The Great Alone
The bears aren’t in hibernation yet, are they? They are most dangerous now, feeding hungrily before going to sleep.
She saw a pair of yellow eyes staring at her from the darkness.
No. She was imagining it.
The ground beneath her changed, gave way. She stumbled. Water sloshed out of the buckets and onto her gloves. Don’tpanicDon’tpanicDon’tpanic.
Her headlight revealed a fallen log in front of her. Breathing hard, she stepped over it, heard the screech of bark against her jeans, and kept going; up a hill, down one, around a dense black thicket. Finally, up ahead, she saw a glimmer.
Light.
The cabin.
She wanted to run. She was desperate to get home, to feel her mother’s arms around her, but she wasn’t stupid. She had already made one mistake—she hadn’t kept track of time.
As she neared the cabin, the night separated a little. She saw charcoal outlines against the black: the sheen of the metal stovepipe poking up through the roof, a side window full of light, the shadow of people inside. The air smelled of wood smoke and welcome.
Leni rushed around to the side of the cabin, lifted the barrel’s makeshift lid, and poured what was left of her water into the barrel. The split second between her upending the bucket and the sound of the water splashing in told her the barrel was about three-quarters full.
Leni was shaking so hard it took two tries for her to unlatch the door.
“I’m back,” she said, stepping into the cabin, her whole body shaking.
“Shut up, Leni,” Dad snapped.
Mama stood in front of Dad. She was unsteady-looking, dressed in ragged sweats and a big sweater. “Hey, there, baby girl,” she said. “Hang up your parka and take off your boots.”
“I’m talking to you, Cora,” Dad said.
Leni heard anger in his voice, saw her mother flinch.
“You have to take the rice back. Tell Large Marge we can’t pay for it,” he said. “And the pilot bread and powdered milk, too.”
“But … you haven’t gotten a moose yet,” Mama said. “We need—”
“It’s all my fault, is it?” Dad shouted.
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it. But winter’s bearing down on us. We need more food than we have, and our money—”
“You think I don’t know we need money?” He swiped at the chair in front of him, sent it tumbling and cracking to the floor.
The sudden wildness in his eyes, the showing of the whites, scared Leni. She took a step backward.
Mama went to him, touched his face, tried to gentle him. “Ernt, baby, we’ll figure it out.”
He yanked back and headed for the door. Grabbing his parka from its place on the hook by the window, he pulled the door open, let in the sweeping cold, and slammed it shut behind him. A moment later, the VW bus engine roared to life; headlights stabbed through the window, turned Mama golden white.
“It’s the weather,” Mama said, lighting a cigarette, watching him drive away. Her beautiful skin looked sallow in the headlights’ glow, almost waxen.
“It’s going to get worse,” Leni said. “Every day is darker and colder.”
“Yeah,” Mama said, looking as scared as Leni suddenly felt. “I know.”
* * *
WINTER TIGHTENED ITS GRIP on Alaska. The vastness of the landscape dwindled down to the confines of their cabin. The sun rose at a quarter past ten in the morning and set only fifteen minutes after the end of the school day. Less than six hours of light a day. Snow fell endlessly, blanketed everything. It piled up in drifts and spun its lace across windowpanes, leaving them nothing to see except themselves. In the few daylight hours, the sky stretched gray overhead; some days there was merely the memory of light rather than any real glow. Wind scoured the landscape, cried out as if in pain. The fireweed froze, turned into intricate ice sculptures that stuck up from the snow. In the freezing cold, everything stuck—car doors froze, windows cracked, engines refused to start. The ham radio filled with warnings of bad weather and listed the deaths that were as common in Alaska in the winter as frozen eyelashes. People died for the smallest mistake—car keys dropped in a river, a gas tank gone dry, a snow machine breaking down, a turn taken too fast. Leni couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without a warning. Already the winter seemed to have gone on forever. Shore ice seized the coastline, glazed the shells and stones until the beach looked like a silver-sequined collar. Wind roared across the homestead, as it had all winter, transforming the white landscape with every breath. Trees cowered in the face of it, animals built dens and burrowed holes and went into hiding. Not so different from the humans, who hunkered down in this cold, took special care.
Leni’s life was the smallest it had ever been. On good days, when the bus would start and the weather was bearable, there was school. On bad days, there was only work, accomplished in this driving, demoralizing cold. Leni focused on what needed to be done—going to school, doing homework, feeding the animals, carrying water, cracking ice, darning socks, repairing clothes, cooking with Mama, cleaning the cabin, feeding the woodstove. Every day more and more wood had to be chopped and carried and stacked. There was no room in these shortened days to think about anything beyond the mechanics of survival. They were growing starter vegetables in Dixie cups on a table beneath the loft. Even the practice of survival skills at the Harlan compound on weekends had been suspended.