Peter Geye: The Lighthouse Road

Another contraction gripped her, and she was brought back to the bed, to Rebekah's steady hand on her own. Grimm was speaking now of his years at the Sorbonne, of his studies with the great Jean-Philippe Armand, of the accoucheur's duty. He had studied two years with Armand, had even cowritten several articles with the man. Or so he said.

He was in fine form, Grimm was. He lectured on the curative powers of ground stag antlers and dried rabbit wombs and a dozen other equally strange remedies for everything from infertility to gonorrhea. He suggested that when the child finally came they ought to read its skull— caul forecasting, he called it. Finally he spoke of his great affinity for Soranus, a second-century Grecian who had been Grimm's first introduction to the science of gynecology. He held forth while he worked, as though his monologue would both edify and distract. Thea, of course, could hardly understand a word he said.

G rimm had two pots of boiled water beside him now, and he was soaking the instruments that Rebekah had earlier arranged. He said, "Well, Miss Eide, what say we welcome this child before dark? Let's earn our sup."

He spread her legs gently, sliding the sleeping gown over her knees. "We must have a look, child." Then he reached into her and pressed and she thought surely this was the first touch of death. She put her hands around her neck and pressed and felt her pulse like hammer blows on the palms of her hands.

"Very good, child. Excellent. You must be halfway there. No doubt you'll be done by suppertime," Grimm said.

She looked at him uncomprehendingly, looked at Rebekah, who had not moved from her side for many minutes. Outside the window she could see the snow still falling.

The morning passed with difficulty. Several times Grimm consulted his library, and his discourse on the history of childbirth gave over to more imminent concerns. He twice sent Rebekah to his stores, once for morphine and later for a vile of scopolamine. Thea closed her eyes at noon and did not open them again until two hours later, when Grimm injected her with another syringe of cold drugs. The moaning that had issued from Thea for hours ceased, and she felt nothing, only that she no longer existed.

It was in this state that the child was born. The umbilical cord was tangled around him, and when Grimm held him up by the feet, even the blood coating him looked blue. The child had a huge shock of hair on his misshapen head and his eyes were but slits. Grimm reached for a long-bladed scalpel. He gripped the umbilical cord and sliced through it as though he were cutting tenderloin from the shoulder, catching the child in the crook of his arm. He unwound the cord, first from the infant's neck and then from his legs. Almost instantly a flush of paleness washed over the boy and he was alive.

Grimm laid the child on a blanket and Rebekah bathed him, she suctioned the mucus from his throat and nose, and when she did he let out his first wheeze. While Rebekah tended to the boy, Grimm stood aside, rubbing his own furrowed brow. He watched the child open his eyes, he counted the lad's fingers and toes, he noted his hair. He documented his findings in a notebook and set the notebook nearby and when the child was cleaned and swaddled, he took him from Rebekah and handed him to Thea, who looked wan but relieved. She held the boy. Smiled. Then wept silently. He recorded this in his notebook, too.

"You'll need a name for this one," Grimm said in stuttering Norwegian. He'd been practicing her language that season.

Thea looked at Grimm. "A name?" she repeated. She looked at her child, pulled him from his place nestled in the warmth of her neck, and rubbed his cheek. It was so soft it could have been satin. "Odd Einar," she said. "I will call him Odd Einar. For my father."

Now the child began a long, wheezing lamentation. He clutched the air with his balled fists and kicked under his swaddle. Thea tried putting him back in the crook of her neck but the child still wailed. She looked at Grimm. She looked at Rebekah, who ushered Grimm from the room and returned to her bedside. The child still cried.

"Thea, the child is hungry. Here," and she pulled the loose sleeping gown over Thea's shoulder, exposing her breast. "The child wants to eat." Rebekah took the child from Thea's arm and told her to sit up. Then Rebekah positioned the child in Thea's lap and said, " Offer him your breast. Milk, Thea. He wants milk."

When Thea looked up uncomprehendingly, Rebekah cupped the baby's head in one hand and Thea's breast in the other and brought them together.

And before Thea could fail, the child opened his mouth and leaned toward his mother's breast. The child sucked with astonishing vigor. He sucked and he sucked and Thea felt the life going into him, drop by precious drop. In that instant she realized she was famished herself. The smell of the roasting birds was delicious now, and she felt she could eat a whole hen.

But she watched her boy suckle instead. He ate and ate. And Thea wept. And wept. And was elated.

And would soon die.

O dd stood out on the point, watching the distant lightning in the east, watching the moonrise in the vacuum of the leaving storm. He could feel the booming surf under his feet, vibrating up through the basalt. He could feel the weather lowering, too, behind his glass eye.

Another swell pounded the beach. He looked behind him, at the water in the cove, at his fish house and skiff. He checked his wristwatch against the moonlight. Just past eleven.

He stayed on the point long enough to imagine star trails. Long enough to imagine everything that could go wrong out there. He didn't have a choice, though. If he balked, Marcus Aas and his brother would get the next job. Odd needed the next job.

He checked his watch again. The lightning was now just flickering over the horizon, like a premature and sputtering sunrise. He knelt, put both hands flat on the rock, felt what it told him: He'd get wet, no doubting that. But there was moon enough. And he was game.

Back in the cove he emptied his skiff, brought the fish boxes up to the fish house. He grabbed line from a hook on the wall and his spray hood. He made a cheese sandwich and wrapped it in wax paper and put it in his pocket. He took the teakettle from the stovetop. It was sweltering inside the fish house and he wiped sweat from his face and cussed. But he smartly donned his oilskin pants and jacket.

At the waterline he untied his skiff and walked it down the boat slide and into the cove. He lowered the Evinrude and turned for the open water. He rounded the point as far offshore as possible dodging the swells as much as he could. But still he was wet right away. He motored past the breakers and in the open water the seas spread out and his ride smoothed.

He passed a set of his gill-net buoys and kept the nose of his skiff pointed east, using Six-Pine Ridge as his marker ashore. The moon was above him now, its light pooled over the lake, over the hills. Twice he checked his watch and when it was finally one o'clock he lit his lantern and hoisted it up one of the oars. He lashed the oar to the gunwale. He settled into the shipping lane bearing northeast, taking the swells on his port bow. He took the cheese sandwich from his pocket and ate it. The pulsing behind his glass eye kept a steady pace with the rolling seas.

He cruised for another hour before he saw the far-off light of his rendezvous. It was nearly two o'clock by then and he knew he'd be lucky to beat the dawn getting back to shore.

The oncoming boat made steady progress. She'd done the lion's share of traveling that night, forty or fifty miles up from Port Arthur. He could see that the boat— as big as a towboat, and cut like one, too — was suited for seas like these. Much better suited than his skiff. He thought for the millionth time of the boat in his mind. Could see it damn near plain as day. Could see himself in a cockpit, the spray over the bow spattering glass instead of his wincing face.