The Lighthouse Road(28)

"Hosea?" Odd asked a moment later, as Hosea was wrapping the eyes back in their silk handkerchiefs.



"What is it, lad?"



"Will I still be able to apprentice with Arne Johnson this spring?"



"I reckon you will, yes."



"Because it's time I got started earning my share."



" There will be plenty of time for earning your share," Hosea said. He put the eyeballs back in the box and clasped it shut. "You boys finish with your fly line. I'll talk to Arne Johnson soon."





Arne Johnson saw no reason Odd shouldn't start learning the ropes, so five weeks after he'd climbed into a bear den Odd straddled the forward thwart of Arne's skiff as they headed out to haul the first set of the season.



Arne was a widower, childless, and the least garrulous man in a town full of reticent men. That Odd was in Arne's skiff at all was a testament to the boy's standing among the villagers. From the first days of his life, Odd had been the whole town's ward. All his sweaters were hand-knit by the fishermen's wives; his haircuts given under a bowl by the innkeeper's wife; the men took him hunting and handed down their own sons' outgrown boots and shotguns; Christmas morning always found twenty gifts intended for Odd on the apothecary doorstep. The godly wives took him to church on Sunday mornings, and the schoolteacher stayed after class to help with his lessons.



That brisk April morning in Arne's skiff was just another version of those Christmas gifts and haircuts and Odd was as grateful for this as he'd been for all the kindnesses bestowed on him over the years. As Arne pulled for the open water beyond Gunflint harbor, he said, "You watch what I do. If your hands get cold, keep it to yourself. If you get hungry, eat the sandwich in your pocket. Watch the shore closely, that will tell you where we are. If you fall overboard, God rest your soul."



Odd listened intently, coupling Arne's terse lecture with what Danny's father had told him about the big water. Arne's thirty-second speech was the first of only a few short speeches that season, but what Odd learned that summer would last his lifetime. They rowed an hour offshore to Arne's buoys, where Arne secured his oars and set immediately to hauling the net. Odd knew to sit still at first, to watch, as Arne had put it. Odd likewise knew that as Arne choked the herring through the net it was his job to box them. The fish were cold and slippery and the wind coming up his back might have dissuaded other boys, but Odd relished it from the first moment. The fear Danny had diagnosed that fateful day on the Burnt Wood River never entered his thoughts.



Five hours they hauled, tending fifteen thousand feet of nets at two different sets. They worked in harmony in a way Arne found unbelievable. The boy with the patched eye was as natural under the rolls of the boat as the water itself. When they got to shore that afternoon, after they'd hefted the boxes into Arne's harborside fish house, as Arne gutted and salted the fish and Odd packed them, Arne offered the only praise he ever would. "You've a fisherman's blood," he said.



Odd would have known this without hearing it, but he blushed all the same, the color in his cheeks announcing not only his embarrassment but also his thanks for the chance.



Over the course of that summer Arne taught Odd everything: how the fish ran, what the wind meant, how to judge a lowering sky, how to mend a net. He taught him how to barter with the fishmonger and keep a ledger, how to sew oilskin and make gunnysack anchors. At the end of summer, after a long day on the water and in the fish house, as Arne cooked sausages and onions on the stove, he told Odd to sit down.



"We'll start building you a skiff this winter. There's plenty of work to do in winter without building a boat, too, but together we can manage. Next spring you'll get your first grounds. You'll use my fish house."



Odd nodded.



Arne stirred the sausages, forked an onion into his mouth.



"The grounds won't yield much. They'll be near the shoreline. And you'll still be apprenticing, but you'll be doing it in your own boat. The season after next you'll be on your own. Do you understand?"



"Yes, sir."



"Good. Now have some grub."





The leaves were turning by the time Hosea fit the glass eye. Odd sat before a mirror in Hosea's examination room. Though his eye still pulsed and sometimes ached behind the patch, he could tolerate it. He hadn't seen the wound yet, and this fact alone worried him that morning.

"You look just like your mother, Odd," Hosea said.

Odd glanced up in the mirror. Hosea was standing behind him, his arms crossed.



"She'd be proud of the young man sitting here today. Even if he was fool enough to raid a bear den."