Leni tried to get Matthew’s attention, but even the opening and closing of the church’s double doors and the subsequent sweep of cold and snow didn’t faze him. He stood there, shoulders slumped, chin dropped, his profile veiled by hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in a week.
Leni followed her parents to an empty space behind Mad Earl’s family and stood there. Mad Earl immediately handed Dad a flask.
Leni stared at Matthew, willing him to look at her. She didn’t know what she’d say when they finally got to talk, maybe she wouldn’t say anything, would just take his hand.
The priest—or was he a reverend, a minister, a father, what? Leni had no idea about things like this—started to talk. “We here all knew Geneva Walker. She wasn’t a member of this church, but she was one of us, from the moment Tom brought her here from Fairbanks. She was game for anything and never gave up. Remember when Aly talked her into singing the national anthem at Salmon Days and she was so bad that the dogs started howling and even Matilda waddled away? And after it was all over, Gen said, ‘Well, I can’t sing a lick but who cares? It’s what my Aly wanted.’ Or when Genny hooked Tom in the cheek at the fishing derby and tried to claim the prize for biggest catch? She had a heart as big as Alaska.” He paused, sighed. “Our Gen. She was a woman who knew how to love. We don’t quite know whose wife she was at the end, but that doesn’t matter. We all loved her.”
Laughter, quiet and sad.
Leni lost track of the words. She wasn’t even sure how much time had passed. It made her think of her own mother, and how it would feel to lose her. Then she heard people start to turn for the door, boots stomping, floorboards creaking.
It was over.
Leni tried to make her way to Matthew, but it was impossible; everyone was pushing toward the door.
As far as Leni could tell, no one had said anything about going down to the Kicking Moose Saloon afterward, but they all ended up there just the same. Maybe it was adult instinctive behavior.
She followed her parents down the hill and across the street and into the charred, tumbledown interior. The minute she crossed the threshold, she smelled the acrid, sooty smell of burnt wood. Apparently that smell never went away. The interior was cavelike, with propane-fueled lanterns swinging creakily from the rafters, throwing light like streams of water on the patrons below, set in motion by the tap of the wind every time the door opened.
Old Jim was behind the bar, serving drinks as fast as he could. A wet gray bar rag hung over one shoulder, dripped dark splotches down the front of his flannel shirt. Leni had heard someone say that he’d bartended here for decades. He’d started back when the few men who lived in this wilderness were either hiding out from or coming home from World War II. Dad ordered four drinks at once, downed them in rapid succession.
The sawdust floor gave off a dusty, barnlike scent and muffled the footsteps of so many people.
They were talking all at once, in the low voices of grief. Leni heard snippets, adjectives.
“… beautiful … give you the shirt off her back … best damn nettle bread … tragedy…”
She saw how death impacted people, saw the glazed look in their eyes, the way they shook their heads, the way their sentences broke in half as if they couldn’t decide if silence or words would release them from sorrow.
Leni had never known anyone who had died before. She had seen death on television and read about it in her beloved books (Johnny’s death in The Outsiders had turned her inside out), but now she saw the truth of it. In literature, death was many things—a message, catharsis, retribution. There were deaths that came from a beating heart that stopped and deaths of another kind, a choice made, like Frodo going to the Grey Havens. Death made you cry, filled you with sadness, but in the best of her books, there was peace, too, satisfaction, a sense of the story ending as it should.
In real life, she saw, it wasn’t like that. It was sadness opening up inside of you, changing how you saw the world.
It made her think about God and what He offered at times like this. She wondered for the first time what her parents believed in, what she believed in, and she saw how the idea of Heaven could be comforting.
She could hardly imagine a thing as terrible as losing your mother. The very thought of it made Leni sick to her stomach. A girl was like a kite; without her mother’s strong, steady hold on the string, she might just float away, be lost somewhere among the clouds.
Leni didn’t want to think about a loss like that, the bone-breaking magnitude of it, but at a time like this there was no looking away, and when she did look it in the face, without blinking or turning away, she knew this: if she were Matthew, she would need a friend right now. Who knew how the friend could help, whether offering silent companionship or a clatter of words was better? That, the how, she would have to figure out on her own. But the what—friendship—that she knew for sure.
She knew when the Walkers entered the tavern by the silence that fell. People turned to face the door.
Mr. Walker entered first; he was so tall and broad-shouldered, he had to duck to pass through the low door. Long blond hair fell across his face; he shoved it back. Looking up, he saw everyone staring at him, and he stopped, straightened. His gaze moved slowly around the room, from face to face; his smile faded. Grief aged him. The beautiful blond girl came up behind him, her face wet with tears. She had her arm around Matthew, was holding him like a Secret Service agent moving an unpopular Nixon through an angry mob. Matthew’s shoulders were rounded, his body hunched forward, his face downcast. Cal hovered behind them, his eyes glassy.
Mr. Walker saw Mama, moved toward her first.
“I’m so sorry, Tom,” Mama said, her face tilted up to him. Crying.
Mr. Walker looked down at her. “I should have been with them.”
“Oh, Tom…” She touched his arm.
“Thanks,” he said in a hoarse, lowered voice. He swallowed hard, seemed to stop himself from saying more. He looked at the friends gathered close. “I know church funerals aren’t our favorite, but it’s so damn cold out, and Geneva did love the idea of church.”
There was a murmur of agreement, a sense of restless motion contained, of relief mingled with grief.
“To Gen,” Large Marge said, lifting her shot glass.
“To Gen!”
As the adults clinked their glasses and downed their drinks and turned their attention to the bar for another round, Leni watched the Walker family move through the crowd, stopping to talk to everyone.
“Pretty high-falutin’ funeral,” Mad Earl said loudly. Drunkenly.
Leni glanced sideways to see if Tom Walker had heard, but Mr. Walker was talking to Large Marge and Natalie.
“What do you expect?” Dad said, downing another whiskey. His eyes had the glazed look of drunkenness. “I’m surprised the governor didn’t fly down to tell us how to feel. I hear he and Tom are fishing buddies. He loves to remind us peons of that.”
Mama moved closer. “Ernt. It’s the day of his wife’s funeral. Can’t we—”
“Don’t you say a word,” Dad hissed. “I saw the way you were hanging all over him—”
Thelma pushed in closer. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ernt. This is a sad day. Stow the jealousy for ten minutes.”
“You think I’m jealous of Tom?” Dad said. He glanced at Mama. “Should I be?”
Leni turned her back on them, watched Alyeska hustle Matthew through the mourners, over to a quiet corner in the back.
Leni followed, eased between people who stank of wood smoke and sweat and body odor. Bathing was a luxury in midwinter. No one did it often enough.
Matthew stood alone, staring blankly forward, with his back to the charred, black-peeling wall. Soot peppered his sleeves.
She was shocked by how changed he looked. He couldn’t have lost that much weight in such a short time, but his cheekbones were like ridges above his hollow cheeks. His lips were chapped and bloodied. A patch of skin was white at his temple, the color a sharp contrast to his windburned cheeks. His hair was dirty, and hung in limp, thin strands on either side of his face.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey,” he answered dully.