The Lighthouse Road Read Online Free

up to the candlelight, rode it along the shadows on the wall. The carving was of a boat, the boat he dreamed about. He'd spent all of Christmas week whittling it from a birch bole, whittled the finest details: the motor box, the canopy, the gunwale, and even a toe rail. He'd fashioned a couple of fish boxes and set them in the cockpit. "Something with a little bow to her, a strong, high sheer. A cockpit instead of that goddamned spray hood. A Buda inboard. A thousand pounds of keel and skeg." A gust of wind blew through the open window and the candle shadow raced up the wall. He moved the carved boat with it. "And a bell. I damn well want a bell. You'll know I'm home by its ringing." He felt her nestle into him, she loved this hopeful part of him, thought it innocent and childlike. "So big I'll need a berth in the harbor, next to the tugs and charter boats."
       A strong breeze came through the window and blew out the candle. He set his carving down and looked out at the night.
       "A boat like that and I could make the runs down to Port Arthur myself. I could do business directly all up and down the shore. Could take a boat like that clear across the lake. Clear across to the Soo. We could go anywhere. Anywhere, Rebekah."
       "I'm too old to go anywhere."
       "That's nonsense."
       "Nearly twice your age."
       "So what? You're the prettiest gal in Gunflint."
       Now she smiled and looked at him again. She kissed him lightly on the lips. "Tell me more about the boat. Where would you take me?"
       "Where'd you want to go?"
       She took a deep breath, was thinking earnestly about where she could get. "What's the place farthest away in the world?"
       "I guess Norway's a fair piece."
       " Where your mother was from."
       "Sure, where she was from."
       "Let's go to Norway, Odd. In your boat. What's it like, do you think?"
       "I've heard tell it ain't unlike it is here."
       "Oh, Lord! Let's choose someplace else, then."
       "I told you we could go anywhere."
       "Anywhere," she repeated.
       They lay in silence, each picturing anywhere as though they might someday get there. She fell asleep. He could tell by how she warmed. So he tilted his head back and looked out the window.
       Here was the daybreak, the first promise of light, coming as deliberate as Rebekah crossing a candlelit room. And there were the pines, swaying in the old wind as though this aubade were played in the slowest of time.

III.

    (July 1893)

    T wo days and two nights of oblivion ended on a Friday morning when Hosea woke from a dead man's sleep. A dozen champagne bottles littered the floor in a swath of dull sunlight. He pressed his eyes and imagined he could feel the dream retreating to its place in that part of his mind he could only access in a state such as he'd roused those days in the Chicago bagnio.
       He found his pants under the bed and checked his pocket watch. He checked his billfold, too, which still held a stack of fifty-dollar banknotes. He kicked the threadbare bed linens from his legs and swung his still-stockinged feet onto the floor. The rush of blood to his head was swift. He was so parched he could not swallow. He needed a drink of water, so he rose and stood still until he found his balance.
       But for his socks he was naked. His drawers hung over a lampshade, his linen shirt was tangled with the duvet on the floor at the foot of the bed. As he dressed, memories of the last forty-eight hours came back to him piecemeal, each more lecherous than the one before. When he was dressed he took stock of the room. Not bad as such rooms went. A carpet on the floor. A bed with a proper headboard. An electric lamp. An enormous mirror on the wall opposite the head board. A brass ashtray. A table and chair in the corner with an empty decanter and four used snifters, three stained with lip rouge.
       At this hour of the morning the hallway was quiet, the water closet vacant. He