All the Winters After (21 page)

THE FALL

2005

FORTY-SEVEN

The fall came on quickly. Suddenly, the pink fireweed was gone, its leaves turned dark red. Kache remembered how summer never lingered; it just up and left. But even the crisping air felt hopeful to him. Nothing but bright gold leaves hung in the birch groves, glowing with exaggerated promise, as if the hillside had flipped open to reveal layers and layers of shimmering treasure.

Why not be hopeful?

Today, his hope lay in a couple of specific things: he'd planned a weekend in Anchorage and wanted to talk Nadia into going with him. He needed to be careful; it would be overwhelming for her to be in a city. Anchorage wasn't a big city, but it was the biggest they had, and if you were used to talking to only one person and a few vegetables, magpies, and moose, it was big enough.

Because she had gone to Caboose several times, this trip would be the logical next step. It might be easier, in fact, because in Anchorage, she wouldn't have to look over her shoulder for Old Believers. As soon as Nadia told him about Vladimir, Kache had started asking around to see if anyone knew him. His mechanic, Greg Barrow, a guy he'd gone to school with, had a lot of Old Believer customers and said he'd never heard of him but he'd look into it. But Old Believers didn't hang out in the city, stay at the Hilton, shop at Nordstrom, or eat at high-end restaurants, which were all part of Kache's plan.

He had bought Nadia a gift, and so he was also hopeful that she would like it and that it might help persuade her to go to Anchorage with him—a small video camera. She'd expressed an interest in learning how to film, and he thought it might help provide a filter so she wouldn't be bombarded with everything at once. Through the camera, she could pick and choose what to see.

She sat at the table, watching video clips on YouTube. He held the camera behind his back.

“How would you like to be able to film things like that?”

“Like this?” She shut the computer. “Ach. That was only people playing mean jokes on one another. I would like to do something much better.”

“If only you had a camera?”

“Well, yes, but these cost great deal of money, I believe.”

“Not that much,” he said and set the camera down on the table.

“This is a video camera?” Her hands fluttered around it. “It is so small!”

“It's really easy to use.”

“I can use this?”

“Of course. It's yours. And please, no more talk about money. It's a gift. I want you to have it.”

A smile spread across her face, and she jumped up and swung her arms around his neck, kissing him.

“Come to Anchorage with me,” he said.

She let go of him. “When?”

“Today is good.”

“Is this bribery that you are doing?”

“Maybe a little.” He grinned. “You don't have to go. But it would be good for us to get away for a couple of days. One night.”

“What about Leo?”

“He'll be fine. That's why I've been having him sleep in the barn the last few nights, so he could get used to it. And he was fine both times when we went to Caboose. It's just one night. We'll feed him before we go and bring him home a treat.”

“I do not know. The city?”

“Far, far away from Altai or Ural.”

“And Leo will be fine, you think?”

“I do.”

“Yes.”

“Are you agreeing with me or agreeing to go?”

“Both. I will pack.”

Kache stood there, hands on hips, while she ran upstairs, taking them two at a time.
Well
, he thought.
That was easy.

• • •

As they stood on a street corner, waiting for the light to change, Nadia tilted her head back, staring through the camera at one of Anchorage's few tall buildings, her mouth gaping. She had recently gotten her hair cut again and another piercing. She wore a tiny diamond on the side of her perfect nose. (After many discussions, Kache had insisted he pay for these things, finally promising he would deduct the amount from the caretaking back pay he felt the family owed her.) She wore the earplugs to guard her sensitive hearing against the traffic, so she talked a little louder than usual. “Were the Twin Towers that high?”

Kache shook his head. “They were much, much higher. These wouldn't even be considered skyscrapers.”

“Like mountains.”

“Man-made mountains.” They fell into a trance, staring at the building. Mountains and skyscrapers. Kache thought of the planes flying into the Twin Towers and of his parents' plane flying into the mountain. The light changed, and he pulled gently on Nadia's hand. “It's okay. We can go now.”

There were no tall buildings or traffic lights in Caboose. So the woman who understood the chemical properties of soil now needed to be reminded that red meant stop and green meant go.

In the department store, she touched everything. “We sew all our
sarafans
, everything.” She walked around all the shoes, picking them up, smelling the leather, putting them back down. She ran her hands along the racks of clothes. “I do not need these. It is too much. You spend too much of the money.”

“No, I want to.”

She shook her head. “I cannot. The camera? Now this? No.”

“Look, you saved our entire house. Believe me, I owe you a lot more money than this. Please. It makes me happy.”

“It does?”

“It does. You need clothes.” He elbowed her. “Besides, I want my old jeans and T-shirts back.”

Her eyes veered up, and she pursed her lips. Finally, she nodded. “Okay. But only if you promise to deduct.”

Nadia circled around the floor and came back empty-handed. “How do you choose something from all of this? Where do you begin?”

“Well, let's see” is what he said, but what he thought was that he had absolutely no idea and that he didn't want to let on that he didn't know his way around the women's department of Nordstrom. He could do this. Sure, Nadia could do just about anything, but he had the upper hand on this one.

She pulled out one of her earplugs, tilted her head, and then said, “Come with me,” offering her hand. She followed the music pumping from the lower level, where the younger styles were. The escalator held her in a daze until Kache demonstrated how to step onto it, insisting that she not try to film and step on at the same time. Once downstairs, she went straight to a pair of jeans and pulled the hanger off the rack. “I like these,” she said. Silver studs curving along the front pockets, not unlike the gold studs that curved along her ear. Nadia had a sense of style. She picked out long sweaters with big, loose necks and tall boots that wouldn't last a day on the homestead. “That's okay,” she explained. “I can wear them tonight.” She picked out a few short skirts and some tights. (
For gathering coal on the beach?
he thought but didn't say.) A black leather jacket and a more practical brown wool one that fit her perfectly. Almost everything she tried on looked damn good on her. He sat outside the dressing room and kept his mind busy thinking about sneaking in and helping her shed that last pair of snug-fitting corduroys.

They carried big bags to the truck. Then he took her to the museum, but she kept her movie camera in her backpack and told him she'd been living in the past her entire life—she already knew the way people used to live. “Who cares about these things? I still use that tool right there for berry picking. And they keep it in glass case? I want to see something new. I want to see how city behaves.”

So Kache took her downtown during the lunch hour. It wasn't Manhattan, but people were out walking quickly, crowding up the street corners, filling up the restaurants. Huge baskets overflowing with flowers hung from the lampposts. Down on Spenard Road, the homeless men slouched with outstretched cups and the drug dealers asked them if they wanted to get high and the alcoholics zigzagged out of the bars. Nadia filmed everything, but when she finally pulled the camera away from her face, Kache saw that she was crying.

“I understand this homelessness. If it had not been for your house, I would have died alone, outside, cold, hungry.”

“I doubt that,” Kache said, tucking her under his arm. “Knowing you, you would have gnawed enough branches to build yourself a shelter and a hunting spear in no time.”

“You are a funny one, Kachemak Winkel.” She used his full name sometimes, the way his mother had. He dug into his wallet to hand her a small wedge of bills to pass out, and she thanked him earnestly, again promising to pay him back.

When the sun began to set, she stood in front of another glass building and watched the reflected yellows and pinks and reds splash across the facade, pointing her camera at the actual mountain scene, back to the reflection, and to the mountains again.

They drove to the airport so she could see the jets and down to the harbor so she could see the last of the season's cruise ships. They walked around the university because she said she wanted to pretend she was a college student.

As bicycles and pedestrians passed them, rushing to classes, Nadia smiled, tilted her head, and said, “Did you study for that test?”

“Which one? Human biology? I pulled an all-nighter. I'm gonna ace it.”

Nadia grinned. “You are very serious student of this subject.”

“You're the
valedictorian
.”

Kache had wanted to take her to a nice restaurant for dinner, but she opted for a movie at a theater because she'd never seen a movie on the big screen. They watched
Batman Begins
. Actually, Kache watched Nadia watching
Batman Begins
. And he took the popcorn from her to hold because she kept spilling it when she jumped.

She had never been in a hotel. When the elevator lurched, she laughed and grabbed him. Then she said, “Why is there no thirteen?”

“Because people think it's bad luck. Thirteen is supposed to be an unlucky number, so no one wants to stay on the thirteenth floor.”

“So there it is empty with no rooms on this floor?”

“No, there really is no floor.”

“There is only big gap of air? Layers of clouds?” She scoffed, shaking her head.

“No. They name one floor twelve, and the next one right after that is fourteen. They just skip thirteen.”

“And people do not know that fourteen is really thirteen? That people on the floor fourteen are—how do you say that?—really
screwed
?”

A man who'd just entered the elevator chuckled. Kache smiled. “It's more of a gesture, I think. Everyone overlooks it.”

“I have a secret for you,” Nadia whispered. “People are strange. And not very smart.”

The man laughed again as he stepped out—onto the fourteenth floor. “Wish me luck, sweetheart,” he said.

The man was old enough to be her father. Kache wondered what her father and mother were like. Which of her brothers and sisters looked like her? Were they smart like she was?

What a loss for the family. The grief they must have felt, must still feel. He wished he could somehow talk her into visiting them. Highly unlikely, he knew. As unlikely as his mom, dad, and Denny running to catch the elevator, saying they were so sorry they'd been gone so long; they had been stuck on the thirteenth floor.

When the elevator door closed and the elevator resumed its trip upward, Nadia said, “Why did he call me ‘sweetheart'? I am not his sweetheart. This man, I do not know. See what I say? Strange cookies, these people.”

In their room, she stood and filmed the view through the window, the cars and the people down below. She had never been more than two stories up. She was starting to commentate what she filmed. “Here we are, on the eighteenth floor, which is really the seventeenth floor. Apparently, this is secret phenomenon. You heard it here first, folks.”

“Where did you hear that?”

She sighed. “From you. About ten minutes ago. Do you not remember having this discussion in elevator?”

“No, I mean the ‘you heard it here first, folks.'”

“I do not know. The movie, perhaps? Something I read?”

“You're all eyes and ears.”

“And camera.” She patted the side of it. “I want to make beautiful movies.”

“And so you will, I suspect.”

“I need to learn how.”

“You mean my mom didn't have a book on filmmaking?”

She shook her head.

“Well, let's go to the bookstore and buy one, and you'll be making Academy Award–winning films by the time you flip through it.”

She touched his shoulder. “You are angry?”

“No, of course not. Why?”

“You are talking funny. You are angry I read your mother's books?”

“No, no, not at all. I'm just…kind of in awe. It seems like there's nothing you can't do.”

“You are wrong. There is much I have not done and cannot do. I cannot even leave the homestead until you came there. And I cannot sing like you or understand talking in groups of people, and many other things. I need college.”

“Nadia, you could
teach
at a college.”

She shook her head and dropped her chin.

“What's wrong?”

“I hide away in stillness, and the world spins on. I have wasted much.”

He put his arms around her. “Nothing has been wasted on you.”

“A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”

“See? Now, where did you hear
that
?”

“Many times, in the old magazines. Advertisements for United Negro College Fund. But I am not Negro.”

“No. And you might want to say ‘African American' instead of ‘Negro.'”

“Okay. But I still have a mind I do not want to waste. Is there United Ex-Old Believer College Fund?”

“No. But it's not a bad idea.” Kache leaned his butt against the ledge that stuck out from the window. He tried imagining Nadia going to college. She looked like a college student. But he couldn't see her there, because then he would have to see his home without her in it.