The Lighthouse Road

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.”