by Peter Geye
Thea came down to Gunflint on the back of Trond Erlandson’s wagon with a promise of more work the next fall. Since her day in Mayfair’s chambers, she’d spent much time pondering the nonsensical life that had been intended for her when she’d left Norway, and when they arrived in Gunflint having not passed the farm, she was as disappointed as she was perplexed. When Trond Erlandson stopped his wagon at the livery, and when he pulled Thea’s bag from the wagon bed and offered her his hand for help getting down, her confusion became greater still.
Trond removed his gloves and put them in the back pocket of his dungarees and turned his head to spit a wad of snoose. “Here’s where the ride ends, Miss Eide.”
She looked at him helplessly. What do I do now? she wanted to ask. Where should I go? Whom can I trust? Where is that man, the watch salesman?
“Where’ll you go?” he asked, as though reading her thoughts. He pulled his pocket watch from his vest and checked the time and replaced the watch. “You’ve got your earnings. Take a room at the hotel.” He pointed up the Lighthouse Road. He looked at her suitcase. He seemed to take stock of his own annoyance. “Maybe Grimm will help. He helped you before.”
Now he lifted her bag and carried it the two blocks to Grimm’s. When they reached the storefront, he set her suitcase on the stone walkway. “Like I said, you’re welcome back upriver come fall. You make a mean biscuit. Keep Grimm apprised, he’ll let me know.”
Thea looked up at his worn-out face, his complexion scarred by the cold. She smiled helplessly. “Thank you,” she said. She reached down and picked up her bag and climbed the staircase to Grimm’s porch. She turned once to look at Trond already walking back toward the livery, set her suitcase beside the door to the apothecary, and smoothed her dress.
Hosea’s kindness had been her salvation when she arrived in Gunflint, and though she had no right to expect any more of it, she walked into his store. The bell above the door rang. She stood at the threshold, waiting.
There was no one about, so it surprised her when she heard Hosea Grimm’s voice from across the room.
“I’ll be right with you,” he said.
She took a tentative step toward the counter, smoothing her dress again.
“Now,” Grimm said, rising from behind the counter, “what can I do for you?” He appeared almost to flinch when he recognized her. It took him a moment to gather his voice. “Miss Eide! I hardly recognized you. How are you?” He looked behind her, as though expecting to see a companion. “Are you alone?”
Grimm walked from behind the counter and stood in front of her. “Now, there’s a beggarly dress, Miss Eide.” Her dress was indeed filthy and threadbare, its hem undone by the scullery mice in the camp’s mess hall. “Of course,” he continued. “The camp’s shut down for the season. You’ve nowhere to go.”
Thea had yet to say a word.
“You’re back where you started. You need a place to lay your head.” He put the tip of his index finger to his pursed lips and then raised that same finger to the air. “Excuse me a moment.” Now he stepped around her and walked to the base of the staircase. “Rebekah, please come down. Thea Eide is here.”
A moment later Rebekah was standing in front of Thea.
“Miss Eide has finished her work up at the Burnt Wood Camp and is looking for a place to stay until she can get her bearings,” Hosea said. “What do you think, Rebekah, could we take her in?”
Rebekah tapped her foot as though to a song. She wore quite lovely shoes, Thea noticed: ankle-high brown leather boots with mother-of-pearl buttons. A well-pressed gingham dress with lace cuffs and a matching lace bow in her hair. Thea’s own shoes were worn-out brogues. Where Rebekah smelled of lavender, Thea hadn’t had a proper bath in eight months and her muskiness was downright rank. But despite Rebekah’s pearly skin and the scent of her fine perfume and the lustrous hair braided down her back, she appeared more trapped in her finery than at ease. Thea could not help but feel pity for her. She felt, in fact, that she held some advantage over the druggist’s daughter.
“Well?” Hosea persisted, taking Rebekah unkindly by the wrist.
Rebekah shook his hand free. “Of course. We should find a place for her to stay.”
Up on the third floor of Grimm’s apothecary, in the finest quarters Thea had ever seen — the finest by far — Rebekah gathered raiment and hairbrushes and glass bottles of hair oil and bath salts. When all was ready Rebekah led Thea, who had been sitting on the settee with tea, to the bath.
“I thought he’d never shush. He talks just to hear himself. Honestly! Have you ever seen anything like it?” Rebekah was sprinkling the bath salts into the steaming tub. The windows above the tub, looking out over the hills behind their muslin drapes, were clouded with the vapor rising up from the bath. “Be careful of him. Do you understand? Be careful? Especially if he comes around with his camera. He’s swine. Sooey, sooey!”
She stopped for a moment and stood before the mirror hanging above the sink, wiping the corners of her mouth with her thin finger. The mirror, too, was beginning to fog. She turned to face Thea. “Well? Get ready for the bath. You must be the dirtiest thing I ever saw. You smell like a horse. Or worse.”
Rebekah sat on the edge of the tub. She cupped her chin in her hands and took a deep breath and looked directly at Thea. “You’ve been through so much. The Evensens and the watch salesman Smith…” Her voice trailed off.
At the mention of Smith’s name, Thea reddened and turned away. She would have run away were there a place to go.
Rebekah put her fingertips on Thea’s shoulder and walked behind her. She began to unbutton Thea’s dress. What was left of her dress. When she had it loosened, she slid it over Thea’s shoulders and untied her discolored shift and also slid it off her shoulders. For a long moment she let her hands rest on Thea’s shoulders. Then she moved around her again and took Thea’s hands. “My, what a lovely shape.”
Thea reclaimed her hands and crossed her arms at her naked breasts, her chin tucked tightly into her shoulder, her cheeks pink as dawn.
“Why are you blushing? You don’t have to be afraid of me.”
Thea, her chin still tucked into her shoulder, quickly lowered her stockings and bloomers and stepped into the bath. The water scalded, set her entire body tingling.
Without any preamble, Rebekah removed her own dress and stockings and bloomers and slid into the bath with Thea. If Thea’s mother had taught her one thing — beyond piety — it was modesty, and no doubt her expression conveyed this because Rebekah splashed water playfully and said, “Don’t be such a grouch, Miss Eide. In Chicago, we girls took our baths together all the time. It’s fun! Here —” Rebekah took Thea by the shoulders again and twirled her around so they sat back to belly. Rebekah wet a bath cloth and lathered it with soap and pushed Thea’s long braid over her shoulder. She cupped water with her hand and poured it over her back and then began washing Thea with the cloth. “It’s a miracle your skin is still so soft, after the winter we had. And you were living up in the woods like a proper creature. Those lumberjacks must have been quite pleased having you around. I bet they ate you up!”
When Thea did not answer, Rebekah continued, “Some of those fellas came into town on Saturday nights. They were all so strong. Even in their filthy clothes and with whiskey on their breath, I loved it when they came in here.” Now she was loosening Thea’s braid and cupping more bathwater over her hair. “When Hosea wasn’t around I’d flirt with them. Some of them I just wanted to grab hold of.”
Rebekah watched as Thea’s downy hair spread across her back. She wet Thea’s hair, the warm water drawing the stench from those blond tresses the way a cold rain brought out a hound’s dank odor. She took the bottle of hair oil and poured a drop in the palm of her hand. “This will get the awful stink from your hair. Honestly, you’re as foul as those jacks!”
She hummed as she shampooed Thea’s fine hair. “I hope you’ll sleep in my bed. With me. Would you do that? We can be sisters.
I never had a sister, did you?”
Thea glanced over her shoulder, met Rebekah’s eyes, but then looked away. They sat in silence as Rebekah rinsed Thea’s hair, as the bathwater cooled and the steam on the mirror above the sink began to run down the glass. “Never mind,” Rebekah said. She kissed Thea’s shoulder without any warning before rising and stepping from the bath. She crossed the room and turned the doorknob and walked dripping into the next room.
Thea stepped from the tub and wrapped a bath linen around her bosom and stood before the mirror. She saw herself as Joshua Smith must have seen her the night of the wolves, blurred and ghostlike. For a long time she stood at the mirror.
When she finally walked into the next room Rebekah was sitting on the floor, Thea’s bag open before her. There were half-a-dozen dresses and skirts from Rebekah’s armoire spread across the four-poster bed. They were all pressed and clean and in the height of fashion. Rebekah herself was already dressed.
“Hosea thinks if he keeps me in fine clothes I’ll be happy.” She paused to consider her wardrobe. “I suppose there are things worse than pretty dresses.” Now a complicated smile came across her face. “Pick what you like. Anything. You can have it all if you want.” She stood and crossed the room and picked a gingham skirt from the pile. “This would suit you. There are all the undergarments you could ever want in the chest of drawers there.” She gestured to the bureau across the room.
Inside the top drawer Thea found a scandalous collection of bloomers and corsets and bodices. Filmy cotton and soft velvet where she was used to coarse wool.
“Hosea says they’ll never catch Joshua Smith. Says a man as cunning as that deserves to be free. I guess he would know.” Rebekah paused, crossed the room again and stood beside Thea. “I’m sorry. I keep mentioning him.” She squeezed Thea’s hand and then crossed the room again.
Rebekah lay down on her bed, her arms tucked behind her head, her legs folded up under her skirt, her eyes fixed on the ceiling. “You don’t understand a word I’m saying, do you?” The thought had only then occurred to her. She propped herself up on an elbow. “Well, then, I’ll have to teach you.”
Thea forced a smile, she took a pair of bloomers and a shift from the drawer and went to the bed and dressed in the clothes Rebekah had selected. When she was finished she joined Rebekah on the floor and removed her hairbrush.
“Let me,” Rebekah said, patting the floor beside her and taking the hairbrush from Thea’s hand.
Thea scooted closer. Before Rebekah began brushing Thea’s hair, she found herself talking. “Hosea promised me, when we left Chicago, that I’d never have to be that girl again. Said he’d teach me to read and cook and say the Lord’s Prayer. He said I might even find a hardworking husband. A husband! Ha! A fine husband any of these boys’d make.
“I guess I’m not the same girl anymore. He was honest about something. I guess that makes him better than Hruby.” She leaned over Thea’s shoulder and tried to look into her eyes. “That was a man with a mean streak. At least Hosea’s not mean.” She pulled the brush through Thea’s hair. “There’s not a true thing about me. Not one.” Now she set the brush on her lap. “Guess you don’t suffer that, do you?”
Rebekah picked the Bible off the floor and handed it to Thea. “Would you read this to me?”
Thea held it before her as though it were some rare and ancient relic, something not to be dropped or smudged.
“Pick some words. Read it,” Rebekah insisted. When Thea sat there still silently, Rebekah opened the Bible, pointed randomly at a passage, and said, “Read.”
So, as Rebekah brushed Thea’s lovely long hair, Thea read her the eighteenth Psalm. She read haltingly, unsure of the sound of her voice. The fresh smell of her own hair was intoxicating, as was the feel of Rebekah’s steady brush strokes. Thea paused midpsalm, she held her place in the Bible with her finger and rearranged herself on the floor.
“Keep reading,” Rebekah said. She sounded as though she had just awoken.
Thea opened her Bible again and continued. When she finished, she turned to look at Rebekah. The folds of Rebekah’s skirt fanned around her and she was fastening the buttons at the wrists of her blouse. Her eyes were wet.
“Let’s be sisters, okay? We’ll be sisters forever,” Rebekah said.
XIX.
(November 1920)
For all his exhaustion, Odd could not sleep their first night in Duluth. The soft yellow glow from the streetlamps below crept under the curtains, filling the room with a kind of haunted light.
So instead of sleeping he took inventory of the days left behind, of the hours of that night, and of a hereafter that was more than ever hard to see, with only that tawny light filtering up from the street. Already the luxury of that hotel room — the big bed and fine linens, the gourmet dinner, the hot bath — was showing its dim foolishness. He couldn’t help thinking, lying there, tired beyond all reason, that it was the season of mending nets, of building new fish boxes, of darning socks and patching his oilskin pants. It was the season for sleeping in past sunup, for long lunch hours at the Traveler’s Hotel. It was the season for running traplines with Danny and fishing steelhead on the shore ice. It was not the season for lying hungover in hotel beds fit for governors. He got up and walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The street below was empty.
He looked back at Rebekah, sound asleep on the bed. He ought to have felt at ease with her lying there, with the hundred miles between them and the life of lies they’d left behind. The truth, though, was that the distance and finality of their coming here served only to deepen the lies. Up in Gunflint at least part of him was true. His boat and fish house. His knowledge of the land and lake and Burnt Wood River. His feelings for Rebekah. The ghostly presence of his unknown mother.
He paused on this last thought — his mother — and went to his duffel bag to retrieve the pictures of her. The picture of them together. He went back to the window and angled the photographs to the light. Was it possible that he had once been that babe? That his mother, with all that love in her aspect, with all that kindness and goodness plain for any fool to see, could be speaking to him in that hour before dawn? Was he capable of listening if she was speaking to him? Could he start his life over, down here in the city, with the child curled in Rebekah’s belly?
He looked between Rebekah and the pictures of his mother and whispered to himself, “I wonder what she’ll look like holding our child.” Before he could answer the question he set the photographs back in the duffel bag. He dressed in a hurry and left the suite with his coat in his hand.
Overnight the winds had strengthened and now were barreling from the northeast. The lake came up with the wind and as he reached the canal breakwater to await the gondola, the piers were suffering heavy seas. It was snowing, too, and cold now. Odd turned his collar up.
He reached the boat club fifteen minutes later. Dawn was up but the sky with the clouds and snow was hunkered in grayness. In the boatyard he found two men standing under his boat.
“Good morning,” Odd said
“How do?” the one in a Duluth Boat Club uniform said. “This your boat?”
“She’s mine.”
“Fitz told me you’d be stopping by.”
Odd nodded, stepped back, and looked at his boat hanging from the davits. She looked a hell of a lot larger out of the water than in it.
It was the other man who spoke next. “Where’d you find her?” His voice was gruff, his eyes the color of the concrete sky.
“Find her?” Odd said. “I built her.”
The man bunched his lips up, nodded.
Odd read the man’s expression as skeptical, said, “She took her maiden voyage yesterday.”
The man nodded again and ducked under the boat so all Odd could see was his feet. He walked around the stern and came back to face Odd. “I’ve never seen a keel like that.”
“I dragged a piece of white pine from the woods, cured it, whittled it down. Now it’
s backboning my boat.”
“You come from where?”
“Gunflint.”
“You got lucky with the weather.” The man looked up into the snowfall, harder now than even a few minutes before.
“No arguing that.”
The man with the eyes settled them on Odd. “How’d she go?”
“I’d take her to war,” Odd said.
“I believe it.” He stepped forward and offered his hand. “Name’s Harald Sargent.”
“Odd Eide.”
“What kind of name’s that?”
The question took Odd aback.
“I mean no offense, I’ve just never heard of anyone called Odd.”
“My mother came from Norway.”
“There’s some folks can build boats,” Sargent said.
“I’ve heard that said.” Odd turned now to the man in the boat club uniform. “I need to fetch a couple things before you cover her.”
“Give me a half hour to get her on the rack, then you can go aboard.”
“All right.”
Sargent said, “Come inside, have a cup of coffee with me while you wait.”
Again Odd said, “All right.”
They walked into a grand dining room. Thirty tables under white tablecloths, fine silverware, and napkins folded to look like swans. Sargent chose a table at random and hung his coat over the back of a chair and removed his hat. He sat down and motioned for Odd to join him. It wasn’t more than a minute before a waiter appeared before them.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
“I’d take a cup of coffee,” Sargent said.
“Two,” Odd said.
The waiter nodded and left.
“I’m a boatwright myself,” Sargent said. “Sloops and cutters, once in a while a runabout or skiff. Build a lot of boats for members here.” He spread his hands before him, suggesting the boat club.