“And if I get her killed? How’s my life after that?”
Large Marge nodded. “You come to me if you need help. Okay? Promise?”
“Sure,” Leni said dully.
Large Marge leaned toward Leni, popped open the creaky glove box, took out a thick envelope. “I have something for you.”
Leni was used to Large Marge’s gifts. A candy bar, a paperback novel, a shiny barrette. Large Marge often had something to press in Leni’s palm at the end of the workday at the store.
Leni looked down at the envelope. It was from the University of Alaska. It had been mailed to Lenora Allbright, in care of Marge Birdsall at the Kaneq General Store.
Her hands were shaking as she tore it open and read the first line. We are pleased to offer you …
Leni looked at Large Marge. “I got in.”
“Congratulations, Leni.”
Leni felt numb. She’d been accepted.
To college.
“Now what?” Leni said.
“You go,” Large Marge said. “I’ve talked to Tom. He’s going to pay for it. Tica and I are buying your books and Thelma is giving you spending money. You’re one of us and we have your back. No excuses, kid. You leave this place the second you can. Run like hell, kid, and don’t look back. But Leni—”
“Yeah?”
“You be careful as hell until the day you leave.”
*
ON THE LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, Leni thought her heart might explode. Maybe she would pitch face-first into the ground and be another Alaskan statistic. The girl who died for love.
The idea of summer, all those long hot days spent working from sunup to sundown, made her insane to contemplate. How could she last until September without seeing Matthew?
“We will hardly see each other,” she said, feeling sick. “We’ll both be working constantly. You know how summer is.” From now on, life would be chores.
Summer. The season of salmon runs and gardens that needed constant tending, of berries ripening on hillsides, of canning fruits and vegetables and fish, of salmon that needed to be cut into strips, marinated, and smoked, of repairs that needed to be made while the sun shone.
“We’ll sneak out,” he said.
Leni couldn’t imagine taking that risk now. The banishment from the Harlans had broken the last thread of her father’s control. He cut trees and skinned logs daily and woke in the middle of the night to pace. He muttered under his breath constantly and hammered, hammered, hammered on his wall.
“We’re going to college together in September,” Matthew said (because he knew how to dream and to believe).
“Yeah,” she said, wanting it more than she had ever wanted anything. “We’ll be normal kids in Anchorage.” It was what they said to each other all the time.
Leni walked beside him to the door, mumbled goodbye to Ms. Rhodes, who gave her a fierce hug and said, “Don’t forget the graduation party at the saloon tonight. You and Mattie are the guests of honor.”
“Thanks, Ms. Rhodes.”
Outside, Leni’s parents were waiting for her, holding a sign that read HAPPY GRAD DAY! She stumbled to a stop.
Leni felt Matthew’s hand at the small of her back. She was pretty sure he gave her a push. She moved forward, forcing a smile.
“Hey, guys,” she said as her parents rushed at her. “You didn’t have to do this.”
Mama beamed at her. “Are you kidding? You graduated at the top of your class.”
“A class of two,” she pointed out.
Dad put an arm around her, drew her close. “I’ve never been number one at anything, Red. I’m proud of you. And now you can leave that pissant school behind. Sayonara, bullshit.”
They packed into the truck and headed out. Overhead, a plane flew low, making a dull putt-putt-putt sound.
“Tourists.” Dad said the word as if it were a curse, loud enough that people heard. Then he smiled. “Mom made your favorite cake and strawberry akutaq.”
Leni nodded, too depressed to force a fake smile.
Down the street, a banner hung across the half-finished saloon. CONGRATULATIONS LENI AND MATTHEW!!! GRAD PARTY FRIDAY NIGHT! 9 P.M. FIRST DRINK FREE!
“Leni, baby girl? You look sad as a lost dollar.”
“I want to go to the graduation party at the saloon,” Leni said.
Mama leaned forward to look at Dad. “Ernt?”
“You want me to walk into Tom Walker’s damn saloon and see all the people who are ruining this town?” Dad said.
“For Leni,” Mama said.
“No way, José.”
Leni tried to see past his anger to the man Mama claimed he used to be, before Vietnam had changed him and Alaska’s winters had revealed his own darkness. She tried to remember being Red, his girl, the one who’d ridden his shoulders on The Strand in Hermosa Beach. “Please, Dad. Please. I want to celebrate graduating from high school in my town. The town you brought me to.”
When Dad looked at her, Leni saw what she saw so rarely in his eyes: love. Tattered, tired, shaved small by bad choices, but love just the same. And regret.
“Sorry, Red. I can’t do it. Not even for you.”
NINETEEN
Evening.
The sound of a chain saw whirring, sputtering, going silent.
Leni stood at the window staring out at the yard. It was seven o’clock: the dinner hour, a break in this season’s long workday. Any minute now, Dad would come back into the cabin, bringing tension in with him. The remnants of Leni’s three-person graduation party—carrot cake and strawberry akutaq, a kind of ice cream made from snow and Crisco and fruit—lay on the table.
“I’m sorry,” Mama said, coming up to stand beside her. “I know how badly you wanted to go to the party. I’m sure you considered sneaking out. I would have at your age.”
Leni scooped out a spoonful of akutaq. Usually, she loved it. Not tonight. “I planned a dozen ways to do it.”
“And?”
“They all end the same way: with you alone in a room full of his fists.”
Mama lit a cigarette, exhaled smoke. “This … wall of his. He’s not giving up on it. We’re going to have to be more careful.”
“More careful?” Leni turned to her. “We think about every single thing we say. We disappear in an instant. We pretend we don’t need anything or anyone except him and this place. And none of it is enough, Mama. We can’t be good enough to keep him from losing it.”
Leni saw how difficult this conversation was for her mother; she wished she could do what she’d always done. Pretend it would get better, that he’d get better, pretend it hadn’t been on purpose or it wouldn’t happen again. Pretend.
But things were different now.
“I got into the University of Alaska at Anchorage, Mama.”
“Oh, my God, that’s great!” Mama said. A smile lit up her face and then faded. “But we can’t afford—”
“Tom Walker and Large Marge and Thelma and Ms. Rhodes are paying for it.”
“Money isn’t the only issue.”
“No,” Leni said, not looking away. “It’s not.”
“We will have to plan this carefully,” Mama said. “Your dad can never know Tom is paying. Never.”
“It doesn’t matter. Dad won’t let me go. You know he won’t.”
“Yes, he will,” Mama said in a firmer voice than Leni had heard from her in years. “I’ll make him.”
Leni cast out the dream, let the hook of it sail over blue, blue water and splash down. College. Matthew. A new life.
Yeah. Right. “You’ll make him,” she said dully.
“I can see why you have no faith in me.”
Leni’s hold on resentment lessened. “That’s not it, Mama. How can I leave you here alone with him?”
Mama gave her a sad, tired smile. “There will be no talk of that. None. You’re the chick. I’m the mama bird. Either you take flight on your own or I shove you out of the nest. It’s your choice. Either way, you’re going off to college with your boy.”
“You think it’s possible?” Leni let the amorphous dream turn solid enough that she could hold it in her hands, look at it from different angles.
“When do classes start?”