“Why would you say that?” Mama gave her a quick, bright smile, but the look in her eyes couldn’t be so easily transformed. She was wearing makeup for the first time in days and it made her look vibrant and beautiful.
“Remember the fair?”
“That was different. The guy tried to cheat him.”
That wasn’t how Leni remembered it. They’d been having a good time at the State Fair until her dad started drinking beer. Then some guy had flirted with Mama （and she had flirted back） and Dad had gone ballistic. He shoved the man hard enough to crack his head into the tent pole at the BeerHaus and started yelling. When the security guys came, Dad was so belligerent that the cops were called. Leni had been mortified to see two of her classmates watching the altercation. They’d seen her dad get dragged over to the cop car.
Dad opened the cabin door and came inside.
“Are my beautiful girls ready to party?”
“You bet,” Mama said quickly, smiling.
“Let’s go, then,” Dad said, herding them into the bus.
In no time—it was less than a quarter of a mile as the crow flew—they drove up to the steel gate with the bleached-white cow head on it. The gate was open in welcome.
The Walker homestead. Their nearest neighbors.
Dad drove slowly forward. The driveway （two ribbons of flattened grass that undulated up and down on lichen-covered ground） unfurled in a lazy S through stands of skinny black-trunked spruce trees. Occasionally there was a break in the trees to her left and Leni saw a splash of distant blue, but it wasn’t until they came to the clearing that Leni saw the view.
“Wow,” Mama said.
They emerged onto a flat ridge situated above a calm blue cove. The huge piece of land had been cleared of all but a few carefully chosen trees and planted in hay.
A large two-story log house sat like a crown at the highest point of land. Its triangular front boasted huge trapezoid windows and a pointed, wraparound deck. It looked like the prow of some great ship, flung to shore by an angry sea and stuck on land, forever gazing out at the sea upon which it belonged. Mismatched chairs decorated the deck, each one turned toward the spectacular view. On the far side of the house were several animal pens full of cows and goats and chickens and ducks. Coils of barbed wire, wooden crates and pallets, a broken-down tractor and the rusted shovel from an excavator, and the husks of several dead and dying trucks lay scattered in the knee-high grass. Beehives stood clustered together not far from a small wooden structure that puffed smoke. In a break in the trees was the sharp peaked roof of an outhouse.
Down at the water, a gray dock jutted out into the blue sea. At its end, a weathered arch read WALKER COVE. A float plane was tied up to the dock, in addition to two bright silver fishing boats.
“A float plane,” Dad muttered. “Must be rich.”
They parked the bus and walked past a bright yellow tractor with a black bucket and a shiny red all-terrain vehicle. From the crested rise, Leni saw people gathered down on the beach, at least a dozen of them, around a huge bonfire. Flames shot into the light lavender sky, making a sound like fingers snapping.
Leni followed her parents down the stairs to the beach. From here, she could see everyone at the party. A broad-shouldered man with long blond hair was sitting on a fallen log playing a guitar. Large Marge had turned two white plastic buckets into bongo drums, and Leni’s teacher, Ms. Rhodes, was going crazy on a fiddle. Natalie was wicked with a harmonica and Thelma was singing “King of the Road.” On means by no means everyone joined in.
Clyde and Ted were handling the barbecue, which looked to have been made out of old oil drums. Mad Earl stood nearby, drinking from a crockery jug. The two younger girls from school, Marthe and Agnes, were down at the waterline, bent over, collecting shells with Moppet.
Mama stepped down onto the beach, carrying her Tupperware full of cornbread. Dad was right behind her with a fifth of whiskey.
The big, broad-shouldered man playing the guitar put down his instrument and got to his feet. He was dressed like most of the men here, in a flan nel shirt and faded jeans and rubber boots, but even so, he stood out. He looked as if he’d been built for this rugged land, as if he could run all day, hack down an old-growth tree with a hatchet, and skip nimbly along a fallen log over a raging river. Even Leni thought he was handsome—for an old guy. “I’m Tom Walker,” he said. “Welcome to my place.”
“Ernt Allbright.”
Tom shook Dad’s hand.
“This is my wife, Cora.”