Sabine Pass

At times, the lighthouse at Sabine Pass turns itself on.

The pre-dawn sky hung low and lazy as the Sabine Pass spilled ever-steady into the sea. On its marshy banks, a gulf tramp struggled to guard his driftwood fire against a late November gust which skated up from Mexico and crashed headlong into the shore.

When the breeze lightened, the tramp swirled his pot of saltwater coffee over the still-dancing flames. He brushed a grubby, gloved hand over his face, wiping sleep and stringy gray hair from his eyes.

A dirty orange smear bled into the blackness, creeping westward and growing to fill the sky. Its reflection, tinged a dull gray-brown by the surface of the muddy water, oscillated gently.

A forktailed frigatebird gripped the railing atop the decommissioned lighthouse before joining its three compadres in an aimless flight. Their black silhouettes circled the lighthouse like vultures around a corpse.

Then like a struck match, the sun crested the eastern horizon with a brilliant flash. For an impossible moment, the dead lens of the lighthouse, shattered and blind for longer than most folks had been alive, caught the light and answered. A clean, white arc swept the water once, deliberate and slow, exactly as it had the day the lighthouse had first been erected.

The tramp let his blackened pot fall into the fire. His empty stare birthed a hysteric, gaptoothed grin as he leapt and hollered, stumbling over his words. "She's calling ‘em in! She's... She's calling the ships to port!"

The beam finished its pass and the lighthouse fell dark again. The tramp’s cracked laugh carried on into the marsh.

Thirty-some-odd miles to the Northeast, Scott Parker slid into his desk at the Cameron Parish Tax Assessor’s satellite branch and checked the clock.

Quarter past. Quarter late.

Red, the manager of seven years, swung out of his office, bee-lining down the narrow aisle between the cluttered desks and dented tin file cabinets. The scent of day-old Whataburger and bleach preceded him.

Scott opened a few windows and buried his eyes in his desktop as he braced for the collision.

But Red stopped short. “Travis, BJ's on the line. Says the demo's tomorrow and they ain't got the 17-B.”

Travis had been reclining in his chair at the desk across from Scott's, mindlessly reassembling a BIC. He checked the calendar tacked to the wall beside him without correcting his posture. “Talking ‘bout Sabine?”

Red's arms flailed in exasperation. “Am I talking ‘bout Sabine? I'm talking A-bout the only thing you was supposed to get done since Tuesday! "

“How'd you figure that?” Travis waved off the question even as it left his mouth. “Never mind it. Hey, I'm up in Deatonville now. Sabine's an hour plus out the way and you know I've been dying of this sinus thing.”

The only response was the pop of the building's heater kicking on.

Travis held a couple tissues over his mouth and forced a cough, which did sound convincing.

Red whipped his head to face Scott.

Scott almost said, “I'm only Records and Liens,” but something in the thin shape of Red's scowling eyes made him think better of it.

As Scott began to answer the glare in agreement, Red barked his orders, “Just bring ‘em in tomorrow. I'll let BJ know to hold the trucks.” Then he stormed off down the aisle, back to his office.

After a day spent researching the particulars of a 17-B, and coming up with a worse understanding than he thought he had to begin with, Scott finally asked Travis as the two left for the day.

“Just a couple photos. The sides, front and back, one of the lantern room and one of the foundation. The rest is on file. Not even worth doing if you ask me.”

Scott was halfway down highway 27 when he cursed himself for not writing it down. His frustrated nervousness shifted to Travis. “You know you ain't even sick, get out there and do your job! It's crazy. What else does he even have to do? Focus on one thing and get it done. One thing!” He caught himself shouting to the empty car and slamming his palm into the steering wheel as he made the turn onto the 82. He shook his head with a sheepish grin.

Ahead, the sun was just dipping below the horizon. “It's gonna be dark by the time I get there. Why am I even doing this?”

The world darkened. When his headlights flicked on he caught himself screaming again, this time at Red. “Obviously he's not going to get anything done, you just dump it on other people. The one person left actually doing their–”

He stopped himself and flipped on the radio.

Static.

He shut it off and he drove the rest of the way in silence.

His headlights swept across an iron gate blocking the entrance road out to the lighthouse and for a moment Scott thought he'd completely wasted his evening. His stomach growled and he grumbled some more about not thinking to stop for a bite. He pulled to the side, got out and went up to the gate. The gate was open enough for foot traffic, but wouldn't budge any further despite a solid push and pull. He turned his phone's flashlight on, hit the button to set his car's alarm and went the rest of the way on foot.

An overcast sky blacked out the moon and stars, so the phone's light bore the entire burden of carving his way through the darkness. Scott waved it back and forth as he went, wary of cottonmouths.

“Too cold for that.” He reassured himself.

And it was cold. The damp wind off the water bit at his ears and nose and he shoved his free hand into the pocket of his jacket. The rhythmic thud and slurp of the waves sliding through rocks and mud seemed to grow louder and louder still as if expanding to fill the night.

Dark as it was, the lighthouse carved an even blacker shape out of the hint of blue that remained in the sky. Still a ways away, Scott took it in.

“Oh…” the realization came to him dully. He stood for a moment, not bothering to ask the obvious question.

He opened the phone's camera, cutting the flashlight off. The night closed in around him. He raised the phone and snapped the picture. Even from the distance, the lighthouse's pale stone walls were illuminated by the flash.

“Good enough,” he muttered, flipping his flashlight back on.

Scott followed the path up to the front of the lighthouse. A light drizzle had started and might have been ice for all he could tell. Little white specks flew in front of the light and struck his cheeks with a tiny sort of sharpness. His slacks seemed to pick up weight and felt wet against his legs.

The few stone steps up to the door were slick with moisture. He gripped the curved, iron door handle and pulled.

Nothing.

“Are you kidding me?”

He looked up, squinting into the now steady rain.

Shaking his head he turned to leave. The first step down gave way as a stone came loose and Scott took a hard seat, skinning his hand on the rough wall as he tried to catch himself. His phone nearly careened from his hand but he hadn't let it go. He sat, collecting himself.

The phone's light caught a glint in the crack where the loose stone had been. He moved the light closer. A brass key lay half buried in the dirt.

Nothing about the experience left him wanting to try the key in the door, but some unconscious pull of a perceived responsibility forced him onward.

And it worked.

The old door opened smooth and silent and clicked shut behind him. He scanned the bare walls and dust-covered room with his light.

No movement.

No sound.

The wood and iron staircase spiraled upward along the wall, eventually coming to a cypress plank door with gaps in places and a brass door handle. Each creaking step he took had pulled at his nerves.

Before the door, he hesitated.

The rain was louder now against the lighthouse's metal roof. A low and rumbling roll of thunder sounded from somewhere over the gulf.

He reached for the handle, then heard it.

A faint scratching, quiet but at the same time deafening, knifed through the noise of the outside world.

There it was again. Louder. Heavier.

Not scratching.

Rustling. Shaking.

He waited.

The rain slowed. It might have stopped.

Scott heard nothing. He turned around, considered his next move and for the first time noticed how high he had come. The floor was lost somewhere in the darkness below. He couldn't move.

He could move.

He gripped the icy handle, pressed the thumb latch, opened the door and stepped in. The door shut with a sharp crack, then a quiet click.

A violent thrashing of black wings, and deep, guttural, gobbling erupted inside the room. Scott covered his head and watched with eyes the size of saucers as four giant birds scrambled to take flight, before escaping through the opening which led onto the lantern gallery, and disappearing into the night.

He froze, thinking that what was left of his nerves had frayed. The cloud of dust kicked up by the commotion hung in the air. It tasted stale and ancient.

If his nerves had fully gone, he couldn't tell. Scott opened the camera, took the picture of the small, circular room then hurriedly turned the flashlight back on.

A square, thin-legged table sat across the room. In the still thick layer of dust that covered it, something had been turned askew, leaving a noticeably dark outline.

Scott picked it up. It was a small envelope. He tapped it against the edge of the little table, knocking the dust off, then held it up to read the front.

He whirled about the room, shining his light this way and that, searching for answers, any answers.

He read the front of the envelope again.

Scott Parker.

It was hand written, clear as could be on the thick yellow stock of the envelope.

He turned it over and opened it and removed a single yellowed piece of paper.

“July 14, 1987 — December 8, 2022.” His voice was a cold whisper.

He drove home with the heater on. By the time he pulled under his carport he was still damp, but he wasn't cold.

He got inside and didn't change.

Three years before, when he had first moved down the Parish, the ice from his freezer started to taste like bitter dirt. His first thought was that some sort of swamp mold had spawned in his pipes and he'd never be able to use his water again. His world was falling apart.

A simple Google search of “ice tastes like dirt” later, and he discovered that all he had to do was dump the ice, cycle it a few times, and leave a bowl of baking soda in the corner of the freezer.

Now, faced with this new issue, he poured over what exactly to type in the search bar.

Letter with your own name on it in Sabine Lighthouse

What does an old paper with your birth date and a date in the future mean?

Sabine Lighthouse, December 8

Sabine Lighthouse, July 14, 1987

July 14 1987 – December 8 2022

Death December 8

Scott Parker, dead

The entries spiraled

No answers.

The envelope and the letter taunted him.

He was cold again.

He fell asleep.

He woke a moment before his alarm sounded. Something about the sunshine made the world seem new, like nothing, not even time had existed before that morning.

It was a silent drive in to the office and when he pulled into their section of the strip mall parking lot, only Red's green Grand Am was parked out front.

He surveyed the parking lot as he walked in to be sure Travis hadn't simply parked somewhere else. Sure enough, he wasn't in today.

Across the street, a grubby homeless man stood awkwardly rigid, watching him. Scott wasn't having any of it and stared right back.

“You're late again. Is it just an every day thing now?” Red barked from his doorway as Scott entered the office.

“Where's Travis?” The escalation just happened, like it had to.

“What? This ain't about him.”

Scott kept on to his desk.

Red marched after him. “He's getting the Sabine pictures before he comes in. Like I told him. He's doing his job and that still’s got nothing to do with why you are late again!”

“What?” Scott asked himself more than Red. “I got the pictures.” His tone lost its edge. He opened his photos and handed his phone to Red.

Red swiped through them, his face puzzled.

“What is this?”

“You told me to go yesterday and bring them in. I drove there after work in the rain in the dark…”

“I told? What? You're Records and Liens. I was talking to Travis. Obviously. And what kind of pictures are these?”

“Pictures of the outside and the lantern room.” Scott's tone soured again.

Red turned the first picture to Scott. It was just a gray-white blur. He swiped to the next one. “And what room is this? Do you even know what a lantern room is?”

Scott closed his eyes and took a long slow breath in through his nose. “You're fat and you smell bad.”

Neither of them knew what to do next.

Red placed the phone on Scott's desk with severe restraint, and went back to his office in silence.

The heater popped on.

Travis rolled in about twenty minutes past three, dropped a brown envelope on Red's desk. Red didn't look at him. Scott watched Travis say something, wait a moment, shrug, then walk to his desk and lean back in his chair. “What's his problem?”

Scott shook his head, unable to find any words.

It was almost four.

“I thought he told me to go.” He eventually said.

“Go where?”

“Sabine.”

“Sabine?”

“Sabine pass.”

“The lighthouse? Why would he tell you to go? You aren't a field guy.”

“Apparently he didn't.” Scott couldn't find anything else to say about the previous night. All the possible words seemed stuck together in his mind.

Like a traffic jam.

“Constipation.”

Travis laughed, and Scott wasn't sure if he'd actually said it.

It was five o'clock.

Scott passed by the door to Red's office without a word. He and Travis crossed the parking lot to their cars. He had his eyes on his shoes and a thousand questions still on the tip of his tongue.

Travis slammed his forearm into Scott's chest and shouted. Before Scott could register any of it, the gulf tramp was on him, pressing into him. Scott tried to back away, but the tramp's gloved grip tightened on his jacket collar and yanked him off balance. Travis's arm remained trapped between them.

Spittle flung from the tramp's lips with every hissing word he whispered. “It's called you. You've seen it. You've tasted it. It's inside you and it's ours. We need it.” His breath was hot and reeked of rancid meat.

Travis finally broke the tramp's grip. Scott almost fell backward, but caught himself. The tramp crouched and ran, disappearing behind a slate gray Subaru, then diving into a row of hedges, cackling as he went.

Travis spoke, but Scott wasn't listening. He spoke again. “Are you good?”

He couldn't answer.

At home, Scott felt the icy sting of his living room window on his forehead as he watched a light rain fall in the orange glow of the streetlight. The envelope was wet with nervous sweat as he clinched it in his palm.

“Well, magic isn't real.” He ripped the envelope and letter in half, stacked them together then ripped it again, wadded up the remains and went outside.

As he lifted the lid to his outside bin, he hesitated, closed it, walked across the street barefoot in the rain, up his neighbor's driveway and put it in their bin. Then he went back inside, showered, laid on his bed, closed his eyes and tried to convince himself he was already asleep.

December 3rd. Saturday.

The sky was cloudless and pure, a perfect robin's egg blue that faded only slightly into a paler shade near the horizon. The sun was lost somewhere in its expanse and the marsh flanking highway 82 flaunted a vibrant green. Everything swelled with vigor and life. Even the asphalt had been washed clean. Everything was new.

Except the Gulf. It was gray and dull and endless. But that’s the Gulf.

Scott savored the last bite of his Whatachick’n and zipped west with the cruise control on. The only soundtrack was the wet hum of his tires and the woosh of someone in more of a rush than him. Occasionally he would take to counting the electric poles that lined the highway. He smiled at the simple pleasure and repeated the phrase that had come to him unconsciously more and more over the last several days. “Magic isn’t real."

He drove across the low bridge, out to the stretch where the lighthouse jutted up from the marsh. The area, though remote and unkempt, was remarkably plain in the daylight, but that lighthouse stood like an intruder in the natural world.

The demo had been postponed indefinitely because, as Red had made abundantly clear, the rest of the 17-B was not on file.

Scott hadn’t been able to muster the drive the previous weekend, but each day had gotten easier and easier. He had to face the place. Stepping out of his car, the cold gust from the water caught him, and nearly put a stop to the whole thing.

“Magic isn’t real.”

He shut the door, locked it and slipped through the gate. A single, stubborn cicada that refused to bow to the seasons’ changing, kept up a lonely, rattling, bzzz-BZZZ-bzzz somewhere off in the scrub oak.

The Lighthouse door was open.

For all the dread and dark confusion of that night, he may very well have left it that way. He must have. He went in, leaving the door open.

Everthing inside was unremarkable, just a remnant of forgotten civil war skirmishes and covert gun running that had been closed up and left to collect dust and rot away. He looked up. “Not all that high.”

The wood and iron spiral staircase creaked as he ascended. His pulse quickened. “It’s the noise and the height. That’s it. It’s not–”

The cypress plank door was in front of him. He took in a long slow breath. “Magic isn’t real.” It wasn’t as easy to say.

He opened the door.

Sitting on the small table across the room, bathed in a beam of sunlight flooding in from the large opening, was the gulf tramp. Scott recognized him instantly. He fell to a knee to keep himself from bolting from the room and toppling over the railing of the staircase.

The tramp sat motionless.

Rigid.

From beneath scraggly eyebrows and tangled gray strands of hair, his eyes stared blankly at the doorway. Scott stared back, locked in, as if the body would spring forward at any moment.

His knees ached when he finally pushed himself up, and he shuffled forward.

A gaping wound had been gouged out of the tramp’s abdomen. Shreds of his shirt and thick leather jacket stuck to the congealed blood and…

Scott couldn’t face what else. He vomited up his Whatachick’n and Coke. Chunks splattered back on his New Balances and jeans. He knelt again, then fell to all fours and heaved and heaved.

And heaved.

The first police cruiser pulled up after nearly an hour. The officers told Scott to come with them, at least to the base of the tower, but he wouldn’t do it.

“I can’t leave you here and I’m not sending Officer Wilson up there alone. We really could use your cooperation here.”

Scott turned away, folded his arms and leaned against the quarter panel of his car.

“Fine.” The officer said, then turned to his partner. “County’s rollin’. Supposed to be about ten minutes. We’ll see.”

Scott didn’t know how much time had passed before the rest of the officers pulled up. He explained again and again to each one what he had seen and what he was doing there. This time with more detail, that time with less.

“It’s for work... The place was supposed to be demo’d.... I needed some pictures... A 17-B... It’s just a form.... I hadn’t taken them yet...”

From the growing swirl of lights and uniforms and cigarette smoke and a thousand conversations he snatched bits of information like flies passing by a duck’s bill.

“Been up there near a week. Probably froze, but birds gutted him. Hurricane birds roost ‘round down here... Yeah I know of him... That’s old George Maine, called him Gus, known him eighteen years... Yeah, he’s free to go.”

Scott typed the name into his phone. Magic might not be real, but the ragtag explanations the officers had volleyed among themselves weren’t either. He was back to needing answers.

It was dark by the time he made it home.

He had been tempted to search the name on the drive, but something about doing it out in the real world made him feel vulnerable, like whatever was going on would somehow be more real.

He sat on his couch, myopic, and typed.

George Gus Maine, Sabine

The results were sparse at first, mostly lighthouse history sites and a few scattered mentions. He’d seen them all before. But one caught his eye. The Portal to Louisiana History. The link led to a digital archive of scanned pictures of the old news clippings, full pages from several newspapers around the region dating back centuries.

He clicked through, poring over current events long forgotten and sports scores of teams and leagues no longer in operation.

And obituaries.

Beaumont Enterprise - Wednesday, 16 December 1987
BODY FOUND IN MARSH -- George Maine, known locally as ‘Gus,’ approximately 47, was discovered late Monday in the area surrounding the derelict Sabine Pass Lighthouse. No sign of foul play. Authorities conclude investigation. Next of kin unknown. Unclaimed remains to parish cemetery.

Beaumont Enterprise - Monday, 9 December 1952
SABINE’S LAST KEEPER DIES IN TOWER – George W. Maine, 50, self-styled watchman of the decommissioned Sabine Pass Lighthouse, was discovered deceased in the lantern room Saturday by the Coast Guard inspectors. The light was officially extinguished this year, yet Maine continued his nightly volunteer vigil. He is survived by his daughter, Clara Maine, age 12, of Port Arthur. Coroner lists cardiac arrest. Private graveside service; lens will never turn again.”

Port Arthur News - Thursday, 18 October 1917
SABINE KEEPER FINDS BODY -- George “Gus” Maine was found dead Tuesday in the lantern gallery, seated against the prism as though watching for ships. The current keeper, who shall remain nameless, climbed the spiral nightly, and discovered the body. No marks of violence; exposure and age, says the doctor. Leaves no immediate family.

Galveston Daily News – 3 November 1882
SABINE PASS LIGHTHOUSE TRAGEDY – Keeper George Maine, a familiar figure these thirty five years, was discovered cold in the lantern room at dawn yesterday. The great hurricane of 86 scarred the lens, but not the man. He kept the flash true through every blow. Found with his log still open and the wick-snuffers in his hand. Coroner rules heart failure. Old pilots say the tower finally claimed its own. Services Saturday; internment on the chenier ridge.

Galveston Weekly News - Tuesday, 14 December 1847
MELANCHOLY END AT SABINE LIGHT -- Mr George W. Maine, aged 47, principal keeper of the new brick tower at Sabine Pass threw himself from the lantern gallery sometime during the night of the 11th. His body was discovered at dawn yesterday, broken upon the stones at the base of the tower. Main, a local native had tended the light only since its first kindling march last. No cause is known for the rash act, though neighbors speak of recent melancholy and complaints of a voice in the wind that would not cease. The lens stood dark the entire night. Passing vessels report no warning beam. He leaves a widow and infant daughter. Coroner’s Verdict: Self-murder whilst of unsound mind. The tower remains unmanned until a successor be appointed.
Dawn cracked through the window. His eyes burned bloodshot in the glow of the screen. His throat ached and he shivered in the cold he’d been sitting in all night.

The heater kicked on.

He shook his head. “What do I do?” There was a resignation in the question. A helplessness.

In the pit of the moment he turned back to the screen. One name had been mentioned. Where was it?

“There.”

Clara Maine. Port Arthur. One listing.
He rushed to his car, still in the same vomit speckled shoes and jeans, and leapt in. He started north toward the 10 to avoid that other way.

His car pulled into a cracked parking lot just as his gas light came on with an unwelcome ding. The place squatted on the edge of a quiet Port Arthur neighborhood. It was single-story and sprawling, brick with faded green awnings and a row of pansies and half dead magnolias. One sad rosemary bush sat like a lopsided Christmas Tree, strung with a single strand of Dollar Store lights that someone had forgotten to turn off that morning. A hand painted sign out front read “Griffing Park Care Center: A Safe and Loving Home.”

The lot was half-empty. A couple of rusted Buicks with handicap tags, one ambulance idling with its exhaust coughing into the cold and a lone security golf cart. Scott killed the engine and sat for a minute.

Inside the glass doors, the lobby smelled exactly like every nursing home. Somewhere a radio was playing Christmas music, but Scott couldn’t quite make out the full tune. The mid-fifties nurse in purple scrubs and a name tag that read SHONDRA looked up from her phone long enough to give him a once over.

“Hello.” Scott said, stepping forward.
“Checking in?” Shondra held Scott’s eyes for a long moment before breaking into the widest, warm smile. “Just playin’ sweetie. How can I help you?”

“Oh,” Scott feigned a breathy laugh and gathered his words. “I, uhm... I’d like to see Clara Maine, if possible. It’s urgent.” That wasn’t at all what he had planned. He knew it, and he felt like Shondra did too. She sat back in her chair and glanced up at the clock.
“What’s the relation?” she asked, some of the warmth gone from her voice. She reached for a clipboard and a pen.

“I’m a family friend. I have some news for her. And a gift.” He shut his eyes and quietly scolded himself.

“Alright. Well, she is in room 112. It’s the memory-care wing. She ain’t talked in three years, but fill this out and we’ll swing in.”
Scott marked up the highlighted lines on the paper with scratchy writing then followed Shondra down the hall. A new Christmas song grew louder then faded as they turned down the beige colored hallways. Their footprints squeaked on the linoleum tile and for a moment Scott thought he was back in seventh grade. Shondra was talking the whole time.

“I shouldn’t put it quite this way, but most of us think Miss Clara went blind about four, five months back. She never really moved much, but lately she won’t even look at you. And I know she can’t hear a thing. It’s still good of ya to visit, though. Here it is.”

They stood outside Room 112. The door was open. Inside, below a small window facing the parking lot, on a hospital bed with rails, a tiny woman curled on her side under a thin yellow blanket. Her hair was snow-white and thin enough that the pink of her scalp showed through. An ancient oxygen cannula snaked across her cheeks.

Scott stepped in. His shoes squeaked.
Clara Maine’s head jerked at the sound like a startled bird. Her milky eyes opened wide, unfocused, but her whole body stiffened.

“No!”

The word escaped her mouth with a clarity and force that frightened Scott back out of the room. Shondra pushed past him to Clara’s bed and grabbed her shoulders, both trying to calm and restrain her as the monitors on the wall started shrieking. Another nurse shoved him aside as she burst into the room. All the while, Clara’s eyes were fixed on Scott. And he knew the whole world, and whatever it might contain, was simply out of reach.

December 7th. Approaching midnight.

Scott woke up turning from the 27 on to Highway 82.

He hadn’t been to the office the last few days. Or he had. He couldn’t remember those days or the days before them. He could remember. He didn’t want to. The gas pedal was down as far as it would go, but still he pressed it harder. He was almost standing. The electric poles whizzed by until they looked like one blur in the peripheral of his headlights.

He parked.

The stars watched him slip through the iron gate. The moon lit his way.

No crime scene.

It was as if it never happened. None of it.

Inside, a thick layer of ancient dust still coated the floor like no one had entered in a hundred years. The creak of the wooden stairs echoed in the cavernous space and for a moment Scott thought that he too had never been there either. The memory seemed loose. They all did, like a shirt that didn't fit.

He breathed in the stale, ancient air, and he knew he had been there. He knew he was arriving.

The cypress plank door was in front of him again. The brass handle was cold in his hand again. He listened for scratching. Rustling. Shaking.

Nothing.

He cracked it open. Here too, a lifetime of dust had settled and any trace of recent events had vanished. Scott stepped in.
The cypress door swung shut with a long, exhausted creak, then a sharp crack. A heartbeat later, the brass latch fell into place with a soft, final clack that echoed in the empty room, then down the stairs, out the door, and was swallowed up by the Gulf wind.

The dirty orange streak rose again at dawn.

The gulf tramp scooped up water from the ever-steady Sabine Pass and came up towards his driftwood fire. Each step was unsteady and deliberate in the waterlogged marsh.

He set the pot on a metal grate he'd found, then tore open a tinfoil pack of coffee grounds and dumped them in. As the sky retook its color from the night, he swirled the awful mixture and lamented the wait.

The sun crested the horizon, and the tramp's eyes shot to the lens at the top of the lighthouse where five forktailed frigatebirds wheeled in aimless flight.