The Lighthouse Road

by Peter Geye

  “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.

  VIII.

  (January 1896)

  The 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.

  By 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.”

  “What did you prescribe?”

  “Spiderwebs. A ball of spiderwebs.”

  The foreman smiled. “I wouldn’t believe it if I hadn’t heard about the ox shit you slathered all over that boy’s back after he fell into his family’s stove.”

  “It worked — both the dung and the spiderwebs.”

  “Tell me, with what would you remedy a frozen timepiece?”

  “For that you’ll want Joshua Smith. He’ll be passing through before long.”

  The foreman took a deep breath. “Sorry you didn’t get your wolf.”

  “I’ll get one yet.”

  “I believe you will.”

  Hosea offered his hand. “I’ll see you in town.”

  “Soon enough.”

  As the two men parted ways on the river, an unkindness of ravens decamped from the high boughs of a white pine and flew up the gorge. Their cries were horrible and their moving shadow cast yet another shade on the snow.

  Hosea Grimm turned back to the foreman and shouted across the river, “What did I say about the ravens?”

  The ice road cut through the tallest stand of white pine along the river. Before the upper falls, the road veered south and plunged into Gunflint. The next morning Trond Erlandson sat his horse on the crest of the road looking onto the morning over the lake. A mile offshore the vaporous open water cemented his doubt. It clouded the sunrise. He looked down the shore for Isle Royale, but it was gone in the sea smoke.

  He had once been a peaceable man — not given to the agitation that

  was so much a part of his daily routine now — and the vista, though it complicated things, reminded him of that quiet part in him. When he had first arrived in these wilds, now thirty years ago, he’d looked on the country — in all its enormity and ungoverned beauty — as if it were his own private opportunity. Though he had worked tirelessly and with unchecked vigor, all he had to show for his labor was his authority. And his responsibility. He took neither lightly. He spit a stream of tobacco juice into the snow and spurred the horse forward.

  In all that cold the leather saddle creaked with the first stride. The horse sidestepped into the soft snow on the edge of the road and began his cautious descent. Some few paces down, the wind paused and when it did the horse paused, too, and the foreman craned his head toward the river. He heard the water coursing under the ice and over the falls and into the Devil’s Maw. He cursed it and spit in its direction. Were it not for the falls and that hole in the river he could have rafted the harvest down to the mill instead of hauling it on the treacherous road. The horse stepped again without prodding and in half an hour Trond heard the whine of the mill and saw the mountains of stacked pine in the mill yard.

  Instead of hitching his horse outside Grimm’s, he stabled him at the livery to be blanketed and fed. Before leaving the horse he took his Winchester from the saddle scabbard and
unloaded it and put it over his shoulder. He asked the livery keeper to water the horse, too, and he patted the Appaloosa’s mottled hindquarters and walked to Grimm’s.

  By any definition Grimm’s store was more than an apothecary — if it was an apothecary at all — though that was what the signboard above the door advertised: grimm’s apothecary. The first time Trond Erlandson entered the store had been in the late spring of 1894, a few months after it opened. His piles had become insufferable and he submitted to his embarrassment and sought counsel. Grimm prescribed oakum, to Trond’s dismay, but it worked. He’d been a reliable customer since.

  The store was as much a testament to Grimm’s eccentricity as it was a place of commerce. When Trond entered that midwinter morning, the whole of his beard was coated with ice stained amber from the snoose dribble. For as often as he frequented Grimm’s apothecary, and as fond as he was of its proprietor, Trond did not feel, now more than a year after his first visit, any closer to knowing Hosea Grimm.

  The door closed behind Trond Erlandson, sucking much of the heat with him. He stomped his feet and took off his mittens and hat and nodded at Rebekah, who darned socks in a chair beside the box stove. There was a basket of socks on the floor beneath her. Hosea himself stood behind the counter, his felt derby squarely on his head, his apron starched and hanging to his ankles. The store was, as always, impeccably clean. At this hour there were no other customers.

  “Trond, my good man. Every time I see you you’ve ice on your face.”

  “Thirteen mornings in a row below zero,” Trond said, stepping forward and cupping his beard in his hands. He stood above the spittoon and waited for a moment while the ice melted, dripping into the slurry. “I see you survived yesterday’s hike out of the woods.”

  Hosea stood before the beakers and vials and canisters lining the shelf behind him. “I guess I’m hardier than all those frozen moose.”

  “That’s why I’m here,” Trond said. “Will you show me that advertisement again?”

  Grimm checked a pair of drawers behind the counter before he found the week-old Two Harbors Ledger in question. At the bottom of the back page an outfit in Castle River advertised the dogs. Grimm asked Rebekah to bring Trond a cup of tea and left him to the classified.

  The headline read, world’s biggest dogs! Two droopy-faced hounds were drawn muzzle to muzzle, looking not unlike the foreman’s St. Bernard. Trond read the rest of the ad: russian ovcharka watchdogs, beasts of the bravest order, fear nothing and no one.

  bred for our killing winters. guard your livestock or family. $30. litter of six yearlings ready for you! It then listed the name of the breeder and an address at which to contact him.

  “What can you tell me about this Olli?” Trond said.

  “He’s a Laplander,” Grimm began. “Used to run a trapline way the hell up the Bunchberry River, but he lost a foot winter of ’93. Now he raises these dogs. And a little hell if truth be told.”

  “On one leg he gets around?”

  “He limps and curses, but he does get around. Got a stump made of hickory. He runs a ferry up to Duluth in the summer months, keeps butter on his bread.”

  “And what have you heard about the dogs?”

  “Joseph Riverfish tells a story how one of them giant mutts treed a bear this fall. Way up a white pine. Then waited the bear out. When it finally came down, the dog and it squared off. The dog won. Olli’s got the pelt to prove it. I guess it’s true they’re two hundred pounds. Feet the size of skillets. Probably wouldn’t want to curl up with one, but might keep the wolves at bay.”

  Trond read the advertisement again, then asked, “When does Joseph make the next mail run?”

  “Not until Friday. But he can’t bring those dogs back. He’ll be fully loaded. He always is.”

  Trond ran his hand through his beard again. “I can’t spare the men or the time,” he said.

  “For the right price his son would make that run.”

  “He’s what, fourteen years old?”

  “He might be, but he’s been helping his father with the mail route. He can look after himself.”

  “What do you suppose the right price is?”

  “Christ, Trond, they live in a wigwam. Eleanor is pregnant. It’s been a long, hard winter. I imagine any price is right. Just be fair.”

  “Could he run up the lake?”

  “I’ve not heard reports from along the way, though you can be damn certain I’d not do it. You can see the water’s still open just a mile offshore.” He peered out the big window in front of his store. “But the trail is fast, from what I hear. The cold, you know. He could have those dogs back here in three or four days.”

  “The dogs, you think they could run the trail?”

  “I imagine those dogs dictate their own terms. If they can’t handle the trail, they’ll let the lad know it.”

  Trond walked to the window. He didn’t have a choice, he reckoned. The jacks would tolerate about anything, but not wolves in their backyard. He turned to Grimm. “Where can I find the boy?”

  IX.

  (March 1910)

  In the middle of the night, exhausted, over a finger of Canadian whiskey, Hosea paged through Howe’s thirty-year-old Manual of Eye Surgery for the fourth time. Odd lay sedated on the same table on which he’d been born, the bleeding from his eye stanched, the hole in his face where his eyeball had been like a potato gone to mush.

  Rebekah slept in a chair at Odd’s side. The cuffs of her blouse sleeves were stained with blood. Hosea set the manual down on the bedside table and stepped into the next room, returning with an afghan that he placed over her. He thought he could see her settle into a deeper sleep under the warmth of it. To what dreams he could not imagine. These two children, he did love them. Which was what made Odd’s pain so difficult to bear. He was still just a boy. A boy whose only chance had been Hosea.

  Hosea looked down on Odd, the ether having blanched the color from his cheeks. I have offered him a chance, haven’t I? This question had been dogging him since Danny had delivered Odd twelve hours earlier.

  Danny had left Odd unconscious on the toboggan outside the apothecary while he bounded up the steps and into the store. Breathlessly he shouted, “Hosea! Hosea! It’s Odd! He needs help! Quick!”

  Hosea had been taking his evening inventory, up on the ladder counting the contents of the canisters on the shelves behind the counter. He jumped down and hurried around the counter to meet Daniel.

  “What is it, lad?”

  Danny still had his snowshoes on and he sat on the floor to take them off as he panted, “Odd, he’s outside. He’s hurt bad.”

  Hosea ran outside, down the steps, and found the boy lying there. One of the town dogs had sniffed Odd out and was poking his cold nose into the wound on his face. Hosea kicked the dog away.

  “Daniel!” he shouted over his shoulder. “Daniel! Get out here.”

  But Danny was already hurrying back to the toboggan.

  “What in Christ’s name happened?”

  Danny’s breath was coming back to him. “It was a bear.”

  “A bear?”

  “Odd went into a den. It’s my fault.”

  Hosea stood quickly and removed his apron and balled it and put it firmly over Odd’s eye. He turned to Daniel. “Listen to me carefully. Go inside. Tell Rebekah to put water on to boil. Lots of it. She’s upstairs. Tell her to put fresh linens on the table in the surgery. Go.”

  Daniel was back inside the apothecary before Hosea lifted Odd off the toboggan. By the time he’d carried him up to the second floor, Rebekah and Daniel were already preparing the table. Hosea laid Odd down. Though the boy was still unconscious, Hosea was relieved to find his pulse steady, his temperature, to the touch, normal.

  “Rebekah, listen.”

  Rebekah could not take her eyes off Odd.

  “Rebekah! Listen to me.”

  She finally looked up.

  “Do you have water boiling?”

  She nodde
d.

  “Go upstairs. As soon as it’s ready, as soon as it’s hot, bring it down. Put more on to boil. Do this as quickly as possible. Do you understand?”

  Rebekah answered by walking backward from the room, her eyes not leaving Odd until she’d stepped out.

  “Now, Daniel, I need you to tell me slowly and precisely what happened.”

  So, while Hosea sedated Odd, while he stanched the blood and cleaned the eye, while he clipped away Odd’s shaggy hair and shaved his eyebrow, Daniel told him the story of Odd climbing into the bears’ den. Danny spoke slowly, as he’d been instructed, and tried to remember every detail. Hosea listened intently while he worked.

  “I tried to stop him but I was too late,” Danny concluded. “He was half in the den when I realized what he was doing. It’s my fault.” Danny started to weep.

  Hosea stood up and checked Odd’s pulse again and then looked at Daniel. “I don’t understand how it’s your fault,” he said.

  “I told him he was a chickenshit,” Danny said. “Odd said he was going to be brave.” Danny wiped the tears from his cheeks, wiped the snot from his nose. “I didn’t know he was going to climb into a bear den.”

  Hosea put his hand on Danny shoulder. “Daniel, any fool who climbs into a bear den deserves what awaits him. This is not your fault.”

  These words only sent the boy into another fit of tears.

  Hosea tousled the boy’s hair and said, “Go help Rebekah with the water, Daniel. We’ll fix your pal up good as new.”

  But Hosea had no confidence this was true. Since his arrival in Gunflint he’d set countless broken bones. Cleaned the bullet wounds of many men clipped accidentally in the shoulder or back during pheasant or turkey hunts. Delivered all the babies born here over the past ten years and stood over more than a few slow deaths. Never mind his effort at curing Thea, the poor lad’s poor mother. But Odd’s injury was different. It was out of his purview, for one. This skull injury, he wondered if he was actually seeing the outer recesses of Odd’s brain when he looked into the wound. And then, it was Odd.