The Great Alone: A Novel (17 page)

Leni looked at the clock. Six
A.M.

Hours later, when dawn finally shed its slow, tentative light across the land, Leni stepped into her white bunny boots and pulled the rifle down from the gun rack by the door, loading it. The closing of the chamber was a loud crack of sound.

“I don’t want to go out there,” Mama said. “And no. You’re not going
alone, Annie Oakley.” With a wan smile, she pulled on her boots and put on her parka, flipping the fur-lined hood up. She loaded up a second rifle and stood beside Leni.

Leni opened the door, stepped out onto the snow-covered deck, holding the rifle in front of her.

The world was white on white. Snow falling. Muffled. No sounds.

They moved across the deck, down the steps.

Leni smelled death before she saw it.

Blood streaked the snow by the ruined goat pen. Stanchions and gates had been torn apart, lay broken. There were feces everywhere, in dark piles, mingled with blood and gore and entrails. Trails of gore led into the woods.

Wrecked. All of it. The pens, the chicken yard, the coop. Every animal gone, not even pieces left.

They stared at the destruction until Mama said, “We can’t stay out here. The scent of blood will draw predators.”

ELEVEN

Out on the road with her mother, walking, the two of them holding hands, Leni felt like an astronaut moving through an inhospitable white landscape. Her breathing and their footsteps were all she heard. She tried to convince Mama to stop at either the Walker place or Large Marge’s, but Mama wouldn’t listen. She didn’t want to admit what had happened.

In town, everything was hunkered down. The boardwalk was a strip of snow-covered ice. Icicles hung from the eaves of the buildings and snow coated every surface. The harbor was full of whitecaps that tossed the fishing boats from side to side, yanked at their lines.

The Kicking Moose was already—or still—open. Light bled through the amber windows. A few vehicles were parked out front—trucks, snow machines—but not many.

Leni elbowed Mama, cocked her head at the VW bus parked near the saloon.

Neither of them moved. “He won’t be glad to see us,” Mama said.

An understatement, Leni thought.

“Maybe we should go home,” Mama said, shivering.

Across the street, the door to the General Store opened, and Leni heard the faraway tinkling of the bell.

Tom Walker stepped out of the store, carrying a big box of supplies. He saw them and stopped.

Leni was acutely aware of how she and Mama looked, standing knee-deep in snow, faces pink with cold, tuques white and frozen. No one went walking in weather like this. Mr. Walker put his box of supplies in the back of his truck, shoved it up against the cab. Large Marge came out of the store behind him. Leni saw the two of them look at each other, frown, and then head toward Leni and her mom.

“Hey, Cora,” Mr. Walker said. “You guys are out on a bad day.”

A shudder of cold made Mama shake; her teeth chattered. “Wolves were at our place last night. I d-don’t know how many. They k-killed all the goats and chickens and ruined the pens and c-coop.”

“Did Ernt kill any of them? Do you need help skinning? The pelts are worth—”

“N-no,” Mama said. “It was dark. I’m just here … to put in an order for more chicks.” She glanced at Large Marge. “Next time you go to Homer, Marge. And for more rice and beans, but … we’re out of money. Maybe I can do laundry. Or darning. I’m good with a needle and thread.”

Leni saw the way Large Marge’s face tightened, heard the curse she muttered beneath her breath. “He left you alone, and wolves attacked your place. You could have been killed.”

“We were fine. We didn’t go out,” Mama said.

“Where is he?” Mr. Walker asked quietly.

“W-we don’t know,” Mama lied.

“At the Kicking Moose,” Large Marge said. “There’s the VW.”

“Tom, don’t,” Mom said, but it was too late. Mr. Walker was walking away from them, striding down the quiet street, his footsteps spraying up snow.

The women—and Leni—rushed along behind him, slipping and sliding in their haste.

“Don’t, Tom, really,” Mama said.

He wrenched open the saloon’s door. Leni instantly smelled damp wool and unwashed bodies and wet dog and burnt wood.

There were at least five men in here, not counting the hunched, toothless bartender. It was noisy: hands thumping on whiskey-barrel tables, a battery-operated radio blaring out “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown,” men talking all at once.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Mad Earl was saying, his eyes glazed. “The first thing they’ll do is take over the banks.”

“And seize our land,” Clyde said, the words slurred.

“They won’t take my g-damn land.” This from her dad. He stood beneath one of the hanging lanterns, swaying unsteadily, his eyes bloodshot. “No one takes what’s mine.”

“Ernt Allbright, you piece of shit,” Mr. Walker hissed.

Dad staggered, turned. His gaze went from Mr. Walker to Mama. “What the hell?”

Mr. Walker stormed forward, knocking chairs aside. Mad Earl scrambled to get out of his way. “A pack of wolves attacked your place last night, Allbright. Wolves,” he said again.

Dad’s gaze went to Mama. “Wolves?”

“You are going to get your family killed,” Mr. Walker said.

“Look here—”

“No.
You
look,” Mr. Walker said. “You aren’t the first cheechako to come up here with no goddamn idea what to do. You aren’t even the stupidest, not by a long shot. But a man who doesn’t take care of his wife…”

“You got no right to say anything about keeping a woman safe, do you, Tom?” Dad said.

Mr. Walker grabbed Dad by the ear and yanked so hard he yelped like a girl. He dragged Dad out of the smelly bar and into the street. “I should kick your ass around the block,” Mr. Walker said in a harsh voice.

“Tom,” Mama pleaded. “
Please.
Don’t make it worse.”

Mr. Walker stopped. Turned. He saw Mama standing there terrified, nearly in tears, and Leni saw him pull himself from the brink of rage. She’d never seen a man do it before.

He stilled, frowned, then muttered something under his breath and
yanked Dad to the bus. Opening the door, he lifted Dad as easily as if he were a kid and shoved him into the passenger seat. “You’re a disgrace.”

He slammed the door shut and then went to Mama.

“Will you be okay?” Leni heard him ask.

Mama whispered an answer Leni couldn’t hear, but she thought she heard Mr. Walker whisper,
Kill him
, and saw Mama shake her head.

Mr. Walker touched her arm, barely, just for a second, but Leni saw.

Mama gave him an unsteady smile and said, “Leni, get in the bus,” without looking away from him.

Leni did as she was told.

Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and started the bus.

All the way home, Leni could see rage building in her father, see it in the way his nostrils flared every now and then, in the way his hands flexed and unflexed, hear it in the words he didn’t say.

He was a man who talked, especially lately, especially in the winter, he always had something to say. Now his lips were pressed tightly together.

It made Leni feel as if she were a coil of rope drawn around a cleat with the wind pulling at it, tugging, the rope creaking in resistance, slipping. If the line wasn’t perfectly tied down, it would all come undone, be torn away, maybe the wind would pull the cleat from its home in fury.

There was still a bright pink mark on his ear, like a burn, where Mr. Walker had taken hold and hauled Dad outside and humiliated him.

Leni had never seen anyone treat her father that way and she knew there would be hell to pay for it.

The bus jerked to a stop in front of the cabin, skidded sideways slightly in the snow.

Mama turned off the ignition, and the silence expanded, grew heavier without the rattle and rumble of the engine to hide even a layer of its depth.

Leni and Mama got out of the bus fast, left Dad sitting there, alone.

As they neared the cabin, they saw again the destruction the wolves had caused. Snow lay over it all, in heaping handfuls on posts and planks. Chicken wire stuck up in tangled heaps. A door lay half exposed. Here and
there, in tree wells mostly, but on wood pieces, too, there was blood turned to pink ice and frozen clumps of gore. A few colorful feathers could be seen.

Mama took Leni by the hand and led her across the yard and into the cabin. She shut the door hard behind them.

“He’s going to hurt you,” Leni said.

“Your dad is a proud man. To be humiliated in that way…”

Seconds later, the door banged open. Dad stood there, his eyes bright with alcohol and rage.

He was across the room in less time than it took Leni to draw a breath. He grabbed Mama by the hair and punched her in the jaw so hard she slammed into the wall and collapsed to the floor.

Leni screamed and flew at him, her hands curling into claws.

“No, Leni!” Mama cried.

Dad grabbed Leni by the shoulders, shook her hard. Grabbing a handful of her hair, he yanked her across the floor, her feet tripping up on the rug, and shoved her outside into the cold.

He slammed the door shut.

Leni threw herself at the door, battering it with her body until there was no strength left in her. She slumped to her knees beneath the small overhang of the roof.

Inside, she heard a crash, something breaking, and a scream. She wanted to run away, get help, but that would only make everything worse. There was no help for them.

Leni closed her eyes and prayed to the God she had never been taught about.

She heard the door unlock. How long had it been?

Leni didn’t know.

Leni stumbled to her feet, frozen, and went into the cabin.

It looked like a war zone. A broken chair, shattered glass across the floor, blood splattered on the sofa.

Mama looked even worse.

For the first time, Leni thought:
He could kill her.

Kill
her.

They had to get away. Now.

*   *   *

L
ENI APPROACHED HER MOTHER
cautiously, afraid Mama was on the verge of collapse. “Where’s Dad?”

“Passed out. In bed. He wanted … to punish me…” She turned away, ashamed. “You should go to bed.”

Leni went to the hooks by the door, got Mama’s parka and boots. “Here, dress warmly.”

“Why?”

“Just do it.” Leni moved quietly across the cabin, eased through the beaded curtain. Her heartbeat was a hammer hitting her rib cage as she looked around, saw what she’d come for.

Keys. Mama’s purse. Not that there was any money in it.

She grabbed it all and started to leave and then stopped, turned back.

She looked at her dad, sprawled facedown on the bed, naked, his butt covered by a blanket. Burn scars puckered and twisted his shoulders and arms, the skin looked lavender-blue in the shadows. Blood smeared the pillow.

She left him there and went back to the living room, where Mama stood alone, smoking a cigarette, looking like she’d been beaten with a club.

“Come on,” Leni said, taking her hand, giving a gentle, insistent tug.

Mama said, “Where are we going?”

Leni opened the door, gave Mama a little shove, then she reached down for one of the bug-out bags that were always by the door, a silent ode to the worst that could happen, a reminder that smart people were prepared.

Hefting it onto her shoulder, Leni leaned into the wind and snow and followed her mother out to the bus. “Get in,” she said gently.

Mama climbed into the driver’s seat and fit the key into the ignition, giving it a turn. As the VW warmed, she said dully, “Where are we going?”

Leni tossed the big pack into the back of the bus. “We’re leaving, Mama.”

“What?”

Leni climbed into the passenger seat. “We’re leaving him before he kills you.”

“Oh. That. No.” Mama shook her head. “He would never do that. He loves me.”

“I think your nose is broken.”

Mama sat there a minute longer, her face downcast. Then, slowly, she put the old VW in gear, and turned toward the driveway. Headlights pointed to the way out.

Mama started to cry in that quiet way of hers, as if she thought Leni couldn’t tell. As they drove into the trees, she kept glancing in the rearview mirror, wiping her tears away. When they reached the main road, a feral wind clawed at the bus. Mama worked the gas carefully, trying to keep the bus steady on the snow-packed ground.

They passed the Walker gate and kept going.

At the next bend in the road, a gust of wind punched the bus hard enough that they skidded sideways. A broken branch cracked into the windshield, got caught for a second in the wiper, was slammed up and down before it blew away, and revealed a giant bull moose in front of them, crossing the road on a turn.

Leni screamed a warning, but she knew it was too late. They had to either hit the moose or swerve too hard, and hitting an animal of that size would destroy the bus.

Mama turned the steering wheel, eased her foot off the accelerator.

The bus, never good in the snow, began a long, slow pirouette.

Leni saw the moose as they glided past him—his huge head inches from her window, his nostrils flaring.

“Hang on,” Mama screamed.

They hit a berm of snow and flipped over; the bus cartwheeled and plummeted off the road, landing in a screech of metal.

Leni saw it in pieces—trees upside down, a snowy hillside, broken branches.

She cracked her head into the window.

When she regained consciousness, the first thing she noticed was quiet. Then the pain in her head and the taste of blood in her mouth. Her mother was slumped beside her; both of them were in the passenger seat.

“Leni? Are you okay?”

“I … think so.”

She heard a hiss of sound—something gone wrong with the engine—and the whining creak of settling metal.

Mama said, “The bus is lying on its side. I think we’re on solid ground, but there could be farther to fall.”

Another way to die in Alaska. “Will someone find us?”

“No one is going to be out in weather like this.”

“Even if they were, they wouldn’t see us.”

Moving cautiously, Leni felt around for the heavy, clanking backpack, found it, and burrowed through it for a headlamp. Fitting it onto her head, she flicked the switch. The glow was too yellow, otherworldly. Mama looked freakish, her bruised face waxlike and melting.

That was when Leni saw the blood in Mama’s lap and her broken arm. A bone stuck out from a tear in her sleeve.

“Mama! Your arm. Your arm! Oh, my God—”

“Take a breath. Look at it, look good. It’s a broken bone. And not my first.”

Leni tried to settle her panic. She took a deep breath, submerged it. “What do we do?”

Mama unzipped the backpack, began pulling out gloves and neoprene face masks with her good hand.

Leni couldn’t look away from the splintered bone, from the blood soaking her mother’s sleeve.

“Okay. First I need you to bind up my arm to stop the bleeding. You’ve learned how to do this. Remember? Rip off the bottom of your shirt.”

“I can’t.”

“Lenora,” Mama said sharply. “Rip your shirt.”

Leni’s hands were shaking as she removed the knife from her belt and
used it to start a rip in the fabric. When she had a long ribbon of flannel, she carefully scooted sideways.