Mama bent down, picked an old gas mask up from a box full of them. “Y-you collect war memorabilia?” she said uneasily.
Mad Earl took another drink, draining an amazing amount of whiskey in a single gulp. “Nope. That ain’t there for looks. The world’s gone mad. A man has to protect himself. I came up here in ’62. The Lower Forty-eight was already a mess. Commies everywhere. The Cuban Missile Crisis scarin’ the shit outta people. Bomb shelters being built in backyards. I brung my family up here. We had nothing but a gun and a bag of brown rice. Figured we could live in the bush and stay safe and survive the nuclear winter that was comin’.” He took another drink, leaned forward. “It ain’t getting better down there. It’s gettin’ worse. What they done to the economy … to our poor boys who went off to war. It ain’t my America anymore.”
“I’ve been saying that for years,” Dad said. There was a look on his face Leni had never seen before. A kind of awe. As if he’d been waiting a long time to hear those words.
“Down there,” Mad Earl went on, “Outside, people are standing in line for gas while OPEC laughs all the way to the bank. And you think the good ole USSR forgot about us after Cuba? Think again. We got Negroes calling themselves Black Panthers and raisin’ their fists at us, and illegal immigrants stealing our jobs. So what do people do? They protest. They sit down. They throw bombs at empty post office buildings. They carry signs and march down streets. Well. Not me. I got a plan.”
Dad leaned forward. His eyes were shiny. “What is it?”
“We’re prepared up here. We’ve got guns, gas masks, arrows, ammunition. We’re ready.”
Mama said, “Surely you don’t really believe—”
“Oh, I do,” Mad Earl said. “The white man is losing out and war is coming.” He looked at Dad. “You know what I mean, don’t you, Allbright?”
“Of course I know. We all do. How many in your group?” Dad asked.
Mad Earl took a long drink, then wiped the dribble from his spotted lips. His rheumy eyes narrowed, moved from Leni to Mama. “Well. It’s just our family, but we take it seriously. And we don’t talk about it to strangers. Last thing we want is people knowing where we are when TSHTF.”
There was a knock at the door. At Mad Earl’s “Come in,” the door opened to reveal a small, wiry-looking woman in camo pants and a yellow smiley-face T-shirt. Although she had to be almost forty, she wore her hair in pigtails. The man beside her was big as a house, with a long brown ponytail and bangs that strafed his eyes. She held a stack of Tupperware in her arms and had a pistol holstered at her hip.
“Don’t let my daddy scare the bejesus out of you,” the woman said, smil ing brightly. As she stepped farther into the cabin, a child sidled along beside her, a girl of about four who was barefoot and dirty-faced. “I’m Thelma Schill, Earl’s daughter. Bo was my big brother. This is my husband, Ted. This is Marybet. We call her Moppet.” Thelma placed a hand on the girl’s head.
“I’m Cora,” Mama said, extending her hand. “That’s Leni.”
Leni smiled hesitantly. Thelma’s husband, Ted, stared at her through squinty eyes.
Thelma’s smile was warm, genuine. “You going to school on Monday, Leni?”
“There’s a school?” Leni said.
“’Course. It isn’t big, but I think you’ll make friends. Kids come from as far away as Bear Cove. I think there’s another week of classes. School ends early up here so kids can work.”
“Where’s the school?” Mama asked.
“On Alpine Street, just behind the saloon, at the base of Church Hill. You can’t miss it. Monday morning at nine.”
“We’ll be there,” Mama said, shooting Leni a smile.
“Good. We are so happy to welcome you here, Cora and Ernt and Leni.” Thelma faced them, smiling. “Bo wrote us plenty from ’Nam. You meant so much to him. Everyone wants to meet you all.” She crossed the room, took Ernt by the arm, and led him out of the cabin.
Leni and Mama followed behind, heard Mad Earl shuffle to his feet, grumbling about Thelma taking over.
Outside, a ragged cluster of people—men, women, children, young adults—stood waiting, each holding something.
“I’m Clyde,” said a man with a Santa beard and eyebrows like awnings. “Bo’s younger brother.” He held out a chain saw, its blade sheathed in bright orange plastic. “I just sharpened the chain.” A woman and two young men, each about twenty, stepped forward, along with two dirty-faced girls who were probably seven or eight. “This here’s Donna, my wife, and the twins, Darryl and Dave, and our daughters, Agnes and Marthe.”
There weren’t many of them, but they were friendly and welcoming. Each person they met gave them a gift: a hacksaw, a coil of rope, sheets of heavy plastic, rolls of duct tape, a bright silver knife called an ulu that was shaped like a fan.
There was no one Leni’s age. The one teenager—Axle, who was sixteen—barely glanced at Leni. He stood off by himself, throwing knives at a tree trunk. He had long dirty black hair and gray eyes.
“You’ll need to get a garden going fast,” Thelma said as the men drifted toward one of the burn barrels and began passing the whiskey bottle from man to man. “Weather’s unpredictable up here. Some years June is spring, July is summer, August is autumn, and everything else is winter.”
Thelma led Leni and Mama to a large garden. A fence made of sagging fishing nets bound to metal stakes kept out animals.
Most of the vegetables were small, clumps of green on the mounds of black earth. Mats of something gross—it looked like kelp—lay drying at the base of the nets, alongside heaps of stinking fish carcasses and eggshells and coffee grounds.
“You know how to garden?” Thelma asked.
“I can tell a ripe melon,” Mama said.
“I’d be happy to teach you. Up here the growing season is short, so we have to really work it.” She grabbed a dented metal bucket from the dirt beside her. “I have some potatoes and onions I can spare. There’s still time for them. I can give you a bunch of carrot starts. And I can spare a few live chickens.”
“Oh, really, you shouldn’t—”
“Believe me, Cora, you have no idea how long the winter will be and how soon it will be here. It’s one thing up here for men—a lot of them are going to leave for work on that new pipeline. You and me—mothers—we stay on the homestead and keep our children alive and well. It’s not always easy; the way we do it is together. We help whenever we can. We trade. Tomorrow I’ll show you how to can salmon. You need to start filling your root cellar with food for winter now.”
“You’re scaring me,” Mama said.
Thelma touched Mama’s arm. “I remember when we first came up here from Kansas City. My mom did nothing but cry. She died the second winter here. I still think she willed herself to die. Just couldn’t stand the dark or the cold. A woman has to be tough as steel up here, Cora. You can’t count on anyone to save you and your children. You have to be willing to save yourselves. And you have to learn fast. In Alaska you can make one mistake. One. The second one will kill you.”
“I don’t think we’re well prepared,” Mama said. “Maybe we’ve already made a mistake by coming here.”
“I’ll help you,” Thelma promised. “We all will.”
FIVE
The endless daylight rewound Leni’s internal clock, made her feel strangely out of step with the universe, as if even time—the one thing you could count on—was different in Alaska. It was daylight when she went to bed and daylight when she woke up.
Now it was Monday morning.
She stood at the window, staring at the newly clean glass, trying to make out her reflection. A useless effort. There was just too much light.
She could only see a ghost of herself, but she knew she didn’t look good, even for Alaska.