There are strange things done in the midnight sun
By the men who moil for gold;
The Arctic trails have their secret tales
That would make your blood run cold …
Leni found herself falling into the poem’s harsh, beautiful world. It captivated her so much that she kept reading, next about Dangerous Dan McGrew and the lady known as Lou, and then “The Law of the Yukon.” This is the law of the Yukon, and ever she makes it plain: / “Send not your foolish and feeble; send me your strong and your sane.” Every line revealed a different side of this strange state they’d come to, but even so, she could never quite get Matthew out of her mind. She kept remembering the embarrassment she’d felt at the party when he overheard her father’s ugly words.
Would he still want to be her friend?
The question consumed her, made her so tense she couldn’t fall asleep. She would have sworn she didn’t sleep at all, except that the next morning she woke to hear, “Come on, sleepyhead. I need your help while Mama cooks us up some grub. You’ve got time before school starts.”
Grub? Had they suddenly become cowboys?
Leni pulled on her jeans and a big sweater and went downstairs for her shoes. Outside she found her dad up on that doghouse-looking thing on stilts. The cache. A skinned log ladder like the one leading up to the loft was propped up against the frame. Her dad stood near the top, hammering planks in place on the roof. “Hand me those penny nails, Red,” he said. “A handful.”
She grabbed the blue coffee can full of nails and climbed up the ladder behind him.
She fished out a single nail and handed it to him. “Your hand is shaking.”
He stared down at the nail in his hand; it bounced in his trembling fist. His face was as pale as a sheet of parchment and his dark eyes looked bruised, the bags were so dark beneath them. “I drank too much last night. Had trouble sleeping.”
Leni felt a jab of worry. Lack of sleep wasn’t good for Dad; it made him anxious. So far, he’d been sleeping great in Alaska.
“Drinking does all kinds of bad shit to you, Red. I know better, too. Well, that’s it,” he said, pounding the last nail into the suede work glove that had been used to make the door’s hinge. （Large Marge’s idea—these Alaskans knew how to make do with anything.）
Leni climbed down and dropped to the ground, the coffee can full of nails rattling at the movement.
Dad rammed his hammer into his belt and started climbing down.
He dropped down beside Leni and tousled her hair. “I guess you’re my little carpenter.”
“I thought I was your librarian. Or your bookworm.”
“Your mama says you can be anything. Some shit about a fish and a bicycle.”
Yeah. Leni had heard that. Maybe Gloria Steinem had said it. Who knew? Mama spouted sayings all the time. It made as much sense to Leni as burning a perfectly good bra to make a point. Then again, it made no sense at all that in 1974 a grown woman with a job couldn’t get a credit card in her name.
It’s a man’s world, baby girl.
She followed her dad from the cache to the deck, passing the bones of their new greenhouse and the garbage-bag-wrapped makeshift smokehouse. On the other side of the cabin, their new chickens pecked at the ground in their new enclosure. A rooster preened on the ramp that led to the coop’s entrance.
At the water barrel, Dad ladled out a scoopful and splashed his face, which sent brown rivulets running down his cheeks. Then he went to the deck and sat on the bottom step. He looked bad. Like he’d been drunk for days and was sick from it. （Like he used to look, when he had nightmares and lost his temper.）
“Your mama seemed to like Tom Walker.”
Leni tensed.
“Did you see the way he shoved our noses in his money? I can loan you my tractor, Ernt, or Do you need a ride to town? He looked down at me, Red.”
“He said to me he thought you were a hero and it was a dang shame what happened to you boys over there,” Leni lied.
“He did?” Dad pushed the hair out of his face. A frown creased his sunburned forehead.
“I like this place, Dad,” Leni said, realizing suddenly the truth of her words. She already felt more at home in Alaska than she ever had in Seattle. “We’re happy here. I see how happy you are. Maybe … maybe drinking isn’t so good for you.”
There was a tense moment of silence; by tacit agreement, Leni and Mama didn’t mention his drinking or his temper.
“You’re probably right about that, Red.” He turned thoughtful. “Come on. Let’s get you to school.”