The Great Alone: A Novel (26 page)

Leni watched the majestic animals move through the tall grass. “Wow.”

A bush plane banked overhead, began its descent.

“My grandpa took me here when I was just a kid,” Matthew whispered. “I remember telling him he was crazy to homestead land so close to the
bears, and he said,
It’s Alaska
, as if that were the only answer that mattered
.
My grandparents relied on their dogs to run off the bears if they came too close. The government created a national refuge around us.”

“Only here,” Leni said with a laugh.

She leaned against Matthew.
Only here.

God, she loved this place; she loved Alaska’s wild ferocity, its majestic beauty. Even more than the land, she loved the people to whom it spoke. She hadn’t realized until just this moment how deep her love for Alaska ran.

“Matthew! Leni!”

They heard Ms. Rhodes yelling for them.

They ducked back through the scrub brush and came out on the beach. Ms. Rhodes was there, with the younger girls gathered around her. Off to her left, a float plane was pulled up onto the beach. “Hurry!” Ms. Rhodes said, waving her hand. “Marthe, Agnes, get in the plane. We have to get back to Kaneq. Mad Earl has had a heart attack.”

*   *   *

M
AD
E
ARL DIED
.

Leni couldn’t quite wrap her mind around it. Yesterday, the old man had been alive, vibrant, drinking moonshine, telling stories. The compound had been a busy place, a hive of activity: chain saws whirring, steel being fired into blades over open flames, axes chopping wood, dogs barking. Without him, it fell into quiet.

Leni didn’t cry for Mad Earl. She wasn’t that much of a hypocrite, but she wanted to weep for the loss she saw in the faces around her. For Thelma and Ted and Moppet and Clyde and the rest of the people who lived at the compound; the blank space left by Mad Earl would hurt for a long time.

Now they were all out in the bay, near the boat launch below the Russian church.

Leni sat in the dented aluminum canoe that her father had salvaged, with Mama in front of her. Dad was behind Leni, keeping them steady in the water.

There were boats all around them, floating in the calm of this bright day. They had gathered for their version of a funeral. It was almost summer; you could feel it in the sun’s heat. Hundreds of snow geese had returned to the head of the bay. The craggy shoreline, empty and slicked with ice all winter, now bore all manner of life. On a rock in the middle of the water, a green and black tower of stone that rose up from the deep, sea lions crowded over one another. Seagulls flew above them in lazy white arcs, yapping like terriers. She saw nesting gulls and diving cormorants. Seals, with black or silver cocker spaniel faces, poked their noses up from the water alongside otters who lay lazily on their backs, cracking clams in quick-moving paws.

Not far away, Matthew sat in a shiny aluminum skiff with his father. Every time Matthew looked at Leni, she looked away, afraid to reveal her feelings for him in such a public place.

“My daddy loved this place,” Thelma was saying, her words swaying in time to the music made by her oar in the water. “He will be missed.”

Leni watched Thelma pour a stream of ashes from a cardboard box. They floated for a moment, fanned out, creating a murky stain, then slowly sank.

Silence fell.

Most of Kaneq was out here, or so it seemed. The Harlans, Tom and Matthew Walker; Large Marge; Natalie; Calhoun Malvey and his new wife; Tica Rhodes and her husband; and all the merchants. There was even a bunch of old-timers, men who lived so far off the grid and so deep in the bush they were hardly ever seen. They had few teeth and lots of stringy hair and hollowed-out cheeks. Several had dogs in their boats. Crazy Pete and Matilda stood on the shore, side by side.

One by one the boats floated back to shore, were beached. Mr. Walker carried Thelma’s canoe up the beach and tossed it into the back of a rusted pickup.

People instinctively looked to Mr. Walker to say something more, to bring them all together. They gathered close to him.

“I’ll tell you what, Thelma,” Mr. Walker said. “Why don’t you all come over to my place? I’ll throw some salmon on the fire and get out a case of cold beer. We can give Earl a send-off he’d love.”

“The big man, offering to host the wake for a man he looked down on,” Dad said. “We don’t need your charity, Tom. We will say goodbye in our own way.”

Leni wasn’t the only one who flinched at the stridency of her father’s voice. She saw shock on the faces around her.

“Ernt,” Mama said. “Not now.”

“Now is the perfect time. We are saying goodbye to a man who came up here because he wanted a simpler way of life. The last thing he’d want us to do is celebrate by drinking with the man who wants to turn Kaneq into Los Angeles.”

Dad seemed to grow while he stood there, fueled by rage and animosity. He moved forward, went to Thelma, who looked as broken as a used Popsicle stick, her hair dirty, her shoulders slumped, her eyes watery.

Dad squeezed Thelma’s shoulder. She flinched, looked frightened. “I’ll take Earl’s place. You don’t have to worry. I’ll make sure we stay ready for anything. I’ll teach Moppet—”

“You’ll teach my daughter what?” Thelma asked in an unsteady voice. “The way you teach your wife? You think we haven’t seen the way you treat her?”

Mama froze, a flush colored her cheeks.

“We’re done with you,” Thelma said, her voice strengthening. “You scare the kids, especially when you’re drinking. My dad put up with you because of what you did for my brother, and I’m grateful for that, too, but there’s something wrong with you. I don’t want to rig the outside of our land with explosives, for God’s sake, and no eight-year-old needs to put on a gas mask at two
A.M.
and get to the gate with her bug-out bag. My dad did things one way. I’m doing them another.” She drew in a deep breath. Her eyes glittered with tears, but Leni saw relief, too. How long had Thelma wanted to say all this? “And now I am taking my dad’s old friends to Tom’s place to celebrate his life. We’ve known the Walkers forever. We were all friends, a
community
, before you showed up. If you can come and be civil, come. If you just want to tear this town apart, stay home.”

Leni saw the way people backed away from Dad. Even the bushy-bearded off-the-gridders took a step back.

Thelma looked at Mama. “Come with us, Cora.”

“What? But—” Mama shook her head.

“My wife stays with me,” Dad said.

There was a long moment. No one moved or spoke. Then, slowly, the Harlans began to walk away.

Dad looked around, saw how easily they’d culled him from the herd.

Leni watched their friends and neighbors get into their vehicles and drive away, boats thumping along behind them on trailers or in pickup beds. Matthew gave Leni a long, sad look and finally turned away.

When they were alone, just the three of them, Leni glanced at Mama, who looked as worried and scared as Leni felt. Neither had any doubt: this would push him over the edge.

Dad stood still, eyes blazing with hatred, staring down the empty road.

“Ernt,” Mama said.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “I’m thinking.”

After that and all the way home, he said nothing, which should have been better than yelling, but it wasn’t. Yelling was like a bomb in the corner: you saw it, watched the fuse burn, and you knew when it would explode and you needed to run for cover. Not speaking was a killer somewhere in your house with a gun when you were sleeping.

Inside the cabin, he paced and paced. He muttered to himself, shook his head as if he were hearing something he didn’t like.

Leni and Mama stayed out of his way.

At suppertime, Mama put some leftover moose stew on the stove to heat up, but the rich aroma did nothing to ease the tension.

When Mama put dinner on the table, Dad stopped suddenly, looked up; the light in his eyes was scary. Muttering something about ingratitude and bitches with bad attitudes and pricks who thought they owned the world, he stormed out of the house.

“We should lock him out,” Leni said.

“And let him break a window or tear a wall away to get in?”

Outside, they heard a chain saw whir to life.

“We could run away,” Leni said.

Mama gave her a wan smile. “Sure. Yeah. He won’t come after us.”

They knew, both of them, that Leni might (might) be able to get away and have a life. Not Mama. He would track her down wherever she went.

They ate dinner in silence, each watching the door carefully, listening for an early warning sign of trouble.

Then the door cracked open against the wall. Dad stood there, crazy-eyed, hair covered in sawdust, holding a hatchet.

Mama lurched to her feet, backed away. He swept in, muttering, yanked Mama into him, drew her outside, and dragged her down the driveway. Leni ran behind them. She heard Mama talking to him in that soothing voice of hers.

He pulled Mama toward a pair of skinned logs that created a giant barricade at the end of their driveway.

“I can build a wall. Put spikes on the top, maybe razor wire. Keep us safe inside. We don’t need the g-damn compound. Screw the Harlans.”

“B-but Ernt … we can’t live—”

“Think of it,” he said, pulling her close, a hatchet hanging from one hand. “Nothing to fear from the outside world anymore. We will be safe inside. Just us. That son of a bitch can turn Kaneq into Detroit and we won’t care. I’ll protect you, Cora. From all of them. That’s how much I love you.”

Leni stared in horror at the logs, imagining it: this thumbprint piece of land walled off at the joint, cut off from the bit of civilization that would now be Out There.

There was no one who would stop her dad from building a wall or shutting them away, no police who would protect them or come in an emergency.

And once he finished it, bolted the gate shut, would Leni—or Mama—ever get out?

Leni glanced at her parents: two thin figures, angled together, touching with lips and fingers, murmuring about love, Mama trying to keep him
calm, Dad trying to keep her close. They would always be the way they’d been, nothing would ever change.

In the naïveté of youth, her parents had seemed like towering presences, omnipotent and all-knowing. But they weren’t that; they were just two broken people.

She could leave them. She could break free and go her own way. It would be frightening, but it couldn’t be worse than staying, watching this toxic dance of theirs, letting their world become her world until there was nothing left of her at all, until she was as small as a comma.

EIGHTEEN

At ten
P.M.
, the night of Mad Earl’s funeral, the sky above Walker Cove was a layer of deep blue, fading to lavender at the edges. The evening’s bonfire had burned down; logs turned to ash and crumbled into one another.

An extreme low tide had pulled back the sea, revealing a wide swath of mud, a mirror of slick gray that reflected the color of the sky and the snow-covered mountains that rose up on the opposite shore. Clumps of shiny black mussels clung to exposed pilings; the aluminum drift boat lay angled in the mud, its line tied to the buoy.

For hours there had been talk. Stories about Mad Earl, told in halting voices. Some had made them laugh. Most had made them all fall silent and remember. Mad Earl hadn’t always been the crotchety, angry man he’d become in old age. Grief over the loss of his son had twisted him. Once, he’d been Grandad Eckhart’s best friend. Alaska was tough on people, especially once they got old.

Now, quiet. There was only the occasional popping of the fire, the thunk of a falling bit of burnt wood, the lapping of the outgoing tide.

Matthew sat in one of their old beach chairs, his legs stretched out, crossed
at the ankles, watching a young eagle picking at a salmon carcass on the beach. A pair of seagulls flew close, waiting for scraps.

There were only three of them left now. Dad and Large Marge and Matthew.

“Are we going to talk about it, Tom?” Large Marge said after so long a silence that Matthew was sure they’d kicked out the fire and climbed the beach stairs. “Thelma pretty much as banished Ernt from their place.”

“Yeah,” Dad said.

Matthew didn’t like the way his father looked at Large Marge. The worry in his eyes.

“What are you two talking about?” Matthew asked.

Dad said, “Ernt Allbright is an angry man. We all know he vandalized the saloon. Thelma said tonight that he’s been trying to get the Harlans to plant trip wires and explosives to ‘protect’ them in case of war.”

“Yeah. He’s crazy like Mad Earl, but—”

“Mad Earl was harmless,” Large Marge said. “Ernt will not take this banishment well. It will piss him off. When he gets mad he gets mean, and when he gets mean, he hurts people.”

“People?” Matthew said, feeling a chill go through him. “You mean Leni? He’ll hurt Leni?”

Matthew didn’t wait for them to answer. He ran up the stairs to the yard, where he snagged his bicycle and climbed aboard. Pedaling hard on the wet, spongy ground, he reached the main road in less than ten minutes.

At the Allbright driveway, he skidded to a stop so fast his bike almost slipped out from underneath him. Two skinned logs barricaded the scrawny necklike entrance to the land. They were the color of salmon meat, freshly cut, a fleshy pink, studded here and there with bits of bark.

What the hell?

Matthew looked around, saw no movement, heard nothing. He pedaled around the logs and kept going, more slowly now, his heart thumping in his chest, worry expanding.

At the end of the driveway, he dismounted, laid his bike on its side. A
cautious examination of the Allbright land showed no sign of trouble. Ernt’s truck was parked in front of the cabin.

Matthew crept forward slowly, wincing every time a twig snapped beneath his foot or he stepped on something—a beer can, a comb someone had dropped—he couldn’t see in the shadows. The goats bleated. Chickens squawked in alarm.

He was about to take a step when he heard a sound.

The cabin door opening.

He threw himself into the tall grass, lay still.

Footsteps on the deck. Creaking.

Scared to move and more scared not to, he lifted his head, looked out above the grass.

Leni stood at the edge of the porch, with a wool blanket wrapped around her in a cape of red and white and yellow stripes. She was holding a roll of toilet paper; moonlight set it aglow.

“Leni,” he said.

She looked over, saw him. Worriedly, she glanced back at the cabin, then ran for him.

He stood, pulled her into his arms, held her tightly. “Are you okay?”

“He’s building a wall,” Leni said, glancing back.

“That’s what those logs are for out at the road?”

Leni nodded. “I’m scared, Matthew.”

Matthew started to say,
It will be all right
, but he heard the cabin lock hitch.

“
Go
,” Leni whispered, shoving him away.

Matthew threw himself into the cover of trees just as the door opened. He saw Ernt Allbright step out onto the porch, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and baggy boxer shorts. “Leni?” he called out.

Leni waved. “I’m here, Dad. Just dropped the TP.” She cast a desperate glance back at Matthew. He hid behind a tree.

Leni walked over to the outhouse, disappeared inside of it. Ernt waited for her on the porch, herded her back inside as soon as she was done. The door lock latched with a click behind them.

Matthew retrieved his bicycle and rode home as fast as he could. He found Large Marge and his dad standing together in the yard, beside Marge’s truck.

“H-he’s building a wall,” Matthew said, his breath coming in gasps. He jumped off his bike and dropped it in the grass by the smokehouse.

“What do you mean?” Dad said.

“Ernt. You know how their land is a bottleneck and then flares out over the water? He’s skinned two logs and laid them across the driveway. Leni says he’s building a wall.”

“Jesus,” Dad said. “He’ll cut them off from the world.”

*   *   *

L
ENI WOKE TO THE
high-pitched whirring of the chain saw and the occasional
whack
of a hatchet splitting wood. Dad had been up for hours, all weekend, building his wall.

The only bright spot was that she had survived the weekend and now it was Monday again, a school day.

Matthew.

Joy pushed aside the cramped, hopeless feeling of loss this weekend had birthed. She dressed for school and climbed down the ladder.

The cabin was quiet.

Mama came out of her bedroom dressed in a turtleneck and baggy jeans. “Morning.”

Leni went to her mother. “We have to do something before the wall is finished.”

“He won’t really do it. He was just crazed. He’ll see reason.”

“That’s what you’re going to rely on?”

Leni saw for the first time how old her mother looked, how drawn and defeated. There was no light in her eyes anymore, no ready smile.

“I’ll get you coffee.”

Before Leni made it to the kitchen, a knock rattled the cabin door. Almost simultaneously the door swung open. “Hullo, the house!”

Large Marge strode forward. A dozen bracelets clattered on her fleshy wrists, earrings bobbed up and down like fishing lures, catching the light. Her hair was growing out again. She’d parted it down the middle and tied it into two pom-pom balls that flopped as she moved.

Dad pushed in behind the black woman, put his hands on his bony hips. “I said you couldn’t go in, g-damn it.”

Large Marge grinned and handed Mama a bottle of lotion. She pressed it into her hands, closed her big hands over Mama’s small ones. “Thelma made this from the lavender growing in her backyard. She thought you’d love it.”

Leni could see what this small kindness meant to her mother.

“We don’t want your charity,” Dad said. “She smells just fine without putting on that shit.”

“Girlfriends give each other gifts, Ernt. And Cora and I are friends. That’s why I’m here, in fact. I thought I’d have coffee with my neighbors.”

“Would you get Marge some coffee, Leni?” Mama said. “And maybe a piece of cranberry bread.”

Dad crossed his arms, standing with his back to the door.

Large Marge led Mama to the sofa, helped her to sit, then sat beside her. The cushion popped beneath the woman’s weight. “Really, I wanted to talk to you about my diarrhea.”

“Good Christ,” Dad said.

“It’s been explosive. I wondered if you’d come across any home remedies. Good Lord, the cramping has been awful.”

Dad muttered an expletive and left the cabin, slamming the door shut behind him.

Large Marge smiled. “Men are so easy to outthink. So, now it’s just us.”

Leni handed out coffees and then sat down in the old Naugahyde recliner they’d bought at a junk store in Soldotna last year.

Large Marge’s gaze moved from Cora, to Leni, and back to Cora. Leni was sure that it missed nothing. “I don’t imagine Ernt was pleased about Thelma’s decision at Earl’s funeral.”

“Oh. That,” Mama said.

“I see the posts he’s dug out on the main road. Looks like he’s building a wall around this place.”

Mama shook her head. “He won’t.”

“You know what walls do?” Large Marge said. “They hide what happens behind them. They trap people inside.” She put her cup down on the coffee table, leaned toward Mama. “He could put a lock on that gate and keep the key and how would you escape?”

“H-he wouldn’t do that,” Mama said.

“Oh, really?” Large Marge said. “That’s what my sister said the last time I talked to her. I would do anything to go back in time and change what happened. She’d finally left him, but it was too late.”

“She left him,” Mama said quietly. For once, she didn’t look away. “That’s what got her killed. Men like that … they don’t stop looking for you until they find you.”

“We can protect you,” Large Marge said.

“‘We’?”

“Tom Walker and me. The Harlans. Tica. Everyone in Kaneq. You’re one of us, Cora, you and Leni. He’s the outsider. Trust us. Let us help.”

Leni thought about it for real, seriously; they could leave him.

It would mean leaving Kaneq and probably Alaska.

Leaving Matthew.

And, what? Would they have to be on the run forever, hiding out, changing their names? How did that work? Mama had no money, no credit card. She didn’t even have a valid driver’s license. Neither of them did. On paper, did she and Mama even exist?

And what if he found them anyway?

“I can’t,” Mama finally said, and Leni thought they were the saddest, most pathetic words she’d ever heard.

Large Marge stared at Mama a long time, disappointment etched in the lines of her face. “Well. These things take time. Just know that we are here. We’ll help you. All you have to do is ask. I don’t care if it’s the middle of the night in January. You come to me, okay? I don’t care what you’ve done or what he’s done. You come to me and I’ll help.”

Leni couldn’t help herself. She launched herself around the coffee table and into Large Marge’s arms. The woman’s comforting bulk enfolded her, made her feel safe. “Come on,” Large Marge said. “Let’s get you to school. There aren’t many days left before you graduate.”

Leni grabbed her backpack and slung it over her shoulder. After a fierce hug for her mother, a whispered, “
We need to talk about this
,” Leni followed Large Marge outside. They were halfway to the truck when Dad appeared, holding a five-gallon jug of gasoline.

“Leaving so soon?” he said.

“Just a cup of coffee, Ernt. I’ll drive Leni to school. I’m heading to the store.”

He dropped the plastic jug. It sloshed beside him. “No.”

Large Marge frowned. “No, what?”

“No one leaves this place without me anymore. There’s nothing out there for us.”

“She’s five days away from graduating. Of course she’s going to finish.”

“Fat chance, fat lady,” Dad said. “I need her at the homestead. Five days is nothing. They’ll give her the damned piece of paper.”

“You want to fight this battle?” Large Marge advanced, bracelets clattering. “If this young woman misses a single day of school, I will call the state and turn you in, Ernt Allbright. Don’t think for one second I won’t. You can be as batshit crazy and mean as you want, but you are not going to stop this beautiful girl from finishing high school. You got it?”

“The state won’t care.”

“Oh. They will. Trust me. You want me talking to the authorities about what goes on here, Ernt?”

“You don’t know shit.”

“Yeah, but I’m a big woman with a big mouth. You want to push me?”

“Go ahead. Take her to school, if it means so damned much to you.” He looked at Leni. “I’ll pick you up at three. Don’t keep me waiting.”

Leni nodded and climbed into the old International Harvester, with its ragtag cloth-covered seats. They drove down the bumpy driveway, past the
newly skinned log poles. Out on the main road, rambling through a cloud of dust, Leni realized she was crying.

It felt overwhelming suddenly. The stakes were too high. What if Mama ran and Dad really did find her and kill her?

Large Marge pulled up in front of the school and parked. “It’s not fair that you have to deal with this. But life ain’t fair, kid. You know that, I guess. You could call the police.”

“And if I get her killed? How’s my life after that?”

Large Marge nodded. “You come to me if you need help. Okay? Promise?”

“Sure,” Leni said dully.

Large Marge leaned toward Leni, popped open the creaky glove box, took out a thick envelope. “I have something for you.”

Leni was used to Large Marge’s gifts. A candy bar, a paperback novel, a shiny barrette. Large Marge often had something to press in Leni’s palm at the end of the workday at the store.

Leni looked down at the envelope. It was from the University of Alaska. It had been mailed to Lenora Allbright, in care of Marge Birdsall at the Kaneq General Store.

Her hands were shaking as she tore it open and read the first line.
We are pleased to offer you
 …

Leni looked at Large Marge. “I got in.”

“Congratulations, Leni.”

Leni felt numb. She’d been
accepted
.

To college.

“Now what?” Leni said.

“You go,” Large Marge said. “I’ve talked to Tom. He’s going to pay for it. Tica and I are buying your books and Thelma is giving you spending money. You’re one of us and we have your back. No excuses, kid. You leave this place the second you can. Run like hell, kid, and don’t look back. But Leni—”

“Yeah?”

“You be careful as hell until the day you leave.”