by Peter Geye
Odd said, “I’m going to apprentice with Arne Johnson in springtime.”
“A herring choker? That Hosea’s idea, too?”
“Hell, no, it ain’t. It’s what I want to do.”
Daniel Riverfish wore his rascally grin.
“The hell’s so funny?” Odd demanded.
“It’s just that you’re a bit of a chickenshit, is all. I don’t see you out on the lake by yourself. Least not when the wind comes on down.”
“A chickenshit?”
Still that grin.
“I’m no chickenshit, Danny.”
“You mess your britches and run for Bekah when an owl hoots. What’s it gonna be like out on Gitche Gumee?”
Odd turned inward, began to think about this, was readying some sharp response. But Daniel spoke again first. “We got a ways to go, let’s walk.”
So Odd stowed the wineskin in his coat and put his mittens back on and adjusted his hat.
“You make the trail now,” Odd said crossly. “I’ll drag the sled.”
And so they climbed the northern rim of the outcropping in silence, Odd sulking, Daniel cutting trail.
It was true Odd was a fearful boy. He was scared of almost everything, but especially of the fact that he’d never had a mother. At night, up in the third-floor apartment at Grimm’s, in the closet-sized room, under the down ticking with the moonlight blaring through the window, in his socks and his union suit, he passed his sleepless hours mulling the life he didn’t have. He didn’t know it, but he was possessed by an old man’s fears. He missed his mother — the mother he’d never known — the way an old widower might miss his wife of fifty years, he’d worked his mother up to those heights. Her ghostly presence colored so many of his thoughts.
And because of the hole she left in his life he was timid, and that timidity might have come across as fear.
Odd looked around the woods, at Daniel’s back before him, at the enormous sky pitch blue and getting bluer. He had always taken these woods for granted. But in that quarter mile before Thistle Creek he realized that if there was anything to fear it was this wilderness, not his missing mother. He’d heard it said there were thousands of miles of the same woods to the north, and temperatures colder, and colder longer, the farther you went. He knew about the wolves and bears and moose that roamed these trees. He suddenly felt vulnerable.
“I guess I’m afraid of some things,” he said from out of the blue.
Daniel Riverfish stopped, turned to face him. “Some things? You flinch at your shadow, bud.” He turned to move ahead but stopped. “All I’m saying is that’s hellish work, out on the lake. Much harder than trapping or standing behind a counter selling aspirin. I ain’t saying you couldn’t do it, but—”
“I never thought I was afraid of these woods, but I am. I think.”
“Hell, yes, you are. And you should be. These woods are the world and the world ain’t an easy place. That’s what Grandpap always says. And he ain’t ever wrong. About nothing.”
“I know it now,” Odd said.
“Good.”
Thistle Creek came down the gully off Peregrine Hill and emptied at the oxbow just north of the Devil’s Maw. Daniel’s first trap was a hundred paces up the creek and marked by a cedar tree grown out over the frozen water. They stopped at the tree and unlashed their shovels from the toboggan and dug through the snow. The trap was empty, as Daniel presumed it would be. He thought they’d be empty clear up to the pond, two miles upstream. But he was dutiful and they spent three hours digging and resetting traps.
By the time they reached the beaver pond Odd’s neck and shoulders were burning and taut and he took the firmness for a sign.
“Watch me be brave,” Odd said aloud.
“What do you mean?”
“Just watch.”
Daniel smiled. “I will.”
Whereas the otter traps were baited with fish, the beaver traps were baited with poplar poles two feet under water. The beavers would find the poplar and as they sat back to eat it fall on the trap and drown. Daniel had a dozen traps in the pond and they worked the first ten of them into the late afternoon. It wasn’t until the eleventh trap that they found a beaver, a middling male. Odd pulled him out of the pond and tossed him onto the snow, released the trap, and reset it underwater.
Daniel huzzahed from across the pond, where he’d found a second beaver in the last trap. He likewise released the trap and reset it and joined Odd near their toboggan.
“Ma will love this tail,” Daniel said. He could already taste it, fried up in bear fat, so hot it would scald the roof of his mouth.
“I’m coming for dinner,” Odd said.
Daniel smiled.
They unsheathed their bowie knives and each of them gutted a beaver, tossing the offal aside for the ravens and wolves. If they were making a living they’d have been poor and disheartened, but because they were only boys in the service of becoming men they were thrilled, and they lashed the gutted beavers to the toboggan and turned down the same trail they’d cut on the way to the pond.
When they reached the Burnt Wood River and the Devil’s Maw Odd finally spoke. “You think you can just decide to change?”
“Yes. Someways.”
“I believe I can do it. I believe I will. No more chickenshit.”
“Grandpap would tell you be careful.”
“Be careful—”
Odd saw it first, heard or saw it, he couldn’t say. Just under the Devil’s Maw, about a hundred paces off the eastern shoreline of the river, from somewhere along the craggy cliff face came a plaintive cry just above Daniel’s whistling and the river purling beneath the ice. The cliff was lit with the setting sun, blazing really, but for the dark re cesses of the shallow caves that dotted the river’s edge. Daniel was well behind him, pulling the sled. The cry grew with each step until Odd found himself slowing, then finally stopping twenty paces short of a curious declivity in the rock. He looked back, saw Daniel still trailing.
He felt himself welling up, recognized the feeling as faintheartedness, and bit down. He walked to the opening in the stone and felt his heart running as there rose from the rocks a musky odor he’d never smelled before. He took a half step back and tried to place the scent but could not. The bawling had stopped. Now only a kind of whimper came from the rocks.
Years later, whenever he tried to reconcile the defining moments of his childhood with the man he had become, he thought of that moment on the precipice as a divine one, when he became, for better or worse, the person he would always be. He would recall with utter clarity Daniel’s voice telling him no, would recall his dizziness and the imaginary hand he felt pushing him as he knelt and removed his snowshoes, as he took his shotgun from over his shoulder and laid it against the cliff wall, as he shifted his bowie knife hanging from his belt to the small of his back. It would be strange to think about in later years, the way he knelt on the rocks without thinking, the way he crawled to the sound from the cave, the way he could never have done it again, how he had acted on the most animal level, curious in a way he’d never be again, not even the first time he made love with Rebekah. Strange to think there were moments when you could live completely outside your mind, stranger still to think how seldom those moments came to pass.
He crawled closer to the sound, to the cave, and then slithered into it. He noticed first the warmth and then caught the smell, rank now, whereas from above it had only been faint and musky. Taken together, the warmth and stink made his already swirling mind swirl more.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness and what it held. In that time he felt and heard the chthonian rhythms: the coursing waters, the earth’s beating heart, his own pulse heavy in his head, the bears’ slow, slow breath. They were two, a sleeping sow and her yearling, awake with the warm day. It must have been the yearling’s cry he’d heard, for the cub’s small white eyes were on him, wide and in a frenzy, its murmur grown to a full yell. A desperate yell.
And there was no way to explain what Odd did next. He reached his hand across the distance between them and touched the sleeping sow’s shoulder. She was the source of all the warmth in the world, and that warmth was his now, too. For a moment he left his hand there, leaning closer and closer toward the bears as though drawn by some magnetic force. The yearling’s screaming had become everything with the warmth. Everything until the sow woke as though from a warning dream. She rolled over and in a single motion came up at his face with her right forepaw. She swiped the side of his head with such force that he was thrown back into the light of day, a bleeding hole where his left eye had been.
Daniel was upon him, his shotgun raised to his shoulder while Odd scrambled up, screaming, his unmittened hand plugging the hole in his face. The bears were both screaming now, the earth rumbling. Daniel hurried Odd onto the sled, shouting, “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s go!” as he pulled the lead ropes of the toboggan with one hand even as he kept his shotgun ready. He told Odd to hold on. To hold on tight. And he ran with the sled behind him, ran away from the sound in the earth, his best friend half blind.
VII.
(August 1920)
He had spent a month watching the white pine not dry fast enough, the pitch bleeding like icicles dripping from an eaves trough.
At the end of the month he rented the horse again and dragged the log up to the mill, where for two dollars he had it kiln dried. He had felt, as he stood in the lumberyard smoking half-a-dozen hand-rolled cigarettes, like a cozener; like having the lumber dried was a desecration of his vision. But he’d also spent enough nights with Rebekah to know that time was more important than principle.
Since that day at the mill he’d lived as a hermit. He tended his nets and ran the barrels but otherwise spent his time in the fish house: by day working on the keel and, on those lucky and unforeseeable nights, in the company of Rebekah. The rhythm of that season was unlike anything he’d ever known. It was almost as if the long, steady work with his saws and adze continued in the dark with Rebekah, and since he took as much pleasure in one as the other, there were nights his felicity seemed endless. Boundless. And so he mistrusted it even as he gorged himself.
Now he had the keel on a strongback, leveled with shims on the floor of the fish house. He’d built the temporary ribbands and he could see, as he stood back with a fifth cup of coffee on those hot August nights, the bones of it, could see with his eye what he’d seen in his mind for years. He had a flitch of cedar sitting under a tarpaulin where the keel had sat before, he’d built a steam box of planks sawn from the white pine and fashioned a steamer from an old five-gallon kerosene bucket and hose line ordered from the automobile-parts catalog Hosea received each spring and fall. He’d also ordered two dozen C-clamps and a hundred dollars’ worth of tools — rabbet planes, chisels, wooden mallets, nippers, a spokeshave, a sharpening stone, an assortment of ball-peen hammers and bucking irons and wrenches and screwdrivers — from Arneson’s Hardware. On the fish counter a dozen well-fingered boat-motor catalogs sat beneath the plans, which were hand-drawn by Odd on huge sheets of onionskin paper. There were pencils and rulers scattered on the counter, and a new lamp shining down on it all.
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 an
d 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.”