The Great Alone

by Kristin Hannah

  Of course Mama knew.

  “I’ll be smarter next time,” Leni said.

  “There won’t be a next time, Leni.” Mama took Leni by the shoulders, turned her around on the stool. “You will wait until college, like we talked about. We will do as we planned. In September, you’ll see Matthew in Anchorage and start your life.”

  “I’ll die if I don’t see him.”

  “No. You won’t. Please, Leni, think about me instead of yourself.”

  Leni was ashamed of herself, embarrassed by her selfishness. “I’m sorry, Mama. You’re right. I don’t know what came over me.”

  “Sex changes everything,” Mama said quietly.

  * * *

  A WEEK LATER, while Mama and Leni were eating oatmeal for breakfast, the cabin door opened. Dad strode inside, his dark hair and flannel shirt dusted with wood chips. “Come with me. Both of you. Hurry!”

  Leni followed her parents out of the cabin and toward the driveway. Dad was walking fast, really covering ground. Mama stumbled along beside him, struggling to keep up on the spongy ground.

  Leni heard her mother say, “Oh, my God,” in a whisper, and Leni looked up.

  The wall her dad had been building all summer was in front of them. Finished. Plank after plank of newly milled wood ran in a straight line, topped in coiled razor wire. It looked like something out of the Gulag.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. Now there was a gate across the driveway; a length of heavy metal chain kept the gate closed. A metal lock hung from loops in the chain. Leni saw the key hanging from a chain around her father’s throat.

  Dad pulled Mama in close. He was smiling now. He leaned in, whispered something in Mama’s ear, and kissed the small purple bruise at the base of her throat.

  “Now it’s just us, in here, cut off from the whole damn backstabbing world,” he said. “We’ll be safe now.”

  * * *

  FEAR, LENI LEARNED, was not the small, dark closet she’d always imagined: walls pressed in close, a ceiling you bumped your head on, a floor cold to the touch.

  No.

  Fear was a mansion, one room after another, connected by endless hallways.

  In the days following the closing of the gate, with its rattling chain, Leni learned the feel of those rooms. At night, in her bed, she lay in the loft and tried not to sleep, because sleep brought on nightmares. The fear she battled during daylight besieged her at night. She dreamed of her death in a hundred ways—drowning, falling through ice, plummeting down a mountainside, being shot in the head.

  Metaphors, all of them. The death of every dream she’d ever had and those she’d yet to dream.

  Dad hovered beside them all the time, talking as if nothing were wrong, in a good humor for the first time since his banishment from the Harlan place. He teased, he laughed, he worked alongside them. At night Leni lay listening to the sound of her parents’ voices, of their lovemaking. Mama was good at pretending everything was normal. Leni had lost that childhood ability.

  What she thought, over and over and over again, was: We need to run.

  * * *

  “WE HAVE TO LEAVE HIM,” Leni said on Saturday morning, a week to the day since he’d locked the gate shut. It was the first time Dad had left them alone together.

  Mama paused, her hands softening on the pile of dough she was kneading. “He’ll kill me,” she whispered.

  “Don’t you get it, Mama? He’s going to kill you in here. Sooner or later. Think about winter coming. The dark. The cold. And us in here, locked behind that wall. He’s not going to work the pipeline this winter. It’ll be just him and us in the dark. Who will stop him or help us?”

  Mama glanced nervously at the door. “Where would we go?”

  “Large Marge offered to help. So did the Walkers.”

  “Not Tom. That would make it worse.”

  “College starts in three and a half weeks, Mama. I have to leave as soon as I can. Will you go with me?”

  “Maybe you should go without me.”

  Leni had known this was coming. She had wrestled with it and finally come to an answer. “I have to go, Mama. I can’t live this way, but I need you. I’m afraid … I won’t be able to leave you.”

  “Peas in a pod,” Mama said, sounding sad. But she understood. They had always been together. “You need to go. I want you to go. I couldn’t forgive myself if you didn’t, so what’s your plan?”

  “The first chance we get, we run. Maybe he goes hunting and we take the boat. Whatever the opportunity is, we take it. If we’re still here when the first leaf falls, it’s all over.”

  “So we just run. With nothing.”

  “We run with our lives.”

  Mama glanced away. It was a long, long time before she nodded and said, “I’ll try.”

  It was not the answer Leni wanted, but it was the best she was going to get. She only prayed that when the opportunity for escape arose, Mama would go with her.

  * * *

  THE WEATHER BEGAN to change. Here and there, bright green leaves turned golden, tangerine, scarlet. Birch trees that had been invisible all year, lost amid the other trees, appeared boldly in the forefront, their bark white as the wings of a dove, their leaves like a million candle flames.

  With every leaf that changed color, Leni’s tension increased. It was nearing the end of August now—early for autumn to arrive, but Alaska was capricious that way.

  Although she and Mama had never spoken of their escape plan again, it lived in the air between sentences. Every time Dad left the cabin they looked at each other, and in that look, a question. Is this the time?

  Today Leni and her mother were making blueberry syrup when Dad came in from outside. He was dirty and sweaty, with a fine layer of black dust on his damp face. For the first time, Leni noticed gray strands in his beard. He wore his hair in a low, haphazard ponytail and had tied a bicentennial bandanna across his forehead. He came forward, his rubber boots clomping on the plywood floor. He went into the kitchen, saw what Mama was making for dinner. “Again?” he said, peering down at the salmon croquettes. “No vegetables?”

  “I’m conserving. We’re out of flour and low on rice. I’ve told you that,” Mama said wearily. “If you’d let me go to town…”

  “You should go to Homer, Dad. Stock up for winter,” Leni said, hoping she sounded casual.

  “I don’t think it’s safe to leave you two here alone.”

  “The wall keeps us safe,” Leni said.

  “Not completely. At high tide someone could come in by boat,” Dad said. “Who knows what could happen when I’m gone? Maybe we all should go. Get what we need from that bitch in town.”

  Mama looked at Leni.

  This is it, Leni’s gaze said.

  Mama shook her head. Her eyes widened. Leni understood her mother’s fear; they had talked about the both of them sneaking away while he was gone, not running away while he was with them. But the weather was changing; the nights were growing cold, which meant that winter was approaching. Classes at U of A started in less than a week. This was their chance to run. If they planned it right—

  “Let’s go,” Dad said. “Right now.” He clapped his hands. At the sharp sound, Mama flinched.

  Leni glanced longingly at her bug-out bag, full—always—of everything she needed to survive in the wild. She couldn’t bring it without arousing suspicion.

  They would have to make their escape with nothing except the clothes they were wearing.

  Dad grabbed a shotgun from the rack by the door and held it over his shoulder.

  Was it a warning?

  “Let’s go.”

  Leni went to her mother, placed a hand on her thin wrist, felt how she was trembling. “Come on, Mama,” Leni said evenly.

  They walked to the cabin door. Leni couldn’t help stopping, turning back just for a second to stare at the cabin’s warm, cozy interior. For all the pain and heartache and fear, this was the only real home she’d ever known.

  She h

oped she would never see it again. How sad that her hope felt like loss.

  In the truck, seated between her parents on the ragged bench seat, Leni could sense her mother’s fear; it gave off a sour smell. Leni wanted to reassure her, say it would be okay, that they’d escape and move to Anchorage and everything would be fine, but she just sat there, breathing shallowly, holding on, hoping that when the time came to run they would make their feet move.

  Dad started up the truck and drove out to the gate.

  There he stopped, got out, left his door open, and went to the gate, grabbing the lock. He removed the key from around his neck and fit it into the lock, giving it a hard turn.

  “This is it,” Leni said to her mother. “In town, we are going to run. The ferry docks in forty minutes. We’ll find a way to be on it.”

  “It won’t work. He’ll catch us.”

  “Then we’ll go to Large Marge. She’ll help us.”

  “You’d risk her life, too?”

  The huge metal lock clanked open. Dad pushed the gate open, over the bumpy muskeg, until the main road was visible again.

  “We might only get one chance,” Mama said, chewing worriedly on her lower lip. “It better be the right one or we wait.”

  Leni knew it was good advice, but she didn’t know if she could wait anymore. Now that she’d allowed herself to actually think about freedom, the idea of returning to captivity seemed impossible. “We can’t wait, Mama. The leaves are falling. Winter could come early this year.”

  Dad climbed into the cab and shut the door. They drove forward. When they’d passed through the gate, Leni twisted around in her seat, stared through the guns in the gun rack. Words in black had been spray-painted across the newly cut wood.

  STAY OUT. NO TRESPASSING. VIOLATERS WILL BE SHOT.

  She made a mental note of the fact that he hadn’t closed the gate behind them. They turned onto the main road and rumbled past the arch at the entrance to Walker land, past Marge Birdsall’s driveway.

  Just past the airstrip, new gravel had been laid down, crunching beneath their tires. Up ahead was the newly painted wooden bridge, where a few people dressed in colorful rain jackets stood at the rail, staring down at the river, pointing at the bright red salmon swimming through the clear water, on their way to spawn and die.

  Dad rolled down his window, yelled, “Go back to California,” as they rumbled past, spitting black smoke at them.

  In town, a barricade ran down the middle of Main Street—a collection of sawhorses and white buckets and orange cones kept tourists away from the backhoe that was digging a trench in front of the diner. Behind it, running the length of the street, was a yawning scar of cut-up earth, with dirt piled alongside.

  Dad stomped on the brake so hard the old truck came to a skidding stop in the tall grass on the side of the road. From here, they could see the backhoe operator: Tom Walker.

  Dad wrenched the truck into park and shut off the engine. Slamming his body into the reluctant door, he jumped out of the truck and slammed the door shut behind him. Just as Leni said, “Stay with me, Mama, hold my hand,” Dad appeared at the passenger door, opened it, and grabbed Mama’s wrist and pulled her out of the truck.

  Mama looked back, wild-eyed, Go, she mouthed. Dad yanked on Mama’s wrist, made her stumble forward to keep up with him.

  “Shit,” Leni said.

  She saw her parents making their way through the few tourists that were here on this bright late August day, her dad elbowing his way harder than he needed to, pushing people aside.

  Leni couldn’t help herself; she sidled out of the truck and followed them. Maybe there was still a way to get Mama away from him. They didn’t need long, just enough time to disappear. Hell, they’d steal a boat if they had to. Maybe this was the distraction they needed.

  “Walker!” Dad shouted.

  Mr. Walker shut the backhoe down and pushed the trucker’s cap back from his sweaty forehead. “Ernt Allbright,” he said. “What a pleasant surprise.”

  “What in the hell are you doing?”

  “Digging a trench.”

  “Why?”

  “Electricity for town. I’m putting in a generator.”

  “What?”

  Mr. Walker said it again, pronouncing e-lec-tri-city with care, as if speaking to someone who barely understood English.

  “What if we don’t want electricity in Kaneq?”

  “I bought easements from every business in town, Ernt. Paid cash money,” Mr. Walker said. “From people who want lights and refrigerators and heat in the winter. Oh, and streetlamps. Won’t that be great?”

  “I won’t let you.”

  “What are you going to do? Spray-paint again? I wouldn’t recommend it. I won’t be so forgiving a second time.”

  Leni came up behind Mama, grabbed her sleeve, tried to pull her away while Dad was fixated on something else.

  “Leni!”

  Matthew’s voice rang out. He was standing in front of the saloon, holding a big cardboard box.

  “Help us,” she screamed.

  Dad grabbed Leni by the bicep and pulled her against him. “You think you need help? What for?”

  She shook her head, croaked, “Nothing. I didn’t mean it.” She glanced at Matthew, who had put down the box and was coming toward them, stepping down from the boardwalk.

  “You’d better tell that boy to stop walking, or so help me God…” Dad put a hand on the knife at his waist.

  “I’m fine,” she yelled to Matthew, but she could see that he didn’t believe her. He saw that she was crying. “S-stay there. Tell your dad we’re okay.”

  Matthew said her name. She saw it form on his lips, but couldn’t hear it.

  Dad tightened his grip on Leni’s upper arm until it felt like pliers clamping down. He guided Leni and Mama back to the truck, shoved them inside, slammed the door shut behind them.

  It took less than two minutes: all of it. The arrival in town, the scene, the shouted plea to help us, and the return to the truck.

  All the way home, Dad muttered under his breath. The only words she got were liar and Walker.

  Mama held Leni’s hand as they bounced over the rutted road and turned onto their land. Leni tried to think of a way to calm her dad down. What had made her cry out like that? She knew better than to ask for help.

  Love and fear.

  The most destructive forces on earth. Fear had turned her inside out, love had made her stupid.

  Dad drove through the open gate, still muttering to himself. Leni thought: When he gets out to close the gate, I’ll grab the wheel and put the truck in reverse and stomp on the gas, but he left the gate open behind him.

  Open. They could run in the middle of the night …

  In the clearing, he threw the gearshift into park and killed the engine, then grabbed Leni and pulled her across the grass and up the steps and across the deck. He shoved her into the cabin so hard she stumbled and fell.

  Mama came up behind him, moving cautiously, her face studiously calm. How she could pull that off, Leni didn’t know. “Ernt, you’re overreacting. Please. Let’s talk about this.” She laid a hand on his shoulder.

  “Do you think you need help, Cora?” he said in a strangely taut voice.

  “She’s young. She didn’t mean anything by it.”

  Leni saw the violence of his breathing, the way his fingers spasmed. He was on the balls of his feet, energy pouring out of him, anger transforming him. “You’re lying to me,” he said.

  Mama shook her head. “No. I’m not. I don’t even know what you mean.”

  “It’s always the Walkers,” he muttered.

  “Ernt, this is crazy—”

  He hit her so hard she slammed into the wall. Before Mama could get to her feet, he was on her again, yanking her hair back, exposing the pale skin of her throat. Wrapping his hand in her hair, he smashed his fist down, cracked the side of her head on the floor.

  Leni hurled herself at her father, landed on his back. She clawed at him, pulled his hair, screamed, “Let her go!”

  He wrenched free, cracked Mama’s forehead into the floor.

  Leni heard the door open behind her; seconds later she was yanked off her dad. She got a glimpse of Matthew, saw him pull Dad off Mama, spin him around, and punch him in the jaw so hard Dad staggered sideways and crumpled to his knees.

  Leni ran to her mother, helped her to her feet. “We need to go. Now.”

  “You go,” Mama said, looking nervously toward Dad, who moaned in pain. “Go.” Her face was bloodied, her lip torn.

  “I’m not leaving you,” Leni said.

  Tears filled Mama’s eyes and fell, mixing with the blood. “He’ll never let me go. You go. Go.”

  “No,” Leni said. “I’m not leaving you.”

  “She’s right, Mrs. Allbright,” Matthew said. “You can’t stay here.”

  Mama sighed. “Fine. I’ll go to Large Marge’s. She’ll protect me, but Leni, I don’t want you anywhere near me. You understand? If he comes after me, I don’t want you there.” She looked to Matthew. “I want her gone for at least twenty-four hours. Hidden someplace he can’t find her. I’ll go to the police this time. Press charges.”

  Matthew nodded solemnly. “I won’t let anything happen to her, Mrs. Allbright. I promise.”

  Dad made a groaning sound, cursed, tried to get up.

  Mama hefted up Leni’s bug-out bag and handed her the pack. “Now, Leni. We need to run.”

  They ran out of the cabin and into the bright sunlit yard toward Matthew’s truck. “Get in,” he yelled, then raced over to Dad’s truck. He opened the hood, did something to the engine.

  Behind them, the cabin door cracked open. Dad staggered out.

  Leni heard the cracking sound of a gun being cocked. “Cora, damn it.” Dad was on the deck, bleeding profusely from his forehead, blinded by blood, holding a shotgun. “Where are you?”

  “Get in!” Matthew yelled, throwing something into the trees. He jumped into the driver’s seat and started his truck.

  In a spray of shotgun pellets pinging loudly, Leni leaped onto the seat and Mama crammed in beside her. Matthew jammed the gearshift into drive and stomped on the gas. The truck fishtailed in the deep grass before the wheels grabbed hold. He sped down the driveway and through the open gate and turned onto the main road.

  -->