Peter Geye: The Lighthouse Road

Convinced he'd found his keel, he plotted his day's work. In his mind he trimmed the boughs and cut it to length and set the skidding tongs and rapped the horse on the ass. He turned to look at the trail heading back down the hill, judged the bend against the length of white pine in his mind, hauled it down the ghost of the ice road and meandered through the trails to his fish house, caught only a couple of times. He wondered how long it would take to bleed the pitch.

And then he saw himself with the whipsaw and planes, the keel materializing in the molds he'd fashion, he saw a whole winter of building the boat up from the keel, saw the beautiful sheer, the transom with her name hand-carved and lacquered and riding across the lake, with only the memories of them watching from the breakwater in Gunflint, waving themselves good-bye.

"You willing to wait a few hours while I cut, old girl? Get up in the shade," he told the horse.

Then he put the ax over his shoulder and descended the hill to the heap of blown-over trees.

I t was past suppertime by the time he'd finished, the task unfolded just as he'd imagined. The white pine ran the length of the fish house now, outside against the western wall so that it might take the afternoon sun. The horse had been returned to the livery; a bowl of venison stew had for dinner at the saloon in the Traveler's Hotel; and now Odd sat on the stoop outside the fish house with a teakettle of whiskey and lake water to rout his thirst.

He sat there all of twilight, watching the gloaming fall, realizing in the deepest part of himself— the least part of himself— that he was watching something holy, this turn of day to night. He finished his drink and packed and puffed his pipe. When he finished smoking he tapped the ash out and got to it.

He covered the barrels in the bed of the pickup with a canvas tarp and covered the tarp with stacks of empty fish boxes. The trail up from the fish house was rutted and overhung with tamaracks, but he managed to get onto the gravel road and into town.

The truck was Hosea's, but Hosea didn't often drive. Aside from the six or eight streets in town and the gravel trail that led three miles up the hill to the Shivering Timber, the roads in and out of Gunflint were mere sleigh roads, fit for dog teams or horse-drawn wagons but not rubber-wheeled flatbeds. Grimm's latest initiative, brought before county commissioners and the state legislature, was to transform the North Shore Trail into a highway built from Two Harbors clear to the Canadian border, insisting that people would come in droves given the chance. He had the big lodges in Misquah and Portage to bolster his argument on the grand scale, and the myriad hunting camps scattered all over the forest on the smaller scale. The ferries that ran all summer from Duluth, the pleasure craft that docked in Gunflint harbor from June through September, the anglers who were willing to hike from Gunflint up to any of a hundred lakes in the bush, all of this had convinced Hosea that given the highway, the area would become a tourist draw.

Odd had already delivered a pair of whiskey barrels at the Traveler's Hotel and now parked the pickup behind the apothecary. He opened the cellar doors. Walked down the stone steps and found the lantern hanging in its spot and lit it and checked there was room in the false floor for the whiskey. Then he went back to the truck and from beneath the tarp removed two more barrels and walked them one at a time down the stone steps and into their hiding spot. He extinguished the lantern and replaced it on the hook. Before he fetched Hosea, Odd packed another pipe and smoked it while he rearranged the tarp and fish boxes.

Grimm stepped out the back door. "There's our boy!" he said.

" Hooch is in the floor."

"Very good."

"Already dropped it at the Traveler's, too."

"Then we're up to the Timber."

"I guess you're all dressed up," Odd said. Hosea wore a seersucker suit with periwinkle-blue pinstripes. He wore white patent-leather brogues and a sharp white hat. His tie was mint green and pinched under his gaunt chin in a collar the color of the pinstripes. "You think those girls'll like you better if you dress like a clown?"

"A clown, you say?"

"Some damn thing."

"Odd, lad, the reason you spend all your time whittling and run

ning whiskey is because you don't take care in your appearance. You've been wearing the same shirt all week. And it's been hot. Maybe if you bathed and put on a hat and a pair of proper trousers, you could get one of the little ladies in town to whittle for you." He winked.

"The little ladies," Odd said, his secret blowing through him like a cool breeze. " Guess I'll worry about that, and about wearing a proper pair of trousers."

"You're my charge is all. I promised your mother I'd raise you right."

Odd stepped to the truck and opened the door. "I'm a grown man. I'll dress how I please."

"Suit yourself," Hosea said, joining him in the truck. He withdrew a pocket flask and unscrewed the cap and sucked a long drink. He offered it to Odd, who took a draft himself.

"Now," Hosea said, "let's get to the strumpets."

T he Shivering Timber was an unabashed brothel and whiskey parlor that had evaded the reach of the pious Gunflinters and constables by catering to their weird and secret proclivities. It housed a dozen or so prostitutes and was guarded by two woodsmen brothers from Wisconsin on Grimm's payroll. They were mild-mannered behemoths who abstained from the whiskey and the whores and buried their considerable fortune in coffee cans and burlap all over their ten-acre parcel.

Odd had never visited for any purpose other than this evening's errand, but Hosea had a forty percent stake in the place. He also kept the girls in calomel and morphine, gave them abortions, and pulled their rotten teeth. And he supplied the whiskey. So he had a king's reign.

There were three girls sitting under the gaslights on the porch as Odd and Hosea carried a barrel around back. They smoked and drank from glass lowballs and when Hosea stopped to greet them on the way back for another barrel they rose and kissed him on his freshly shaven cheek from over the railing.

By the time the last barrel was in place Hosea was in the room behind the bar, standing at the glass of the one-way mirror, looking back past the bar to the dimly lit lounge and taking inventory of the whores reclining on divans or standing at the bar with their long cigarette holders and watered-whiskey cocktails. There were only a handful of other men in the lounge, men unknown to Hosea, likely sportsmen up from the Twin Ports or even come through the Soo. A long way from home in any case, from their wives and children, and playing at being their younger, wilder selves.

"You want a plate of roast venison?" one of the brothers asked Grimm.

"Thanks, no, but I'll have a whiskey, up." And then to Odd, "Nothing strikes your fancy, lad?"

"I ain't dressed for it, doubt they'd even take a gander."

"Don't patronize me, Odd. I'm offering is all. My treat."

"I think not." Rebekah on his mind, her stories, their secret stories, took on a little extra heft in the Shivering Timber.

Larue returned with a whiskey in one hand and his ledger in the other. He and Grimm stood at the glass and went over accounts.

"We'll need extra the next couple of months. Busy summer. Six barrels next week?"

Hosea looked over his shoulder at Odd, who nodded. "Six barrels it is."

"What do you fellas know about this census taker?"

Hosea said, "He stinks. Rotten. But he's having a fine time up here in the wilderness. I doubt he wants his good summer to end. I'll see that it doesn't."