The Vigils
By Sarah Tinkham of Kresge
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My older brother always had a thing for sunsets. I figure it had something to do with being the oldest. We’re Californians, born and raised, but what one thing we seem to forget is that on the continental United States, California, Oregon, and Washington are the three states that get the last light of day. My reasoning is that Soren was exposed to that for longer than I was…and with all the perks that first-borns get, he had the eyes for things that I did not. You could see it when he wrote; he saw things like he was seeing them for the first time. To say I’m envious of such a gift is an understatement. That was why, when Soren took me to the hill at the beach, the place where he saw what he called his “First” sunset, I was excited, and a little worried. I was thrilled to have the chance to see what he saw, and worried that I was incapable of such sight. We drove down to the beach an hour before noon, and I spent a good deal of time collecting sea glass while Soren surfed. When the sun started lowering, Soren joined me in gathering sea glass. He drove the car closer to the beach and started walked back to it frequently when he had a jar half-full of the sea glass to get a new one. He didn’t talk much, but I did. I often do when I’m nervous.
“We brought a lot more jars than we had to,” I said.
“We brought just the right amount of jars,” he replied.
Soren was referring, of course, to the empty pickle jars, mason jars, and Snapple bottles that were lying in the back of the car that he continued to retrieve with every jar he filled halfway.
“We won’t collect nearly enough sea glass to fill them all,” I said, hoping that he would get the hint that I wanted him to explain why we had brought so many.
“They won’t be filled all the way,” he said.
I glanced down at my jar, with the Vlasic pickle label torn off and the sticky stuff that had kept it on carefully picked away with my fingernail. It was filled to the brim with sea glass. Soren glanced up and sighed.
“We’re not filling them all the way,” he repeated, walking to the car and grabbing an empty jam jar. He picked off the remaining sticky stuff as he walked over and opened my pickle jar. He took out two large handfuls of sea glass from my pickle jar and stuck his hand into the jam jar, letting the sea glass slide through his fingers and hit the bottom of the jar, making sounds like a tinny rain stick.
“Why are you still wearing the wetsuit?” I asked.
“I’ll be getting in the water again.”
“To surf?” I persisted once more.
“No.”
I frowned. Anyone who’s ever worn a wetsuit before will tell you that there are few things as unpleasant on the surface of your skin as a slowly drying, salty wetsuit. He could have taken it off and gotten into some more comfortable clothes, but he seemed to want to be ready to run back to the water at any time. As the day went on Soren got more restless, and started looking at the horizon every two minutes to make sure the sun hadn’t hit the water yet. Suddenly, he perked up and ran to the water, carrying a jar half-filled with sea glass as he did so. He ran into the water until he was shoulder deep, and held the jar above the surface of the water. I could make out his head clearly bobbing, rising with the waves and still holding the jar. He was treading water in the glittering reflection of light caused by the sun, so bright that you squinted even if you were just looking at the water. He tilted the jar slightly and skimmed it across the glittering surface, then bobbed back to the shore, careful not to spill any of the water still in the jar, then ran up on the beach and took another jar from next to me.
“Try it,” he said to me.
“Try what?” I asked.
“Gloaming.”
“What?”
“Look…” he held out the jar to me, showing the shining light within, speckled with jade green and amber brown as the sea glass within gently rolled over each other,
“See the light?” he asked.
“Yeah…” I said, leaning in for a closer look. It looked like champagne held up against a floodlight, its brilliance only emphasized by the tiny imperfections created by grains of sand floating here and there.
“I’ve been talking…with kids online. The kids in Hawaii get the best but…” Soren trailed off. I could even feel the warmth of the light on my face, like I was looking into the sun, rather than a vlasic pickle jar.
“What is it?”
“Whaddarya, blind?! It’s sunlight!”
“Bull.”
“Look at it!”
“I see it. What did you put in the water?”
“No, no, no…It’s water in the sunlight!”
“But…that’s impossible! It’s light! You can’t…scoop it up like this!”
“But it’s here.”
“How?”
“I told you, it’s gloaming. People do it all over the world. The folk in the Pacific islands get what we don’t, and the Japanese get the first batch of the new day’s sunlight. See, you can only gloam when the dark is pushing the light back…that’s when the light is movable. Now, do what I do.”
I rolled up my pants to the knees, disregarding my 2-week unshaved legs and followed his lead, walking into the shallows where the water sucked around my ankles.
“Only the pbbbt!” Soren spat from deeper in the water, spewing some of the water as he yelled, “Only the parts that shine!”
I looked down and saw glittering spots in the water. I scooped them up, careful not to spill out any of the sea glass, and walked back to the beach, examining the jar. I still couldn’t believe it. When Soren wasn’t looking I suspiciously sniffed the water in the jar. At first, I simply smelled the brine of the salt water, but then the scent of the sunlight seemed to punch through. At this point, I’m reminded of my jealousy of Soren’s ability to write, and wish I had such ability so that I could describe the smell of sunlight. It was musty in my nose at first, like that musty feeling you get seeing dust motes when light enters a grungy old room. That scent was lightened, like there were daisies drying upside down in bunches in that grungy old room, and that scent was mixed with the rainbow of droplets flying off of the fur of a wet golden retriever as he shakes himself dry, then it fell into the smell of fresh cut lawns and the stench of photosynthesis of a noon sun hitting an algae-green lake, the warmth of it seemed to surface into my nostrils, and the scent turned to brown sugar, the sweet-scent of deodorant kicked into overdrive after a sprint down a hot sidewalk, drying apricots, pralines, the tall yellow grass in the hills of Potter Valley, apple pie, fresh-squeezed lemonade, and honey. I probably would have kept snorting that sunlight had Soren not walked back onto the sand with two more jars full of sea glass and glittering water and given me a partially annoyed, partially affectionate swat upside the head.
“Keep them in the sun,” he instructed before grabbing the last four jars full of sea glass, “We can’t afford to lose any before they start coming in.”
“They?” I looked at him, still a little sore from the sunburns on my skin, as well as the one that seemed to be on the inside of my nostrils now. Another one of the things that made me jealous of Soren as a writer was the fact that he was one of those people who didn’t need a lot of dialogue for exposition in both his writing and his real life. He was born with that naturalist instinct of waiting and watching, whereas I was impatient in my pursuit of understanding and had to capture and dissect everything verbally.
“You’ll see them,” he replied, running his hands through his sienna-brown hair, turning it umber as he did so. His hands were covered in grains and droplets of light, and he gingerly brushed the light off into one of the jars.
“Who are they?” I asked, halfheartedly running one hand through my thick hair and shaking it into the jar as well. To be honest, I could have done a better job getting the sunlight out of my hair, but I never cared too much for it, even in the case of fantastic, solar-related phenomena.
“You have to catch all you can,” said Soren, “Before they take it.”
He handed me two of the jars and pulled off his wetsuit. He was wearing his shorts underneath, and would probably freeze in the wind if he were not so concerned with his two jars. He held the wetsuit towards the ocean and sun now touching the horizon. He stood there for a second, and then squeezed the ankles of the wetsuit into the jars of sea glass. The water poured in like liquid sunshine. Then he set about running his hands over each other, until they looked like they were shrouded in night with stars on his fingertips. He shook his hands over the jar and the bright lights dropped from his fingers into the jar. He glanced at my sunburned shoulders and bronzed arms. “You’ve been in the sun all day,” he murmured.
“Ugh, yeah,” I started, looking at my arms, “I’m going to be so sore tomorr—”
“What are you doing standing there? The sun’s going down! Get it in the jar, quick!”
He seized my arm and swept his hand down it, sweeping the light on my arm into a pile at the back of my hand. My arm turned dusky with a pile of glowing diamonds at my knuckles. He swept the granulated light into the jar.
“Your other arm and your legs. Don’t forget those either,” he reminded me.
I did as he said, watching as he swept the sunlight off of his feet and into his jars. I swept the sunlight off of my other arm and legs and into the jars. The sun was halfway into the water when Soren raced to the car, carrying as many jars as he could. I raced after him. The air from inland blew cold out to the sea, already chilled by the darkened mountains in the distance. I shivered and pulled on my black sweatshirt, pulling up the hood over my wet hair. I grabbed all the jars and ran to the car, where Soren was already sitting in his after-surf clothes, clearly anxious to get going. We drove only a short distance, to the top of a hill overlooking the beach, and the sun was already halfway into the ocean. Soren turned off the car, then walked around and opened the back. He looked down at all the jars full of sunlight and sea glass that we had gleaned, and then he covered it with a tarp. He then walked to my door.
“What are you waiting for? Did you want to see them or not?”
“See who?
He opened the door and grabbed my arm. We walked to the top of the hill and stood there, watching the sunlight melt into the sea.
Then I saw them.
I had at first glanced back to look at the car sitting halfway up the hill, but they were there. There were hundreds of them. The car was glowing with twilight, and they ran their hands over it and the light from it disappeared into their cloaks. None of them seemed to notice our jars of sunlight inside, though. They were all about 11 feet tall, hats included, some of them carried dim lanterns, and all of them wore tall hats with wide brims, halfway between a witch and a pilgrim. Their faces were gray, but their features were as blurred as any human face in the darkest point of night. They looked almost like they were wearing the masks of the plague doctors of the dark ages, with empty black eyes and long beaks. I turned to Soren, equal parts mystified and terrified, and Soren put a finger to his lips. They glided up the hill, the ones in front sucking the goldenrod from the dead grass and exhaling the blue-gray of twilight, and the ones in back breathing in the blue-gray and exhaling navy. They breathed in the glow of that all sunsets leave and exhaled the indigo mantle of night. The air, once golden, turned pink as it was being sucked into mouth-like orifices in their beaks. That cold inland wind off of the mountains blew again, and hit my face. I didn’t even notice or care about the cold, I was so engrossed in these beings. I had lost myself in watching them…but they found me. Their empty eye sockets turned up to me, and they all started rushing toward me like a humid summer wind. It was only then that I realized that my hood had blown off.
“What’s—-“ I turned to Soren, but he was gaping in horror.
“You’re dirty blonde!” he said, terrified. He reached forward and desperately started running his hands through my hair. “Oh god, I’m so sorry! I shouldn’t have forgotten!”
“Forgotten what!?” I protested, flailing a little under his yanking and grappling hands in my hair.
“It’s easier to get the sun out of brown hair like mine, but yours is dirty blonde. It’s got dark parts and light parts and it’s hard to tell whether the sunlight—-NO!”
I suddenly felt cold hands intertwining into my hair, still salty and stiff from that warm day spent squatting in the sand. The dark figures were bent over the two of us, but they were blind to Soren as he struggled to wipe the sunlight from my hair. He was brushed aside and I was yanked onto my heels and dragged down the cliff to the beach. My feet thrashed and my hands gripped at my hair, trying to pull myself free from their grip,
“What are they doing?!” I shouted to Soren as he slid down the cliff f face, ignoring all signs prohibiting the erosion he was exacting on the dirt there, and ran after me.
“I told you! They’re gloamers! They push the light after the sun and leave the dark in its place!”
“Why do they have ME!?”
“THERE’S STILL LIGHT IN YOUR HAIR!”
I kicked and attempted to dig my heels into the sand as they moved across the beach, but to no avail. I yanked and writhed and strained my back and torso trying to force myself from their grip, but still they moved: Silent, unfeeling. I started screaming as I felt water splash onto my back. They had reached the ocean. If they could, would they drag me all the way to the Pacific Islands? All the way to Japan? Or would they leave me 200 feet out into the water in the dead of night once the light finally faded from my hair? Either way, I desperately thrashed and screamed. I literally was not going quietly into ANY night, let alone that good one. Then I saw Soren’s face and felt his body crash into me. It pushed me below the surface of the water, plunging my head underneath from the weight on my stomach. The air was forced out of me and brine filled my nostrils. My eyes were open and stinging with the salt, and beneath the surface I saw a cloud of golden light lift away from my hair. It drifted up to the surface and floated there. I saw a gray blurred hand sweep the light away and leave a dark gray blue in the green of the water. It spread like cream in tea. I had not realized how empty both my lungs were until most of the gloamers had passed over us. Then, Soren and I both broke the surface of the water and I gasped for breath and coughed. The sun was finally sinking into the horizon. It turned to gold mist at the edge of the sky, then the gloamers passed through and turned it lilac, then blue, then the gloamers disappeared over the edge of the sea. Soren and I stood there, soaking wet, thigh-deep in water. I hocked a wad of salty phlegm from my throat and then the reverence continued for another few minutes. Then we both turned back and walked up the path cutting into the cliff, toweled off a bit, then sat in the car, with towels covering the seats underneath us. We were silent as we drove for the first half of the ride. Then Soren exhaled.
“So….First sunset…thoughts?” he asked.
“That was messed up.”
“Yeah the Gloamers are a little weird like that.”
“I could’ve died.”
“The light would have faded from your hair before you got too far out. I just jumped in there ‘cause you were freaking out and I didn’t want someone to come in and scare the gloamers. But, first impulse, yes or no, would you want to do it again?”
“Yes,” the damnable word passed my lips.
“Great,” said Soren.
I looked over my shoulder at the jars glowing under the tarp, and then turned to Soren.
“So what are we going to do with all the sunlight we got?” I asked.
Soren smiled and rolled the grip of his fingers over the steering wheel.
“We’re waking up early tomorrow,” he said, “I’m taking you to the mountains. You’re going to see your first sunrise.”
