Every morning that December Odd woke in the darkness and padded down the hallway of the brownstone they’d rented on East Sixteenth Street. He’d stand over the sink in the bathroom and shave around a lit cigarette dangling from his lips, the wonder of hot running water and the steam it aroused a minor miracle each morning after all those years of hauling buckets of icy water up to the fish house from the lake.
He’d go quietly down the hall from the bathroom to the kitchen and start a pot of water on the stove and while he waited for it to boil he’d patch his lunch together: a cheese sandwich and garlic pickle wrapped in wax paper, a tin of sardines. He’d pack it in his lunch pail and brew the coffee and pour himself a single cup to drink with his oatmeal and pour the rest in his thermos. He did all this in utter silence, mindful of Rebekah still sound asleep. When he finished his breakfast he went back to their bedroom and feathered the hair off Rebekah’s forehead and kissed her, hoping the touch of his lips might impart some contentedness. Might sweeten her dreams.
His morning ritual, conducted in that silence and dim light, made each day seem holy. And each day when he stepped from their home he did so feeling devout. Though Harald Sargent had done his share of proselytizing, he’d failed to convert Odd, who had decided early in that season and in the face of Sargent’s sermons that he’d take his heaven on earth. And he’d found it in his and Rebekah’s domesticity, in their quiet and honest life together. He’d never felt so at peace, not even during his best moments in the skiff.
After he closed the door quietly behind him he’d walk the four downhill blocks to wait for the streetcar on Superior Street. Already in the days before Christmas more than a foot of snow had softened the yards and in those hours before dawn the whiteness cast a ghostly hue on the morning.
When the streetcar arrived — the first of the morning — he’d jump on and drop his token in the fare box and nod hello to the motorman. He’d walk to the smoking compartment on the back of the streetcar and roll a cigarette and while he listened to the plangent clack of the wheels, to the shrieking brakes, he’d watch the snow come up like a wake behind them. Given those early hours he was often the only passenger. But even still — with the sleeping city all around him and Rebekah and the babe in her belly behind him — he felt the world was waiting to happen.
By the time he reached Sixth or Seventh Street the same streetlights that had, for those first few nights in Duluth, shone up into the hotel room at the Spalding Hotel now shone in his eyes, the brooding buildings — rising like a river gorge on either side of the trolley — shadowy behind the light. He might have been in Russia for how foreign it was.
His thoughts inevitably turned to the child, to those days ahead when he’d have a chance to redress his mother’s stolen maternity. Whether here or in Gunflint, whether as a boat builder or fisherman or any other thing, Odd would teach the child, would raise him, would love him. This he vowed solemnly each morning on the trolley. He was desperate for the time to come.
As sweet as the promise of those days was, there remained Rebekah’s melancholy. There were evenings when, upon Odd’s return from his workday, she seemed happy enough. She’d have dinner ready and her hair washed. He might find her sitting on the davenport in the small sitting room, her needlepoint on her lap, ready with a faint smile to meet him. But more often he found her sitting at the kitchen table. Sometimes with a glass of half-drunk whiskey soaking up the amber glow from the electric light. Those nights she was distant and unaffectionate. And Odd did not know what to do.
By the time the streetcar passed the Spalding Hotel and halted at the Union Station stop, he’d exhausted himself with worry and joy. It was at that stop that his morning solitude came to an end, where the stevedores and railway workers and other harbor rats jumped the streetcar and found seats and unfolded their newspapers. In the now crowded trolley he watched the shipyards and loading docks pass. The grandeur of the east end, of the downtown buildings and lights, gave over to the drab harbor on the south side of the tracks and to the shabby houses on the north side of the line.
The terminus of the Oneota-Superior line came at Raleigh and East Seventieth streets. He’d step out the rear door and onto the cobblestones and turn his collar up against the wind off the river. There was a doughnut shop where he paid a nickel for a fritter the size of his hand, and he’d eat that on the way to Sargent’s, which was on the water just past the Zenith Furnace Company. He punched in at six o’clock each morning. He was never once late.
Sargent was paying Odd fifteen dollars a week to pinch oakum into the seams of small boats, a job that left an indelible stink and stickiness on his fingers but one he took seriously and performed with a kind of manic attention. Aside from the sealing work Odd also bent boards, did some finishing, and found himself learning things he wished he’d known when he’d built his own boat.
Sargent had customers all across the Great Lakes, with backorders enough to fill a year of work. He could have added another shift, in fact, but preferred to oversee the building of every boat himself. Each morning he met with his crew before manning the storefront chandlery and setting to work on his accounts. Even still, he passed through the workroom every hour, inspecting and praising the work being done.
They gathered around a table in the back of the shop at noon, where Sargent said a blessing before they all ate in silence. Most of the crew at the boatwright’s had been eight or ten years in Sargent’s employ. They were a hardworking and earnest bunch of men, not given to much conversation. After lunch, however, as they stepped outside for a smoke, Sargent would pass among them, asking after their families in a hushed voice that belied his fierce eyes. But for Odd they were all family men and churchgoers. Between the two subjects and their common vocation they had fodder enough to chat for the length of time it took to smoke their cigarettes.
On Christmas Eve, after a busy week, when half the crew had taken the day off, Sargent found Odd after lunch. Sargent lit his pipe, offered Odd the match.
“How will you and Missus Eide be spending the holiday, Odd?”
Odd, remembering those lonely Christmases at Grimm’s, said, “I suppose Rebekah will cook up a feast. After dinner we’ll sip some of that apple wine you gave us and sing a few carols. How about yourself?”
Sargent turned his eyes into the light snowfall, a smile came to his face. “Ah! The boys will be on the train this evening. No doubt Mother’s got a feast of her own planned.” Now he looked at Odd. “Of course we’ll go to church. Wake to presents under the tree. Mother still spoils those boys rotten.”
“Where are your boys coming from?”
“They’re in college down in Minneapolis. Michael’s a senior, Jonathon a sophomore.”
Odd nodded, took a drag on his cigarette. Sargent looked south, his eyes faraway, as though he might see his boys boarding the train in Minneapolis.
“Sounds like a swell time,” Odd said.
“It’s my favorite time of the year,” Sargent confirmed.
They stood there smoking.
For all the thought Odd had given his own child, he’d not once imagined a Christmas morning with him. Perhaps it was because Christmas had always been the time of year when the pity from the townswomen was most tender and their dotting on their own children made him ache with envy. He felt the same tenderness from Sargent, and, more enchanted with him than ever, Odd said, “I reckon I’ll be spoiling my own child this time next year.”
Sargent’s head swiveled, his smile broadened. “Congratulations, my friend.”
“Thank you, Mister Sargent.”
“Mother will be so happy to hear your news.”
Odd returned Sargent’s smile. What he saw in that instant and knew with certainty was that here was an empathetic man, a selfless man. He was, Odd realized, a man to model his life after.
“Are you nervous, son?”
“I think Rebekah’s a bit nervous, but I’m pleased as punch.”
“Well, what better gift could she give you?”
“I know it.”
Sargent emptied his pipe bowl and looked again into the falling
snow. He took a deep breath, put his hand on Odd’s shoulder. “Not that you asked, but let me give you a piece of advice, Odd. Someday your child will be full of wants. What they’ll want more than anything, whether they know it or not, is for you to cherish them.” He squeezed Odd’s shoulder now. “I doubt you’ll have much trouble with that.” He took his hand from Odd’s shoulder, reached into his coat pocket, and removed a gift wrapped in Christmas paper. “This is from Mother and me. For you. And Rebekah. And your child now, I suppose. Merry Christmas, Odd.”
Odd held the gift. “Thank you. Thanks for everything.” He paused, looked between the gift in his hand and Harald Sargent.
“What is it?” Sargent said.
“I’ve been wondering, why were you at the boat club that first morning? I can’t quite parse it out.”
“Well, I’ve much business at the boat club.”
“At six o’clock in the morning? On a Sunday?”
“You ask as though you’re suspicious of me.”
“I ain’t suspicious, just curious.”
Sargent smiled. “The truth is, I was there to offer you this job. The boatyard custodian is a neighbor of mine. We met in the alleyway on Saturday night, putting the trash out. He told me about your boat, said I ought to see it. So I came to see it, and here we are.”
“Why’d he say that?”
“You’re not aware of what you’ve accomplished, are you? You don’t see the beauty in that vessel you built.”
“I see a cockpit. A little more room for fish boxes. A heavier keel in big water.”
“A heavier keel. Precisely.”
“You’re speaking in riddles, Mister Sargent.”
“There’s no riddle at all, Odd. You built something worth seeing.
I thought I’d take a look. The rest of it, the fact that we’ve become friends, that you’ve ended up here —” he knocked on the wooden wall of his shop —"that’s just the Lord working in strange ways.”
“Strange ways indeed,” Odd said.
“I’m just glad it worked out, son. Now, in honor of the birth of our Lord Jesus Christ, take the rest of the day off. I’m closing the shop early today.” Sargent took a step toward the shop door but stopped. He turned back to Odd. “And tell Rebekah I send my congratulations, will you?”
“I will. Thanks.”
What Odd found when he returned to their brownstone could have felled him. There was Rebekah, sitting on the davenport stringing popcorn, a short and misshapen Christmas tree standing in the window. He stood in the doorway, smiling, dumb, holding the packages he’d stopped to buy on the way home like some kind of working-class Saint Nick.
After a moment Rebekah stood and crossed the small apartment. “Hello. You’re home early.”
“Sargent closed shop for Christmas. What’s this?” Odd said, nodding his head at the Christmas tree.
“Mister Johnson walked down to the lot with me and carried it home. He helped me set it up. I bought the bulbs at the hardware store on the corner. Isn’t it nice?”
Odd stepped in, closed the door behind him. He kicked off his boots and walked across the parlor. He put the packages under the tree and turned and crossed the apartment again. He took Rebekah in his arms and held her for a long time.
When finally he let her go he said, “It’s perfect. And what’s that smell?” He turned his nose to the small kitchen on the other side of the flat.
Rebekah grabbed his arm and pulled him toward the tree. “That’s a surprise. Here —” she forced him to sit on the davenport—"help me with these popcorn strings.”
Odd picked up a threaded needle and started stringing the popcorn. He’d never had the sensation of being awake in a dream but he did now. He said as much.
Rebekah sighed and said, “I’ve been difficult.”
“Well, now.”
“One minute I’m happy, the next I’m—” She turned away, her eyes widened and then closed. She shook her head and looked back at Odd. “I’m terrified of the baby. Even more terrified that this is no life I want, much as I do want you. I feel like a different person every day of the week.” She stopped talking as suddenly as she’d started, picked the strand of popcorn back up and began stringing it with a new kind of haste.
Odd did not know what to say, or at least had no words to say what he wanted.
More calmly, Rebekah continued, “It’s Christmas. I at least wanted to make a nice go of it. I thought a tree would make me happy.”
“Has it made you happy?”
“Let’s finish with the popcorn.”
So they finished their strings and hung them and stood in the end of the daylight looking at the scrawny tree. Odd was thinking it the most wonderful tree, greater than any of the two-hundred-foot white pines left in the forest. But he didn’t say anything, only stood there on tenterhooks, hoping Rebekah saw what he did.
“It needs candles,” she said, her voice suggesting nothing.
“It looks awfully good to me.”
She squeezed his hand.
“It’s early for dinner, but if you’re hungry, it’s ready.”
“The smell,” Odd said.
Now a very pleased look came over Rebekah’s face. She almost blushed.
“Rabbit stew!”
The kitchen table was so small the rims of their bowls touched. The table and two chairs, a davenport, a Murphy bed and armoire in the bedroom, these were the only furnishings in the apartment.
Their bowls were steaming. Parsnips and potatoes, mushrooms, onions and garlic, tender chunks of rabbit, barley malt, all of it held together with buttery roux. It was their secret, this feast, harkening back to their first time up at Rune Evensen’s farm.
As they sat there under the cheap chandelier, he thought her face was as changeable and temperamental as a stormy sky lowering over Lake Superior. And as distant. So except to thank her for the stew, Odd had not uttered a word since they’d sat down. He reckoned even the possibility of her contentment was better than the moods likely possessing her. She stirred her bowl of stew absently, once or twice dipping a crust of bread into it and raising the bread to her lips before setting it back on the edge of the bowl uneaten.
When Odd finished the first bowl Rebekah rose automatically and fetched the Dutch oven from the stovetop. She ladled him another helping. She also topped off his mug of apple wine.
“It’s delicious, Rebekah. A real treat.” He said this without lifting his head to look at her.
“Have more.”
He finished the second bowl and wiped it out with a piece of bread and ate the bread. He sat back with his apple wine and looked at her.
“Want your presents?” he said. “I know it ain’t Christmas morning yet, but I doubt Saint Nick will mind.”
He got up and stood before her, his hand outstretched as though he were asking her for a waltz. They walked to the davenport this way. Outside, the snow had started again. It was almost dark so he turned on the electric lamp. Odd took the gifts from under the tree. He put them next to her on the davenport and sat before her on the floor.
“I didn’t get you anything,” she said.
“As if I could want more.”
She reached down and ran her hand through his hair.
“Go on, now. Open ’em up.”
She took the smallest gift from the top of the stack and opened it. She smiled when she saw the chocolates and set them aside directly.
Next she opened a hatbox and pulled a cloche with pink ribbon from the tissue. She put it immediately onto her head, cocked it just so, and looked down at Odd flirtatiously.
“Looks real nice, Rebekah.”
“It’s very smart,” she said.
“There’s a whole department store full of them just down the road. Got about every color in the rainbow.”
She removed the hat, held it before her, inspecting the soft felt and silk ribbon.
Odd sat up, took the hat from her, and put it on her head again. “There’s one more. Go on.”
She took the big box on her lap. “I feel bad I didn’t get you anything.”
“I told you I got all I want. Now, open that last one.”
She tore the big box open and pulled a dress from the tissue. It fell before her, catching the lamplight. “Oh, my!” she said. She dropped to her knees and wrapped her arms around him. “It’s so pretty!” She stood up as quickly as she’d knelt and held the dress before her again.
“Go put it on,” Odd said.
Her face was bright as she hurried to their bedroom.
Odd climbed up onto the davenport, took a cigarette from his shirt pocket and lit it, and laid his head back while he smoked. God almighty, he thought, let her be happy tonight. He closed his eyes tight and pinched the bridge of his nose. After a couple of minutes he shouted, “You come on out here when you get that dress on, let me see how it looks.”
A moment later she reappeared wearing the dress. “Let’s see.” He took her hands as he stood, shifted her to the left and to the right, looking her up and down. “I ain’t never seen something so pretty before. My goodness.” He reached behind him, took the cloche up, and put it on her head. “There now,” he said. “My goodness,” he repeated.
She seemed suddenly bashful, running her hands along the beaded chiffon, adjusting the shoulder straps and the hat, her eyes cast down, standing there in her bare feet.
“You like it?”
“A whole bunch,” she said, smoothing the belly of the dress.
“It’s the right size?”
She took a deep breath, stepped back. There were tears in her eyes.
“Hey, now. What are you crying for?”
She sat down, felt the dress tighten around her waist. “You’re such a sweet boy.”
He sat down beside her. “I got to tell you, Rebekah, you’re getting harder and harder to understand. One minute you’re calling me baby, the next you’re calling me a boy. You’re cooking up our rabbit stew, then you’re sitting here crying. Do you not like the dress?”
She took another deep breath. “It won’t be a month and the dress will be too small.”
“Well, let’s get a different size,” he said, oblivious.
“It’s the right size, Odd. It’ll be too small because of the baby.”
“That’s a good reason to outgrow a dress.” But he knew she was lost for the night. This was how it went: Once she settled on the pregnancy — on her fear of it, on how it would change her — she drifted off into a world of sad thoughts where he wasn’t welcome. “That Glass Block store is full of a hundred dresses. We’ll go find some good ones.”
The apologetic smile she gave him was sincere but unmistakable. He had to look away.
Odd sat there for a long time, staring at his hands folded on his lap, thinking it was easier to read the lake than this woman. For the first time since they’d been in Duluth he felt angry with her. His reason and sympathies were being devoured by her moodiness. For all the thought he’d given it — and he was thinking of it again now — he didn’t see how being here, with him, with all that was in store for them, could be worse than being in Gunflint. He got up. He wanted a drink, started for the kitchen and his stash, but stopped at the sound of her voice.
“I love you,” she said. “I’ve loved you every way a girl can love a boy. Every way a woman can love a man.”
He didn’t stop walking but went into the bedroom instead of the kitchen. He took the lockbox from the bottom drawer of the armoire and the key from his pocket and unlocked the box. He moved the wads of cash aside and took the small velvet bag in his hand. He put the money back in the box and stowed it again.
He returned to the parlor. Rebekah hadn’t moved. She sat on the davenport with her feet up beneath her, the cloche still on her head.
Odd knelt, took from the velvet bag the diamond ring he’d bought from the widower Veilleux, and held it before him. “I want you to marry me,” he said, his voice cracking as though he were twelve years old. “I want you to be my wife and be happy with me. We can be happy.”
“No,” she said, as though he had proposed three hours ago and she’d had all that time to consider.
He didn’t move.
She stood up, took the hat from her head, and dropped it to the floor. She reached behind her and unbuttoned the dress and let it fall and pool around her ankles. She reached behind her back and unlaced her corset, she slid her hands beneath the waist of her panties and slid her panties from her hips. They too fell in the mess of clothes on the floor.
“No,” she said again. “I don’t want to get married. I can’t be happy and you can’t be happy with me.”
Odd was stunned, both by her nakedness and what she was saying.
She lay back on the davenport. “Stand up,” she said. “Put that ring away.”
As though Odd were hypnotized, he did as she said.
“Now, come here,” she said.
When Odd stepped to her, she reached up and unbuttoned his trousers. She tugged them down and lay back again on the davenport.
“Come to me,” she said.
She left him alone in the parlor when they were finished.
He lay there for a long time before he thought to get up and pour himself that drink he’d first craved an hour earlier. On the way back to the sitting room he stopped and found a new pack of cigarettes in his coat pocket. He also found Sargent’s gift. He took both to the window and lit a cigarette and took a sip of his whiskey. He looked at the pack age. He looked at Rebekah’s dress and hat and undergarments still piled on the floor.
He felt aged, like ten years had passed since he’d got home from work, like in all that time the world had changed without his knowing. He drank and smoked and looked out on the Christmas Eve. There was the snow.
He looked over his shoulder, thought of her sleeping — how could she sleep?—back on their bed.
Almost as though he were surprised, he felt Sargent’s gift in his hand. And because he could think of nothing else to do, he tore off the paper. It was a Bible. There was a note, too, written in Sargent’s impeccable script: turn to luke. bless you. h. sargent
Odd opened the book and scanned the names — he might have been reading roll for the old men in Gunflint: Joshua, Samuel, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Daniel, Hosea — until he found Luke and turned to the corresponding page. At first he was put off by the high style of the King James version. It reminded him of those Greek poets he’d been made to read in school what seemed like a hundred years ago. But as he settled into it he found himself in a kind of communion with the gospel.
And so he read the story of the life of Christ. He read for hours, until the first light of Christmas morning was showing on the edge of the dark sky. When finally he put the book down and laid his head back, he realized that his own sorrow and suffering were nothing next to the world’s. If Rebekah would renounce him, if she would renounce her child, he would be father enough when the time came to raise his baby.
He set the Bible on the floor, stood up and gathered Rebekah’s new dress and undergarments from the floor, folded them neatly, and put everything in the department-store box.