The Lighthouse Road(73)

"Mister Smith, I've lived in this town for twenty years. I built the first house, I named the first street. Lectures on how cold the winter is are lost on me. I'll offer you a last chance to make your case." He held his index finger up, wagged it at Smith. "One more chance."



"I had wolves following me day and night. They were after me. Their tracks were on the trail before and behind me. They'd howl. How they'd howl. You put the wolves after the cold, after the wilderness." He shook his head.



" There are wolves in these woods just as there's cold in winter, Smith. It's true."



Joshua Smith risked interrupting Mayfair. "They were taunting me. I needed them to stop. That's why I set the horse in the paddock. To feed them. It was me or the horse."



"Mister Smith, if it's true the wolves were taunting you, then all the hounds of hell must have besieged you in Duluth. Why else burn a city block? I think we've heard enough about the horse. Tell me, what were your intentions when you went to the mess hall?"



"My intentions? I went to the mess hall," Smith said, speaking more softly now, "because the cook's beautiful. There's no great mystery in it. She was kind to me and she's beautiful and I was a man caught in that season. I don't know what I expected. I don't know."



"I'm sure we'd all agree Miss Eide is lovely to look at, Mister Smith, but I'd venture to guess we'd none of us do what you did. The cold and the wolves and the trees don't grant permission of that sort. No one does, nothing does."



"Permission—" Smith began, but Mayfair interrupted.



"Do you know the girl's enceinte?"



"Enceinte?"

"The girl's with child, Joshua Smith. While you're doing your time in a federal penitentiary, she'll be raising your misbegotten child."



Smith's mouth hung open. He leant forward, tried to look at her belly under the table opposite him.



" There are five people in this room with better things to do with their time than listen to your stories about being cold. I'll write a decision to send with the Mounties." Mayfair moved papers around his blotter, took his pen from his shirt pocket, and began to write even as he continued speaking. "This world is dreadful enough. It doesn't need the help of monsters." He paused in his writing, looked squarely at Smith. "Mister Smith, you are a monster. I can only hope the sight of this woman and the child growing in her belly tames some small part of you."



To Thea and Hosea and Selmer, Mayfair said, "You're all free to leave. I'm sorry for the waste of your time." Then to Thea he said, "Miss Eide, my wife and I pray for you. We pray for your unborn child. People are unkind, but if you can rise above the unfortunate nature of the conception of that babe, and if you can love it with a pure heart, with an unsullied conscience, then the stain of its paternity will fade. The good people of Gunflint will rise above their ignorance and make the child one of us. I promise you that."



Selmer finished translating Mayfair's last words and rose. Hosea followed. Then Thea. They stood for just a moment, long enough for Joshua Smith to get a glimpse of Thea's belly, of the swell that sealed the rest of his life with a barred fate. He knew that much. He knew, also, that he was right about the cold and the trees and the wolves.





XXI.





(December 1920)





Every morning that December Odd woke in the darkness and padded down the hallway of the brownstone they'd rented on East Sixteenth Street. He'd stand over the sink in the bathroom and shave around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, the wonder of hot running water and the steam it aroused a minor miracle each morning after all those years of hauling buckets of icy water up to the fish house from the lake.



He'd go quietly down the hall from the bathroom to the kitchen and start a pot of water on the stove and while he waited for it to boil he'd patch his lunch together: a cheese sandwich and garlic pickle wrapped in wax paper, a tin of sardines. He'd pack it in his lunch pail and brew the coffee and pour himself a single cup to drink with his oatmeal and pour the rest in his thermos. He did all this in utter silence, mindful of Rebekah still sound asleep. When he finished his breakfast he went back to their bedroom and feathered the hair off Rebekah's forehead and kissed her, hoping the touch of his lips might impart some contentedness. Might sweeten her dreams.



His morning ritual, conducted in that silence and dim light, made each day seem holy. And each day when he stepped from their home he did so feeling devout. Though Harald Sargent had done his share of proselytizing, he'd failed to convert Odd, who had decided early in that season and in the face of Sargent's sermons that he'd take his heaven on earth. And he'd found it in his and Rebekah's domesticity, in their quiet and honest life together. He'd never felt so at peace, not even during his best moments in the skiff.