The next morning, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Leni and Mama cleaned the cabin. They swept and scrubbed and washed. It turned out that the sink in the cabin was “dry” (there was no running water inside), so water had to be carried in by the bucketful from a stream not far away and boiled before they could drink it, cook with it, or bathe in it. There was no electricity. Propane-fueled lights swung from the rafters and sat on the plywood countertops. Beneath the house was a root cellar that was at least eight feet by ten feet, layered with sagging, dusty shelving and filled with empty, filthy mason jars and mildewed baskets. So they cleaned all of that, too, while Dad worked on clearing the driveway so they could drive the rest of their supplies onto the homestead.
By the end of the second day (which, by the way, lasted forever; the sun just kept shining and shining), it was ten P.M. before they quit work.
Dad built a bonfire on the beach—their beach—and they sat on fallen logs around it, eating tuna fish sandwiches and drinking warm Coca-Colas. Dad found mussels and butter clams and showed them how to crack them open. They ate each of the slimy mollusks in a single gulp.
Night didn’t fall. Instead, the sky became a deep lavender-pink; there were no stars. Leni glanced across the dancing orange firelight, sparks spraying skyward, snapping like music, and saw her parents coiled together, Mama’s head on Dad’s shoulder, Dad’s hand laid lovingly on her thigh, a woolen blanket wrapped around them. Leni took a picture.
At the flash and the snap-whiz of the Polaroid, Dad looked up at her and smiled. “We’re going to be happy here, Red. Can’t you feel it?”
“Yeah,” she said, and for the first time ever, she really believed it.
* * *
LENI WOKE TO THE SOUND of someone—or something—pounding on the cabin door. She scrambled out of her sleeping bag, shoved it aside, toppling her stack of books in her haste. Downstairs, she heard the rustle of beads and the pounding of footsteps as Mama and Dad ran for the door. Leni dressed quickly, grabbed her camera, and hurried down the ladder.
Large Marge stood in the yard with two other women; behind them, a rusted dirt bike lay on its side in the grass, and beside that was an all-terrain vehicle, loaded down with coiled chicken wire.
“Hullo, Allbrights!” Large Marge said brightly, waving her saucer-sized hand in greeting. “I brought some friends,” she said, indicating the two women she’d brought with her. One was a wood sprite, small enough to be a kid, with long gray Silly-String-like hair; the other was tall and thin. All three of them were dressed in flannel shirts and stained jeans that were tucked into brown rubber knee-high boots. Each carried a tool—a chain saw, an ax, a hatchet.
“We’ve come to offer some help getting started,” Large Marge said. “And we brought you a few things you’ll need.”
Leni saw her father frown. “You think we’re incompetent?”
“This is how we do it up here, Ernt,” Large Marge said. “Believe me, no matter how much you’ve read and studied, you can never quite prepare for your first Alaskan winter.”
The wood sprite came forward. She was thin and small, with a nose sharp enough to slice bread. Leather gloves stuck out of her shirt pocket. For as slight as she was, she exuded an air of competence. “I’m Natalie Watkins. Large Marge told me ya’all don’t know much about life up here. I was the same way ten years ago. I followed a man up here. Classic story. I lost the man and found a life. Got my own fishing boat now. So I get the dream that brings you here, but that’s not enough. You’re going to have to learn fast.” Natalie put on her yellow gloves. “I never found another man worth having. You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”
The taller woman had a beige braid that fell almost to her waist, and eyes so pale they seemed to take their color from the faded sky. “Welcome to Kaneq. I’m Geneva Walker. Gen. Genny. The Generator. I’ll answer to almost anything.” She smiled, revealing dimples. “My family is from Fairbanks, but I fell in love with my husband’s land, so here is where I’ve stayed. I’ve been here for twenty years.”
“You need a greenhouse and a cache at the very least,” Large Marge said. “Old Bo had big plans for this place when he bought it. But Bo went off to war … and he was a great one for getting a job half done.”
“A cash?” Dad said.
Large Marge nodded brusquely. “A cache is a small building on stilts. Your meat goes there, so the bears can’t get at it. This time of year, the bears are hungry.”
“Come on, Ernt,” Natalie said, reaching down for the chain saw at her feet. “I brought a portable mill. You cut down the trees and I’ll saw ’em into planks. First things first, righto?”
Dad went back into the cabin, put on his down vest, and headed into the forest with Natalie. Soon, Leni heard the whir of a chain saw and the thunking of an ax into wood.
“I’ll get started on the greenhouse,” Geneva said. “I imagine Bo left a tangle of PVC pipe somewhere…”
Large Marge walked up to Leni and Mama.
A breeze picked up; it turned cold in the blink of an eye. Mama crossed her arms. She had to be cold, standing there in a Grateful Dead T-shirt and bell-bottom jeans. A mosquito landed on her cheek. She slapped it away in a smear of blood.
“Our mosquitoes are bad,” Large Marge said. “I’ll bring you some repellant next time I come to visit.”
“How long have you lived here?” Mama asked.
“Ten of the best years of my life,” Large Marge answered. “Life in the bush is hard work, but you can’t beat the taste of salmon you caught in the morning, drizzled with butter you churned from your own fresh cream. Up here, there’s no one to tell you what to do or how to do it. We each survive our own way. If you’re tough enough, it’s heaven on earth.”
Leni stared up at the big, rough-looking woman in a kind of awe. She’d never seen a woman so tall or strong-looking. Large Marge looked like she could fell a full-grown cedar tree and sling it over her shoulder and keep going.
“We needed a fresh start,” Mama said, surprising Leni. It was the kind of rock-bottom truth Mama tended to avoid.
“He was in ’Nam?”
“POW. How did you know?”
“He has the look. And, well … Bo left you this place.” Large Marge glanced left, to where Dad and Natalie were cutting down trees. “Is he mean?”
“N-no,” Mama said. “Of course not.” “Flashbacks? Nightmares?”
“He hasn’t had one since we headed north.”
“You’re an optimist,” Large Marge said. “That’ll be good for a start. Well. You’d best change your shirt, Cora. The bugs are going to go mad for all that bare white skin.”
Mama nodded and turned back for the cabin.
“And you,” Large Marge said. “What’s your story, missy?” “I don’t have a story.”
“Everyone has a story. Maybe yours just starts up here.” “Maybe.”
“What can you do?”
Leni shrugged. “I read and take pictures.” She indicated the camera that hung around her neck. “Not much that will do us any good.”
“Then you’ll learn,” Large Marge said. She moved closer, leaned down to whisper conspiratorially into Leni’s ear. “This place is magic, kiddo. You just have to open yourself up to it. You’ll see what I mean. But it’s treacherous, too, and don’t you forget that. I think it was Jack London who said there were a thousand ways to die in Alaska. Be on the alert.”
“For what?” “Danger.”
“Where will it come from? The weather? Bears? Wolves? What else?”
Large Marge glanced across the yard again to where Dad and Natalie were felling trees. “It can come from anywhere. The weather and the isolation makes some people crazy.”
Before Leni could ask another question, Mama came back, dressed for work in jeans and a sweatshirt.
“Cora, can you make coffee?” Large Marge asked.
Mama laughed and hip-bumped Leni. “Well, now, Large Marge, it seems you’ve found the one thing I can do.”
* * *
LARGE MARGE AND NATALIE and Geneva worked all day alongside Leni and her parents. The Alaskans labored in silence, communicating with grunts and nods and pointed fingers. Natalie put a chain saw in a cage thing and milled the big logs Dad had cut down into boards all by herself. Each fallen tree revealed another slice of sunlight.
Geneva taught Leni how to saw wood and hammer nails and build raised vegetable beds. Together they started the PVC pipe-and-plank structure that would become a greenhouse. Leni helped Geneva carry a huge, heavy roll of plastic sheeting that they found in the broken-down chicken coop. They dropped it onto the ground.
“Sheesh,” Leni said. She was breathing hard. Sweat sheened her forehead and made her frizzy hair hang limply on either side of her flushed face. But the skeleton of a garden gave her a sense of pride, of purpose. She actually looked forward to planting the vegetables that would be their food.
As they worked, Geneva talked about what vegetables to grow and how to harvest them and how important they would be when winter came.
Winter was a word these Alaskans said a lot. It might be only May, almost summer, but the Alaskans were already focused on winter.
“Take a break, kiddo,” Geneva finally said, pushing to her feet. “I need to use the outhouse.”
Leni staggered out of the greenhouse shell and found her mother standing alone, a cigarette in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.
“I feel like we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” Mama said. Beside her, the unsteady card table from the cabin held the remnants of lunch—Mama
had made a stack of pan biscuits and fried up some bologna.
The air smelled of wood smoke and cigarette smoke and fresh-cut wood. It sounded of chain saws whirring, boards thumping onto piles, nails being hammered.
Leni saw Large Marge walking toward them. She looked tired and sweaty, but was smiling. “I don’t suppose I could have a sip of that coffee?”
Mama handed Large Marge her cup.
The three of them stood there, gazing out at the homestead that was changing before their eyes.
“Your Ernt is a good worker,” Large Marge said. “He’s got some skills.
Said his dad was a rancher.”
“Uh-huh,” Mama said. “Montana.”
“That’s good news. I can sell you a breeding pair of goats as soon as you get the pens repaired. I’ll give you a good price. They’ll be good for milk and cheese. And you can learn a shitload from Mother Earth News magazine. I’ll bring you over a stack.”
“Thank you,” Mama said.
“Geneva said Leni was a joy to work with. That’s good.” She patted Leni so hard she stumbled forward. “But, Cora, I’ve looked through your supplies. I hope you don’t mind. You don’t have nearly enough. How are your finances?”
“Things are tight.”
Large Marge nodded. Her face settled into grim lines. “Can you shoot?” Mama laughed.
Large Marge didn’t smile. “I mean it, Cora. Can you shoot?” “A gun?” Mama asked.
“Yeah. A gun,” Large Marge said.
Mama’s laughter died. “No.” She stubbed out her cigarette on a rock. “Well. You aren’t the first cheechakos to come up here with a dream and
a poor plan.”
“Cheechako?” Leni asked.
“Tenderfoot. Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become. You are out here in the wild, girls. That isn’t some fable or fairy tale. It’s real. Hard. Winter will be here soon, and
believe me, it’s not like any winter you’ve ever experienced. It will cull the herd, and fast. You need to know how to survive. You need to know how to shoot and kill to feed yourselves and keep yourselves safe. You are not the top of the food chain here.”
Natalie and Dad walked toward them. Natalie was carrying the chain saw and wiping her sweaty forehead with a bunched-up bandanna. She was such a small woman, barely taller than Leni; it seemed impossible that she could carry that heavy chain saw around.
At Mama’s side, she stopped, rested the rounded tip of the chain saw on the toe of her rubber boot. “Well. I got to feed my animals. I gave Ernt a good drawing for the cache.”
Geneva strode toward them. Black dirt colored her hair, her face, splattered across her shirtfront. “Leni has the right work attitude. Good for you, parents.”
Dad laid an arm along Mama’s shoulders. “I can’t thank you ladies enough,” he said.
“Yes. Your help means the world to us,” Mama said.
Natalie’s smile gave her an elfin look. “Our pleasure, Cora. You remember. Tonight you lock your door when you go to bed. Don’t come out till morning. If you need a chamber pot, get one from Large Marge at the Trading Post.”
Leni knew her mouth gaped just a little. They wanted her to pee in a
bucket?
“Bears are dangerous this time of year. Black bears especially. They’ll attack sometimes just ’cause they can,” Large Marge said. “And there are wolves and moose and God knows what else.” She took the chain saw from Natalie and slung it over her shoulder as if it were a stick of balsam wood. “There’s no police up here and no telephone except in town, so Ernt, you teach your women to shoot, and do it fast. I’ll give you a list of the minimum supplies you’ll need before September. You’ll need to bag a moose for sure this fall. It’s better to shoot ’em in season, but … you know, what matters is meat in the freezer.”
“We don’t have a freezer,” Leni pointed out. The women laughed at that, for some reason.
Dad nodded solemnly. “Gotcha.”
“Okay. See you later,” the women said in unison. Waving, they walked toward their vehicles and mounted up, and then drove down the trail that led out to the main road. In moments they were gone.
In the silence that followed, a cold breeze ruffled the treetops above them. An eagle flew overhead, a huge silver fish struggling in its talons’ grip. Leni saw a dog collar hanging from the top branches of an evergreen. An eagle must have picked up a small dog and carried it away. Could an eagle carry off a girl who was skinny as a beanpole?
Be careful. Learn to shoot a gun.
They lived on a piece of land that couldn’t be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you. There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream.
For the first time, she really understood what her dad had been saying.
Remote.
* * *
LENI WOKE TO THE SMELL of frying bacon. When she sat up, pain radiated down her arms and up her legs.
She hurt everywhere. Mosquito bites made her skin itch. Five days (and up here the days were endless, sunlight lasted until almost midnight) of hard labor had revealed muscles she’d never known she had before.
She climbed out of her sleeping bag and pulled on her hip-hugger jeans. (She’d slept in her sweatshirt and socks.) The inside of her mouth tasted terrible. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth last night. Already she was beginning to conserve water that didn’t flow through faucets but had to be hauled inside by the bucketful.
She climbed down the ladder.
Mama was in the kitchen alcove, at the camp stove, pouring oatmeal into a pot of boiling water. Bacon sizzled and snapped in one of the black cast- iron skillets they’d found hanging from a hook.
Leni heard the distant pounding of a hammer. Already that rhythmic beat had become the soundtrack of their lives. Dad worked from sunup to
sundown, which was a long day. He’d already repaired the chicken coop and fixed the goat pens.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said. “Fun,” Mama said.
Leni put on her wafflestompers, and stepped outside into a blue-skied day. The colors were so vibrant, the world hardly looked real: green, swaying grass in the clearing, purple wildflowers, the gray zigzag steps leading to a blue sea that breathed in and out along the pebbled shore. Beyond it all, a fjord of impossible grandeur, sculpted eons ago by glaciers. She wanted to go back for her Polaroid and take pictures of the yard—again
—but already she was learning that she needed to conserve her film. Getting more would not be an easy thing up here.
The outhouse was positioned on the bluff, in a stand of thin-trunked spruce, overlooking the rocky coastline. On the toilet lid, someone had painted I never promised you a rose garden, and applied flower decals.
She lifted the lid, using her sleeve to protect her fingers, and carefully averted her gaze from the hole as she sat down.
When she finished, Leni headed back to the cabin. A bald eagle soared overhead, gliding in a circle and then swooping up, flying away. She saw a fish carcass hanging high in one of the trees, catching the sunlight like a Christmas ornament. An eagle must have dropped it there, after picking all the meat off the bones. Off to her right, the cache was half finished—four skinned log braces that led to a three-foot-by-three-foot wooden platform twelve feet in the air. Below it were six empty raised beds covered by a hoop-skirt-like structure of pipe and wood that awaited plastic covering to become a greenhouse.
“Leni!” her dad shouted, coming toward her in that exuberant, ground- covering walk of his. His hair was a dirty, dusty mess and his clothes were covered with oil spots and his hands were grubby. Pink sawdust peppered his face and hair. He waved at her, smiling.
The joy on his face brought her to a complete stop. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so happy. “By God, it’s beautiful here,” he said.
Wiping his hands on a red bandanna he kept wadded up in his jeans pocket, he looped an arm around her shoulder and walked with her into the cabin.
Mama was just serving breakfast.
The card table was rickety as heck, so they stood in the living room, eating oatmeal from their metal camp bowls. Dad shoveled a spoonful of oatmeal in his mouth at the same time he was chewing bacon. Lately, eating seemed to Dad to be a waste of time. There was so much to do outside.
Immediately after breakfast, Leni and Mama returned to cleaning the cabin. Already they had removed layers of dust and dirt and dead bugs. Each of the rugs had been hung over the deck rails and beaten with brooms that looked as dirty as the rugs themselves. Mama took down the curtains and carried them out to one of the big oil drums in the yard. After Leni hauled water up from the river, they filled the antique washing machine with water and laundry soap and Leni stood there for an hour, sweating in the sunshine, stirring the curtains in the soapy water. Then she carried the heavy, dripping mass of fabric to a barrel full of clean water for rinsing.
Now she was feeding the soaking wet curtains through the old-fashioned wringer. The work was hard, backbreaking, exhausting.
She could hear Mama in the yard not far away, singing as she washed another load of clothes in the sudsy water.
Leni heard an engine. She stood up, rubbing an ache out of her lower back. She heard the crunch of rocks, the splash of mud … and the old VW bus emerged from the trees and stopped in the yard. The road was finally cleared!
Dad honked the horn. Birds flew up from the trees, squawked in irritation.
Mama stopped stirring the laundry and looked up. The bandanna that covered her blond hair was wet with sweat. Mosquito bites created a red lattice pattern on her pale cheeks. She tented a hand across her eyes. “You did it!” she yelled.
Dad stepped out of the bus and waved them over. “Enough work, Allbrights. Let’s go for a drive.”
Leni squealed in delight. She was more than ready to take a break from this back-wrenching work. Scooping up the wrung-out fabric, she carried it over to the sagging clothesline Mama had set up between two trees and hung the curtains to dry.
Leni and Mama were both laughing as they climbed into the old bus. They had carried all of their supplies out of the bus already (several trips back and forth, carrying heavy packs); only a few magazines and empty Coke cans were left on the seats.
Dad battled the loose gearshift, shoved it into first gear. The bus made a sound like an old man coughing and shuddered, metal creaking, tires thumping in pits, as it circled the grassy yard.
Leni could now see the driveway Dad had cleared. “It was already there,” he said, yelling to be heard over the engine’s whine. “A bunch of willows had grown up. I just had to clear it.”
It was rough going, a track barely wider than the bus. Branches snapped into the windshield, scraped along the bus’s sides. Their banner was ripped off, flew up, stuck in the trees. The driveway was more pits and boulders than dirt; the old bus was constantly rising and thumping down. Tires crunched slowly over exposed roots and rocky outcroppings as they drove into the dark shadows cast by the trees.
At the end of their driveway, they drove into the sunlight and onto a real dirt road.
They rumbled past the Walker metal gate and the Birdsall sign. Leni leaned forward, excited to see the marshes and airfields that signaled the outskirts of Kaneq.
Town! Only a few days ago it had seemed worse than an outpost, but it didn’t take much time in the Alaskan bush to reassess one’s opinion. Kaneq had a store. Leni could get some film and maybe a candy bar.
“Hang on,” Dad said as he turned left into the trees. “Where are we going?” Mama asked.
“To tell Bo Harlan’s family thank you. I’ve brought his father a half gallon of whiskey.”
Leni stared out the dirty window. Dust turned the view into a haze. For miles there was nothing but trees and bumps. Every now and then a vehicle
was rotting at the side of the road in the tall grass.
There were no houses or mailboxes, just dirt trails here and there that veered off into the trees. If people lived out here, they didn’t want you to find them.
The road was rough: two beaten-down tire tracks on rocky, uneven ground. As they climbed in elevation, the trees grew thicker, began to block out more and more of the sun. They saw the first sign about three miles in:
NO TRESPASSING. TURN AROUND. YES, WE MEAN YOU. PROPERTY PROTECTED BY DOGS AND GUNS. HIPPIES GO HOME.
The road ended at the crest of a hill with a sign that read, TRESPASSERS WILL BE SHOT. SURVIVORS WILL BE SHOT AGAIN.
“Jesus,” Mama said. “Are you sure we’re in the right place?”
A man with a rifle appeared in front of them, stood with his legs in a wide stance. He had frizzy brown hair that puffed out from beneath a dirty trucker’s cap. “Who are you? What do you want?”
“I think we should turn around,” Mama said.
Dad leaned his head out the window. “We’re here to see Earl Harlan. I was a friend of Bo’s.”
The man frowned, then nodded and stepped aside.
“I don’t know, Ernt,” Mama said. “This doesn’t feel right.”
Dad worked the gearshift. The old bus grumbled and rolled forward, jouncing over rocks and hillocks.
They drove into a wide, flat patch of muddy ground studded here and there with clumps of yellowing grass. Three houses bordered the field. Well, shacks, really. They looked to have been made of whatever was handy
—sheets of plywood, corrugated plastic, skinned logs. A school bus with curtains in the windows sat on tireless rims, hip-deep in the mud. Several scrawny dogs were chained up, straining at their leashes, snarling and barking. Fire barrels belched smoke that had a noxious, rubbery smell.
People dressed in dirty clothes stepped out of the cabins and shacks. Men with ponytails and buzz cuts and women wearing cowboy hats. All wore guns or knives in sheaths at their waists.
Directly in front of them, from a log cabin with a slanted roof, a white- haired man emerged carrying an antique-looking pistol. He was wiry thin, with a long white beard and a toothpick chomped down tight in his mouth.
He stepped down into the muddy yard. The dogs went crazy at his appearance, growled and snapped and groveled. A few jumped on top of their houses and kept barking. The old man pointed his gun at their bus.
Dad reached for the door handle.
“Don’t get out,” Mama said, grabbing his arm.
Dad pulled free of Mama’s grasp. He grabbed the half gallon of whiskey he’d brought and opened the door and stepped down into the mud. He left the bus door open behind him.
“Who are you?” the white-haired man yelled, the toothpick bobbing up and down.
“Ernt Allbright, sir.”
The man lowered his weapon. “Ernt? It’s you? I’m Earl, Bo’s daddy.” “It’s me, sir.”
“Well, slap me silly. Who you got with ya?”
Dad turned and waved at Leni and Mama to get out of the bus.
“Yeah. This seems like a good idea,” Mama said as she opened her door.
Leni followed. She stepped down into the mud, heard it squelch up around her wafflestompers.
Around the compound, people were stopped, staring.
Dad pulled them in close. “This is my wife, Cora, and my daughter, Leni. Girls, this is Bo’s dad, Earl.”
“Folks call me Mad Earl,” the old guy said. He shook their hands, then swiped the bottle of whiskey from Dad and led them into his cabin. “Come in. Come in.”
Leni had to force herself to enter the small, shadowy interior. It smelled like sweat and mildew. The walls were lined with supplies—food and gallons of water and cases of beer, boxes full of canned goods, heaps of sleeping bags. Along one whole wall: weapons. Guns and knives and boxes of ammunition. Old-fashioned crossbows hung from hooks alongside maces.
Mad Earl plopped onto a chair made of Blazo box slats. He cracked open the whiskey and lifted the bottle to his mouth, drinking deeply. Then he handed the jug to Dad, who drank for a long time before he handed the bottle back to Mad Earl.
Mama bent down, picked an old gas mask up from a box full of them. “Y-you collect war memorabilia?” she said uneasily.
Mad Earl took another drink, draining an amazing amount of whiskey in a single gulp. “Nope. That ain’t there for looks. The world’s gone mad. A man has to protect himself. I came up here in ’62. The Lower Forty-eight was already a mess. Commies everywhere. The Cuban Missile Crisis scarin’ the shit outta people. Bomb shelters being built in backyards. I brung my family up here. We had nothing but a gun and a bag of brown rice. Figured we could live in the bush and stay safe and survive the nuclear winter that was comin’.” He took another drink, leaned forward. “It ain’t getting better down there. It’s gettin’ worse. What they done to the economy … to our poor boys who went off to war. It ain’t my America anymore.”
“I’ve been saying that for years,” Dad said. There was a look on his face Leni had never seen before. A kind of awe. As if he’d been waiting a long time to hear those words.
“Down there,” Mad Earl went on, “Outside, people are standing in line for gas while OPEC laughs all the way to the bank. And you think the good ole USSR forgot about us after Cuba? Think again. We got Negroes calling themselves Black Panthers and raisin’ their fists at us, and illegal immigrants stealing our jobs. So what do people do? They protest. They sit down. They throw bombs at empty post office buildings. They carry signs and march down streets. Well. Not me. I got a plan.”
Dad leaned forward. His eyes were shiny. “What is it?”
“We’re prepared up here. We’ve got guns, gas masks, arrows, ammunition. We’re ready.”
Mama said, “Surely you don’t really believe—”
“Oh, I do,” Mad Earl said. “The white man is losing out and war is coming.” He looked at Dad. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Allbright?”
“Of course I know. We all do. How many in your group?” Dad asked. Mad Earl took a long drink, then wiped the dribble from his spotted lips.
His rheumy eyes narrowed, moved from Leni to Mama. “Well. It’s just our
family, but we take it seriously. And we don’t talk about it to strangers. Last thing we want is people knowing where we are when TSHTF.”
There was a knock at the door. At Mad Earl’s “Come in,” the door opened to reveal a small, wiry-looking woman in camo pants and a yellow smiley-face T-shirt. Although she had to be almost forty, she wore her hair in pigtails. The man beside her was big as a house, with a long brown ponytail and bangs that strafed his eyes. She held a stack of Tupperware in her arms and had a pistol holstered at her hip.
“Don’t let my daddy scare the bejesus out of you,” the woman said, smiling brightly. As she stepped farther into the cabin, a child sidled along beside her, a girl of about four who was barefoot and dirty-faced. “I’m Thelma Schill, Earl’s daughter. Bo was my big brother. This is my husband, Ted. This is Marybet. We call her Moppet.” Thelma placed a hand on the girl’s head.
“I’m Cora,” Mama said, extending her hand. “That’s Leni.”
Leni smiled hesitantly. Thelma’s husband, Ted, stared at her through squinty eyes.
Thelma’s smile was warm, genuine. “You going to school on Monday, Leni?”
“There’s a school?” Leni said.
“’Course. It isn’t big, but I think you’ll make friends. Kids come from as far away as Bear Cove. I think there’s another week of classes. School ends early up here so kids can work.”
“Where’s the school?” Mama asked.
“On Alpine Street, just behind the saloon, at the base of Church Hill.
You can’t miss it. Monday morning at nine.”
“We’ll be there,” Mama said, shooting Leni a smile.
“Good. We are so happy to welcome you here, Cora and Ernt and Leni.” Thelma faced them, smiling. “Bo wrote us plenty from ’Nam. You meant so much to him. Everyone wants to meet you all.” She crossed the room, took Ernt by the arm, and led him out of the cabin.
Leni and Mama followed behind, heard Mad Earl shuffle to his feet, grumbling about Thelma taking over.
Outside, a ragged cluster of people—men, women, children, young adults—stood waiting, each holding something.
“I’m Clyde,” said a man with a Santa beard and eyebrows like awnings. “Bo’s younger brother.” He held out a chain saw, its blade sheathed in bright orange plastic. “I just sharpened the chain.” A woman and two young men, each about twenty, stepped forward, along with two dirty-faced girls who were probably seven or eight. “This here’s Donna, my wife, and the twins, Darryl and Dave, and our daughters, Agnes and Marthe.”
There weren’t many of them, but they were friendly and welcoming. Each person they met gave them a gift: a hacksaw, a coil of rope, sheets of heavy plastic, rolls of duct tape, a bright silver knife called an ulu that was shaped like a fan.
There was no one Leni’s age. The one teenager—Axle, who was sixteen
—barely glanced at Leni. He stood off by himself, throwing knives at a tree trunk. He had long dirty black hair and gray eyes.
“You’ll need to get a garden going fast,” Thelma said as the men drifted toward one of the burn barrels and began passing the whiskey bottle from man to man. “Weather’s unpredictable up here. Some years June is spring, July is summer, August is autumn, and everything else is winter.”
Thelma led Leni and Mama to a large garden. A fence made of sagging fishing nets bound to metal stakes kept out animals.
Most of the vegetables were small, clumps of green on the mounds of black earth. Mats of something gross—it looked like kelp—lay drying at the base of the nets, alongside heaps of stinking fish carcasses and eggshells and coffee grounds.
“You know how to garden?” Thelma asked. “I can tell a ripe melon,” Mama said.
“I’d be happy to teach you. Up here the growing season is short, so we have to really work it.” She grabbed a dented metal bucket from the dirt beside her. “I have some potatoes and onions I can spare. There’s still time for them. I can give you a bunch of carrot starts. And I can spare a few live chickens.”
“Oh, really, you shouldn’t—”
“Believe me, Cora, you have no idea how long the winter will be and how soon it will be here. It’s one thing up here for men—a lot of them are going to leave for work on that new pipeline. You and me—mothers—we stay on the homestead and keep our children alive and well. It’s not always easy; the way we do it is together. We help whenever we can. We trade. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to can salmon. You need to start filling your root cellar with food for winter now.”
“You’re scaring me,” Mama said.
Thelma touched Mama’s arm. “I remember when we first came up here from Kansas City. My mom did nothing but cry. She died the second winter here. I still think she willed herself to die. Just couldn’t stand the dark or the cold. A woman has to be tough as steel up here, Cora. You can’t count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves. And you have to learn fast. In Alaska you can make one mistake. One. The second one will kill you.”
“I don’t think we’re well prepared,” Mama said. “Maybe we’ve already made a mistake by coming here.”
“I’ll help you,” Thelma promised. “We all will.”
