All the Winters After (9 page)

TWENTY-ONE

As soon as Snag left, Lettie opened her eyes and grabbed Kache's hand. “Look,” she whispered. “I'm not taking that pink pill. Makes me forget my own name. But I can't get any of them to listen to me. If my heart gives out, it gives out. I'm ninety-eight years old. I'd rather be able to feed myself a few more times than live ten more years drooling and thinking I'm Katharine Hepburn. As beautiful as she was.”

“But, Gram, have you talked to the doctors?”

“I've tried. Everyone's convinced I need that damn pill. Sometimes I can be sneaky, but other times I have to swallow it because they won't leave and the stupid thing starts to dissolve on my tongue. But those pills do me in. Please, Kache. Help me out with this.”

Kache didn't want to do something dangerous, but the difference in her since last night was startling. Of course she wouldn't want to take that pill. She'd obviously skipped some before and hadn't dropped dead. “Okay. But let me talk to Gilly and your doctors too, okay?”

Lettie gripped him tighter. “They think their job is to keep me alive until I break some Guinness world record. I don't want to live beyond what I'm supposed to. All these drugs! Look. Eight pills. Eight! It's ridiculous. If it's a choice between my head and my heart, or my kidneys, or my lungs—they seem to take turns these days—I'll pick my head, every time.” She handed him the pink one and swallowed the rest. “See? I'm almost behaving. Now, about Nadia. Is she okay?”

“Yes, she seems to be. But she won't talk to me.”

“She might, in her own time. I never did get her whole story, but she's a dear and hardworking too. I tried to talk her into coming into town and living with me, but she wouldn't have it. Never set a foot off that property. Kache, she's no 'fraidy cat. Someone must have hurt her and hurt her bad. Promise me you'll let her stay.”

“Gram, don't you think we've done our part? And don't you think she'd be better off in town than alone?”

“No. Believe me, I wish I still lived out there myself.”

“But you have family and friends. She needs people.”

“Apparently, she doesn't. How the hell do you know what she needs, Kachemak Winkel?”

“I thought we'd rent it to someone who could use the land. Could help with the taxes.”

“Pish. You and Snag hardly need help in the money department. No. Promise me, Kache. Do not kick her out. I've got an automatic payment set up with the Caboose electric. Used to bring her supplies—” Suddenly, she let go of his hand, closed her eyes, and started snoring.

Just then, Snag came in and pulled a quilt up to Lettie's chin. “Poor thing. She needed her morning nap.”

Kache slipped the pink pill into his pocket.

While Kache drove Snag home, he asked if he could borrow her truck for a few more days, and she said that would be fine. Then she asked, “Do you think that woman out there is okay? Can we trust her?”

He shrugged. “She's been living there forever, presumably on her own. The place looks exactly like we left it. Exactly. It looks like Mom and Dad and Denny just walked out.”

Snag's eyes got wide. “Really?”

“Really.”

“I can't imagine it.”

“It's—I don't know—weird…and kind of comforting…haunting… really sad.”

She nodded, kept nodding. “Is that your way of saying you're leaving soon?”

He pulled into her driveway and put the gear in park. “No. Not for a couple of weeks. I was going to ask you to help me get it ready to rent, but Gram says no. She's adamant. Wants Nadia to stay.”

“After everything, I guess we shouldn't fight her on this, at least not right now.”

Kache saw her point, but he still didn't know if it was the best plan.

“I just hope Lettie's right about her, Kache. Hey, you look beat.”

He admitted that he hadn't slept. And when Snag suggested he come in and take a nap, he agreed—and didn't wake up until late the next morning.

• • •

That afternoon, Kache stopped at Safeway to pick up a battery for the flashlight and, hit with an unexpected burst of generosity, began pulling items from the shelves as if a natural disaster was predicted to hit in the next twenty-four hours. He tried to think of what might appeal to someone living alone and mostly cut off from society for the last ten years. Twenty-eight years, if he counted the time before she came to the house, when she must have lived with the Old Believers. But he saw Old Believer women in the store, shopping in pairs, their long, bright scarves and dresses tied with belts, children sitting in the carts. In some ways, the Old Believers seemed practically worldly compared to Nadia, though she'd made no attempt to cover her head and certainly seemed comfortable wearing his old jeans. He wanted to ask if they knew her, but of course he didn't.

Instead, he bought peanut butter, strawberry sorbet, and ice cream. He bought bags of chips and a couple of pounds of deli meat and Swiss cheese and Brie and bacon. He bought oranges, apples, bananas, grapes, almonds, raisins, and batteries and a pile of magazines and a newspaper. He bought boxes of cereal and salty snacks and girly stuff like lavender bubble bath and lotions and toilet paper and toothpaste—just in case Lettie's supply was getting low. He even thought about buying Tampax—God knew he'd had to run to the store for Janie—but he figured that crossed a line. He bought toothbrushes and four different high-end chocolate bars. Wait, he needed something for dinner. He bought decent wine and beer. She probably didn't drink, but he did, and he definitely wanted a drink. He bought salad fixings and crusty bread and a couple of steaks, wrapped with cellophane in their Styrofoam trays. Although she might not want any meat that came with a price sticker.

She might very well have the same philosophy as his dad.

• • •

“Autumn. Tin-colored sky and bay. Already more than a foot of snow on the ground. Kache was thirteen, maybe fourteen. They'd come across a bull moose, who'd somehow snapped his leg, and his father had decided it was the perfect time for Kache to shoot his first moose. “This isn't murder, Son. It's mercy.”

Kache held the gun up to his shoulder and closed one eye. He trained the bead on the head of the moose, who stopped struggling and set his eyes on Kache. Or more like
in
Kache, because that moose's eyes seemed to penetrate Kache's soul. He tried. He even closed his own eyes. But he could not bring himself to pull the trigger. The woods around them quieted and stilled, waiting.

Finally, his father swore, grabbed the gun from where Kache had lowered it, and went ahead and shot the bull right between those big pleading eyes. Kache willed back the tears, wished again he was more like Denny.

“We call it game, but this is
not
a game, Son,” his dad hollered above the churning tractor as they dragged the shot moose toward home. “It's not a little ditty you can fiddle around with on that guitar of yours. You can't take it or leave it. It's life or death.”

“That's because
you
choose to live this way. News flash: there's a Safeway an hour away. That sells steak.”

His dad stopped the tractor, pulled Kache off the side of it, pushed him back to the moose, long-lashed eyes staring blank.

“Look at him. Know where your food came from.” His father's dark eyes flashed with such intensity, it was as if they'd taken on the life force of the moose along with his own. “You can't appreciate the life of something that comes without a face, wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam. Swollen up with all kinds of chemicals. Use your brain, Kache.”

Kache thought that was an ironic phrase to use just then, after his father had shot through the head of the moose that could no longer use
his
brain. “There's more than one way to live your life, Dad,” he said as they climbed back on the tractor.

His dad pushed the hair back from his forehead with his gloved hand. “All I'm asking is that you make knowledgeable decisions.”

“All you're asking is for me to do everything
your
way. The Holy Ordained Glenn Winkel Way.”

The tractor lurched and then jerked toward home, where he helped his father rig up the pulleys and the moose spreader bar, so the six-hundred-pound moose hung upside down by his hind legs along with all the silence hanging between them. They began skinning the legs first, the fur giving way to the white fat below. They hoisted the carcass up higher so they could continue skinning down the flanks. They did this all without speaking. Kache knelt in the pink-stained snow and tried to mimic the movements of his father, concentrating so he didn't make a mistake that might set him off. When the moose was skinned, Kache closed his eyes while his father cut the head off right at the last joint at the base of the skull. Taking the saw up to just below the V of the animal's spread legs, his dad worked his way down, sawing the front of it into two perfect halves that parted like doors until he stood inside the animal. From there, he finally spoke, his voice slightly muffled but the words clear.

“This guy has a big heart. Never been one for religion, but this is the closest thing to stepping inside a confessional. This is where you understand sacrifice. Right here, Son, is where I check my own heart for unworthiness. Where I ask for forgiveness, not from God, mind you, but from God's creature.” When Kache hadn't answered him, his father had resumed sawing.

• • •

Well, Nadia could trap herself a squirrel or eat rabbit from the freezer if she didn't like store-bought meat. In the truck, he hummed a song he used to sing with Marion and the band—the words weren't quite coming to him—when halfway out to the homestead, he remembered the road, or lack thereof. He had been so caught up in buying out Safeway that he'd forgotten. He had a truckload of groceries and a two-mile walk ahead of him. Damn. Did the old ATV still run? Worth a try. He turned back around, filled the truck at the gas station, and filled the gas can Snag kept in the truck bed. He needed to hurry before all the ice cream melted—although that wasn't exactly an imminent threat like it would have been in Austin.

TWENTY-TWO

Nadia dragged the faded orange canoe from the ledge of land above the beach while Leo waited below with the three boxes of provisions and clothing. It occurred to her that the clothes belonged to Kache and taking them could be considered stealing, but she was not about to paddle away with nothing but her old cotton
sarafan
.

Leo whined, sitting still in the bow and staring at her as she pushed off. There was the uncertainty of a destination. The wind would likely be picking up as the day went on, and the bay would get choppy—lumpy is what Lettie called it. Nadia knew lumpy could quickly change to deadly. She felt superstitious about canoeing on the bay. She had falsely accused the water of killing her, and she always wondered if it might act out in revenge. When she lifted the paddle, it left a trail of drops on the gray-green surface that sounded to Nadia like a line of words:
Then why not…make it so?

To go along the shore to the northeast meant going toward her old villages; to go southwest meant to go toward Caboose. Neither was acceptable. She could set out straight across the bay, but that was twenty-four miles, and she lacked the nerve. She sat, bobbing with the waves, the paddle now resting on her lap and the edges of the canoe while she stared back at Leo, who was quite familiar with this scenario.

All morning, she'd thought of her father's words:
Nado privyknut
.
One must get used to it
. How many times had she heard him say that while growing up, and how many times had she resisted it? But the truth was that most of her adult life had been about getting used to one thing and one thing only: living without human contact. For the majority of people, each day brought the noise and conversations, the push, pull, spin of others. The coughing, the chewing, the passing of gas. The singing, shouting, laughing, whispering. Every day, their decisions and desires and willfulness, their opinions, sufferings, needs, celebrations, illnesses, all butted up against one another, some wrestling for the win, some finding joy in the yielding, contentment in the taking or the giving. It was the human dance, and Nadia only knew how to dance alone. To ask of no one, to answer to no one, to touch no one.

Nado privyknut.

And she had. She had gotten used to it. She had adapted to her solitary environment, but at what cost? Acceptance, she learned, killed the dream of something more. But to not accept? Where does that lead? To leaving.

Always to leaving?

She picked up the paddle and turned the canoe toward the shore, guiding it past a mass of tangled bull kelp.

“I am Nadia. I live here alone ten years.” Leo tilted his head. “Please don't ask of me so many questions. It is difficult for me to talk of this. Thank you. Good to meet you. I am sorry your mama and papa and brother died. This must make you very sad.”

She would wait.

She would wait to see if Kachemak Winkel came back, to see what he had to say, to see if she would be asked to leave, or what she might be asked to accept.

And then she would decide what she could or could not get used to.

TWENTY-THREE

Kache called out, but neither the woman nor the dog made a sound. Would he have to talk her out from under the bed every time he walked in the door? He put the ice cream and pizza in the freezer, a gallon of milk and other perishables in the fridge, and then went out to the storage barn to see if they still had the ATV so he wouldn't have to walk the other groceries in.

There she was. Nadia, out in the meadow, with two sandhill cranes. They were long-legged, large, prehistoric-looking birds with red face masks. Kache had always thought of them as mysterious. He stayed perfectly still as he watched, afraid to even breathe too loudly. The birds called out, squawking and squeaking, flapping their wings, twirling, hopping, and Nadia, unbelievably, did the same. She jutted her long neck, twisted, jumped, even squawked. The birds weren't just dancing with one another; they were dancing with her.

Who was this woman?

They went on dancing as if to music—that Stravinsky piece his mother used to play on the piano—dipping and flapping and weaving in and around one another. It was far too intimate and strange and beautiful to watch, but Kache could not turn away.

Lettie thought someone had hurt Nadia. Who had hurt her? Who
could
? And even though Kache didn't move, a shift occurred within him. Of course she could stay. And of course he would stay longer than two weeks: as long as it took to help her in whatever way she needed help.

Eventually, the cranes flew off, and Nadia watched them, waving. Kache ducked out of the old storage barn and took careful, quiet steps around the bend. He waited another minute before he started whistling loudly, kicking rocks, trying to look like he'd just arrived. But she was no longer in the yard.

He found the ATV where it always had been, parked between the tractor and Denny's Land Cruiser in the newer storage barn. The place certainly wasn't lacking in vehicles.

Once he filled the small tank with gas, it started up after several tries. He tied an old canvas bag to the handlebar. As he backed up out of the barn, the dog ran up to him. Nadia walked toward them, carrying a pail. Afraid to cut the motor in case it refused to start again, he yelled over the engine, “Groceries are in the fridge, and I'm going back to the truck to get more. The truck wouldn't make it up the road. What's in the pail? Clams?”

She shook her head and held out the pail for him to see.

“Milk?”

She nodded, eyes down.

“You have a cow?”

“Goats.” She pointed toward the big barn in the distance, and when he squinted, he saw what looked like a few goats beyond it. He hadn't seen or heard them the night before. No mystery where they came from—Lettie loved goats.

“Oh. I bought cow's milk. But you probably won't like it.”

She had looked so perfectly at ease dancing with the birds, but Kache wondered if she knew how to smile at a human. Or make eye contact. He gave a quick nod, revved the ATV once, and took off toward the road.

As quiet as Nadia was, he still felt excited about showing her the stash of stuff he'd bought. He wondered what might elicit a real smile from her. The ice cream? The chocolate? Or maybe she didn't want any of it. Maybe she preferred goat's milk and game and wild berries, like his dad.

It turned out to be the magazines and the newspaper that she snatched up. She didn't smile exactly, but she was clearly enthralled.

Her earlier reference to Tolstoy and Chekhov meant she at least read Russian. He almost asked her if she knew how to read English, but she said, “George Bush was elected to our president again? Bill Clinton beat him, yes? So did he run again?”

He stared at her. She waited until he finally said, “This is the younger George Bush. His son. Who is now serving his second term. You've missed out on a few things. Did Lettie ever bring you a newspaper?”

That made her smile finally and even look him in the eyes, her own eyes filled with question. “Lettie is still alive then?”

He nodded.

“I have been worried. This frightened me to ask this. In several years, she has not been here. And no, she never brought any of this news of outside world. She thought it might make things harder for me, I believe. And I never ask.” She brought her hand to her throat and stood, leaving the paper and magazines on the table.

“Where did you learn to speak and read English?”

“In school, they teach us. One of few concessions to outside world.”

“Are you hungry?”

“I have seen never so many types of food in one place. For only two people?”

“I didn't know if there were more to feed.” He paused, but she didn't offer any information. “I don't know how you got here and where your family is. Lettie said you've never left our property? Is that true? In ten years?”

“It is difficult, this thing, to talk about.”

“Okay. But I'm not sure what to do. Lettie trusts you and wants you to be here, so that's a start.” She tilted her head, waited. “We can figure it out later. Right now, I'm starving. I bought a chicken and some steaks. Interested in either of those?”

“After I put milk away, I make soup. You have some of this, if you like.”

“Let me make you something. Without you having to wrangle it up from the earth. How about a steak and some salad? Baked potatoes?”

She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no. Kache started preparing the meal.