The Great Alone

In the days following the closing of the gate, with its rattling chain, Leni learned the feel of those rooms. At night, in her bed, she lay in the loft and tried not to sleep, because sleep brought on nightmares. The fear she battled during daylight besieged her at night. She dreamed of her death in a hundred ways—drowning, falling through ice, plummeting down a mountainside, being shot in the head.

Metaphors, all of them. The death of every dream she’d ever had and those she’d yet to dream.

Dad hovered beside them all the time, talking as if nothing were wrong, in a good humor for the first time since his banishment from the Harlan place. He teased, he laughed, he worked alongside them. At night Leni lay listening to the sound of her parents’ voices, of their lovemaking. Mama was good at pretending everything was normal. Leni had lost that childhood ability.

What she thought, over and over and over again, was: We need to run.

* * *

“WE HAVE TO LEAVE HIM,” Leni said on Saturday morning, a week to the day since he’d locked the gate shut. It was the first time Dad had left them alone together.

Mama paused, her hands softening on the pile of dough she was kneading. “He’ll kill me,” she whispered.

“Don’t you get it, Mama? He’s going to kill you in here. Sooner or later. Think about winter coming. The dark. The cold. And us in here, locked behind that wall. He’s not going to work the pipeline this winter. It’ll be just him and us in the dark. Who will stop him or help us?”

Mama glanced nervously at the door. “Where would we go?”

“Large Marge offered to help. So did the Walkers.”

“Not Tom. That would make it worse.”

“College starts in three and a half weeks, Mama. I have to leave as soon as I can. Will you go with me?”

“Maybe you should go without me.”

Leni had known this was coming. She had wrestled with it and finally come to an answer. “I have to go, Mama. I can’t live this way, but I need you. I’m afraid … I won’t be able to leave you.”

“Peas in a pod,” Mama said, sounding sad. But she understood. They had always been together. “You need to go. I want you to go. I couldn’t forgive myself if you didn’t, so what’s your plan?”

“The first chance we get, we run. Maybe he goes hunting and we take the boat. Whatever the opportunity is, we take it. If we’re still here when the first leaf falls, it’s all over.”

“So we just run. With nothing.”

“We run with our lives.”

Mama glanced away. It was a long, long time before she nodded and said, “I’ll try.”

It was not the answer Leni wanted, but it was the best she was going to get. She only prayed that when the opportunity for escape arose, Mama would go with her.

* * *

THE WEATHER BEGAN to change. Here and there, bright green leaves turned golden, tangerine, scarlet. Birch trees that had been invisible all year, lost amid the other trees, appeared boldly in the forefront, their bark white as the wings of a dove, their leaves like a million candle flames.

With every leaf that changed color, Leni’s tension increased. It was nearing the end of August now—early for autumn to arrive, but Alaska was capricious that way.

Although she and Mama had never spoken of their escape plan again, it lived in the air between sentences. Every time Dad left the cabin they looked at each other, and in that look, a question. Is this the time?

Today Leni and her mother were making blueberry syrup when Dad came in from outside. He was dirty and sweaty, with a fine layer of black dust on his damp face. For the first time, Leni noticed gray strands in his beard. He wore his hair in a low, haphazard ponytail and had tied a bicentennial bandanna across his forehead. He came forward, his rubber boots clomping on the plywood floor. He went into the kitchen, saw what Mama was making for dinner. “Again?” he said, peering down at the salmon croquettes. “No vegetables?”

“I’m conserving. We’re out of flour and low on rice. I’ve told you that,” Mama said wearily. “If you’d let me go to town…”

“You should go to Homer, Dad. Stock up for winter,” Leni said, hoping she sounded casual.

“I don’t think it’s safe to leave you two here alone.”

“The wall keeps us safe,” Leni said.

“Not completely. At high tide someone could come in by boat,” Dad said. “Who knows what could happen when I’m gone? Maybe we all should go. Get what we need from that bitch in town.”