The Great Alone: A Novel (33 page)

Leni kept reliving the scene with Matthew, hearing his screams, seeing his eye roll around in the socket.
He needs a diaper change.

Her fault. All of it.

Large Marge returned, her rubber boots squeaking on the sawdust floor. “You might need this, I’m afraid. I always keep one in stock.”

Leni looked down, saw the slim box in Large Marge’s palm.

And just like that, Leni’s life got even worse.

*   *   *

I
N THE DARK
of an early-fallen night, Leni made her way from the outhouse to the cabin beneath a starlit velvet blue sky. It was one of those vibrant, clear-skied Alaskan nights that were otherworldly. Moonlight reflected on snow and set the world aglow.

Once inside the cabin, she latched the door behind her and stood by the row of parkas and Cowichan sweaters and rain jackets, the box of mittens and gloves and hats at her feet. Unable to move, to think, to feel.

Until now, this second, she would have said blue was her favorite color. (A stupid thought, but there it was.) Blue. The color of morning, of twilight, of glaciers and rivers, of Kachemak Bay, of her mother’s eyes.

Now blue was the color of a ruined life.

She didn’t know what to do. There was no good answer. She was smart enough to know that.

And dumb enough to be in this situation.

“Leni?”

She heard her mother’s voice, recognized the concerned tone, but it didn’t matter. Leni felt distance spreading between them. That was how change came, she supposed: in the quiet of things unspoken and truths unacknowledged.

“How was Matthew?” Mama asked. She walked over to Leni, peeled off her parka, hung it up, and led her to the sofa, but neither of them sat down.

“He’s not even him,” Leni said. “He can’t think or talk or walk. He didn’t look at me, just screamed.”

“He’s not paralyzed, though. That’s good, right?”

That was what Leni had thought, too. Before. But what good was being able to move if you couldn’t think or see or talk? It might have been better if he’d died down there. Kinder.

But the world was never kind, especially not to kids.

“I know you think it’s the end of the world, but you’re young. You’ll fall in love again and … What’s that in your hand?”

Leni held out her fist, uncurled her fingers to reveal the thin vial in her hand.

Mama took it, studied it. “What is this?”

“It’s a pregnancy test,” Leni said. “Blue means positive.”

She thought about the chain of choices that had led her here. A ten-degree shift anywhere along the way and everything would be different. “It must have happened the night we ran away. Or before? How do you know a thing like that?”

“Oh, Leni,” Mama said.

What Leni needed now was Matthew. She needed him to be
him,
whole. Then they would be in this together. If Matthew were Matthew, they’d get married and have a baby. It was 1978, for God’s sake; maybe they didn’t even have to get married. The point was, they could make it. They’d be too young and college would have to wait, but it wouldn’t be the tragedy it was now.

How was she supposed to do this without him?

Mama said, “It’s not like in my day when they sent you away in shame and nuns took your baby. You have choices now. It’s legal to—”

“I’m having Matthew’s baby,” Leni said. She didn’t even know until then that all of this had already gone through her brain and she’d decided.

“You can’t raise a baby alone. Here.”

“You mean with Dad,” Leni said, and there it was: the thing that made this even worse. Leni was carrying a Walker baby. Her father would blow a gasket when he found out.

“I don’t want him anywhere near this baby,” Leni said.

Mama pulled Leni into her arms, held her tightly.

“We will figure this out,” Mama said, stroking her hair. Leni could tell that her mother was crying, and that made her feel even worse.

“What’s this?” Dad said, his voice booming loud.

Mama sprang back, looking guilty. Her cheeks shone with tears, her smile was unsteady. “Ernt!” Mama said. “You’re back.”

Leni shoved the vial into her pocket.

Dad stood by the door, unzipped his insulated coveralls. “How is the kid? Still a vegetable?”

Leni had never felt such hatred. She pushed Mama aside and went to him, saw his surprise as she neared him and said, “I’m pregnant.”

She never saw the hit coming. One minute she was standing there, staring at her father, and the next minute his fist hit her chin so hard she tasted blood. Her head snapped back, she stumbled, lost her balance, crashed into an end table, and fell to the floor. As she landed, she thought, oddly,
He’s so fast
.

“Ernt, no!” Mama screamed.

Dad unbuckled his belt, pulled it loose, came at Leni.

She tried to get up, but her head was ringing and she was dizzy. Her vision was off.

The first crack of his belt buckle hit her across the cheek, breaking the skin. Leni cried out, tried to scuttle away.

He hit her again.

Mama threw herself at Dad, clawing at his face. He shoved her away and went after Leni again.

He yanked her to her feet, backhanded her across the face. She heard the cartilage crack, pop. Blood gushed from her nose. She staggered back, instinctively protecting her stomach as she fell to her knees.

A gun fired.

Leni heard the loud
craaaack
and smelled the shot. Glass shattered.

Dad stood there, his legs braced wide, his right hand still curled into a fist. For a second nothing happened; no one moved. Then Dad stumbled forward, toward Leni. Blood pulsed from a wound in his chest, stained his shirt. He looked confused, surprised. “Cora?”

Mama stood behind him, the gun still pointed at him. “Not Leni,” she said, her voice steady. “Not my Leni.”

She shot him again.

TWENTY-FOUR

“He’s dead,” Leni said. Not that there was much doubt. The gun Mama had chosen could kill a bull moose.

Leni realized she was kneeling in a pool of gore. Bits of bone and cartilage looked like maggots in the blood. Ice-cold air swept into the room through the broken window.

Mama dropped the weapon. She moved toward Dad, her eyes wide, her mouth trembling. She scratched nervously at her throat, turned the pale skin red in streaks.

Leni climbed woodenly to her feet and walked into the kitchen. She ought to be thinking,
We’re fine, he’s gone
, but she felt nothing, not even relief.

Her face hurt so much it made her sick to her stomach. The taste of blood was making her gag, and with every breath her nose made a whistling sound. She got a rag wet and pressed it to her face, wiped blood away.

How had Mama endured this pain over and over?

She rinsed the rag, twisted out the pink water of her blood, and dampened it again, then returned to the living room, which smelled of gun smoke and gore and blood.

Mama knelt on the floor. She’d pulled Dad into her lap and was rocking him back and forth, crying. There was blood everywhere: on her hands, her knees. She’d smeared it across her eyes.

“Mama?” Leni leaned down, touched her mother’s shoulder.

Her mother looked up, blinking groggily. “I didn’t know how else to stop him.”

“What do we do?” Leni said.

“Get on the ham radio. Call the police,” Mama said in a lifeless voice.

The police. Finally. After all these years, they would get some help. “We will be okay, Mama. You’ll see.”

“No, we won’t, Leni.”

Leni wiped blood from her mother’s face, just as she’d done so often before. Mama didn’t even flinch. “What do you mean?”

“They’ll call it murder.”

“Murder? But he was beating us. You saved my life.”

“I shot him in the back, Leni. Twice. Juries and defense attorneys don’t like people shot in the back. It’s fine. I don’t care.” She pushed the hair out of her face, left bloody streaks. “Go tell Large Marge. She’s a lawyer, or was. She’ll handle it.” Mama sounded drugged; her speech was slow. “You’ll have your fresh start. You’ll raise your baby here in Alaska, among our friends. Tom will be like a father to you. I know it. And Large Marge adores you. Maybe college is still a possibility.” She looked at Leni. “It was worth it. I want you to know that. I’d do it again for you.”

“Wait. Are you talking about
leaving
me? About prison?”

“Just go get Large Marge.”

“You are not going to prison for killing a man that everyone in town knew was abusive.”

“I don’t care. You’re safe. That’s all that matters.”

“What if we get rid of him?”

Mama blinked. “Get rid of him?”

“We could make it so this never happened.” Leni got to her feet.
Yes
. This was the answer. They would devise a way to erase what they’d done. Then
they could stay here, she and Mama, and live among their friends, in this place they’d grown to love. The baby would be loved by all of them, and when Matthew finally got better, Leni would be waiting.

“That’s not as easy as it sounds, Leni,” Mama said.

“This is Alaska. Nothing is easy, but we’re tough, and if you go to prison, I’ll be alone. With a baby to raise. I can’t do it without you. I
need
you, Mama.”

It was a moment before Mama said, “We’d need to hide the body, make sure it never gets found. The ground is too frozen to bury him.”

“Right.”

“But Leni,” she said evenly. “You’re talking about another crime.”

“Letting you be called a murderer?
That
would be a crime. You think I’m going to trust the law with your life? The
law
? You told me the law didn’t protect abused women, and you were right. He got out of jail in a few days. When did the law ever protect you from him? No.
No.
”

“Are you sure, Leni? It means you’ll have to live with it.”

“I can live with it. I’m sure.”

Mama took a while to consider, then extracted herself from Dad’s limp, bloody body, and stood. She went into her bedroom and came out a few moments later dressed in insulated pants and a turtleneck. She dumped her bloody clothes in a heap by Dad’s body. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t open the door to anyone except me.”

“What do you mean?”

“Step one is to dispose of the body.”

“And you think I’m going to sit here while you do it?”

“
I
killed him. I’ll do this.”

“And I’m helping you cover it up.”

“We don’t have time to argue.”

“Exactly.” Leni stripped out of her bloody clothes. Within moments she was in her insulated pants and parka and bunny boots, ready to go.

“Get his traps,” Mama said, and left the cabin.

Leni gathered the heavy traps from their hooks on the cabin wall and
carried them outside. Mama had already hooked the big red plastic sled to the snow machine. It was the one Dad had used for hauling wood. It could hold two large coolers, a lot of chopped wood, and a moose carcass.

“Lay the traps in the sled. Then go get the chain saw and the auger.”

When Leni returned with the tools, Mama said, “You ready for the next part?”

Leni nodded.

“Let’s go get him.”

It took them thirty minutes to drag Dad’s lifeless body from the cabin and across the snowy deck, and then another ten minutes to get him settled on the sled. A bloody trail in the snow revealed their path, but within the hour, with snow falling this heavily, it would be gone. Come spring, the rains would wash it away. Mama covered Dad with a tarp and lashed him and it down with bungee cords.

“Okay, then.”

Leni and her mother exchanged a look. In it was the truth that this act, this decision, would change them forever. Without words, Mama gave Leni the chance to change her mind.

Leni stood firm. She was in this. They would dispose of the body, clean the cabin, and tell everyone he left them, say he must have fallen through the ice while hunting or lost his way in the snow. No one would question or care. Everyone knew there were a thousand ways to disappear up here.

Leni and her mama would finally—
finally
—be unafraid.

“Okay, then.”

Mama pulled the cord to start the snow machine, then took her place on the two-person seat and grasped the throttle. She fitted a neoprene face mask over her bruised, swelling face, and gingerly pulled on her helmet. Leni did the same. “This is going to be cold as hell,” Mama yelled over the roar of the engine. “We’re going up the mountain.”

Leni climbed aboard, put her arms around her mother’s waist.

Mama revved the engine and they were off, driving through the virgin snow, through the open gate. They turned right on the main road and left
onto the road that led up to the old chromium mine. By then it was deep night and blowing snow and cold. The thread of yellow from the snow machine’s headlight led the way.

In weather like this, they didn’t need to worry much about being seen. For more than two hours, Mama drove high up the mountain. Where the snow was deep, her touch on the throttle was light. They rode up hills, down valleys, across frozen rivers, and around cliffs of soaring rock. Mama kept the snow machine’s speed so low it was barely faster than walking; speed wasn’t their objective now. Invisibility was. And the sled needed to stay steady.

They came at last to a small lake high on the mountain, ringed by tall trees and cliffs. Sometime in the last hour the snow had stopped falling and the clouds had departed to reveal a velvety blue night sky awash in swirls of starlight. The moon came out, as if to watch two women in the midst of all this snow and ice or to mourn their choices. Full and bright, it shone down on them, its light reflected across the snow, seeming to lift skyward, a radiant glow illuminating the snowy landscape.

In the sudden clarity of the night, they were visible now, two women on a snow machine in a glowing, silver-white world with a dead body on a sled.

At the frozen lakeshore, Mama eased off of the gas, came to a trembling stop. The insect drone of the engine was the loudest noise out here. It drowned out the harsh sound of Leni’s breathing through the neoprene face mask and helmet.

Was the lake fully frozen? There was no way to know for sure. It should be, at this high elevation, but it was early, too. Not midwinter. The snow radiated with moonlight across the flat, frozen lake.

Leni tightened her hold.

Mama barely turned the throttle, then inched forward. In this dark, they were like astronauts, moving through a strange, impossibly illuminated world, like deepest space, the sound of cracking ice all around them. In the center of the lake, Mama killed the engine. The snow machine slid to a stop. Mama dismounted. The cracking sound was loud, insistent, but not the kind
of sound that mattered. It was just the ice breathing, stretching; not breaking.

Mama took off her helmet, hung it on the throttle, and removed her face mask. Her breath shot out in humid plumes. Leni set her helmet on the duct-taped vinyl seat.

In the silver-blue-white light of the moon, ice crystals sparkled across the surface of the snow, glittered like gemstones.

Quiet.

Only their breathing.

Together they pulled Dad’s body off the sled. Leni used the emergency shovel to clear a divot in the snow. When she came to the glassy silver ice, she put her shovel away and retrieved the auger and the chain saw. Mama used the auger to drill an eight-inch hole in the ice. Slushy water seeped up, bounced the round disc of ice.

Leni pulled off her face mask and shoved it in her pocket, then started up the chain saw, the
wa-na-na-na
excruciatingly loud out here.

She pointed the blade downward, stuck it in the hole, and began the long, arduous process of turning the hole into a big square opening in the ice.

When Leni finished, she was sweating hard. Mama dropped the animal traps beside the hole. They landed with a clank.

Then Mama went back for Dad. Grabbing hold of his cold white hands, she dragged him over to the hole, tucked him up close to it.

Dad’s body was stiff and still, his face as white and hard as a tusk carving.

For the first time, Leni really thought about what they were doing. The bad thing they’d done. From now on, they would have to live with the knowledge that they were capable of
this,
all of it. The shooting, the carrying of a dead man, the covering up of a crime. Although they’d had a lifetime of covering up for him, looking away, pretending, this was different. Now they were the criminals and the secret Leni had to protect was her own.

A good person would feel ashamed. Instead she was angry. Howlingly so.

If only they had walked away years ago, or called the police, asked for
help. Any small course correction on Mama’s part might have led to a future where there wasn’t a dead man on the ice between them.

Mama dragged the traps apart, forced the black jaws open. She pushed Dad’s forearm into the maw. The trap closed with a
snap
of breaking bone. Mama paled, looking sick. Traps broke both of Dad’s legs—
sn-ap
—became weights.

The northern lights appeared overhead, cascading in swirls of yellow, green, red, and purple. Impossible, magical color; lights fell like silken scarves across the sky, skeins of yellow, neon-green, shocking pink. The electric-bright moon seemed to watch it all.

Leni stared down at her father. She saw the man who had used his fists when he was angry, saw the blood on his hands and the mean set to his jaw. But she saw the other man, too, the one she’d crafted from photographs and her own need, the one who’d loved them as much as he could, his capacity for love destroyed by war. Leni thought maybe that he would haunt her. Not just him, but the idea of him, the sad and scary truth that you could love and hate the same person at the same time, that you could feel a deep and abiding loss and shame for your own weakness and still be glad that this awful thing had been done.

Mama dropped to her knees beside him, bent close. “We loved you.”

She looked up at Leni, wanting—maybe needing—Leni to say the same thing, to do what Leni had always done. Peas in a pod.

It was between them now, years of yelling and hitting, of being afraid … and smiles and laughter, Dad saying,
Heya, Red
, and begging for forgiveness.

“’Bye, Dad” was all Leni could summon. Maybe, in time, this wouldn’t be her last memory of him; maybe, in time, she would remember how it felt when he held her hand or put her on his shoulders as he walked along The Strand.

Mama pushed him across the ice, traps clanking, into the open hole. His body plunged down, snapping his head back.

His face peered up at them, a cameo in cold black water, skin white in
the moonlight, beard and mustache frozen. Slowly, slowly he sank into the water and disappeared.

There would be no trace of him tomorrow. The ice would close up long before anyone else came out here. His body would be dragged by the heavy traps to the lake floor. In time, he would be worn down by the water and become only bones, and bones could wash ashore, but the predators would likely find them before the authorities would. By then no one would be looking, anyway. Five out of every thousand people went missing in Alaska every year, were lost. That was a known fact. They fell down crevasses, lost their way on trails, drowned in a rising tide.

Alaska. The Great Alone.

“You know what this makes us,” Mama said.

Leni stood beside her, imagining the sight of her dad’s pale, stiff body being dragged down into the dark. The thing he hated most. “Survivors,” Leni said. The irony was not lost on her. It was what her dad had wanted them to be.

Survivors.

*   *   *

L
ENI KEPT REPLAYING IT
in her mind, seeing the last glimpse of her dad’s face before the black water pulled him under. The image would haunt her for the rest of her life.