The Lighthouse Road (10 page)

   He'd spent fifteen hours a day working on the boat since he'd gotten the keel dried, days he'd not eaten more than an apple, a bacon-and-onion sandwich, days that turned into night without a moment's notice or pause. At the end of those days he found himself exhausted but unable to sleep for the anticipation Rebekah might appear. And because her visits were unscheduled and the waiting interminable it was during these hours of night that he'd stop the physical work and resort to culling the catalogs, to his drawings and plans. He'd redraw the lines, up the sheer, recalculate the amount of lumber he was going to need, the barrels of oakum; double-check the weight of the motor he was considering against the strength of the motor box he had planned. All of these things raised in him an apprehension that was redoubled by the uncertainty of seeing her.

   The waiting gave him a feeling deep inside. It was not heartache or longing but rather a definite pain, a throbbing in his bones. Some mornings he'd wake from his few fitful hours of sleep hardly able to walk. He'd brew a pot of coffee and stand at the counter scratching his beard, considering the boat. Considering his achy bones. He knew these first strips of wood were the most important, and the thought of his own life at the mercy of his workmanship filled him with doubt. On one such morning, after three nights without Rebekah, he decided to visit Hosea to see what he could learn about bones.

   As a boy he'd been forbidden to enter certain rooms at the apothecary. Hosea's bedroom on the third floor was off limits, as were his offices on the second floor. There were doors with padlocks on them in the basement, rooms he knew now as the storage cellars for the hooch. Even Rebekah— so wont to disobey Hosea, so quick to conspire with Odd— was firm on the banishment.

   But even as he'd been forbidden entrance, Odd had been a young boy left often to his own devices and full of a child's inquisitiveness. He'd made his romps through the apothecary governed by his curiosity, reveling in his cunning more than the discoveries made. The room Odd thought of now was Grimm's medical office. He wanted to see the skeleton that stood in the corner.

   When he entered the apothecary on that August morning it was a place bustling with customers. By then Hosea was peddling garments and dry goods along with his cures, and the townsfolk were out in force. The Lund boy was behind the cash register in an apron to match Hosea's, Rebekah nowhere to be seen.

   When finally there was a lull, Hosea met Odd at the counter. "Hello, young man," he said. "Business is brisk. It is indeed."

   "I see that," Odd said.

   "I'm a fool for not introducing this line of clothes sooner."

"They're in a frenzy for them, sure enough."

   Hosea took a moment to delight in his savvy, then turned his attention back to Odd. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

   "I'm wanting to learn about bone disease."

   "Bone disease?"

   "Yup."

   "As in diseases of the human skeleton? That sort of bone disease."

   "That sort."

   "Why? Are you not well?"

   "I'm fine. Curious is all."

   "Well," Hosea began, lapsing into a fatherly role that had never once suited him, "there are many diseases that afflict bone and marrow alike. Jean George Chrétien Frédéric Martin Lobstein was a professor and pathologist at École d'obstétrique du Rhin inférieur. He discovered the root causes of osteoporosis. Brittle bones, essentially. There are cancers of the bone marrow. Rickets, of course. And—"

   "What about that skeleton up in your office?" Odd interrupted. "That bunch of bones have any disease?"

   "Why, no, of course not."

   "Can I go up and have a look at it?"

   "Why so curious about bones in an attic?"

   "I just want to see the skeleton."

   Hosea looked around the shop, told the Lund boy he'd be back in a moment, and led Odd up the hidden staircase behind the wall of shelves above the counter.

   Upstairs, he took a key from above the door frame and unlocked the door. "We don't often venture into these quarters anymore," Hosea said. The room was windowless, hot and close, dark but for what light followed them in from the hallway.

   It was hard to see at first, but everything in the room was covered with white bed linens. As Hosea went from object to object removing the linens, a whole world of antique curiosities came into dim view. There was Hosea's old phrenology machine, his dentist's chair, his surgical table and glass-cased surgical tools, several volumes of medical books all bound in calfskin and stamped with gold lettering, a model of the planets aligned, held in place with bronze rods. Under the last sheet stood the skeleton. It was on a cart with wheels and Hosea rolled it toward the light from the hallway.

   Odd glanced at the leg and arm bones, at the feet and hands, but settled quickly on the ribs and spine. As he studied the skeleton, Hosea launched into a lecture on what he called osteology. Hosea's bloviating was something Odd had long since learned to ignore, so as Hosea prattled, Odd studied the delicate curve of the ribs, the intricacies of the spinal column, the interconnectedness of the entire system.

   He interrupted Hosea midsentence, "It's a complicated thing, ain't it?"

   "The skeletal system?"

   "What the hell else would I be talking about?"

   Without suffering Odd's question for a moment, Hosea continued as though this had been the thread of their conversation all along. "When an infant is born there are many times more bones than the skeleton of the adult. They fuse. The system simplifies. Though of course it remains a wonder."

   Finally Hosea stopped talking. The two of them stood in the afternoon light in the hallway and studied the skeleton.

   Odd thought of the boat, the latticework of bent wood it would require, the hundred hours he'd spent shaping the keel, its perfection. He thought of the worst Lake Superior could offer and found satisfac tion in his confidence in the white pine that just the winter before had stood in the forest. He decided he would be less cerebral about the boat. Less susceptible to his longing for Rebekah.

   "What's brought this curiosity on?" Hosea asked.

   Odd looked at him, thought better of telling him, but did anyway. "I'm building a new boat. A bigger boat. I just wanted to see the skeleton." He paused. "I've got the ribbands all set up. The keel is made. It's one piece, carved it out of a white pine log."

   Hosea appeared interested. "How long is the keel?"

   "Eighteen foot."

   Now Hosea appeared interested and impressed. "A single-piece keel eighteen feet long? The wood is sound tip to tail?"

   "It came from a chunk forty foot long. It's sound. It's a goddamn work of art, what it is."

   "Why a new boat?" Hosea said.

   "I'm tired of being wet."

   Hosea smiled, remembering the night of the storm last month, Odd's willingness to risk his life in the skiff. "A little more cargo room?" Hosea pressed.

   Now Odd smiled. "Yeah, a little."

   "But why the skeleton?"

   "I've been achy. I don't think I'll be anymore."

   Hosea wheeled the skeleton back across the office. He covered it with a sheet. "I'll tend to the rest of this later."

   Odd stepped down the hall and Hosea closed the door. After he turned the lock, he put the skeleton key in his pocket and led Odd downstairs.

T
he moon hung gibbous and low, casting the snow in the gorge in bronze light. The only sounds were the wind and the flowing water beneath the snow. In an hour the sun would break over the lake.

   Trond Erlandson and Hosea both wore fur coats and moose-hide mitts and hats pulled over their ears. They wore woolen socks beneath their sheep-lined boots and they covered their boots with felt. They stood on snowshoes and carried loaded Winchesters. The foreman withdrew from the inside of his coat a pair of field glasses that he trained first upriver and then down. The only thing they seemed to magnify was the cold. This was the eleventh night below zero and still two weeks until February.

   Whispering, Hosea said, "We saw the otter scat smeared around below the lower falls. The wolf sign's up and down this river like they couldn't care less about you."

   Trond looked into the downriver darkness, measuring their whereabouts against a woodsman's markers: deadfall, beaver lodge, muskeg, eagle aerie. "We're only six miles from camp," he said. He shook his head and spit the wad of snoose from his mouth, spit twice more and said, "Goddamn. Where was the bull moose they found?"

   "Up on Bear Paw Lake. Just ten miles as the raven flies. And those ravens have been around."

   The bull moose had been found by a crew of sawyers working the northern parcel two days earlier. Frozen solid, its graying dewlap blowing in the stiff wind, leaning against an enormous white pine, it was but the most recent evidence of winter's provenance. They'd found other creatures similarly dead. Each carcass a portent of hungry wolves.

   The foreman followed the moonlight up the gorge once more. New snow had fallen the day before and in that light the drifts appeared lit from inside.

   "I've been in these particular woods for three years and not seen them yet," the foreman said. "I've heard them, I've messed my boots in their scat, I've seen what they can do to a caribou weighing four hundred pounds. But I've not set my eyes on them." He spoke as much to himself as to Grimm. "But if they're this close to camp —" His voice trailed off and he shook his head. "We're not talking about hugags or agropelters here." He closed his eyes hard against the wind and when he opened them the moon was gone, swallowed by clouds.

   He turned to Hosea. "You want the wolves why?"

   "The bitches are in estrus, their glands are spilling with curatives."

   "I wouldn't believe it if I'd never seen some of those potions you peddle."

   They hiked another quarter mile along the palisade's edge, hoping for a better view of the river. They stood against trees not four feet from the precipice, the wind rising to their faces. They were silent now, waiting for the clouds to pass or the morning light to rise. The foreman already knew he would send for the dogs down in Two Harbors. He knew, also, that any wolf sign closer to camp would sharpen the auguries forming in the minds of the men.

   There was no longer any reason to be standing on that cliff with Hosea Grimm but that he wanted to see the pack. So they waited. He knew the hour to be near five, the time of day he usually rose from his bunk and stepped outside to piss.

   "There!" Hosea Grimm whispered, clutching the foreman's shoulder. "There, below the falls."

   The foreman craned to see but found only dark.

   " There again. Christ. Christ, yes." Hosea Grimm lifted the Winchester to his shoulder and aimed downriver.

   Still the foreman searched, pleading silently with the morning for light. But none came.

   And then the flash of the gun, the concussion traveling up and down the gorge, trapped.

B
y the time they reached the lower falls the morning light was up. The clouds that had engulfed the moon stuck, so the day broke grainy and dim. But no matter, all the light in the world would not have illumined the wolves. Nor any tracks nor any sign at all.

   " Fools persist," the foreman said. "I lost a night's sleep for what?"

   "A vigorous hike is good for body and mind," Hosea countered. "Cold air clears the lungs."

   "I get plenty of cold air, to say nothing of hiking around these woods." The foreman checked his pocket watch. "This damn watch. It's froze up on me."

   Hosea Grimm checked his own. "It's nearly seven thirty. I'd best turn for town. Who knows what the peaked will require today. Yesterday it was Mats Barggaard with a nosebleed."