A few hours after Kache and Leo left, Snag paced a pathway from the homestead’s kitchen sink to the window, where she looked out, then to the woodstove and back. “Part of me—a big part of me—thinks we should call the police. But Kache is right about the media. It will be endless. It will be twisted. And it will be hard for you to survive it.” She’d started by holding out one finger and with each point she made, she stuck out another finger. “And there’s no way a man could survive a fall like that. And this is Alaska, it’s the wild, wild west. And you’re saying he didn’t have any family or friends?”
“No, none. He was always loner. He came from the village in Oregon, but he left Altai not long after I did. He never mentioned anyone the whole time I knew him.”
Snag nodded, kept pacing. She called Gilly, and Nadia could hear them going over the story again until Snag nodded and said, “Yes, yes. You’re right. Okay. I’ll wait.” Then she turned to Nadia.
“If Kache doesn’t return by a couple hours after dawn, I’m calling the police and Search and Rescue.”
SIXTY-NINE
If it wasn’t for Leo, Kache wouldn’t have known where to break trail, but the dog seemed to have a sixth sense or at least a plan about how to go about descending the crevice—and that was more than Kache had.
So Leo led the way, creating his own switchbacks when he could or stopping when he couldn’t and waiting for Kache to take his scythe to the profuse underbrush, alder and berry bushes. Much of the still-clinging snow was mud-streaked and not in the least bit stable, and Kache would often call Leo to his side and test it with the ski pole before they stepped. When they weren’t managing the rickety patches of snow, they were bogging through mud and newly released creeks. Every five or six steps, Kache stopped to listen for Vladimir, or for a bear, then set down the ski pole, picked up the scythe, hacked at another gristly bush.
The sweat poured from him, even through the ridiculous cold. His clothes went from mud-crusted, to damp with sweat, to washed-clean-but-soaking-wet from slipping in the creek water. His boots—good mountain-man boots—helped, but Kache needed much more than a good pair of boots.
How absurd. How cavalier of him, a man so ill-equipped, to tell the fair maiden he would slay the dragon, the dragon she had the courage to kill. The dragon probably lay dead, and odds favored that Kache would end up dead too before this thing played out. But he had to go. What else could he have done? He wanted only to get this one thing right.
“Keep going. Not much farther now, Kachemak.” He was so far gone he heard his dead father talking to him. But he let him. Kache needed the company. “There’s a bench of land you can’t quite see yet. A nice big ledge that rises out of nowhere.”
“Is that where you found Walter?”
“Yes, son, it is.”
Sure enough, the bench presented itself. Kache must have heard a tidbit of his parents’ discussion to have this information lodged in his subconscious and hear it resurface in his dad’s voice.
But all the same Kache said aloud, “Thanks, Dad.”
“If he’s alive, you know what you have to do. I’ll be here for you, you understand?” Kache nodded that he did. “Now head west about fifty yards.”
Kache and Leo inched on in a westerly direction and came to a cleared area where large rocks—maybe a dozen of them—lined up, and when he stepped back, he saw that they were spaced in the shape of a W.
Walter. Good Walter.
Throat tight, he said, “Thanks for showing me this. It means something to me. It does. But I misunderstood.”
“You want to find the Russian. Keep going. About forty more yards.”
Milky light filled the steel sky. The cold and wet had ravaged his clothing and he wished he could discard it. Leo sniffed the air incessantly, then began to whine, then snarled and began barking. “Shh. Quiet, boy.”
Vladimir lay on the blood-soaked snow, which had turned a disturbing pink. A branch pinned him down, both legs bent in unbendable directions. “Thank God you have come. Thank God you are here,” he whispered, his face contorted, his breathing shallow. Kache checked his coat and pants for the knife or a gun, then knelt to give him water. He saw then that Vladimir wasn’t under the branch, but had been impaled through the gut by it. The branch was so thick, it must have been the top part of the trunk of a birch tree. Kache looked away when he thought he saw a smear of the man’s intestines on the bark.
“Vodka … in my pack … there. Then you shoot … Quick, my friend.”
“I’m not your friend. I should carve my initials all over you,” Kache said but he found the pack a few yards away and retrieved the canister and held it to Vladimir’s lips. “I can go and get help. We can helicopter you out.” He said this knowing that Vladimir would not survive the time it would take.
“Dying. Must shoot.”
“I don’t want to fucking shoot you.”
Vladimir grimaced. “You owe … nothing … But I beg … mercy.” He was crying now, coughing up blood. “Here,” he tapped his chest. “Shoot …”
Kache swigged the vodka out of the canister. Swigged again. Saw the dark eyes of the crippled moose, that day with his father. This isn’t murder, son. It’s mercy. Kache put his hand in his pocket and set his fingers in their places. He said, “Vladimir, let’s talk about—” and in one fluid motion, pulled the gun out, and shot Vladimir in his dark heart above his pierced stomach.
The dead man stared at him, his eyes blank in their sinister beauty. Vladimir’s eyes truly were unique, almost purple, set off with black brows and thick eyelashes. His mother must have loved those eyelashes. Nadia must have too, at the very beginning.
I won’t tell her how much you suffered or how you begged, Kache thought. Even though I want to. He hung his head and cried out with relief and gratitude and shame. Leo whined and scratched at his leg.
Kache wept while he dug the shallow grave with a rock and the scythe, while he spread the mud and snow over Vladimir, the tree branch ironically serving as a headstone, the nubs of new leaf buds that would never unfurl. With a pocketknife, he carved the letter B into the wet ground, and watched it disappear just as quickly. Most likely it wasn’t enough of a grave to keep away bears coming out of hibernation, or a pack of wolves.
He and Leo began their way back up the canyon. At least they had done the trailblazing on the way down. But as Leo trotted up a pile of rocks, he lost his footing and took several hard, twisted bounces.
“Leo!” Kache called out. “You okay?” The dog jumped up before Kache got to him, but it was already obvious Leo was not okay. His front leg, badly broken, hung bleeding. He whined and licked at it and Kache tilted his head back and yelled at the sky, “God DAMN it.”
The look on Leo’s face was so full of pain and apology and worry that Kache ripped off his jacket and his shirt, and got to work tying up the leg with the shirt and a splint he made from a stick.
“Don’t you worry, boy. It’s gonna be okay,” he said while he wondered how in the living hell he would ever make it back up so steep a grade carrying a 70-pound dog when he’d barely made it down carrying nothing.
He called out to his father, “Dad!” His father didn’t answer him. He needed the help, but at least Kache wasn’t hallucinating anymore. He hunched down and positioned his head under Leo, then tried to stand up wearing Leo over his shoulders. At first he wavered like a top-heavy tree about to go down, but finally found his balance, using the ski pole now to help him with the extra weight.
“It’s just backpacking now,” he said. “We can do this. Right, Dad?” All he heard was the wind and the whoo-whoo-whoo of an owl. Kache closed his eyes tight, willing forth what he needed most: the one thing he’d fought against his whole life. When he looked up to find the wisp of their trail, his father stood waiting for him, carrying a man on his shoulders. They were both dressed in army fatigues. His dad didn’t say a word, just shared a long look with Kache and proceeded ahead of him. He’d turn and wait whenever Kache slipped
or when he hesitated, shivering, aching, nauseous with exhaustion and the compression of his spine—there was his father, his face full of a compassion Kache had never seen, or maybe never noticed, when he was a kid.
His dad led him up and up, switching back, higher and higher, until Kache clawed his way through the final ascent and crawled over the ledge, where he collapsed. He heard voices, Leo barking, and he tried to get up, but it felt so good to close his eyes, just for a minute.
When he opened them it was Nadia’s face over his that he saw, her hands on his temples.
“You are okay? You are okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Snag is taking Leo to the vet. It is going to be fixed, the leg.” They were still outside, his head in her lap. She tilted water through his lips.
She said, “You found him?”
He nodded. She didn’t ask further. She had draped a wool blanket over him. “Dad …” But his father was gone. He sat up, half wondering if he’d appear. Kache wanted to say goodbye. He wanted to thank him. But there was no sign of him anywhere, now that Kache wasn’t delirious.
Still. Snag was right. He knew now that his father’s blood coursed through him—his blind devotion to this land, his self-righteous anger, born from his stubborn striving to control, to do whatever necessary to keep those he loved close and safe.
SEVENTY
She stood with her hands in her coat pockets and watched Kache empty the gas tank of Vladimir’s motorcycle and wheel it out to the canyon ledge and push it over.
At first, Nadia felt nothing but relief. Relief that Vladimir was dead. Relief that Kache was alive. In the days that followed, the relief began to give way to dread. She had to reply to the school’s offer. Neither she nor Kache had said a word about it since their fight. She wanted the answer that didn’t involve pain, but that answer didn’t exist. Every direction required a huge sacrifice—hers or Kache’s or both of theirs.
She and Kache sat on opposite sides of the couch, Nadia reading while Kache checked his emails on the laptop, their legs wrapped around each other and Leo, who snored, his casted leg sticking straight up.
Kache said, “Is there something you want to show me?”
“What is it you mean?”
“Well, there’s a strange email here from my old girlfriend Janie. It’s forwarded from her friend who wrote ‘This looks like Kache’ in the subject line. Then a note from Janie. Do you want me to read it?”
Nadia felt her neck getting hot. “If you want to.”
“It says, ‘Wow. You’ve gone viral. I never imagined you were that good. So glad you’re playing again. And look at you. You look like Mr. Happenings himself.’ Then she goes on to say how happy she is that I found someone and that she’s getting married next month.”
“Who is this Mr. Happenings?”
“Long story.”
“I see.”
“So … there’s a link here I can click on but I thought you might have something to tell me before I do.”
“I was going to wait until your birthday but now it is a good time, yes?” She started to lean towards him but her nerves forced her up, out to the kitchen, where she began washing the breakfast dishes. She washed each one carefully, taking her time, afraid to turn around.
When she turned off the water, she heard the song coming to its end, the last chorus:
“Nadia, you unknotted me
Nadia, you undeniably
Nadia you unarguably
Made me a better man.”
There were Kache’s hands on her hips, turning her away from the sink, his arms wrapping her in a hug.
“I had no idea. How did you learn to do that?”
She shrugged, trying not to smile quite so big. “You gave me the camera.”
“It’s as if … I don’t know. As if I were seeing a sunset reflected in a building for the first time. As if I’d never seen a homeless woman until now. Like I’m seeing not just what you’re seeing but how you see it. Even those mountains. And those shots of me working. How’d you make me look like I know what I’m doing?”
“Because.” She laughed. “Now you do.”
He went on. “And I love how the chopping wood works in time to the beat, the way you slow it down in spots, and how the visuals reflect the lyrics, but not too overtly.”
She laughed again. She couldn’t help it. “So. You like it?”
“I’m blown away by it.”
They both fell quiet. She stayed in his arms, his praise filling her. The faucet dripping, the clock ticking on and on.
Then Kache leaned back and tilted her face up toward his. “Nadia,” he said.
She waited.
“You’re right to want this.” He let out a long sigh. There was so much sadness in that sigh. His dark eyes seemed as deep as the canyon. “It was wrong of me to try to keep you here. You have to go. And I have to stay.”
She pressed her ear against the place where she always heard his heart beat, and she nodded.
SEVENTY-ONE
They’d decided that Leo would stay with Kache, so for the first time he could remember, Leo didn’t follow him down to the barn when he did the milking that morning. It was as if the dog knew he had limited time with Nadia. Kache understood. He too wanted to sit at her heels while she packed.
“Settle down, Mooze, girl,” he told the cow, but she might as well have said the same thing to him. It was funny how sensitive the animals were, how they picked up on human emotions so easily. Both Mooze and Kache finally did settle down, and the steady stream of milk, the zip, zip, zip rhythm calmed him even more.
In the past few months, Kache had tried to imagine what his life might be like on the homestead once Nadia was gone. He couldn’t picture it. But he knew there would be good moments like this one, little surprises here and there, glimpses of grace. Nothing like what they’d had here together, not entire days and even weeks that were downright wondrous. But there would be good moments—and they would not be wasted on him.
A loud squawking and squeaking erupted outside. He gave Mooze a grateful pat on her hide and went out to investigate. The sandhill cranes had returned, and they’d brought friends. There must have been thirty, maybe forty of them, and they were dancing. Flapping their wings, hopping and twirling. Kache looked back at the house; no one was out.
He watched a while longer, but he couldn’t help himself. He set down the pail of milk and, timidly at first, took a few steps toward the birds. They hardly noticed. Admittedly, with his long legs and arms, he probably didn’t look all that foreign. He tried flapping his arms, took a few hops. As musical as he was, he had two left feet. But he seemed made for the Sandhill Crane Dance. He spread his arms even wider, picked up his legs and took high prances, and those birds let him in. They let him in.
Then Nadia was beside him, dressed in her city-girl leather jacket, her slim jeans, her pretty riding boots. She flapped her arms, stretched her long neck, stepping up, twirling, a hop. They ran, skipped, jumped; flapping, fluttering, squawking. They danced and they danced. He opened his arms and she twirled to him and they held each other, her soft golden feathers of hair on his chin. The birds lost interest and flew away, but Kache and Nadia stayed like that while they laughed and cried and caught their breath, hearts pounding.
He wanted to remind her that sandhill cranes mated for life. But then she would have to remind him that he and she were not sandhill cranes.
At the airport, Kache took the silk scarf he’d kept with him all those years in Austin—gold, black, cobalt, sage and rose—out of his pocket. “This was my mom’s,” he told her. “It was the only thing I took with me when I left here. I want you to take it with you.” She hesitated, but then nodded and he wrapped it loosely around her neck. “I know you won’t ever be needing it for your head, but this looks really fashionable. It’s from New York. You look like a real city woman. Oh, and this.” He handed her a leather-bound notebook. “Your own journal.”
She tiptoed, wrapped her arms around his neck, a
nd he pulled her to him, and they stayed like this, breathing in each other, not talking until her flight was called.
“You have your earplugs and your wristbands? Someone from the school will meet you, right?” She nodded. “And your cellphone is charged?”
She nodded again, tears streaming down her beautiful, beautiful face. “I know! I remembered to charge. A miracle!” She told him to take good care of Leo. She told Kache how much she loved him and he told her how much he loved her. Still, she turned and left and flew away and he stayed. He waved to her, watching her from the ground until the plane flew above the clouds and he could see her no more.
Lettie, Snag, and Gilly had come out for a goodbye dinner and were staying for a few days. That evening Lettie asked Kache to wheel her out on the property. He sat on a log next to her. They looked out at the sky. It was the kind of sky that might make a devout atheist reconsider the possibility of heaven. Some clouds ran themselves in silver layers upon layers, and some formed golden vertical towers. Still others billowed in a bouquet of pinks and oranges. And the light—it seemed to emanate from all different sources, bordering around and spotlighting from above and below and exploding through. It was a sky for everyone, everywhere.
They sat, taking it in. When Kache stood to begin pushing her back up, she reached behind her and said, “Here you are,” but when Kache went to take whatever it was she was offering, her hand was empty. She gripped his fingers and said it again, “Here you are. This place, it means something to you, Kache.”
He said, “More than I wish it did, Gram.”
“You got that gene from me.”
He squeezed back. “Yeah, I guess I did. Whaddya know? Here I am.”
Lettie died two days later in her sleep, in the cabin that she and A.R. had built, exactly how she always said she would go. The next week, the town of Caboose came out to the homestead. It was an honest-to-god summer day, breezy but shirtsleeves-warm, Kache’s garden overflowing, the bay sparkling. Snag and Kache spread the ashes on the land where they had once spread Denny, Bets, and Glenn, and before them, A.R. Kache sang Lettie’s favorite song:
The House of Frozen Dreams Page 30
