The Lighthouse Road (12 page)
Read The Lighthouse Road Online
Authors: Peter Geye
"I told him he was a chickenshit," Danny said. "Odd said he was going to be brave." Danny wiped the tears from his cheeks, wiped the snot from his nose. "I didn't know he was going to climb into a bear den."
Hosea put his hand on Danny shoulder. "Daniel, any fool who climbs into a bear den deserves what awaits him. This is not your fault."
These words only sent the boy into another fit of tears.
Hosea tousled the boy's hair and said, "Go help Rebekah with the water, Daniel. We'll fix your pal up good as new."
But Hosea had no confidence this was true. Since his arrival in Gunflint he'd set countless broken bones. Cleaned the bullet wounds of many men clipped accidentally in the shoulder or back during pheasant or turkey hunts. Delivered all the babies born here over the past ten years and stood over more than a few slow deaths. Never mind his effort at curing Thea, the poor lad's poor mother. But Odd's injury was different. It was out of his purview, for one. This skull injury, he wondered if he was actually seeing the outer recesses of Odd's brain when he looked into the wound. And then, it was Odd.
Hosea walked to Odd's bedside and carefully removed the bandage covering the boy's eye. Blood pulsed slowly from the wound with each beat of Odd's heart. Hosea put two fingers on his neck and opened his pocket watch. After a minute he wrote the boy's heart rate on a chart on the bedside table. From his pocket he removed the ophthalmoscope and trained it on the empty eye socket. He had identified the essential components. The extraocular muscles had been severed. The ophthalmic artery was intact. The bundle of optic and sclerotic nerves was horribly frayed. Hosea could not imagine the pain. It made his skin crawl to think of it. He wet a clean cloth in the bowl of warm water and washed the wound for the tenth time. Odd stirred but did not wake, the drugs staying consciousness.
He replaced the ophthalmoscope and walked to the window. The sun was near to rising over the lake. He had to catch his breath looking on the horizon, thinking about the boy and how from now on he'd only ever see half of what he ought.
A
fter lunch, after Hosea had been up the Lighthouse Road to the telegraph machine in the lighthouse keeper's office, after he'd exchanged telegraphs with a physician friend in Chicago, after two more hours spent with Howe's
Manual
and another hour studying Gray's
Anatomy,
after he'd administered another dose of ether, after all this, Hosea performed the surgery. With a speculum holding Odd's eyelids wide open, Hosea trimmed the frayed nerves and cut back the extraocular muscles. The bear's claw had entered at the corner of the boy's eye and broken the bridge of his nose in the process. Hosea removed several tiny fragments of bone that he'd not seen until then. For an hour he labored over the boy's injury and when he was satisfied he stitched the gash extending down from the outer corner of Odd's eye, bandaged it, and wrapped his head with gauze. Finally he gave him a last dose of morphine and left the boy to sleep.
Danny had been sitting outside the surgery since early morning, and when Hosea stepped out of the room Danny stood with a questioning look on his face.
Hosea took a deep breath, he cracked his knuckles. "Hello, Daniel."
"How is he, Mister Grimm?"
"I think he'll be fine. He's lost his eye. It will take him some long time to recover. He'll need visitors. I hope you'll come see him."
"I will. Every day."
"I believe you will."
"Can I go in and sit next to him?"
"Don't touch or otherwise disturb him. Do you understand?"
Danny nodded.
"And if he wakes, or if anything seems strange, come up and fetch me."
"I will."
Hosea turned to leave as Danny stepped into the room, but Hosea paused and turned. "Daniel."
Danny paused in turn. "Yes?"
" Where were you boys when this happened?"
"Up on the Burnt Wood. We spent the day on my trapline."
"Why did you call Odd a chickenshit?"
Danny blushed.
"I already told you it's not your fault, son."
"He told me about learning to fish with Arne and I couldn't help it. I just don't see him out on the big water all by himself."
Hosea considered this for a moment. "So he went bear hunting."
"Mister Grimm, I wish I wouldn't have said it."
"I'm sure. Go on in there, sit next to your friend."
Danny did.
T
wice each day Hosea cleaned the wound and changed the bandages. He administered smaller and smaller doses of morphine until finally none was needed. Danny came every day and sat on the bedside chair. Rebekah brought Odd his meals and watched over him when Danny wasn't there.
wice each day Hosea cleaned the wound and changed the bandages. He administered smaller and smaller doses of morphine until finally none was needed. Danny came every day and sat on the bedside chair. Rebekah brought Odd his meals and watched over him when Danny wasn't there.
After a week Odd was well enough to convalesce up in the flat, so Hosea moved a chair to the front window and piled books around the boy and in this way Odd ushered in spring. Danny still came often and the two boys spent the first days of April playing chess or card games rather than romping through the woods.
On one such day, as the boys sat in the flat putting new backing and line on their fly reels, Hosea joined them.
"I've something to show you, Odd."
Three weeks had passed since the surgery and except for the regular, dull throbbing in his eyeless socket Odd was feeling fine. The boys set their fly reels down and looked at Hosea standing above them. He held a metal box.
"What is it?" Odd asked.
Hosea set the box on the coffee table, knelt on one knee, and opened the box. He withdrew one of a dozen silken handkerchiefs. He peeled the silk back as though it were a banana skin and withdrew from its center a glass eyeball. He offered it to Odd, who took it and held it close to his good eye.
"What is it?" Odd asked again.
"It's a glass eye, son. I have several here. Wanted to see whether any of them might fit."
Odd was transfixed by the eyeball. He held it up to the sunlight in the window and rotated it as though he had in his hand a precious jewel. The sunlight caught the glass and flashed brilliant penumbras on the floor.
"I don't understand," Odd said.
"You put it in place of the eyeball you lost to the bear."
"Will I see from it?"
"No, it's cosmetic. It will look just like a regular eye, but it serves no purposes for sight."
"So he won't have to walk around with a patch over his eye for the rest of his life?" Daniel ventured.
"Precisely," Hosea said. He removed another of the silk handkerchiefs and extracted a second glass eye. "If none of these work, we'll have to order one."
Odd reached into the box himself now, pulled another out, and unwrapped it. He couldn't imagine it in his eye socket. For that matter, he couldn't imagine that he'd lost one of his eyes. The thought quickened his heart and the pulsing behind the bandages intensified.
"We'll have to wait another month or so, until the eye has healed some. But I wanted to show you. What do you think?"
"I don't know what to think."
"It's a good thing, Odd."
Odd said, "What if it shatters? What if someone hits me in the eye? What if I slip out on the boat, hit my eye on the deck?"
"I believe they're quite durable, though I suppose there's always a chance of the eye shattering. Or cracking. In which case we'll replace it."
Odd was now holding the second glass eye up to the light. The quizzical expression on his face suggested he'd heard none of what Hosea said.
"In any case, wearing a glass eye will be better than walking around looking as though your face were half melted away. Hell, it might even help you find a wife someday."
"Hosea?" Odd asked a moment later, as Hosea was wrapping the eyes back in their silk handkerchiefs.
"What is it, lad?"
"Will I still be able to apprentice with Arne Johnson this spring?"
"I reckon you will, yes."
"Because it's time I got started earning my share."
" There will be plenty of time for earning your share," Hosea said. He put the eyeballs back in the box and clasped it shut. "You boys finish with your fly line. I'll talk to Arne Johnson soon."
A
rne Johnson saw no reason Odd shouldn't start learning the ropes, so five weeks after he'd climbed into a bear den Odd straddled the forward thwart of Arne's skiff as they headed out to haul the first set of the season.
rne Johnson saw no reason Odd shouldn't start learning the ropes, so five weeks after he'd climbed into a bear den Odd straddled the forward thwart of Arne's skiff as they headed out to haul the first set of the season.
Arne was a widower, childless, and the least garrulous man in a town full of reticent men. That Odd was in Arne's skiff at all was a testament to the boy's standing among the villagers. From the first days of his life, Odd had been the whole town's ward. All his sweaters were hand-knit by the fishermen's wives; his haircuts given under a bowl by the innkeeper's wife; the men took him hunting and handed down their own sons' outgrown boots and shotguns; Christmas morning always found twenty gifts intended for Odd on the apothecary doorstep. The godly wives took him to church on Sunday mornings, and the schoolteacher stayed after class to help with his lessons.
That brisk April morning in Arne's skiff was just another version of those Christmas gifts and haircuts and Odd was as grateful for this as he'd been for all the kindnesses bestowed on him over the years. As Arne pulled for the open water beyond Gunflint harbor, he said, "You watch what I do. If your hands get cold, keep it to yourself. If you get hungry, eat the sandwich in your pocket. Watch the shore closely, that will tell you where we are. If you fall overboard, God rest your soul."
Odd listened intently, coupling Arne's terse lecture with what Danny's father had told him about the big water. Arne's thirty-second speech was the first of only a few short speeches that season, but what Odd learned that summer would last his lifetime. They rowed an hour offshore to Arne's buoys, where Arne secured his oars and set immediately to hauling the net. Odd knew to sit still at first, to watch, as Arne had put it. Odd likewise knew that as Arne choked the herring through the net it was his job to box them. The fish were cold and slippery and the wind coming up his back might have dissuaded other boys, but Odd relished it from the first moment. The fear Danny had diagnosed that fateful day on the Burnt Wood River never entered his thoughts.
Five hours they hauled, tending fifteen thousand feet of nets at two different sets. They worked in harmony in a way Arne found unbelievable. The boy with the patched eye was as natural under the rolls of the boat as the water itself. When they got to shore that afternoon, after they'd hefted the boxes into Arne's harborside fish house, as Arne gutted and salted the fish and Odd packed them, Arne offered the only praise he ever would. "You've a fisherman's blood," he said.
Odd would have known this without hearing it, but he blushed all the same, the color in his cheeks announcing not only his embarrassment but also his thanks for the chance.
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