The Great Alone

On this beautiful blue evening, beneath a cerulean sky, Leni stepped into her rubber Xtratuf boots and went outside to feed the animals. They had seven goats now and thirteen chickens and four ducks. Slogging through ankle-deep mud, along watery tire grooves, she heard voices. She turned toward the sound, toward the cove that was their family’s link to the outside world. Although they had spent years here, the property remained stubbornly wild. Even in her own backyard Leni had to be careful, but on days like this, when the tide was in and water lapped up on the shell-strewn shore, it still took her breath away.

Now she saw canoes down on the water, a flotilla of brightly colored boats gliding past.

Tourists. Probably unaware of how fast things could change in Alaska. The water beneath them was calm, but the small bay filled and emptied twice a day in fast, rushing tides that could strand or drown the unwary before they recognized the danger.

Mama came up beside Leni. She smelled the familiar combination of cigarette smoke, rose-hip soap, and lavender hand cream that would always remind her of her mother. Mama looped one arm over Leni’s shoulder, gave her a playful hip bump.

They watched the tourists glide into the cove, heard their laughter echo across the water. Leni wondered what their lives were like, those Outside kids, who came up here for a vacation and backpacked up mountainsides and dreamed of living “off the land,” and then went back to their suburban homes and their changing lives.

Behind them, the red truck rumbled to life. “It’s time to go, girls,” Dad yelled.

Mama took Leni’s hand. They began walking toward Dad.

“We shouldn’t go to the meeting,” Leni said when they reached him.

Dad looked at her. In their years in Alaska, he had aged, turned thin and wiry. Fine lines bracketed his eyes, creased his sunken cheeks. “Why?”

“It will upset you.”

“You think I’d run from a Walker? You think I’m a coward?”

“Dad—”

“This is our community, too. No one loves Kaneq more than I do. If Walker wants to act like a big shot and call a meeting, we’re going. Get in the truck.”

They crammed into the old truck.

Kaneq was a different town than it had been when they moved here, and her father hated each and every change. He hated that there was now a foot ferry that brought tourists from Homer. He hated that you had to slow down for them because they walked in the middle of the road and wandered around googly-eyed, pointing to every eagle and hawk and seal. He hated that the new fishing-charter business in town was thriving and sometimes there wasn’t an empty seat at the diner. He hated people who came to visit—lookie-loos, he called them—but even more, he hated the outsiders who’d moved in, building houses near town, taming their lots with fences and building garages.

On this warm evening, a few hardy tourists moved down Main Street, taking pictures and talking loudly enough to startle the dogs tied up along the roadside. They gathered outside the brand-new Snackle Shop (where you could buy snacks and fishing tackle).

A sign on the Kicking Moose Saloon read TOWN MEETING SUNDAY NIGHT. 7 P.M.

“What are we? Seattle?” Dad muttered.

“Our last meeting was two years ago,” Mama said. “When Tom Walker donated the lumber to repair the transient dock.”

“You think I don’t know that?” he said, pulling into a parking space. “You think I need you telling me that? I can hardly forget Tom Walker acting like a big shot, shoving his money in our noses.” He parked in front of the burnt-out Kicking Moose Saloon. The bar’s door was flung wide open in welcome.

Leni followed her parents into the saloon.

For all the changes that had taken place in town, this was the one place that had remained the same. No one in Kaneq cared about the blackened walls or the smell of char, as long as the booze flowed.

The place was already packed. Men and women (mostly men) in flannel shirts were bellied up to the bar. A few scrawny dogs lay curled beneath the barstools and out of the way. Everyone was talking at once and music played in the background. A dog whined along to the sound, howled once before a boot shut him up.

Mad Earl saw them and waved.

Dad nodded and headed to the bar.

Old Jim was bartending, as he had for decades. With no teeth and rheumy eyes and a beard as sparse as his vocabulary, he was slow behind the bar but congenial. Everyone knew Old Jim would give them a drink on credit or take some moose meat in trade. Rumor was, it had been that way at the Moose since Tom Walker’s dad built the saloon in 1942.

“Whiskey, double,” Dad yelled out to Jim. “And a Rainier beer for the missus.” He slapped a handful of wadded-up pipeline bills on the table.

Taking his drink and Mama’s beer, he headed to the corner, where Mad Earl and Thelma and Ted and Clyde and the rest of the Harlan clan had staked out a collection of chairs clustered around an overturned barrel.

Thelma smiled up at Mama, pulled a white chair in beside her. Mama sat down and the two women immediately bent their heads together and started talking. In the past few years, they had become good friends. Thelma, Leni had learned over the years, was like most of the Alaskan women who dared to live in the bush—tough and steady and honest to a fault. But you didn’t want to mess with her.

“Hey, Leni,” Moppet said, smiling up with her mouthful of which-a-ways teeth. Her sweatshirt was too big and her pants were too short, exposing at least three inches of pipe-cleaner-thin shins above her slumped woolen socks and ankle boots.