“Yeah,” Dad said.
Matthew didn’t like the way his father looked at Large Marge. The worry in his eyes.
“What are you two talking about?” Matthew asked.
Dad said, “Ernt Allbright is an angry man. We all know he vandalized the saloon. Thelma said tonight that he’s been trying to get the Harlans to plant trip wires and explosives to ‘protect’ them in case of war.”
“Yeah. He’s crazy like Mad Earl, but—”
“Mad Earl was harmless,” Large Marge said. “Ernt will not take this banishment well. It will piss him off. When he gets mad he gets mean, and when he gets mean, he hurts people.”
“People?” Matthew said, feeling a chill go through him. “You mean Leni? He’ll hurt Leni?”
Matthew didn’t wait for them to answer. He ran up the stairs to the yard, where he snagged his bicycle and climbed aboard. Pedaling hard on the wet, spongy ground, he reached the main road in less than ten minutes.
At the Allbright driveway, he skidded to a stop so fast his bike almost slipped out from underneath him. Two skinned logs barricaded the scrawny necklike entrance to the land. They were the color of salmon meat, freshly cut, a fleshy pink, studded here and there with bits of bark.
What the hell?
Matthew looked around, saw no movement, heard nothing. He pedaled around the logs and kept going, more slowly now, his heart thumping in his chest, worry expanding.
At the end of the driveway, he dismounted, laid his bike on its side. A cautious examination of the Allbright land showed no sign of trouble. Ernt’s truck was parked in front of the cabin.
Matthew crept forward slowly, wincing every time a twig snapped beneath his foot or he stepped on something—a beer can, a comb someone had dropped—he couldn’t see in the shadows. The goats bleated. Chickens squawked in alarm.
He was about to take a step when he heard a sound.
The cabin door opening.
He threw himself into the tall grass, lay still.
Footsteps on the deck. Creaking.
Scared to move and more scared not to, he lifted his head, looked out above the grass.
Leni stood at the edge of the porch, with a wool blanket wrapped around her in a cape of red and white and yellow stripes. She was holding a roll of toilet paper; moonlight set it aglow.
“Leni,” he said.
She looked over, saw him. Worriedly, she glanced back at the cabin, then ran for him.
He stood, pulled her into his arms, held her tightly. “Are you okay?”
“He’s building a wall,” Leni said, glancing back.
“That’s what those logs are for out at the road?”
Leni nodded. “I’m scared, Matthew.”
Matthew started to say, It will be all right, but he heard the cabin lock hitch.
“Go,” Leni whispered, shoving him away.
Matthew threw himself into the cover of trees just as the door opened. He saw Ernt Allbright step out onto the porch, dressed in a ragged T-shirt and baggy boxer shorts. “Leni?” he called out.
Leni waved. “I’m here, Dad. Just dropped the TP.” She cast a desperate glance back at Matthew. He hid behind a tree.
Leni walked over to the outhouse, disappeared inside of it. Ernt waited for her on the porch, herded her back inside as soon as she was done. The door lock latched with a click behind them.
Matthew retrieved his bicycle and rode home as fast as he could. He found Large Marge and his dad standing together in the yard, beside Marge’s truck.
“H-he’s building a wall,” Matthew said, his breath coming in gasps. He jumped off his bike and dropped it in the grass by the smokehouse.
“What do you mean?” Dad said.
“Ernt. You know how their land is a bottleneck and then flares out over the water? He’s skinned two logs and laid them across the driveway. Leni says he’s building a wall.”
“Jesus,” Dad said. “He’ll cut them off from the world.”
*
LENI WOKE TO THE high-pitched whirring of the chain saw and the occasional whack of a hatchet splitting wood. Dad had been up for hours, all weekend, building his wall.
The only bright spot was that she had survived the weekend and now it was Monday again, a school day.
Matthew.
Joy pushed aside the cramped, hopeless feeling of loss this weekend had birthed. She dressed for school and climbed down the ladder.
The cabin was quiet.
Mama came out of her bedroom dressed in a turtleneck and baggy jeans. “Morning.”
Leni went to her mother. “We have to do something before the wall is finished.”