The Lighthouse Road (31 page)

   Mayfair interrupted, "With all due respect to your travails, Mister Smith, what bearing does any of this have on your actions?"

   "It has everything to do with it. Maybe you sit in your warm office, you light up your pipe without frostbitten hands, you loosen your shirt collar to cool off, maybe you do all that and you forget about what's there —" he pointed out the window, up the hill, at the trees and the wilderness they held—"and what it all means. What it
means."

   "Mister Smith, I've lived in this town for twenty years. I built the first house, I named the first street. Lectures on how cold the winter is are lost on me. I'll offer you a last chance to make your case." He held his index finger up, wagged it at Smith. "One more chance."

   "I had wolves following me day and night. They were after me. Their tracks were on the trail before and behind me. They'd howl. How they'd howl. You put the wolves after the cold, after the wilderness." He shook his head.

   " There are wolves in these woods just as there's cold in winter, Smith. It's true."

   Joshua Smith risked interrupting Mayfair. "They were taunting me. I needed them to stop. That's why I set the horse in the paddock. To feed them. It was me or the horse."

   "Mister Smith, if it's true the wolves were taunting you, then all the hounds of hell must have besieged you in Duluth. Why else burn a city block? I think we've heard enough about the horse. Tell me, what were your intentions when you went to the mess hall?"

   "My intentions? I went to the mess hall," Smith said, speaking more softly now, "because the cook's beautiful. There's no great mystery in it. She was kind to me and she's beautiful and I was a man caught in that season. I don't know what I expected. I don't know."

   "I'm sure we'd all agree Miss Eide is lovely to look at, Mister Smith, but I'd venture to guess we'd none of us do what you did. The cold and the wolves and the trees don't grant permission of that sort. No one does, nothing does."

   "Permission—" Smith began, but Mayfair interrupted.

   "Do you know the girl's enceinte?"

"Enceinte?"

   "The girl's with child, Joshua Smith. While you're doing your time in a federal penitentiary, she'll be raising your misbegotten child."

   Smith's mouth hung open. He leant forward, tried to look at her belly under the table opposite him.

   " There are five people in this room with better things to do with their time than listen to your stories about being cold. I'll write a decision to send with the Mounties." Mayfair moved papers around his blotter, took his pen from his shirt pocket, and began to write even as he continued speaking. "This world is dreadful enough. It doesn't need the help of monsters." He paused in his writing, looked squarely at Smith. "Mister Smith, you are a monster. I can only hope the sight of this woman and the child growing in her belly tames some small part of you."

   To Thea and Hosea and Selmer, Mayfair said, "You're all free to leave. I'm sorry for the waste of your time." Then to Thea he said, "Miss Eide, my wife and I pray for you. We pray for your unborn child. People are unkind, but if you can rise above the unfortunate nature of the conception of that babe, and if you can love it with a pure heart, with an unsullied conscience, then the stain of its paternity will fade. The good people of Gunflint will rise above their ignorance and make the child one of us. I promise you that."

   Selmer finished translating Mayfair's last words and rose. Hosea followed. Then Thea. They stood for just a moment, long enough for Joshua Smith to get a glimpse of Thea's belly, of the swell that sealed the rest of his life with a barred fate. He knew that much. He knew, also, that he was right about the cold and the trees and the wolves.

E
very morning that December Odd woke in the darkness and padded down the hallway of the brownstone they'd rented on East Sixteenth Street. He'd stand over the sink in the bathroom and shave around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, the wonder of hot running water and the steam it aroused a minor miracle each morning after all those years of hauling buckets of icy water up to the fish house from the lake.

   He'd go quietly down the hall from the bathroom to the kitchen and start a pot of water on the stove and while he waited for it to boil he'd patch his lunch together: a cheese sandwich and garlic pickle wrapped in wax paper, a tin of sardines. He'd pack it in his lunch pail and brew the coffee and pour himself a single cup to drink with his oatmeal and pour the rest in his thermos. He did all this in utter silence, mindful of Rebekah still sound asleep. When he finished his breakfast he went back to their bedroom and feathered the hair off Rebekah's forehead and kissed her, hoping the touch of his lips might impart some contentedness. Might sweeten her dreams.

   His morning ritual, conducted in that silence and dim light, made each day seem holy. And each day when he stepped from their home he did so feeling devout. Though Harald Sargent had done his share of proselytizing, he'd failed to convert Odd, who had decided early in that season and in the face of Sargent's sermons that he'd take his heaven on earth. And he'd found it in his and Rebekah's domesticity, in their quiet and honest life together. He'd never felt so at peace, not even during his best moments in the skiff.

   After he closed the door quietly behind him he'd walk the four downhill blocks to wait for the streetcar on Superior Street. Already in the days before Christmas more than a foot of snow had softened the yards and in those hours before dawn the whiteness cast a ghostly hue on the morning.

   When the streetcar arrived— the first of the morning— he'd jump on and drop his token in the fare box and nod hello to the motorman. He'd walk to the smoking compartment on the back of the streetcar and roll a cigarette and while he listened to the plangent clack of the wheels, to the shrieking brakes, he'd watch the snow come up like a wake behind them. Given those early hours he was often the only passenger. But even still— with the sleeping city all around him and Rebekah and the babe in her belly behind him— he felt the world was waiting to happen.

   By the time he reached Sixth or Seventh Street the same streetlights that had, for those first few nights in Duluth, shone up into the hotel room at the Spalding Hotel now shone in his eyes, the brooding buildings— rising like a river gorge on either side of the trolley— shadowy behind the light. He might have been in Russia for how foreign it was.

   His thoughts inevitably turned to the child, to those days ahead when he'd have a chance to redress his mother's stolen maternity. Whether here or in Gunflint, whether as a boat builder or fisherman or any other thing, Odd would teach the child, would raise him, would love him. This he vowed solemnly each morning on the trolley. He was desperate for the time to come.

   As sweet as the promise of those days was, there remained Rebekah's melancholy. There were evenings when, upon Odd's return from his workday, she seemed happy enough. She'd have dinner ready and her hair washed. He might find her sitting on the davenport in the small sitting room, her needlepoint on her lap, ready with a faint smile to meet him. But more often he found her sitting at the kitchen table. Sometimes with a glass of half-drunk whiskey soaking up the amber glow from the electric light. Those nights she was distant and unaffectionate. And Odd did not know what to do.

   By the time the streetcar passed the Spalding Hotel and halted at the Union Station stop, he'd exhausted himself with worry and joy. It was at that stop that his morning solitude came to an end, where the stevedores and railway workers and other harbor rats jumped the streetcar and found seats and unfolded their newspapers. In the now crowded trolley he watched the shipyards and loading docks pass. The grandeur of the east end, of the downtown buildings and lights, gave over to the drab harbor on the south side of the tracks and to the shabby houses on the north side of the line.

   The terminus of the Oneota-Superior line came at Raleigh and East Seventieth streets. He'd step out the rear door and onto the cobblestones and turn his collar up against the wind off the river. There was a doughnut shop where he paid a nickel for a fritter the size of his hand, and he'd eat that on the way to Sargent's, which was on the water just past the Zenith Furnace Company. He punched in at six o'clock each morning. He was never once late.

   Sargent was paying Odd fifteen dollars a week to pinch oakum into the seams of small boats, a job that left an indelible stink and stickiness on his fingers but one he took seriously and performed with a kind of manic attention. Aside from the sealing work Odd also bent boards, did some finishing, and found himself learning things he wished he'd known when he'd built his own boat.

   Sargent had customers all across the Great Lakes, with backorders enough to fill a year of work. He could have added another shift, in fact, but preferred to oversee the building of every boat himself. Each morning he met with his crew before manning the storefront chandlery and setting to work on his accounts. Even still, he passed through the workroom every hour, inspecting and praising the work being done.

   They gathered around a table in the back of the shop at noon, where Sargent said a blessing before they all ate in silence. Most of the crew at the boatwright's had been eight or ten years in Sargent's employ. They were a hardworking and earnest bunch of men, not given to much conversation. After lunch, however, as they stepped outside for a smoke, Sargent would pass among them, asking after their families in a hushed voice that belied his fierce eyes. But for Odd they were all family men and churchgoers. Between the two subjects and their common vocation they had fodder enough to chat for the length of time it took to smoke their cigarettes.

   On Christmas Eve, after a busy week, when half the crew had taken the day off, Sargent found Odd after lunch. Sargent lit his pipe, offered Odd the match.

   "How will you and Missus Eide be spending the holiday, Odd?"

   Odd, remembering those lonely Christmases at Grimm's, said, "I suppose Rebekah will cook up a feast. After dinner we'll sip some of that apple wine you gave us and sing a few carols. How about yourself ?"

   Sargent turned his eyes into the light snowfall, a smile came to his face. "Ah! The boys will be on the train this evening. No doubt Mother's got a feast of her own planned." Now he looked at Odd. "Of course we'll go to church. Wake to presents under the tree. Mother still spoils those boys rotten."

   " Where are your boys coming from?"

   "They're in college down in Minneapolis. Michael's a senior, Jonathon a sophomore."

   Odd nodded, took a drag on his cigarette. Sargent looked south, his eyes faraway, as though he might see his boys boarding the train in Minneapolis.

   "Sounds like a swell time," Odd said.

   "It's my favorite time of the year," Sargent confirmed.

   They stood there smoking.

   For all the thought Odd had given his own child, he'd not once imagined a Christmas morning with him. Perhaps it was because Christmas had always been the time of year when the pity from the townswomen was most tender and their dotting on their own children made him ache with envy. He felt the same tenderness from Sargent, and, more enchanted with him than ever, Odd said, "I reckon I'll be spoiling my own child this time next year."

   Sargent's head swiveled, his smile broadened. "Congratulations, my friend."

   " Thank you, Mister Sargent."

   "Mother will be so happy to hear your news."

   Odd returned Sargent's smile. What he saw in that instant and knew with certainty was that here was an empathetic man, a selfless man. He was, Odd realized, a man to model his life after.

   "Are you nervous, son?"

   "I think Rebekah's a bit nervous, but I'm pleased as punch."

   "Well, what better gift could she give you?"

   "I know it."

   Sargent emptied his pipe bowl and looked again into the falling

snow. He took a deep breath, put his hand on Odd's shoulder. "Not that you asked, but let me give you a piece of advice, Odd. Someday your child will be full of wants. What they'll want more than anything, whether they know it or not, is for you to cherish them." He squeezed Odd's shoulder now. "I doubt you'll have much trouble with that." He took his hand from Odd's shoulder, reached into his coat pocket, and removed a gift wrapped in Christmas paper. "This is from Mother and me. For you. And Rebekah. And your child now, I suppose. Merry Christmas, Odd."

   Odd held the gift. " Thank you. Thanks for everything." He paused, looked between the gift in his hand and Harald Sargent.

   "What is it?" Sargent said.

   "I've been wondering, why were you at the boat club that first morning? I can't quite parse it out."