All the Winters After (7 page)

SIXTEEN

As he drove, Kache tried to get a grip. He hadn't slept at all. Forget dandelion root tea; he needed an Americano with an extra shot. He needed answers. He needed some kind of plan. A plan would be good.

The weather could go one of many ways—big gray clouds hung around the mountain peaks, trying to decide if they wanted to get ugly, but the sun was up and shining as if to say,
Hey, calm down. I've got this one
.

Kache didn't want to turn Nadia in. So she'd been squatting on their property for the last ten years. She'd also saved it from going to ruin. But that meant it had stood empty for the decade prior to her arrival. Ten winters with no one running water in the pipes or knocking the snow off the roof or keeping the shrews and voles and mice from taking over. No way. So she was lying or Snag was lying or another strange person had holed up in the house too and might still be around, which circled back to Nadia lying.

Still, he wouldn't turn her in. He'd just ask her to find a different place. He'd help her find something suitable. If she really didn't want to go back to her village, there were people in town who'd probably trade child care or property maintenance for a room. Then, before he went back to Austin, he'd work on the homestead—she had kept up on it the best she could, but he knew it must still need some maintenance—and get it ready to rent out to a cattle rancher or someone who needed a large chunk of the land. He and Snag could deal with it together. It would feel right for them to finally step up, keep a few meaningful things, sell the rest. It would be good. Like the therapist Janie had dragged him to that one time had said: “There's healing in turning homeward, a wholeness that results from facing your history, an ability to move forward.” Kache hadn't wanted to hear it and called it a bunch of poetic psychobabble. But, hell, maybe there was something to it.

He pulled up to a drive-through, an orange-and-blue coffee truck called the Caboose Cuppabrews. The brittle air blasted through his open window while a dark-haired boy of about eleven took his order.

“Aren't you a little young to be a coffee barista?”

The boy shrugged. “A bar what?”

A woman laughed from somewhere behind the boy. “We start them working young here, sir. He's my son, so we skirt around those pesky labor laws.”

“Marion?”

“Yes?” She bent down, and he took in her face. She had the same dark eyes and high cheekbones and still wore her hair parted in the middle and straight. She had hardly changed. “Kache? No way!” She leaned out farther, spilling the coffee on her wrist. “Ouch! Shit. Sorry. Wait, don't move.” And she disappeared back through the window, leaving the boy to sponge up the coffee, shaking his head with a small, somewhat parental smile.

Marion had pulled on a parka, sprinted out from the backside of the truck, reached in through the window, and wrapped her arms around Kache's neck before he could open his door. “I thought they were holding you hostage until we agreed to say Texas was the bigger state after all. Lettie didn't take another turn?”

He teeter-tottered his hand. “My aunt thinks she's at death's door. Gram's confused, but for someone who's ninety-eight years old…”

“You'll have to say hi to my grandpa. Remember Leroy? He's happy as long as they let him fish the hallways. My ex says Leroy's got the best fishing spot on the peninsula, right there in his head. Lettie's been so sharp until recently. How long are you here?”

He shrugged. “Not sure.”

“You got someone special?” She smiled that old Marion smile.

“Not as of two days ago. You?”

Now she teeter-tottered her hand. “Still singing?”

He shook his head. “You?”

“Of course. Playing?”

He shook his head again.

“You're shittin' me. You need to come down to the Spit Tune. We still play a few nights a week. Mike, Chris, Dan—all of us. Bring your guitar and that voice of yours. Rex will do cartwheels down the bar when he sees you.” She turned toward her son. “Ian, this is Kache. He's a helluva guitar player, and he's got a voice some hotshot reporter called ‘both wound and wonder.'”

Kache laughed. “Is there such a thing as a hotshot reporter in Alaska?”

Several cars had pulled up behind him. “Ha-ha. Gotta get back to work, but do not leave town without us catching up. I'm here every morning except Christmas, New Year's, and Easter. Seriously. No excuses, okay?”

He smiled. “Scout's honor.”

“You dropped out of the Scouts!” she shouted as he pulled away.

Wow. Marion had a kid. Marion was still singing. The band was still together.

His old house, a museum of his eighteen-year-old life. And his old girlfriend, still playing with their band. He might as well make this trip back in time complete. He turned toward the spit and headed out to see Rex. Since Kache had arrived, he'd already done more socializing than he had in years. Janie would be shocked.

• • •

Only two days before, he'd lain wedged in the permanent indent he'd caused in his and Janie's sofa, the TV cradling him in its familiar steel-colored light. On his chest, the cat Charlotte had purred and slept. He'd turned down the volume for the commercial, the warm Austin air carrying aching guitar riffs in D minor along with aromas of barbecue from the restaurant across the street. Another do-it-yourself show was about to start. He should get up—
Arise! Go forth!
—and turn off the TV, but he didn't. He let Charlotte sleep.

Each step of each project was vivid in his mind's eye: a version of his own hands performing every task, but calloused, surer, moving with the certainty of the experienced. Not the boy's hands his father had made fun of. “Explain to me, Son,” he'd said, “how the same fingers that spin gold on that silly guitar of yours turn into flippers when you pick up a hammer?”

But some of what his father tried to teach him was at long last finding its way in, if only from a type of televised osmosis.

Janie was upstairs in the loft of their apartment, spreading on lotion, dusting on makeup, curling her hair. He must have once felt something more for her than he did now, which if he had to classify it, fell in the vicinity of a fond affection. They had traveled some, had good sex. He'd moved into her place. They'd cooked, laughed, watched movies, shared a few secrets. And yet he experienced those times as if they'd occurred in a hazy, disjointed dream.

Her footsteps clicked down the stairs and stopped in the kitchen behind him.

“Sure you don't want to join us?” she asked again.

He gently lifted Charlotte off his chest and propped himself up on his elbow so he could see Janie in the shadows, the jutted hip and crossed arms stance of late. Charlotte leaped down and began winding herself through and around Janie's ankles. “No thanks.”

He sat all the way up and twisted around to face her in the kitchen, his back sore with stiffness, his arm slung along the top of the sofa in order to show her he was making an effort, paying attention. She flicked on the light. She had her hair up loose the way he liked it best, and she wore a dress he hadn't seen before. “You look nice,” he said. “Really pretty.”

Without a smile, she shifted her weight, unfolded her arms so they hung by her sides, her pale palms facing him. “You might surprise yourself and have fun.”

How to explain the impossibility? “Not really up to it tonight.”

She kept her eyes on him. She was gracious enough not to ask:
Did you apply for any jobs today? Did you make any follow-up calls? Did you even return your aunt's call? It's ironic, you know. Watching the Do-It-Yourself Network all day long and never
doing
a damn thing.

She spun away, the air barely lifting the edge of her dress, and said, “I'll be home late,” closing the door with force, but not quite a slam. They didn't slam doors. They didn't shout. They'd been together for more than three years and never had more than a low-heated discussion, where nothing ever boiled over, just simmered on and on until they had reached this state of bone-dry evaporation.

Kache got up to find something to eat. He stretched, muscles tight from lying down so long, his vertebrae a series of hooks and sinkers.

Janie blamed this funk he'd been in for the last six months on the fact that he'd been let go from his job. A buyout. He'd received a generous enough severance package. They called it the golden parachute, but he was too young for that. Maybe the silver? Not even. Brass. The brass-can't-save-your-ass parachute.

It wasn't that he needed the money. He'd invested well, lived far below his means. There was just nothing he could bring himself to
do
. In the quiet of their kitchen, he spread peanut butter on wheat bread. He could do that much.

The job had provided a masquerade that kept Janie from seeing the obvious: he'd been asleep for the last two decades. A relentless fog descended upon him that god-awful day, and it remained, through his college education (with the help of a fair amount of weed) and then through his job in accounting at a small high-tech company. He'd quit the weed by then but hid in the numbers for years without anyone realizing that he wasn't quite…
there
. They shrugged it off, thinking, he supposed, that he was merely distant, quiet. They, including Janie, chalked it up to personality traits of a numbers geek.

But no one in Austin had known him before the plane crash. Way back when he wrote songs and played the guitar, when he talked too much and argued with passion and was “too touchy-feely for his own good.” While at work, he'd lost himself in the black and white of the numbers; their rigid columns and graphs had held him in a tight cocoon of space. Math became his new music, but without the emotions, which was a welcome relief. He had not turned out to be a “lazy, no-good rock and roller” after all.

Unlike Kache's father, Rex would find that disappointing.

SEVENTEEN

The Spit Tune was one of the oldest buildings on the spit. It had survived the fire in 1918 and the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. Peanut shells and sawdust covered the floor. Signed dollar bills from every corner of the world hung from the ceiling and walls, and when Kache was a high school kid, he figured there was enough money there to fund their first album. Now he knew just how naive that had been. First of all, there wasn't nearly that much money, even twenty years later. And secondly, Rex, who'd owned the place forever, was fond of saying he'd shoot anyone who even tried to take one dollar down. “I won't hurt you real bad,” he'd say. “Maybe just take off a finger or two to remind you to follow the rules.”

Rex himself wasn't one to follow many rules. Kache, Marion, Chris, Dan, and Mike were all well underage when they started playing at the bar. Sometimes Rex even let them drink a few beers if they promised not to tell.

But Rex wasn't around. Kache didn't recognize the bartender, a young bearded guy who told him Rex was vacationing in Phoenix. Kache sat down anyway and nursed his coffee.

“Can I get you something stronger?”

“Not yet. Mind if I change the channel?”

The bartender handed him the remote. “A friend of Rex's can do anything he wants.” Kache found the DIY Network. His favorite show was about to start: the father-and-son show called
The House That Jack and Jack Jr. Built
. The hosts wore their tool belts low on their hips just like Kache's father and Denny once had, sharing a similar comradeship, and when the hosts patiently began showing Kache how to build a fire pit, he felt the smallest hint of a burning in the pit between his heart and his stomach.

The hosts acted like they believed in Kache, even the father, Jack Sr. From the screen, they spoke with reassuring confidence, as if Kachemak Winkel could, in fact, do it himself; he could do any goddamn thing, if he ever decided he wanted to. He could prove his father wrong again and again. He wanted his father to be wrong. That his father had been dead since 1985 didn't matter. Kache had never wanted him to be dead, just dead
wrong
.

It was crazy, he knew, to desperately need approval and understanding from a dead man. But he did.

“Pussy Hollywood boys think they can tell us Alaskans how to build shit ourselves? I'd like to see them build a fox trap or skin a bear. Am I right, my friend?”

A large, strong-looking man sat a few stools down. Kache hadn't even heard the guy come in. “You sound like my father,” Kache said. “And my brother, for that matter.”

“Is that right? There's a couple of fine men I'd like to meet.” He smiled warmly, eyes teasing.

“Can't. They're dead.”

“Sorry to hear that. My papa too. And my mama.”

Kache nodded. “Yep. Same.”

“How?” The man motioned for the bartender to get Kache a beer.

“Plane crash.”

“That's harsh.”

“And yours?”

“Bear.”

“As in a bear attack?
That's
harsh.” Kache took a swig of the beer. “Were you there?”

The man said he was but that he hadn't been hurt. “No scars. At least none you can see. You know what I mean, my friend.”

Kache did know what he meant, even if he didn't quite think of him as his friend just yet—he did already feel an odd kinship with him, knowing what they shared. The man had a Russian accent but was clean-shaven and sitting at a bar drinking a beer. Clearly not an Old Believer. Kache had grown up with a lot of Russians, and he wondered if they knew any of the same people. But when Kache asked him, he replied that he'd just moved here from the north slope after another failed marriage and that he lived in an old hunter's cabin. “Only place in town I go to is here for booze and music. The rest I do myself. Not pretend, like bozos.” He motioned his beer toward the TV. “Don't need anybody. Tired of thinking marriage might change me. It won't. Can't. What about you? You with beautiful woman?”

That required a complicated explanation, so Kache just shook his head and turned his attention to the television, but soon, his mind looped back on Janie.

• • •

The other night after she'd left to hang out with friends, Kache had noticed a light glowing from the guest room and had gone to investigate. Janie had left her computer on. Janie never left her computer on. She worked for the electric company and always not only turned off, but also unplugged every appliance, light, and electronic gadget they owned. She'd been spending a lot of time on the computer, and Kache sometimes wondered if she'd found someone to love on the Internet. He understood why she might. He should just turn the thing off.

But the fact that he was even curious at all gave him a rare surge of energy, so he clicked the mouse, and the screen filled with tan and cream and that teal color Janie always liked.

A banner across the top read:
Happenings from Our Happy Home—Welcome to My Blog
.

His mom had kept journals with the commitment of keeping a religious commandment, but why anyone wanted to display a personal diary on the Internet confounded him. Below the banner, a living room basked in natural light flowing through huge windows flanked with curtains, which resembled the ones his mother had made of burlap. Now they were in style? She would have gotten a kick out of that.

Hello, Bloggers!

This weekend, Mr. Happenings has big plans to build a used-brick patio for the luau we're having in a few weeks. (Can you say pig roast? Leis? Even poi?) I have no idea where he gets his energy. It's not like his job isn't grueling enough!

Mr.
Happenings
?

But he insists he can do-it-himself, so who am I to argue?

Anyhoo, we're off to a dinner party tonight with our dear friends.

Was this just a random blog, or was this someone she envied? Did she have a crush on Mr. Happenings? Why else would she read this? This was exactly the kind of perkiness she made fun of.

Hope y'all have happy happenings this weekend. Be sure to check in on Monday for photos of our new patio project. Knowing Mr. Happenings, it will be completely finished. (And I'll be giving him one of my Swedish massages!)

Toodle-oo,

Janie

Janie?
Janie
who
? He had never heard Janie once say
toodle-oo
, or
anyhoo
for that matter, not to mention the fact that none of this had anything to do with their life.

Along the right side of the screen, a cartoon caricature with Janie's long, dark hair and brown eyes grinned at him.

Click here to read About Me:

Hi, I'm Janie. I'm an Alternative Energy Specialist.

Well, he supposed that was
one
way to say she worked in collections for the electric company. She had studied modern dance and wanted to be a dancer just as he had wanted to be a musician; they shared a haunting sense of failure. Though they each bore it quietly, it was always there, as constant as the indented couch.

I'm married to Mr. Happenings, an accomplished musician and CFO who is my Renaissance man. Seriously. What can't he do? We have two darling kids, who I call the Pumpkin and the Petunia, and honestly? Most of the happenings at our home really are happy! We work hard and play hard. Check back regularly to see our do-it-yourself projects, recipes, parenting tips, decorating, crafts, and hints on how to keep your marriage and family positively happy!

He needed to stop reading, to turn it off if he could find—

“Kache. What the—?” Janie stood in the doorway, clasping her high heels in each hand.

“I'm sorry. I didn't mean to,” he told her, swiping the cursor toward the X, still trying to shut it down.

“Oh, it's some work thing. I came back to turn it… Here, let me…”

“Janie.” He stood and reached out, taking a shoe so he could hold her hand, so tiny inside his mammoth one. “I'm sorry, but what is this? Some kind of alternate personality?”

Her face flushed, and the pink splotch made its appearance, spreading down her neck. He felt bad, wished he had turned off the computer before she discovered what he'd discovered. “No, it's not what you think. I'm not… I was just playing around.”

“Who's Mr. Happenings? Is he supposed to be me? Or I guess the anti-me? My evil twin. Or I'd be the evil twin in this scenario, I guess.”

“No, no. It's silly. I'm so embarrassed. It started out… I was…bored, you know?”

“Jesus. You had to make up an entire life? It's that bad?”

She looked toward her toes as if they might have an answer. “We could change that, Kache, if you'd
try
.” Her shoulders slumped, and a few tears hit her pearly polished toenails.

He pulled her to him in a hug, Janie so short without her heels and him so tall he had to practically fold himself in half to hold her. “I will. I'll try harder.”

Her muffled voice, breathy against his arm, said, “You always say that, but nothing changes. It's such a lazy-ass cliché.”

He pulled back and looked at her. “Wait. You really give Swedish massages?”

She didn't smile. She didn't even respond.

He sighed. “I
am
a lazy ass.”

“You didn't get all those promotions by being a lazy ass.”

“I got fired.”

“Laid off. Bought out. Restructuring. It's different. You ran that place.”

“Hardly. I got lucky is all, but the gig's up. No, Janie. When it comes to getting things done, I'm as competent as a clam. Hence Mr. Happenings. My dad would love the guy.”

She stepped back. With her small, tight fist, she punched him once firmly, squarely in his chest. “Your father has been dead twenty years. They all have been. Anniversaries are hard, I get that. But this has been going on forever. Kache,
you
didn't die.”

She grabbed her shoe from him, pulled her heels back on. Balancing on one dancer's leg then the other, she kept her eyes locked on his while he stood, hands in his pockets, the slight sensation of her punch already fading. Her bottom lip trembled.

Her words had come loud and fast. “No. You know what? Forget it. We're done. I
hate
that I wrote that creepy blog. Jesus, I need an actual
life
. Get the hell out and don't come back.” She'd turned and slammed the door so loud the floor quaked. Her final shout had come from the other side: “And WAKE THE FUCK UP!”

• • •

“You hear anything I say, my friend? Taking nap after one beer? You need me to drive you home?” Kache wasn't sure what he'd told the man. Had he been speaking out loud? He hoped not. But the man was smiling at him again. Something about him reminded Kache of Denny. That warm familiarity. The ability to chat with anyone. Kache was so tired after staying up all night with the squatter woman, he wouldn't mind having someone drive him home. But he needed to get over to the Old Folks' and fill in Snag, visit Lettie. He thanked the man for the beer and said he hoped to see him around.

The man called after him, “Next time I see you, your life will be better. You find beautiful woman! Not like me, you live happily ever after!”