Peter Geye: The Lighthouse Road

They called sooner than he'd expected, their voices carried on the stiff breeze. "Ahoy! That Grimm's runner? What're ya, in a canoe there?"

He heard drunken laughter as the Canadians slowed beside him. When the lines came over and after he triced up the boats, he saw there were three men.

"Old Grimm sent a runt, Donny. Look at this one."

"You shits are late," he said. "It's no night for sitting in a skiff."

One of the men had come to his gunwale and stood looking down at him. "But it's a fine night for moonshine! Just look at her up there." The man gestured at the luminous sky. "Don't piss on me about being late, runty. We're here, we got the hooch."

"Six barrels?"

"That's what Grimm ordered, that's what we got. How 'bout the dough? Hosea send it along?"

Odd reached into his pocket and withdrew the wad of bills. He handed it up to the man at the gunwale.

"It's all here?"

"It's all there."

"Donny! Over the side. Let's load these barrels."

The one named Donny came over the gunwale and into Odd's skiff. He offered his hand and they shook and when he looked up they were ready with the first barrel.

"Good Christ, friend, six of these barrels might damn well sink you."

"Don't worry," Odd said. They each took an end and lowered the barrel, the boats rising and falling like a pair of drunken dancers.

They took five more barrels aboard his skiff and Donny scuttled ass back up onto his boat. "I've seen sunken boats with more freeboard than that," he said.

"Say your prayers, runty," one of them said. "By God, you'll need more than luck to get back to Gunflint."

Odd was already covering the whiskey barrels with the spray hood, lashing it as the wind played hell with the canvas. "Don't worry about my luck."

"To hell with him," one of them said.

"Tell Hosea good night," another shouted.

"Tell him we'll be up to see his daughter!"

"You shut the hell up," Odd said at the mention of her. He gave them a fierce look before he unfastened the lines that held their boats together. He hurried to the rear thwart and started the Evinrude before he lost the shelter of their lee.

And then he was taking the swells astern and wet all over again. They were right about the freeboard. There wasn't more than two feet of it. Though the whiskey was good ballast, it was too much. "As true in the belly as in the boat," he said aloud.

He'd have a hell of a time the next three hours, that much was sure. He pulled the lantern down, stowed the oar, and extinguished the light.

W as it really possible for the pressure to fall and rise and fall again all in the same summer night? The wind coming around now from the northwest, the moon fading behind a lacework of clouds, and the pulsing behind his glass eye all told him yes. He'd been a half hour heading upshore, running before the seas, and though the swells were shrinking they were running closer together, too. None of this good news. A couple of times he'd come off a crest and into a trough and the Evinrude's propeller had come out of the water and raced and whined. He eased up on the throttle each time but when he slowed the boat would yaw, and he was good and goddamn tired of getting pooped.

He thought if he shifted the barrels he might run a little easier, so he untied the spray hood and unlashed the barrel closest to him and rolled it back to his feet. The skiff heeled as the other barrels came free, all five of them following the first.

"You're as goddamned dumb as Hosea says you are," he said aloud, the sound of his voice barely audible above the wind.

He throttled down to an idle and on hands and knees rolled one of the barrels up toward the bow. He set it upright and lashed it quickly and, like a housecat, crawled amidships and lashed another pair of barrels to the thwart. All the while water was washing into the skiff and before he could get back to the Evinrude and his cruise home, he spent fifteen minutes with his bail bucket, the cold, cold water numbing his hand even as lightning flashed to the north.

"Christ almighty," he said, shaking his head. "Good Christ almighty, I'm about done wrestling this goddamn lake."

But the lightning— even with all it implied— was a turn of fortune: Without it, he'd have had a hell of a time keeping the shoreline in view, for the clouds were back with the change of weather and he was in a new kind of darkness, one relieved only by the flickering sky. By the time he had the barrels lashed and the skiff bailed and was back on his rear thwart with a wad of snoose stuck in his mouth, he realized that accounting for the squally seas had slowed him by half, and the lightning showed the hills above Gunflint still twenty miles before him. He ought to have been safe in the cove by now, safe in his bunk for a few hours' sleep. Instead he had two more hours of lake water swamping his boat, soaking his trousers and boots.

He spent those hours fighting sleep and swearing there had to be a better way. Hosea had it all figured out. Send a sap like him out to fetch the goods, give him a hundred dollars for his trouble, then turn around and distribute the rye for ten times the runner's share. That was five hundred dollars a week easy in Hosea's purse. And that on top of his other schemes.

"I just need my boat," Odd said to himself. Now he was using the sound of his voice to keep him company. "A bigger boat and I can fish more and deeper and make the run up to Port Arthur myself. Pocket the five hundred and to hell with Hosea Grimm." He even figured he could work with Marcus Aas and his brother, figured they'd be damn near friendly if they weren't tussling for the same scant share of Grimm's whiskey dollars.

The lightning quivered again and he could see the hills above town. He could see, from the top of the next wave, the lights of town. Twice as many now in the hour before light as there'd been in the hour of his leaving. No doubt the other herring chokers were up now, standing on the shore, taking stock of the lake. Most of them would leave their nets for another day. He would if he were standing ashore, reading the water.

But he'd been out in worse than this, he told himself. Last March, his first haul, northerly seas so sudden he'd been thrown half from his boat. He'd lost a boot in the bargain. Theo Wren's boat had come back without him that day. He'd orphaned two little boys and widowed his wife, Theo had. "Yes, sir," Odd said aloud, "that storm was worse. I'll be home in half an hour."

And he was. His watch read four forty-five behind the blurry crystal. As blurry as he himself was. He managed to navigate the skiff into the cove. But even as he coasted across the gentler sheltered waters he could still feel the swells lifting and settling him. He steered the nose of his skiff onto the boat slide and tied her quickly to the winch line and on unsteady legs hauled her out of the water.

He removed the Evinrude from the boat and set it on the grass ashore and then one at a time he rolled the whiskey barrels up and over the transom, let them roll into the cove and then floated them in knee-deep water to the very crux of the cove and the large boulders that sat there. He wrestled the barrels ashore and then rolled them behind the rocks. He'd deliver them that night. Now he sat atop one of the barrels and caught his breath. For a moment he looked at the dark silhouette of his fish house, sitting under the tall pines, his place in the world. He'd built it himself. Paid for it and built it with his dollars and his sweat. And him come from nothing.

Before he went inside he put the Evinrude back on the transom. He brought the gas can up to the fish house and set it at the foot of the steps. He walked to the boat slide and checked the knot and line holding the skiff. And last thing, he took the teakettle from under the slide, walked the hundred paces to the whiskey barrels, and cut the oakum from the top of one of them. He pried the lid from the barrel, the aroma oaky and fine. He dipped his finger into the hooch and brought it to his lips and licked his finger. That taste alone made the whole night worthwhile, he felt sure of that.