The Lighthouse Road Read Free Page B

That taste alone made the whole night worthwhile, he felt sure of that.
       "But we'll take this for good measure," he said aloud, and he dipped the teakettle into the barrel, filling it to the brim.
       He hammered the lid back onto the barrel and carried the whiskey to the fish house.

    H e wasn't expecting to see her inside but was glad when he did. Sitting under the open window, in the guttering candlelight, her hair down the way he liked. There she was. He stood in the dark corner of the fish house looking at her, she looking back. Neither spoke. It occurred to him, as he untied his bootlaces and kicked them off, that the candlelight was doing the same work inside that the lightning had been doing out: throwing just enough light to lead him where he needed to be.
       Before he went to her he stopped at the end of the workbench he used as his kitchen counter and found two clean coffee cups. He poured a finger of hooch into a cup, swallowed it quickly, then poured another finger in each.
       He stopped short of her, stopped short of the light from the candle, stood there with the coffee cups. His very favorite thing was to watch her rise, to watch her long arms and legs and hair simply move. She moved— in the middle of the night, in candlelight— with the almost imperceptible slowness and suppleness of the seiches.
       When she flipped her hair and looked down, he said, "What's this, Rebekah?"
       She glanced up at him, pouted. "Only a fool who didn't care about anything would have gone out on that lake tonight."
       "A fool, you say?"
       "A proper fool. Yes."
       He stepped to her, set the coffee cups on the floor, and lifted her from the chair on which she sat. "I'd never convince you or anyone I wasn't a fool, but I didn't have a choice. I don't make that run and Marcus Aas does, then he wins favor. Aas wins favor and I lose the skiff. I lose the fish house —" his voice trailed off. He thought better of saying, I lose the fish house and we've got nowhere to go.
       She looked up at him for the first time since he'd stepped in from outside. The look that came over her face was as a mother's. She reached up and feathered his damp hair away from his eyes.
       They looked at each other for a long moment before Odd set her down. He bent and picked the whiskey off the floor, handed her one and they stepped to his bunk. They drank their whiskey together, two sips apiece and in harmony. He slid off his soaked pants and hung them over the back of the chair. Did the same with his shirt. He lifted first his left foot to remove his sock, then his right. He lay down. Though he was a short man— only five foot five — he was also long-armed and broad-shouldered, he had a chest like a woodstove, was as hairy as a bear. Swallowing her up was as easy as putting his arms around her, which he did as she lay down beside him, using his bare arm as her pillow.
       He took a deep breath, closed his eyes. It occurred to him that he conducted all the best and easiest hours of his life here in the fish house: his heavy slumber, what few idle afternoons he had whittling and carving, the poker games, the long winter mornings spent mending his gill nets. And now his hours with Rebekah, here under his arms, her impossibly soft skin and the attar of rose in her hair. Their life together went back to the hour of his birth, and he supposed their time together now was something like religion.
       "How long can you stay?" he said.
       "He was soused at four o'clock when the card game ended. He'll sleep until at least nine. I've time."
       Outside he could still hear the wind rocking the trees and the pounding surf out on the point. If there'd been no wind or breakers on the lake, he'd have heard the Burnt Wood River running hard with fresh summer rains.
       "A bigger boat would make life a hell of a lot easier." He reached to the upturned fish box beside his bunk and took his carving from it, held it