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.
Margaret reassured her, reassured her again. There would someday be a train connecting them to Anchorage, and a school. More talk of a store. A post office. And soon, a church.
What Margaret didnt seem to know was Lettie didnt need reassuring. A church? Why anyone wanted to worship God in a dark log hovel when a mere glimpse of the water, which went from green to red to pink to blue, depending on what the sun and moon were up tonot as it had been earlier with the torment of waves, but now white with the suns reflections, a thousand spots of light leaping and dancingseemed a declaration to her, Let there be Light!
If she could, Lettie would have stripped off her vomit-crusted clothes, pitched them into the fire and worn nothing but a cowbell while she splashed in the icy waves.
Later, while the young women of Herring Town plotted their civilities, crowded around the Sears Catalog, and tended to their children, the men helped Lettie and A.R. stake out their land. She giggled at the kissing puffins with their strange hooked orange beaks and matching feet, cried when she first heard the lonely cry of a loon. Her heart jumped with the salmon in the river; when she saw their silver streaks through the clear water, she saw for the first time the invisible currents of her own life.
One night she pulled A.R. close to her, unlatched his trousers, snugged them down before hed even stopped snoring. She was not that type of woman, really. She had always been a lady, though a rather plain one. But Alaska was no place for a lady; the men in Kansas said that to A.R. Even the men on the boat said it. She kissed A.R. on the mouth and he stopped snoring with a snort. And then he said her nameas hed been saying it for the past few monthswith a question mark. Lettie? Lettie? but then Lettie
She wanted to give him some of this what was it? Abundance. It spilled up and out and over her. Let him see it, experience it.
Now now now, she said, arching her back, thinking that if A.R. went deep enough he might touch this something inside her, take part of it for himself.
The scent of the land got inside her too. A damp, sprucey, smoky, salty scent that she fancied. She smelled it in her own hair, in her clothes and on the tips of her fingers.
She worked harder than shed ever worked on the farm, right alongside A.R. and the other men. There was a difference between Lettie and the other womenthey all soon recognized this. Instead of dissention and jealousy, the difference bore a mutual respect. Lettie had no children. And Lettie did not come to Alaska as a generous submission to her husbands quest. Alaska was Letties quest.
Quest. Was that the right word? Yes, she decided. Quest and question, too. Alaska was her question. The one shed had to ask. Shed been a woman who had asked few questions. Her life had been a series of neatly laid out stepping stones, provided for her convenience. She had taken them one at a time, never skipping one or turning over another, never prying one loose to see what might lie underneath. Shed never gotten her feet muddy, so to speak. And then the next expected step was gone; simply not there. She and A.R. had not conceived. There were no children. She hadnt questioned that, really, either. Tried not to think about it, mostly. Just stayed perched on and busy with the farm and A.R.
Until the photograph.
Mom? Are you awake? Snag again. Snag, always trying to reel her back in to the hospital when Lettie just wanted to stay on the land.
Oh, the land. The dream she and A.R. once had to hand it down to their children and grandchildren. She must talk to Kache, tell him what shed done, get him to go out and see if Nadia was still there. For all she knew, the poor girl was gone now, or worse, dead. As dead and gone as A.R. himself.
Except there hed been, as close as her own hand, there in her remembering.
SIXTEEN
As he drove, Kache tried to get a grip. He hadnt slept at all. Forget dandelion root tea, he needed an Americano with an extra shot. He needed answers. He needed some kind of plan. A plan would be good.
The weather could go one of many waysbig gray clouds hung around the mountain peaks, trying to decide if they wanted to get ugly, but the sun was up and shining as if to say, Hey, calm down, Ive got this one.
Kache didnt want to turn Nadia in. So shed been squatting on their property for the last ten years. Shed also saved it from going to ruin. But that meant it had stood empty for the decade prior to her arrival. Ten winters with no one running water in the pipes or knocking the snow off the roof or keeping the shrews and voles and mice from taking over. No way. So she was lying or Snag was lying or another strange person had holed up in the house too and might still be around, which circled back to Nadia lying.
Still, he wouldnt turn her in. Hed just ask her to find a different place. Hed help her find something suitable. If she really didnt want to go back to her village, there were people in town whod probably trade childcare or property maintenance for a room. Then, before he went back to Austin, hed work on the homesteadshe had kept up on it the best she could but he knew it must still need some maintenanceand get it ready to rent out to a cattle rancher or someone who needed a large chunk of the land. He and Snag could deal with it together. It would feel right for them to finally step up, keep a few meaningful things, sell the rest. It would be good. Like the therapist Janie had dragged him to that one time had said, Theres healing in turning homeward, a wholeness that results from facing your history, an ability to move forward. Kache hadnt wanted to hear it and called it a bunch of poetic psychobabble. But, hell, maybe there was something to it.
He pulled up to a drive-thru orange and blue coffee truck called The Caboose Cuppabrews. The brittle air blasted through his open window while a dark-haired boy of about eleven took his order.
Arent you a little young to be a coffee barristo?
The boy shrugged. A barwhat?
A woman laughed from somewhere behind the boy. We start them working young up here, sir. Hes my son, so we skirt around those pesky labor laws.
Marion?
Yes? She bent down and he took in her face. She had the same dark eyes and high cheekbones, and still wore her hair parted in the middle and straight. She had hardly changed. Kache! No way! She leaned out farther, spilling the coffee on her wrist. Ouch! Shit. Sorry. Wait, dont move. And she disappeared back through the window, leaving the boy to sponge up the coffee, shaking his head with a small, somewhat parental smile.
Marion had pulled on a parka, sprinted out from the backside of the truck, reached in through the window and wrapped her arms around Kaches neck before he could open his door. I thought they were holding you hostage until we agreed to say Texas was the bigger state after all. Lettie didnt take another turn?
He teeter-tottered his hand. My aunt thinks shes at deaths door. Grams confused, but for someone whos ninety-eight years old
He teeter-tottered his hand. My aunt thinks shes at deaths door. Grams confused, but for someone whos ninety-eight years old
Youll have to say hi to my grandpa. Remember Leroy? Hes happy as long as they let him fish the hallways. My ex says Leroys got the best fishing spot on the peninsula, right there in his head. Letties been so sharp until recently. How long are you here?
He shrugged. Not sure.
You got someone special? She smiled that old Marion smile.
Not as of two days ago. You?
She teeter-tottered her hand. Still singing?
He shook his head. You?
Of course. Playing?
He shook his head again.
Youre shittin me. You need to come down to The Spit Tune. We still play a few nights a week. Bring your guitar and that voice of yours. Rex will do cartwheels down the bar when he sees you. She turned toward her son. Ian, this is Kache. Hes a helluva guitar player and hes got a voice some hotshot reporter called both wound and wonder.
Kache laughed. Is there such thing as a hotshot reporter in Alaska?
Several cars had pulled up behind him. Ha ha. Gotta get back to work, but do not leave town without us catching up. Im here every morning except Christmas, New Years and Easter. Seriously. No excuses, okay?
He smiled. Scouts honor.
You dropped out of the Scouts! she shouted as he pulled away.
Wow. Marion had a kid. Marion was still singing. The band was still together.
His old house, a museum of his seventeen-year-old life. And his old girlfriend, still playing with their band. He might as well make this trip back in time complete. He turned toward the Spit and headed out to see Rex. Since Kache had arrived, hed already done more socializing than he had in years. Janie would be shocked.
Only two days before, hed lain wedged in the permanent indent hed caused in his and Janies sofa, the TV cradling him in its familiar steel-colored light. On his chest the cat Charlotte had purred and slept. Hed turned down the volume for the commercial, the warm Austin air carrying aching guitar riffs in D minor along with aromas of barbeque from the restaurant across the street. Another Do-it-Yourself show was about to start. He should get upArise! Go forth!and turn off the TV, but he didnt. He let Charlotte sleep.
Each step of each project, vivid in his minds eye: A version of his own hands performing every task, but calloused, surer, moving with the certainty of the experienced. Not the boys hands his father had made fun of. Explain to me, son, hed said, how the same fingers that spin gold on that silly guitar of yours turn into flippers when you pick up a hammer?
But some of what his father tried to teach him was at long last finding its way in, if only from a type of televised-osmosis.
Janie was upstairs in the loft of their apartment, spreading on lotion, dusting on makeup, curling her hair. He must have once felt something more for her than he did now, which if he had to classify, fell in the vicinity of a fond affection. They had traveled some, had good sex. Hed moved into her place. Theyd cooked, laughed, watched movies, shared a few secrets. And yet he experienced those times as if theyd occurred in a hazy, disjointed dream.
Her footsteps clicked down the stairs and stopped in the kitchen behind him.
Sure you dont want to join us? she asked again.
Gently he lifted Charlotte off his chest and propped up on his elbow so he could see Janie in the shadows, the jutted hip and crossed-arms stance of late. Charlotte leapt down and began winding herself through and around Janies ankles. No thanks.
He sat up and twisted around to face her in the kitchen, his back sore with stiffness, his arm now slung along the top of the sofa in order to show her he was making an effort, paying attention. She flicked on the light. She had her hair up loose the way he liked it best and she wore a dress he hadnt seen before. You look nice, he said. Really pretty.
Without a smile she shifted her weight, unfolded her arms so they hung by her sides, her pale palms facing him. You might surprise yourself and have fun.
How to explain the impossibility? Not really up to it tonight.
She kept her eyes on him. She was gracious enough not to ask: Did you apply for any jobs today? Did you make any follow-up calls? Did you even return your aunts call? Its ironic, you know. Watching the Do-it-Yourself Network all day long and never doing a damn thing.
She spun away, the air barely lifting the edge of her dress, said, Ill be home late, and closed the door with force, but not quite a slam. They didnt slam doors. They didnt shout. Theyd been together over three years and never had more than a low-heated discussion, where nothing ever boiled over, just simmered on and on until they had reached this state of bone-dry evaporation.
Kache got up to find something to eat. He stretched, muscles tight from lying down so long, his vertebrae a series of hooks and sinkers.
Janie blamed this funk hed been in for the last six months on the fact that hed been let go from his job. A buyout. Hed received a generous enough severance package. They called it the Golden Parachute, but he was too young for that. Maybe the silver? Not even. Brass. The Brass-Cant-Save-Your-Ass Parachute.
It wasnt that he needed the money. Hed invested well, lived far below his means. There was just nothing he could bring himself to do. In the quiet of their kitchen he spread peanut butter on wheat bread. He could do that much.
The job had provided a masquerade that kept Janie from seeing the obvious: Hed been asleep for the last two decades. A relentless fog descended upon him that god-awful day and it remained, through his college education (with the help of a fair amount of weed) and then through his job in accounting at a small hi-tech company. Hed quit the weed by then but hid in the numbers for years without anyone realizing that he wasnt quite there. They shrugged it off, thinking, he supposed, that he was merely distant, quiet. They, including Janie, chalked it off as personality traits of a numbers geek.
But no one in Austin had known him before the plane crash. Way back when he wrote songs and played the guitar, when he talked too much and argued with passion and was too touchy feely for his own good. While at work, hed lost himself in the black and white of the numbers; their rigid columns and graphs had held him in a tight cocoon of space. Math became his new music, but without the emotions, which was a welcome relief. He had not turned out to be a lazy-no-good rock and roller, after all. Unlike Kaches father, Rex would find that disappointing.
SEVENTEEN
The Spit Tune was one of the oldest buildings on the Spit. It had survived the fire in 1918 and the Good Friday earthquake of 1964. Peanut shells and sawdust covered the floor. Signed dollar bills from every corner of the world hung from the ceiling and walls, and when Kache was a high school kid, he figured there was enough money there to fund their first album. Now he knew just how naïve that had been. First of all, there wasnt nearly that much money, even twenty years later. And secondly, Rex, whod owned the place forever, was fond of saying hed shoot anyone who even tried to take one dollar down. I wont hurt you real bad, hed say. Maybe just take off a finger or two to remind you to follow the rules.