Out on the road with her mother, walking, the two of them holding hands, Leni felt like an astronaut moving through an inhospitable white landscape. Her breathing and their footsteps were all she heard. She tried to convince Mama to stop at either the Walker place or Large Marge’s, but Mama wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to admit what had happened.
In town, everything was hunkered down. The boardwalk was a strip of snow-covered ice. Icicles hung from the eaves of the buildings and snow coated every surface. The harbor was full of whitecaps that tossed the fishing boats from side to side, yanked at their lines.
The Kicking Moose was already—or still—open. Light bled through the amber windows. A few vehicles were parked out front—trucks, snow machines—but not many.
Leni elbowed Mama, cocked her head at the VW bus parked near the saloon.
Neither of them moved. “He won’t be glad to see us,” Mama said. An understatement, Leni thought.
“Maybe we should go home,” Mama said, shivering.
Across the street, the door to the General Store opened, and Leni heard the faraway tinkling of the bell.
Tom Walker stepped out of the store, carrying a big box of supplies. He saw them and stopped.
Leni was acutely aware of how she and Mama looked, standing knee- deep in snow, faces pink with cold, tuques white and frozen. No one went walking in weather like this. Mr. Walker put his box of supplies in the back
of his truck, shoved it up against the cab. Large Marge came out of the store behind him. Leni saw the two of them look at each other, frown, and then head toward Leni and her mom.
“Hey, Cora,” Mr. Walker said. “You guys are out on a bad day.”
A shudder of cold made Mama shake; her teeth chattered. “Wolves were at our place last night. I d-don’t know how many. They k-killed all the goats and chickens and ruined the pens and c-coop.”
“Did Ernt kill any of them? Do you need help skinning? The pelts are worth—”
“N-no,” Mama said. “It was dark. I’m just here … to put in an order for more chicks.” She glanced at Large Marge. “Next time you go to Homer, Marge. And for more rice and beans, but … we’re out of money. Maybe I can do laundry. Or darning. I’m good with a needle and thread.”
Leni saw the way Large Marge’s face tightened, heard the curse she muttered beneath her breath. “He left you alone, and wolves attacked your place. You could have been killed.”
“We were fine. We didn’t go out,” Mama said. “Where is he?” Mr. Walker asked quietly.
“W-we don’t know,” Mama lied.
“At the Kicking Moose,” Large Marge said. “There’s the VW.”
“Tom, don’t,” Mom said, but it was too late. Mr. Walker was walking away from them, striding down the quiet street, his footsteps spraying up snow.
The women—and Leni—rushed along behind him, slipping and sliding in their haste.
“Don’t, Tom, really,” Mama said.
He wrenched open the saloon’s door. Leni instantly smelled damp wool and unwashed bodies and wet dog and burnt wood.
There were at least five men in here, not counting the hunched, toothless bartender. It was noisy: hands thumping on whiskey-barrel tables, a battery- operated radio blaring out “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” men talking all at once.
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mad Earl was saying, his eyes glazed. “The first thing they’ll do is take over the banks.”
“And seize our land,” Clyde said, the words slurred.
“They won’t take my g-damn land.” This from her dad. He stood beneath one of the hanging lanterns, swaying unsteadily, his eyes bloodshot. “No one takes what’s mine.”
“Ernt Allbright, you piece of shit,” Mr. Walker hissed.
Dad staggered, turned. His gaze went from Mr. Walker to Mama. “What the hell?”
Mr. Walker stormed forward, knocking chairs aside. Mad Earl scrambled to get out of his way. “A pack of wolves attacked your place last night, Allbright. Wolves,” he said again.
Dad’s gaze went to Mama. “Wolves?”
“You are going to get your family killed,” Mr. Walker said. “Look here—”
“No. You look,” Mr. Walker said. “You aren’t the first cheechako to come up here with no goddamn idea what to do. You aren’t even the stupidest, not by a long shot. But a man who doesn’t take care of his wife…”
“You got no right to say anything about keeping a woman safe, do you, Tom?” Dad said.
Mr. Walker grabbed Dad by the ear and yanked so hard he yelped like a girl. He dragged Dad out of the smelly bar and into the street. “I should kick your ass around the block,” Mr. Walker said in a harsh voice.
“Tom,” Mama pleaded. “Please. Don’t make it worse.”
Mr. Walker stopped. Turned. He saw Mama standing there terrified, nearly in tears, and Leni saw him pull himself from the brink of rage. She’d never seen a man do it before.
He stilled, frowned, then muttered something under his breath and yanked Dad to the bus. Opening the door, he lifted Dad as easily as if he were a kid and shoved him into the passenger seat. “You’re a disgrace.”
He slammed the door shut and then went to Mama. “Will you be okay?” Leni heard him ask.
Mama whispered an answer Leni couldn’t hear, but she thought she heard Mr. Walker whisper, Kill him, and saw Mama shake her head.
Mr. Walker touched her arm, barely, just for a second, but Leni saw.
Mama gave him an unsteady smile and said, “Leni, get in the bus,” without looking away from him.
Leni did as she was told.
Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and started the bus.
All the way home, Leni could see rage building in her father, see it in the way his nostrils flared every now and then, in the way his hands flexed and unflexed, hear it in the words he didn’t say.
He was a man who talked, especially lately, especially in the winter, he always had something to say. Now his lips were pressed tightly together.
It made Leni feel as if she were a coil of rope drawn around a cleat with the wind pulling at it, tugging, the rope creaking in resistance, slipping. If the line wasn’t perfectly tied down, it would all come undone, be torn away, maybe the wind would pull the cleat from its home in fury.
There was still a bright pink mark on his ear, like a burn, where Mr.
Walker had taken hold and hauled Dad outside and humiliated him.
Leni had never seen anyone treat her father that way and she knew there would be hell to pay for it.
The bus jerked to a stop in front of the cabin, skidded sideways slightly in the snow.
Mama turned off the ignition, and the silence expanded, grew heavier without the rattle and rumble of the engine to hide even a layer of its depth.
Leni and Mama got out of the bus fast, left Dad sitting there, alone.
As they neared the cabin, they saw again the destruction the wolves had caused. Snow lay over it all, in heaping handfuls on posts and planks. Chicken wire stuck up in tangled heaps. A door lay half exposed. Here and there, in tree wells mostly, but on wood pieces, too, there was blood turned to pink ice and frozen clumps of gore. A few colorful feathers could be seen.
Mama took Leni by the hand and led her across the yard and into the cabin. She shut the door hard behind them.
“He’s going to hurt you,” Leni said.
“Your dad is a proud man. To be humiliated in that way…”
Seconds later, the door banged open. Dad stood there, his eyes bright with alcohol and rage.
He was across the room in less time than it took Leni to draw a breath. He grabbed Mama by the hair and punched her in the jaw so hard she slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor.
Leni screamed and flew at him, her hands curling into claws. “No, Leni!” Mama cried.
Dad grabbed Leni by the shoulders, shook her hard. Grabbing a handful of her hair, he yanked her across the floor, her feet tripping up on the rug, and shoved her outside into the cold.
He slammed the door shut.
Leni threw herself at the door, battering it with her body until there was no strength left in her. She slumped to her knees beneath the small overhang of the roof.
Inside, she heard a crash, something breaking, and a scream. She wanted to run away, get help, but that would only make everything worse. There was no help for them.
Leni closed her eyes and prayed to the God she had never been taught about.
She heard the door unlock. How long had it been? Leni didn’t know.
Leni stumbled to her feet, frozen, and went into the cabin.
It looked like a war zone. A broken chair, shattered glass across the floor, blood splattered on the sofa.
Mama looked even worse.
For the first time, Leni thought: He could kill her. Kill her.
They had to get away. Now.
* * *
LENI APPROACHED HER MOTHER cautiously, afraid Mama was on the verge of collapse. “Where’s Dad?”
“Passed out. In bed. He wanted … to punish me…” She turned away, ashamed. “You should go to bed.”
Leni went to the hooks by the door, got Mama’s parka and boots. “Here, dress warmly.”
“Why?”
“Just do it.” Leni moved quietly across the cabin, eased through the beaded curtain. Her heartbeat was a hammer hitting her rib cage as she looked around, saw what she’d come for.
Keys. Mama’s purse. Not that there was any money in it.
She grabbed it all and started to leave and then stopped, turned back.
She looked at her dad, sprawled facedown on the bed, naked, his butt covered by a blanket. Burn scars puckered and twisted his shoulders and arms, the skin looked lavender-blue in the shadows. Blood smeared the pillow.
She left him there and went back to the living room, where Mama stood alone, smoking a cigarette, looking like she’d been beaten with a club.
“Come on,” Leni said, taking her hand, giving a gentle, insistent tug. Mama said, “Where are we going?”
Leni opened the door, gave Mama a little shove, then she reached down for one of the bug-out bags that were always by the door, a silent ode to the worst that could happen, a reminder that smart people were prepared.
Hefting it onto her shoulder, Leni leaned into the wind and snow and followed her mother out to the bus. “Get in,” she said gently.
Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and fit the key into the ignition, giving it a turn. As the VW warmed, she said dully, “Where are we going?” Leni tossed the big pack into the back of the bus. “We’re leaving,
Mama.”
“What?”
Leni climbed into the passenger seat. “We’re leaving him before he kills you.”
“Oh. That. No.” Mama shook her head. “He would never do that. He loves me.”
“I think your nose is broken.”
Mama sat there a minute longer, her face downcast. Then, slowly, she put the old VW in gear, and turned toward the driveway. Headlights pointed to the way out.
Mama started to cry in that quiet way of hers, as if she thought Leni couldn’t tell. As they drove into the trees, she kept glancing in the rearview
mirror, wiping her tears away. When they reached the main road, a feral wind clawed at the bus. Mama worked the gas carefully, trying to keep the bus steady on the snow-packed ground.
They passed the Walker gate and kept going.
At the next bend in the road, a gust of wind punched the bus hard enough that they skidded sideways. A broken branch cracked into the windshield, got caught for a second in the wiper, was slammed up and down before it blew away, and revealed a giant bull moose in front of them, crossing the road on a turn.
Leni screamed a warning, but she knew it was too late. They had to either hit the moose or swerve too hard, and hitting an animal of that size would destroy the bus.
Mama turned the steering wheel, eased her foot off the accelerator. The bus, never good in the snow, began a long, slow pirouette.
Leni saw the moose as they glided past him—his huge head inches from her window, his nostrils flaring.
“Hang on,” Mama screamed.
They hit a berm of snow and flipped over; the bus cartwheeled and plummeted off the road, landing in a screech of metal.
Leni saw it in pieces—trees upside down, a snowy hillside, broken branches.
She cracked her head into the window.
When she regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was quiet. Then the pain in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her mother was slumped beside her; both of them were in the passenger seat.
“Leni? Are you okay?” “I … think so.”
She heard a hiss of sound—something gone wrong with the engine—and the whining creak of settling metal.
Mama said, “The bus is lying on its side. I think we’re on solid ground, but there could be farther to fall.”
Another way to die in Alaska. “Will someone find us?” “No one is going to be out in weather like this.”
“Even if they were, they wouldn’t see us.”
Moving cautiously, Leni felt around for the heavy, clanking backpack, found it, and burrowed through it for a headlamp. Fitting it onto her head, she flicked the switch. The glow was too yellow, otherworldly. Mama looked freakish, her bruised face waxlike and melting.
That was when Leni saw the blood in Mama’s lap and her broken arm. A bone stuck out from a tear in her sleeve.
“Mama! Your arm. Your arm! Oh, my God—”
“Take a breath. Look at it, look good. It’s a broken bone. And not my first.”
Leni tried to settle her panic. She took a deep breath, submerged it. “What do we do?”
Mama unzipped the backpack, began pulling out gloves and neoprene face masks with her good hand.
Leni couldn’t look away from the splintered bone, from the blood soaking her mother’s sleeve.
“Okay. First I need you to bind up my arm to stop the bleeding. You’ve learned how to do this. Remember? Rip off the bottom of your shirt.”
“I can’t.”
“Lenora,” Mama said sharply. “Rip your shirt.”
Leni’s hands were shaking as she removed the knife from her belt and used it to start a rip in the fabric. When she had a long ribbon of flannel, she carefully scooted sideways.
“Above the break. Tie it as tightly as you can.”
Leni fit the fabric around Mama’s bicep, heard the groan of pain her mama made when Leni tightened it.
“Are you okay?” “Tighter.”
Leni yanked it as tightly as she could, tied it in a knot.
Mama let out a shaky sigh and climbed back into the driver’s seat. “Here’s what we have to do. I am going to break my window. You are going to climb over me and climb out.”
“B-but—”
“No buts, Leni. I need you to be strong now, okay? You need it. I can’t get out and if we both stay here, we’ll freeze to death. You need to go for
help. I can’t climb out of the bus with this broken arm.” “I can’t do it.”
“You can do this, Leni.” Mama clamped a bloody hand over the makeshift bandage on her arm. “I need you to do it.”
“You’ll freeze while I’m gone,” she said.
“I’m tougher than I look, remember? Thanks to your dad’s Armageddon phobia, we’ve got a bug-out bag. A survival blanket, and food and water.” She gave a wan smile. “I will be fine. You go for help. Okay?”
“Okay.” She tried not to be scared, but her whole body was shaking. She put on her gloves and her neoprene face mask and zipped up her parka.
Mama pulled a life hammer out from under her seat. “The Walker place is closest. It’s probably less than a quarter of a mile from here. Go there. Can you make it?”
“Yeah.”
The bus made a dull, creaking sound, settled a little, moved. “I love you, baby girl.”
Leni tried not to cry.
“Hold your breath. Go up.”
Mama cracked the hammer against the window, hard, fast.
The glass crackled into a webbed pattern, sagged. For a second it held together, and then with a snap! it broke. Snow dumped into the bus, covering them.
The cold was shocking.
Leni lurched forward, climbing over her mother, trying not to hit her arm, hearing her moan in pain, feeling her mother’s good hand come up through the snow to push her.
Leni shimmied through the window.
A branch smacked her in the face. She kept going, crawling on the side of the bus until she reached the hillside, which had been scraped and scarred by the plunging vehicle; black dirt and broken branches and exposed roots.
She launched herself forward, flailed for a higher foothold, climbed up the hillside.
It seemed to take forever. Clawing, clinging, hauling herself upward, breathing hard, sucking in snow. But finally she made it. She threw herself over the edge and landed facedown in the snow, on the road. Gasping, she climbed onto all fours and got to her feet.
Whiteout. Her headlamp threw out a razor-thin glow. Wind tried to shove her off the road as she started her trek. Trees shuddered all around her, bent and cracked. Branches flew past her, scraping the torn ground. One hit her hard in the side, almost knocked her over.
The light was her lifeline out here. Her chest began to ache from the frigid air she was breathing in, a stitch formed in her side. Sweat slid down her back and turned her hands clammy inside her gloves.
She had no idea how long she’d been trudging forward, trying not to stop or cry or scream, when she saw the silver gate up ahead, and the cow skull on it, wearing a bowler of snow.
Leni dragged the gate open, over the bumpy ground, bulldozing snow aside.
She wanted to run forward, scream Help! but she knew better. Running could be mistake number two. Instead, she trudged through the knee-high snow. The forest on her right blocked some of the wind.
It took at least fifteen minutes to get to the Walker house. As she neared it, saw light in the windows, she felt the sting of tears—tears that froze in the corners of her eyes, hurting, blurring her vision.
All at once the wind died; the world drew in a quiet breath, leaving a near-perfect silence, broken only by her ragged breathing and the distant purr of the waves on a frozen shore.
She stumbled past the snow-covered heaps of junk and old cars and past the beehives. At her approach, cows began lowing, stomping their hooves as they herded together in case she was a predator. Goats bleated.
Leni went up the ice-slick steps and pounded on the front door.
Mr. Walker answered quickly, opened the door. When he saw Leni, his face changed. “Jesus.” He pulled her into the house, through the arctic entry lined with coats and hats and boots, and to the woodstove.
Her teeth were chattering so hard she was afraid she’d bite off her tongue if she tried to talk, but she had to.
“W-w-we cr-crashed th-the b-b-bus. M-Mama’s stuck.” “Where?”
She couldn’t stop her tears now, or her shaking. “By the b-bend in the road before Large Marge’s p-place.”
Mr. Walker nodded. “Okay.” He left her standing there, shaking and shivering just long enough for him to return in snow gear, carrying a big mesh bag slung over one shoulder.
He went to the ham radio and found an open frequency. Staticky sound crackled through, then a high-pitched squeal. “Large Marge,” he said into a handheld mouthpiece. “Tom Walker here. Car crash near my place on the main road. Need help. On my way. Over.” He lifted his thumb from the button. Static again. Then he repeated the message and hung up the mouthpiece. “Let’s go.”
Could Dad hear that? Was he listening or still passed out?
Leni glanced worriedly outside, half expecting him to materialize.
Mr. Walker grabbed a striped red and yellow and white wool blanket from the back of the sofa and wrapped it around Leni.
“Her arm is broken. She’s bleeding.”
Mr. Walker nodded. Taking Leni’s gloved hand in his own, he pulled her out of the warm house and back out into the frigid cold.
In the garage, his big truck started right up. The heat came on, blanketing the cab, making Leni shiver harder. She couldn’t stop shaking as they drove down the driveway and turned out onto the main road, where wind beat at the windshield and whistled through every crevice in the metal frame.
Tom eased up on the gas; the truck slowed, grumbled, and whined. “There!” she said, pointing to where they’d gone off the road. As Mr.
Walker pulled over to the side, headlights appeared in front of them.
Leni recognized Large Marge’s truck. “You stay in the truck,” Mr. Walker said. “No!”
“Stay here.” He grabbed his mesh bag and left the truck, slamming the door behind him.
In the glow of headlights, Leni saw Mr. Walker meet Large Marge in the middle of the road. He dropped his bag, took out some coiled-up rope.
Leni pressed herself to the window, her breath clouding the view.
Impatiently she wiped it away.
Mr. Walker tied one end of the rope around a tree and the other end around his own waist in an old-school belay.
With a wave to Large Marge, he lowered himself over the embankment and disappeared.
Leni wrenched the door open and fought the wind, blinded by snow, to cross the road.
Large Marge stood at the edge of the embankment.
Leni peered over the edge, saw broken trees and the bus’s shadowy bulk. She shined her flashlight down but it wasn’t enough light. She heard metal creaking, a thump, and a woman’s scream.
And then … Mr. Walker reappeared in the feeble beam of light, with Mama bound to his side, tied to him.
Large Marge grabbed the rope in her gloved hands, pulled them up, hand over hand, until Mr. Walker stumbled back up onto the road, Mama slumped at his side, unconscious, held up by Mr. Walker’s grip. “She’s in bad shape,” Mr. Walker yelled into the wind. “I’ll take her by boat to the hospital in Homer.”
“What about me?” Leni screamed. They seemed to have forgotten she was there.
Mr. Walker gave Leni one of those you-poor-kid looks Leni knew so well. “You come with me.”
* * * THE SMALL HOSPITAL waiting room was quiet.
Tom Walker sat beside Leni, his parka puffed up in his lap. First they had driven to Walker Cove, where Mr. Walker had carried Mama down to the dock and placed her gently on the bench seat in his aluminum boat. They had sped around the craggy shoreline to Homer.
At the hospital, Mr. Walker carried Mama up to the front desk. Leni ran along beside, touching Mama’s ankle, her wrist, whatever she could reach.
A Native woman with two long braids sat at the desk, clacking away on a typewriter.
Within moments, a pair of nurses came to take Mama away. “Now what?” Leni asked.
“Now we wait.”
They sat there, not talking; each breath Leni took felt difficult, as if her lungs had a mind of their own and might stop working. There was so much to be afraid of: Mama’s injury, losing Mama, Dad coming in (Don’t think about that, how mad he will be … what he’ll do when he realizes they were leaving), and the future. How would they leave now?
“Can I get you something to drink?”
Leni was so deep in the pit of her fear that it took her a second to realize Mr. Walker was talking to her.
She looked up, bleary-eyed. “Will it help?”
“Nope.” He reached over for her hand, held it. She was surprised enough by the unexpected contact that she almost pulled away, but it felt nice, too, so she held his hand in return. She couldn’t help wondering how different life would be with Tom Walker as her dad.
“How’s Matthew?” she asked.
“He’s getting better, Leni. Genny’s brother is going to teach him to fly. Matthew is seeing a therapist. He loves your letters. Thanks for keeping in touch with him.”
She loved his letters, too. Sometimes it felt like hearing from Matthew was the best part of her life. “I miss him.”
“Yeah. Me, too.” “Will he come back?”
“I don’t know. There’s so much up there. Kids his age, movie theaters, sports teams. And I know Mattie, once he takes control of an airplane for the first time, he will fall in love. He’s a kid who loves adventure.”
“He told me he wanted to be a pilot.”
“Yeah. I wish I’d listened to him a little better,” Mr. Walker said with a sigh. “I just want him to be happy.”
A doctor walked into the waiting room, approached them. He was a heavyset man with a barrel chest that strained to be freed from the confines of his blue scrubs. He had the rugged, hard-drinking look of a lot of the men who lived in the bush, but his hair was closely cropped and, except for a
bushy gray mustache, he was clean-shaven. “I’m Dr. Irving. You must be Leni,” he said, pulling off his surgical cap.
Leni nodded, got to her feet. “How is she?”
“She’s going to be fine. Her arm is set in a cast now, so she’ll need to slow down for six weeks or so, but there should be no lasting damage.” He looked at Leni. “You saved her, young lady. She wanted to make sure I told you that.”
“Can we see her?” Leni asked. “Of course. Follow me.”
Leni and Mr. Walker followed Dr. Irving down the white hallway and into a room with a sign that read RECOVERY on the door. He pushed open the door.
Mama was in a fabric-curtained cubicle. She was sitting upright in a narrow bed, wearing a hospital gown; a warming blanket lay across her lap. Her left arm was bent at a ninety-degree angle and was encased in a cast of white plaster. Something wasn’t quite right with her nose and both eyes showed signs of bruising.
“Leni,” she said, her head lolling a little to the right on the stack of pillows behind her. She had the lazy, unfocused look of someone who’d been drugged. “I told you I was tough,” she said. Her voice was a little misshapen. “Ah, baby girl, don’t cry.”
Leni couldn’t help herself. Seeing her mother like this, living through the crash, all she could think about was how fragile Mama was and how easily she could be lost. It made her think sharply, keenly, of Matthew and how quickly and unexpectedly death could sweep in.
She heard the doctor say goodbye and leave the room.
Mr. Walker went to Mama’s bedside. “You were leaving him, weren’t you? What other reason would there be to be out in this weather?”
“No.” Mama shook her head.
“I could help you,” he said. “We could help you. All of us. Large Marge used to be a prosecutor. I could call the police, tell them he hurt you. He does, doesn’t he? You didn’t break your nose in the accident, did you?”
“The police can’t help,” Mama said. “I know the system. My dad’s a lawyer.”
“They’d put him in jail.”
“For what? A day? Two? He’d come back for me. Or you. Or Leni. Do you think I could live with putting other people at risk? And … well…”
Leni heard Mama’s unspoken words: I love him.
Mr. Walker stared down at Mama, who was so bruised and bandaged she barely looked like herself. “All you have to do is ask for help,” he said quietly. “I want to help you, Cora. Surely you know I—”
“You don’t know me, Tom. If you did…”
Leni saw tears gather in her mother’s eyes. “There’s something wrong with me,” she said slowly. “Sometimes it feels like a strength and sometimes like a weakness, but I don’t know how to stop loving him.”
“Cora!” Leni heard her father’s voice and saw how Mama shrank into the pillows behind her.
Mr. Walker lurched away from her bedside.
Dad ignored Mr. Walker completely, shoved past him. “Oh, my God, Cora? Are you okay?”
Mama seemed to melt in front of him. “We crashed the bus.”
“What were you doing out in that weather?” he said, but he knew. Leni saw it in his eyes. There was a deep scratch on his cheek.
Mr. Walker backed toward the door, a big man trying to disappear. He gave Leni a sad, knowing look and left the room, closing the door quietly behind him.
“We needed food,” Mama said. “I wanted to make you a special d- dinner.”
Dad laid his work-callused hand against her bruised, swollen cheek, as if his touch could heal her. “Forgive me, baby. I’ll kill myself if you don’t.”
“Don’t say that,” Mama said. “Don’t ever say that. You know I love you.
Only you.”
“Forgive me,” he said. He turned. “And you, too, Red. Forgive a stupid man who can’t get his shit together sometimes, but who loves you. And who will do better.”
“I love you,” Mama said, and she was crying now, too, and suddenly Leni understood the reality of her world, the truth that Alaska, in all its beautiful harshness, had revealed. They were trapped, by environment and
finances, but mostly by the sick, twisted love that bound her parents together.
Mama would never leave Dad. It didn’t matter that she’d gone so far as to take a backpack and run to the bus and drive away. She would come back, always, because she loved him. Or she needed him. Or she was afraid of him. Who knew, really?
Leni couldn’t begin to understand the hows and whys of her parents’ love. She was old enough to see the turbulent surface, but too young to know what lay beneath.
Mama could never leave Dad, and Leni would never leave Mama. And Dad could never let them go. In this toxic knot that was their family, there was no escape for any of them.
* * *
THAT NIGHT, they took Mama home from the hospital.
Dad held Mama as if she were made of glass. So careful, so concerned for her well-being. It filled Leni with an impotent rage.
And then she’d get a glimpse of him with tears in his eyes and the rage would turn soft and slide into something like forgiveness. She didn’t know how to corral or change either of these emotions; her love for him was all tangled up in hate. Right now she felt both emotions crowding in on her, each jostling for the lead.
He got Mama settled in bed and immediately went out to chop wood. There was never enough on the pile and Leni knew that physical exertion helped him somehow. Leni sat by her mother’s bedside for as long as she could, holding her mother’s cold hand. She had so many questions she wanted to ask, but she knew the ugly words would only make her mother cry, so Leni said nothing.
The next morning, Leni was climbing down the ladder when she heard Mama crying.
Leni went into Mama’s bedroom and found her sitting up in bed (just a mattress on the floor), leaning back against the skinned log wall, her face swollen, both eyes black and blue, her nose just slightly to the left of where it belonged.
“Don’t cry,” Leni said.
“You must think the worst of me,” Mama said, gingerly touching the split in her lip. “I baited him, didn’t I? Said the wrong thing. I must have?”
Leni didn’t know what to say to that. Did Mama mean that it was her fault, that if Mama was quieter or more supportive or more agreeable, Dad wouldn’t explode? It didn’t seem true to Leni, not at all. Sometimes he snapped and sometimes he didn’t, that was all there was. Mama taking the blame seemed wrong. Dangerous, even.
“I love him,” Mama said, staring down at her cast-encased arm. “I don’t know how to stop. But I have you to think about, too. Oh, my God … I don’t know why I’m like this. Why I let him treat me this way. I just can’t forget who he was before the war. I keep thinking he’ll come back, the man I married.”
“You won’t ever leave him,” Leni said quietly. She tried not to make it sound like an indictment.
“Would you really want that? I thought you loved Alaska,” Mama said. “I love you more. And … I’m afraid,” Leni said.
“This time was bad, I’ll admit, but it scared him. Really. It won’t happen again. He’s promised me.”
Leni sighed. How was Mama’s unshakable belief in Dad any different than his fear of Armageddon? Did adults just look at the world and see what they wanted to see, think what they wanted to think? Did evidence and experience mean nothing?
Mama managed a smile. “You want to play crazy eights?”
So that was how they would do it, merge back into the driving lane after a blown tire. They would say ordinary things and pretend none of it had happened. Until the next time.
Leni nodded. She retrieved the cards from the rosewood box that held her mother’s favorite things and sat down on the floor beside the mattress.
“I’m so lucky to have you, Leni,” Mama said, trying to organize her cards with one hand.
“We’re a team,” Leni said. “Peas in a pod.”
“Two of a kind.”
Words they said all the time to each other; words that felt a little hollow now. Maybe even sad.
They were halfway through the first game when Leni heard a vehicle drive up. She tossed the cards on the bed and ran to the window. “It’s Large Marge,” she yelled back to Mama. “And Mr. Walker.”
“Shit,” Mama said. “Help me get dressed.”
Leni ran back to Mama’s bedroom and helped her take off her flannel pajamas and get into a pair of faded jeans and an oversized hooded sweatshirt with sleeves big enough to accommodate the cast. Leni brushed Mama’s hair and then helped her out to the living room, got her situated on the ragged sofa.
The cabin door opened. Snow fluttered inside on a wave of icy air, brushed across the plywood floor.
Large Marge looked like a grizzly in her huge fur parka and mukluks, with a wolverine hat that looked to have been handmade. Earrings made of antler bone hung from her sagging earlobes. She stomped the snow from her boots and started to say something. Then she saw Mama’s bruised face and muttered, “Son of a freaking bitch. I should kick his beef-jerky ass.”
Mr. Walker came in to stand behind her.
“Hey,” Mama said, not quite making eye contact with him. She didn’t stand; maybe she wasn’t strong enough. “Would you like some—”
Dad pushed his way in, slammed the door shut behind him. “I’ll get ’em coffee, Cora. You stay put.”
The tension between the adults was unbearable. What was happening here? Something, that was for sure.
Large Marge took Mr. Walker by the arm—a firm, fish-landing grip— and led him to a chair by the woodstove. “Sit down,” she said, shoving him into the chair when he didn’t move fast enough.
Leni grabbed a stool from beside the card table and dragged it into the living room for Large Marge.
“That itty-bitty thing?” Large Marge asked. “My ass is going to look like a mushroom on a toothpick.” Still, she sat down. Planting her fleshy hands on her hips, she looked at Mama.
“It’s worse than it looks,” Mama said in an uneven voice. “We had a car crash, you know.”
“Yeah. I know,” Large Marge said.
Dad came into the living room, carrying two blue-speckled cups full of coffee. Steam rose up from them, scented the air. He handed Tom and Large Marge each a cup.
“So,” he said uneasily. “We haven’t had winter guests in a while.” “Sit down, Ernt,” Large Marge said.
“I don’t—”
“Sit down or I’ll knock you down,” Large Marge said. Mama gasped.
Dad sat down on the sofa beside Mama. “That’s not really the way to talk to a man in his own home.”
“You don’t want to get me started on what a real man is, Ernt Allbright. I’m holding on to my temper, but it could run away with me. And you do not want to see a big woman come at you. Trust me. So shut your trap and listen.” She glanced at Mama. “Both of you.”
Leni felt the air leave the room. A chilling, weighted silence came in, pressed down on them.
Large Marge looked at Mama. “I know you know I’m from D.C. and that I used to be a lawyer. Big-city prosecutor. Wore designer suits and high heels. The whole shebang. I loved it. And I loved my sister, who married the man of her dreams. Only he turned out to have a few problems. A few quirks. Turned out he drank too much and liked to use my baby sis as a punching bag. I tried everything to get her to leave him, but she refused. Maybe she was scared, maybe she loved him, maybe she was as sick and broken as he was. I don’t know. I know that when I called the police it was worse for her and she begged me not to do it again. I backed off. Biggest mistake of my life. He went after her with a hammer.” Large Marge flinched. “We had to have a closed-casket funeral. That was what he’d done to her. He claimed he’d taken the hammer from her and protected himself. The law isn’t kind to battered women. He’s still out there. Free. I came up here to get away from all that.” She looked at Ernt. “And here you are.”
Dad started to rise.
“I’d sit, if I were you,” Mr. Walker said.
Dad slowly sat back down. Anxiety shone in his eyes, showed in the hands he flexed and unflexed. His booted foot tapped nervously on the floor. They had no idea what this little meeting would cost Mama. As soon as they left, he’d explode.
“You probably mean well,” Leni said. “But—”
“No,” Mr. Walker said in a kind voice. “This isn’t for you to solve, Leni.
You’re a kid. Just listen.”
“Tommy and I have talked about this,” Large Marge said. “Your situation here. We have a couple of solutions, but really, Ernt, our favorite one is we take you out and kill you.”
Dad laughed once, then went silent. His eyes widened when he realized they weren’t joking.
“That’s my choice, actually,” Mr. Walker said. “Large Marge has a different plan.”
“Ernt, you’re going to pack your shit up and go to the slope,” Large Marge said. “The pipeline is hiring men like you—it’s a Sodom and Gomorrah up there—and they need mechanics. You’ll make a pile of money, which you need, and you’ll be gone until spring.”
“I can’t leave my family alone until spring,” Dad said. “How thoughtful you are,” Mr. Walker muttered. “You think I’ll just leave her to you?” Dad said.
“Enough, boys,” Large Marge said. “You can clank antlers later. For now, Ernt is leaving and I’m moving in. I’ll stay with your girls for the winter, Ernt. I’ll keep them safe from everything and everyone. You can come back in the spring. By then, maybe you’ll know what you’ve got and treat your wife as she deserves.”
“You can’t make me go,” Dad said.
“That’s not the A answer,” Large Marge said. “Look, Ernt. Alaska brings out the best and the worst in a man. Maybe if you’d stayed Outside you never would have become who you are now. I know about ’Nam, and it breaks my heart what you boys went through. But you can’t handle the dark, can you? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Most folks can’t. Accept it and do what’s best for your family. You love Cora and Leni, don’t you?”
Dad’s expression changed as he looked at Mama. Everything about him softened; for an instant, Leni saw her dad, the real him, the man he would have been if the war hadn’t ruined him. The man from Before. “I do,” he said.
“Perfect. You love them enough to leave and provide for them,” she said. “Go pack your shit and hit the road. We’ll see you again at breakup.”
