at the kissing puffins with their strange hooked orange beaks and matching feet, cried when she first heard the lonely cry of a loon. Her heart jumped with the salmon in the river; when she saw their silver streaks through the clear water, she saw for the first time the invisible currents of her own life.
One night she pulled A.R. close to her, unlatched his trousers, snugged them down before he’d even stopped snoring. She was not that type of woman, really. She had always been a lady, though a rather plain one. But Alaska was no place for a lady; the men in Kansas said that to A.R. Even the men on the boat said it. She kissed A.R. on the mouth and he stopped snoring with a snort. And then he said her name—as he’d been saying it for the past few months—with a question mark. “Lettie? Lettie?” but then “Lettie …”
She wanted to give him some of this … what was it? Abundance. It spilled up and out and over her. Let him see it, experience it.
“Now … now … now,” she said, arching her back, thinking that if A.R. went deep enough he might touch this something inside her, take part of it for himself.
The scent of the land got inside her too. A damp, sprucey, smoky, salty scent that she fancied. She smelled it in her own hair, in her clothes and on the tips of her fingers.
She worked harder than she’d ever worked on the farm, right alongside A.R. and the other men. There was a difference between Lettie and the other women—they all soon recognized this. Instead of dissention and jealousy, the difference bore a mutual respect. Lettie had no children. And Lettie did not come to Alaska as a generous submission to her husband’s quest. Alaska was Lettie’s quest.
Quest. Was that the right word? Yes, she decided. Quest and question, too. Alaska was her question. The one she’d had to ask. She’d been a woman who had asked few questions. Her life had been a series of neatly laid out stepping stones, provided for her convenience. She had taken them one at a time, never skipping one or turning over another, never prying one loose to see what might lie underneath. She’d never gotten her feet muddy, so to speak. And then the next expected step was gone; simply not there. She and A.R. had not conceived. There were no children. She hadn’t questioned that, really, either. Tried not to think about it, mostly. Just stayed perched on and busy with the farm and A.R.
Until the photograph.
“Mom? Are you awake?” Snag again. Snag, always trying to reel her back in to the hospital when Lettie just wanted to stay on the land.
Oh, the land. The dream she and A.R. once had to hand it down to their children and grandchildren. She must talk to Kache, tell him what she’d done, get him to go out and see if Nadia was still there. For all she knew, the poor girl was gone now, or worse, dead. As dead and gone as A.R. himself.
Except there he’d been, as close as her own hand, there in her remembering.
As he drove, Kache tried to get a grip. He hadn’t slept at all. Forget dandelion root tea, he needed an Americano with an extra shot. He needed answers. He needed some kind of plan. A plan would be good.
The weather could go one of many ways—big gray clouds hung around the mountain peaks, trying to decide if they wanted to get ugly, but the sun was up and shining as if to say, Hey, calm down, I’ve got this one.
Kache didn’t want to turn Nadia in. So she’d been squatting on their property for the last ten years. She’d also saved it from going to ruin. But that meant it had stood empty for the decade prior to her arrival. Ten winters with no one running water in the pipes or knocking the snow off the roof or keeping the shrews and voles and mice from taking over. No way. So she was lying or Snag was lying or another strange person had holed up in the house too and might still be around, which circled back to Nadia lying.
Still, he wouldn’t turn her in. He’d just ask her to find a different place. He’d help her find something suitable. If she really didn’t want to go back to her village, there were people in town who’d probably trade childcare or property maintenance for a room. Then, before he went back to Austin, he’d work on the homestead—she had kept up on it the best she could but he knew it must still need some maintenance—and get it ready to rent out to a cattle rancher or someone who needed a large chunk of the land. He and Snag could deal with it together. It would feel right for them to finally step up, keep a few meaningful things, sell the rest. It would be good. Like the therapist Janie had dragged him to that one time had said, “There’s healing in turning homeward, a wholeness that results from facing your history, an ability to move forward.” Kache hadn’t wanted to hear it and called it a bunch of poetic psychobabble. But, hell, maybe there was something to it.
He pulled up to a drive-thru orange and blue coffee truck called The Caboose Cuppabrews. The brittle air blasted through his open window while a dark-haired boy of about eleven took his order.
“Aren’t you a little young to be a coffee barristo?”
The boy shrugged. “A bar—what?”
A woman laughed from somewhere behind the boy. “We start them working young up here, sir. He’s my son, so we skirt around those pesky labor laws.”
“Marion?”
“Yes?” She bent down and he took in her face. She had the same dark eyes and high cheekbones, and still wore her hair parted in the middle and straight. She had hardly changed. “Kache! No way!” She leaned out farther, spilling the coffee on her wrist. “Ouch! Shit. Sorry. Wait, don’t move.” And she disappeared back through the window, leaving the boy to sponge up the coffee, shaking his head with a small, somewhat parental smile.
Marion had pulled on a parka, sprinted out from the backside of the truck, reached in through the window and wrapped her arms around Kache’s neck before he could open his door. “I thought they were holding you hostage until we agreed to say Texas was the bigger state after all. Lettie didn’t take another turn?”
He teeter-tottered his hand. “My aunt thinks she’s at death’s door. Gram’s confused, but for someone who’s ninety-eight years old …”
“You’ll have to say hi to my grandpa. Remember Leroy? He’s happy as long as they let him fish the hallways. My ex says Leroy’s got the best fishing spot on the peninsula, right there in his head. Lettie’s been so sharp until recently. How long are you here?”
He shrugged. “Not sure.”
“You got someone special?” She smiled that old Marion smile.
“Not as of two days ago. You?”
She teeter-tottered her hand. “Still singing?”
He shook his head. “You?”
“Of course. Playing?”
He shook his head again.
“You’re shittin’ me. You need to come down to The Spit Tune. We still play a few nights a week. Bring your guitar and that voice of yours. Rex will do cartwheels down the bar when he sees you.” She turned toward her son. “Ian, this is Kache. He’s a helluva guitar player and he’s got a voice some hotshot reporter called ‘both wound and wonder.’”
Kache laughed. “Is there such thing as a hotshot reporter in Alaska?”
Several
