Natalie’s smile gave her an elfin look. “Our pleasure, Cora. You remember. Tonight you lock your door when you go to bed. Don’t come out till morning. If you need a chamber pot, get one from Large Marge at the Trading Post.”
Leni knew her mouth gaped just a little. They wanted her to pee in a bucket?
“Bears are dangerous this time of year. Black bears especially. They’ll attack sometimes just ’cause they can,” Large Marge said. “And there are wolves and moose and God knows what else.” She took the chain saw from Natalie and slung it over her shoulder as if it were a stick of balsam wood. “There’s no police up here and no telephone except in town, so Ernt, you teach your women to shoot, and do it fast. I’ll give you a list of the minimum supplies you’ll need before September. You’ll need to bag a moose for sure this fall. It’s better to shoot ’em in season, but … you know, what matters is meat in the freezer.”
“We don’t have a freezer,” Leni pointed out.
The women laughed at that, for some reason.
Dad nodded solemnly. “Gotcha.”
“Okay. See you later,” the women said in unison. Waving, they walked toward their vehicles and mounted up, and then drove down the trail that led out to the main road. In moments they were gone.
In the silence that followed, a cold breeze ruffled the treetops above them. An eagle flew overhead, a huge silver fish struggling in its talons’ grip. Leni saw a dog collar hanging from the top branches of an evergreen. An eagle must have picked up a small dog and carried it away. Could an eagle carry off a girl who was skinny as a beanpole?
Be careful. Learn to shoot a gun.
They lived on a piece of land that couldn’t be accessed by water at low tide, on a peninsula with only a handful of people and hundreds of wild animals, in a climate harsh enough to kill you. There was no police station, no telephone service, no one to hear you scream.
For the first time, she really understood what her dad had been saying. Remote.
*
LENI WOKE TO THE SMELL of frying bacon. When she sat up, pain radiated down her arms and up her legs.
She hurt everywhere. Mosquito bites made her skin itch. Five days （and up here the days were endless, sunlight lasted until almost midnight） of hard labor had revealed muscles she’d never known she had before.
She climbed out of her sleeping bag and pulled on her hip-hugger jeans. （She’d slept in her sweatshirt and socks.） The inside of her mouth tasted terrible. She’d forgotten to brush her teeth last night. Already she was beginning to conserve water that didn’t flow through faucets but had to be hauled inside by the bucketful.
She climbed down the ladder.
Mama was in the kitchen alcove, at the camp stove, pouring oatmeal into a pot of boiling water. Bacon sizzled and snapped in one of the black cast-iron skillets they’d found hanging from a hook.
Leni heard the distant pounding of a hammer. Already that rhythmic beat had become the soundtrack of their lives. Dad worked from sunup to sundown, which was a long day. He’d already repaired the chicken coop and fixed the goat pens.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said.
“Fun,” Mama said.
Leni put on her wafflestompers, and stepped outside into a blue-skied day. The colors were so vibrant, the world hardly looked real: green, swaying grass in the clearing, purple wildflowers, the gray zigzag steps leading to a blue sea that breathed in and out along the pebbled shore. Beyond it all, a fjord of impossible grandeur, sculpted eons ago by glaciers. She wanted to go back for her Polaroid and take pictures of the yard—again—but already she was learning that she needed to conserve her film. Getting more would not be an easy thing up here.
The outhouse was positioned on the bluff, in a stand of thin-trunked spruce, overlooking the rocky coastline. On the toilet lid, someone had painted I never promised you a rose garden, and applied flower decals.
She lifted the lid, using her sleeve to protect her fingers, and carefully averted her gaze from the hole as she sat down.
When she finished, Leni headed back to the cabin. A bald eagle soared overhead, gliding in a circle and then swooping up, flying away. She saw a fish carcass hanging high in one of the trees, catching the sunlight like a Christmas ornament. An eagle must have dropped it there, after picking all the meat off the bones. Off to her right, the cache was half finished—four skinned log braces that led to a three-foot-by-three-foot wooden platform twelve feet in the air. Below it were six empty raised beds covered by a hoop-skirt-like structure of pipe and wood that awaited plastic covering to become a greenhouse.