All the Winters After (31 page)

SIXTY-SEVEN

Nadia locked eyes with Leo, not Kache. She didn't want Kache to look at her, because it would be the death of them.
Yes
, she told Leo without speaking.
Keep your eyes on Vladimir's knife.

The knife glinted moonlight in her eyes. She knew why he had a knife instead of the easier gun, knew that Kache had interrupted his long-thought-out plan. He had told her as much. He did not want to only kill her—the killing would be the last act of a winding story, and that is why he hadn't yet cut her throat. Now he muttered about sacrificial lambs and goats and how the bear must always be fed.

For an instant, she imagined the thin red line and how it would spread. She closed her eyes, opened them. There were special effects. The silver light on the trees could be turned up so that it too had a sinister glint.

Slow motion set in. Frame by frame. Kache holding the gun in place, Leo crouched, silent now. Close up to his eyes on her, waiting.

• • •

There are different ways to tell a story. One second can be slowed down, dissected for all its worth: life, death, retribution. But whose?

What has been unclear for a decade comes into a single, focused frame.

You. Me. A knife.

Again.

But I said never again, and I meant it.

I built my life around never again.

And yet here we are.

You. Me. A knife.

But there is more now.

There is them.

Cut to them.

Look in their eyes and admit you see that I have found love despite you.

That alone is my revenge.

But what will be yours?

Killing me?

Or forcing me to kill you?

You think this choice belongs to you.

It does not.

It is mine.

• • •

She silently said
Now
to Leo with a nod. He snarled and leaped onto Vladimir, going for his throat. The man reeled back, trying to regain his balance. Leo released his hold, but Vladimir stumbled back, twisted around, hung on to Nadia.

Leo attacked again, and her feet went out from under her. Was this it? Her face was covered by his open jacket, falling. But then ground, not a freefall over the edge. She lay on top of him, scrambled up. Vladimir jumped to his feet, but before he could regain his balance, Leo pounced. Nadia thought but didn't say,
Kache, don't shoot now. Don't shoot Leo.

With all the strength Vladimir had given her—for his wickedness had given birth to her courage as well as her fear, she knew that—Nadia reached out and placed her hands on his back, the heft of him crashing against her, but then came another pounce from Leo, a final heave from the deepest part of Nadia, and Vladimir became weightless. He plummeted off the edge, into the canyon.

His howls joined the wind. His screams—“MY GOD… My God… my god…”—faded into the infinite sea of trees.

SIXTY-EIGHT

Kache ran to Nadia, gathering her up in his arms, asking, “Are you okay? Are you okay?” and she insisted she was while Leo jumped on both of them.

“Good boy, Leo, good boy,” Kache said, rubbing his head. They took small, careful steps nearer to the edge of the canyon, but not all the way. They held back, looking down. Nothing but the black, pointed shapes of the tops of trees. Kache took out his flashlight, but it provided a pinprick of light in the vastness.

Nadia said, “We should call the police.” She heard the tremble in her own voice.

They started back, but about halfway, Kache stopped. “Nadia. I don't think we should call.”

“What if he's not dead?”

“Exactly. Listen to me. If we call the police, there will be a huge media frenzy. It will become all about you—the hermit woman who fled her backwoods village. The Old Believer who faked her own death. They will put some strange spin on it, and you'll be hounded by every talk show host and news agency in the country. And I know you did the bravest possible thing—but you may still be charged with murder.”

She understood. He was right about that. “What is it that we do?”

Kache began walking in fast circles around her, lost in thought. “I should go. I'll go and find him.”

“And then what?”

“I just want to make sure he's dead. No one could survive that fall. But just in case…”

“And if he isn't dead?”

“I'll decide what to do then. It depends…”

“On what? What if
he
kills
you
?”

“He won't. He's going to already be dead. I just want to make sure. I want to know, to see him with my own eyes so we both know.”

“How will you ever make it down there? It's way too steep.”

“My dad did it. I can do it. I'll take it slow.”

She didn't want him to go, but she saw a determination cross his face that she understood. He would go anyway. It would do no good to fight him. It would undermine his confidence when he needed all of it. And she too wanted to know that Vladimir was dead for certain.

“Only if you take Leo with you.”

“Then I'll have to worry about
him
falling. I've already lost one dog to this canyon.”

“But that was because Walter chased butterfly, dreaming and distracted. Leo is good on his feet. He will show you the way. And he will protect you if Vladimir…” But she couldn't finish. She watched Kache while he considered her proposal.

“Okay,” he finally said. “There will be enough light soon. Let me get some supplies and one of the smaller packs. And rope in case I need it. Call Snag and have her come out to stay with you. Hurry.”

She could not keep her hands and words from quivering. “He was taking me to the beach, Kache. He said if I want to drown so badly, I should ask him for help the first time.” She left out all the other things he'd promised he would do to her.

“I'm so sorry. I should have never left you. But it's over now. It's almost over.”

She knew how wretched that canyon descent was and that they were still a long way from “almost over.” The adrenaline kept her legs moving forward as they raced their way up the hill toward the house.

• • •

A few hours after Kache and Leo had left, Snag paced a pathway from the homestead's kitchen sink to the woodstove and back. She stared out the window. “Part of me—a big part of me—thinks we should call the police. But Kache is right about the media. It will be endless. It will be twisted. And it will be hard for you to survive it.” She'd started by holding out one finger, and with each point she made, she stuck out another finger. “And there's no way a man could survive a fall like that. And this is Alaska. It's the Wild, Wild West. And you're saying he didn't have any family or friends?”

“No, none. He was always loner. He came from the village in Oregon, but he left Altai not long after I did. He never mentioned anyone this whole time I knew him.”

Snag kept pacing. She called Gilly, and Nadia could hear them going over the story again until Snag said, “Yes, yes. You're right. Okay. I'll wait.” Then she turned to Nadia.

“If Kache doesn't return by midmorning, I'm calling the police
and
search and rescue.”

SIXTY-NINE

If it wasn't for Leo, Kache wouldn't have known where to break trail, but the dog seemed to have a sixth sense or at least a plan about how to go about descending the crevice—and that was more than Kache had.

So Leo led the way in the first breaking light, creating his own switchbacks when he could or stopping when he couldn't and waiting for Kache to take his scythe to the profuse underbrush, alder, and berry bushes. Much of the still-clinging snow was mud streaked and not in the least bit stable, and Kache would often call Leo to his side and test it with the ski pole before they stepped. When they weren't managing the rickety patches of snow, they were bogging through mud and newly released creeks. Every five or six steps, Kache stopped to listen for Vladimir, or for a bear and then set down the ski pole, picked up the scythe, and hacked at another gristly bush.

The sweat poured from him, even through the ridiculous cold. His clothes went from mud crusted to damp with sweat to washed clean but soaking wet from slipping in the creek water. His boots—good mountain-man boots—helped, but Kache needed much more than a good pair of boots.

How absurd. How cavalier of him, a man so ill equipped, to tell the fair maiden he would slay the dragon, the dragon she'd had the courage to kill. The dragon probably lay dead, and odds were that Kache would end up dead too before this thing played out. But he had to go. What else could he have done? He wanted only to get this one thing right.

“Keep going. Not much farther now, Kachemak.” He was so far gone that he heard his dead father talking to him. But he let him. Kache needed the company. “There's a bench of land you can't quite see yet. A nice big ledge that rises out of nowhere.”

“Is that where you found Walter?”

“Yes, Son, it is.”

Sure enough, the bench presented itself. Kache must have heard a tidbit of his parents' discussion to have this information lodged in his subconscious and hear it resurface in his dad's voice.

But all the same, Kache said aloud, “Thanks, Dad.”

“If he's alive, you know what you have to do. I'll be here for you, you understand?” Kache nodded that he did. “Now head west about fifty yards.”

Kache and Leo inched on in a westerly direction and came to a cleared area where large rocks—maybe a dozen of them—lined up, and when he stepped back, he saw that they were spaced in the shape of a
W
.

Walter. Good Walter.

Throat tight, he said, “Thanks for showing me this. It means something to me. It does. But I misunderstood.”

“You want to find the Russian. Keep going. About forty more yards.”

Milky light filled the sky. The cold and wet had ravaged his clothing, and he wished he could discard it. Leo sniffed the air incessantly, whined, snarled, and began barking. “Shh. Quiet, boy.”

Vladimir lay on the blood-soaked snow, which had turned a disturbing pink. A branch pinned him down, both legs bent in unbendable directions. “Thank God you have come. Thank God you are here,” he whispered, his face contorted, his breathing shallow. Kache checked his coat and pants for the knife or a gun and then knelt to give him water. He saw then that Vladimir wasn't under the branch but had been impaled through the gut by it. The branch was so thick, it must have been the top part of the trunk of a birch tree. Kache looked away when he thought he saw a smear of the man's intestines on the bark.

“Vodka…in my pack…there. Then you shoot… Quick, my friend.”

“I'm not your friend. I should carve my initials all over you,” Kache said, but he found the pack a few yards away, retrieved the canister, and held it to Vladimir's lips. “I can go and get help. We can helicopter you out.” He said this knowing that Vladimir would not survive the time it would take.

“Dying. Must shoot.”

“I don't want to fucking shoot you.”

Vladimir grimaced. “You owe…nothing…but I beg…mercy.” He was crying now, coughing up blood. “Here.” He tapped his chest. “Shoot…”

Kache swigged the vodka out of the canister. Swigged again. Saw the dark eyes of the crippled moose, that day with his father.
This isn't murder, Son. It's mercy.
Kache put his hand in his pocket and set his fingers in their places. He said, “Vladimir, let's talk about—” And in one fluid motion, Kache pulled the gun out and shot Vladimir in his dark heart above his pierced stomach.

The dead man stared at him, his eyes blank in their sinister beauty. Vladimir's eyes truly were unique, almost purple, set off with black brows and thick eyelashes. His mother must have loved those eyelashes. Nadia must have too, at the very beginning.

I won't tell her how much you suffered or how you begged
, Kache thought.
Even though I want to.
He hung his head and cried out with relief and gratitude and shame. Leo whined and scratched at his leg.

• • •

Kache wept while he dug the shallow grave with a rock and the scythe, while he spread the mud and snow over Vladimir, the tree branch ironically serving as a headstone, the nubs of new leaf buds that would never unfurl. With a pocketknife, he carved the letter
B
into the wet ground and watched it disappear just as quickly. It most likely wasn't enough of a grave to keep away a pack of wolves, or bears coming out of hibernation.

He and Leo began their way back up the canyon. At least they had done the trailblazing on the way down. But as Leo trotted up a pile of rocks, he lost his footing and took several hard, twisted bounces.

“Leo!” Kache called out. “You okay?” The dog jumped up before Kache got to him, but it was already obvious Leo was not okay. His front leg, badly broken, hung bleeding. He whined and licked at it, and Kache tilted his head back and yelled at the sky, “GOD
DAMN
IT!”

The look on Leo's face was so full of pain and apology and worry that Kache ripped off his jacket and his shirt and got to work making a splint for Leo's leg with the shirt and a stick.

“Don't you worry, boy. It's gonna be okay,” he said while he wondered how in the living hell he would ever make it back up so steep of a grade carrying a seventy-pound dog when he'd barely made it down carrying nothing.

“Dad!” His father didn't answer him. He needed the help, but at least Kache wasn't hallucinating anymore. He hunched down, positioned his head under Leo, and tried to stand up wearing Leo over his shoulders. At first, he wavered like a top-heavy tree about to go down, but he finally found his balance, using the ski pole to help him with the extra weight.

“It's just backpacking now,” he said. “We can do this. Right, Dad?” All he heard was the wind and the whoo-whoo-whoo of an owl. Kache closed his eyes tight, willing forth what he needed most: the one thing he'd fought against his whole life. When he looked up to find the wisp of their trail, his father stood waiting for him, carrying a man on his shoulders. They were both dressed in army fatigues. His dad didn't say a word, just shared a long look with Kache and proceeded ahead of him. He'd turn and wait whenever Kache slipped or when he hesitated, shivering, aching, nauseous with exhaustion and the compression of his spine—there was his father, his face full of a compassion Kache had never seen, or maybe never noticed, when he was a kid.

His dad led him up and up, switching back, higher and higher, until Kache clawed his way through the final ascent and crawled over the ledge, where he collapsed. He heard voices, Leo barking, and he tried to get up, but it felt so good to close his eyes, just for a minute.

• • •

When he opened his eyes, it was Nadia's face he saw, her hands on his temples.

“You are okay? You are okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Snag is taking Leo to vet. It is going to be fixed, the leg.” They were still outside, his head in her lap. She tilted water through his lips.

She asked, “You found him?”

Kache nodded. She didn't ask further. She had draped a wool blanket over him. “Dad…” But his father was gone. He sat up, half wondering if he'd appear. Kache wanted to say good-bye. He wanted to thank him. But there was no sign of him anywhere. Still, Snag was right. He knew now that his father's blood coursed through him—his blind devotion to this land, his self-righteous anger, born from his stubborn strive to control, to do whatever was necessary to keep those he loved close and safe.