strength and both her hands, lifts the barrel of oil from the low, wood-doored cabinet in which it was stored and laboriously tips up its edge so that oil sloshes over the side onto the wooden floor. She repeats the same maneuver many times, soaking the floor. Then, the barrel becoming lighter and lighter, she moves to the walls—first inside, then out—sloshing the oil upward. We see her again from the perspective of the light. This perspective has always been alien and alienating, but now, in the vision presented, we see explicitly what we have always felt: that, to the light, Rowena has always been an interloper. Now, finally, an enemy bringing destruction. Rowena finishes pouring the oil, takes out her tinderbox, and, using a strip of cloth from her clothes-mending projects (which she has kept up to remain ready for James's return), she lights the lighthouse on fire.

Suddenly she has a flash vision of herself taking off that grass ring from years ago and placing it in the rafters of the lighthouse. She moves toward the blazing building as if to go back. Ezekiel, who has finished moving the boat, has come up behind her and reaches out to stop her. Their eyes averted from one another's, she begins to frantically push him away but ends up grasping for his hand.

We see the grass and thistle ring, all dry and brown now, up in the rafters of the lighthouse next to the light and the lens, suddenly burst into flame and fall to one side.

They watch the lighthouse become a column of flame. We see things "from the light's perspective" for the last time and can see only a wall of fire.

Now they are in the boat, pulling away from shore through the waves. Ezekiel, chest-deep in the water, hoists himself into the boat and takes the oars from Rowena. For a moment she stands looking at the flame, then she sits facing out to sea. The wind has come up.

Listen while you… digest: