Читать книгу The Lighthouse Road - Peter Geye - Страница 9

VII.

(August 1920)

He had spent a month watching the white pine not dry fast enough, the pitch bleeding like icicles dripping from an eaves trough.

At the end of the month he rented the horse again and dragged the log up to the mill, where for two dollars he had it kiln dried. He had felt, as he stood in the lumberyard smoking half-a-dozen hand-rolled cigarettes, like a cozener; like having the lumber dried was a desecration of his vision. But he'd also spent enough nights with Rebekah to know that time was more important than principle.

Since that day at the mill he'd lived as a hermit. He tended his nets and ran the barrels but otherwise spent his time in the fish house: by day working on the keel and, on those lucky and unforeseeable nights, in the company of Rebekah. The rhythm of that season was unlike anything he'd ever known. It was almost as if the long, steady work with his saws and adze continued in the dark with Rebekah, and since he took as much pleasure in one as the other, there were nights his felicity seemed endless. Boundless. And so he mistrusted it even as he gorged himself.

Now he had the keel on a strongback, leveled with shims on the floor of the fish house. He'd built the temporary ribbands and he could see, as he stood back with a fifth cup of coffee on those hot August nights, the bones of it, could see with his eye what he'd seen in his mind for years. He had a flitch of cedar sitting under a tarpaulin where the keel had sat before, he'd built a steam box of planks sawn from the white pine and fashioned a steamer from an old five-gallon kerosene bucket and hose line ordered from the automobile-parts catalog Hosea received each spring and fall. He'd also ordered two dozen C-clamps and a hundred dollars' worth of tools— rabbet planes, chisels, wooden mallets, nippers, a spokeshave, a sharpening stone, an assortment of ball-peen hammers and bucking irons and wrenches and screwdrivers— from Arneson's Hardware. On the fish counter a dozen well-fingered boat-motor catalogs sat beneath the plans, which were hand-drawn by Odd on huge sheets of onionskin paper. There were pencils and rulers scattered on the counter, and a new lamp shining down on it all.

He'd spent fifteen hours a day working on the boat since he'd gotten the keel dried, days he'd not eaten more than an apple, a bacon-and-onion sandwich, days that turned into night without a moment's notice or pause. At the end of those days he found himself exhausted but unable to sleep for the anticipation Rebekah might appear. And because her visits were unscheduled and the waiting interminable it was during these hours of night that he'd stop the physical work and resort to culling the catalogs, to his drawings and plans. He'd redraw the lines, up the sheer, recalculate the amount of lumber he was going to need, the barrels of oakum; double-check the weight of the motor he was considering against the strength of the motor box he had planned. All of these things raised in him an apprehension that was redoubled by the uncertainty of seeing her.

The waiting gave him a feeling deep inside. It was not heartache or longing but rather a definite pain, a throbbing in his bones. Some mornings he'd wake from his few fitful hours of sleep hardly able to walk. He'd brew a pot of coffee and stand at the counter scratching his beard, considering the boat. Considering his achy bones. He knew these first strips of wood were the most important, and the thought of his own life at the mercy of his workmanship filled him with doubt. On one such morning, after three nights without Rebekah, he decided to visit Hosea to see what he could learn about bones.

As a boy he'd been forbidden to enter certain rooms at the apothecary. Hosea's bedroom on the third floor was off limits, as were his offices on the second floor. There were doors with padlocks on them in the basement, rooms he knew now as the storage cellars for the hooch. Even Rebekah— so wont to disobey Hosea, so quick to conspire with Odd— was firm on the banishment.

But even as he'd been forbidden entrance, Odd had been a young boy left often to his own devices and full of a child's inquisitiveness. He'd made his romps through the apothecary governed by his curiosity, reveling in his cunning more than the discoveries made. The room Odd thought of now was Grimm's medical office. He wanted to see the skeleton that stood in the corner.

When he entered the apothecary on that August morning it was a place bustling with customers. By then Hosea was peddling garments and dry goods along with his cures, and the townsfolk were out in force. The Lund boy was behind the cash register in an apron to match Hosea's, Rebekah nowhere to be seen.

When finally there was a lull, Hosea met Odd at the counter. "Hello, young man," he said. "Business is brisk. It is indeed."

"I see that," Odd said.

"I'm a fool for not introducing this line of clothes sooner."

"They're in a frenzy for them, sure enough."

Hosea took a moment to delight in his savvy, then turned his attention back to Odd. "To what do I owe the pleasure?"

"I'm wanting to learn about bone disease."

"Bone disease?"

"Yup."

"As in diseases of the human skeleton? That sort of bone disease."

"That sort."

"Why? Are you not well?"

"I'm fine. Curious is all."

"Well," Hosea began, lapsing into a fatherly role that had never once suited him, "there are many diseases that afflict bone and marrow alike. Jean George Chrétien Frédéric Martin Lobstein was a professor and pathologist at École d'obstétrique du Rhin inférieur. He discovered the root causes of osteoporosis. Brittle bones, essentially. There are cancers of the bone marrow. Rickets, of course. And—"

"What about that skeleton up in your office?" Odd interrupted. "That bunch of bones have any disease?"

"Why, no, of course not."

"Can I go up and have a look at it?"

"Why so curious about bones in an attic?"

"I just want to see the skeleton."

Hosea looked around the shop, told the Lund boy he'd be back in a moment, and led Odd up the hidden staircase behind the wall of shelves above the counter.

Upstairs, he took a key from above the door frame and unlocked the door. "We don't often venture into these quarters anymore," Hosea said. The room was windowless, hot and close, dark but for what light followed them in from the hallway.

It was hard to see at first, but everything in the room was covered with white bed linens. As Hosea went from object to object removing the linens, a whole world of antique curiosities came into dim view. There was Hosea's old phrenology machine, his dentist's chair, his surgical table and glass-cased surgical tools, several volumes of medical books all bound in calfskin and stamped with gold lettering, a model of the planets aligned, held in place with bronze rods. Under the last sheet stood the skeleton. It was on a cart with wheels and Hosea rolled it toward the light from the hallway.

Odd glanced at the leg and arm bones, at the feet and hands, but settled quickly on the ribs and spine. As he studied the skeleton, Hosea launched into a lecture on what he called osteology. Hosea's bloviating was something Odd had long since learned to ignore, so as Hosea prattled, Odd studied the delicate curve of the ribs, the intricacies of the spinal column, the interconnectedness of the entire system.

He interrupted Hosea midsentence, "It's a complicated thing, ain't it?"

"The skeletal system?"

"What the hell else would I be talking about?"

Without suffering Odd's question for a moment, Hosea continued as though this had been the thread of their conversation all along. "When an infant is born there are many times more bones than the skeleton of the adult. They fuse. The system simplifies. Though of course it remains a wonder."

Finally Hosea stopped talking. The two of them stood in the afternoon light in the hallway and studied the skeleton.

Odd thought of the boat, the latticework of bent wood it would require, the hundred hours he'd spent shaping the keel, its perfection. He thought of the worst Lake Superior could offer and found satisfaction in his confidence in the white pine that just the winter before had stood in the forest. He decided he would be less cerebral about the boat. Less susceptible to his longing for Rebekah.

"What's brought this curiosity on?" Hosea asked.

Odd looked at him, thought better of telling him, but did anyway. "I'm building a new boat. A bigger boat. I just wanted to see the skeleton." He paused. "I've got the ribbands all set up. The keel is made. It's one piece, carved it out of a white pine log."

Hosea appeared interested. "How long is the keel?"

"Eighteen foot."

Now Hosea appeared interested and impressed. "A single-piece keel eighteen feet long? The wood is sound tip to tail?"

"It came from a chunk forty foot long. It's sound. It's a goddamn work of art, what it is."

"Why a new boat?" Hosea said.

"I'm tired of being wet."

Hosea smiled, remembering the night of the storm last month, Odd's willingness to risk his life in the skiff. "A little more cargo room?" Hosea pressed.

Now Odd smiled. "Yeah, a little."

"But why the skeleton?"

"I've been achy. I don't think I'll be anymore."

Hosea wheeled the skeleton back across the office. He covered it with a sheet. "I'll tend to the rest of this later."

Odd stepped down the hall and Hosea closed the door. After he turned the lock, he put the skeleton key in his pocket and led Odd downstairs.