Odd had never visited for any purpose other than this evening's errand, but Hosea had a forty percent stake in the place. He also kept the girls in calomel and morphine, gave them abortions, and pulled their rotten teeth. And he supplied the whiskey. So he had a king's reign.
There were three girls sitting under the gaslights on the porch as Odd and Hosea carried a barrel around back. They smoked and drank from glass lowballs and when Hosea stopped to greet them on the way back for another barrel they rose and kissed him on his freshly shaven cheek from over the railing.
By the time the last barrel was in place Hosea was in the room behind the bar, standing at the glass of the one-way mirror, looking back past the bar to the dimly lit lounge and taking inventory of the whores reclining on divans or standing at the bar with their long cigarette holders and watered-whiskey cocktails. There were only a handful of other men in the lounge, men unknown to Hosea, likely sportsmen up from the Twin Ports or even come through the Soo. A long way from home in any case, from their wives and children, and playing at being their younger, wilder selves.
"You want a plate of roast venison?" one of the brothers asked Grimm.
"Thanks, no, but I'll have a whiskey, up." And then to Odd, "Nothing strikes your fancy, lad?"
"I ain't dressed for it, doubt they'd even take a gander."
"Don't patronize me, Odd. I'm offering is all. My treat."
"I think not." Rebekah on his mind, her stories, their secret stories, took on a little extra heft in the Shivering Timber.
Larue returned with a whiskey in one hand and his ledger in the other. He and Grimm stood at the glass and went over accounts.
"We'll need extra the next couple of months. Busy summer. Six barrels next week?"
Hosea looked over his shoulder at Odd, who nodded. "Six barrels it is."
"What do you fellas know about this census taker?"
Hosea said, "He stinks. Rotten. But he's having a fine time up here in the wilderness. I doubt he wants his good summer to end. I'll see that it doesn't."
"I knew that son of a bitch was a nark," Larue said.
"He'll be easy enough to manage. You see his shoes? They're falling apart. He wears the same trousers day after day. He's got a wife in St. Paul, she'll grow fond of what those few extra dollars each week will bring. I see new crockery in her kitchen cupboards, new dresses for church on Sunday. Maybe even a beaver-pelt coat."
"I was you, I'd tell him to keep the hell away from us. Strange things happen to the uninitiated up here at the Timber. There're lots of places to fall and break a leg, lots of hungry critters in the woods happy to make a snack of boys fallen down."
Hosea smiled. "So violent, man!"
"I don't want to see him. That's all I'm saying. I'll make things bad for him if I do."
"Once I've pocketed him, I'll pass your message along."
Odd liked this talk. He knew that Hosea would indeed pocket the fed and that a summer of running whiskey lay ahead. Enough money to outfit his boat and maybe make a run for it next spring. He and Rebekah gone forever.
"Odd, you want a whiskey? A gal?" Larue asked.
"No, thanks. I'll be on my way."
Hosea, speaking to Larue, said, "Don't worry, he isn't queer. Just principled."
" There were more principled men in this world, the Timber would be on the Lighthouse Road, we'd be selling whiskey on the boardwalk," Larue said.
Odd smiled. "There'd be no fun in that, though," he said.
Larue patted Odd's shoulder. " Point well taken, friend."
Odd took a few minutes to study the lounge, the women in their negligees or cheap dresses, their vacant eyes and slumped shoulders. Odd could not see the pleasure in any of it.
V.
(January 1896)
Thea learned first to tend the scullery fire, to warm water for the dish scrubbing, to make tea for the other cookees. She was up at four every morning, rekindling flames as she mouthed her silent prayers.
Between the stovewood and the kitchen sink carved from white pine, she had splinters enough that her hands looked like porcupines. But she was tireless and dispassionate and worked without complaint. Within two weeks of her arrival at the camp she was paring potatoes and rutabagas and opening tins of milk. Before Thanksgiving she could soak the beans and boil cabbage. Now, in the new year, she was in charge of baking: biscuits and rye bread and larrigan pies. She could slice the loaves and ready the pea soup before the other cookees could set the tables and replenish the woodpile.
Because he could not speak Norwegian the camp cook taught her by demonstrating, speaking only in rudimentary terms fit for a child or simpleton. In this way she came to know the language of the kitchen as a series of words in isolation, nouns and verbs independent of each other. Herring, oleo, roux, apple, mutton, cellar, sowbelly, stove. And clean, stew, stir, cut, serve. Though he was terse and strict, she knew that she pleased him, and not for the reasons she pleased the hundred other men in camp. In the cook's estimation, her diligence and subordination would have been enough. What came after that was gravy. As for Thea, she understood his authority instinctually, and though she had no great opinion of the man, he was at least not mysterious.