“I didn’t move out into the bush so I could have a hotel nearby,” Dad said.
Mad Earl grumbled something, took a long drink.
Leni watched the men come together, each one clapping Dad on the back as if he had said the perfect thing.
Within moments the women were left sitting alone in the muddy center of the compound.
“Ernt is pretty worked up over a little fixing-up of the saloon,” Thelma said, watching the men. You could see them ingesting righteous anger, puffing up with it, passing the jug from one to the other. “I thought he’d let it go.”
Mama lit a cigarette. “He never lets anything go.”
“I know you two don’t have much influence with him,” Thelma said, looking from Mama to Leni. “But he could start a shitstorm up here. Tom Walker may have a new truck and own the best land on the peninsula, but he’ll give you the shirt off his back. Last year when Mop was so sick, Tom heard about it from Large Marge and showed up here on his own and flew her to Kenai.”
“I know,” Mama said quietly.
“Your husband’s going to rip this town apart if we aren’t careful.”
Mama gave a tired laugh. Leni understood. You could be as careful as a chemist with nitroglycerin around Dad. It wouldn’t change a thing. Sooner or later, he was going to blow.
*
ONCE AGAIN, Leni’s parents got so drunk she had to drive them home. Back at the cabin, she parked the truck and helped Mama into her room, where she collapsed into bed, laughing as she reached for Dad.
Leni climbed up to her own bed, to the mattress they’d salvaged from the dump and cleaned with bleach, and lay beneath her army surplus blankets and tried to fall asleep.
But the incident at the saloon and the meeting with the Harlans stayed with her. Something about it was deeply unsettling, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on any one moment and say, There, that’s what bothered me. Maybe just a sense of imbalance in her dad that was, if not new, a magnification.
Change. Slight, but apparent.
Her dad was angry. Maybe furious. But why?
Because he’d been fired from the pipeline? Because he’d seen Mama and Tom Walker together in March, seen Mr. Walker sitting at their table?
It had to be something more than what it seemed. How could a few businesses in town upset him so much? God knew he liked to drink whiskey at the Kicking Moose more than most men.
She rolled over for the box by her bed, the one that held Matthew’s letters from the last few years. Not a month had gone by without word from him. She had each letter memorized and could pull them up at will. Some sentences never left her. I’m getting better … I thought of you last night when I was out to dinner, this kid had a huge Polaroid camera … I scored my first goal yesterday, I wish you’d been there … and her favorites, when he said things like, I miss you, Leni. Or, I know it sounds lame, but I dreamed of you. Do you ever dream of me?
Tonight, though, she didn’t want to think about him and how far away he was or how lonely she felt without him and his friendship. In the years he’d been gone, no new kids had moved in to Kaneq. She had learned to love Alaska, but she was lonely a lot, too. On bad days—like today—she didn’t want to read his letters and wonder if he would ever come back, and she worried that if she wrote to him, she would accidentally say what was really on her mind. I’m afraid, she might say, I’m lonely.
Instead, she opened her latest book—The Thorn Birds—and lost herself in the story of a forbidden love in a harsh and inhospitable land.
She was still reading well past midnight, when she heard the rustling of beads. She expected to hear the clank of the woodstove door opening and closing, but all she heard were footsteps moving across the wooden floor. She eased out of bed and crawled to the edge of the loft and peered down.
In the dark, with only the woodstove’s glow for light, it took her eyes a moment to adjust.
Dad was dressed all in black, with an Alaska Aces baseball cap pulled low on his forehead. He was carrying a big gear bag that clanked as he walked.
He opened the front door and stepped out into the night.
Leni climbed down the loft stairs and went quietly to the window and peeked out. A full moon shone down on the muddy yard; here and there, stubborn patches of crusty brown snow caught the light. There were piles of junk all around: boxes of fishing tackle and camping supplies, rusting metal crates and contraptions, a broken gate, another bicycle Dad had never gotten around to fixing, a stack of blown-out tires.
Dad tossed the gear bag into the bed of the truck, then slogged over to the plywood shed where they kept their tools.
A moment later he came out carrying an ax over one shoulder.
He climbed into the truck and drove away.
*
THE NEXT MORNING, Dad was in a good mood. His shaggy black hair was drawn into a weirdo Jesus-samurai topknot that had fallen to one side and looked like a puppy’s ear. His thick black beard was full of wood shavings, and so was his mustache. “There’s our sleepyhead. Did you stay up reading last night?”
“Yeah,” Leni said, eyeing him uneasily.
He pulled her into his arms, danced with her until she couldn’t help smiling.
The worry she’d had since last night slowly released.
What a relief. And on the first Saturday in April; one of her favorite days of the year.
Salmon Days. Today the town would come together to celebrate the upcoming salmon season. The festivities had begun under another name, started by the Native tribe that had once lived here; they had come together to ask for a good fishing season. Now, though, it was just a town party. On today of all days, the unpleasantness of last night would be forgotten.
A little after two o’clock, after all their chores were done, Leni loaded her arms with containers of food and followed her parents out of the cabin. Blue sky stretched as far as the eye could see; the pebbled beach looked iridescent in the sunlight, with its broken clamshells scattered like pieces of wedding lace.
They loaded food and blankets and a bag full of rain gear and extra coats (the weather wasn’t reliable this time of year) into the back of the truck. Then they squished into the cab’s bench seat and Dad drove off.
In town, they parked by the bridge and walked toward the General Store.
“What in the world?” Mama said when they rounded the corner.
Main Street was crowded, but not in the way it should be. There should have been men gathered around barbecues, grilling moose burgers and reindeer sausage and fresh clams, swapping fish tales, drinking beers. The women should have been by the diner, fussing over long tables set up with food—halibut sandwiches, platters of Dungeness crab, buckets of steamed clams, vats of baked beans.
Instead, half the townspeople stood on the boardwalk on the water side of town and the other half stood in front of the saloon. It was like some weird O.K. Corral showdown.
Then Leni saw the saloon.
Every window was broken, the door had been hacked to bits, left as sharp shards of wood hanging from brass hinges, and white spray-painted graffiti covered the burnt walls. THIS IS A WARNING. STAY AWAY. ARROGANT PRICK. NO PROGRESS.
Tom Walker stood in front of the ruined saloon, with Large Marge and Natalie standing to his left and Ms. Rhodes and her husband on his right. Leni recognized the rest of the people standing with him: most of the town’s merchants and fishermen and outfitters. These were the people who’d come to Alaska for something.
Across the street, on the boardwalk, stood the off-the-gridders; the outcasts, the loners. Folks who lived in the bush, with no access to their property except by sea or air and who had come here to get away from something—creditors, the government, the law, child support, modern life. Like her dad, they wanted Alaska to remain wild to her fingertips forever. If they had their way, there would never be electricity or tourists or telephones or paved roads or flush toilets.