The first time Odd saw Rebekah with the child, he read the end of their story in the look on her face. Her gaze rested on the boy with the same vacant ambivalence she used to train on butchered capons before roasting them. The child lay in her arms, stunned, staring through the slits of his own eyes upon a mother he would never know.
Odd had been at work, finished with lunch and back at the steam box bending planks for the lapstrake hull he was working on. During his time at the boatwright his responsibilities had grown, and now, seven months later, he was as close to a foreman as the shop had.
Sargent was in the chandlery office when the call came. Odd could see him talking into the telephone mouthpiece, could see him turn quickly and motion with his elbow. Odd pulled one of his mates to the steam box and hurried to the chandlery office as Sargent put the telephone earpiece back on the hook.
“Grab your lunch pail, Mister Eide. Your wife is in labor.”
Odd stood there dumb.
“Hurry, now. I’ll drive you.” Then Sargent put his head into the workshop, “Willy! Get over here, man the chandlery while I bring Odd to the hospital.” He turned back to Odd, put his hands on his shoulders, and said, “The Lord has blessed you this day.” There appeared almost to be tears in his eyes. “Now, let’s go. You’ll want to be near your wife.”
They climbed into Sargent’s flatbed — the same truck Hosea owned — and started up Raleigh.
Sargent said, “Would you like to pray?”
“You pray for me,” Odd said. “Pray for Rebekah and the child, too.”
So they drove in silence across town.
Sargent parked the Ford on the street in front of the hospital. Together they hurried up to the third floor, where Doctor Crumb’s office and Odd’s fate awaited. Sargent sat in the reception room while a nurse led Odd into the surgery. It was there he found Rebekah and the child, there he saw the look on her face.
It was Doctor Crumb who spoke first. “Mister Eide, meet your son.”
Odd stood where he was, looking now on the child. “My son,” he said or thought, he didn’t know which.
“He’s big as a bear, Mister Eide. I’ve never seen one bigger.”
Odd took a pair of unsteady steps toward the surgery table, toward Rebekah and the big boy. A boy.
“He’s well?” Odd finally managed.
“I’m surprised the lad didn’t come out with teeth. Or hair on his chest. He’s nine even pounds according to my scale. And he’s fine, way ahead in the race and only just in it.”
Odd walked to Rebekah. “And you?” he asked, knowing with unwelcome certainty the answer to his question.
Rebekah, confirming all, said nothing, only lifted the baby to Odd’s hands.
He’d never held a child before, never suspected that something that had weighed so heavily in his mind could be so light in his hands. But as he looked down on the boy, on his puckered lips and pale skin, Odd felt a preternatural strength rising in him. He felt as though someone could have handed him a bowl with all the water of Lake Superior in it and he would still have been able to bear it.
“I’ve a few details to attend to,” Doctor Crumb said. “If you’ve a name for this one, the time to tell me is now.”
Odd kept his eyes on the boy, said to Rebekah, “Any ideas?”
“He’s your son. You name him.”
Her words felt like a punch, but he’d been sure of the boy’s name for months. “We’ll call him Harald Einar Eide.”
Doctor Crumb said, “He’ll live up to his stature with a name like that.”
“I hope so,” Odd said.
Odd walked the boy to the window. It was late afternoon and the summer sky was squally. Odd knew surely there was a thunderstorm up there, might have been able to say the exact hour at which it would begin to rain. He whispered to the boy, “Look up there, son. You see? That’s a thunderhead. Means rain.”
Together they stood at the window looking at the weather. Odd pictured his own mother, recalling that photograph on the windowsill in the brownstone. The picture of him in his mother’s arms. He saw that beatific look in her eyes and knew the same look came now from him. From his good and his bad eye both. After a few minutes Odd returned to Rebekah’s bedside and looked down on her with all the courage he had to spare.
Five days later Rebekah and little Harald came home from the hospital. It was a hot and low-down day, the first heavy weather of summer. The humidity stuck for a week, and whether it was because of the atmosphere or Rebekah’s disposition, the first few days of having the baby home were some of the unhappiest of Odd’s life. The only sounds that made their way around the flat were the hungry yowls of the boy and Rebekah’s sullen sighs. She seemed to have a complaint for everything. Her sincerest and most regular grievance came whenever it was time for the boy to eat. Her breasts were sore and engorged, her nipples cracked, and Harry, unnaturally big as he was, demanded regular suck.
The looks she cast on that boy. His hunger, his fear and vulnerability, all of it like a badge he wore. And still she looked at him as though he were a cancer. He’d spit her nipple, grab at her breast, wail. And Rebekah with that poisonous and unforgiving stare would scold him. Odd wanted to help, would have done anything, but was always in the way, making Rebekah more agitated.
On the occasions Rebekah could slake the boy’s hunger, he’d fall into a heavy infant slumber. Rebekah would call Odd, hand Harry to him, and lie down on the davenport, shielding her eyes from everything with her arm.
“My breasts feel like they’re going to catch right on fire,” she said one June evening after Harry had eaten and was sleeping in his papa’s arms.
“I sure am sorry, Rebekah.”
She looked up at him from under her arm. “What are you sorry for?”
“Sorry you’re not feeling well. Sorry you’re so tired. All that stuff.”
“All that stuff…”
Odd had walked Harry to the window. Together they stood looking at the Norway pines on the side of the house.
“It was so easy for your mother. When you were a baby. To feed you. You latched right on and ate like there was no tomorrow.” She might have groaned, Odd couldn’t tell. “I can’t stop thinking what a twisted-up thing this is.”
“Haven’t we about covered that?” Odd asked from the window, not even turning to look at her.
“Oh, sure, we’ve covered it. Or you have. Mister Everything Will Be All Right. Mister We Don’t Need No One. You’ve covered it, all right.”
“What the hell do you want me to say, Rebekah? What in fuck’s name is going to get the sulk out of you?”
She didn’t say anything, only lay there on the davenport with her arm over her eyes. Odd and Harry still stood at the window, Odd whispering to Harry an account of a gray squirrel husking a pinecone on the bough of a tree.
“That first day her milk came in, and you ate and then filled your diaper and slept for six straight hours, she held you the whole time. She always held you. Sang those fool songs.” Her words trailed off. Odd turned to look at her.
“I want to understand, Rebekah. I do. But I don’t see your unhappiness. It doesn’t make sense.”
She looked at him for a long time. Eyes as vacant as two stones. She might have been dead for all the life in her.
Odd kept at it. “He’s a hundred percent perfect, this one. Sure, he’s hard to get fed. I know that. And I know it’s you suffering his temper tantrums when he’s at the teat. But he’s brand-new to this business. Might you give him an inch of rope?”
If it was possible, the look on her face went even more expressionless. Still she would not look away from him.
“Some things just aren’t meant to be understood,” she said. “Some things are just invisible and out of reach.”
Odd crossed the room, offered her Harry. “He ain’t out of reach. He’s right goddamn here. Take him.”
She put her arm back over her eyes. “Your mother,” Rebekah began before Odd could say more, “she was real sad after you were born. Melancholy’s what Hosea called it. Said she had the sadness disease. But still she wouldn’t set you down. She wouldn’t stop ogling you. She was more in love with you than she could even imagine.”
Odd had cradled Harry back in his arm. Now he sat on the end of the davenport.
Rebekah tucked her feet up beneath her to make room for him. “Hosea had a way to get the sadness out of her,” she continued. “Cut it right out of her, that’s how he described it.” She shook her head under her arm.
“What are you talking about, cut it right out of her?”
“He did an operation. An ovariotomy, he called it. He cut the sadness out of her.”
“Maybe there’s a way to cut the sadness out of you.” He couldn’t help feeling hopeful, still clung to some thought they could all three of them be a happy family.
She looked at him under her arm. “Sadness has no hold on me, Odd. It’s something else. Besides, when Hosea got the sadness out of her, he got everything else, too. The whole life of her.”
Odd sat up. “What do you mean the whole life of her? What are you talking about?”
“After the operation. She got sick.”
“You always told me it was a fever she died of.”
“She did. A fever he conjured up, I suppose.”
Now Odd stood. “What’s that mean?”
“Your mother didn’t have any sadness in her, Odd. That’s what I was telling you. She was the happiest person I ever saw in those days after you were born. She needed that operation like the lake needs more water.”
Odd stood there trembling. He’d always been led to believe that his mother had died naturally. A simple fever that had got the best of her. “Are you telling me she got the fever because of Hosea?”
“I don’t know why she got the fever, but it came a day after the surgery.”
“He killed her?” he whispered. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“How could I know?”
Odd looked down at Harry. For a long time he just looked at the boy sleeping in his arm. “How come you never told me before? Why didn’t anyone do anything?”
“He was trying to help her.”
“He’s got every living soul hoodwinked.”
“What difference does it make? The how or the why? You’re an orphan either way. Nothing was going to change that. Not then, not now.”
Odd walked back to the window. The squirrel was still on the bough.
“I believe he thought he was doing the right thing. For what it’s worth, I believe that,” she said.
“What is that? You and this notion Hosea needs defending? He’s lousy. Any way you slice it, he’s lousy. And you talking for the hundredth time like he was some upstanding man.”
“Where would you be without him?”
Odd spun around. “We’re gonna cover that territory again, too? Hell, no.” He shook his head slowly. “Hell, no, we ain’t. Hosea our savior. You must be out of your mind, Rebekah.”
“I guess I am,” she said. “I guess I am.”
And maybe she was. How else to account for her?
Sargent had given Odd two weeks off, and when Odd returned to the boatwright’s on a Monday morning it was with grave misgivings. The week passed and his misgivings grew, and on Friday evening, after work, after Odd had made supper and given Harry his bath, after Rebekah had fed the boy and put him to sleep in his basinet, she asked Odd to sit down. So he did.
She had that look on her face like the night of his birthday, in his fish house. Like she was about to tell him the end times were nigh. “I’m sorry what I told you about your mother,” she said. “I’m trying to—” Her voice emptied out, got lost in one of her sighs.
Most of these conversations during the last week, Odd had just quit. Walked into the bedroom or right out the door. But this night was different. He didn’t know why.
Rebekah began again. “I told you about your mother because thinking of her is the only way any of this makes sense to me. The way she felt, that’s how I’m supposed to feel. I’m supposed to be as happy as she was. I couldn’t get to happiness on a train. Maybe Hosea could make me happy.”
“Sure, give him a chance to kill you, too.”
She looked up at him. “You could never understand. Not about me, or your mother.”
“I don’t understand, you’re right. Not what you’re saying. Not how you’re acting. And sure as shit not how Hosea could make you happy. Hosea goddamn killed her. He killed her and then tried to be my old man. I hope he’s hung himself up by the neck.” There was no rancor in his voice. No exasperation. Not even any curiosity. He was taking his own account was all.
“If you really understand about my mother,” Odd continued, “then you’d see what you’re doing to Harry. He might as well be an orphan. Half an orphan, leastways. How much you hate him.”
“I don’t hate Harry, Odd.” She shook her head, as though he were the biggest fool. “You and me. Harry next. We’re all orphans.”
Odd stood there in disbelief, mustering the right words to end this season’s long conversation once and for all. He simply could not bear it any longer. He smiled at her. Shook his head. Said, “Rebekah, darlin’, I love you. I don’t care how we got here or what kind of right or wrong it is, but Harry is our boy. That’s all there is now. That’s all there’ll ever be. I know you’re mixed up. But here’s something you need to hear from me.” He paused again, looking down at Rebekah, who was looking back up at him with tears in her eyes. “If you abandon our boy once, you abandon him forever. If you walk away, our boy will never know you. Much as it would kill me, I’ll see to it. So help me God.”
Strange that he should find himself standing outside Gloria Dei Lutheran Church on Sunday morning. Harry was sleeping in his buggy, the canopy pulled up to block the hot sun. Odd himself was shielding his eyes with his cap, looking up at Sargent’s church. From inside he could hear the organ piping in harmony with the singing congregation.
He stood there until the doors swung open twenty minutes later and the worshippers came out in their summer dresses and seersucker suits. Sargent appeared midflock, his wife on his arm. They paused on the top step, looked up at the glorious day.
It was Rose who saw Odd and Harry. She raised her hand to greet them, tugged on Sargent’s coat sleeve, pointed at Odd. They made their way through the departing throng and joined Odd on the sidewalk.
“Mister Eide, to what do we owe the pleasure?”
“Mornin’, Harald. Missus Sargent.”
“This must be little Harald,” Rose said, peeking under the buggy’s canopy.
“That’s Harry. Sleeping his fool head off.”
Sargent lit a cigarette. “Rebekah’s catching up on her own sleep, I gather?”
“I couldn’t rightly tell you what Rebekah’s doing.”
Sargent arched his eyebrows. “Mother, see if you can talk to Pastor Guenther about the bake sale next week, would you?”
She turned a sympathetic eye to Odd. “Mister Eide, it was very nice to see you. And this lovely little boy. What an angel!”
“He is that,” Odd said. “He’s that if he’s nothing else.”
The two men watched Rose head back up the church steps. Watched as she took the pastor’s arm and headed inside the church again.
Sargent offered Odd a cigarette, which he took and lit and pulled the smoke in. As he exhaled he said, “Rebekah’s gone, Harald. Just up and left.”
“What are you saying? Where did she go?”
“I have my suspicions about where she went off to, but I couldn’t say for sure. Harry here woke up howling this morning and his mama was gone. That’s about it.”
“She didn’t say where she was going?”
Odd looked at him as though to suggest the question was ridiculous.
“What about the boy?”
“The boy’s the problem. Or a big part of the problem.” Odd tried to gather himself, tried to understand why he was there with Sargent. “It’s a complicated business, Harald. It’s a sight more than complicated, to tell the truth. Rebekah, she was never keen about having the baby. She was scared and confused. Didn’t think she’d know what to do once he came.” He paused, took a drag on his smoke.
Sargent had those eyes set on Odd. Didn’t even blink as he blew his own smoke out his nose. “Go on, son.”
“I guess she was right. See, she was an orphan. We’re both orphans, if you want the truth. I suppose she never saw a child being cared for. Never saw how a mother’s supposed to act. Anyway.”
“Do you mean to suggest that she’s gone for good? That she doesn’t want to have anything to do with the boy?”
Odd nodded his head.
“That’s impossible. A mother can’t abandon her child that way.”
“Rebekah always had a mind of her own. But I’ve got a mind of my own, too. I got imagination enough to take care of the boy. Why, hell, just this morning I mashed up some blueberries to feed him. Ate ’em up like that milk from the bub was a long-forgotten thing.” Odd tried to smile as though his cleverness was enough. It wasn’t. He felt tears welling.
“Son, you can’t feed a baby that age blueberries. He needs his mother’s milk. Some milk, leastways.”
“He ain’t never supping at that teat again.”
Sargent looked up at the stained-glass window of the church for a long while. Long enough he finished his smoke. He dropped it and rubbed it out with the sole of his shoe, then said, “Are you sure you’re not the cause of her leaving, Odd?”
“What do you mean?”
“Did you ever raise your hand against her?”
“Hell, no.”
“Did you ever berate her? Demean her?”
“I was never anything but kind and true, Harald. I love her better than anything.”
“But she’ll come back, son. She can’t really leave the boy. Can’t leave a man good as you.”
“She can and she did, and she ain’t coming back. I don’t know much, but I know this.”
Sargent brought his hands together and hung his head. “Dear Lord, forgive that woman. Forgive her and find peace for her. And for this child, Lord, hold him in your hands. Show him the way.” He lifted his face to the sunlight for a moment, then looked again at Odd. “Son, you know you’ve got a place with me as long as you need. Mother, she can watch the boy until you find other arrangements. I’ll call Doctor Crumb. We’ll find the boy a wet nurse. Everything will be all right.”
“You’re right, boss. Everything will be all right. But part of why I’m here is to say good-bye.”
“Good-bye?”
Now Odd turned his face up to the sun. “You’ve been the closest thing to a father I ever had. It ain’t even a year I’ve known you and I’d lay across the tracks for you. But I was always just visiting. I didn’t know that until this morning. I’m a Gunflinter, I guess.” He lowered his face and took the last draw on his cigarette. “I’m gonna get my boat out of dry dock tomorrow. I’m gonna take this boy home. I’m gonna teach him how to cast a net and build a boat.” Now Odd smiled. “I’ll build him a skiff so he can run about.”
And Sargent couldn’t help smile himself. “It’ll be a fine boat.”
“A damn fine boat.”
The next day Odd and Harald motored home. Roundabout Otter Bay, Odd opened the locker in the cockpit and withdrew the box that held the bell. He locked the wheel and checked on Harry and then, nimble as a cat, Odd fixed the bell to the header in the cockpit.
The rest of the way home he talked to Harry. He told him about the lake, the rivers and streams. He told him about the kinds of fish in the lake and the kinds of men in the world. He told him what kind of man he would be. Motoring past the settlement at Misquah, he told him about the boat. Said, “I built this boat for all the wrong reasons, Harry. It’s easy to do things for the wrong reasons. My problem? I never know what the wrong reasons are until it’s too late. Same goes for your mother, rest her soul.” He looked down at the boy in the crook of his arm. The sun on his pale skin. “See, I built it so I could run more whiskey. Catch more fish. Get more. But now I got all I want.” He rubbed Harry’s cheek with the back of his thumb, a gesture that would become his regular show of affection. “How could I have known when I dragged that tree out of the woods, when I carved this keel, when I bent the first board, that I’d be cruising with you? I couldn’t, you see? But now I know what I never could have: that of all the reasons to have a boat, none is as important as using it to carry your son home. To carry you home, Harry.”
Before they reached Gunflint Harry started fussing. The roll and pitch of the water and Odd’s voice had left the boy sleeping for the better part of six hours but he woke just east of Misquah. So Odd fixed him a bottle. He had fifty dollars’ worth of Dextri-maltose prescribed by Doctor Crumb. He mixed it up and offered Harry the rubber nipple.
When Harry had guzzled it all, Odd laid a blanket across the motor box and changed the boy’s diaper. “That’s my little fella,” Odd said, picking him up and resting him on his shoulder. He burped him and then held him in the crook of his arm.
When they came up on Gunflint it was still light. The sun rested on the hilltop. A breeze had been stiffening for the last hour, and as they rounded the breakwater and headed across the harbor, the roll of the boat on the swells set the bell tolling. It was the song of their coming home, and Odd hoped everyone heard it.