It was October of 2001. Dazzling trees zipped past as I drove north to Duluth. Dappled hillsides flowed by. Transformed leaves mingled with steady, green conifers. The sky had become dull grey, heavily overcast and thick with coming snow.
 
Reading the death certificates was still very fresh in mind. It had taken place only a month before, but certainly didn’t feel like it. I kept thinking about very, very briefly seeing sparks right before the acetylene tank exploded. How a coroner’s investigation corroborated my drowning dreams. Seeing Murphy’s official cause of death still struck me as tremendously personal.
 
My inner voice kept repeating, “I never knew what happened to him. I never found him. I looked everywhere. I didn’t know where he went.” The lady from Detroit once told me of how Louie took on the role of protective older brother to Murphy. He took the teenager under his wing, perhaps even a father figure as Louie had twenty years on him. There was a notable sense of relief from reading the death certificate, but a new sense of guilt. It occurred to me that Louie needed to know Murphy was safe after the explosion, but was unable to find him and became increasingly worried.
 
Over the years, through more trips to Duluth than I can count, I became friends with a ship. More accurately, with her crew, although I knew the vessel very well too. She was called the Oglebay Norton, a massive bulk cargo carrier that ran up and down the Great Lakes. She was 1,000 ft / 305 m long, 12 stories tall and could unload herself. She hauled coal, iron ore pellets and limestone. One of the gentlemen I quite knew well was her captain. He was a down-to-earth, easygoing man, quick to joke and stone serious.
 
I had timed my October trip to coincide with the Oglebay Norton’s arrival. I needed information that only came from a commercial vessel. The next morning we connected and after a bit of catching up I requested the use of the ship’s chartroom. The captain generously obliged and took me up. The charts were housed in a small room directly aft of the wheelhouse.
 
I never asked the good captain for anything before, taking my welcome aboard as all I would want. To ask to study one of his charts felt very odd. He stayed by me as I examine coastal lines and depth notations. I told him that I was particularly interested in the waters off of Red Cliff, north of Bayfield. This surprised him; well I suppose all of this surprised him. In truth I was probably strangely quiet at the time. I didn’t notice it until he finally started asking about my motives.
 
I chose not to tell him the entire story of how I somehow picked up a ghost who drowned off of Red Cliff and my insane obsession over all things Marigold. I rather thought that if I told him those things me might call me the mayor of Crazytown and have me escorted off. Instead I told him the true motivation for my visit to Duluth. I wanted to go to that site and remember three men who lost their lives while on duty to the US Light House Service. The captain nodded. As a fellow professional mariner he understood and there was no need to know why.
 
He very kindly mentioned that this was his only copy of that chart and he needed to keep the set intact. If he had an extra it would have been mine. The thought of owning it never occurred to me, I was only interested in tiny dirt roads in the area. I needed to get as close on land as possible. Previously I made an attempt to hire a boat to take me to the spot, for this trip, but that fell through. It was with tremendous good fortune that Oglebay Norton’s chart marked where the old Red Cliff light once stood. It was now an underwater hazard and pinpointed my next destination.
 
Following thank yous and handshakes I bid the ship a safe journey and went to the market. There I secured four roses, one shorter than the rest. The next stop was on a very small dirt road, north of Bayfield.