A womans voice called out from the front porch. Well, whoever you are, youre trespassing on my property but Im not gonna shoot you. You might as well show your face.
Nadia pressed harder against the building. It must be the owner. Nadia had thought it possible they would never come back. When shed first found the house, she saw that no one had been there for months. Strangest were the signs that no one had actually lived there for more than a decade. The calendars, the newspapers, the magazineseverything stopped after May, 1985.
Come on now. Contrary to what you might think, Im glad youre here, the voice called. You seem to be taking good care of the place. Im going to fix us something to eat. I hope youll join me in the kitchen.
Eventually Nadia did get hungry and cold. She smelled something meaty and sweet and delicious, along with smoke from the woodstove. Because she could not afford to pause to consider the consequences, she traversed the yard and climbed the steps to the front door without hesitation. She knocked on the door, which felt odd, and when an old woman with a white braid answered, Nadia held out the basket of chanterelles like the neighbors attending a holy day feast back in the village. The woman smiled, her wrinkles a map of her long life. Repositioning her braid so it lay behind her shoulder, she thanked Nadia and took the basket.
She said, You poor sweet girl. I hope you like homemade beef vegetable soup and bread and chocolate chip cookies.
Nadia had nodded, pushing the heels of her palms against her eyes.
Dont you worry now, you hear me? Ill tell you what. No ones going to badger you or make you go anywhere.
And Lettie had stuck to her word.
If only Kachemak took after his grandmother. It seemed evident that my non-meddling gene, as Lettie had called it, had not traveled down through the generations.
Already Kachemak had asked more questions than Lettie. And already Nadia had decided she needed to find someway to leave, and somewhere to leave to. Somehow.
FOURTEEN
Snag needed to call Claire Hughes to get a ride to the Caboose Chamber meeting. Kache hadnt returned the previous night, which meant Snag hadnt slept even one quarter of a wink. But he called from his cellphone that morning and told her he was fine, not to worry. When she tried to ask him about the homestead, hed only said theyd talk later, then hung up.
Snag cleaned all morning, cleaned over what shed already cleaned in preparation for his arrival, because cleaning calmed her nerves. Not this time. Everything veered off course, as if the earth had freed itself from its steadfast journey around the sun and decided to skedaddle over to Jupiter with a side trip around Mars on the way.
She should go out to the homestead. Obviously. But she didnt have her truck, which meant shed need a ride out there, which meant whoever drove her might detect her own unbelievable capacity for negligence, which meant, in Caboose, perhaps forty-five minutes, tops, would pass before the town and its outlying communities would hear the whole humiliating story.
Besides, she really did have to get herself to the Chamber meeting. Shed been heading up a project, trying to get the train running all the way to Caboose again. A long haul, so to speak, but theyd finally gotten approval from the railroad company and the Department of Transportation, which had already begun renovation on the tracks. Now the town squabbled about one major detail.
Way back, when Caboose used to be called Herring Town with the perfectly clever slogan The End of the Line, the herring boom brought the train, the train brought the people, the herring were loaded on the train by the peopleeveryone was happy, and everyone got down on their knees at night and thanked the good Lord for the train and the herring in all its abundance. But then, as too much of a good thing is bound to do, the herring industry dried up from overfishing as fast as it came and the town all but dried up and the railroad company crowned Wilbur, Alaska, as its new End of the Line, about seventy-five miles up the tracks. For some reason no one quite knew, a caboose was left abandoned at the end of the Herring Town Spit, that jut of land four-and-a-half miles long, that long finger pointing to the mountains across the bay.
About fifty years after the herring left, someone came up with the idea of changing the town name because calling it Herring Town was a bit like calling the Mojave Desert Seaside. A vote made it officially Caboose. They needed to change the slogan too because it was no longer the end of the line, so some idiot, as far as Snag was concerned, came up with the zinger: See the Moose in Caboose. Wow. That was interesting. Moose appeared around every other bend in the state of Alaska, and most of Canada. Not exactly bragging material.
So Snag had devised a plan to get the railroad to consider bringing the train back for the tourists and thus, reestablishing the old slogan, which would once again make sense. Caboose was one of the prettiest towns in Alaska. Although, she had to admit, Alaskans used the term pretty rather loosely when describing towns. Caboose itself was a typical frontier town where mostly ugly buildings had cropped up as needed without much of a plan, but everyone said the setting on the mountain-bordered bay wasnt just one of the prettiest in Alaska. It was one of the prettiest in the world. The tourists flocked like locusts every summer; the road backed up with motor homes all the way to Anchorage. A major cluster. Bad for the environment, and hard on everyones nerveslocals and tourists alike. So she got the railroad to agree to bring the train back. Hallelujah, right?
Wrong. Now that theyd started refurbishing the track, everyone was pissed over the fate of the caboose, the town mascot that sat at the end of the Spit and currently housed a mini-museum with photos and artifacts of the early Alaskan pioneers.
Snag wanted to have the original caboose refurbished and let it run as intended, at the back end of the train, with the pioneer memorabilia on display along with sou-venirs for sale. A great story, extra publicityjust like the town that had once been abandoned, the old caboose had been reborn and had a new lease on life. Stuck for all these years, and then, finally, on the move. She could practically write the publicity materials in her sleep.
But a big chunk of the town had their Carhartts in a bunch over the idea.
We cant move the caboose! Its what our town was named after.
The caboose, Snag had reminded them, will still be here twice a day. But it will have a purpose, just like its namesake. It will be alive again, just like our town. Come on, people. Lets just get another new caboose to stick out there and use the original as it was intended.
She was beginning to realize she made up the entire minority on this issue. Snag, whod been told by Marv Rosetter she could sell ice to an Inupiaq, had not been successful in convincing the people of Caboose of this one obvious solution. Another reason she should get herself to the meeting.
But Nicole Hughes didnt pick up the phone. Neither did Suz Clayton. Melanie Magees line was already busywith one of the others calling her, Snag suspected. They, of course, played on the side of the caboose keepers. And they had caller ID. So Snag could almost see them standing in their kitchens, listening to her ask if they might be able to give her a ride. They may as well have shouted into the receiver, No, and hell no!
She pulled on her coat, stepped into her boots on the porch and started marching toward the Chamber meeting. But as she walked she thought of Kache. Again. Where was he? Had he gone to see Lettie? She didnt know that the homestead had been abandoned. Every time she said she wanted to go out there, Snag lied. She told her there were renters who didnt want to be disturbed. She told her the road was too bad and shed get stuck. She told her maybe next week, maybe next month, maybe in the summer.
One day, after Lettie could no longer drive, shed set out walking toward the homestead, but luckily Snag had come across her on the way home from the Christmas festival meeting. Winter, dusk at two in the afternoon, cold. Mom! What were you thinking?
But Lettie hadnt answered. She just shook her head and turned toward the window.
Now instead of going left toward the Chamber, Snag turned right onto Willow and hiked up the street to the Old Folks. She had to get to Lettie before Kache did.
FIFTEEN
Lettie closed her eyes again. If only the nurses and Snag would let her be for more than ten minutes so she could enjoy this remembering, which had become so clear, as if the past was happening to her once again.
This morning, her mind took her all the way back to the time when she first got the idea of Alaska in her head. Shed thought of herself as an adulteress, but of course not in the common sense of the word. It was the land. Damn the land. It called to her, first in a whisper, its name, Alaska, soft down the nape of her neck while she hung out the clothes. Then it was everywhere. It took her over. Alaska, Alaska, the broom said. Alaska? the chickens asked. She carried a picture in her pocketof some mountain range across an inlet of waterand she took it out so often it began to peel back from the corner. At night, while A.R. slept loud and hard, she lay awake, then dreamt wet, green, mossy dreams spilling one into the other. Thick, abundant dreams that tumbled her back into morning breathless and then with a feeling she guessed was yearning.
A.R. told her to forget it. One winter, hed said, will send you back to Kansas kissing the dry cracked dirt, calling it the floor of heaven. Even with this Depression and all.
No, Alaska was strictly Letties idea.
The man whod bought the farm from them for practically nothing was the one who told them about homesteading up north. Lettie thought it his way of trying to redeem himself for taking their land and knowing there wasnt a mud puddle in the United States they could buy with what hed given them for it. Hed said, In Herring Town you can get land for free. Just like in the West way back when, but there arent no Indians in Alaskawell, not the fighting kind.
Hed handed her the photograph. You just stake out the prettiest piece of property you ever seen in your lifetime, hed said. Trees and meadows, lakes and mountains and the sea, too. And the moose and the berry plants, the fish and clams, the coal just waiting for you to pick it off the beach. None of thems gotten word theres a Depression going on.
A.R. kept moping around after theyd sold the farm and most of their things and moved to town, into the apartment with her Uncle Fred. A.R. moped like a man whose dream had fallen down and died. But the farm wasnt his dream, after all, she said carefully one morning, while he still lay in bed, smoking one cigarette after the other. It was your daddys dream. In a rare moment of intensity between them, she grabbed his arm, tight; her fingernails made grooves into his flesh.
I think, she said, her eyes filling with tears, I think you gotta have your own dreams. He looked at her, blank, apparently as puzzled by her tears as she was. She stood. Staring into the corner of the tiny, crowded bedroom, she tried to explain if only to herself. It must be like what they say about religion. You cant inherit your religion. I imagine the sames true for your dreams.
A.R. was a man resigned. Had he known, Lettie thought, hed have been a man torn by jealousy. Because that placethat place shed only heard about, only seen in a single photographhad taken her over so completely she thought of little else. One night she woke from a dream that should have been a nightmare. But strangely, it wasnt. Instead of feeling frightened, she felt a freedom that did frighten her more than a nightmare ever had. In the dream, A.R. passed on. Lettie cried. But she left the funeral before it was over, threw her bags in a car of a northbound train and jumped aboard with ease. Free.
The next morning she ripped up the photograph. The pieces scattered from her hand like snow. Enough, she said aloud. She hummed familiar tunes and tried to enjoy the sun on her arms while she hung laundry on the line, as she had before this whole nonsense got started.
But the nonsense refused to let go of her. In a pitiful desperation she pleaded with A.R., afraid of that dream of his death and afraid of her own was it passion?
When he finally said yes, he didnt let go gradually, he just let go. Well, okay. Well go to Alaska. And she did what anyone whod grown accustomed to pulling with all her might would do. She fell flat on her keister.
Well, what on? he said, reaching a hand over to help her up.
She couldnt answer. Laughing, crying, laughing.
Where did you come from, woman? he asked, dusting her off. And what on earth did you do with my Lettie?
When she found her voice she said, Thank you thank you thank you! while she kissed him all over his face, feeling a tenderness toward him she hadnt felt for a long time.
So many times over the next year anyone else might have shaken a fist at her, damned her for getting them there in the first place. But A.R. never did. Not even one I told you so.
There was the treacherous boat trip once they ventured outside the Inside Passage, where she clung to both the fear that they might die and the fear that they might not die, that death might not come and save them from the slamming, slamming, slamming of the sea.
But they survived somehow, and they arrived somewhere. It was called Herring Town. They trudged through icy waves, carrying their bags over their heads while waves leapt at them like children begging for a present. There were people on the shore, too. A man, a woman andshe counted themten children. Ten! The Newberrys. All of them round-faced and round-eyed, but their bodies were lean and muscled. All except for the baby, who was delightfully fat, and the toddler, who, later when the sun broke through and slapped color all over the place, ran along the beach wearing nothing but a dirty orange life preserver and a cow bell, his legs chubby and creased, his feet padding on the wet sand.
Frank Newberry had gotten word from the Rosses in Anchor Point, whod gotten word from Uncle Freds next-door neighbors cousin, Beck Patten, that Lettie and A.R. were due to come in to Herring Town on the Salty Sally. For three days, the Newberrys watched down the inlet for the promise of Lettie and A.R.
Margaret Newberry clung to Lettie as if she were a long-lost sister. She stroked Letties hair, most of it fallen loose from the bun shed pinned it up in days before. A lifetime before. Lettie held her breath while Margaret stared into her face, inches away. Lettie knew she reeked of vomit and worse, but Margaret didnt seem to mind.