"I was never anything but kind and true, Harald. I love her better than anything."
"But she'll come back, son. She can't really leave the boy. Can't leave a man good as you."
"She can and she did, and she ain't coming back. I don't know much, but I know this."
Sargent brought his hands together and hung his head. "Dear Lord, forgive that woman. Forgive her and find peace for her. And for this child, Lord, hold him in your hands. Show him the way." He lifted his face to the sunlight for a moment, then looked again at Odd. "Son, you know you've got a place with me as long as you need. Mother, she can watch the boy until you find other arrangements. I'll call Doctor Crumb. We'll find the boy a wet nurse. Everything will be all right."
"You're right, boss. Everything will be all right. But part of why I'm here is to say good-bye."
" Good-bye?"
Now Odd turned his face up to the sun. "You've been the closest thing to a father I ever had. It ain't even a year I've known you and I'd lay across the tracks for you. But I was always just visiting. I didn't know that until this morning. I'm a Gunflinter, I guess." He lowered his face and took the last draw on his cigarette. "I'm gonna get my boat out of dry dock tomorrow. I'm gonna take this boy home. I'm gonna teach him how to cast a net and build a boat." Now Odd smiled. "I'll build him a skiff so he can run about."
And Sargent couldn't help smile himself. "It'll be a fine boat."
"A damn fine boat."
The next day Odd and Harald motored home. Roundabout Otter Bay, Odd opened the locker in the cockpit and withdrew the box that held the bell. He locked the wheel and checked on Harry and then, nimble as a cat, Odd fixed the bell to the header in the cockpit.
The rest of the way home he talked to Harry. He told him about the lake, the rivers and streams. He told him about the kinds of fish in the lake and the kinds of men in the world. He told him what kind of man he would be. Motoring past the settlement at Misquah, he told him about the boat. Said, "I built this boat for all the wrong reasons, Harry. It's easy to do things for the wrong reasons. My problem? I never know what the wrong reasons are until it's too late. Same goes for your mother, rest her soul." He looked down at the boy in the crook of his arm. The sun on his pale skin. "See, I built it so I could run more whiskey. Catch more fish. Get more. But now I got all I want." He rubbed Harry's cheek with the back of his thumb, a gesture that would become his regular show of affection. "How could I have known when I dragged that tree out of the woods, when I carved this keel, when I bent the first board, that I'd be cruising with you? I couldn't, you see? But now I know what I never could have: that of all the reasons to have a boat, none is as important as using it to carry your son home. To carry you home, Harry."
Before they reached Gunflint Harry started fussing. The roll and pitch of the water and Odd's voice had left the boy sleeping for the better part of six hours but he woke just east of Misquah. So Odd fixed him a bottle. He had fifty dollars' worth of Dextri-maltose prescribed by Doctor Crumb. He mixed it up and offered Harry the rubber nipple.
When Harry had guzzled it all, Odd laid a blanket across the motor box and changed the boy's diaper. "That's my little fella," Odd said, picking him up and resting him on his shoulder. He burped him and then held him in the crook of his arm.
When they came up on Gunflint it was still light. The sun rested on the hilltop. A breeze had been stiffening for the last hour, and as they rounded the breakwater and headed across the harbor, the roll of the boat on the swells set the bell tolling. It was the song of their coming home, and Odd hoped everyone heard it.
XXVII.
(February 1937)
The shingle above the chandlery door read, eide's boatbuilding & supplies. Every time Odd walked under it, he thought of Sargent and Hosea, the two men he had had to learn from. Both men had hung such shingles over their doors: Hosea at the apothecary, Harald at the boatwright.
That morning he and Harry walked in together an hour before sunrise, a strange, cold wind blowing away a fog bank outside. They went to their desks and poured coffee from matching thermoses and spent fifteen minutes cracking their knuckles and sharpening their tools before either of them spoke.
Odd said, "We've got a letter here. A query about building a canoe."
"I'm not building a canoe," Harry said.
Odd smiled. "I guess you think they wouldn't pay for a canoe?"
Harry took his adze to the skiff he was building. He put his hands on the gunwale the way Odd always did, walked around the boat twice before he set to shaving a bit off the transom.