Peter Geye - The Lighthouse Road

The headline read, world's biggest dogs !Two droopy-faced hounds were drawn muzzle to muzzle, looking not unlike the foreman's St. Bernard. Trond read the rest of the ad: russian ovcharka watchdogs, beasts of the bravest order, fear nothing and no one.

bred for our killing winters. guard your livestock or family. $30. litter of six yearlings ready for you! It then listed the name of the breeder and an address at which to contact him.

"What can you tell me about this Olli?" Trond said.

"He's a Laplander," Grimm began. "Used to run a trapline way the hell up the Bunchberry River, but he lost a foot winter of '93. Now he raises these dogs. And a little hell if truth be told."

"On one leg he gets around?"

"He limps and curses, but he does get around. Got a stump made of hickory. He runs a ferry up to Duluth in the summer months, keeps butter on his bread."

"And what have you heard about the dogs?"

"Joseph Riverfish tells a story how one of them giant mutts treed a bear this fall. Way up a white pine. Then waited the bear out. When it finally came down, the dog and it squared off. The dog won. Olli's got the pelt to prove it. I guess it's true they're two hundred pounds. Feet the size of skillets. Probably wouldn't want to curl up with one, but might keep the wolves at bay."

Trond read the advertisement again, then asked, "When does Joseph make the next mail run?"

"Not until Friday. But he can't bring those dogs back. He'll be fully loaded. He always is."

Trond ran his hand through his beard again. "I can't spare the men or the time," he said.

"For the right price his son would make that run."

"He's what, fourteen years old?"

"He might be, but he's been helping his father with the mail route. He can look after himself."

"What do you suppose the right price is?"

"Christ, Trond, they live in a wigwam. Eleanor is pregnant. It's been a long, hard winter. I imagine any price is right. Just be fair."

" Could he run up the lake?"

"I've not heard reports from along the way, though you can be damn certain I'd not do it. You can see the water's still open just a mile offshore." He peered out the big window in front of his store. "But the trail is fast, from what I hear. The cold, you know. He could have those dogs back here in three or four days."

"The dogs, you think they could run the trail?"

"I imagine those dogs dictate their own terms. If they can't handle the trail, they'll let the lad know it."

Trond walked to the window. He didn't have a choice, he reckoned. The jacks would tolerate about anything, but not wolves in their backyard. He turned to Grimm. " Where can I find the boy?"

I n the middle of the night, exhausted, over a finger of Canadian whiskey, Hosea paged through Howe's thirty-year-old Manual of Eye Surgery for the fourth time. Odd lay sedated on the same table on which he'd been born, the bleeding from his eye stanched, the hole in his face where his eyeball had been like a potato gone to mush.

Rebekah slept in a chair at Odd's side. The cuffs of her blouse sleeves were stained with blood. Hosea set the manual down on the bedside table and stepped into the next room, returning with an afghan that he placed over her. He thought he could see her settle into a deeper sleep under the warmth of it. To what dreams he could not imagine. These two children, he did love them. Which was what made Odd's pain so difficult to bear. He was still just a boy. A boy whose only chance had been Hosea.

Hosea looked down on Odd, the ether having blanched the color from his cheeks. I have offered him a chance, haven't I? This question had been dogging him since Danny had delivered Odd twelve hours earlier.

Danny had left Odd unconscious on the toboggan outside the apothecary while he bounded up the steps and into the store. Breathlessly he shouted, "Hosea! Hosea! It's Odd! He needs help! Quick!"

Hosea had been taking his evening inventory, up on the ladder counting the contents of the canisters on the shelves behind the counter. He jumped down and hurried around the counter to meet Daniel.

"What is it, lad?"

Danny still had his snowshoes on and he sat on the floor to take them off as he panted, "Odd, he's outside. He's hurt bad."

Hosea ran outside, down the steps, and found the boy lying there. One of the town dogs had sniffed Odd out and was poking his cold nose into the wound on his face. Hosea kicked the dog away.

"Daniel!" he shouted over his shoulder. "Daniel! Get out here."

But Danny was already hurrying back to the toboggan.

"What in Christ's name happened?"

Danny's breath was coming back to him. "It was a bear."

"A bear?"

"Odd went into a den. It's my fault."

Hosea stood quickly and removed his apron and balled it and put it firmly over Odd's eye. He turned to Daniel. "Listen to me carefully. Go inside. Tell Rebekah to put water on to boil. Lots of it. She's upstairs. Tell her to put fresh linens on the table in the surgery. Go."

Daniel was back inside the apothecary before Hosea lifted Odd off the toboggan. By the time he'd carried him up to the second floor, Rebekah and Daniel were already preparing the table. Hosea laid Odd down. Though the boy was still unconscious, Hosea was relieved to find his pulse steady, his temperature, to the touch, normal.

"Rebekah, listen."

Rebekah could not take her eyes off Odd.

"Rebekah! Listen to me."

She finally looked up.

"Do you have water boiling?"

She nodded.

"Go upstairs. As soon as it's ready, as soon as it's hot, bring it down. Put more on to boil. Do this as quickly as possible. Do you understand?"

Rebekah answered by walking backward from the room, her eyes not leaving Odd until she'd stepped out.

"Now, Daniel, I need you to tell me slowly and precisely what happened."

So, while Hosea sedated Odd, while he stanched the blood and cleaned the eye, while he clipped away Odd's shaggy hair and shaved his eyebrow, Daniel told him the story of Odd climbing into the bears' den. Danny spoke slowly, as he'd been instructed, and tried to remember every detail. Hosea listened intently while he worked.

"I tried to stop him but I was too late," Danny concluded. "He was half in the den when I realized what he was doing. It's my fault." Danny started to weep.

Hosea stood up and checked Odd's pulse again and then looked at Daniel. "I don't understand how it's your fault," he said.

"I told him he was a chickenshit," Danny said. "Odd said he was going to be brave." Danny wiped the tears from his cheeks, wiped the snot from his nose. "I didn't know he was going to climb into a bear den."

Hosea put his hand on Danny shoulder. "Daniel, any fool who climbs into a bear den deserves what awaits him. This is not your fault."

These words only sent the boy into another fit of tears.

Hosea tousled the boy's hair and said, "Go help Rebekah with the water, Daniel. We'll fix your pal up good as new."

But Hosea had no confidence this was true. Since his arrival in Gunflint he'd set countless broken bones. Cleaned the bullet wounds of many men clipped accidentally in the shoulder or back during pheasant or turkey hunts. Delivered all the babies born here over the past ten years and stood over more than a few slow deaths. Never mind his effort at curing Thea, the poor lad's poor mother. But Odd's injury was different. It was out of his purview, for one. This skull injury, he wondered if he was actually seeing the outer recesses of Odd's brain when he looked into the wound. And then, it was Odd.

Hosea walked to Odd's bedside and carefully removed the bandage covering the boy's eye. Blood pulsed slowly from the wound with each beat of Odd's heart. Hosea put two fingers on his neck and opened his pocket watch. After a minute he wrote the boy's heart rate on a chart on the bedside table. From his pocket he removed the ophthalmoscope and trained it on the empty eye socket. He had identified the essential components. The extraocular muscles had been severed. The ophthalmic artery was intact. The bundle of optic and sclerotic nerves was horribly frayed. Hosea could not imagine the pain. It made his skin crawl to think of it. He wet a clean cloth in the bowl of warm water and washed the wound for the tenth time. Odd stirred but did not wake, the drugs staying consciousness.