For all his exhaustion, Odd could not sleep their first night in Duluth. The soft yellow glow from the streetlamps below crept under the curtains, filling the room with a kind of haunted light.
So instead of sleeping he took inventory of the days left behind, of the hours of that night, and of a hereafter that was more than ever hard to see, with only that tawny light filtering up from the street. Already the luxury of that hotel room — the big bed and fine linens, the gourmet dinner, the hot bath — was showing its dim foolishness. He couldn’t help thinking, lying there, tired beyond all reason, that it was the season of mending nets, of building new fish boxes, of darning socks and patching his oilskin pants. It was the season for sleeping in past sunup, for long lunch hours at the Traveler’s Hotel. It was the season for running traplines with Danny and fishing steelhead on the shore ice. It was not the season for lying hungover in hotel beds fit for governors. He got up and walked to the window and pulled the curtain aside. The street below was empty.
He looked back at Rebekah, sound asleep on the bed. He ought to have felt at ease with her lying there, with the hundred miles between them and the life of lies they’d left behind. The truth, though, was that the distance and finality of their coming here served only to deepen the lies. Up in Gunflint at least part of him was true. His boat and fish house. His knowledge of the land and lake and Burnt Wood River. His feelings for Rebekah. The ghostly presence of his unknown mother.
He paused on this last thought — his mother — and went to his duffel bag to retrieve the pictures of her. The picture of them together. He went back to the window and angled the photographs to the light. Was it possible that he had once been that babe? That his mother, with all that love in her aspect, with all that kindness and goodness plain for any fool to see, could be speaking to him in that hour before dawn? Was he capable of listening if she was speaking to him? Could he start his life over, down here in the city, with the child curled in Rebekah’s belly?
He looked between Rebekah and the pictures of his mother and whispered to himself, “I wonder what she’ll look like holding our child.” Before he could answer the question he set the photographs back in the duffel bag. He dressed in a hurry and left the suite with his coat in his hand.
Overnight the winds had strengthened and now were barreling from the northeast. The lake came up with the wind and as he reached the canal breakwater to await the gondola, the piers were suffering heavy seas. It was snowing, too, and cold now. Odd turned his collar up.
He reached the boat club fifteen minutes later. Dawn was up but the sky with the clouds and snow was hunkered in grayness. In the boatyard he found two men standing under his boat.
“Good morning,” Odd said
“How do?” the one in a Duluth Boat Club uniform said. “This your boat?”
“She’s mine.”
“Fitz told me you’d be stopping by.”
Odd nodded, stepped back, and looked at his boat hanging from the davits. She looked a hell of a lot larger out of the water than in it.
It was the other man who spoke next. “Where’d you find her?” His voice was gruff, his eyes the color of the concrete sky.
“Find her?” Odd said. “I built her.”
The man bunched his lips up, nodded.
Odd read the man’s expression as skeptical, said, “She took her maiden voyage yesterday.”
The man nodded again and ducked under the boat so all Odd could see was his feet. He walked around the stern and came back to face Odd. “I’ve never seen a keel like that.”
“I dragged a piece of white pine from the woods, cured it, whittled it down. Now it’s backboning my boat.”
“You come from where?”
“Gunflint.”
“You got lucky with the weather.” The man looked up into the snowfall, harder now than even a few minutes before.
“No arguing that.”
The man with the eyes settled them on Odd. “How’d she go?”
“I’d take her to war,” Odd said.
“I believe it.” He stepped forward and offered his hand. “Name’s Harald Sargent.”
“Odd Eide.”
“What kind of name’s that?”
The question took Odd aback.
“I mean no offense, I’ve just never heard of anyone called Odd.”
“My mother came from Norway.”
“There’s some folks can build boats,” Sargent said.
“I’ve heard that said.” Odd turned now to the man in the boat club uniform. “I need to fetch a couple things before you cover her.”
“Give me a half hour to get her on the rack, then you can go aboard.”
“All right.”
Sargent said, “Come inside, have a cup of coffee with me while you wait.”
Again Odd said, “All right.”
They walked into a grand dining room. Thirty tables under white tablecloths, fine silverware, and napkins folded to look like swans. Sargent chose a table at random and hung his coat over the back of a chair and removed his hat. He sat down and motioned for Odd to join him. It wasn’t more than a minute before a waiter appeared before them.
“Gentlemen,” he said.
“I’d take a cup of coffee,” Sargent said.
“Two,” Odd said.
The waiter nodded and left.
“I’m a boatwright myself,” Sargent said. “Sloops and cutters, once in a while a runabout or skiff. Build a lot of boats for members here.” He spread his hands before him, suggesting the boat club.
“Is that right?”
“For more than ten years now,” Sargent said. He coupled his hands on the table in front of him, leaned in. “I’ve never seen a boat like that one out there. What’s it for?”
“I’m a fisherman,” Odd said, the half truth of it caused his stomach to drop.
“A fisherman from Gunflint wintering up in Duluth?”
“My wife and I, we’re honeymooning.” He felt his voice falter.
“I might have chose Key Largo,” Sargent said.
“I never even heard of Key Largo.”
“I suppose not.”
The waiter brought a tray with two cups of coffee. He set one before each of the men and then set a bowl of sugar cubes and a creamer between them.
Sargent said to Odd, “You want a Danish? Some eggs?”
“I’m fine with the coffee.”
Sargent turned to the waiter. “How about a couple of Danishes?”
Again the waiter nodded and left. Sargent doctored his coffee with the cream and sugar. He took a cigarette from his shirt pocket, offered the pack to Odd, who took one. Sargent struck a match on his boot sole and lit his cigarette and offered the match to Odd. They both took long drags and sat back in their chairs.
“Mostly it’s yachtsmen and rowers belong to this club. You’re paying ten dollars a month for what would cost ten dollars for the whole winter upriver.”
Odd looked through the cigarette smoke at Sargent, whose eyes were even more forbidding inside the boat club.
“It was the first place I saw entering the harbor last night.”
“I see,” Sargent said. He took another long drag from his cigarette. “Where are you and the missus staying?”
“The Spalding Hotel.”
“Nice place.”
“Awfully so,” Odd said.
They sat in silence until the waiter brought the pastries. Sargent took an enormous bite, took a long drink of his steaming coffee.
“What kind of motor’s running that boat of yours?”
“A Buda. Company out of Illinois.”
“Six-stroke?”
“Four. She don’t speed along, but usually the fish are waiting for me in the nets.”
Sargent smiled. “Most of the fishermen I know between here and the Soo fish in skiffs. What you got is more like a lobsterman’s boat.”
Odd took a final drag from the cigarette and stubbed it out. He leaned back in his chair and looked at Sargent. He was feeling defensive, as though Sargent suspected him of something. “I’ve been a herring choker almost as long as you been building boats. Spent enough time soaking wet to want a little dryness. So I built a bigger boat with a cockpit. Here I am.”
Harald Sargent only nodded, took another bite of his Danish.
Now Odd shifted in his seat, leaned forward instead of back. “I’m not sure I understand you, Mister Sargent. I’ve got the feeling there’s something you’re wanting to say.”
“You should come take a look at my shop.”
“I’m not really in the market for a new boat.”
Odd felt pierced by the boatwright’s gaze, by those eyes as heavy as granite seeing right through him. In a way it was a relief. Sargent stubbed out his own cigarette and finished his Danish. “Son, you’re spending money faster than you could throw it into the lake. On a fisherman’s wages — if fisherman is what you are — you’re going to need a job. I make no judgments. I don’t even want to know what you’ve left behind or where you think you’re heading. But if you honestly built that boat, then I’m in some sort of company. I got a crew of seven and I need eight. Even if it’s only for a few months, through the winter, I could use the help. I’ve got two dozen boats to deliver by springtime.
“Now"—he leaned forward again, knocked the tabletop with his big knuckles—"you steal one single screwdriver, one drop of paint thinner, I’ll throw you right out the back door.” His look softened. “But if you’re ready to live an honest life, making an honest buck, and if you can be up this early every day, then come see me.” Sargent reached into his coat and withdrew his wallet and from a pocket in his wallet took a business card. He handed it to Odd. “We’re the last stop on the Oneota-Superior line, on the west end, out at the mouth of the St. Louis River.”
Odd looked at the business card. He wanted to say thanks. Instead he flicked the card against his finger, said, “The coffee is on me, Mister Sargent.”
Harald Sargent stood up. He took his coat from the back of his chair and pulled it on. “Are you familiar with the good book, Mister Eide?”
“We’ve got believers down the shore.”
“Are you one of them?”
“There’s plenty I believe in.”
“But plenty you don’t?”
Odd shrugged.
“Because I’ve seen that boat of yours, and because I can tell you’re a decent fellow, I forgive your mother for not showing you the way of the Lord. But the words of scripture are succor in the worst of times, and I’ll leave you with this wisdom from King Solomon.” Sargent raised three fingers. “There be three things which are too wonderful for me, yea"—now he raised a fourth finger—"four which I know not: the way of an eagle in the air; the way of a serpent upon a rock; the way of a ship in the midst of the sea; and the way of a man with a maid.” He pulled his fingers into a fist. “You puzzle over that, you think about my offer, and then come see me. I’m there every day but the Sabbath. I thank you for the coffee.”
Odd wanted to say something, anything, but Sargent’s words and his look steadier than ever made him dumb. Instead of speaking he nodded, knowing certainly, as he watched Sargent walk away, that he would find the shop the next morning.
Odd was still sitting there when the boatyard custodian came into the dining room. He told Odd that his boat was on the rack and that he could now retrieve whatever it was he needed. Odd thanked him and laid some coins on the tabletop and followed the custodian out into the boatyard. There was a ladder leaning against his boat and Odd climbed it and went to the thwart before the motor box. He lifted the seat and removed the lid from the false floor inside and from within that secret compartment he removed a small metal box that held within it a roll of cash money and the diamond ring he’d bought off old man Veilleux when his ancient wife had passed in July of that year.
He climbed down off the boat and watched as a crew of three boatyard custodians covered his boat with a canvas tarp that flapped in the stiff breeze until thirty or more cords of rope held it tight. Then he walked back toward the gondola, where he waited to cross the canal again. By the time he returned to the Spalding Hotel there was two or three inches of snow on the ground and no sign of it lightening.