No one was listening. Even Mad Earl was moving toward the bar for his free drink.
“You never did know when to shut up, Ernt,” Large Marge said, sidling up to him. She was wearing a knee-length, hand-beaded suede coat over flannel pajama pants tucked into mukluks. “Does anyone make you get a business license to fix boat engines down at the dock? No. We don’t. If Tom wants to turn this place into Barbie’s Dream House, none of us will tell him otherwise. That’s why we’re here. To do whatever we want. Not to do what you want us to.”
“I’ve taken shit from men like him all of my life.”
“Yeah. Well. Maybe that’s more about you than him,” Large Marge said.
“Shut your fat mouth,” Dad snapped. “Come on, Leni.” He grabbed Mama by the bicep and pulled her through the crowd.
“Allbright!”
Leni heard Mr. Walker’s big voice behind them.
Almost to the door, Dad stopped, turned. He yanked Mama close in beside him. She stumbled, almost fell.
Mr. Walker moved toward Dad, and people came with him, stood close, drinks in hand. Mr. Walker looked casual until you saw his eyes and the way his mouth tightened when he looked at Mama. He was pissed.
“Come on, Allbright. Don’t run off. Be neighborly,” Mr. Walker said. “There’s money to be made, man, and change is natural. Unavoidable.”
“I won’t let you change our town,” Dad said. “I don’t care how much money you have.”
“Yes, you will,” Mr. Walker said. “You have no choice. So let it go and lose gracefully. Have a drink.”
Gracefully?
Didn’t Mr. Walker know by now?
Dad wasn’t one to let things go.
THIRTEEN
All the next day, Dad paced and fumed and railed about dangerous changes and the future. At noon, he got on the ham radio and called for a meeting at the Harlan family compound.
For the entirety of the day, Leni had a bad feeling, a hollowness in the pit of her stomach. The hours passed slowly, but still they passed. After dinner, they drove up to the compound.
Now they were all waiting impatiently for the meeting to start. Chairs had been dragged out of cabins and unstacked from sheds and set up in a haphazard fashion on the muddy ground facing Mad Earl’s porch.
Thelma sat in an aluminum chair, with Moppet sprawled uncomfortably across her, the girl too big for her mother’s lap. Ted stood behind his wife, smoking a cigarette. Mama sat beside Thelma in an Adirondack chair with only one arm, and Leni was beside her, sitting in a metal fold-out chair that had sunk into the muck. Clyde and Donna stood like sentinels on either side of Marthe and Agnes, both of whom were carving sticks of wood into spikes.
All eyes were on Dad, who stood on the porch, alongside Mad Earl. There was no sign of whiskey between them, but Leni could tell they had been drinking.
A dreary rain fell. Everything was gray—gray skies, gray rain, gray trees lost in a gray haze. Dogs barked and snapped at the ends of rusty chains. Several stood atop small doghouses and watched the proceedings in the center of the compound.
Dad looked out over the crowd gathered in front of him, which was the smallest it had ever been. In the last few years, the young adults had ventured off their grandfather’s land in search of their own lives. Some fished in the Bering Sea, others rangered up in the national park. Last year Axle had impregnated a Native girl and was now living in a Yupik settlement somewhere.
“We all know why we’re here,” Dad said. His long hair was a dirty mess and his beard was thick and untrimmed. His skin was winter pale. A red bandanna covered most of his head, kept his hair out of his face. He patted Mad Earl’s scrawny shoulder. “This man saw the future long before any of the rest of us. He knew somehow that our government would fail us, that greed and crime would destroy everything we love about America. He came up here—brought you all here—to live a better, simpler life, one that went back to the land. He wanted to hunt his food and protect his family and be away from the bullshit that goes on in cities.” Dad paused, looked out at the people gathered in front of him. “It’s all worked. Until now.”
“Tell ’em, Ernt,” Mad Earl said, leaning forward, reaching down for a jug hidden beneath his chair, uncorking it with a thunk.
“Tom Walker is a rich, arrogant prick,” Dad said. “We’ve all known men like him. He didn’t go to ’Nam. Guys like him had a million ways to dodge the draft. Unlike me and Bo and our friends, who stood up for our country. But, hey, I can get over that, too. I can get over his holier-than-thou attitude and his rubbing his money in my face. I can get over him leering at my wife.” He stepped down the rickety porch steps, splashed into the murky water that pooled along the bottom step. “But I will not let him destroy Kaneq and our way of life. This is our home. We want it to stay wild and free.”