The Great Alone

He stood, pulled her into his arms, held her tightly. “Are you okay?”

“He’s building a wall,” Leni said, glancing back.

“That’s what those logs are for out at the road?”

Leni nodded. “I’m scared, Matthew.”

Matthew started to say, It will be all right, but he heard the cabin lock hitch.

“Go,” Leni whispered, shoving him away.

Matthew threw himself into the cover of trees just as the door opened. He saw Ernt Allbright step out onto the porch, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and baggy boxer shorts. “Leni?” he called out.

Leni waved. “I’m here, Dad. Just dropped the TP.” She cast a desperate glance back at Matthew. He hid behind a tree.

Leni walked over to the outhouse, disappeared inside of it. Ernt waited for her on the porch, herded her back inside as soon as she was done. The door lock latched with a click behind them.

Matthew retrieved his bicycle and rode home as fast as he could. He found Large Marge and his dad standing together in the yard, beside Marge’s truck.

“H-he’s building a wall,” Matthew said, his breath coming in gasps. He jumped off his bike and dropped it in the grass by the smokehouse.

“What do you mean?” Dad said.

“Ernt. You know how their land is a bottleneck and then flares out over the water? He’s skinned two logs and laid them across the driveway. Leni says he’s building a wall.”

“Jesus,” Dad said. “He’ll cut them off from the world.”

* * *

LENI WOKE TO THE high-pitched whirring of the chain saw and the occasional whack of a hatchet splitting wood. Dad had been up for hours, all weekend, building his wall.

The only bright spot was that she had survived the weekend and now it was Monday again, a school day.

Matthew.

Joy pushed aside the cramped, hopeless feeling of loss this weekend had birthed. She dressed for school and climbed down the ladder.

The cabin was quiet.

Mama came out of her bedroom dressed in a turtleneck and baggy jeans. “Morning.”

Leni went to her mother. “We have to do something before the wall is finished.”

“He won’t really do it. He was just crazed. He’ll see reason.”

“That’s what you’re going to rely on?”

Leni saw for the first time how old her mother looked, how drawn and defeated. There was no light in her eyes anymore, no ready smile.

“I’ll get you coffee.”

Before Leni made it to the kitchen, a knock rattled the cabin door. Almost simultaneously the door swung open. “Hullo, the house!”

Large Marge strode forward. A dozen bracelets clattered on her fleshy wrists, earrings bobbed up and down like fishing lures, catching the light. Her hair was growing out again. She’d parted it down the middle and tied it into two pom-pom balls that flopped as she moved.

Dad pushed in behind the black woman, put his hands on his bony hips. “I said you couldn’t go in, g-damn it.”

Large Marge grinned and handed Mama a bottle of lotion. She pressed it into her hands, closed her big hands over Mama’s small ones. “Thelma made this from the lavender growing in her backyard. She thought you’d love it.”