The Lighthouse Road(51)

In the Gunflint harbor he went first to the fuel dock and filled his tank. He put payment and a note in an envelope and dropped it into the harbormaster's mailbox and climbed back aboard the boat, untied her from the dock, and crossed the harbor to the Lighthouse Road, where he tied up again and waited for Rebekah. The moon was over the hills above town, nearly full and heavy with light. He remembered what Hosea had told him once about how the moon tugged the waters of the oceans of the world. Tides, he called them. Like seiches but without need of wind or pressure. Odd wondered was the moon really capable of that. All he wanted now was the light of the moon to show him Rebekah walking up the Lighthouse Road.



And it wasn't long before he saw just that. Saw her silhouette backlit by the moon, as if she were the tide itself, the moon pulling her toward him. Saw Danny laden like a pack mule next to her. Saw her coat flaring out not from a wind but from how fast she was walking. Then saw her face as she stood on the Lighthouse Road above his boat. Saw a look something like pity cast his way, a look cast by the moonlight.



Odd reached his hand up and helped her into the boat. He escorted her to the bench in the cockpit, told her to sit down, offered a woolen blanket for her lap, knelt before her and tucked the blanket around her legs. He whispered that he loved her. In return she gave him a smile, a faint smile, to be sure, but a smile all the same.



Then Odd took her belongings from Danny. Two bags stuffed to bursting. A chest that must have weighed eighty pounds, a hatbox, a pillowcase full of foodstuffs. He stowed the bags in the lockers on either side of the cockpit, stashed the chest behind the motor box and lashed it and covered it with a canvas tarp. He asked Rebekah to hold on for a minute and then climbed from the boat onto the Lighthouse Road.



He looked steadily at Danny. "I set it up with Mayfair that you're in charge of my property. If anything happens to me, it goes to Rebekah. I'll be in touch once we're settled in Duluth, if Duluth is where we end up staying. I'll send news through Mayfair."



"I'll be careful not to burn the place down."

"Hosea's first stop is going to be my front door."

"I'll have him in for tea," Danny said, and smiled.

"He's a wily old prick."

"And I ain't no northwoods rube. Don't worry."

Odd looked up the Lighthouse Road, over Danny's shoulder, at the moon now resting on the hilltop. He looked behind him, out over the lake and onto the eastern horizon. The first inkling of light showed clouds. He looked back at Danny.



Danny said, "There's safe water in Otter Bay. That's halfway up the shore. Safe water again in Two Harbors."



"You reckon the weather will hold? I got that feeling in my eye."



"Get on the water. You'll find out."



"Danny, thanks, brother."



Danny clapped him on the shoulder. "The world's waiting."



Odd climbed back aboard his boat. He untied the sternline while Danny untied the bowline and held them to the quay. Odd punched the ignition and the Buda rumbled to life. He was already growing attuned to the sound of it, was already learning the way the vibrations felt in his feet. He was ready to go.



Odd throttled the boat forward and turned her left and headed along the Lighthouse Road out past the breakwater. He turned south and west and got her up to speed and they were on their way.





See the sun coming up?" Odd said. They'd been a half hour in the boat and off the portside bow the sun shone dull, half above the horizon, above the water.



"Hmm," Rebekah said.

"We're on our way, Rebekah. The rest of our lives—" he gestured to the wide-open waters before them "—it's right out there."



She looked up through the cockpit window but didn't say anything.



"Are you happy?" he asked.



"I'm here," she said.





In two hours they motored past the settlement at Misquah, past the mouth of the Birch River and the looming hills through which it ran. There were half-a-dozen fish houses dotting the craggy shoreline, half-a-dozen skiffs upturned for the season. This was as far south as Odd had ever been, and then only once, the summer before, when he had delivered a barrel of whiskey to the Lutheran pastor whose church stood stark white on the hillside.



They were a mile offshore, nosing into a quartering wind, the lake not much agitated by the southwesterly breeze. The boat ran like she was on a rail, and Odd felt capable of anything.



He'd piled some of their bags in the cockpit and Rebekah lay on them, her legs under her like a cat, a blanket tucked around her, sleeping. How could anyone sleep on a day like this, Odd wondered. He looked down at her. So lovely, wisps of hair streaming from under her hat, her eyes impervious to the wind and the dull, throbbing sky. He reached down and pulled the blanket over her shoulder. He tucked her hair behind her ear.