All the Winters After

by Seré Prince Halverson

  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 making a splint for Leo’s leg with the shirt and 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 of a grade carrying a seventy-pound dog when he’d barely made it down carrying nothing.

  “Dad!” His father didn’t answer him. He needed the help, but at least Kache wasn’t hallucinating anymore. He hunched down, positioned his head under Leo, and tried to stand up wearing Leo over his shoulders. At first, he wavered like a top-heavy tree about to go down, but he finally found his balance, using the ski pole 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 his eyes, it was Nadia’s face he saw, her hands on his temples.

  “You are okay? You are okay?” When he nodded, she said, “Snag is taking Leo to 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 asked, “You found him?”

  Kache 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 good-bye. He wanted to thank him. But there was no sign of him anywhere. 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 strive to control, to do whatever was necessary to keep those he loved close and safe.

  CHAPTER

  SEVENTY

  Nadia stood with her hands in her coat pockets and watched Kache empty the gas tank of Vladimir’s motorcycle, wheel it out to the canyon ledge, and push it over.

  At first, she 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.

  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.”

  “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 good time, yes?” She started to lean toward 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.

  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.

  CHAPTER

  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 skinny legs and arms, he probably didn’t look all that foreign. He tried flapping his arms and 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 and stretched her long neck, stepping up, twirling, hopping. 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 the two of them 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 Nadia. “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 and wrapped her arms around his neck. 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 cell phone is charged?”

  She nodded again, tears streaming down her beautiful, beautiful face. “I know! I remember 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 good-bye 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 the hill, Lettie reached behind her and said, “Here you are,” but when he 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 in her sleep two days later, 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 water is wide,

  I can’t cross over,

  And neither have

  I wings to fly.

  Build me a boat

  That can carry two,

  And both shall row,

  My love and I.”

  His voice caught, and the crowd waited patiently while he took a deep breath and then another. He’d always thought of my love as the physical person, sitting there in the boat rowing with you, but he saw how in the end, maybe it wasn’t the actual person who helped you across whatever you needed to cross over. Maybe it was simply your love for that person.

  “And both shall row,

  My love and I.”

  When Snag—Eleanor, she was officially going by Eleanor now—heard Kache’s voice break out into her mom’s favorite song, she started to cry, and Gilly took her hand. Eleanor squeezed Gilly’s fingers, held on. Then she rested her head on Gilly’s lovely shoulder and kept it there for the whole town of Caboose to see.

  • • •

  Sixteen hundred miles away, Nadia walked across the Golden Gate Bridge for the first time. With her camera in hand, she filmed up the big reddish steel trusses and back down to the wide, cobalt water reflecting the sun, the ivory city—her city!—risen against clear blue sky. People were passing her in cars, buses, taxis, trucks, on bikes, walking hand in hand, running in packs. Noise and movement and mayhem. She let the camera come down from her face, taking it all in. The rumbling of traffic came up through her feet in what seemed like a gesture of connection.

  A couple walking toward her stopped, and the smiling young woman offered to film Nadia for a moment. Nadia stood against the railing and waved at the couple. A wind gust picked up the silk scarf she’d worn around her neck, but she caught it and held on.

  The woman handed the camera back to her, still smiling. She said, “For a second there, it looked like you had grown wings.”

  Later that evening, in her tiny rented room, Nadia ate her carton of Chinese takeout and wrote in her journal while lonely violin music arched its way up through the window. When she finished writing, she closed the notebook. She sat, listening to the aching notes, the impatient horns, and frantic sirens, the single long screech of a bus coming to its stop.

  She remembered the film clip and downloaded it onto her computer. There she was on the bridge: laughing, waving, with her city in the background. And when the scarf Kache had given her—Elizabeth’s scarf—rose behind her in the wind and ballooned out for an instant on each side, Nadia saw that what the woman had said was true.

  READING GROUP GUIDE

  1. Discuss the title of the novel and how you feel it connects with the story.

  2. Discuss the role of the homestead and the role of the setting in Kache’s and Nadia’s lives, both individually and together.

  3. How did you feel about Snag and her actions? How did time and place affect her, and how might her story be different today?

  4. Discuss the nature of choice and loss for Kache and Nadia.

  5. How do you think the seasons reflect Nadia’s and Kache’s emotional journeys?

  6. Nadia’s family chose their religion above continuing a relationship with Nadia. How do you perceive this choice? Have you ever faced such a life-altering choice in your own life, and if so, what was it?

  7. Kache and his father appear to have a fractured relationship, but Kache is gradually able to see his father’s actions from a grown perspective, and it changes how he sees their relationship—and ultimately saves his life. Discuss the importance of parental relationships and the differences in this perception as children and as adults.

  8. Nadia falls in love with Kache as a young man through reading his mother’s journals, and although this enables her to fall in love with him as an adult, it causes friction in their relationship.
Do you think she should have read the journals? What could she have done differently with the knowledge?

  9. At the end of the novel, Kache and Nadia are unable to find a way to continue their relationship. How did you feel about this? Do you believe they did the right thing?

  10. What do you believe happens to Kache and Nadia after the end of the story?

  A CONVERSATION

  WITH THE AUTHOR

  What was your inspiration for All the Winters After?

  When I made my first trip to Homer, Alaska, I immediately fell under its spell. The mountains. The bay. The wildlife. The people. Circumstances prevented me from hopping on a boat and moving there like Lettie did. But because I’m a writer, my mind, at least, can move anywhere it pleases. And my mind was already packing. At the Homer Bookstore, I came upon a book of autobiographical accounts from the area’s homesteaders. I saw Old Believer women shopping at the Safeway, wearing long colorful skirts and head scarves. Intrigued by the place, the homesteaders, and the Old Believers, I had an idea for a novel. I wrote about fifty pages. But life got complicated, and my mind was needed elsewhere. So I put that novel away. For about, oh, twenty years. I wrote two other books before I finally picked those fifty pages back up.

  Can you share how the actual Old Believers’ villages became Ural and Altai and how Homer became Caboose?

  By the time I returned to this story, there was a lot more information available on the Old Believers than there had been all those years before, both in print and on the Internet. There are several Old Believer villages on the outskirts of Homer. Altai and Ural are fictionalized versions of two of those villages; I created them from what I’ve read and imagined, but they are not meant to be factual representations. They were seeds of inspiration mixed with my imagination. That is also true for Homer in its transformation to Caboose. I borrowed heavily from the town, especially its location, but I also had fun making things up and altering them. I combined real history and locations with creative license.