Peter Geye - The Lighthouse Road

"What in the hell is with you? I don't need goddamn papers drawn up or money from your pocket."

"I'm sorry, Danny. I guess life seems a little more official the last couple of days."

Danny stood up. He looked again into the dark corners. "Hell, yes, I'll squat here. And you take all the time you need to decide what to do."

Odd offered his hand, which Danny shook firmly.

T hey worked through the night, Odd on his back under the boat, fumbling the propeller into place, caulking everything. Danny finished with the varnish. They'd switched from Hakonsson's home brew to coffee sometime in the middle of the night and between the fumes of the varnish and the caffeine both were jittery and twitchy.

As dawn neared Danny broke for a couple hours' sleep. Odd stoked the stove and closed the doors, hoping to warm the place up and hasten the drying of the varnish. He spent the time Danny slept working on the engine. He installed the ignition and battery, the twelve-volt generator, the starter. He double-checked everything against the manual, sealed for a second time the propeller shaft. Finally he poured a couple gallons of fuel into the fifty-gallon tank. He added the motor oil and primed the engine and stood in the cockpit, his hand on the ignition. The smell of varnish was still heavy in the air, but he'd moved all the rags and brushes outside, hefted the whiskey barrel out back and covered it. He thought he was safe. Thought there wasn't much to worry about.

He started her up, let her run for thirty seconds. The Buda coughed and sputtered but caught and ran smooth. Odd knelt at the motor box and adjusted the choke. Despite her purring he was full of doubt. He saw himself rowing the last ninety miles up to Duluth, or worse. But he also believed more than ever in his sense of urgency. Believed that leaving before the next daybreak was essential in a way that he never could have figured. Thought if they didn't he'd lose Rebekah forever.

The engine woke Danny and he stepped to the boat, his hair matted and damp from the heat of the stove. "You trying to cook me alive?" he said.

Odd had a distant and pleased look on his face. "It's time to put this thing in the water. I'll lay the ways, you get your brothers."

Danny donned his coat and left to fetch his four older brothers. Odd threw open the barn doors on Danny's heels. It was a gentle thirty-foot slope from the fish house to the boat slide. Between what was left of the Thanksgiving snow and the overgrown grass the ways sat up high. He had twenty cedar logs piled on the north side of the fish house, and he spaced them a foot apart. His original plan had included building a custom set of rails to winch the boat down to the water. But building such a contraption would have taken a full day and he didn't have the lumber for it anyway.

When Danny returned with his brothers they got right to work. As he removed the braces, Odd explained how they'd go three men on either side of the boat, shoulder it off the strongback and out the barn doors, then set the starboard hull onto the ways. Once they had it resting there, they'd tie lines fore and aft and use the winch to lower it down to the water. The hard part would be getting it onto the ways. He asked were they ready and lined them up under the boat and said, "Once we get this thing off the strongback, there's no setting it down until we have it on the ways, got it?" They all grunted and Odd said, "All right, on the count of three."

It was a hell of a load, even for six brawny men, but they inched her out the barn doors and the six snow-covered feet to the first of the ways and laid her gently on her side. The Riverfish boys rolled smokes while Odd rigged two lines around the boat, spliced them, and fixed the rope to the winch. The winch was fastened to one of the supporting pillars in the fish house.

"Danny, you winch her down. You boys help me guide her. We have to keep the skeg and rudder up off the ways. Something happens with the line and she starts sliding, you lay your goddamn lives down for her."

So Odd stepped backward between the ways as Danny cranked the winch and Danny's brothers stood ready fore and aft. When the boat reached the last of the ways Odd hollered, "Wait!" and he and the Riverfish boys inched her up onto the boat slide. He walked backward down the slide, into the freezing water. When the port-side gunwale reached the shoreline he summoned the brothers again and asked them to hold her steady while he removed the lines.

He was waist-deep in water when he got the rigging free. "All right, boys. This is it. Gently, now, slide her the last yard."

There were ten Riverfish hands on the port-side gunwale as they lowered her into the water and ten wet boots when they were done. The boat bobbed for a moment and found her balance. Odd was by then in water up to his chest, his hands on the starboard hull. He walked through the water around the aft end of her. In knee-deep water he walked along her port side up to the prow. She looked even better in the water than he'd thought she would. He stepped aboard, whipped a line on the belaying cleat, and tossed it to Danny onshore. "Tie this to one of those gunnysacks." For good measure he fixed another line to another cleat and tossed it ashore, told Danny to tie it to the other gunnysack.

He lifted the sole and checked to see if water was leaking into the bilge. It was as dry as it had been on the strongback. He walked around the cockpit and checked the bilge up front. All was sound. He went to the cockpit, punched the ignition, and felt the engine hum on. He stood there on the keel line, put his hands out to either side, shifted his weight from one foot to the other, felt the nearly imperceptible teeter ing, and whispered aloud for only himself to hear, "Goddamn, she's gonna float."

He killed the engine, stepped ashore, and walked up the boat slide to where the Riverfish boys were stomping their cold feet.

Danny said, "She taking any water?"

"Not yet."

"She looks good."

Odd said, "She does, don't she?"

And she did. Her sheer was gorgeous, rising gently from the cockpit. She had five feet of freeboard at her bow, three feet at the transom. The homemade varnish had dried almost black, a color to match the water at this time of day. He'd never thought for one minute he'd be using her to go on the lam, but she looked up for it, sleek and sharp, ready to run.

S aturday afternoons usually found Curtis Mayfair receiving visitors. Odd arrived at twilight and saw the lamp glowing in Mayfair's office, one of the townsfolk sitting across from the magistrate. Odd sat on the steps outside and rolled a smoke while he waited his turn.

He looked up and down the Lighthouse Road, taking stock of the only place he'd ever really been, realizing he might not be coming back. This thought filled him with gloom. He looked out at the harbor, at the breakwater and the wild waters beyond. I was goddamn born here, he thought. I got rights to it. But then he thought of how complicated everything would be. He thought of Hosea's sense of entitlement, knew that Hosea believed he'd saved Odd and Rebekah from lives of deprivation that only he could imagine. Odd wanted his child to come into the world free of such nonsense, free of Hosea's strange grip. Odd looked up at the fat skies, shook his head in sadness and disgust, and stubbed out his cigarette.

It wasn't long before Mayfair stepped outside. He bade Will Halvard good evening and turned to Odd. "There's a fellow I don't see often enough. How goes it, Mister Eide?"

Odd stood and offered his hand and said, "I'm getting by, Curtis."