A Lesser Light, page 29
Despite her caution, it wasn’t long before the strain in her strong young legs was the only indication she moved in the right direction. When she paused—to rest, yes, but also to sense her whereabouts—she’d have sworn she heard voices. Whispers. Whether the voice of the wolf or her parents or the weather itself, she couldn’t say. But between their presence and the fact she could no longer see the trees before her, never mind the trap splayed across the top of the fish box or her own hands that held it, she started to cry. Not from fear, but because this moment seemed the culmination of so much confusion and spiritual disarray. As if the instant she realized her parents had drowned finally had its end here, up on the hill, in blinding fog and with a box of offal and a wolf trap.
The weeping was solace, though, and she squatted and set the box among the ferns and lifted a shoulder to each eye one at a time to wipe her tears. She wiped her hands, too, on the knees of her skirt, and then put her hands to her ears to block the distant foghorn, and clenched her eyes shut. In this particular darkness, a notion took root. She could no sooner describe it to herself than she might the blackness that attended it, but its realness and certainty were as absolute as the pulsing of her heart, or the blood it sent coursing. She might have called it an awakening if it didn’t seem so like a dream, but regardless, her world grew enormously as she stood there. As if a whole season of rain and sun had nourished her maturation.
When she opened her eyes, not only could she see the trees and ferns and fish box again, but the fog had vanished altogether. Even up in the heady canopy of the pines, daylight reigned. She checked behind her. Was the still-throbbing sound of the foghorns mocking her? Warning her? Serenading her? And which did she hope was true? She looked at her hands, sticky and speckled with blood. By some association she could hardly fathom but was aware of all the same, the sight of her hands led her to the image of her parents sunk a half mile offshore, a quarter mile down in the depths, spotless. Resting. At peace in a way they’d never been in life. Almost happy.
* * *
It wasn’t long before she reached Odegaard Creek, where she stood on a fallen tree spanning the brook. Several trees bridged the water, which trilled with the hope of two recent rainstorms. She saw the riffles settle into a pool at a bend a hundred feet downstream. A copse of cedar trees shaded the pool, and for a moment she imagined herself bathing in that spot. But just as soon as she saw the box of fish guts and the trap, the frivolity of the idea left her in a gust.
She made her way down the bank and set the trap and fish box on a rock. For a long moment she stood there, the sun warming her back and shimmering off the water. When clouds passed, she could see into the pool, where fish schooled, their tailfins curved with the current. As soon as her shadow crossed their backs, they darted as one into deeper water.
Always, there was deeper water.
Uncle Mats had cooked the bacon—which she’d relished even as she feigned injury—but the truth was, the offal would be better bait. Especially here along the creek. She slung it along the shoreline rocks fifty feet in either direction and by the time she stood again beside the pool, ravens and their caws filled the now cloudless sky, their hollering filling the void left by the foghorns.
She lowered the trap in flowing water and looped the drag around one of the trees, leaving the ten feet of chain underwater. The trap she arranged between rocks half-submerged in the creek until it was firm and level. She stood up and looked at the ravens and the trail of carrion and guts and then tried to imagine the wolf coming up the creek bed at the beckoning of these birds. Likely he was already on his way. He and his whole pack. They’d move carefully, pulled along by the stink of the dead fish, alert to every sound but the cawing birds. Likely they’d sample the fish skin, they’d slurp the bowels, they’d develop a taste for it. Here at the pool, they’d pause to drink, their paws finding purchase on the larger rocks, the rocks as much as cemented in place. There were a couple of dozen such rocks surrounding the pool.
She double-checked the trap between the rocks. As she spread the jaws, the teeth drawing flat on either side of the triggering plate, some feeling in her own guts spread, too. It broadened her, left her feeling empty and wanting and dangerous and like she’d not known herself until this morning.
What might possibly have accounted for this? She couldn’t know. But as she laid the last of the dead fish on and around the trap, as she washed the slime and blood from her fingers in the creek water, as she stood upright and felt the warmth of the sun this time on her face, she imagined the trap snapping shut and saw not a wolf in its hold, but a man.
Inheritance
July 5, 1910
We speak often of the separation of the soul and body after death, but what of the soul before a body is born? Do we inherit our souls as we do our toes and thumbs, our spleens and bones, our blood and marrow?
I’ve sometimes pondered the possibility of our lives having been foreordained, as though we are but stars streaking across the cosmos, flaring and fading and dying. Who sees to it we’re illuminated? And snuffed? Before we arrive and after we’ve gone, are we but essence? Possibility? What force sets us in motion?
Most people would name it God and would endow Him with these and infinite powers. A lovely, simple notion. For it answers all questions. Indeed, it is written, in the 138th Psalm, that Thy eyes did see my imperfect being, and in thy book all shall be written: days shall be formed, and no one in them. Thy, here, of course being God. It sounds as plausible to me as anything else.
But whoever declares the answer is a charlatan, even if I can’t blame them for wondering. Myself? I tend to think we are like a forest of trees, ready to be made into shanties by the boards that come of us. Or better, an alphabet, soon to be made into words.
* * *
FOR THE BETTER PART of thirty-six hours Theodulf had sulked and stomped around the grounds, fretting about the fact that the post office wouldn’t be open due to the Independence Day holiday. His incorrigibility since Mrs. Wilson mentioned it was out of proportion even for him.
But now he rowed the lighthouse tender, hoping to beat the Nocturne down the shore. If she were on schedule, he’d have half an hour to spare when he got to the dock in Otter Bay. But she’d not come up out of the lake even after he’d rounded Big Rock. Not even the steam from her stack. He feathered the oars and checked his watch, fretful that perhaps he’d mislaid the time again.
Eight o’clock on Tuesday morning. That much was certain according to his Longines. Except that when he took the oars again and sliced them into the still water, the lake answered with its own yawn against the hour. He’d noticed other phenomena of this sort since he’d thrown the Hamilton into the fog. As if the lake kept its own time. Cosmic. Godly. Interminable. And he at its mercy.
Madness, he thought, digging harder with the oars.
Fifteen minutes later the whine of the mill shrieked across the water. Still no Nocturne—not in either direction—though a freighter made several knots against the horizon. Of course, the first hot summer day would arrive just in time for him to sweat under its burden. Perspiration fairly poured from his body, soaking the back of his shirt. He stretched his shoulders, glancing up to see a scavenging of gulls mistaking the lighthouse tender for a fishing boat. Their riotous calls set him on edge.
It was not yet nine when he tied up on the dock in Otter Bay. He’d rolled his sleeves up past his elbows by then. Unbuttoned his collar. Left his cap on the thwart still damp with sweat. If he’d been back at the lighthouse, with the privacy of the dock there, he’d have stripped down to his skivvies and jumped in the lake. Instead, he walked up the dock and onto the beach and stepped to the water and splashed his face with it. He ran his wet hands through his hair. He rinsed his forearms.
A summer day wasn’t the worst thing, surely, but as he stood there, he’d have been hard pressed to think of something worse. No sooner did the thought cross his mind than a swarm of flies descended upon him. Normally he’d use his hat to swipe them away, but he’d removed it in the boat. So instead, he slapped at his neck and bare arms and ears, hurrying from the cloud of whirring bugs out to the end of the dock. But there was no breeze, and the flies followed him like his own dark thoughts. One flew into his ear canal, bit him, and tickled its way back out. The itch flared immediately, and while he was busy waving the flies away with one hand, he stuck the pinky of his other into his ear to scratch the bite. But he couldn’t reach it, not even by twisting his head around like a horse and plunging each of his fingers in turn. He might have screamed at the indignity, but just then he saw the Nocturne in the distance. The sight of it calmed him, and he went back up the dock to the post office.
Mr. Holzer already had the door wedged open. Inside, the darkness had kept the warm morning at bay. But now the humidity came in like smoke from a fire. His back ran like a freshet again. Standing behind the counter, old Holzer didn’t even answer when Theodulf helloed, leaving him standing there instead, feeling like he was melting.
After another minute, Theodulf touched the bell on the counter and cleared his throat. Mr. Holzer turned around slowly, as though he were on a rotating pedestal that had a chink in its gears. “Ah, Keeper Sauer.” He lifted his eyes but not his face when he spoke. “A locomotive could sneak up on me these days. Feels like the Missus Holzer poured her tea honey in my ears.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, Mr. Holzer.”
He waved the sympathy away.
“I’ve a couple of letters to send,” Theodulf said, reaching into his pocket to retrieve them.
“Did you go for a swim with these in your pocket, Mr. Sauer?” Holzer held the limp letters at arm’s length.
“It’s like a sauna out there. No summer at all until this morning, and then it rises like Lazarus of Bethany.”
“I reckon some of your pious friends and associates would liken that comparison to blasphemy.”
“Oh, let them,” Theodulf said.
Mr. Holzer raised a suspecting eyebrow.
“I only meant it as a figure of speech.” He wiped his brow. “I’m agitated, Mr. Holzer. Soaked through with sweat and eager to get these letters sent.”
Holzer shifted his gaze out to the dock. “Here’s the Nocturne now.”
Sure as he said it, the good ship slid up to the dock. Stevedores stood ready to catch the hawsers from over the railing before she even touched the fenders. When Theodulf looked the other way, streams of townsfolk headed toward her, ready for whatever she brought. There might be friends and family, cows and kerosene, flour and apples, boots and gingham, Winchesters and violins. For certain there’d be mail. He only cared about the mail.
Which was delivered not five minutes later. A sack each of letters and packages, both dropped on the counter. In the same motion, the man from the Nocturne picked up the sack Mr. Holzer had set in the outgoing box atop the counter. Not a word passed between any of the three men.
Despite his aged tilt and ponderous belly, Mr. Holzer filed the letters as though it were his singular purpose in life. The lighthouse had a larger postbox. Into it went the official correspondence. Each of the families had their own postboxes. By the time Mr. Holzer had finished sorting—not five minutes after the sacks had been laid on his counter—there was mail in each. Finished, Holzer resumed his listless posture and returned his attention to Theodulf.
“Now,” he said, as though picking up in the middle of their conversation, “your agitation doesn’t much interest me. But getting you what you came for does. So . . .” He turned to the very postboxes he’d just slotted the mail into and removed the lighthouse station’s official correspondence—there was but a single parcel—and a letter from his family box. “This here’s for you.”
Theodulf inspected the return address which announced the Sauer estate on London Road. It was written in his mother’s hand. For a moment he was baffled. How could she have replied so quickly? But as soon as he thought it, he realized mere chance left him with the letter in his hand. He stepped onto the deck outside the post office and slid his finger under the seal of the envelope. What news greeted him there:
July 3, 1910
My dear son,
Your father passed away this morning. Peacefully and without apparent cause as he slept. Please come home.
Your loving mother
What news indeed. How was it that not a single emotion coursed through him save a slight peevishness at needing to leave his post? And imminently.
He looked up. The same stevedores who had caught the hawsers were now untying them. Black steam sputtered from the Nocturne’s stack. Before the fact of his father’s death settled on him, the ship was sailing off. Theodulf looked at his watch. He followed the ship’s slow reverse passage, and its turn east, down the shore. The day’s soddenness redoubled. The itch in his ear flared again. Still his pinky could not reach it. He knocked his ear with the heel of his hand. Rubbed it with the pad of his thumb.
The Nocturne would return in twenty-four hours, headed back up to Duluth.
* * *
SHE’D WEEKS AGO quit trying to understand his moods or the vacancy of his expression. But this one? The shroud of sincere bafflement? Of absolute defeat? Well, this one at least intrigued her. She stood in the kitchen with a paring knife in one hand and a peeled potato in the other, waiting for him to say something. When, after another moment passed and he didn’t, she spoke softly, “Do you have heat stroke?”
He swabbed his face with the loose cuff of his shirtsleeve.
“Sit down,” she said, pulling a chair from under the table and then turning to fetch a glass of water and a tea cloth from the pantry. She imagined wiping his brow but handed him the cloth instead.
He wiped his face again, drank half the water. After he set the glass on the table, he said, “I had a letter from my mother today.” He took the letter from his shirt pocket and laid it beside the glass of water. Outside, Ruth and Ida crossed the grounds. Theodulf watched them, his eyes as distant as the noontime sun.
“What did your mother’s letter say?”
He answered without turning back. “My father is dead. He passed in his sleep.”
“Oh my,” she said and sat across from him. She set the knife and potato on the tabletop and wiped her hands on her apron. “My condolences, Theodulf.” They might well have been the first genuine and kind words she’d spoken to him since the day she arrived at the station.
“Yes, well.”
“You’ll leave on tomorrow’s boat?”
He nodded.
“Shall I join you? Is that the custom?”
Now he turned to her. “No.” He tapped the letter with his fingertip. “She asked me to come alone.” He drank the rest of the water. “I imagine her shock is matched only by her confusion. She needs my private counsel, I think. My calming presence.”
Willa’s sympathy vanished. She looked between Theodulf’s complexion and the potato. They could have been mistaken one for the other. The waxen color. The sheen. Even the expression.
“Yes,” he said, as though to confirm his thinking. “That’s what she needs. That’s why she’s asked me to come alone.”
Willa’s lip quivered. She stood and turned to the pot on the stove. She quartered the potato, letting each chunk drop into the water.
* * *
After dinner, Theodulf visited Keepers Wilson and Axelsson to inform them of his impending absence. Willa circled the house, watching from different windows as he searched them out and spoke with them. He moved like a thief. A wolf. Quickly and with purpose. He found Mr. Axelsson at the oil house and Mr. Wilson under the portico on his house next door. The sun was still brazen at eight o’clock when he returned. At his desk he composed several letters. He asked for a cup of tea.
All this while Willa moved anxiously about the house. As if a party would soon begin. He hardly spoke to her but to ask for the tea.
At ten o’clock he found her in the sitting room.
“I’ll be turning in,” he said.
Willa set her book down.
“I’ll need you to bring me to Otter Bay in the morning.”
“That’s fine.”
“At sunrise.”
She nodded.
“Mother will be expecting a note of condolence.”
“I already wrote one. I’ll put it on your desk.”
He appeared to take some satisfaction in this. As though his civilizing influence were the reason for her having written, not her inherent good manners and general kindness.
“Well, then. Goodnight.” He hesitated.
“Theodulf,” Willa said. She sat up on the edge of her chair, set her book down. “When my own father passed—”
“Your father’s death and my father’s death have little in common.” He turned up the stairs.
Two months ago, she’d have fumed. Now she was only glad for his absence. She picked her book back up and held it toward the lamplight. Of these similitudes, she read, the one which has the best pretensions to a rude accuracy is that first mentioned; for the resemblance of the full moon to a human countenance, wearing a painful or lugubrious expression, is very striking. Indeed, she thought, remembering her husband’s pallid, ugly face as he ascended the stairs.
She clapped the book shut. Put it on the table. Realized that the moon shone now in the bright summer sky. Better to behold it than to read about it.
When a child, Willa used to sit in her father’s office on the top floor of their house and listen to him work. She loved the sounds of the graphs ticking out their information, her father’s pencil tapping some code as he took his readings, his own mumbling as he riddled the forecast. He often described the weather as being predictable until it arrived. She understood that better now.
* * *
Standing in the shadow of the lighthouse tower, the beam from the lamp aligning every ten seconds with the moon’s steady rays and shining on the Lindvik place across the bay, she saw a bridge of light. She couldn’t help the thought. Uncrossable, true, that distance, even with the light to carry her. She turned back to the moon itself. Wished more than ever she could get there.
