The Lighthouse Road(74)

After he closed the door quietly behind him he'd walk the four downhill blocks to wait for the streetcar on Superior Street. Already in the days before Christmas more than a foot of snow had softened the yards and in those hours before dawn the whiteness cast a ghostly hue on the morning.



When the streetcar arrived— the first of the morning— he'd jump on and drop his token in the fare box and nod hello to the motorman. He'd walk to the smoking compartment on the back of the streetcar and roll a cigarette and while he listened to the plangent clack of the wheels, to the shrieking brakes, he'd watch the snow come up like a wake behind them. Given those early hours he was often the only passenger. But even still— with the sleeping city all around him and Rebekah and the babe in her belly behind him— he felt the world was waiting to happen.



By the time he reached Sixth or Seventh Street the same streetlights that had, for those first few nights in Duluth, shone up into the hotel room at the Spalding Hotel now shone in his eyes, the brooding buildings— rising like a river gorge on either side of the trolley— shadowy behind the light. He might have been in Russia for how foreign it was.



His thoughts inevitably turned to the child, to those days ahead when he'd have a chance to redress his mother's stolen maternity. Whether here or in Gunflint, whether as a boat builder or fisherman or any other thing, Odd would teach the child, would raise him, would love him. This he vowed solemnly each morning on the trolley. He was desperate for the time to come.



As sweet as the promise of those days was, there remained Rebekah's melancholy. There were evenings when, upon Odd's return from his workday, she seemed happy enough. She'd have dinner ready and her hair washed. He might find her sitting on the davenport in the small sitting room, her needlepoint on her lap, ready with a faint smile to meet him. But more often he found her sitting at the kitchen table. Sometimes with a glass of half-drunk whiskey soaking up the amber glow from the electric light. Those nights she was distant and unaffectionate. And Odd did not know what to do.



By the time the streetcar passed the Spalding Hotel and halted at the union   Station stop, he'd exhausted himself with worry and joy. It was at that stop that his morning solitude came to an end, where the stevedores and railway workers and other harbor rats jumped the streetcar and found seats and unfolded their newspapers. In the now crowded trolley he watched the shipyards and loading docks pass. The grandeur of the east end, of the downtown buildings and lights, gave over to the drab harbor on the south side of the tracks and to the shabby houses on the north side of the line.



The terminus of the Oneota-Superior line came at Raleigh and East Seventieth streets. He'd step out the rear door and onto the cobblestones and turn his collar up against the wind off the river. There was a doughnut shop where he paid a nickel for a fritter the size of his hand, and he'd eat that on the way to Sargent's, which was on the water just past the Zenith Furnace Company. He punched in at six o'clock each morning. He was never once late.



Sargent was paying Odd fifteen dollars a week to pinch oakum into the seams of small boats, a job that left an indelible stink and stickiness on his fingers but one he took seriously and performed with a kind of manic attention. Aside from the sealing work Odd also bent boards, did some finishing, and found himself learning things he wished he'd known when he'd built his own boat.



Sargent had customers all across the Great Lakes, with backorders enough to fill a year of work. He could have added another shift, in fact, but preferred to oversee the building of every boat himself. Each morning he met with his crew before manning the storefront chandlery and setting to work on his accounts. Even still, he passed through the workroom every hour, inspecting and praising the work being done.



They gathered around a table in the back of the shop at noon, where Sargent said a blessing before they all ate in silence. Most of the crew at the boatwright's had been eight or ten years in Sargent's employ. They were a hardworking and earnest bunch of men, not given to much conversation. After lunch, however, as they stepped outside for a smoke, Sargent would pass among them, asking after their families in a hushed voice that belied his fierce eyes. But for Odd they were all family men and churchgoers. Between the two subjects and their common vocation they had fodder enough to chat for the length of time it took to smoke their cigarettes.



On Christmas Eve, after a busy week, when half the crew had taken the day off, Sargent found Odd after lunch. Sargent lit his pipe, offered Odd the match.



"How will you and Missus Eide be spending the holiday, Odd?"



Odd, remembering those lonely Christmases at Grimm's, said, "I suppose Rebekah will cook up a feast. After dinner we'll sip some of that apple wine you gave us and sing a few carols. How about yourself ?"