Seventeen-year-old Leni drove the snow machine with confidence in the falling snow. She was all alone in the vastness of winter. Following the glow of her headlights in the predawn dark, she turned onto the old mine road. Within a mile or so the road became a trail that twisted and turned and rose and fell. The plastic sled behind her thumped on the snow, empty now, but she hoped that soon it would hold her latest kill. If there was one thing her dad had been right about, it was this: Leni had learned to hunt.
She hurtled over embankments and around trees and across frozen rivers, airborne on the snow machine sometimes, skidding out of control, sometimes shrieking in joy or fear or a combination of the two. She was completely in her element out here.
As the elevation increased, the trees became sparser, scrawnier. She began to see cliffs and snow-covered rock outcroppings.
She kept going: up, down, around, bursting through banks of snow, careening around fallen logs. It took so much concentration, she couldn’t think or feel anything else.
On a hill, the snow machine slid left, lost traction. She eased back on the gas, slowed. Stopped.
Breathing hard through the slits in her neoprene face mask, Leni looked around. Sharp white mountain peaks, blue-white glaciers, black shadows.
She dismounted, shivering. Bracing against the wind, she untied her pack and put on snowshoes, then pushed the snow machine into the limited protection afforded by a large tree and tarped it. This was as far as the vehicle could take her.
The sky overhead was lightening by degrees. Daylight expanded with each breath.
The trail turned upward, narrowed. She saw her first clot of frozen sheep scat within half a mile and followed the hoofprints higher uphill.
She brought out her binoculars and scanned the white landscape around her.
There. A cream-colored Dall sheep with huge curving horns, walking along a high ledge, its hooves dainty on the rough, snowy terrain.
She moved carefully, made her way along the narrow ridge, and hiked up into the trees. There, she found tracks again and followed them to a frozen river.
Fresh scat.
The sheep had crossed the river here, crashing through the ice, splashing through the river. Big chunks of ice poked up, bobbed, held in place by the solid ice around them.
An old tree lay across the ice, its frozen limbs splayed out, water stirring in patches alongside.
Snow swirled across the ice, collecting on one side of the log, fanning away in tiny whirlwinds on the other side. Here and there, the wind had brushed all of the snow away, leaving glistening, cracked patches of silver- blue ice. She knew it was unsafe to cross here, but anywhere else could cost her hours. And who knew if there would even be a good crossing point? She hadn’t come all this way to quit.
Leni tightened her pack and tied down her hunting rifle, took off her snowshoes and tied them to her pack, too.
Staring down at the log, which was about two feet in diameter, its bark peeling away, frozen, covered with snow and ice, she took a deep breath and climbed onto it on all fours.
The world became as narrow as the log, as wide as the river. Rough icy bark bit into her knees. The cracking of the ice was like gunfire exploding around her.
She stared down the barrel of the log.
There. The other shore. That was all she would think about. Not the creaking ice or the frigid water running beneath. Certainly not the idea of
falling through.
She crawled forward inch by inch, wind whipping across her, snow peppering her.
The ice cracked. Hard. Loud. The log crashed downward, breaking through the ice in front of her. Water splashed up, pooled on the ice, caught what little light there was.
The log made a deep snapping sound and thunked down deeper, hit something.
Leni lurched to her feet, found her balance, held her arms out. The log seemed to be breathing beneath her.
The ice cracked again. A roar of sound this time.
There were maybe seven feet between her and the shore. She thought of Matthew’s mother, whose body had been found miles from where she had gone through the ice, and ravaged by animals. You didn’t want to fall through the ice. There was no telling where your body would be found; water ran everywhere in Alaska, revealed things that should stay hidden.
She inched forward. When she neared the opposite shore, she launched herself upward, arms and legs flailing as if she could will herself to take flight, and crashed into the snow-covered rocks on the other side.
Blood.
She tasted it, warm and metallic in her mouth, felt it sliding down one ice-cold cheek.
Suddenly she was shivering, aware of the dampness of her clothes, whether from sweat or water droplets on her wrists or in her boots, she didn’t know. Her gloves were wet, as were her boots, but both were waterproof.
She crawled to her feet and assessed the damage. She had a superficial forehead laceration and she’d bitten her tongue. The cuffs of her parka sleeves were wet and she thought some water had splashed down her neck. Nothing bad.
Resettling her pack and repositioning her rifle, she went off again, began hiking away from the river, while keeping it in view. She followed the tracks and scat, up and up, across jutting shelves of rock. This high up, the
world was dead quiet. Everything was blurred by the falling snow and her breath.
Then: a sound. The crack of a branch, a snap of hooves sliding on rock. She smelled the musky scent of her prey. She eased between two trees, lifted her weapon.
She peered through the sight, found the male sheep, took aim. She breathed evenly.
Waited.
Then pulled the trigger.
The sheep didn’t make a sound. A perfect shot, right on target. No suffering. The sheep crashed to its knees, crumpled, slid down the rock face, and came to a stop at a snowy ledge.
She trudged through the snow toward her kill. She wanted to field-dress the animal and get the meat in her pack as quickly as possible. This was technically an illegal kill—the hunting season for sheep was in the fall—but an empty freezer was an empty freezer. She guessed that the animal would dress out at about one hundred pounds. It would be a long trek back to the snow machine, carrying all that weight.
* * *
LENI MANEUVERED THE SNOW MACHINE down the long white driveway toward the cabin. She kept a light hand on the throttle, moved slowly, aware of every dip and turn.
In the past four years, she had grown like everything grew in Alaska: wild. Her hair hung almost to her waist (she never saw any reason to cut it) and had turned a deep mahogany red. Her pudgy, little-girl face had thinned, her freckles had faded away, left her with a milky complexion that accentuated the aqua of her eyes.
Next month, her father would return to the cabin. For the past few years, Dad had followed the rules laid down by Tom Walker and Large Marge. Grudgingly, and with a bad attitude, he’d done as they “recommended.” After Thanksgiving every year (usually just as his nightmares were starting to increase and when he started muttering to himself and picking fights), he left for the North Slope to work on the pipeline. He made good money,
which he sent home every week. Money they’d used to better their life up here. They now had goats and chickens, and an aluminum skiff for fishing, and a garden that thrived inside a domed greenhouse. The VW had been traded in for a reasonably good truck. An old hermit lived in the bus now, up in the woods around McCarthy.
Dad was still a hard man to live with, volatile and moody. He hated Mr. Walker with a dangerous intensity, and the smallest disappointment (or whiskey and Mad Earl) could still set him off, but he wasn’t stupid. He knew Tom Walker and Large Marge were watching him closely.
Mama still said, He’s better, don’t you think? and Leni sometimes believed it. Or maybe they’d adapted to their environment, like the ptarmigans who turned white in the winter.
In the darkening month before he left for the pipeline, and on the winter weekends when he came home to visit, they studied Dad’s moods like scientists, noting the tiniest twitch of an eye that meant his anxiety was rising. Leni learned how to defuse her father’s temper when she could and get out of the way when she couldn’t. Her interference—she had learned the hard way—only made things worse for Mama.
Leni pulled into the white yard, noticed Tom Walker’s big truck parked alongside Large Marge’s International Harvester.
Parking between the chicken coop and the cabin, Leni stepped off the snow machine, her booted foot sinking into the crusty, dirty snow. Down here, the weather was changing fast: warming. It was late March. Soon the icicles would start to drip water from the eaves in a constant patter, and snowmelt in the higher elevations would run downhill and turn their yard to mud.
She untied the field-dressed carcass from the red plastic sled that the snow machine towed. Hefting the bloody, white-bagged meat over her shoulder, she trudged past the animals—clucking, bleating at her arrival— and went up the now-solid stairs and into the cabin.
Warmth and light immediately enfolded her. Her breath, which she’d seen only seconds before, disappeared. She heard the hum of the generator, which powered the lights. The little black woodstove—the one that had always been here—pumped out heat.
Music blared from a big portable radio on the new dining room table. Some disco song by the Bee Gees was cranked up. The cabin smelled of baking bread and roasting meat.
You could always tell when Dad was gone. Everything was easier and more relaxed in his absence.
Large Marge and Mr. Walker sat at the big rectangular dining table Dad had made last summer, playing cards.
“Hey, Leni. Make sure they’re not cheating,” Mama yelled from the kitchen alcove, which had been redesigned piecemeal over the years—a propane oven had been hauled in, as well as a refrigerator. Mr. Walker had tiled the counter and put in a better dry sink. There was still no running water and no bathroom in the cabin. Large Marge had built a rack for the dishes they bought when they went to the Salvation Army in Homer.
“Oh, they’re cheating,” Leni said, smiling.
“Not me,” Large Marge said, popping a chunk of reindeer sausage in her mouth. “I don’t need to cheat to beat these two. Come on over, Leni. Give me a run for my money.”
Chuckling, Mr. Walker got up, his chair screeching across the plank floor. “Looks like someone bagged a sheep.” He pulled a big white plastic sheet out from underneath the sink and spread it out on the floor.
Leni thumped her load down onto the plastic and knelt beside it. “I did,” she said. “Up by Porter Ridge.” She opened the bag and pulled out the field-dressed carcass.
Mr. Walker sharpened an ulu, handed it to her.
Leni set about her task of cutting the haunch into steaks and roasts and tearing away the silvery skeins from the meat. Once it had seemed weird to butcher meat in the house, on a sheet of plastic. No more. This was life in the winter months.
Mama came out of the kitchen, smiling. In the winter, it seemed, she was always smiling. She had bloomed here in Alaska, just as Leni had. Ironically, they both felt safest in the winters, when the world was at its smallest and most dangerous. With Dad gone, they could breathe easily. They were the same height now, she and Leni. Their protein-heavy diet had made them both as lean and lithe as ballerinas.
Mama took her place at the table and said, “I’m shooting the moon this time. Just letting you get your strategy set.”
“All the way?” Mr. Walker said. “Or just most of the way, like usual?” Mama laughed. “You’ll eat those words, Tom.” She started dealing.
Leni did some pretending in the winter, just as she did in the summer. Like now, she pretended not to notice how Mama and Mr. Walker looked at each other, how careful they were never to actually touch each other. How Mama sometimes sighed when she mentioned his name.
Some things were dangerous; they all knew that.
Leni bent to her task. She was concentrating so keenly on making her cuts that it was a moment before she noticed the sound of an engine. Then she saw a flash of headlights come through the window, illuminating the cabin in a staccato burst.
Moments later, the cabin door opened.
Dad walked in. He wore a faded, frayed trucker’s hat, pulled low on his brow, his long beard and mustache untended. After months on the pipeline, he had the sinewy, hard look of a man who drank too much and ate too little. The harsh Alaska weather had given his skin a lined, leathery look.
Mama shot to her feet, looking instantly anxious. “Ernt! You’re home early! You should have told me you were coming.”
“Yeah,” he said, looking at Mr. Walker. “I can see why you’d want to know.”
“It’s just a hand of cards with neighbors,” Mr. Walker said, pushing to his feet. “But we’ll leave you to your reunion.” He walked past Dad (who didn’t take a step backward, forced Mr. Walker to change course), took his parka from the hook by the door, and put it on. “Thanks, gals.”
When he was gone, Mama stared at Dad, her face pale, her mouth parted slightly. She had a breathless, worried look about her.
Large Marge stood up. “I can’t get my stuff together quick enough, so I’ll just stay tonight, if you don’t mind. I’m sure you don’t.”
Dad didn’t spare Large Marge a glance. He had eyes only for Mama. “Far be it for me to tell a fat woman what to do.”
Large Marge laughed and walked away from the dining table. She plopped onto the sofa Dad had bought from a hotel going out of business in
Anchorage, put her slippered feet up on the new coffee table.
Mama went to Dad, put her arms around him, pulled him close. “Hey, you,” she whispered, kissing his throat. “I missed you.”
“They fired me. Sons of bitches.”
“Oh, no,” Mama said. “What happened? Why?”
“A lying son of a bitch said I was drinking on the job. And my boss is a prick. It wasn’t my fault.”
“Poor Ernt,” Mama said. “You never get a break.”
He touched Mama’s face, tilted her chin up, kissed her hard. “God, I missed you,” he said against her lips. She moaned at his touch, molded her body to his.
They drifted toward the bedroom, pushed through the clacking beads, apparently unaware that anyone else was in the cabin. Leni heard them fall on the bed with a thump, heard their breathing accelerate.
Leni sat back on her heels. Good God. She would never understand her parents’ relationship. It shamed Leni; that unshakable love both she and Mama had for Dad gave her a bad, heartsick feeling. There was something wrong with them; she knew it. Saw it in the way Large Marge sometimes looked at Mama.
“It ain’t normal, kid,” Large Marge said. “What is?”
“Who the hell knows? Crazy Pete is the happiest married person I know.”
“Well, Matilda’s no ordinary goose. You hungry?”
Large Marge patted her big belly. “You bet. Your mama’s stew is my favorite.”
“I’ll get us some. God knows they won’t be out of the bedroom for a while.” Leni wrapped up the meat she’d butchered, then washed her hands with water from the bucket by the sink. In the kitchen, she cranked up the radio as loud as it would go, but it wasn’t enough to drown out the reunion in the bedroom.
* * *
BREAKUP IN ALASKA. The season of melting, movement, noise, when the sunlight tenatively came back, shone down on dirty, patchy snow. The world shifted, shrugging off the cold, making sounds like great gears turning. Blocks of ice as big as houses broke free, floated downstream, hitting anything in their way. Trees groaned and fell over as the wet, unstable ground moved beneath them. Snow turned to slush and then to water that collected in every hollow and indentation in the land.
Things lost in the snow were found again: a hat taken by the wind, a coil of rope; beer cans that had been tossed into snowbanks floated to the muddy surface of the road. Black spruce needles lay in murky puddles, branches broken by storms floated in the water that ran downhill from every corner of their land. The goats stood knee-deep in a sucking muck. No amount of hay could soak it up.
Water filled tree wells and ran along roadsides and pooled everywhere, reminding everyone that this part of Alaska was technically a rain forest. You could stand anywhere and hear ice cracking up and water sluicing from tree limbs and eaves, along the sides of the road, running in rivulets along every indentation in the oversaturated ground.
The animals came out of hiding. Moose ambled through town. No one ever took a turn too quickly. Sea ducks returned in squawking flocks and settled on waves in the bay. Bears came out of their dens and lumbered down hillsides looking for food. Nature was spring-cleaning, scrubbing away the ice and cold and frost, clearing the windows to let in the light.
On this beautiful blue evening, beneath a cerulean sky, Leni stepped into her rubber Xtratuf boots and went outside to feed the animals. They had seven goats now and thirteen chickens and four ducks. Slogging through ankle-deep mud, along watery tire grooves, she heard voices. She turned toward the sound, toward the cove that was their family’s link to the outside world. Although they had spent years here, the property remained stubbornly wild. Even in her own backyard Leni had to be careful, but on days like this, when the tide was in and water lapped up on the shell-strewn shore, it still took her breath away.
Now she saw canoes down on the water, a flotilla of brightly colored boats gliding past.
Tourists. Probably unaware of how fast things could change in Alaska. The water beneath them was calm, but the small bay filled and emptied twice a day in fast, rushing tides that could strand or drown the unwary before they recognized the danger.
Mama came up beside Leni. She smelled the familiar combination of cigarette smoke, rose-hip soap, and lavender hand cream that would always remind her of her mother. Mama looped one arm over Leni’s shoulder, gave her a playful hip bump.
They watched the tourists glide into the cove, heard their laughter echo across the water. Leni wondered what their lives were like, those Outside kids, who came up here for a vacation and backpacked up mountainsides and dreamed of living “off the land,” and then went back to their suburban homes and their changing lives.
Behind them, the red truck rumbled to life. “It’s time to go, girls,” Dad yelled.
Mama took Leni’s hand. They began walking toward Dad.
“We shouldn’t go to the meeting,” Leni said when they reached him.
Dad looked at her. In their years in Alaska, he had aged, turned thin and wiry. Fine lines bracketed his eyes, creased his sunken cheeks. “Why?”
“It will upset you.”
“You think I’d run from a Walker? You think I’m a coward?” “Dad—”
“This is our community, too. No one loves Kaneq more than I do. If Walker wants to act like a big shot and call a meeting, we’re going. Get in the truck.”
They crammed into the old truck.
Kaneq was a different town than it had been when they moved here, and her father hated each and every change. He hated that there was now a foot ferry that brought tourists from Homer. He hated that you had to slow down for them because they walked in the middle of the road and wandered around googly-eyed, pointing to every eagle and hawk and seal. He hated that the new fishing-charter business in town was thriving and sometimes there wasn’t an empty seat at the diner. He hated people who came to visit
—lookie-loos, he called them—but even more, he hated the outsiders
who’d moved in, building houses near town, taming their lots with fences and building garages.
On this warm evening, a few hardy tourists moved down Main Street, taking pictures and talking loudly enough to startle the dogs tied up along the roadside. They gathered outside the brand-new Snackle Shop (where you could buy snacks and fishing tackle).
A sign on the Kicking Moose Saloon read TOWN MEETING SUNDAY NIGHT. 7 P.M.
“What are we? Seattle?” Dad muttered.
“Our last meeting was two years ago,” Mama said. “When Tom Walker donated the lumber to repair the transient dock.”
“You think I don’t know that?” he said, pulling into a parking space. “You think I need you telling me that? I can hardly forget Tom Walker acting like a big shot, shoving his money in our noses.” He parked in front of the burnt-out Kicking Moose Saloon. The bar’s door was flung wide open in welcome.
Leni followed her parents into the saloon.
For all the changes that had taken place in town, this was the one place that had remained the same. No one in Kaneq cared about the blackened walls or the smell of char, as long as the booze flowed.
The place was already packed. Men and women (mostly men) in flannel shirts were bellied up to the bar. A few scrawny dogs lay curled beneath the barstools and out of the way. Everyone was talking at once and music played in the background. A dog whined along to the sound, howled once before a boot shut him up.
Mad Earl saw them and waved. Dad nodded and headed to the bar.
Old Jim was bartending, as he had for decades. With no teeth and rheumy eyes and a beard as sparse as his vocabulary, he was slow behind the bar but congenial. Everyone knew Old Jim would give them a drink on credit or take some moose meat in trade. Rumor was, it had been that way at the Moose since Tom Walker’s dad built the saloon in 1942.
“Whiskey, double,” Dad yelled out to Jim. “And a Rainier beer for the missus.” He slapped a handful of wadded-up pipeline bills on the table.
Taking his drink and Mama’s beer, he headed to the corner, where Mad Earl and Thelma and Ted and Clyde and the rest of the Harlan clan had staked out a collection of chairs clustered around an overturned barrel.
Thelma smiled up at Mama, pulled a white chair in beside her. Mama sat down and the two women immediately bent their heads together and started talking. In the past few years, they had become good friends. Thelma, Leni had learned over the years, was like most of the Alaskan women who dared to live in the bush—tough and steady and honest to a fault. But you didn’t want to mess with her.
“Hey, Leni,” Moppet said, smiling up with her mouthful of which-a- ways teeth. Her sweatshirt was too big and her pants were too short, exposing at least three inches of pipe-cleaner-thin shins above her slumped woolen socks and ankle boots.
Leni smiled down at the eight-year-old. “Hey, Mop.”
“Axle was home yesterday. I almost shot him with my arrow,” she said with a grin. “Boy, was he piss-a-rood.”
Leni bit back a smile.
“You got new pictures to show me?”
“Sure. I’ll bring ’em next time we come up.” Leni leaned back against the burnt log wall. Moppet tucked in close beside her.
At the front of the bar, a bell clanged.
The conversations around the bar quieted but didn’t silence. Town meetings might be an accepted custom off the grid, but you could never really shut up a room full of Alaskans.
Tom Walker moved into place behind the bar, smiled. “Hey, neighbors. Thank you for coming. I see a lot of old friends in this room and plenty of new faces. To our new neighbors, hello and welcome. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Tom Walker. My father, Eckhart Walker, came to Alaska before most of you were born. He panned for gold but found his real wealth in land, here in Kaneq. He and my mom homesteaded one hundred and sixty acres and staked their claim.”
“Here we go,” Dad said sourly, downing his drink. “Now we’re gonna hear all about his buddy the governor, and how they went crab fishing when they were kids. Good God…”
“Three generations of my family have lived on the same land. This place is not just where we live, it’s who we are. But times are changing. You know what I’m talking about. New faces attest to the changes. Alaska is the last frontier. People are hungry to see our state before it changes even more.”
“So what?” someone yelled.
“Tourists are flooding the banks of the Kenai River during king season, they’re navigating our waters, they’re packing the marine ferry system and coming to our dock in droves. Cruise ships are going to start bringing thousands of people up here, not just hundreds. I know Ted’s charter business has doubled in the last two years and you can’t get a seat at the diner in the summer. Word is that the foot ferry between us and Seldovia and Homer could be filled every day.”
“We came up here to get away from all that,” Dad shouted.
“Why are you telling us all this, Tommy?” Large Marge called out from the corner.
“Glad you asked, Marge,” Mr. Walker said. “I’ve finally decided to spend some money on the Moose, fix the old girl up. It’s about time we had a bar that didn’t blacken our palms and the seat of our pants.”
Someone whooped out in agreement.
Dad got to his feet. “You think we need a citified bar, that we need to welcome the idiots who come up here in sandals, with cameras hanging around their necks?”
People turned to look at Dad.
“I don’t think a little paint and some ice behind the bar will hurt us,” Mr.
Walker said evenly.
The crowd laughed.
“We came here to get away from the Outside and that screwed-up world. I say we say no to Mr. Big Shot improving this saloon. Let cheechakos go to the Salty Dawg to drink.”
“I’m not building a bridge to the mainland, for God’s sake,” Mr. Walker said. “My dad built this town, don’t forget. I was working at the saloon when you were trying out for Little League in the Outside. It’s all mine.” He paused. “All of it. Did you forget that? And now that I think of it, I
better fix up the old boardinghouse, too. People need somewhere to sleep. Hell, I’ll call it the Geneva. She’d like that.”
He was needling Dad; Leni saw it in Mr. Walker’s eyes. The animosity between the two men was ever-present. Oh, they tried to walk a wide berth around each other, but it was always there. Only now Mr. Walker wasn’t moving aside.
“Do you frigging believe this?” Dad turned to Mad Earl. “What’s next?
A casino? A Ferris wheel?”
Mad Earl frowned, got to his feet. “Hold on a sec, here, Tom—”
“It’s just ten rooms, Earl,” Mr. Walker said. “It welcomed guests a hundred years ago when Russian fur traders and missionaries walked these streets. My mother made the stained-glass windows in the lobby. The inn is a part of our history and now she’s all boarded up like a widow in black. I’ll make her shine again.” He paused, looked right at Dad. “No one can stop me from improving this town.”
“Just ’cause you’re rich, you don’t get to shove us all around,” Dad yelled.
“Ernt,” Thelma said. “I think you’re making too much of this.”
Ernt shot Thelma a sharp look. “We don’t want a bunch of tourists climbing up our asses. We say no to this. No, g-damn it—”
Mr. Walker reached up to the bell above the bar, clanged it. “Drinks are on the house,” he said with a smile.
There was an immediate uproar: people clapping and whooping and bellying up to the bar.
“Don’t let him buy you with a few free drinks,” Dad shouted. “This idea of his is bad. If we wanted to live in a city, we’d be somewhere else, damn it. And what if he doesn’t stop there?”
No one was listening. Even Mad Earl was moving toward the bar for his free drink.
“You never did know when to shut up, Ernt,” Large Marge said, sidling up to him. She was wearing a knee-length, hand-beaded suede coat over flannel pajama pants tucked into mukluks. “Does anyone make you get a business license to fix boat engines down at the dock? No. We don’t. If Tom wants to turn this place into Barbie’s Dream House, none of us will tell him
otherwise. That’s why we’re here. To do whatever we want. Not to do what you want us to.”
“I’ve taken shit from men like him all of my life.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe that’s more about you than him,” Large Marge said. “Shut your fat mouth,” Dad snapped. “Come on, Leni.” He grabbed
Mama by the bicep and pulled her through the crowd. “Allbright!”
Leni heard Mr. Walker’s big voice behind them.
Almost to the door, Dad stopped, turned. He yanked Mama close in beside him. She stumbled, almost fell.
Mr. Walker moved toward Dad, and people came with him, stood close, drinks in hand. Mr. Walker looked casual until you saw his eyes and the way his mouth tightened when he looked at Mama. He was pissed.
“Come on, Allbright. Don’t run off. Be neighborly,” Mr. Walker said. “There’s money to be made, man, and change is natural. Unavoidable.”
“I won’t let you change our town,” Dad said. “I don’t care how much money you have.”
“Yes, you will,” Mr. Walker said. “You have no choice. So let it go and lose gracefully. Have a drink.”
Gracefully?
Didn’t Mr. Walker know by now? Dad wasn’t one to let things go.
