Читать книгу Safe from the Sea - Peter Geye - Страница 7

The officer stood the midnight watch, his hand easy on the wooden wheel. He was steering the ore boat Ragnarøk, five hours outside Duluth harbor and downbound for the Superior Steel Works in Detroit.

“Jacobsen,” he called.

“Sir?” The wheelsman stepped to the helm.

“Bear northeast, Jacobsen. And never mind this.” He tapped the binnacle dome. “Steer for Polaris.” He pointed up at the firmament. “The top of the dipper.” Their load of taconite had sent the compass dithering.

“Yes, sir.”

The officer stepped to the chart. He withdrew his tobacco and papers from the inside pocket of his coat and rolled a cigarette. In the weary light of a twenty-watt bulb he studied their course. They were some twenty nautical miles north of the Keweenaw Peninsula in water a hundred and fifty fathoms deep. He marked their position. It was a passage plotted ages ago, one he knew by rote. He stood there because he was a prudent man, strict in his habits and in his discipline. An upholder of protocol. Consulting the charts was written into his duties.

He stepped outside, rounded the pilothouse decking. With his feet astride the keel line he lit his smoke. There was the sky to the north. The aurora borealis. Coronas the color of ice, the color of fire. This man was no philosopher, but neither was he blind. He could see what lay before him.

When his smoke was down to its nub he flicked it over the deck railing. He tucked his chin into his coat and again rounded the decking.

Back in the pilothouse he said, “Jacobsen, do you have children?” “No, sir.”

“My first child was born nine days ago. A son. Nine days ago, and here I am bound for the Soo. Can you beat that?” “What’s his name, sir?”

“My wife named him Noah.” A weather report warning of snow squalls off the Keweenaw crackled over marine radio. This sent both men’s eyes back to the north.

“Look at that sky, Jacobsen. Have you ever seen anything like it?” “It’s something.”

“If only my son could see it.” “Someday, sir.”

This pacified the officer. “Someday,” he echoed.

The officer settled into his loneliness, thinking of his son and wife. The feeling was specifically sad and beautiful. The colors in the sky vanished, were replaced with the brightness of stars.

By the time they cleared the Keweenaw the sky was indeed squally. A chop had come up with the wind. The officer checked his pocket watch against the sky.