The Great Alone: A Novel Read online

  He took off walking, his arms swinging in time to his steps. Leni could hear his old army boots crunching and squishing in the muddy dirt. He whistled along, like Johnny Appleseed.

  Mama glanced longingly back at the bus. Then she turned to Leni and smiled, but it struck Leni as an expression of terror rather than joy. “Okay, then,” she said. “Come on.”

  Leni reached out for Mama’s hand.

  They walked through a shadow land of trees, following a narrow, winding trail. They could hear the sea crashing all around them. As they continued, the sound of the surf diminished. The land expanded. More trees, more land, more shadow.

  “Sweet simple Christ,” Mama said after a while. “How much farther is it?” She tripped on a rock, fell, went down hard.

  “Mama!” Leni reached for her without thinking and her pack threw her to the ground. Mud filled Leni’s mouth, made her sputter.

  Dad was beside them in an instant, helping Leni and Mama to stand. “Here, girls, lean on me,” he said. And they were off again.

  Trees crowded into one another, jostled for space, turned the trail gloomy and dark. Sunlight poked through, changing color and clarity as they walked. The lichen-carpeted ground was springy, like walking on marshmallows. In no time, Leni noticed that she was ankle-deep in shadow. The darkness seemed to be rising rather than the sun falling. As if darkness were the natural order around here.

  They got hooked in the face by branches, stumbled atop the spongy ground, until finally they emerged into the light again, into a meadow of knee-high grass and wildflowers. It turned out that their forty acres was a peninsula: a huge thumbprint of grassy land perched above the water on three sides, with a small C-shaped beach in the middle. There, the water was calm, serene.

  Leni staggered into the clearing, unhooked her pack, let it crash to the ground. Mama did the same.

  And there it was: the home they’d come to claim. A small cabin built of age-blackened logs, with a slanted, moss-furred roof that was studded with dozens of bleached-white animal skulls. A rotting deck jutted out from the front, cluttered with mildewed chairs. Off to the left, between the cabin and the trees, were decrepit animal pens and a dilapidated chicken coop.

  There was junk everywhere, lying in the tall grass: a big pile of spokes, oil drums, coils of reddish wire, an old-fashioned wooden washing machine with a hand-cranked wringer.

  Dad put his hands on his hips and threw his head back and howled like a wolf. When he stopped, and silence settled in again, he swept Mama into his arms, twirling her around.

  When he finally let her go, Mama stumbled back; she was laughing, but there was a kind of horror in her eyes. The cabin looked like something an old, toothless hermit would live in, and it was small.

  Would they all be crammed into a single room?

  “Look at it,” Dad said, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. They all turned away from the cabin and looked out to sea. “That’s Otter Cove.”

  At this late afternoon hour, the peninsula and sea seemed to glow from within, like a land enchanted in a fairy tale. The colors were more vibrant than she’d ever seen before. Waves lapping the muddy beach left a sparkling residue. On the opposite shore, the mountains were a lush, deep purple at their bases and stark white at their peaks.

  The beach below—their beach—was a curl of gray polished pebbles, washed by an easy white-foam surf. A rickety set of stairs built in the shape of a lightning bolt led from the grassy meadow to the shore. The wood had turned gray from age and was black from mildew; chicken wire covered each step. The stairs looked fragile, as if a good wind could shatter them.

  The tide was out; mud coated everything, oozed along the shore, which was draped in seaweed and kelp. Clumps of shiny black mussels lay exposed on the rocks.

  Leni remembered her dad telling her that the bore tide in Upper Cook Inlet created waves big enough to surf; only the Bay of Fundy had a higher tide. She hadn’t really understood that fact until now, as she saw how far up the stairs the water could get. It would be beautiful at high tide, but now, with the tide ebbed and mud everywhere, she understood what it meant. At low tide, the property was inaccessible by boat.

  “Come on,” Dad said. “Let’s check out the house.”

  He took Leni by the hand and led them through the grass and wildflowers, past the junk—barrels overturned, stacks of wooden pallets, old coolers, and broken crab pots. Mosquitoes nipped at her skin, drew blood, made a droning sound.

  At the porch steps, Mama hesitated. Dad let go of Leni’s hand and bounded up the sagging steps and opened the front door and disappeared inside.

  Mama stood there a moment, breathing deeply. She slapped hard at her neck, left a smear of blood behind. “Well,” she said. “This isn’t what I expected.”

  “Me, either,” Leni said.

  There was another long silence. Then, quietly, Mama said, “Let’s go.”

  She took Leni’s hand as they walked up the rickety steps and entered the dark cabin.

  The first thing Leni noticed was the smell.

  Poop. Some animal (she hoped it was an animal) had pooped everywhere.

  She pressed a hand over her mouth and nose.

  The place was full of shadows, dark shapes and forms. Cobwebs hung in ropy skeins from the rafters. Dust made it hard to breathe. The floor was covered in dead insects, so that each step produced a crunch.

  “Yuck,” Leni said.

  Mama flung open the dirty curtains and sunlight poured in, thick with dust motes.

  The interior was bigger than it looked from outside. The floors had been crafted of rough, mismatched plywood nailed into place in a patchwork quilt pattern. Skinned log walls displayed animal traps, fishing poles, baskets, frying pans, water buckets, nets. The kitchen—such as it was—took up one corner of the main room. Leni saw an old camp stove and a sink with no fixtures; beneath it was a curtained-off space. On the counter sat an old ham radio, probably from World War II, cloaked in dust. In the center of the room, a black woodstove held court, its metal pipe rising up to the ceiling like a jointed tin finger pointed at heaven. A ragged sofa, an overturned wooden crate that read BLAZO on the side, and a card table with four metal chairs comprised the cabin’s furnishings. A narrow, steeply pitched log ladder led to a skylit loft space, and off to the left a curtain of psychedelic-colored beads hung from a narrow doorway.

  Leni pushed through the dusty beaded curtain and went into the bedroom beyond, which was barely bigger than the stained, lumpy mattress on the floor. Here there was more junk hanging from hooks on the walls. It smelled vaguely of animal excrement and settled dust.

  Leni kept a hand over her mouth, afraid she’d gag as she returned to the living room (crunch, crunch on the dead bugs). “Where’s the bathroom?”

  Mama gasped, headed for the front door, flung it open, and ran out.

  Leni followed her out onto the sagging deck and down the half-broken steps.

  “Over there,” Mama said and pointed at a small wooden building surrounded by trees. A half-moon cutout on the door identified it.

  An outhouse.

  An outhouse.

  “Holy shit,” Mama whispered.

  “No pun intended,” Leni said. She leaned against her mother. She knew what Mama was feeling right now, so Leni had to be strong. That was how they did it, she and Mama. They took turns being strong. It was how they’d gotten through the war years.

  “Thanks, baby girl. I needed that.” Mama put an arm around Leni, drew her close. “We’ll be okay, won’t we? We don’t need a TV. Or running water. Or electricity.” Her voice ended on a high, shrill note that sounded desperate.

  “We’ll make the best of it,” Leni said, trying to sound certain instead of worried. “And he’ll be happy this time.”

  “You think so?”

  “I know so.”

  FOUR

  The next morning, they rolled up their sleeves and got to work. Leni and Mama cleaned the cabin. They swept and scrubbed and washed. It turned out that the sink in the cabin was “dry” (there was no running water inside), so water had to be carried in by the bucketful from a stream not far away and boiled before they could drink it, cook with it, or bathe in it. There was no electricity. Propane-fueled lights swung from the rafters and sat on the plywood countertops. Beneath the house was a root cellar that was at least eight feet by ten feet, layered with sagging, dusty shelving and filled with empty, filthy mason jars and mildewed baskets. So they cleaned all of that, too, while Dad worked on clearing the driveway so they could drive the rest of their supplies onto the homestead.

  By the end of the second day (which, by the way, lasted forever; the sun just kept shining and shining), it was ten P.M. before they quit work.

  Dad built a bonfire on the beach—their beach—and they sat on fallen logs around it, eating tuna fish sandwiches and drinking warm Coca-Colas. Dad found mussels and butter clams and showed them how to crack them open. They ate each of the slimy mollusks in a single gulp.

  Night didn’t fall. Instead, the sky became a deep lavender-pink; there were no stars. Leni glanced across the dancing orange firelight, sparks spraying skyward, snapping like music, and saw her parents coiled together, Mama’s head on Dad’s shoulder, Dad’s hand laid lovingly on her thigh, a woolen blanket wrapped around them. Leni took a picture.

  At the flash and the snap-whiz of the Polaroid, Dad looked up at her and smiled. “We’re going to be happy here, Red. Can’t you feel it?”

  “Yeah,” she said, and for the first time ever, she really believed it.

  * * *

  LENI WOKE TO THE SOUND of someone—or something—pounding on the cabin door. She scrambled out of her sleeping bag, shoved it aside, toppling her stack of books in her haste. Downstairs, she heard the rustle of beads and the pounding of footsteps as Mama and Dad ran for the door. Leni dressed quickly, grabbed her camera, and hurried down the ladder.

  Large Marge stood in the yard with two other women; behind them, a rusted dirt bike lay on its side in the grass, and beside that was an all-terrain vehicle, loaded down with coiled chicken wire.

  “Hullo, Allbrights!” Large Marge said brightly, waving her saucer-sized hand in greeting. “I brought some friends,” she said, indicating the two women she’d brought with her. One was a wood sprite, small enough to be a kid, with long gray Silly-String-like hair; the other was tall and thin. All three of them were dressed in flannel shirts and stained jeans that were tucked into brown rubber knee-high boots. Each carried a tool—a chain saw, an ax, a hatchet.

  “We’ve come to offer some help getting started,” Large Marge said. “And we brought you a few things you’ll need.”

  Leni saw her father frown. “You think we’re incompetent?”

  “This is how we do it up here, Ernt,” Large Marge said. “Believe me, no matter how much you’ve read and studied, you can never quite prepare for your first Alaskan winter.”

  The wood sprite came forward. She was thin and small, with a nose sharp enough to slice bread. Leather gloves stuck out of her shirt pocket. For as slight as she was, she exuded an air of competence. “I’m Natalie Watkins. Large Marge told me ya’all don’t know much about life up here. I was the same way ten years ago. I followed a man up here. Classic story. I lost the man and found a life. Got my own fishing boat now. So I get the dream that brings you here, but that’s not enough. You’re going to have to learn fast.” Natalie put on her yellow gloves. “I never found another man worth having. You know what they say about finding a man in Alaska—the odds are good, but the goods are odd.”

  The taller woman had a beige braid that fell almost to her waist, and eyes so pale they seemed to take their color from the faded sky. “Welcome to Kaneq. I’m Geneva Walker. Gen. Genny. The Generator. I’ll answer to almost anything.” She smiled, revealing dimples. “My family is from Fairbanks, but I fell in love with my husband’s land, so here is where I’ve stayed. I’ve been here for twenty years.”

  “You need a greenhouse and a cache at the very least,” Large Marge said. “Old Bo had big plans for this place when he bought it. But Bo went off to war … and he was a great one for getting a job half done.”

  “A cash?” Dad said.

  Large Marge nodded brusquely. “A cache is a small building on stilts. Your meat goes there, so the bears can’t get at it. This time of year, the bears are hungry.”

  “Come on, Ernt,” Natalie said, reaching down for the chain saw at her feet. “I brought a portable mill. You cut down the trees and I’ll saw ’em into planks. First things first, righto?”

  Dad went back into the cabin, put on his down vest, and headed into the forest with Natalie. Soon, Leni heard the whir of a chain saw and the thunking of an ax into wood.

  “I’ll get started on the greenhouse,” Geneva said. “I imagine Bo left a tangle of PVC pipe somewhere…”

  Large Marge walked up to Leni and Mama.

  A breeze picked up; it turned cold in the blink of an eye. Mama crossed her arms. She had to be cold, standing there in a Grateful Dead T-shirt and bell-bottom jeans. A mosquito landed on her cheek. She slapped it away in a smear of blood.

  “Our mosquitoes are bad,” Large Marge said. “I’ll bring you some repellant next time I come to visit.”

  “How long have you lived here?” Mama asked.

  “Ten of the best years of my life,” Large Marge answered. “Life in the bush is hard work, but you can’t beat the taste of salmon you caught in the morning, drizzled with butter you churned from your own fresh cream. Up here, there’s no one to tell you what to do or how to do it. We each survive our own way. If you’re tough enough, it’s heaven on earth.”

  Leni stared up at the big, rough-looking woman in a kind of awe. She’d never seen a woman so tall or strong-looking. Large Marge looked like she could fell a full-grown cedar tree and sling it over her shoulder and keep going.

  “We needed a fresh start,” Mama said, surprising Leni. It was the kind of rock-bottom truth Mama tended to avoid.

  “He was in ’Nam?”

  “POW. How did you know?”

  “He has the look. And, well … Bo left you this place.” Large Marge glanced left, to where Dad and Natalie were cutting down trees. “Is he mean?”

  “N-no,” Mama said. “Of course not.”

  “Flashbacks? Nightmares?”

  “He hasn’t had one since we headed north.”

  “You’re an optimist,” Large Marge said. “That’ll be good for a start. Well. You’d best change your shirt, Cora. The bugs are going to go mad for all that bare white skin.”

  Mama nodded and turned back for the cabin.

  “And you,” Large Marge said. “What’s your story, missy?”

  “I don’t have a story.”

  “Everyone has a story. Maybe yours just starts up here.”

  “Maybe.”

  “What can you do?”

  Leni shrugged. “I read and take pictures.” She indicated the camera that hung around her neck. “Not much that will do us any good.”

  “Then you’ll learn,” Large Marge said. She moved closer, leaned down to whisper conspiratorially into Leni’s ear. “This place is magic, kiddo. You just have to open yourself up to it. You’ll see what I mean. But it’s treacherous, too, and don’t you forget that. I think it was Jack London who said there were a thousand ways to die in Alaska. Be on the alert.”

  “For what?”

  “Danger.”

  “Where will it come from? The weather? Bears? Wolves? What else?”

  Large Marge glanced across the yard again to where Dad and Natalie were felling trees. “It can come from anywhere. The weather and the isolation makes some people crazy.”

  Before Leni could ask another question, Mama came back, dressed for work in jeans and a sweatshirt.

  “Cora, can you make coffee?” Large Marge asked.

  Mama laughed and hip-bumped Leni. “Well, now, Large Marge, it seems you’ve found the one thing I can do.”

  * * *

  LARGE MARGE AND NATALIE and Geneva worked all day alongside Leni and her parents. The Alaskans labored in silence, communicating with grunts and nods and pointed fingers. Natalie put a chain saw in a cage thing and milled the big logs Dad had cut down into boards all by herself. Each fallen tree revealed another slice of sunlight.

  Geneva taught Leni how to saw wood and hammer nails and build raised vegetable beds. Together they started the PVC pipe-and-plank structure that would become a greenhouse. Leni helped Geneva carry a huge, heavy roll of plastic sheeting that they found in the broken-down chicken coop. They dropped it onto the ground.

  “Sheesh,” Leni said. She was breathing hard. Sweat sheened her forehead and made her frizzy hair hang limply on either side of her flushed face. But the skeleton of a garden gave her a sense of pride, of purpose. She actually looked forward to planting the vegetables that would be their food.

  As they worked, Geneva talked about what vegetables to grow and how to harvest them and how important they would be when winter came.

  Winter was a word these Alaskans said a lot. It might be only May, almost summer, but the Alaskans were already focused on winter.

  “Take a break, kiddo,” Geneva finally said, pushing to her feet. “I need to use the outhouse.”

  Leni staggered out of the greenhouse shell and found her mother standing alone, a cigarette in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

  “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.”

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