The Great Alone

* * *

ON A COLD NIGHT in late September, after a long work day, Leni stood at the window, staring out at the dark yard. She and her mother were exhausted; they’d worked from sunup to sundown, canning the last of the season’s salmon—preparing jars, scaling fish, slicing the plump pink and silver strips, and cutting off the slimy skin. They packed the strips in jars and put them into the pressure cooker. One by one, they carried the jars down to the root cellar and stacked them on newly built shelves.

“If there are ten smart guys in a room and one crackpot, you can bet who your dad will like best.”

“Huh?” Leni asked.

“Never mind.”

Mama moved in to stand by Leni. Outside, night had fallen. A full moon cast blue-white light on everything. Stars filled the sky with pinpricks and elliptical smears of light. Up here, at night, the sky was impossibly huge and never quite turned black, but stayed a deep velvet blue. The world beneath it dwindled down to nothing: a dollop of firelight, a squiggly white reflection of moonlight on the tarnished waves.

Dad was out there in the dark with Mad Earl. The two men stood beside each other at a fire burning in an oil drum, passing a jug back and forth. Black smoke billowed up from the garbage they were burning. Everyone else who had come by to help had gone home hours ago.

Mad Earl suddenly pulled out his pistol and shot at the trees.

Dad laughed uproariously at that.

“How long are they going to stay out there?” Leni asked. The last time she’d gone to the outhouse, she’d heard snippets of their conversation. Ruining the country … keep ourselves safe … coming anarchy … nuclear.

“Who knows?”

Mama sounded irritated. She’d fried the moose steaks Mad Earl had brought with him; then she’d made roasted potatoes and set the card table with their camping plates and utensils. One of Leni’s paperback novels had been used to prop up the table’s bad leg.

That had been hours ago. Now the meat was probably as dry as an old boot.

“Enough is enough,” Mama finally said. She went outside. Leni sidled to the doorway, pushed the door open so she could hear. Goats bleated at the sound of footsteps.

“Hey, Cora,” Mad Earl said, smiling sloppily. He stood unsteady on his feet, swayed to the right, stumbled.

“Would you like to stay for dinner, Earl?” Mama asked.

“Naw, but thanks,” Mad Earl said, stumbling sideways. “My daughter will tan my hide if I don’t make it home. She’s making salmon chowder.”

“Another time then,” Mama said, turning back to the cabin. “Come on in, Ernt. Leni’s starving.”

Mad Earl staggered to his truck, climbed in, and drove away, stopping and starting, honking the horn.

Dad made his way across the yard in a mincing, overcautious way that meant he was drunk. Leni had seen it before. He slammed the door behind him and stumbled to the table, half falling into his chair.

Mama carried in a platter of meat and oven-browned potatoes and a warm loaf of sourdough bread, which Thelma had taught them how to make from the starter every homesteader kept on hand.

“Loo … s great,” Dad said, shoveling a forkful of moose meat into his mouth, chewing noisily. He looked up, bleary-eyed. “You two have a lot of catching up to do. Earl and I were talking about it. When TSHTF, you two would be the first casualties.”

“TSHTF? What in God’s name are you talking about?” Mama said.

Leni shot her mother a warning look. Mama knew better than to say anything about anything when he was drunk.

“When the shit hits the fan. You know. Martial law. A nuclear bomb. Or a pandemic.” He tore off a hunk of bread, dragged it in the meat juice.

Mama sat back. She lit up a cigarette, eyeing him.

Don’t do it, Mama, Leni thought. Don’t say anything.

“I don’t like all of this end-of-the-world rhetoric, Ernt. And there’s Leni to consider. She—”

Dad slammed his fist down on the table so hard everything rattled. “Damn it, Cora, can’t you ever just support me?”

He got to his feet and went to the row of parkas hanging by the front door. He moved jerkily. She thought she heard him say, G-damn stupid, and mutter something else. He shook his head and flexed and unflexed his hands. Leni saw a wildness in him, barely contained emotion rising hard and fast.