The Lighthouse Road

by Peter Geye

  Odd was already covering the whiskey barrels with the spray hood, lashing it as the wind played hell with the canvas. “Don’t worry about my luck.”

  “To hell with him,” one of them said.

  “Tell Hosea good night,” another shouted.

  “Tell him we’ll be up to see his daughter!”

  “You shut the hell up,” Odd said at the mention of her. He gave them a fierce look before he unfastened the lines that held their boats together. He hurried to the rear thwart and started the Evinrude before he lost the shelter of their lee.

  And then he was taking the swells astern and wet all over again. They were right about the freeboard. There wasn’t more than two feet of it. Though the whiskey was good ballast, it was too much. “As true in the belly as in the boat,” he said aloud.

  He’d have a hell of a time the next three hours, that much was sure. He pulled the lantern down, stowed the oar, and extinguished the light.

  Was it really possible for the pressure to fall and rise and fall again all in the same summer night? The wind coming around now from the northwest, the moon fading behind a lacework of clouds, and the pulsing behind his glass eye all told him yes. He’d been a half hour heading upshore, running before the seas, and though the swells were shrinking they were running closer together, too. None of this good news. A couple of times he’d come off a crest and into a trough and the Evinrude’s propeller had come out of the water and raced and whined. He eased up on the throttle each time but when he slowed the boat would yaw, and he was good and goddamn tired of getting pooped.

  He thought if he shifted the barrels he might run a little easier, so he untied the spray hood and unlashed the barrel closest to him and rolled it back to his feet. The skiff heeled as the other barrels came free, all five of them following the first.

  “You’re as goddamned dumb as Hosea says you are,” he said aloud, the sound of his voice barely audible above the wind.

  He throttled down to an idle and on hands and knees rolled one of the barrels up toward the bow. He set it upright and lashed it quickly and, like a housecat, crawled amidships and lashed another pair of barrels to the thwart. All the while water was washing into the skiff and before he could get back to the Evinrude and his cruise home, he spent fifteen minutes with his bail bucket, the cold, cold water numbing his hand even as lightning flashed to the north.

  “Christ almighty,” he said, shaking his head. “Good Christ almighty, I’m about done wrestling this goddamn lake.”

  But the lightning — even with all it implied — was a turn of fortune: Without it, he’d have had a hell of a time keeping the shoreline in view, for the clouds were back with the change of weather and he was in a new kind of darkness, one relieved only by the flickering sky. By the time he had the barrels lashed and the skiff bailed and was back on his rear thwart with a wad of snoose stuck in his mouth, he realized that accounting for the squally seas had slowed him by half, and the lightning showed the hills above Gunflint still twenty miles before him. He ought to have been safe in the cove by now, safe in his bunk for a few hours’ sleep. Instead he had two more hours of lake water swamping his boat, soaking his trousers and boots.

  He spent those hours fighting sleep and swearing there had to be a better way. Hosea had it all figured out. Send a sap like him out to fetch the goods, give him a hundred dollars for his trouble, then turn around and distribute the rye for ten times the runner’s share. That was five hundred dollars a week easy in Hosea’s purse. And that on top of his other schemes.

  “I just need my boat,” Odd said to himself. Now he was using the sound of his voice to keep him company. “A bigger boat and I can fish more and deeper and make the run up to Port Arthur myself. Pocket the five hundred and to hell with Hosea Grimm.” He even figured he could work with Marcus Aas and his brother, figured they’d be damn near friendly if they weren’t tussling for the same scant share of Grimm’s whiskey dollars.

  The lightning quivered again and he could see the hills above town. He could see, from the top of the next wave, the lights of town. Twice as many now in the hour before light as there’d been in the hour of his leaving. No doubt the other herring chokers were up now, standing on the shore, taking stock of the lake. Most of them would leave their nets for another day. He would if he were standing ashore, reading the water.

  But he’d been out in worse than this, he told himself. Last March, his first haul, northerly seas so sudden he’d been thrown half from his boat. He’d lost a boot in the bargain. Theo Wren’s boat had come back without him that day. He’d orphaned two little boys and widowed his wife, Theo had. “Yes, sir,” Odd said aloud, “that storm was worse. I’ll be home in half an hour.”

  And he was. His watch read four forty-five behind the blurry crystal. As blurry as he himself was. He managed to navigate the skiff into the cove. But even as he coasted across the gentler sheltered waters he could still feel the swells lifting and settling him. He steered the nose of his skiff onto the boat slide and tied her quickly to the winch line and on unsteady legs hauled her out of the water.

  He removed the Evinrude from the boat and set it on the grass ashore and then one at a time he rolled the whiskey barrels up and over the transom, let them roll into the cove and then floated them in knee-deep water to the very crux of the cove and the large boulders that sat there. He wrestled the barrels ashore and then rolled them behind the rocks. He’d deliver them that night. Now he sat atop one of the barrels and caught his breath. For a moment he looked at the dark silhouette of his fish house, sitting under the tall pines, his place in the world. He’d built it himself. Paid for it and built it with his dollars and his sweat. And him come from nothing.

  Before he went inside he put the Evinrude back on the transom. He brought the gas can up to the fish house and set it at the foot of the steps. He walked to the boat slide and checked the knot and line holding the skiff. And last thing, he took the teakettle from under the slide, walked the hundred paces to the whiskey barrels, and cut the oakum from the top of one of them. He pried the lid from the barrel, the aroma oaky and fine. He dipped his finger into the hooch and brought it to his lips and licked his finger. That taste alone made the whole night worthwhile, he felt sure of that.

  “But we’ll take this for good measure,” he said aloud, and he dipped the teakettle into the barrel, filling it to the brim.

  He hammered the lid back onto the barrel and carried the whiskey to the fish house.

  He wasn’t expecting to see her inside but was glad when he did. Sitting under the open window, in the guttering candlelight, her hair down the way he liked. There she was. He stood in the dark corner of the fish house looking at her, she looking back. Neither spoke. It occurred to him, as he untied his bootlaces and kicked them off, that the candlelight was doing the same work inside that the lightning had been doing out: throwing just enough light to lead him where he needed to be.

  Before he went to her he stopped at the end of the workbench he used as his kitchen counter and found two clean coffee cups. He poured a finger of hooch into a cup, swallowed it quickly, then poured another finger in each.

  He stopped short of her, stopped short of the light from the candle, stood there with the coffee cups. His very favorite thing was to watch her rise, to watch her long arms and legs and hair simply move. She moved — in the middle of the night, in candlelight — with the almost imperceptible slowness and suppleness of the seiches.

  When she flipped her hair and looked down, he said, “What’s this, Rebekah?”

  She glanced up at him, pouted. “Only a fool who didn’t care about anything would have gone out on that lake tonight.”

  “A fool, you say?”

  “A proper fool. Yes.”

  He stepped to her, set the coffee cups on the floor, and lifted her from the chair on which she sat. “I’d never convince you or anyone I wasn’t a fool, but I didn’t have a choice. I don’t make that run and Marcus Aas does, then he wins favor. Aas wins fav
or and I lose the skiff. I lose the fish house —” his voice trailed off. He thought better of saying, I lose the fish house and we’ve got nowhere to go.

  She looked up at him for the first time since he’d stepped in from outside. The look that came over her face was as a mother’s. She reached up and feathered his damp hair away from his eyes.

  They looked at each other for a long moment before Odd set her down. He bent and picked the whiskey off the floor, handed her one and they stepped to his bunk. They drank their whiskey together, two sips apiece and in harmony. He slid off his soaked pants and hung them over the back of the chair. Did the same with his shirt. He lifted first his left foot to remove his sock, then his right. He lay down. Though he was a short man — only five foot five — he was also long-armed and broad-shouldered, he had a chest like a woodstove, was as hairy as a bear. Swallowing her up was as easy as putting his arms around her, which he did as she lay down beside him, using his bare arm as her pillow.

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he conducted all the best and easiest hours of his life here in the fish house: his heavy slumber, what few idle afternoons he had whittling and carving, the poker games, the long winter mornings spent mending his gill nets. And now his hours with Rebekah, here under his arms, her impossibly soft skin and the attar of rose in her hair. Their life together went back to the hour of his birth, and he supposed their time together now was something like religion.

  “How long can you stay?” he said.

  “He was soused at four o’clock when the card game ended. He’ll sleep until at least nine. I’ve time.”

  Outside he could still hear the wind rocking the trees and the pounding surf out on the point. If there’d been no wind or breakers on the lake, he’d have heard the Burnt Wood River running hard with fresh summer rains.

  “A bigger boat would make life a hell of a lot easier.” He reached to the upturned fish box beside his bunk and took his carving from it, held it up to the candlelight, rode it along the shadows on the wall. The carving was of a boat, the boat he dreamed about. He’d spent all of Christmas week whittling it from a birch bole, whittled the finest details: the motor box, the canopy, the gunwale, and even a toe rail. He’d fashioned a couple of fish boxes and set them in the cockpit. “Something with a little bow to her, a strong, high sheer. A cockpit instead of that goddamned spray hood. A Buda inboard. A thousand pounds of keel and skeg.” A gust of wind blew through the open window and the candle shadow raced up the wall. He moved the carved boat with it. “And a bell. I damn well want a bell. You’ll know I’m home by its ringing.” He felt her nestle into him, she loved this hopeful part of him, thought it innocent and childlike. “So big I’ll need a berth in the harbor, next to the tugs and charter boats.”

  A strong breeze came through the window and blew out the candle. He set his carving down and looked out at the night.

  “A boat like that and I could make the runs down to Port Arthur myself. I could do business directly all up and down the shore. Could take a boat like that clear across the lake. Clear across to the Soo. We could go anywhere. Anywhere, Rebekah.”

  “I’m too old to go anywhere.”

  “That’s nonsense.”

  “Nearly twice your age.”

  “So what? You’re the prettiest gal in Gunflint.”

  Now she smiled and looked at him again. She kissed him lightly on the lips. “Tell me more about the boat. Where would you take me?”

  “Where’d you want to go?”

  She took a deep breath, was thinking earnestly about where she could get. “What’s the place farthest away in the world?”

  “I guess Norway’s a fair piece.”

  “Where your mother was from.”

  “Sure, where she was from.”

  “Let’s go to Norway, Odd. In your boat. What’s it like, do you think?”

  “I’ve heard tell it ain’t unlike it is here.”

  “Oh, Lord! Let’s choose someplace else, then.”

  “I told you we could go anywhere.”

  “Anywhere,” she repeated.

  They lay in silence, each picturing anywhere as though they might someday get there. She fell asleep. He could tell by how she warmed. So he tilted his head back and looked out the window.

  Here was the daybreak, the first promise of light, coming as deliberate as Rebekah crossing a candlelit room. And there were the pines, swaying in the old wind as though this aubade were played in the slowest of time.

  III.

  (July 1893)

  Two days and two nights of oblivion ended on a Friday morning when Hosea woke from a dead man’s sleep. A dozen champagne bottles littered the floor in a swath of dull sunlight. He pressed his eyes and imagined he could feel the dream retreating to its place in that part of his mind he could only access in a state such as he’d roused those days in the Chicago bagnio.

  He found his pants under the bed and checked his pocket watch. He checked his billfold, too, which still held a stack of fifty-dollar banknotes. He kicked the threadbare bed linens from his legs and swung his still-stockinged feet onto the floor. The rush of blood to his head was swift. He was so parched he could not swallow. He needed a drink of water, so he rose and stood still until he found his balance.

  But for his socks he was naked. His drawers hung over a lampshade, his linen shirt was tangled with the duvet on the floor at the foot of the bed. As he dressed, memories of the last forty-eight hours came back to him piecemeal, each more lecherous than the one before. When he was dressed he took stock of the room. Not bad as such rooms went. A carpet on the floor. A bed with a proper headboard. An electric lamp. An enormous mirror on the wall opposite the head board. A brass ashtray. A table and chair in the corner with an empty decanter and four used snifters, three stained with lip rouge.

  At this hour of the morning the hallway was quiet, the water closet vacant. He stepped into it and closed the door behind him. He washed his face without looking in the mirror above the basin. He slicked back his hair and then put his mouth to the faucet and drank copiously. He drank until he thought he’d vomit and then rested a moment and then drank as much again. Already he was feeling better, the fire in his gut just smoldering now.

  When he reached the bottom of the staircase he was surprised to see five women lounging on the divans. There was a barman behind the counter. The window looking onto Wrightwood Avenue was covered with crushed-velvet drapes, the only daylight coming in from the rose window above the entryway door. There was a young girl tending the coatroom, and Hosea stopped for his jacket and suitcase. She came from behind the half door and offered to assist with his jacket, but Hosea declined. He fished a bill from his wallet and put it neatly into her palm.

  “You’re Ava?” he said.

  She looked over Hosea’s shoulder at the barman, then looked at Hosea. She nodded.

  “Well,” Hosea said, then thought better of it and said nothing more.

  She returned to her spot behind the half door and nodded again and Hosea crossed the lounge to the bar.

  He asked for a soda water and after he paid he packed his pipe and the barman lit it. The barman also placed a copy of the morning Tribune before Hosea, who looked at the headlines but was too distracted by the thought of Ava behind him to read beyond the banner.

  “Say,” Hosea said, “might I talk to Mister Hruby?”

  The barman grunted and disappeared into a doorway at the end of the bar. A minute later he returned, Hosea’s old friend Vaclav Hruby trailing behind him in a cloud of cigar smoke.

  “You’ve made it out alive, friend,” Vaclav said.

  “Alive and clearer of mind,” Hosea said.

  Vaclav watched the barman resume his spot at the end of the counter, watched him pick up a newspaper and light a cigar himself.

  When the barman was out of earshot, Vaclav said, “That’s the lass.” He nodded in the direction of the coatroom.

  “Yes, I know,” Hosea said.

>   “She’s a good girl. She won’t cause trouble.”

  “I’d like to speak with her. Alone,” Hosea said.

  Vaclav stubbed out his cigar. “I told her the score. But if you want to talk to her, go ahead. Why don’t you wait upstairs in one of the rooms? Leave the door open. I’ll send her up.”

  “Maybe it would be better to talk to her outside. Tell her to meet me at the artesian well in Lincoln Park. Give me a few minutes to get ahead of her.”

  “You’re the boss, Grimm.”

  So Hosea walked out of the bagnio, pausing outside to look back at the inconspicuous brownstone. He knew of a dozen other such places in cities on the water, places as far away as Acapulco and Bombay. He walked up Wrightwood Avenue, crossed the trolley tracks at North Clark, and reached the park five minutes later. It was a hot morning, humid, with low clouds hiding a hazy sun over the lake.

  Hosea pumped the well until a steady flow of the sweet water poured from the spigot. He bent at the waist and let it pour into his mouth. When he was finished he removed the handkerchief from his coat pocket and wiped his lips and brow. He took a seat on a bench near the well, adjusted his hat, and turned his attention up the gravel path.

  It was fifteen minutes before she arrived, wearing a different dress

  than she’d had on in the coatroom. She walked quickly, a parasol over her shoulder. She wore white gloves. She was lovely.

  “Good morning, Mister Grimm,” she said, offering a slight curtsy.

  “Good morning. Thanks for joining me.”

  “I’d do anything to get out of that nest of harlots,” she said.

  “‘Nest of harlots,’ you say?”

  She closed her parasol and stood before him. “Call them whatever you want.”

  “Please, sit down.”

  She sat on the bench beside him, crossed her legs and adjusted her skirts.

  “Vaclav has informed you of my reason for being here, is that right?”

  “He’s a pig.”