Peter Geye: The Lighthouse Road

He rose now, finally lit his cigarette, and went to the window. He knew it was time to get to work.

The cupboard was empty but for a can of coffee and two jars of soused herring, the heel of the loaf of brown bread. There was an apple on the windowsill. He thought of making coffee but remembered he'd filled the teakettle with whiskey the night before. This goddamned life of mine, he thought, taking the apple from the windowsill and wiping it on his drawers.

He ate the apple as he walked to the shore, a towel over his shoulder, a bar of soap in his hand. The apple was tart and hard and grown in a place unsuited for apples. But he ate it anyway, his face puckering with each bite. When he got to the shore he threw the apple core into the lake.

The water in the cove had warmed some with the week of hot weather, but the night before the rollicking seas had brought in more of the cold water, and when he stepped into the lake beneath the boat slide the chill felt electric. Outside the cove he could see the big waters had slowed, had almost synchronized with the dying wind. The rollers came weakly and slow now, like a herring's last few gill flaps in the bottom of his skiff.

He washed quickly and toweled off and went back into the fish house to shave, which he did with his straight blade after honing it on the strap he had tacked into the counter. There was a small mirror hanging beside the window and he watched himself as he shaved. The lines in his brow led to it like streams to a shaded pond. Only twenty-three years old and already he had a face like a map. He could have passed for a man twice his age, even with his youthful grin and fine full hair.

Before taking his hidden trail to town, he checked on the whiskey. It sat as the night before among the rocks in the cove. He'd stashed it there in the past and was fine leaving it until nightfall. If not for that census taker, he could load it onto the bed of the pickup right now. Lord knows Mayfair didn't give a damn about a few barrels of whiskey; he imbibed himself. But the rumors of feds masquerading as civil servants were rampant in the Minnesota wilds, and this fellow up from St. Paul was as fishy as a jar of roe.

How long, Hosea asked one night over cards, did it take to count two thousand folks? Much as he questioned Grimm, Odd had to admit the old man had a point. There weren't more than two thousand people in all the great county, and the census taker had been in Gunflint since March.

I need something to keep the skeeters off my neck," Odd said, standing at the counter in Grimm's Apothecary.

"It grows by the bushel on every lake shore, you can't pick some?"

"I'm no goddamned flower picker."

Grimm turned and pulled one of the glass canisters from the shelves that lined the wall behind his counter. There were a hundred such canisters, full of everything from catnip to balls of spiderwebs to lemon drops and horehounds.

"You went rowing last night?"

"A little breeze is all she had."

Hosea put a small bouquet of catnip into a paper sack and handed it to Odd. "Christ, Odd, you'd wrastle a black bear, wouldn't you?" Hosea winked.

"To hell with you."

"But you landed the juice?"

"I'll bring it around come dark. Couple of barrels here, couple more over to the Traveler's, the rest up to the Timber. I'll roll yours down to the cellar."

Grimm's awful smile came across his whiskered face. "Drop mine first, I'll join you up to the Timber."

"Sure."

Rebekah appeared from the hidden staircase behind the shelves of canisters. Despite the fact that Odd had been raised in this place, a person appearing from the narrow staircase always shocked him, especially when, as with Rebekah now, her skirts sprang fully like an umbrella as she made the last step into the apothecary.

She walked over to him and kissed him on the cheek and said, "Hello, little brother."

Odd blushed, he couldn't help it.

She looked into the wax-paper sack. "What are the flowers for?"

"I'm going up to the farm today. Skeeters are hell with all this hot."

Hosea counted twenty five-dollar bills onto the counter. "For your trouble," he said. "I'll see you at nightfall."

"Hosea's making deliveries with me tonight," Odd explained.

"Boys on the town."

"Something like that," Odd said.

"Can I come?" she asked, a wink for Odd.

Hosea stood up straight. "The Timber's no place for a woman of your standing," he said.

"A woman of my standing. Yes, well. I know all about the Shivering Timber," Rebekah said sharply. "A woman of my standing," she added, this time under her breath.

T he way up to Rune Evensen's farm was a palimpsest of old logging roads and game trails, the abandoned rail bed, the ice road they were talking about turning into a certified highway, one that went all the way up to Canada. Middle summer now, the forest's undergrowth was tall and unruly and giving Odd hell. The grabby brush even annoyed the horse he'd rented from the livery keeper. A big beautiful Percheron sired by one of the old Burnt Wood Camp haulers.

Odd urged her along, tugging on the bridle reins and saying sweet things. The horse was already in harness and excited about the afternoon ahead, even hot as it was. The skeeters and blackflies were awful, as Odd knew they'd be, and when he reached Rune's old fence he stopped and buttoned his shirt at the wrists and collar and took the catnip from his rucksack and rubbed the dried flowers all over his neck and hands and face. They continued along the fence line until they reached the gate, where Odd stamped the ferns and brush and pulled it open. The horse neighed and shook her head and stepped into the paddock. Odd slung the bridle over the horse's neck and hit her on the rump. "I'll fetch you a bucket of water. Then we'll get to work, you hear?"

The horse answered by pushing Odd with her long face and neighing again.

In the barn Odd found the wood bucket he used to water the horse and walked the fifty yards to the well pump in the middle of the paddock. It took fifteen minutes to get water, and Odd was as primed as the pump by the time he did, but the water was frigid and delicious and he soaked his head and slaked his thirst before filling the bucket for the horse. He set the bucket next to the fence, and the mare dropped her neck and drank and when she finished she took a long and heavy piss. He tied the horse to the fence and gave her a nosebag of oats and finally turned to survey the farm, the barn, the house now fifteen years abandoned, his at the age of eight. An awfully young age to be a private landowner.

When Rune Evensen died intestate — drowned in and washed down the Burnt Wood River— Hosea hired the best attorney in Duluth, who'd convinced Mayfair that Odd, as next of kin, deserved the property and chattel and that Hosea, as Odd's guardian, should hold the trust. It was one of the many piebald gestures Grimm had made on Odd's behalf after his mother died. No doubt the property established Odd. He'd mortgaged his fish house and length of shoreline against it fifteen years after Rune's death, upon Grimm's suggestion. But how much money had Grimm skimmed off Odd's holdings? And had Hosea known Odd would be beholden to the odd jobs he was employed in on Grimm's behalf? The whiskey running, the mail fraud, the chopping of half-a-dozen cords of firewood each summer, the carpentry work on the apothecary. Odd often felt he'd never be out from under Grimm. " Which is why I'm out here hunting wood now," he said to himself.

He walked into the old farmhouse. It was hard to imagine that anyone had ever lived here. Two small rooms. Two windows. Six-foot ceilings. Odd didn't know much of the history, only that Rune was his mother's uncle. He knew of the misfortune that had come to pass here, knew of the ghosts said to haunt the place. He knew it was a goddamned eerie place, no doubt about it. Knew that a farm in these climes was doomed at the outset. But he loved the place, and not only because it belonged to him alone. No, his attachment to the farm stemmed from a single sudden day eight years ago.