Thea noted what she had seen but thought little more of it until an hour later, when the horse began to scream.
No longer filtered by the cold and dark, the wolves’ howls came over the ridge, near and frightening, as though each element of that night — the coldness and darkness and stillness, the moon’s bright luster — had its own voice in the discordant choir of the pack. In camp, the jacks stirred. Some came outside for a smoke or to stare up at the sound as though it could be seen. Thea had been readying herself for bed but lit another lantern in the kitchen when she heard the wolves.
They wailed for what seemed an hour. The jacks returned to their bunks and a silence spilled over the night, eerier in its way than the close song of the pack. It was in that interval of calm that the wolves emerged from the ridgetop pines. The dog, Lodden, greeted the pack even as he retreated to the horse hobbled in the paddock, his hackles and slaver evidence of an outrage a thousand years in the breeding. Lodden moved silently, though, even as the draft horse screamed and snorted and finally collapsed onto the trampled snow.
Though terrified, Thea could not help but be drawn to the commotion. Against her instincts and better judgment, she hurried to the door of the mess hall with a lantern. As she shouldered the door open, the watch salesman Smith met her. In Norwegian he said, “The wolves have come.”
He still smelled of hooch even in all that cold and in that first moment of recognition she was actually happy to see him. She felt her spirits rise. But then he took the lantern from her hand and made a great show of extinguishing the light. He set the lantern on the floor and approached her as if inviting her to dance, took her hard by the wrist and ushered her into the kitchen. He pushed her onto the kitchen table, piecrusts scattering, the horrible screaming horse and growling dogs in the paddock a befitting accompaniment to his meanness.
She tried to kick him as he came toward her, but he grabbed her boot and twisted it off. She opened her eyes and saw his limp face and fierce eyes and that dead tooth. Then she closed her eyes and felt Smith’s hot breath on her neck.
Now there were men yelling in the bunkhouse and barn. The barn boss had set free the bitch and the Ovcharkas circled the horse as eight wolves whirled about the paddock. They moved to their own ancient choreography, their red eyes in the darkness, their thick pelts shimmering like tinsel under the moon. They were silent, but the dogs understood their intentions. Lodden charged a closing wolf, swatted it with his massive forepaw, and bit with two-inch fangs and the wolf wheeled and growled and circled back into the ranks. In the barn, rifles were loaded with shivering hands.
And in the mess hall Thea could not breathe under the drunkard, who held her neck with one hand while he pulled up her skirts with the other. She wanted to cry out but could not, neither for his hand around her neck nor her great confusion. He pressed his hips against her and removed his hand from her neck. As if she had just come up from underwater, she took a gulping breath. But then he ripped her stockings off and she was drowning again.
A desperate yelp came from the night. Lodden chased one of the wolves to the edge of the paddock and broke its hind leg as it attempted to jump the fence. The other wolves continued to circle. At the fence, Lodden set his jaws into the ruff of the injured wolf and sawed into its veins until the blood poured onto the snow. The dog lifted the dead wolf as if it were a pup of his own and carried it across the paddock and tossed it at a trio of its packmates. A warning and boast both. The next wolf Lodden had in his fangs merely rolled over. The dog eviscerated the wolf’s pink belly in a single chomp.
Then the horse was up and bucking, the hobble kicked free. And
the jacks came out of the bunkhouse and barn and started firing at the pack, who would not retreat but seemed unwilling to blitz again despite their hunger.
Thea thought she might faint but was astonished to feel Smith’s wet lips on her ear, to feel the gale of his breath. He clutched her breasts violently, and in that same moment she felt a world of fire in her belly. He grunted with each thrust of his hips, and with each thrust she felt a part of her body leaving her. Like the steam that had earlier that season risen from the jacks in the mess.
In the paddock the wolves were suddenly wise. As another shot rang from the direction of the barn, they turned and ran for the trees on the ridge. Lodden and Freya chased, and before the pack reached the trees the dogs tackled the last straggling wolf and sank their fangs into his throat.
Smith’s end came with a sobering shudder and he looked at Thea for the first time since meeting her at the door. For a moment he seemed confused, as though he did not know where he was, but then he pushed himself up off his elbows and buttoned his trousers. Three more rifle shots hollered through the night.
As he ran out the door, Thea fell from the table onto her knees. She opened her eyes and saw only the darkness of that unholy night.
XV.
As he motored out of the cove, as his boat rode the gentle swells, he knew he was crossing seiches, knew because there’d been no wind for two full days, knew because the pressure was falling, had been falling all day, the pulsing behind his glass eye his barometer. He was glad of the seiches, they allowed him to feel the water under his boat, feel it come up through his feet and into his legs.
She moved nicely, his boat. Heavy in the bottom, firm up front. The wheel quick to the rudder. And even as slowly as he went, the boat came out of turns smoothly, found her level quickly. He was dancing with her, learning her manners and mien.
He straightened, headed due east, pushed the throttle to three-quarters. The lake was barely rippling and the boat planed out as quickly as she accelerated. He turned her full left, north, came back across his wake and then full right. The water churned up around him as he throttled down, let her bob there in the mess of the wake. He was a quarter mile offshore, facing town. By God, he was about to be gone.
In the Gunflint harbor he went first to the fuel dock and filled his tank. He put payment and a note in an envelope and dropped it into the harbormaster’s mailbox and climbed back aboard the boat, untied her from the dock, and crossed the harbor to the Lighthouse Road, where he tied up again and waited for Rebekah. The moon was over the hills above town, nearly full and heavy with light. He remembered what Hosea had told him once about how the moon tugged the waters of the oceans of the world. Tides, he called them. Like seiches but without need of wind or pressure. Odd wondered was the moon really capable of that. All he wanted now was the light of the moon to show him Rebekah walking up the Lighthouse Road.
And it wasn’t long before he saw just that. Saw her silhouette backlit by the moon, as if she were the tide itself, the moon pulling her toward him. Saw Danny laden like a pack mule next to her. Saw her coat flaring out not from a wind but from how fast she was walking. Then saw her face as she stood on the Lighthouse Road above his boat. Saw a look something like pity cast his way, a look cast by the moonlight.
Odd reached his hand up and helped her into the boat. He escorted her to the bench in the cockpit, told her to sit down, offered a woolen blanket for her lap, knelt before her and tucked the blanket around her legs. He whispered that he loved her. In return she gave him a smile, a faint smile, to be sure, but a smile all the same.
Then Odd took her belongings from Danny. Two bags stuffed to bursting. A chest that must have weighed eighty pounds, a hatbox, a pillowcase full of foodstuffs. He stowed the bags in the lockers on either side of the cockpit, stashed the chest behind the motor box and lashed it and covered it with a canvas tarp. He asked Rebekah to hold on for a minute and then climbed from the boat onto the Lighthouse Road.
He looked steadily at Danny. “I set it up with Mayfair that you’re in charge of my property. If anything happens to me, it goes to Rebekah. I’ll be in touch once we’re settled in Duluth, if Duluth is where we end up staying. I’ll send news through Mayfair.”
“I’ll be careful not to burn the place down.”
“Hosea’s first stop is going to be my front door.”
“I’ll have him in for tea,” Danny said, and smiled.
“He’s a wily old prick.”
“And I ain’t no northwoods rube. Don’t worry.”
