Chapter 24: The Starter

The feeding days had become his days. Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday — the discard and the replenishment, the removing of half the culture and the adding of fresh flour and fresh water, the ratio one to one, equal parts, the balance that Nora had taught him in October when the old starter was dead and the new one was beginning and the beginning was in his hands and in hers and in the jar on the windowsill.

The jar was the same jar. The mason jar from the pantry, the glass clear, the lid replaced by a cloth held with a rubber band, the cloth admitting the air that the culture needed, the air carrying the wild yeast and the bacteria that populated the culture, the organisms invisible, numberless, alive, the living engine that transformed flour and water into bread, and the engine ran on attention, on the every-other-day feeding that was its fuel, and the fuel was Eamon's to provide now, solely his, the transfer complete, the responsibility accepted.

He stood at the counter in the keeper's kitchen at six in the morning on a Tuesday in May, the third May since he had begun his voluntary tenure, the fifteenth spring on the point, and the kitchen was quiet in the way that a kitchen is quiet when one person occupies it rather than two, the quiet not silence but reduction, the sounds halved — one set of footsteps instead of two, one mug on the counter instead of two, one chair pulled from the table instead of two — and the halving was the mathematics of absence, the subtraction that the house performed each morning when Eamon came down from the bedroom and Nora was not at the table, was not at the stove, was not looking out the window at the bay and saying something about the fog or the bread or Colleen's boat working the traps close to the point.

He opened the jar. The smell rose, the sour tang, the living smell, the smell that said: I am here, I am active, I am hungry, feed me. The surface was domed, was risen, the culture having consumed the last feeding and produced the gas that inflated the paste, the carbon dioxide that was the evidence of metabolism, of consumption, of the biological process that was identical in principle to the process that occurred in Eamon's own body — the taking in of fuel and the converting of it to energy and waste, the same chemistry, the same thermodynamics, the only difference being scale and complexity and the capacity for grief.

He discarded half. He scraped it into the compost bucket, the half that would not become bread, the half that was excess, that was the culture's overflow, and the discarding was necessary because without it the culture would outgrow the jar, would expand beyond its container, would become unmanageable, and the management was the point, the control of the growth to maintain the balance, and the balance was what produced the bread, and the bread was the thing.

He added flour. He added water. He stirred. The spoon moved in its circles, the blending, the incorporating, the fresh food mixing with the established colony, and the stirring was the act, the daily act, the keeper's act, the act that was identical in its discipline and its purpose to the cleaning of the lens — the maintaining of a thing through repetitive attention, the keeping of a system in working order through the refusal to skip the step, to miss the day, to let the entropy win.

He covered the jar. He set it on the windowsill. The morning light came through the glass, the May light, warm, the light that was growing longer each day as the earth tilted toward the summer, the mechanics of the planet producing the light that the light required, and the light fell on the jar and the jar held the culture and the culture was alive.

This was Nora's culture. This was the organism she had started in October from the yeast on this windowsill, in this kitchen, in this house, the yeast that was indigenous to this point, to this air, to this particular intersection of latitude and longitude and elevation and proximity to the ocean, the yeast that was the yeast of Penobscot Bay and was no other yeast, and the culture carried her in it, not metaphorically but biologically — the organisms she had handled, the flour she had stirred, the air she had breathed into the jar, the microbiome of her hands transferred to the culture through the daily contact of feeding, the cells of her skin, the bacteria of her fingers, the biological signature of a woman who had maintained this thing, who had kept it alive, who had passed it to her husband the way a keeper passed the watch to the next keeper, the handoff at the changing of the guard.

He baked on feeding days. The routine was: feed the starter in the morning, mix the dough in the late morning, shape in the afternoon, bake in the evening, carry the bread to Harbor Hill the next day. The routine was a schedule, was a structure, was the architecture of the days that did not have Nora in them, the days that had been emptied by her absence and that he filled with the work, the lighthouse work and the bread work, the cleaning and the baking, the climbing and the kneading, the tower and the kitchen, the two poles of his life now as the tower and the house had been the two poles before, the orbit shifted, the path altered, but the orbiting the same, the going-between the same, the keeper moving from one station to the other, from the light to the bread, from the lens to the dough.

He mixed the dough at ten. The flour on the scale — five hundred grams, bread flour, the kind he bought in twenty-five-pound bags from the natural foods store in Rockland because Nora had bought it there and the flour was the flour and the source was the source and he would not change the source because changing the source changed the bread. The water — three hundred and fifty grams, warm, not hot, ninety degrees, the temperature that activated the yeast without killing it, the narrow window between dormancy and death that the water had to hit, and he hit it, checked it with the instant-read thermometer that Nora had kept in the drawer by the stove, the thermometer that she had used for bread and for turkey and for candy and for the precise management of temperature that her cooking required.

The starter — one hundred grams, measured from the jar, the culture thick and bubbly and smelling of the sour that was the flavor, the signature, the terroir of this particular colony, this particular windowsill, this particular house. The salt — ten grams, the teaspoon, the small essential thing whose absence changed everything, the small essential thing that Nora had forgotten twice before the old starter died and that Eamon had never forgotten because Eamon did not forget maintenance steps, did not skip items on the checklist, did not omit the small essential thing, this being his gift, his pathology, his defining quality, the quality that made him a keeper and that had not been enough to keep the thing he most wanted to keep.

He mixed. He folded. He turned the dough in the bowl, the motion that Nora had shown him, the fold and the turn, the stretch and the tuck, the dough developing the gluten that gave the bread its structure, the protein strands aligning, lengthening, creating the network that would hold the gas, that would give the loaf its rise, its shape, its crumb. The folding was a thing the hands learned. His hands had learned it. His hands were not Nora's hands — were larger, rougher, less practiced, less graceful — but his hands could fold the dough and the folding was correct and the bread would rise.

He covered the bowl with the cloth. He set it on the counter to rise. He went to the tower.

The tower in May was the tower emerging from winter, the granite releasing the cold it had held since November, the stone warming degree by degree, the temperature of the walls approaching the temperature of the air, the tower catching up, arriving at the present season three weeks late, the lag that was the stone's nature, the inertia of mass, the reluctance of a substance that weighed four hundred tons to change its temperature in response to a change in the weather. He climbed the seventy-two steps. The stairs were warmer than they had been in February, the iron losing its bite, the rail no longer cold enough to numb the hand, and the climbing was easier in the warmth, the muscles looser, the joints less aggrieved, and the knees still filed their complaints but the complaints were quieter in spring, were muted by the warmth, by the light, by the season's generosity.

The lantern room. The lens. The chamois on the prisms, the light through the east window, the spectrum on the walls. He cleaned the lens and the cleaning was the cleaning and the cleaning was the thing, the thing that he did and had always done and would always do, the act that defined him, that organized his mornings, that gave the first hours of the day their shape, their purpose, their reason, and the reason was the lens, the two hundred and fifty-six prisms, the glass that he kept clean because the glass should be clean, because clean glass focused light and focused light was the purpose and the purpose was sufficient, the purpose did not require justification, the purpose was the keeping.

He went to the gallery. The railing was sound. The drains were clear. The decking was dry, the winter's ice gone, the surface painted, the non-skid enamel that he had applied in September holding through the winter as it had held every winter, the paint doing its job, the maintenance maintaining. He stood on the gallery and looked at the bay and the bay was blue, the May blue, the blue of returning warmth, and the lobster boats were on the water and Colleen's boat was among them, the Patience working the traps near the point, the diesel engine audible in the still air, and the buoys were on the water, the colors bright, and the cormorants were on the ledge and the sky was clear and the morning was the morning.

He looked south. Toward Rockland. Toward the twenty-three miles of coast and road and water that separated the point from Harbor Hill. He could not see Harbor Hill. The geography prevented it, the curve of the coast, the headlands between, the distance. But the water was there. The water went from here to there. The water was the connection.

He went down. He wrote in the log:

0600. Clear. S 5-8. Temp 54. Barometer 30.08, steady. Visibility unlimited. Lens cleaned. Gallery inspected — satisfactory. All systems satisfactory. Bread day — starter fed, dough mixed.

Bread day. The entry was the entry he had been making for three months now, the bread in the log, the personal in the official, the life in the record, and the entry was as natural now as the wind speed or the temperature, was as much a part of the log as the pressure or the visibility, because the bread was as much a part of the keeping as the lens, because the bread was the thing he carried to Nora, because the bread was the connection, because the bread was the light.

At noon he checked the dough. It had risen. The surface was domed, was smooth, was the evidence of the yeast doing its work, the invisible organisms consuming and producing and growing in the warm kitchen in the May light, the culture alive, the bread becoming bread. He shaped the loaf. He turned it out onto the floured board and folded it and shaped it, the hands doing what Nora's hands had done, the technique transferred, the knowledge in the fingers, and the loaf was round, was taut, was the shape that would become the crust, the crust that would hold the crumb, the crumb that would hold the flavor, the flavor that was the starter's flavor, Nora's starter, the culture from this windowsill.

He set the loaf in the basket to proof. He waited. The waiting was the patience, the trust, the thing Nora had told him — don't check it, trust it — and he trusted it, he waited, and the dough rose in the basket and the afternoon passed and at four he heated the oven and at four-thirty he baked the loaf and at five the bread came out, the crust brown and cracked, the loaf heavy and warm and smelling of the sour and the wheat and the heat, the smell that was the oldest kitchen smell, the smell that preceded everything.

He wrapped the loaf in a cloth. He set it on the counter to cool. He sat at the table and looked at the bread and thought about tomorrow, about the drive to Rockland, about the walk up the stairs of Harbor Hill, about the door of the room on the second floor, south side, about the woman in the chair by the window, the woman who might or might not know him, who might or might not say his name, who would know the bread.

The bread was the thing she knew. The bread was the constant. In the weeks since the move, the recognition of Eamon had become intermittent — some days the face connected to the name and the name connected to the history and the history was there, was present, was the forty-four years, and on those days she said "Eamon" and the saying was the signal, was the barometer reading, was the all-systems-satisfactory that meant the connection was alive. And on other days the face was a face and the name was gone and the history was gone and the man in the doorway was a man in a doorway, a stranger who brought bread, and the bread was known but the man was not.

But the bread was always known. The bread arrived and the bread was recognized and the recognition was not cognitive but sensory, was not in the cortex but in the nose and the tongue and the hands, the deep old brain where the smells were stored and the smells were linked to the feelings and the feelings were linked to the life, and the bread bypassed the damage, the bread went around the lesions and the plaques and the tangles and arrived at the place where Nora still lived, the place below the disease, the place where the knowing was cellular rather than cerebral, where the self persisted in the tissue rather than the thought.

He went to the tower at eight. He climbed the seventy-two steps. He lit the brass lamp. He sat at the desk and opened the log and wrote:

2015. Clear. SW 3-5. Temp 49. Barometer 30.06. Visibility unlimited. Bread baked — new starter, feeding day 87. Loaf for N. Bryce, Harbor Hill, tomorrow. All lighthouse systems satisfactory. Keeper on watch.

He looked at the entry. Feeding day eighty-seven. He had been counting. He had been counting the feedings the way the log counted the days, the way the barometer counted the pressure, the way the tower counted the steps — not consciously but automatically, the accumulation of a number that increased by one each feeding day, the number climbing the way the stairs climbed, ascending, the count a record of the attention given, the care provided, the days that the culture had been alive under his stewardship.

Eighty-seven feedings. Eighty-seven times he had opened the jar and discarded and added and stirred and covered. Eighty-seven acts of maintenance that had kept the culture alive, that had kept the bread coming, that had kept the connection to Nora maintained, the thread unbroken, the line uncut, the warp that connected the trap to the buoy, the buoy to the surface, the surface to the keeper who hauled it.

He blew out the lamp. He descended the stairs. He crossed the yard. The kitchen was dark. The bread was on the counter, cooling. The jar was on the windowsill, the culture fed, the culture resting, the culture alive. The house was quiet. The clock was in Rockland, ticking in Nora's room, keeping Nora's time. The bed was upstairs, the bed that was too wide, the bed with the empty side.

He stood in the kitchen in the dark and he could smell the bread, the warm bread, the bread that was still releasing its heat into the room, the bread that was the evidence that the culture was alive, that the feeding was working, that the maintenance was holding, that the keeping was keeping.

Tomorrow he would drive to Rockland. Tomorrow he would carry the bread up the stairs. Tomorrow he would open the door and she would be in the chair and she would see the bread before she saw the man and the bread would be known and the knowing would be the connection and the connection would be maintained.

Connection maintained. The two words that he wrote in the log after every visit. The two words that were the keeping, the two words that were the love, the two words that were the fixed white light, steady, unwavering, visible not from fourteen nautical miles but from the chair by the window in a room on the second floor of a yellow Victorian in Rockland, Maine, twenty-three miles from the point, twenty-three miles from the tower, twenty-three miles from the man who baked the bread and climbed the stairs and cleaned the lens and fed the starter and kept the light.

He went upstairs. He got into bed. The bed was cold on the side that was not his. He lay in the dark and listened. The sea on the rocks. The wind in the eaves. The house settling. The stove ticking as it cooled. The sounds of the keeper's house at night, the sounds that were the same sounds they had always been, the same sounds minus one — the breathing of the woman beside him, the two-second inhale and the three-second exhale, the rhythm that had been the rhythm of his nights for forty-four years, the rhythm that was absent, that was in Rockland, that was in a room with a clock and a window and a quilt.

He lay in the dark and he listened to the absence, and the absence was the presence, and the presence was the love, and the love was the bread, and the bread was on the counter, and the bread was for tomorrow, and tomorrow was coming, and the keeper was on watch.