The Lighthouse Road(3)

Grimm laid the child on a blanket and Rebekah bathed him, she suctioned the mucus from his throat and nose, and when she did he let out his first wheeze. While Rebekah tended to the boy, Grimm stood aside, rubbing his own furrowed brow. He watched the child open his eyes, he counted the lad's fingers and toes, he noted his hair. He documented his findings in a notebook and set the notebook nearby and when the child was cleaned and swaddled, he took him from Rebekah and handed him to Thea, who looked wan but relieved. She held the boy. Smiled. Then wept silently. He recorded this in his notebook, too.



"You'll need a name for this one," Grimm said in stuttering Norwegian. He'd been practicing her language that season.



Thea looked at Grimm. "A name?" she repeated. She looked at her child, pulled him from his place nestled in the warmth of her neck, and rubbed his cheek. It was so soft it could have been satin. "Odd Einar," she said. "I will call him Odd Einar. For my father."



Now the child began a long, wheezing lamentation. He clutched the air with his balled fists and kicked under his swaddle. Thea tried putting him back in the crook of her neck but the child still wailed. She looked at Grimm. She looked at Rebekah, who ushered Grimm from the room and returned to her bedside. The child still cried.



"Thea, the child is hungry. Here," and she pulled the loose sleeping gown over Thea's shoulder, exposing her breast. "The child wants to eat." Rebekah took the child from Thea's arm and told her to sit up. Then Rebekah positioned the child in Thea's lap and said, " Offer him your breast. Milk, Thea. He wants milk."



When Thea looked up uncomprehendingly, Rebekah cupped the baby's head in one hand and Thea's breast in the other and brought them together.



And before Thea could fail, the child opened his mouth and leaned toward his mother's breast. The child sucked with astonishing vigor. He sucked and he sucked and Thea felt the life going into him, drop by precious drop. In that instant she realized she was famished herself. The smell of the roasting birds was delicious now, and she felt she could eat a whole hen.



But she watched her boy suckle instead. He ate and ate. And Thea wept. And wept. And was elated.



And would soon die.





II.





(July 1920)





Odd stood out on the point, watching the distant lightning in the east, watching the moonrise in the vacuum of the leaving storm. He could feel the booming surf under his feet, vibrating up through the basalt. He could feel the weather lowering, too, behind his glass eye.



Another swell pounded the beach. He looked behind him, at the water in the cove, at his fish house and skiff. He checked his wristwatch against the moonlight. Just past eleven.



He stayed on the point long enough to imagine star trails. Long enough to imagine everything that could go wrong out there. He didn't have a choice, though. If he balked, Marcus Aas and his brother would get the next job. Odd needed the next job.



He checked his watch again. The lightning was now just flickering over the horizon, like a premature and sputtering sunrise. He knelt, put both hands flat on the rock, felt what it told him: He'd get wet, no doubting that. But there was moon enough. And he was game.



Back in the cove he emptied his skiff, brought the fish boxes up to the fish house. He grabbed line from a hook on the wall and his spray hood. He made a cheese sandwich and wrapped it in wax paper and put it in his pocket. He took the teakettle from the stovetop. It was sweltering inside the fish house and he wiped sweat from his face and cussed. But he smartly donned his oilskin pants and jacket.



At the waterline he untied his skiff and walked it down the boat slide and into the cove. He lowered the Evinrude and turned for the open water. He rounded the point as far offshore as possible dodging the swells as much as he could. But still he was wet right away. He motored past the breakers and in the open water the seas spread out and his ride smoothed.



He passed a set of his gill-net buoys and kept the nose of his skiff pointed east, using Six-Pine Ridge as his marker ashore. The moon was above him now, its light pooled over the lake, over the hills. Twice he checked his watch and when it was finally one o'clock he lit his lantern and hoisted it up one of the oars. He lashed the oar to the gunwale. He settled into the shipping lane bearing northeast, taking the swells on his port bow. He took the cheese sandwich from his pocket and ate it. The pulsing behind his glass eye kept a steady pace with the rolling seas.



He cruised for another hour before he saw the far-off light of his rendezvous. It was nearly two o'clock by then and he knew he'd be lucky to beat the dawn getting back to shore.



The oncoming boat made steady progress. She'd done the lion's share of traveling that night, forty or fifty miles up from Port Arthur. He could see that the boat— as big as a towboat, and cut like one, too — was suited for seas like these. Much better suited than his skiff. He thought for the millionth time of the boat in his mind. Could see it damn near plain as day. Could see himself in a cockpit, the spray over the bow spattering glass instead of his wincing face.