Peter Geye - The Lighthouse Road

T he Sault passed through the locks onto Lake Superior in the middle of the night. It rode out of Whitefish Bay, the moon on the horizon its lodestar. It was cold and even as the boat sailed ahead, a breeze came up the stern, hitting Thea's face and bringing tears to her eyes. The Sault docked in Marquette at midday. For half an hour stevedores unloaded and loaded cargo, a dozen passengers debarked, another dozen boarded. In the dark of night they docked again, this time in Ashland. The same exchange of passengers and goods. Another half hour spent in harbor.

The following morning Thea stood on the stern deck again. Again she watched the sunrise behind them. Still the stiff breeze trailing. It was fully day when the Sault landed at the Chicago, Soo & Duluth Line docks in Duluth harbor. She thought the fledgling city rising before the tall hills looked something like Tromsø. Even the air had an arctic quality, chill and damp.

The offices of the North Shore Ferry Service were located right on the harbor, behind the livery and the enormous Board of Trade building. Thea entered and waited while a man behind a barred window sold billets to two families in line ahead of her. When finally it was her turn, she approached the window. She had clutched in her hands the phrasebook she'd been given for just such purposes.

In a halting whisper she said, "Gunflint, Minnesota. Please."

" Speak up," the man said.

Thea collected herself and repeated her request.

" Opportunity sails tomorrow at seven a.m. Passage is two dollars twenty cents." He spoke in a loud voice, avoiding her pleading eyes. "Will you take a ticket? There are others awaiting my services here." He gestured to the queue behind her.

Thea reached for her purse, pulled some crumpled dollar bills from it, and put them on the tray under the bars. The ticket vendor looked at her finally, exhausted. He took a deep breath.

He shifted his visor and said, "Do you understand the boat leaves tomorrow?"

She answered with an unconvincing nod.

He took another deep breath and shifted his visor still again. "Wait a moment." He stepped into an office behind him and returned in a moment with his own phrasebook. He made his best effort to put the same question to her in Norwegian.

In English she said, "Yes. Tomorrow."

He nodded and set about preparing her boarding card. He made change for her payment.

Thea, emboldened by the exchange, added, "I am new in America."

Without looking up the ticket vendor said, "I'd never have guessed."

S he walked up Lake Street past Superior Street, dodging the mule-drawn streetcars, slipping on the rain-slicked cobbles. Farther up the hill, on the corner of Lake and First, she paid a quarter for a room in a boardinghouse, another dime for a hot bath. It was her first proper bath since leaving Hammerfest and as she soaked in the tub she was overcome with fatigue. So rather than going out for a hot meal, she finished her bath and dressed in her freshest clothes and, by the light of a window, read her Bible. She read it with a fervency she'd not felt in ages. Starting with First Corinthians. She read for a long time. Even as her eyes felt heavy and the softness of her rented bed called, she read.

When finally the evening fell and the light from the window waned, she laid herself down and slept, the good book clenched to her heart, for more than twelve hours. When she woke before dawn she felt a moment of panic before she realized where she was. She quickly gathered her belongings, washed her face, pulled her hair back, and donned her bonnet. By six a.m. she was back on Lake Avenue, headed for the docks.

The Opportunity was a two-masted schooner and her crew was drunk and quarrelsome even as the passengers boarded. The rigging and masts were plagued by a colony of gulls and the singing of the lines in the wind was a song that brought Thea back to the harbor in Hammerfest. It reminded her of why she was making this journey. She stood on deck, her bags between her feet, as the Opportunity was tugged through the canal and out onto the lake. The sails were raised and they filled and she felt the old pull of a boat borne by the wind.

The boat moved into a quartering breeze, its progress slow, the roll of the water sharp. The spray rose above the decking, met her waiting face. Four hours later the crew was already lowering the sails. The weather the wind had brought in turned cold and foggy, the conditions worsening the crew's already sour mood. They weighed anchor and dropped a tender and announced Two Harbors. For an hour she stood on deck and watched as the tender made trips in and out of the fogged harbor. Ten travelers debarked, none boarded.

The rest of the day was slow moving. At sunset they anchored outside Otter Bay. All afternoon Thea had had the strange sensation of going back in time. Whether it was the way the boat moved under sail, the sharpness of the cold wind, or the prehistoric wilderness they were traveling past she could not have said.

At midnight they stood at anchor outside the settlement at Misquah. The boat's captain told Thea and the three remaining passengers that they would have to wait until morning to sail to Gunflint, so Thea went belowdecks and found a bench to rest on, using her carpetbag as a pillow.

The ship heaved all night, even as the wind died and the rain began. Sleep was impossible, and not only because of the ship's rolling. She felt, after this long month of travel and tribulation, the relief of being so near her destination. She felt the excitement that should have been accompanying her all along.

In the morning they woke to more heavy fog. The lake was now coming in slow undulations. The lines rang up on the masts, the gulls swarmed in the brume, and the crew was hungover and at odds over whether to weigh anchor or wait for the sun, which showed promise in the east, to come burn off the fog.

They waited for two hours, the fog more blown away than burned, and raised sails under a southwesterly breeze that brought as much warmth as it did smooth sailing. They traveled the last thirty miles of shoreline in little more than three hours. As they turned toward shore outside Gunflint Thea saw the town spread sparsely along the harbor: the fish houses, the hotel and apothecary, the church steeple up the hill. From the quarter mile offshore, with the exception of the trees, it looked just like Hammerfest, and as her heart raced it also sank. The boats rowing out to meet them looked exactly like her papa's fishing skiff, the water was as hard and as cold as the North Sea. The wind, even as it brought a warmer day, had every quality of bitterness that the air back home had. Had she really traveled so far to end up where she'd started?

Rather than dropping anchor again, the crew reefed the sails and turned for harbor. It seemed a difficult maneuver, as the ship was large and the harbor entry narrow, but the crew was practiced and sidled her right alongside the Lighthouse Road. Two of the deckhands jumped ashore with lines and tied her off on the cleats.

On the Lighthouse Road several townsfolk had gathered. Thea, standing behind the mizzen shroud, her heart aflutter, looked from face to face for the welcoming smiles of her aunt and uncle. She panned the crowd twice, each time coming away empty. She sat on a crate on deck, disbelieving.

"Last stop," one of the crew said. "Gunflint, Minnesota."

Thea looked at him. He had a wind-worn face, his hair was a tousled mess, his coat was open and sagging on his large shoulders.

"Miss," he said, as he stepped nearer, "all passengers must get off the boat now."