Inside the cabin, he paced and paced. He muttered to himself, shook his head as if he were hearing something he didn’t like.
Leni and Mama stayed out of his way.
At suppertime, Mama put some leftover moose stew on the stove to heat up, but the rich aroma did nothing to ease the tension.
When Mama put dinner on the table, Dad stopped suddenly, looked up; the light in his eyes was scary. Muttering something about ingratitude and bitches with bad attitudes and pricks who thought they owned the world, he stormed out of the house.
“We should lock him out,” Leni said.
“And let him break a window or tear a wall away to get in?”
Outside, they heard a chain saw whir to life.
“We could run away,” Leni said.
Mama gave her a wan smile. “Sure. Yeah. He won’t come after us.”
They knew, both of them, that Leni might （might） be able to get away and have a life. Not Mama. He would track her down wherever she went.
They ate dinner in silence, each watching the door carefully, listening for an early warning sign of trouble.
Then the door cracked open against the wall. Dad stood there, crazy-eyed, hair covered in sawdust, holding a hatchet.
Mama lurched to her feet, backed away. He swept in, muttering, yanked Mama into him, drew her outside, and dragged her down the driveway. Leni ran behind them. She heard Mama talking to him in that soothing voice of hers.
He pulled Mama toward a pair of skinned logs that created a giant barricade at the end of their driveway.
“I can build a wall. Put spikes on the top, maybe razor wire. Keep us safe inside. We don’t need the g-damn compound. Screw the Harlans.”
“B-but Ernt … we can’t live—”
“Think of it,” he said, pulling her close, a hatchet hanging from one hand. “Nothing to fear from the outside world anymore. We will be safe inside. Just us. That son of a bitch can turn Kaneq into Detroit and we won’t care. I’ll protect you, Cora. From all of them. That’s how much I love you.”
Leni stared in horror at the logs, imagining it: this thumbprint piece of land walled off at the joint, cut off from the bit of civilization that would now be Out There.
There was no one who would stop her dad from building a wall or shutting them away, no police who would protect them or come in an emergency.
And once he finished it, bolted the gate shut, would Leni—or Mama—ever get out?
Leni glanced at her parents: two thin figures, angled together, touching with lips and fingers, murmuring about love, Mama trying to keep him calm, Dad trying to keep her close. They would always be the way they’d been, nothing would ever change.
In the na?veté of youth, her parents had seemed like towering presences, omnipotent and all-knowing. But they weren’t that; they were just two broken people.
She could leave them. She could break free and go her own way. It would be frightening, but it couldn’t be worse than staying, watching this toxic dance of theirs, letting their world become her world until there was nothing left of her at all, until she was as small as a comma.
EIGHTEEN
At ten P.M., the night of Mad Earl’s funeral, the sky above Walker Cove was a layer of deep blue, fading to lavender at the edges. The evening’s bonfire had burned down; logs turned to ash and crumbled into one another.
An extreme low tide had pulled back the sea, revealing a wide swath of mud, a mirror of slick gray that reflected the color of the sky and the snow-covered mountains that rose up on the opposite shore. Clumps of shiny black mussels clung to exposed pilings; the aluminum drift boat lay angled in the mud, its line tied to the buoy.
For hours there had been talk. Stories about Mad Earl, told in halting voices. Some had made them laugh. Most had made them all fall silent and remember. Mad Earl hadn’t always been the crotchety, angry man he’d become in old age. Grief over the loss of his son had twisted him. Once, he’d been Grandad Eckhart’s best friend. Alaska was tough on people, especially once they got old.
Now, quiet. There was only the occasional popping of the fire, the thunk of a falling bit of burnt wood, the lapping of the outgoing tide.
Matthew sat in one of their old beach chairs, his legs stretched out, crossed at the ankles, watching a young eagle picking at a salmon carcass on the beach. A pair of seagulls flew close, waiting for scraps.
There were only three of them left now. Dad and Large Marge and Matthew.
“Are we going to talk about it, Tom?” Large Marge said after so long a silence that Matthew was sure they’d kicked out the fire and climbed the beach stairs. “Thelma pretty much as banished Ernt from their place.”