The Great Alone

Leni heard the click of a stopwatch. “Go, Leni. Clean your weapon, put it back together.”

Leni reached out, felt for the cold pieces of the rifle, pulled them toward her. The darkness unnerved her, made her slow. She saw a match flare in the darkness, smelled a cigarette being lit.

“Stop,” Dad said. A flashlight beam erupted, blared into being, focused on the rifle. “Unacceptable. You’re dead. All of our food is gone. Maybe one of them is thinking of rape.” He grabbed the rifle, disassembled it, and pushed the pieces to the center of the table. In the blast of light, Leni saw the rifle in parts, in addition to a cleaning rod, cloths, some Hoppes 9 solvent and rust protector, a few screwdrivers. She tried to memorize where everything was.

He was right. She needed to know how to do this or she could be killed.

Concentrate.

The light clicked off. The stopwatch clicked on.

“Go.”

Leni reached out, trying to remember what she’d seen. She pulled the rifle parts toward her, assembled it quickly, screwed the scope in place. She was reaching for the cleaning cloth when the stopwatch clicked off.

“Dead,” Dad said in disgust. “Try again.”

* * *

YESTERDAY, on the second Saturday in December, they joined their neighbors for a tree-cutting party. They all hiked out into the wilderness and chose trees. Dad cut down an evergreen, dragged it onto their sled, and hauled it back to the cabin, where they placed it in the corner beneath the loft. They decorated it with family Polaroids and fishing lures. A few presents wrapped in yellowed pages from the Anchorage Daily Times were positioned beneath the fragrant green branches. Magic Marker lines pretended to be ribbon. The propane-fueled hanging lanterns created a warm interior, their light a sharp contrast to the still-dark morning. Wind clawed at the eaves; every now and then a tree branch smacked hard against the cabin.

Now, on Sunday afternoon, Mama was in the kitchen, making sourdough bread. The yeasty fragrance of baking bread filled the cabin. The bad weather kept them all inside. Dad was hunched over the ham radio, listening to scratchy voices, his fingers constantly working the knobs. Leni heard the staticky sound of Mad Earl’s voice, his high-pitched cackle coming through loud and clear.

Leni sat huddled on the sofa, reading the ragged paperback copy of Go Ask Alice she’d found at the dump. The world felt impossibly small here; the drapes were drawn tightly for warmth and the door was locked shut against cold and predators.

“What was that, say again, over?” Dad said. He was hunched over the ham radio, listening. “Marge, is that you?”

Leni heard Large Marge’s voice come through the radio, broken up, spangled with static. “Emergency. Lost … Search party … past Walker cabin … Meet on Mine Road. Out.”

Leni put down her book, sat up. “Who is lost? In this weather?”

“Large Marge,” Dad said. “Come in. Who is it? Who is lost? Earl, you there?”

Static.

Dad turned. “Get dressed. Someone needs help.”

Mama took the half-baked bread out of the oven and set it on the counter, covering it with a dishcloth. Leni dressed in the warmest clothes she had: Carhartt insulated pants, rolled up at the hem, parka, bunny boots. Within five minutes of the call from Large Marge, Leni was in the back of the bus, waiting for the engine to start.

It would be a while.

Finally, Dad got the windshield scraped enough to see through. Then he checked the chains and climbed into the driver’s seat. “It’s a bad day for someone to get lost.”

Dad slowly maneuvered around in the axle-deep snow, turned toward their driveway, which was a thick, unbroken layer of white without tire tracks, bracketed by snow-covered trees. Leni could see her breath; that was how cold it was inside the bus. Snow built up and disappeared on the windshield in between each swipe of the wiper blades.

As they neared town, vehicles appeared out of the curtain of falling snow in front of them, headlights glowing through the gloom. Up ahead, Leni saw amber and red lights flashing. That would be Natalie and her snowplow, leading the way onto a barely-there road that led toward the old mine.

Dad eased up on the gas. They slowed, pulled into line behind a big pickup truck that belonged to Clyde Harlan, and drove up the mountain.

When they reached a clearing, Leni saw a bunch of snow machines (Leni still thought of them as snowmobiles but no one called them that up here) parked in an uneven line. They belonged to the residents who lived in the bush, without roads to their homesteads. All of them had their lights on and their engines running. Falling snow braided through the light beams and gave it all an eerie, otherworldly look.

Dad parked alongside a snow machine. Leni followed her parents out into the falling snow and howling wind, into the kind of cold that burrowed deep. They saw Mad Earl and Thelma and made their way over to their friends.

“What’s up?” Dad shouted to be heard above the wind.

Before Mad Earl or Thelma could answer, Leni heard the high-pitched wail of a whistle being blown.

A man in a heavy blue insulated parka and pants stepped forward. A wide-brimmed hat identified him as a policeman. “I’m Curt Ward. Thanks for coming. Geneva and Matthew Walker are missing. They were supposed to arrive at their hunting cabin an hour ago. This is their usual route. If they’re lost or hurt, we should find them between here and the cabin.