The Lighthouse Road(2)

She didn't open her eyes again until they reached Gunflint a half hour later. Closer to the lake, the blizzard had a different shape and unruliness. Snow had drifted into sharp ridges all along the break water. In town— or what passed as town— the roads were covered in snow, so even the horse had trouble passing. There was no sound from the mill. The lights in the Traveler's Hotel lobby were unlit. Even the dogs that usually ran the streets were nowhere to be seen. At Grimm's apothecary, though, the large front window was aglow. The only sign of life in town. Frost crept down from the corners to cloud the glass.



Thea was by then in agony, but still she bore it. The Meltmen boy picked her up and trudged through the knee-deep snow to Grimm's door, where he hammered on the glass. Before a minute passed he hammered again, and Hosea Grimm's daughter, Rebekah, came hurrying across the storeroom floor. She opened the door and said, "Oh, dear," and turned and hollered, "Hosea! Hosea! It's Thea. Hurry."



Inside the store the smell of roasting capon hanging in the air sickened Thea. She said, "Stink." To which Rebekah replied, "That's Thanksgiving dinner already in the oven."



The Meltmen boy set Thea on her feet, tipped his hat, and left as though he'd just delivered a parcel.



Hosea Grimm, dressed only in his union   suit and a matching toque, came down the stairs two at a time. "None of us was sure we'd get you here in time, Miss Eide. How far along are you?"



Thea, answering, fell into Grimm's ready arms.





She labored to the reassuring sound of Hosea Grimm's deep voice. He bent beside her, dressed now minus the collar he usually wore, his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbow, an apron cinched around his waist. Next to him, resting on a music stand, Hunter's Anatomy of the Gravid Uterus stood opened. He read from it while Rebekah listened intently and arranged a tray of medical implements. Thea's pain was rising now— she thought she could see it coming, swell after swell— like storm breakers on the shores of Hammerfest. She moaned as the contraction passed and then settled back into the cushion of pillows Rebekah had placed behind her.

By what strange calculus could she measure the distance between the shores of her childhood in Hammerfest and her laboring on this table in Gunflint? For all of Rebekah's tenderness, Thea wanted her mother now. More than anything she wanted her mother. She called her name.



Another contraction gripped her, and she was brought back to the bed, to Rebekah's steady hand on her own. Grimm was speaking now of his years at the Sorbonne, of his studies with the great Jean-Philippe Armand, of the accoucheur's duty. He had studied two years with Armand, had even cowritten several articles with the man. Or so he said.



He was in fine form, Grimm was. He lectured on the curative powers of ground stag antlers and dried rabbit wombs and a dozen other equally strange remedies for everything from infertility to gonorrhea. He suggested that when the child finally came they ought to read its skull— caul forecasting, he called it. Finally he spoke of his great affinity for Soranus, a second-century Grecian who had been Grimm's first introduction to the science of gynecology. He held forth while he worked, as though his monologue would both edify and distract. Thea, of course, could hardly understand a word he said.





Grimm had two pots of boiled water beside him now, and he was soaking the instruments that Rebekah had earlier arranged. He said, "Well, Miss Eide, what say we welcome this child before dark? Let's earn our sup."

He spread her legs gently, sliding the sleeping gown over her knees. "We must have a look, child." Then he reached into her and pressed and she thought surely this was the first touch of death. She put her hands around her neck and pressed and felt her pulse like hammer blows on the palms of her hands.



"Very good, child. Excellent. You must be halfway there. No doubt you'll be done by suppertime," Grimm said.



She looked at him uncomprehendingly, looked at Rebekah, who had not moved from her side for many minutes. Outside the window she could see the snow still falling.



The morning passed with difficulty. Several times Grimm consulted his library, and his discourse on the history of childbirth gave over to more imminent concerns. He twice sent Rebekah to his stores, once for morphine and later for a vile of scopolamine. Thea closed her eyes at noon and did not open them again until two hours later, when Grimm injected her with another syringe of cold drugs. The moaning that had issued from Thea for hours ceased, and she felt nothing, only that she no longer existed.



It was in this state that the child was born. The umbilical cord was tangled around him, and when Grimm held him up by the feet, even the blood coating him looked blue. The child had a huge shock of hair on his misshapen head and his eyes were but slits. Grimm reached for a long-bladed scalpel. He gripped the umbilical cord and sliced through it as though he were cutting tenderloin from the shoulder, catching the child in the crook of his arm. He unwound the cord, first from the infant's neck and then from his legs. Almost instantly a flush of paleness washed over the boy and he was alive.