“I feel like we’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” Mama said. Beside her, the unsteady card table from the cabin held the remnants of lunch—Mama had made a stack of pan biscuits and fried up some bologna.
The air smelled of wood smoke and cigarette smoke and fresh-cut wood. It sounded of chain saws whirring, boards thumping onto piles, nails being hammered.
Leni saw Large Marge walking toward them. She looked tired and sweaty, but was smiling. “I don’t suppose I could have a sip of that coffee?”
Mama handed Large Marge her cup.
The three of them stood there, gazing out at the homestead that was changing before their eyes.
“Your Ernt is a good worker,” Large Marge said. “He’s got some skills. Said his dad was a rancher.”
“Uh-huh,” Mama said. “Montana.”
“That’s good news. I can sell you a breeding pair of goats as soon as you get the pens repaired. I’ll give you a good price. They’ll be good for milk and cheese. And you can learn a shitload from Mother Earth News magazine. I’ll bring you over a stack.”
“Thank you,” Mama said.
“Geneva said Leni was a joy to work with. That’s good.” She patted Leni so hard she stumbled forward. “But, Cora, I’ve looked through your supplies. I hope you don’t mind. You don’t have nearly enough. How are your finances?”
“Things are tight.”
Large Marge nodded. Her face settled into grim lines. “Can you shoot?”
Mama laughed.
Large Marge didn’t smile. “I mean it, Cora. Can you shoot?”
“A gun?” Mama asked.
“Yeah. A gun,” Large Marge said.
Mama’s laughter died. “No.” She stubbed out her cigarette on a rock.
“Well. You aren’t the first cheechakos to come up here with a dream and a poor plan.”
“Cheechako?” Leni asked.
“Tenderfoot. Alaska isn’t about who you were when you headed this way. It’s about who you become. You are out here in the wild, girls. That isn’t some fable or fairy tale. It’s real. Hard. Winter will be here soon, and believe me, it’s not like any winter you’ve ever experienced. It will cull the herd, and fast. You need to know how to survive. You need to know how to shoot and kill to feed yourselves and keep yourselves safe. You are not the top of the food chain here.”
Natalie and Dad walked toward them. Natalie was carrying the chain saw and wiping her sweaty forehead with a bunched-up bandanna. She was such a small woman, barely taller than Leni; it seemed impossible that she could carry that heavy chain saw around.
At Mama’s side, she stopped, rested the rounded tip of the chain saw on the toe of her rubber boot. “Well. I got to feed my animals. I gave Ernt a good drawing for the cache.”
Geneva strode toward them. Black dirt colored her hair, her face, splattered across her shirtfront. “Leni has the right work attitude. Good for you, parents.”
Dad laid an arm along Mama’s shoulders. “I can’t thank you ladies enough,” he said.
“Yes. Your help means the world to us,” Mama said.
Natalie’s smile gave her an elfin look. “Our pleasure, Cora. You remember. Tonight you lock your door when you go to bed. Don’t come out till morning. If you need a chamber pot, get one from Large Marge at the Trading Post.”
Leni knew her mouth gaped just a little. They wanted her to pee in a bucket?
“Bears are dangerous this time of year. Black bears especially. They’ll attack sometimes just ’cause they can,” Large Marge said. “And there are wolves and moose and God knows what else.” She took the chain saw from Natalie and slung it over her shoulder as if it were a stick of balsam wood. “There’s no police up here and no telephone except in town, so Ernt, you teach your women to shoot, and do it fast. I’ll give you a list of the minimum supplies you’ll need before September. You’ll need to bag a moose for sure this fall. It’s better to shoot ’em in season, but … you know, what matters is meat in the freezer.”
“We don’t have a freezer,” Leni pointed out.
The women laughed at that, for some reason.
Dad nodded solemnly. “Gotcha.”
“Okay. See you later,” the women said in unison. Waving, they walked toward their vehicles and mounted up, and then drove down the trail that led out to the main road. In moments they were gone.
In the silence that followed, a cold breeze ruffled the treetops above them. An eagle flew overhead, a huge silver fish struggling in its talons’ grip. Leni saw a dog collar hanging from the top branches of an evergreen. An eagle must have picked up a small dog and carried it away. Could an eagle carry off a girl who was skinny as a beanpole?
Be careful. Learn to shoot a gun.
They lived on a piece of land that couldn’t be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you. There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream.
For the first time, she really understood what her dad had been saying. Remote.
*
LENI WOKE TO THE SMELL of frying bacon. When she sat up, pain radiated down her arms and up her legs.
She hurt everywhere. Mosquito bites made her skin itch. Five days (and up here the days were endless, sunlight lasted until almost midnight) of hard labor had revealed muscles she’d never known she had before.
She climbed out of her sleeping bag and pulled on her hip-hugger jeans. (She’d slept in her sweatshirt and socks.) The inside of her mouth tasted terrible. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth last night. Already she was beginning to conserve water that didn’t flow through faucets but had to be hauled inside by the bucketful.
She climbed down the ladder.
Mama was in the kitchen alcove, at the camp stove, pouring oatmeal into a pot of boiling water. Bacon sizzled and snapped in one of the black cast-iron skillets they’d found hanging from a hook.
Leni heard the distant pounding of a hammer. Already that rhythmic beat had become the soundtrack of their lives. Dad worked from sunup to sundown, which was a long day. He’d already repaired the chicken coop and fixed the goat pens.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Fun,” Mama said.
Leni put on her wafflestompers, and stepped outside into a blue-skied day. The colors were so vibrant, the world hardly looked real: green, swaying grass in the clearing, purple wildflowers, the gray zigzag steps leading to a blue sea that breathed in and out along the pebbled shore. Beyond it all, a fjord of impossible grandeur, sculpted eons ago by glaciers. She wanted to go back for her Polaroid and take pictures of the yard—again—but already she was learning that she needed to conserve her film. Getting more would not be an easy thing up here.
The outhouse was positioned on the bluff, in a stand of thin-trunked spruce, overlooking the rocky coastline. On the toilet lid, someone had painted I never promised you a rose garden, and applied flower decals.
She lifted the lid, using her sleeve to protect her fingers, and carefully averted her gaze from the hole as she sat down.
When she finished, Leni headed back to the cabin. A bald eagle soared overhead, gliding in a circle and then swooping up, flying away. She saw a fish carcass hanging high in one of the trees, catching the sunlight like a Christmas ornament. An eagle must have dropped it there, after picking all the meat off the bones. Off to her right, the cache was half finished—four skinned log braces that led to a three-foot-by-three-foot wooden platform twelve feet in the air. Below it were six empty raised beds covered by a hoop-skirt-like structure of pipe and wood that awaited plastic covering to become a greenhouse.
“Leni!” her dad shouted, coming toward her in that exuberant, ground-covering walk of his. His hair was a dirty, dusty mess and his clothes were covered with oil spots and his hands were grubby. Pink sawdust peppered his face and hair. He waved at her, smiling.
The joy on his face brought her to a complete stop. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen him so happy. “By God, it’s beautiful here,” he said.
Wiping his hands on a red bandanna he kept wadded up in his jeans pocket, he looped an arm around her shoulder and walked with her into the cabin.