The Great Alone: A Novel (19 page)

“I love you,” Mama said, and she was crying now, too, and suddenly Leni understood the reality of her world, the truth that Alaska, in all its beautiful harshness, had revealed. They were trapped, by environment and finances, but mostly by the sick, twisted love that bound her parents together.

Mama would never leave Dad. It didn’t matter that she’d gone so far as to take a backpack and run to the bus and drive away. She would come back, always, because she loved him. Or she needed him. Or she was afraid of him. Who knew, really?

Leni couldn’t begin to understand the hows and whys of her parents’
love. She was old enough to see the turbulent surface, but too young to know what lay beneath.

Mama could never leave Dad, and Leni would never leave Mama. And Dad could never let them go. In this toxic knot that was their family, there was no escape for any of them.

*   *   *

T
HAT NIGHT
, they took Mama home from the hospital.

Dad held Mama as if she were made of glass. So careful, so concerned for her well-being. It filled Leni with an impotent rage.

And then she’d get a glimpse of him with tears in his eyes and the rage would turn soft and slide into something like forgiveness. She didn’t know how to corral or change either of these emotions; her love for him was all tangled up in hate. Right now she felt both emotions crowding in on her, each jostling for the lead.

He got Mama settled in bed and immediately went out to chop wood. There was never enough on the pile and Leni knew that physical exertion helped him somehow. Leni sat by her mother’s bedside for as long as she could, holding her mother’s cold hand. She had so many questions she wanted to ask, but she knew the ugly words would only make her mother cry, so Leni said nothing.

The next morning, Leni was climbing down the ladder when she heard Mama crying.

Leni went into Mama’s bedroom and found her sitting up in bed (just a mattress on the floor), leaning back against the skinned log wall, her face swollen, both eyes black and blue, her nose just slightly to the left of where it belonged.

“Don’t cry,” Leni said.

“You must think the worst of me,” Mama said, gingerly touching the split in her lip. “I baited him, didn’t I? Said the wrong thing. I must have?”

Leni didn’t know what to say to that. Did Mama mean that it was her
fault, that if Mama was quieter or more supportive or more agreeable, Dad wouldn’t explode? It didn’t seem true to Leni, not at all. Sometimes he snapped and sometimes he didn’t, that was all there was. Mama taking the blame seemed wrong. Dangerous, even.

“I love him,” Mama said, staring down at her cast-encased arm. “I don’t know how to stop. But I have you to think about, too. Oh, my God … I don’t know why I’m like this. Why I let him treat me this way. I just can’t forget who he was before the war. I keep thinking he’ll come back, the man I married.”

“You won’t ever leave him,” Leni said quietly. She tried not to make it sound like an indictment.

“Would you really want that? I thought you loved Alaska,” Mama said.

“I love you more. And … I’m afraid,” Leni said.

“This time was bad, I’ll admit, but it scared him. Really. It won’t happen again. He’s promised me.”

Leni sighed. How was Mama’s unshakable belief in Dad any different than his fear of Armageddon? Did adults just look at the world and see what they wanted to see, think what they wanted to think? Did evidence and experience mean nothing?

Mama managed a smile. “You want to play crazy eights?”

So that was how they would do it, merge back into the driving lane after a blown tire. They would say ordinary things and pretend none of it had happened. Until the next time.

Leni nodded. She retrieved the cards from the rosewood box that held her mother’s favorite things and sat down on the floor beside the mattress.

“I’m so lucky to have you, Leni,” Mama said, trying to organize her cards with one hand.

“We’re a team,” Leni said.

“Peas in a pod.”

“Two of a kind.”

Words they said all the time to each other; words that felt a little hollow now. Maybe even sad.

They were halfway through the first game when Leni heard a vehicle
drive up. She tossed the cards on the bed and ran to the window. “It’s Large Marge,” she yelled back to Mama. “And Mr. Walker.”

“Shit,” Mama said. “Help me get dressed.”

Leni ran back to Mama’s bedroom and helped her take off her flannel pajamas and get into a pair of faded jeans and an oversized hooded sweatshirt with sleeves big enough to accommodate the cast. Leni brushed Mama’s hair and then helped her out to the living room, got her situated on the ragged sofa.

The cabin door opened. Snow fluttered inside on a wave of icy air, brushed across the plywood floor.

Large Marge looked like a grizzly in her huge fur parka and mukluks, with a wolverine hat that looked to have been handmade. Earrings made of antler bone hung from her sagging earlobes. She stomped the snow from her boots and started to say something. Then she saw Mama’s bruised face and muttered, “Son of a freaking bitch. I should kick his beef-jerky ass.”

Mr. Walker came in to stand behind her.

“Hey,” Mama said, not quite making eye contact with him. She didn’t stand; maybe she wasn’t strong enough. “Would you like some—”

Dad pushed his way in, slammed the door shut behind him. “I’ll get ’em coffee, Cora. You stay put.”

The tension between the adults was unbearable. What was happening here? Something, that was for sure.

Large Marge took Mr. Walker by the arm—a firm, fish-landing grip—and led him to a chair by the woodstove. “Sit down,” she said, shoving him into the chair when he didn’t move fast enough.

Leni grabbed a stool from beside the card table and dragged it into the living room for Large Marge.

“That itty-bitty thing?” Large Marge asked. “My ass is going to look like a mushroom on a toothpick.” Still, she sat down. Planting her fleshy hands on her hips, she looked at Mama.

“It’s worse than it looks,” Mama said in an uneven voice. “We had a car crash, you know.”

“Yeah. I know,” Large Marge said.

Dad came into the living room, carrying two blue-speckled cups full of coffee. Steam rose up from them, scented the air. He handed Tom and Large Marge each a cup.

“So,” he said uneasily. “We haven’t had winter guests in a while.”

“Sit down, Ernt,” Large Marge said.

“I don’t—”

“Sit down or I’ll knock you down,” Large Marge said.

Mama gasped.

Dad sat down on the sofa beside Mama. “That’s not really the way to talk to a man in his own home.”

“You don’t want to get me started on what a real man is, Ernt Allbright. I’m holding on to my temper, but it could run away with me. And you do not want to see a big woman come at you. Trust me. So shut your trap and listen.” She glanced at Mama. “Both of you.”

Leni felt the air leave the room. A chilling, weighted silence came in, pressed down on them.

Large Marge looked at Mama. “I know you know I’m from D.C. and that I used to be a lawyer. Big-city prosecutor. Wore designer suits and high heels. The whole shebang. I loved it. And I loved my sister, who married the man of her dreams. Only he turned out to have a few problems. A few quirks. Turned out he drank too much and liked to use my baby sis as a punching bag. I tried everything to get her to leave him, but she refused. Maybe she was scared, maybe she loved him, maybe she was as sick and broken as he was. I don’t know. I know that when I called the police it was worse for her and she begged me not to do it again. I backed off. Biggest mistake of my life. He went after her with a hammer.” Large Marge flinched. “We had to have a closed-casket funeral. That was what he’d done to her. He claimed he’d taken the hammer from her and protected himself. The law isn’t kind to battered women. He’s still out there. Free. I came up here to get away from all that.” She looked at Ernt. “And here you are.”

Dad started to rise.

“I’d sit, if I were you,” Mr. Walker said.

Dad slowly sat back down. Anxiety shone in his eyes, showed in the hands
he flexed and unflexed. His booted foot tapped nervously on the floor. They had no idea what this little meeting would cost Mama. As soon as they left, he’d explode.

“You probably mean well,” Leni said. “But—”

“No,” Mr. Walker said in a kind voice. “This isn’t for you to solve, Leni. You’re a kid. Just listen.”

“Tommy and I have talked about this,” Large Marge said. “Your situation here. We have a couple of solutions, but really, Ernt, our favorite one is we take you out and kill you.”

Dad laughed once, then went silent. His eyes widened when he realized they weren’t joking.

“That’s my choice, actually,” Mr. Walker said. “Large Marge has a different plan.”

“Ernt, you’re going to pack your shit up and go to the slope,” Large Marge said. “The pipeline is hiring men like you—it’s a Sodom and Gomorrah up there—and they need mechanics. You’ll make a pile of money, which you need, and you’ll be gone until spring.”

“I can’t leave my family alone until spring,” Dad said.

“How thoughtful you are,” Mr. Walker muttered.

“You think I’ll just leave her to you?” Dad said.

“Enough, boys,” Large Marge said. “You can clank antlers later. For now, Ernt is leaving and I’m moving in. I’ll stay with your girls for the winter, Ernt. I’ll keep them safe from everything and everyone. You can come back in the spring. By then, maybe you’ll know what you’ve got and treat your wife as she deserves.”

“You can’t make me go,” Dad said.

“That’s not the A answer,” Large Marge said. “Look, Ernt. Alaska brings out the best and the worst in a man. Maybe if you’d stayed Outside you never would have become who you are now. I know about ’Nam, and it breaks my heart what you boys went through. But you can’t handle the dark, can you? It’s nothing to be ashamed of. Most folks can’t. Accept it and do what’s best for your family. You love Cora and Leni, don’t you?”

Dad’s expression changed as he looked at Mama. Everything about him
softened; for an instant, Leni saw her dad, the real him, the man he would have been if the war hadn’t ruined him. The man from Before. “I do,” he said.

“Perfect. You love them enough to leave and provide for them,” she said. “Go pack your shit and hit the road. We’ll see you again at breakup.”

1978

TWELVE

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.

*   *   *

L
ENI 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.”