The Lighthouse Road(4)

They called sooner than he'd expected, their voices carried on the stiff breeze. "Ahoy! That Grimm's runner? What're ya, in a canoe there?"



He heard drunken laughter as the Canadians slowed beside him. When the lines came over and after he triced up the boats, he saw there were three men.



"Old Grimm sent a runt, Donny. Look at this one."

"You shits are late," he said. "It's no night for sitting in a skiff."

One of the men had come to his gunwale and stood looking down at him. "But it's a fine night for moonshine! Just look at her up there." The man gestured at the luminous sky. "Don't piss on me about being late, runty. We're here, we got the hooch."



"Six barrels?"



"That's what Grimm ordered, that's what we got. How 'bout the dough? Hosea send it along?"



Odd reached into his pocket and withdrew the wad of bills. He handed it up to the man at the gunwale.



"It's all here?"



"It's all there."



"Donny! Over the side. Let's load these barrels."



The one named Donny came over the gunwale and into Odd's skiff. He offered his hand and they shook and when he looked up they were ready with the first barrel.



"Good Christ, friend, six of these barrels might damn well sink you."



"Don't worry," Odd said. They each took an end and lowered the barrel, the boats rising and falling like a pair of drunken dancers.



They took five more barrels aboard his skiff and Donny scuttled ass back up onto his boat. "I've seen sunken boats with more freeboard than that," he said.



"Say your prayers, runty," one of them said. "By God, you'll need more than luck to get back to Gunflint."



Odd was already covering the whiskey barrels with the spray hood, lashing it as the wind played hell with the canvas. "Don't worry about my luck."



"To hell with him," one of them said.



"Tell Hosea good night," another shouted.



"Tell him we'll be up to see his daughter!"

"You shut the hell up," Odd said at the mention of her. He gave them a fierce look before he unfastened the lines that held their boats together. He hurried to the rear thwart and started the Evinrude before he lost the shelter of their lee.



And then he was taking the swells astern and wet all over again. They were right about the freeboard. There wasn't more than two feet of it. Though the whiskey was good ballast, it was too much. "As true in the belly as in the boat," he said aloud.



He'd have a hell of a time the next three hours, that much was sure. He pulled the lantern down, stowed the oar, and extinguished the light.





Was it really possible for the pressure to fall and rise and fall again all in the same summer night? The wind coming around now from the northwest, the moon fading behind a lacework of clouds, and the pulsing behind his glass eye all told him yes. He'd been a half hour heading upshore, running before the seas, and though the swells were shrinking they were running closer together, too. None of this good news. A couple of times he'd come off a crest and into a trough and the Evinrude's propeller had come out of the water and raced and whined. He eased up on the throttle each time but when he slowed the boat would yaw, and he was good and goddamn tired of getting pooped.



He thought if he shifted the barrels he might run a little easier, so he untied the spray hood and unlashed the barrel closest to him and rolled it back to his feet. The skiff heeled as the other barrels came free, all five of them following the first.



"You're as goddamned dumb as Hosea says you are," he said aloud, the sound of his voice barely audible above the wind.



He throttled down to an idle and on hands and knees rolled one of the barrels up toward the bow. He set it upright and lashed it quickly and, like a housecat, crawled amidships and lashed another pair of barrels to the thwart. All the while water was washing into the skiff and before he could get back to the Evinrude and his cruise home, he spent fifteen minutes with his bail bucket, the cold, cold water numbing his hand even as lightning flashed to the north.



"Christ almighty," he said, shaking his head. "Good Christ almighty, I'm about done wrestling this goddamn lake."



But the lightning— even with all it implied— was a turn of fortune: Without it, he'd have had a hell of a time keeping the shoreline in view, for the clouds were back with the change of weather and he was in a new kind of darkness, one relieved only by the flickering sky. By the time he had the barrels lashed and the skiff bailed and was back on his rear thwart with a wad of snoose stuck in his mouth, he realized that accounting for the squally seas had slowed him by half, and the lightning showed the hills above Gunflint still twenty miles before him. He ought to have been safe in the cove by now, safe in his bunk for a few hours' sleep. Instead he had two more hours of lake water swamping his boat, soaking his trousers and boots.