by Peter Geye
“He was trying to help her.”
“He’s got every living soul hoodwinked.”
“What difference does it make? The how or the why? You’re an orphan either way. Nothing was going to change that. Not then, not now.”
Odd walked back to the window. The squirrel was still on the bough.
“I believe he thought he was doing the right thing. For what it’s worth, I believe that,” she said.
“What is that? You and this notion Hosea needs defending? He’s lousy. Any way you slice it, he’s lousy. And you talking for the hundredth time like he was some upstanding man.”
“Where would you be without him?”
Odd spun around. “We’re gonna cover that territory again, too? Hell, no.” He shook his head slowly. “Hell, no, we ain’t. Hosea our savior. You must be out of your mind, Rebekah.”
“I guess I am,” she said. “I guess I am.”
And maybe she was. How else to account for her?
Sargent had given Odd two weeks off, and when Odd returned to the boatwright’s on a Monday morning it was with grave misgivings. The week passed and his misgivings grew, and on Friday evening, after work, after Odd had made supper and given Harry his bath, after Rebekah had fed the boy and put him to sleep in his basinet, she asked Odd to sit down. So he did.
She had that look on her face like the night of his birthday, in his fish house. Like she was about to tell him the end times were nigh. “I’m sorry what I told you about your mother,” she said. “I’m trying to—” Her voice emptied out, got lost in one of her sighs.
Most of these conversations during the last week, Odd had just quit. Walked into the bedroom or right out the door. But this night was different. He didn’t know why.
Rebekah began again. “I told you about your mother because thinking of her is the only way any of this makes sense to me. The way she felt, that’s how I’m supposed to feel. I’m supposed to be as happy as she was. I couldn’t get to happiness on a train. Maybe Hosea could make me happy.”
“Sure, give him a chance to kill you, too.”
She looked up at him. “You could never understand. Not about me, or your mother.”
“I don’t understand, you’re right. Not what you’re saying. Not how you’re acting. And sure as shit not how Hosea could make you happy. Hosea goddamn killed her. He killed her and then tried to be my old man. I hope he’s hung himself up by the neck.” There was no rancor in his voice. No exasperation. Not even any curiosity. He was taking his own account was all.
“If you really understand about my mother,” Odd continued, “then you’d see what you’re doing to Harry. He might as well be an orphan. Half an orphan, leastways. How much you hate him.”
“I don’t hate Harry, Odd.” She shook her head, as though he were the biggest fool. “You and me. Harry next. We’re all orphans.”
Odd stood there in disbelief, mustering the right words to end this season’s long conversation once and for all. He simply could not bear it any longer. He smiled at her. Shook his head. Said, “Rebekah, darlin’, I love you. I don’t care how we got here or what kind of right or wrong it is, but Harry is our boy. That’s all there is now. That’s all there’ll ever be. I know you’re mixed up. But here’s something you need to hear from me.” He paused again, looking down at Rebekah, who was looking back up at him with tears in her eyes. “If you abandon our boy once, you abandon him forever. If you walk away, our boy will never know you. Much as it would kill me, I’ll see to it. So help me God.”
Strange that he should find himself standing outside Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Sunday morning. Harry was sleeping in his buggy, the canopy pulled up to block the hot sun. Odd himself was shielding his eyes with his cap, looking up at Sargent’s church. From inside he could hear the organ piping in harmony with the singing congregation.
He stood there until the doors swung open twenty minutes later and the worshippers came out in their summer dresses and seersucker suits. Sargent appeared midflock, his wife on his arm. They paused on the top step, looked up at the glorious day.
It was Rose who saw Odd and Harry. She raised her hand to greet them, tugged on Sargent’s coat sleeve, pointed at Odd. They made their way through the departing throng and joined Odd on the sidewalk.
“Mister Eide, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Mornin’, Harald. Missus Sargent.”
“This must be little Harald,” Rose said, peeking under the buggy’s canopy.
“That’s Harry. Sleeping his fool head off.”
Sargent lit a cigarette. “Rebekah’s catching up on her own sleep, I gather?”
“I couldn’t rightly tell you what Rebekah’s doing.”
Sargent arched his eyebrows. “Mother, see if you can talk to Pastor Guenther about the bake sale next week, would you?”
She turned a sympathetic eye to Odd. “Mister Eide, it was very nice to see you. And this lovely little boy. What an angel!”
“He is that,” Odd said. “He’s that if he’s nothing else.”
The two men watched Rose head back up the church steps. Watched as she took the pastor’s arm and headed inside the church again.
Sargent offered Odd a cigarette, which he took and lit and pulled the smoke in. As he exhaled he said, “Rebekah’s gone, Harald. Just up and left.”
“What are you saying? Where did she go?”
“I have my suspicions about where she went off to, but I couldn’t say for sure. Harry here woke up howling this morning and his mama was gone. That’s about it.”
“She didn’t say where she was going?”
Odd looked at him as though to suggest the question was ridiculous.
“What about the boy?”
“The boy’s the problem. Or a big part of the problem.” Odd tried to gather himself, tried to understand why he was there with Sargent. “It’s a complicated business, Harald. It’s a sight more than complicated, to tell the truth. Rebekah, she was never keen about having the baby. She was scared and confused. Didn’t think she’d know what to do once he came.” He paused, took a drag on his smoke.
Sargent had those eyes set on Odd. Didn’t even blink as he blew his own smoke out his nose. “Go on, son.”
“I guess she was right. See, she was an orphan. We’re both orphans, if you want the truth. I suppose she never saw a child being cared for. Never saw how a mother’s supposed to act. Anyway.”
“Do you mean to suggest that she’s gone for good? That she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the boy?”
Odd nodded his head.
“That’s impossible. A mother can’t abandon her child that way.”
“Rebekah always had a mind of her own. But I’ve got a mind of my own, too. I got imagination enough to take care of the boy. Why, hell, just this morning I mashed up some blueberries to feed him. Ate ’em up like that milk from the bub was a long-forgotten thing.” Odd tried to smile as though his cleverness was enough. It wasn’t. He felt tears welling.
“Son, you can’t feed a baby that age blueberries. He needs his mother’s milk. Some milk, leastways.”
“He ain’t never supping at that teat again.”
Sargent looked up at the stained-glass window of the church for a long while. Long enough he finished his smoke. He dropped it and rubbed it out with the sole of his shoe, then said, “Are you sure you’re not the cause of her leaving, Odd?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever raise your hand against her?”
“Hell, no.”
“Did you ever berate her? Demean her?”
“I was never anything but kind and true, Harald. I love her better than anything.”
“But she’ll come back, son. She can’t really leave the boy. Can’t leave a man good as you.”
“She can and she did, and she ain’t coming back. I don’t know much, but I know this.”
Sargent brought his hands together and hung his head. “Dear Lord, forgive that woman. Forgive
her and find peace for her. And for this child, Lord, hold him in your hands. Show him the way.” He lifted his face to the sunlight for a moment, then looked again at Odd. “Son, you know you’ve got a place with me as long as you need. Mother, she can watch the boy until you find other arrangements. I’ll call Doctor Crumb. We’ll find the boy a wet nurse. Everything will be all right.”
“You’re right, boss. Everything will be all right. But part of why I’m here is to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
Now Odd turned his face up to the sun. “You’ve been the closest thing to a father I ever had. It ain’t even a year I’ve known you and I’d lay across the tracks for you. But I was always just visiting. I didn’t know that until this morning. I’m a Gunflinter, I guess.” He lowered his face and took the last draw on his cigarette. “I’m gonna get my boat out of dry dock tomorrow. I’m gonna take this boy home. I’m gonna teach him how to cast a net and build a boat.” Now Odd smiled. “I’ll build him a skiff so he can run about.”
And Sargent couldn’t help smile himself. “It’ll be a fine boat.”
“A damn fine boat.”
The next day Odd and Harald motored home. Roundabout Otter Bay, Odd opened the locker in the cockpit and withdrew the box that held the bell. He locked the wheel and checked on Harry and then, nimble as a cat, Odd fixed the bell to the header in the cockpit.
The rest of the way home he talked to Harry. He told him about the lake, the rivers and streams. He told him about the kinds of fish in the lake and the kinds of men in the world. He told him what kind of man he would be. Motoring past the settlement at Misquah, he told him about the boat. Said, “I built this boat for all the wrong reasons, Harry. It’s easy to do things for the wrong reasons. My problem? I never know what the wrong reasons are until it’s too late. Same goes for your mother, rest her soul.” He looked down at the boy in the crook of his arm. The sun on his pale skin. “See, I built it so I could run more whiskey. Catch more fish. Get more. But now I got all I want.” He rubbed Harry’s cheek with the back of his thumb, a gesture that would become his regular show of affection. “How could I have known when I dragged that tree out of the woods, when I carved this keel, when I bent the first board, that I’d be cruising with you? I couldn’t, you see? But now I know what I never could have: that of all the reasons to have a boat, none is as important as using it to carry your son home. To carry you home, Harry.”
Before they reached Gunflint Harry started fussing. The roll and pitch of the water and Odd’s voice had left the boy sleeping for the better part of six hours but he woke just east of Misquah. So Odd fixed him a bottle. He had fifty dollars’ worth of Dextri-maltose prescribed by Doctor Crumb. He mixed it up and offered Harry the rubber nipple.
When Harry had guzzled it all, Odd laid a blanket across the motor box and changed the boy’s diaper. “That’s my little fella,” Odd said, picking him up and resting him on his shoulder. He burped him and then held him in the crook of his arm.
When they came up on Gunflint it was still light. The sun rested on the hilltop. A breeze had been stiffening for the last hour, and as they rounded the breakwater and headed across the harbor, the roll of the boat on the swells set the bell tolling. It was the song of their coming home, and Odd hoped everyone heard it.
XXVII.
(February 1937)
The shingle above the chandlery door read, eide’s boatbuilding & supplies. Every time Odd walked under it, he thought of Sargent and Hosea, the two men he had had to learn from. Both men had hung such shingles over their doors: Hosea at the apothecary, Harald at the boatwright.
That morning he and Harry walked in together an hour before sunrise, a strange, cold wind blowing away a fog bank outside. They went to their desks and poured coffee from matching thermoses and spent fifteen minutes cracking their knuckles and sharpening their tools before either of them spoke.
Odd said, “We’ve got a letter here. A query about building a canoe.”
“I’m not building a canoe,” Harry said.
Odd smiled. “I guess you think they wouldn’t pay for a canoe?”
Harry took his adze to the skiff he was building. He put his hands on the gunwale the way Odd always did, walked around the boat twice before he set to shaving a bit off the transom.
Odd still sat at his desk, sipping his coffee, watching Harry. He wondered how the boy would be different if he’d been given his mother.
“You’ll be done with that in a week,” Odd said.
“Less than that.”
“Then you can get to work on the canoe.”
“All right,” Harry said.
Odd watched him for another spell. Long enough that the boy had set down the adze and was stroking the transom with his sanding block. “I don’t see why we wouldn’t go out and catch some of those morning trout, do you?” Odd said.
Harry gave up that big, boyish smile. He didn’t say anything, just smacked the sawdust from his trousers and went to the door to fetch his coat and mitts. He stepped outside, crossed the yard to the fish house, and pulled the toboggan loaded with their ice-fishing supplies from the barn door.
“Let’s walk around the point today. Get some of that sunrise on our ugly mugs,” Odd said.
“Let’s go, Pops.”
How many times had Rebekah stood at the window as she did that day, her forehead and fingertips resting on the glass? She was watching them walk into the rising wind, out from the point, a sled trailing the boy. They’d been at it often enough since the ice had come to stay in January, and she always watched them go. On some days she stood at the window the whole while they were gone. Others she went to her needlepoint and tried to put them out of her mind.
That morning she would lose hours to the sadness left in their wake. Though she literally could no longer cry, she felt the phantom welling in her eyes. She wondered, Has the boy ever known? Does Odd ever think of me now?
Out on the ice Harry said, “You don’t feel it?”
“I don’t,” Odd said. “You sure it ain’t the breeze is all?”
“The breeze coming up through my feet? I don’t think so.”
“Your tongue ain’t getting any duller, is it?” Odd asked. He put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and smiled to himself. The smile lasted only a moment.
These mornings ice fishing? The summer mornings when they were at their nets before dawn, the only herring chokers still making a go of it out of Gunflint? Or, back across the isthmus, those mornings in their workshop, building boats side by side? Thousands of mornings if you added them up, all begun with the memory of her looming above him.
If Harry knew of the grief that attended his papa, if he saw it in Odd’s bowed head, he at least had the wisdom to witness it in silence instead of badgering his father about it. Odd took pride in his son’s stoic silence. The whole world, it seemed to Odd, was garrulous. But not Harry.
Out past the breakwater Odd said, “That is a strange wind.”
“And cold.”
“Did you ever know a February wind to be otherwise?”
“I’m just saying.”
“I know it.”
They walked another fifty rods before they stopped. Odd turned to the shore to take measure of where they were. He turned to the lake to do the same. “What do you think?” he asked Harry.
The boy answered by lifting the auger from the sled. He set the blade on the ice and started to drill. He was a long-armed, well-built kid and it wasn’t ten minutes before the auger broke through to water. It came splashing up through the hole.
Odd and Harry looked at each other. “Maybe we should go a little closer to shore,” Harry said.
Odd inspected the horizon over the lake, the sky above them. He pulled the sleeve of his coat up, took off his mitten, and knelt. He stuck his hand into the hole in the ice to measure its thickness. He stood up. “I think we’re all right.”
Harry started another hole ten paces from the first. He’d inherited his father’
s habits of calm and diligence, and he went about the work of making a fishing hole with an old man’s patience. When the second hole was augered he brought his papa’s stool to it. He brought the small ice-fishing rod and the box of jigs.
“You rig it,” Odd said.
“I know.”
Odd’s hands were worthless in winter. He could hardly tie his boots anymore, let alone jigs onto fishline. So Harry baited his papa’s line and handed him the rod. He tied a jig to his own line and in no time at all they were both fishing for steelheads. They’d eaten nothing but trout dinners for two weeks, and still they had a freezer full of fish. Times were better on the ice than in the open water, something Odd brought up every day.
“You give any thought to Veilleux’s offer?” Odd asked over his shoulder.
“I give it some thought, sure.”
Already Odd had a strike and he set the hook and started reeling. He loosened his drag and then, as though nothing were happening, he said, “It’d be a good move. He’s a good man with a good business. His family has been here from day one.”
Harry was peering into his own hole on the ice, more intent on hooking a fish than on his papa’s pitch. Even still he responded, “You know how much I like fishing and boatbuilding.”
“And I can’t say I blame you, Harry. But there ain’t much of a living to be made any longer. Neither enterprise pays for itself nowadays. Not small operations like ours. You apprentice with Veilleux and you can make money all year long. You could still fish some. Obviously we’d keep filling boat orders. Canoe orders. You’d just have another wagon to hitch your load to.”
Odd pulled the fish from the hole, unhooked it, and threw it on the ice a few feet away. He took his knife from this belt and knelt before the fish, thumping it on the head with the hilt before he sliced the guts from it. He threw the offal as far as he could, with the wind. He did this in twenty seconds and in twenty seconds more had his jig back in the water. A colony of gulls descended from the clearing sky and went to work on the fish guts.