He maneuvered into a spot between a mud-splattered Econoline van with Nebraska license plates and a lime-green Gremlin with duct-tape-and-cardboard windows. They set up their tent on the sand, tying it to the bus’s bumper. The sea-scented wind was insistent down here.
The surf made a quiet shushing sound as it rolled forward and drew back. All around them people were enjoying the day, throwing Frisbees to dogs and building bonfires in the sand and putting boats in the water. The chatter of human voices felt small and transient in the bigness of the world here.
They spent the day as tourists, drifting from place to place. Mama and Dad bought beers at the Salty Dawg Saloon, while Leni bought an ice-cream cone from a shack on the Spit. Then they dug through bins at the Salvation Army until they found rubber boots in all of their sizes. Leni bought fifteen old books （most of them damaged and water-stained in some way） for fifty cents. Dad bought a kite to fly at the beach, while Mama slipped Leni some cash and said, “Get yourself some film, baby girl.”
At a little restaurant at the very end of the Spit, they gathered at a picnic table and ate Dungeness crab; Leni fell in love with the sweet, salty taste of the white crabmeat dunked in melted butter. Seagulls cawed to them, floated overhead, eyeing their fries and French bread.
Leni couldn’t remember a better day. A bright future had never seemed so close.
The next morning, they drove the bus onto the hulky Tustamena ferry （called Tusty by the locals） that was a part of the Alaska Marine Highway. The stout old ship serviced remote towns like Homer, Kaneq, Seldovia, Dutch Harbor, Kodiak, and the wild Aleutian Islands. As soon as the bus was parked in its lane, the three of them rushed out onto the deck and headed to the railing. The area was crowded with people, mostly men with long hair and bushy beards, wearing trucker’s caps and plaid flannel shirts, puffy down vests and dirty jeans tucked into brown rubber boots. There were a few college-aged hippies here, too, recognizable by their backpacks, tie-dyed shirts, and sandals.
The ferry eased away from the dock, belching smoke. Almost immediately Leni saw that the water in Kachemak Bay wasn’t as calm as it had looked from the safety of the shore. Out here, the sea was wild and white-tipped. Waves roiled and splashed the sides of the boat. It was beautiful, magical, wild. She took at least a dozen pictures and tucked them into her pocket.
A pod of orcas surfaced from the waves; seals peered at them from the rocks. Otters fed in kelp beds along the rough shores.
Finally, the ferry turned, chugged around an emerald-green mound of land that protected them from the wind that barreled across the bay. Lush islands with tree-tossed rocky shores welcomed them into their calm waters.
“Kaneq coming up!” came over the loudspeaker. “Next stop, Seldovia!”
“Come on, Allbrights. Back to the bus!” Dad said, laughing. They maneuvered through the line of cars, found their way back to the bus, and climbed in.
“I can’t wait to see our new home,” Mama said.
The ferry docked and they drove off the boat and uphill onto a wide dirt road that cut through a forest. At the crest of the hill stood a white clapboard church with a blue-domed steeple topped with a three-slatted Russian cross. Beside it was a small picket-fenced cemetery studded with wooden crosses.
They crested the hill, came down on the other side, and got their first look at Kaneq.
“Wait,” Leni said, peering out the dirty window. “This can’t be it.”
She saw trailers parked on grass, with chairs out front, and houses that would have been called shacks back in Washington. In front of one of the shacks, three scrawny dogs were chained up; all three stood on top of their weathered doghouses, barking and yelping furiously. The grassy yard was pitted with holes where the bored dogs dug.
“It’s an old town with a remarkable history,” Dad said. “Settled first by Natives, then by Russian fur traders, and then taken over by adventurers looking for gold. An earthquake in 1964 hit the town so hard that the land dropped five feet in a second. Houses broke apart and fell into the sea.”
Leni stared at the few ramshackle, paint-blistered buildings that were connected to one another by an aging boardwalk; the town was perched on pilings above mudflats. Beyond the mud was a harbor full of fishing boats. The main street was less than a block long, and unpaved.
To her left was a saloon called the Kicking Moose. The building was a charred, blackened husk; clearly the victim of a fire. Through the dirty glass window, she saw patrons inside. People drinking at ten A.M. on a Thursday in a burned-out shell of a building.