The House of Frozen Dreams

by Seré Prince Halverson

  The warmer weather had eradicated every last patch of old snow and dried up the mud. The days lengthened so rapidly it was as if someone tugged on each end, stretching them like taffy. He’d forgotten the way you could step outside to wash the truck and not realize until you stepped back in and looked at the clock that it was nearing midnight. Alaska created a seasonal bi-polarism he couldn’t deny. Summer meant fifteen-hour workdays. Energy bounced from the sun to this part of the earth and back continuously, coursing through him as it traveled in both directions. He saw himself transforming from an Alaskan Clark Kent wearing flannel and wool socks, wrapped in a quilt by the fire, to the other dude in tights. Kache almost felt the cape fluttering behind him as he turned the wheelbarrow up toward the garden plot. He’d forgotten the miracle of this season’s transformation. Not a blessed thing went untouched. The world went into fast-motion photography mode. One day the trees’ branches shivered bare, the next they were blanketed with buds. If he stood still long enough he could witness those buds growing, bursting forth, unfolding to warm their faces in the sun.

  All along the bench of land above the bay, fireweed spread like its namesake, setting the slope in a blaze of the most vibrant fuchsia. In this land known for everything large and majestic—mountains, eagles, glaciers, bears, even its mosquitoes, which Alaskans called the state bird—the tiny pale state flower popped up everywhere, those delicate sky-colored forget-me-nots with their pinpointed yellow centers, as if the sun had sacrificed a part of itself in order to anoint each one with a sacred droplet of light.

  The place was getting to him. No, the place in the summer was getting to him, he reminded himself, barely able to recall the gray storms that had stuck around for most of breakup and kept them shivering, ducked under rain gear for days on end.

  But now a good summer had set in and it was mostly sun splashing down. It seemed that the birds never stopped singing—right now a hermit thrush and kinglet were competing for the lead solo. And Nadia never stopped moving, never stopped foraging. Bending, picking, reaching, digging, pinching, plucking. Baskets, nets, pouches, slings, bags, backpacks—all filled and emptied and filled again. She knew the names, the functions, the recipes. She was wisdom and knowledge without a hint of the bored or accustomed. And always, her sense of discovery. Finding a mushroom, she’d act as excited as if it were her first one but then she’d rattle off enough information to fill a guidebook.

  She had collections of seeds—cabbage, kale, oak leaf lettuce, onions, potatoes, broccoli, carrots and rhubarb. Plus flowers: pansies and marigolds, goldenrod and nasturtiums. She refused to go into town, but when Kache came back one warm early afternoon with pumpkin seeds and acorn squash and zucchini she smiled, the biggest smile yet.

  She set down the hoe and took the packets in her hands. “To grow a giant pumpkin, I have always wanted this,” she said.

  “So it could magically turn into a horse and carriage and whisk you away from here?” He began reattaching the chicken wire that had been pulled down—probably by a moose—along the top of the fence.

  “No. So I could carve the scary face and light it with candles and set on the porch.”

  He grinned. “For those hundreds of trick-or-treaters we get—you get—out in the middle of nowhere.”

  She shook her head, handed the seed packets back to him. “I saw photos in your mother’s magazine. Sunrise? No, Sunset. The jack lanterns and trickers. They made this impression on me. I’d never before seen.”

  “You know, a lot of people think Halloween is the devil’s holiday. With your upbringing, do you pay attention to any of that?”

  She gave him a long look. She said, “Kache. I have known the devil. A pumpkin? It does not scare me.” She turned away and resumed attacking the soil.

  Despite the mid-day sun, a chill skittered down his back. “Okay then. We will grow an Alaskan size jack o’ lantern.”

  “Will you still be here to help me carve it, when it grows?”

  This was the first time Nadia had asked him of his plans. The truth was that he had none, other than doing more of what he was doing. He probably needed to take a trip to Austin, if just to tie up some loose ends—sell his car, pick up the rest of his stuff from Janie’s. But he didn’t need to stay there for a job. He had enough money to keep the homestead going and pay the taxes and, eventually, maybe build some wilderness cabins he could rent out to tourists, somewhere far enough away on the four hundred acres that the house wouldn’t lose its privacy. Vague ideas, but far from a plan.

  So he said, “As far as I know, yes, I’ll be here. What about you?”

  “I am here to stay as long as you allow me.”

  He knew she probably meant the word stay quite literally, as in not crossing her foot over the property line. He’d kept gently offering to take her in to Caboose, but she adamantly refused. “Nadia, what if you had to leave? Where would you go?”

  She set her shoulders back, held the hoe straight alongside her. “To San Francisco.”

  That was fast. “Wouldn’t you like to give it some thought first?” And wait. How will you get to San Francisco when you won’t even talk about venturing the five miles to the main road, let alone into Caboose? “I mean, you don’t even want to go into our little town.”

  He knew he shouldn’t have brought this up again, but he couldn’t stop himself. He went on: “Don’t get me wrong. You can stay here as long as you like. My family appreciates all you’ve done. But don’t you want to peel yourself off of this particular rock?” He took a deep breath and then asked, “Does this devil you refer to live in town?”

  She pulled her bandana from her jeans’ pocket—his jeans’ pocket, actually—and wiped her forehead. “I am going to prepare for us some lunch,” she said and left.

  He’d pushed too hard again. Someone had obviously scared her into staying put, like Lettie thought. Nadia showed a keen interest in the world, delighted with most of what he brought her each day: always a newspaper and a magazine, along with supplies—gasoline for his dad’s old power tools, seeds, different foods to try, even a dairy cow they named Mooze, though she insisted she loved the goats’ milk and had served him the delicious cheese she made from it. She’d gotten used to most of the food he bought from the store and even wrote up a list of requests. But other than the mention of San Francisco—San Francisco? Really?—she seemed bent on spending her entire life in isolation. All he could do was help her continue to be as self-sufficient as possible. Helping someone be self-sufficient … someone who had already mastered it. Not exactly a calling.

  If he couldn’t take her out into the world, how much of the world to bring in? There was the question of a computer and the Internet, now available on most of the Peninsula. Cable television. (His own addiction gave him pause on that one. Perhaps just upgrade the old VCR to a DVD player for movies?) It was possible now to wire in the world. She was knowledgeable; not only about how to survive by yourself on a homestead, but it was obvious she’d read their books, watched their movies, and listened to their albums. She’d had plenty of time and she’d used it well.

  He took off his work gloves and headed toward the house. He’d help with lunch and wouldn’t say anything more about Caboose.

  The windows were open and Neil Young’s voice greeted him as he stepped onto the porch. She would often put an album on the stereo when they’d come in from work. Listening to the old albums intensified the feeling of time travel he kept dipping in and out of; the scratchy sound of the vinyl made it seem as though life spun around and around and you could almost drop in on a specific groove and replay your favorite days.

  Inside, he saw that Nadia already sat at the table eating. He untied his boots and lined them next to hers.

  While he washed his hands, hunger and fatigue simultaneously hit him. He fell into the other chair and thanked her for the lunch—a salmon sandwich bordered by a pile of homemade potato chips. Though Nadia admitted she liked the Lay’s he’d brought home, she still insisted on
making her own and now he preferred them too.

  Neil Young crooning Old Man … his dad in one of his light-hearted moments doing his best Neil impression, which was amazingly good. Denny sat at this same worn spruce table with his head in The Farmer’s Almanac, their mom curled in her red-checked chair with her feet tucked under her, writing in her journal. The fire popped and sputtered. Everyone was tired; everyone was full. It was late autumn and they’d been working hard to get the last of the harvesting done before the freeze set in, the last of the hay bales into the barn. Even Kache had worked hard that day. Whether or not his dad had noticed, Kache wasn’t sure. But his dad seemed to be in good spirits. He poured himself and Bets a scotch on the rocks, toasted her and sat down in his chair in his stocking feet. Glenn Winkel was a good-looking man. Shorter and thicker than Kache, close to Denny in size and stature, with dark, mostly straight hair that fell in one wave onto his forehead. He was clean-shaven with sideburns.

  “I’m a lot like you …” he sang along with Neil. “Hey, Kachemak. I hardly recognized you sitting there empty-handed. Where’s your guitar, son?”

  Kache shrugged. He didn’t trust this unprecedented interest in his music. But his father’s eyes shone and he smiled. Then he stood in front of Kache, holding his guitar out to him. He hadn’t remembered his dad ever touching it before. “Can you play me this song? Would you?”

  Kache nodded, took his guitar into his hands. It was the first and last time his dad ever asked him to play, and Kache played and played for him—with all the soul and love and attention he could muster.

  Kache was so entrenched in this memory that when he came back to the present, he saw, for the first time in twenty years, his old guitar, floating, ghostlike in front of him. He recoiled. It was Nadia’s hand on its neck, holding his guitar out to him. The guitar he’d been sure not to look for since he’d returned. “Will you play it? Can you play me this song?”

  He grabbed the guitar and pulled it away from her. Can you play me this song? What?

  He wanted to say, Quit fucking with me. Instead he said, “Is this some kind of joke?”

  Her eyebrows darted up, her hand went flat against her collarbone. “No, there is no laughing.”

  “Where did you find this? Why did you ask me to play that song?” It took all his restraint to ask this without yelling.

  “Kache, wait. I am apologizing.”

  “Isn’t it enough that you live in my house? Do you have to live in my messed-up head too?”

  “I do not mean to hurt you. I—”

  He didn’t hear the rest because he wedged the guitar under his arm, grabbed his boots, slammed the front door, stepped into the boots without tying them, and drove away too fast. He couldn’t stop shaking the whole way to Snag’s.

  But Nadia had had no way of knowing. He already felt like an idiot for leaving her like that. There was also the ugly fear that he might be losing his mind. His guitar leaned against the passenger seat, turned slightly as if observing him, as if it might break out into its own rendition of “Hello Old Friend.”

  “Stop this,” Kache whispered to no one. “Please. Just stop.”

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  After another frustrating chamber meeting Snag stopped by the Spit Tune to meet Gilly. Snag ordered a beer and Gilly ordered a pink drink called a Cosmo, which Snag had never heard of. “You know,” Gilly explained, “like Sex and the City.”

  “Both of those words are so far removed from my lifestyle, I’d feel like a complete fraud ordering one.”

  Gilly laughed, pushed her drink over for Snag to try. It was sweet and tasty and when Snag said so, Gilly went to the bar. Snag watched as she ordered a drink from the owner, Rex. A broad-shouldered man, who had been sitting a few stools down, rose and leaned over to say something in Gilly’s ear, and though Snag couldn’t hear the conversation, she saw Gilly shake her head and smile. The man was good-looking, at least in the dim light of the bar. Snag felt a small hot kernel of jealousy sprouting in her chest and she knew she had to put it out immediately. Gilly? No way. She hadn’t let herself feel anything for anyone for twenty years because she’d felt nothing but jealousy for the twenty years prior. Twenty years of consuming jealousy, followed by twenty years of remorse. Not much of a life. And she knew that little burning coal—because it had already blossomed from a kernel into a coal in minutes—could ruin all the years remaining. At sixty-five she was lucky if she had twenty years or so left. She did not want them filled with envy and unrequited, impossible love. Gilly was a decade younger than Snag and straight as an icepick. Enough said.

  Gilly returned with a pink drink for Snag and Snag closed her eyes and downed enough of it to put out that hot coal for good.

  When Snag opened her eyes, she saw the beer sitting to the side, sweating, and beyond it, just good ol’ kind-hearted Gilly, her new friend and nothing more, so help her God. Snag let out a sigh of relief.

  Gilly must have thought it was a sigh of appreciation for the drink, because she said, “So I see you like it.”

  Snag nodded and tilted her head toward the man at the bar. “An admirer?”

  Gilly shrugged. “Not my type.”

  Snag raised her eyebrows but Gilly didn’t elaborate, so Snag started filling her in on the chamber meeting, how everyone else seemed desperate to keep the old Herring Town caboose stuck at the end of the track. “That poor old caboose has been sitting there for decades, a pitiful museum to its former life. Why wouldn’t they want to see it useful and moving again?”

  “Excuse me for asking this, Snag, but why not just let the old caboose stay put and let there be a new version—a reproduction of the old one? Then everyone will be happy.”

  “I won’t be. It’s the principle of the matter. That caboose makes me sad.”

  “Sad?”

  “Yep. Sad. Doesn’t it make you sad? A bygone era, a town built on an industry and then the whole thing ups and dies because of greed, and the town almost died too.”

  “But it didn’t. It kept going. It reinvented itself.”

  “Exactly! Which is why I’d like to see that caboose moving again.”

  “I guess I’m not quite following you. Some might say the caboose has reinvented itself—as a museum.”

  “Museums are about the past. Not the future.”

  “Ah.”

  Snag took a sip of the City Sexy drink without looking at Gilly, who continued, “Okay, I’ll give you that much. But I don’t think that’s what’s been eating you up lately.”

  Rex came by and set a bowl of peanuts on their table. “Your boyfriend wanted to buy you another round but I told him you were married so he’d lay off. Strange dude, even by Alaska standards.”

  “Oh yeah?” Snag said. “How’s that?”

  “He’s a drifter. Says he has a cabin off the grid by the lake. Russian.”

  Snag said, “Old Believer?”

  “Heh. Not even close. He had a job up at Prudoe Bay, married a Native woman awhile back, didn’t work out, so now he’s here again. Says he’s a hermit except when he comes in to watch TV or listen to the band. Just want you to know I’m watching out for you two fair maidens.”

  “Thanks, Rex,” Gilly said. “Does that mean you’re buying the next round?”

  “Hell no. Man’s gotta make a living.” He grinned, flipped his towel over his shoulder and headed back to the bar.

  “Rex,” Snag said. “Always the gossip. I’m guessing he’s scaring the guy off because Rex fancies you too.”

  Gilly shook her head. “Naw, not Rex. He’s been in love with Tilde Miller since the mastodons walked these parts. So. Here we are, despite the fact that you’ve managed to cancel on me three Thursdays in a row.”

  “I can’t even remember what I was so upset about that day you offered to talk.”

  Gilly popped a peanut in her mouth and smiled. “I imagine you do remember.” Gilly was even nice when she was pinning you into a corner. She gently refused any bullshit.

  Snag fe
lt her face redden and was glad for the dim light of the bar. “I guess you’re right. But it doesn’t feel so urgent anymore.”

  “Snag, you surely don’t have to tell me one iota of anything, but I do find it helps me to talk this stuff out. Life can tie a person up in knots. Talking can loosen those knots, sometimes even set us free.”

  “That’s a nice idea, but it’s not really true when you’re talking about the past. Talking can’t undo past mistakes. Nothing can. Especially when those mistakes set the people you love on a course bound for tragedy.”

  The bar was practically empty now, Gilly’s admirer gone and just old Johnny Mathis-Yes-That’s-My-Real-Name and his son Bobby sitting down at the end of the bar, eyes locked on the TV. It was early yet, and the band wasn’t due to start for another forty minutes.

  Snag needed to move. Now. She started to get up but Gilly reached for her arm, pulling her back down, and Snag landed with a plop. She stared at her hands. She liked her hands with their nicely shaped nail beds, with her father’s gold wedding band settled on her middle finger. They were capable hands. Gilly rested her hand on Snag’s and waited.

  Ever since Kache had come back, Snag had felt ready to burst at the seams with her secrets. And now here was Gilly, all concerned eyes and ears—her earrings even dangled like carrots beckoning Snag to finally speak. And so she did: “Are you ready for this one, Gilly? You’ve been a friend to me and it’s been nice knowing you, but all that’s about to end. And that’s okay. I’ll understand. Because here it is: I was in love with my own sister-in-law. For twenty-two years I was like a puppy following her around. Pathetic. I even fantasized about my own brother kicking the bucket and her declaring her love for me. And then he went and did exactly that. And so did beautiful Bets, and my sweet, Teddy bear of a nephew, Denny. And I’m to blame.”