Keeping an eye out for moose, he drove the first part of the road, the paved part, fast. Here the houses stood close enough to see each other, all facing south to take advantage of the viewthe jagged horizon of mountains marooned across six miles of Kachemak Bay.
Kachemak. A difficult name to have in this town, the kids teasing him in his first years at school, when the teacher let his full name slip out during roll call instead of the shortened version hed insisted onpronounced simply catchthe kids adding Bay onto the end of it. Then in high school, the girls blushing and calling him What a Kache, asking him if he would write a song for them. Or the boys throwing balls of any type his way and saying Here, Kache, followed by You cant! Kache!, which was absolutely correct.
At first his mom told him they named him for the bay because it was the most beautiful bay shed ever seen and he was the most beautiful baby shed ever laid eyes on. Whenever Denny protested, shed laugh and say, Den, I wont lie to you. You had the sweetest little squished-up turnip face. Fortunately, you grew into your dashingly handsome self.
Later, when Kache was sixteen and his father decided he was old enough to be let in on a secret, he told Kache that was all true, but there was more. Kache was conceived, his father said, grinning, in the fishing boat on the bay. The sun had been warm and the fishing slowboth rarities for Alaska. Proved to be a fruitful combination, heh? He slapped Kache on the back so hard it about knocked him over. Denny, of course, was conceived on a camping trip to Denali. Kache had told his dad that he didnt need quite that much information, thank you very much.
He hit a pothole and mud splattered on the hood and windshield. Kache knew the house was probably too far out of the way and too well hidden for anyone to stumble upon. Old Believers wouldnt want anything to do with a house outside their village, and the deepest cut of canyon on the whole peninsula added an uncrossable deterrent. Nobody with a brain would descend that canyon. The one other access besides their five-mile private road was by the beach, and only during the lowest tides. Most likely, the house stood its ground against the snow and rain and wind until the chinking filled like sponges, the roof turned to cheesecloth, the furniture rotted with moss, all his mothers books All those books. His moms paintings and her quilts and the photographs. The photographs he had never wanted, now he wanted them, even the blurry black-and-white ones hed taken when he was five, when hed snapped a whole roll of film with Dennys new camera, and Denny had threatened to strangle him.
Damn it, Aunt Snag.
Where you been? Where you been?
Damn it yourself, Winkel. He hit the steering wheel, pulled on the lights, leaned forward as if that would make him get there faster.
The road turned to dirtmud this time of year. A plastic bottle of Advil lodged between the seats rattled on and on. This was the part of the road he knew best, the part his old blue Schwinn had known so well that at one time the bike might have found its way back home without anyone riding it.
No turning around now; the pull grew stronger, magnetic.
He wasnt the first one to leave and get pulled back. In the mid-Sixties, even his dad couldnt wait to get away, had gone off to Vietnam in a huff of rebellion mixed with a desperation to see someone other than the all-too-familiar faces in Caboose, Alaska. But he returned with a deep disdain for the World Out There. In a few short, horrific years, he said, hed learned a lifetime of lessons about human nature and wasnt interested in learning more.
Ill take plain old nature with a minimum of the human element, thank you, he was fond of saying.
But then hed met Bets, and she restored his faith in humankind, or at least in womankind, and instead of the life hed planned as a hermit bachelor, he became a family man. Still, he answered to no one (except, it was a known fact, Bets) and lived off the sea and the land for the most part, earning a decent living as a fisherman. Theyd been able to transform the cabin into a real house, with huge windows facing the bay and Kenai Mountains. Bets had eased him into one compromise after the other over the years, first with a generator, and then, once Caboose Electric Association extended their service, real electricity, although they never did have central heating. Shed confided to Kache that it was next on her list, right before the Cessna crashed.
It made sense for homesteaders, like all farmers, to have large families to help with the work. But Lettie and A.R., and later Bets and Glenn, had only had two children. Fortunately, Denny, like his father Glenn before him, was able to do the work of three or four strapping boys. Kache, however, had been a disappointment, and his father had a hard time hiding just how much Kache let him down on a daily basis.
A bull moose plunged through the spruce trees, and Kache slowed to a stop and let it cross in front of him. Its long legs navigated the mud with each step before it disappeared into the alder bushes. Kache drove on and turned down their private road to the homestead. But he quickly pulled over. Road was an optimistic term. A churned up pathway of sludge obstructed by downed spruce and birch trunks and overgrown alders was more like it. He grabbed the flashlight, which was also optimistic, the light dim, the battery exhausted. Aunt Snag knew to keep the battery fresh, but Kache should have checked it before he left. He didnt want to walk in the dark through moose and bear country at the onset of spring when the animals experienced the boldest of hunger pangs.
His cellphone was useless; no service. He should turn back. Get in the car and head into town and return tomorrow. But his dad, his mom, Dennythey seemed so close: a slap on his back, an arm around his shoulders, as certain as the cold on his feet, and he shivered from both. He smelled the fire from their woodstove, as if they kept it burning all these years. All around him they said his name in all its variations and tones, so achingly clear: Kache, honey? Oh, Kaa-achemak, theres my Widdle Brodder Did you hear me, Son? Pay attention. He heard their snow machines, though there wasnt any snow, though there wasnt any them. He didnt believe in heaven, exactly, but this place was thick with recollections and maybe something more. If their spirits watched him, somehow, from somewhere, didnt he want to prove he had become capable of more than any of them thought possible? But had he? No. A city boy number-cruncher-turned-couch-potato who wore pretty boots and forgot a decent flashlight would hardly invoke awe. Still. If they were waiting, theyd been waiting twenty years and he didnt want to make them wait another day.
He made his way through the mud, tripping, sinking, until the full moon rose from behind the mountains. Like a helpful neighbor in the nick of time, it shined its generous gold light through the cobalt sky. A wolf howled, holding a single lonely note in the distance. The scent of spruce and mud and sea kept dredging up the imagined hint of smoke. All those scents had always come together here. Even in the summers, a fire burned in the woodstove.
Now Kache spotted the downed trees clearly without the flashlight, and he walked as quickly as his mud-soaked city boy boots would allowuntil the last bend, where he stopped and readied himself for what lay ahead.
It was then, as he stood on the road that was no longer a road, breathing deep, heart hammering, that the realization jarred him. The familiar scent. The spruce, the soaked loamy earth, the sea; yes, yes, yes. But wood smoke? It was too strong, too distinct now, not merely his imagination. It was definitely the smell of wood burning, and coal too.
He edged around the last corner, saw the house through the boughs of spruce and naked birch and cottonwoods. It stood, not a dejected pile of logs, but tall and proud, glowing with warm light.
What?
Who?
Smoke rose straight up from the chimney, as if the house raised its hand. As if the house knew the answer.
SEVEN
Kache stood, staring, the cold mud oozing into his boots and now through his socks. The house stared back as it always had in his mind, glowing with light and life in the middle of the cleared ten acres.
Who in the hell?
Sweating, watching, allowing for the strangest glimmer of hope. Maybe he really had been dreaming, really had been sleeping, and now that hed finally awoken, life might resume as it had before? Maybe all and everyone had not been lost? Maybe only he had been lost.
In these last two minutes he felt more alive than he had in two decades. Maybe hed been under some sort of spell, broken at last on this anniversary. His mom would love the mysticism and synchronicity of that.
He shook his head, boxed his own ears. What he needed was common sense. His dad would have reamed him for not grabbing Aunt Snags .22 that hung on the enclosed back porch. As much as Kache hated guns, never got himself to actually shoot one, he knew it was crazy to approach the house without carrying one, especially given the lights and smoke. His dad used to say it didnt matter if you were far to the left of liberal, if you walked by yourself in the boondocks of Alaska, you should carry a gun.
His feet started moving forward anyway. Forward to his old house, his old room. Who in the hell?
Inside, a dog barked. A shadow passed by one of the windows. The shade went down, snapped up again, quick as a wink, then shut. The other shade went down. The soft light behind them off now, replaced with the dark hed expected to find in the first place.
He pressed his back against the old storage barn, took deep breaths and tried to line up his thoughts, which kept ricocheting off each other. He should go back, return in daylight with the gun. Call Clemsky, Jack OConnell, a few of the others. He licked his palm and made a small circle on the mud-covered window beside him. He peered in. It was dark, and he barely made out the outline of his dads Ford pickup. Aunt Snag had even left that, probably driven it home that day from where his dad had parked it by the runway. She should have used it. That would have meant something.
The dog was going nuts now, continuously barking. Kache pushed on the storage barn side door; it wasnt locked, opened easily. Along the wall he felt for the shovel, the hoe, the rake. He decided on the sharp, stiff-bladed rake. Better than nothing.
Hovering behind a warped barrel, then a salmonberry bush, he tried the back door of the house, knowing it would be locked. He crept along to the first kitchen window, remembering. That window never did lock. He slid it open, pulled himself up on one knee, lowered the rake in first, then jumped down inside with a thud.
The barking stopped, became a whine and growl. He pictured a hand muzzled around the dogs nose. Kache tried to make himself smaller by crouching, then slipping along the wall. The thought came to him: I am not the intruder here. This is my house. Hed forgotten, taken on the attitude of a thief instead of a protector, and now he stood straight with his rake, as if that would shift the perspective of whoever was upstairs, as if the moment was a black-ink silhouette that changed depending on how you looked at it.
The whining, the growling. Kache could smell his own nerves, so of course the dog could. He ran his hand along the blue-tiled kitchen counter, up to the light switch, flicked on the lights. Nothing had changed. As always the woodstove warmed the large living room, which had once held four rooms before his mom and dad remodeled. The same furniture stood in its assigned places. His mothers paintings still hung heavily on the thick, chinked walls. Photos of the four of them, baby pictures, wedding pictures, Christmas pictures all lined the top of the piano. He ran his finger along the top; free of dust. Games and books crammed the shelves. Kache fingered the masking tape his mother had sealed along the broken seam of the Scrabble box. He fought urges to throw the rake, to vomit, to leave.
Upstairs, another growl. Kache choked out, Hello? He listened. Nothing. Hello?
Then, rage. He pounded up the stairs. Answer me! Answer me! He flung open doors and flipped on lights to bedrooms that stood like shrines to the dead. All as theyd left it. In his room, a yellowed poster of Double Trouble was still stapled to the wall, Stevie Ray Vaughan still alive and well. As if neither his plane nor Kaches familys plane had ever gone down. As if Kache still slept in the bottom bunk and dreamed of playing the guitar on stage.
Under the bed, the dog let out barks like automatic ammunition, scrambling his claws on the wood floor. Kache held out the rake. Whos there! An arm shot out, fist clenched around the handle of Dennys hunting knife. But even more startling than the knife: the arm, clad in the sleeve of his mothers suede paisley shirt. The shirt Kache and Denny bought in Anchorage for her birthday, and that she referred to as the most stylish, most perfect-fitting shirt on the planet that had somehow forged its way to the backwoods of Alaska. Mom? Kache whispered under the barking dog. Mom? he said louder, his eyes filling.
The dog poked his nose out, then was yanked back by the collar. A husky mix. Kache bent down, trying to see through the thick darkness. Mom? Thats not you?
The knife retreated and the hand reappeared, unfolded. Not his mothers hand. It spread, splayed and pressed its fingers on the floor, until a blonde head emerged, and then a face looked up. Not his mothers face. That was all he saw. It was not his mothers face, and a new grief slammed him to his knees.
Mom.
Minutes went by before he realized the dog was still barking and this other face that was not his mothers looked up at him for some kind of mercy, and though he hated the face for not belonging to his dead mother, he saw then, that it was a womans face, that it was round, that blue eyes begged him, that lips moved, saying words.
Kachemak? It is you? You are not dead?
EIGHT
There had only been one visitor, years before.
Kachemak had caught her so completely unprepared that her heartbeat seemed to be running away, down to the beach, while the rest of her waited.
He looked older, his face more angled than in the photographs. But he still had the same curly hair, though shorter now, and the same heavy brows. His heighttaller than the rest of the family in every photoalso gave him away. He asked her to call the dog off, and so she did, and pulled herself out from under the bed though her arms wobbled like a moon jellyfish. She shoved her trembling hands in her pockets and tried to appear brave and confident.