“I won’t let you change our town,” Dad said. “I don’t care how much money you have.”

“Yes, you will,” Mr. Walker said. “You have no choice. So let it go and lose gracefully. Have a drink.”

Gracefully?

Didn’t Mr. Walker know by now?

Dad wasn’t one to let things go.

THIRTEEN

All the next day, Dad paced and fumed and railed about dangerous changes and the future. At noon, he got on the ham radio and called for a meeting at the Harlan family compound.

For the entirety of the day, Leni had a bad feeling, a hollowness in the pit of her stomach. The hours passed slowly, but still they passed. After dinner, they drove up to the compound.

Now they were all waiting impatiently for the meeting to start. Chairs had been dragged out of cabins and unstacked from sheds and set up in a haphazard fashion on the muddy ground facing Mad Earl’s porch.

Thelma sat in an aluminum chair, with Moppet sprawled uncomfortably across her, the girl too big for her mother’s lap. Ted stood behind his wife, smoking a cigarette. Mama sat beside Thelma in an Adirondack chair with only one arm, and Leni was beside her, sitting in a metal fold-out chair that had sunk into the muck. Clyde and Donna stood like sentinels on either side of Marthe and Agnes, both of whom were carving sticks of wood into spikes.

All eyes were on Dad, who stood on the porch, alongside Mad Earl. There was no sign of whiskey between them, but Leni could tell they had been drinking.

A dreary rain fell. Everything was gray—gray skies, gray rain, gray trees lost in a gray haze. Dogs barked and snapped at the ends of rusty chains. Several stood atop small doghouses and watched the proceedings in the center of the compound.

Dad looked out over the crowd gathered in front of him, which was the smallest it had ever been. In the last few years, the young adults had ventured off their grandfather’s land in search of their own lives. Some fished in the Bering Sea, others rangered up in the national park. Last year Axle had impregnated a Native girl and was now living in a Yupik settlement somewhere.

“We all know why we’re here,” Dad said. His long hair was a dirty mess and his beard was thick and untrimmed. His skin was winter pale. A red bandanna covered most of his head, kept his hair out of his face. He patted Mad Earl’s scrawny shoulder. “This man saw the future long before any of the rest of us. He knew somehow that our government would fail us, that greed and crime would destroy everything we love about America. He came up here—brought you all here—to live a better, simpler life, one that went back to the land. He wanted to hunt his food and protect his family and be away from the bullshit that goes on in cities.” Dad paused, looked out at the people gathered in front of him. “It’s all worked. Until now.”

“Tell ’em, Ernt,” Mad Earl said, leaning forward, reaching down for a jug hidden beneath his chair, uncorking it with a thunk.

“Tom Walker is a rich, arrogant prick,” Dad said. “We’ve all known men like him. He didn’t go to ’Nam. Guys like him had a million ways to dodge the draft. Unlike me and Bo and our friends, who stood up for our country. But, hey, I can get over that, too. I can get over his holier-than-thou attitude and his rubbing his money in my face. I can get over him leering at my wife.” He stepped down the rickety porch steps, splashed into the murky water that pooled along the bottom step. “But I will not let him destroy Kaneq and our way of life. This is our home. We want it to stay wild and free.”

“He’s fixing up the tavern, Ernt, not building a convention center,” Thelma said. At her raised voice, Moppet got up and walked away, went over to play with Marthe and Agnes.

“And a hotel,” Mad Earl said. “Don’t forget that, missy.”

Thelma looked at her father. “Come on, Dad. You guys are making a mountain out of a molehill. There are no roads over here, no services, no electricity. All this complaining is counterproductive. Just let it go.”

“I don’t want to complain,” Dad said. “I want to do something, and by Christ, I will. Who’s with me?”

“Damn right,” Mad Earl said, his voice a little slurred.

“He’ll raise the price of drinks,” Clyde complained. “You watch.”

“I didn’t move out into the bush so I could have a hotel nearby,” Dad said.

Mad Earl grumbled something, took a long drink.

Leni watched the men come together, each one clapping Dad on the back as if he had said the perfect thing.

Within moments the women were left sitting alone in the muddy center of the compound.

“Ernt is pretty worked up over a little fixing-up of the saloon,” Thelma said, watching the men. You could see them ingesting righteous anger, puffing up with it, passing the jug from one to the other. “I thought he’d let it go.”

Mama lit a cigarette. “He never lets anything go.”

“I know you two don’t have much influence with him,” Thelma said, looking from Mama to Leni. “But he could start a shitstorm up here. Tom Walker may have a new truck and own the best land on the peninsula, but he’ll give you the shirt off his back. Last year when Mop was so sick, Tom heard about it from Large Marge and showed up here on his own and flew her to Kenai.”

“I know,” Mama said quietly.

“Your husband’s going to rip this town apart if we aren’t careful.”

Mama gave a tired laugh. Leni understood. You could be as careful as a chemist with nitroglycerin around Dad. It wouldn’t change a thing. Sooner or later, he was going to blow.

* * *

ONCE AGAIN, Leni’s parents got so drunk she had to drive them home. Back at the cabin, she parked the truck and helped Mama into her room, where she collapsed into bed, laughing as she reached for Dad.

Leni climbed up to her own bed, to the mattress they’d salvaged from the dump and cleaned with bleach, and lay beneath her army surplus blankets and tried to fall asleep.

But the incident at the saloon and the meeting with the Harlans stayed with her. Something about it was deeply unsettling, although she couldn’t quite put her finger on any one moment and say, There, that’s what bothered me. Maybe just a sense of imbalance in her dad that was, if not new, a magnification.

Change. Slight, but apparent.

Her dad was angry. Maybe furious. But why?