by Peter Geye
“Why’d he say that?”
“You’re not aware of what you’ve accomplished, are you? You don’t see the beauty in that vessel you built.”
“I see a cockpit. A little more room for fish boxes. A heavier keel in big water.”
“A heavier keel. Precisely.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, Mister Sargent.”
“There’s no riddle at all, Odd. You built something worth seeing.
I thought I’d take a look. The rest of it, the fact that we’ve become friends, that you’ve ended up here —” he knocked on the wooden wall of his shop —"that’s just the Lord working in strange ways.”
“Strange ways indeed,” Odd said.
“I’m just glad it worked out, son. Now, in honor of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, take the rest of the day off. I’m closing the shop early today.” Sargent took a step toward the shop door but stopped. He turned back to Odd. “And tell Rebekah I send my congratulations, will you?”
“I will. Thanks.”
What Odd found when he returned to their brownstone could have felled him. There was Rebekah, sitting on the davenport stringing popcorn, a short and misshapen Christmas tree standing in the window. He stood in the doorway, smiling, dumb, holding the packages he’d stopped to buy on the way home like some kind of working-class Saint Nick.
After a moment Rebekah stood and crossed the small apartment. “Hello. You’re home early.”
“Sargent closed shop for Christmas. What’s this?” Odd said, nodding his head at the Christmas tree.
“Mister Johnson walked down to the lot with me and carried it home. He helped me set it up. I bought the bulbs at the hardware store on the corner. Isn’t it nice?”
Odd stepped in, closed the door behind him. He kicked off his boots and walked across the parlor. He put the packages under the tree and turned and crossed the apartment again. He took Rebekah in his arms and held her for a long time.
When finally he let her go he said, “It’s perfect. And what’s that smell?” He turned his nose to the small kitchen on the other side of the flat.
Rebekah grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the tree. “That’s a surprise. Here —” she forced him to sit on the davenport—"help me with these popcorn strings.”
Odd picked up a threaded needle and started stringing the popcorn. He’d never had the sensation of being awake in a dream but he did now. He said as much.
Rebekah sighed and said, “I’ve been difficult.”
“Well, now.”
“One minute I’m happy, the next I’m—” She turned away, her eyes widened and then closed. She shook her head and looked back at Odd. “I’m terrified of the baby. Even more terrified that this is no life I want, much as I do want you. I feel like a different person every day of the week.” She stopped talking as suddenly as she’d started, picked the strand of popcorn back up and began stringing it with a new kind of haste.
Odd did not know what to say, or at least had no words to say what he wanted.
More calmly, Rebekah continued, “It’s Christmas. I at least wanted to make a nice go of it. I thought a tree would make me happy.”
“Has it made you happy?”
“Let’s finish with the popcorn.”
So they finished their strings and hung them and stood in the end of the daylight looking at the scrawny tree. Odd was thinking it the most wonderful tree, greater than any of the two-hundred-foot white pines left in the forest. But he didn’t say anything, only stood there on tenterhooks, hoping Rebekah saw what he did.
“It needs candles,” she said, her voice suggesting nothing.
“It looks awfully good to me.”
She squeezed his hand.
“It’s early for dinner, but if you’re hungry, it’s ready.”
“The smell,” Odd said.
Now a very pleased look came over Rebekah’s face. She almost blushed.
“Rabbit stew!”
The kitchen table was so small the rims of their bowls touched. The table and two chairs, a davenport, a Murphy bed and armoire in the bedroom, these were the only furnishings in the apartment.
Their bowls were steaming. Parsnips and potatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic, tender chunks of rabbit, barley malt, all of it held together with buttery roux. It was their secret, this feast, harkening back to their first time up at Rune Evensen’s farm.
As they sat there under the cheap chandelier, he thought her face was as changeable and temperamental as a stormy sky lowering over Lake Superior. And as distant. So except to thank her for the stew, Odd had not uttered a word since they’d sat down. He reckoned even the possibility of her contentment was better than the moods likely possessing her. She stirred her bowl of stew absently, once or twice dipping a crust of bread into it and raising the bread to her lips before setting it back on the edge of the bowl uneaten.
When Odd finished the first bowl Rebekah rose automatically and fetched the Dutch oven from the stovetop. She ladled him another helping. She also topped off his mug of apple wine.
“It’s delicious, Rebekah. A real treat.” He said this without lifting his head to look at her.
“Have more.”
He finished the second bowl and wiped it out with a piece of bread and ate the bread. He sat back with his apple wine and looked at her.
“Want your presents?” he said. “I know it ain’t Christmas morning yet, but I doubt Saint Nick will mind.”
He got up and stood before her, his hand outstretched as though he were asking her for a waltz. They walked to the davenport this way. Outside, the snow had started again. It was almost dark so he turned on the electric lamp. Odd took the gifts from under the tree. He put them next to her on the davenport and sat before her on the floor.
“I didn’t get you anything,” she said.
“As if I could want more.”
She reached down and ran her hand through his hair.
“Go on, now. Open ’em up.”
She took the smallest gift from the top of the stack and opened it. She smiled when she saw the chocolates and set them aside directly.
Next she opened a hatbox and pulled a cloche with pink ribbon from the tissue. She put it immediately onto her head, cocked it just so, and looked down at Odd flirtatiously.
“Looks real nice, Rebekah.”
“It’s very smart,” she said.
“There’s a whole department store full of them just down the road. Got about every color in the rainbow.”
She removed the hat, held it before her, inspecting the soft felt and silk ribbon.
Odd sat up, took the hat from her, and put it on her head again. “There’s one more. Go on.”
She took the big box on her lap. “I feel bad I didn’t get you anything.”
“I told you I got all I want. Now, open that last one.”
She tore the big box open and pulled a dress from the tissue. It fell before her, catching the lamplight. “Oh, my!” she said. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s so pretty!” She stood up as quickly as she’d knelt and held the dress before her again.
“Go put it on,” Odd said.
Her face was bright as she hurried to their bedroom.
Odd climbed up onto the davenport, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, and laid his head back while he smoked. God almighty, he thought, let her be happy tonight. He closed his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a couple of minutes he shouted, “You come on out here when you get that dress on, let me see how it looks.”
A moment later she reappeared wearing the dress. “Let’s see.” He took her hands as he stood, shifted her to the left and to the right, looking her up and down. “I ain’t never seen something so pretty before. My goodness.” He reached behind him, took the cloche up, and put it on her head. “There now,” he said. “My goodness,” he repeated.
She seemed suddenly bashful, running her hands along the beaded chiffon, adjusting the s
houlder straps and the hat, her eyes cast down, standing there in her bare feet.
“You like it?”
“A whole bunch,” she said, smoothing the belly of the dress.
“It’s the right size?”
She took a deep breath, stepped back. There were tears in her eyes.
“Hey, now. What are you crying for?”
She sat down, felt the dress tighten around her waist. “You’re such a sweet boy.”
He sat down beside her. “I got to tell you, Rebekah, you’re getting harder and harder to understand. One minute you’re calling me baby, the next you’re calling me a boy. You’re cooking up our rabbit stew, then you’re sitting here crying. Do you not like the dress?”
She took another deep breath. “It won’t be a month and the dress will be too small.”
“Well, let’s get a different size,” he said, oblivious.
“It’s the right size, Odd. It’ll be too small because of the baby.”
“That’s a good reason to outgrow a dress.” But he knew she was lost for the night. This was how it went: Once she settled on the pregnancy — on her fear of it, on how it would change her — she drifted off into a world of sad thoughts where he wasn’t welcome. “That Glass Block store is full of a hundred dresses. We’ll go find some good ones.”
The apologetic smile she gave him was sincere but unmistakable. He had to look away.
Odd sat there for a long time, staring at his hands folded on his lap, thinking it was easier to read the lake than this woman. For the first time since they’d been in Duluth he felt angry with her. His reason and sympathies were being devoured by her moodiness. For all the thought he’d given it — and he was thinking of it again now — he didn’t see how being here, with him, with all that was in store for them, could be worse than being in Gunflint. He got up. He wanted a drink, started for the kitchen and his stash, but stopped at the sound of her voice.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve loved you every way a girl can love a boy. Every way a woman can love a man.”
He didn’t stop walking but went into the bedroom instead of the kitchen. He took the lockbox from the bottom drawer of the armoire and the key from his pocket and unlocked the box. He moved the wads of cash aside and took the small velvet bag in his hand. He put the money back in the box and stowed it again.
He returned to the parlor. Rebekah hadn’t moved. She sat on the davenport with her feet up beneath her, the cloche still on her head.
Odd knelt, took from the velvet bag the diamond ring he’d bought from the widower Veilleux, and held it before him. “I want you to marry me,” he said, his voice cracking as though he were twelve years old. “I want you to be my wife and be happy with me. We can be happy.”
“No,” she said, as though he had proposed three hours ago and she’d had all that time to consider.
He didn’t move.
She stood up, took the hat from her head, and dropped it to the floor. She reached behind her and unbuttoned the dress and let it fall and pool around her ankles. She reached behind her back and unlaced her corset, she slid her hands beneath the waist of her panties and slid her panties from her hips. They too fell in the mess of clothes on the floor.
“No,” she said again. “I don’t want to get married. I can’t be happy and you can’t be happy with me.”
Odd was stunned, both by her nakedness and what she was saying.
She lay back on the davenport. “Stand up,” she said. “Put that ring away.”
As though Odd were hypnotized, he did as she said.
“Now, come here,” she said.
When Odd stepped to her, she reached up and unbuttoned his trousers. She tugged them down and lay back again on the davenport.
“Come to me,” she said.
She left him alone in the parlor when they were finished.
He lay there for a long time before he thought to get up and pour himself that drink he’d first craved an hour earlier. On the way back to the sitting room he stopped and found a new pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. He also found Sargent’s gift. He took both to the window and lit a cigarette and took a sip of his whiskey. He looked at the pack age. He looked at Rebekah’s dress and hat and undergarments still piled on the floor.
He felt aged, like ten years had passed since he’d got home from work, like in all that time the world had changed without his knowing. He drank and smoked and looked out on the Christmas Eve. There was the snow.
He looked over his shoulder, thought of her sleeping — how could she sleep?—back on their bed.
Almost as though he were surprised, he felt Sargent’s gift in his hand. And because he could think of nothing else to do, he tore off the paper. It was a Bible. There was a note, too, written in Sargent’s impeccable script: turn to luke. bless you. h. sargent
Odd opened the book and scanned the names — he might have been reading roll for the old men in Gunflint: Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea — until he found Luke and turned to the corresponding page. At first he was put off by the high style of the King James version. It reminded him of those Greek poets he’d been made to read in school what seemed like a hundred years ago. But as he settled into it he found himself in a kind of communion with the gospel.
And so he read the story of the life of Christ. He read for hours, until the first light of Christmas morning was showing on the edge of the dark sky. When finally he put the book down and laid his head back, he realized that his own sorrow and suffering were nothing next to the world’s. If Rebekah would renounce him, if she would renounce her child, he would be father enough when the time came to raise his baby.
He set the Bible on the floor, stood up and gathered Rebekah’s new dress and undergarments from the floor, folded them neatly, and put everything in the department-store box.
XXII.
(October 1895)
In an examination room on Ellis Island, an immigration official asked Thea her final destination.
“Gunflint, Minnesota,” she said.
The Norwegian-speaking immigration officer checked one of a dozen ledgers on his desk. “Gunflint, you say?” He checked another of the ledgers. “There doesn’t seem to be a place with that name.”
Thea was of course confused. She told him her aunt and uncle lived there. She gave him their names as though that might prove its place on a map, its place in a ledger.
“How will you be getting from here to there?” he said.
She told him she would be taking a train from Hoboken to Chicago. From Chicago she’d take a steamer to Duluth. From Duluth another steamer up Lake Superior to Gunflint. She told him her uncle raised cattle.
The immigration officer consulted an atlas of Midwestern states. He summoned another official and, after a brief consultation, they settled on Duluth, Minnesota, for Thea’s final official destination.
Five hours later she was on a barge bound for Hoboken. She would not remember these days, or would remember them only as a blur, as though she had passed through the train station in Hoboken in a dream. The locomotive was another dream, and the two days it spent on its way to Chicago were still other dreamlike days.
In Chicago, at Union Station, she stepped from the train into the strangest world yet, a building so grand and in such contrast to anything she had ever imagined that it frightened her. All that noise and motion and clamor like a taut string about to snap.
And outside Union Station was another kind of tension, another kind of dream. The buildings above her were shrouded in fog, a kind of rain fell and drenched the penny map she held before her. On Michigan Avenue she walked north to the river and found the docks of the Chicago, Soo & Duluth Line. In the ticket office she bought a third-class berth on the Sault for seven dollars. She had only four hours to wait for her three-day cruise to Duluth.
The Sault passed through the locks onto Lake Superior in the middle of the night. It rode out of Whitefish Bay, the moon on the horizon its lodestar. It was cold and
even as the boat sailed ahead, a breeze came up the stern, hitting Thea’s face and bringing tears to her eyes. The Sault docked in Marquette at midday. For half an hour stevedores unloaded and loaded cargo, a dozen passengers debarked, another dozen boarded. In the dark of night they docked again, this time in Ashland. The same exchange of passengers and goods. Another half hour spent in harbor.
The following morning Thea stood on the stern deck again. Again she watched the sunrise behind them. Still the stiff breeze trailing. It was fully day when the Sault landed at the Chicago, Soo & Duluth Line docks in Duluth harbor. She thought the fledgling city rising before the tall hills looked something like Tromsø. Even the air had an arctic quality, chill and damp.
The offices of the North Shore Ferry Service were located right on the harbor, behind the livery and the enormous Board of Trade building. Thea entered and waited while a man behind a barred window sold billets to two families in line ahead of her. When finally it was her turn, she approached the window. She had clutched in her hands the phrasebook she’d been given for just such purposes.
In a halting whisper she said, “Gunflint, Minnesota. Please.”
“Speak up,” the man said.
Thea collected herself and repeated her request.
“Opportunity sails tomorrow at seven a.m. Passage is two dollars twenty cents.” He spoke in a loud voice, avoiding her pleading eyes. “Will you take a ticket? There are others awaiting my services here.” He gestured to the queue behind her.
Thea reached for her purse, pulled some crumpled dollar bills from it, and put them on the tray under the bars. The ticket vendor looked at her finally, exhausted. He took a deep breath.
He shifted his visor and said, “Do you understand the boat leaves tomorrow?”
She answered with an unconvincing nod.
He took another deep breath and shifted his visor still again. “Wait a moment.” He stepped into an office behind him and returned in a moment with his own phrasebook. He made his best effort to put the same question to her in Norwegian.