THE FISH WAS done cooking by the time I got back to my dad. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been so hungry. Which was good, because just plain fish without even salt to season it isn’t the tastiest thing I’ve ever had. But it filled my belly, and by the time we were done eating, Dad and I weren’t quite as prickly toward each other.
What he’d wanted to show me over here, it turned out, was a berry patch. There weren’t any berries—they’d peaked early this season. But he said next year we could come down and pick pounds and pounds of it, and make jam and preserves to last us all winter.
“Of course, we have to make sure to get to them before Rolly does,” he said.
“Who?”
“Rolly. She’s a bear,” he said cheerfully. “Just a little one, and as long as you don’t bother her babies she won’t bother you, but she’ll eat your berries and your fish and your breakfast out of your hand if you let her, which is definitely not a habit you should encourage. What you really have to worry about is moose.”
“Moose? Really?” I said, skeptical. “Aren’t they vegetarians?”
“Huge, angry vegetarians. You hear a moose coming for you, get up a tree,” Dad said, nodding. “Don’t go for the water, ’cause Mr. Moose can swim a whole lot faster than you can. But he can’t climb. And you sit up in that tree as long as you need to for him to leave, and then sit up there a little while longer.”
“What about a porcupine?” I asked. “What do you do about a porcupine?”
He laughed. “Don’t step on ’em,” he said. “Porcupine’s about the easiest meat you can get out here. They’re slow and dumb. You can pin ’em with a stick and hit ’em with a rock, and then you flip ’em over to get at that soft belly and finish them off. Of course, we’ve got no need, but if you’re starving and you can find one . . .”
I must have been making a face at him, because he trailed off. I didn’t want to hit anything with a rock. Okay, I thought I could manage catching and gutting fish. But a porcupine? I didn’t want to try getting the guts out of that. And what if I stuck myself with the quills? I’d been a vegetarian before Mom died. I gave it up at the Wilkersons because otherwise I’d have gone hungry, but I didn’t want to kill an animal myself.
Dad showed me a little stream next, which he said I shouldn’t drink, but that would do for rinsing off our hands. He said there was good sweet water down by the south of the lake, a little waterfall, and that he usually went fishing and trapping down that way because for whatever reason, the fish and the “varmints” liked it better on the south side. Which was maybe why when he checked the traps he’d set around here, all of them were empty. He cussed a bit and re-baited them.
“I’ll show you how to set these another time,” he said, but that sounded even worse to me than killing a porcupine. An animal might be alive and suffering for hours and hours before you ever came to check on it.
We paddled back across the water, leaving Bo to run the lakeshore again. On our way up to the cabin we fetched water from the lake. I didn’t carry much, just one half-gallon jug while Dad loaded up with five gallons in each hand. You had to do a lot of hauling to get much water, but Dad said it was sweeter than anything out of a tap.
“Winter’s easier in a way, because you can just melt snow,” he said, and I pictured myself wading through snow with my bad leg. I had to get out of here before winter. When was Griff coming back? Tomorrow seemed like too late.
“So, Griff’s coming back . . .” I prompted.
“Sure is, but you can never really tell when. Depends on the weather and what he’s up to. Sometimes he visits a lady friend, and sometimes he gets melancholy for a few weeks, but eventually he always pours himself out of his bottle and comes back.” Dad nodded as he talked. “Things don’t run on a schedule the way they do in the city,” he said. “Things happen when they’re going to happen, and there’s always more to do than you have time for. It’s about priorities, not hours of the day.”
My heart sank. It could be weeks, then. It could be winter.
No, it would be before that. Dad wouldn’t want to build in the winter, right? He’d want the extension done before it snowed, so Griff would have to come back soon with supplies.
“Jess?” Dad said. He sounded hesitant, a question to my name; that was new. “You remember what Griff’s plane looks like, right? The yellow one.”
“Of course,” I said, confused. Did he think I had memory problems? Was he going to start treating me like a baby, the way some people did? I’m pretty sure even if I did have brain damage, I wouldn’t want people talking to me like I was a toddler.
“You see any other plane, come find me,” Dad said.
“Why?” I asked, more confused than alarmed.
“It’s just that . . . some of my friends, they’re not as personable as I am,” Dad said. “People this far out tend to be a little rough around the edges.”
“Griff’s rough around the edges.”
“Griff would start a rehabilitation and rescue center for injured flies if he could get the funding,” Dad said with a laugh. “The only thing you’ve got to worry about with Griff is making sure he doesn’t swipe your beer. He’s a good person. One of the best.”
“But you’ve got friends who aren’t good people?”
Dad rubbed his thumb along the side of his mouth. “Griff aside, I don’t know that I believe people are good or bad all at once,” he said. “We’re all a collection of our choices. Good choices, bad choices, choices that don’t look one way or another when you’re making them. Anyway. Point stands. You see anyone but Griff coming, and you make sure to find me. How’s that leg?” Dad asked suddenly.
I blinked at the sudden change of topic, putting my hand to my leg automatically, kneading the meat of my thigh. “It’s okay,” I said. “A bit sore.”
“You should rest, then,” Dad said. He scratched at his neck, where stubble was bristling already. I wondered if he’d shaved for my arrival.
“Okay.” I didn’t move just yet. It seemed like he was going to say something more, but instead he shook his head. I walked back to the cabin. Bo started to follow until Dad whistled, and I walked the rest of the way alone. Step-drag, step-drag. I had worn myself out too much.
I sat on the bed and took out the picture of Mom. I wished I’d gotten a picture of Scott, too. He’d visited me in the hospital, and he’d called me once a week or so. He’d said he wished I could come stay with him, and I said I wished that, too, but I hadn’t meant it, exactly. I hadn’t wanted to live anywhere, then. I’d just wanted to sleep and wake up with my mom still there and everything just a dream.
DINNER WAS SMOKED fish and bread slathered in butter and honey. We ate in silence, but when I was licking crumbs and honey off my fingers, Dad finally spoke.
“I loved your mother very much,” he said.
I looked at him blankly. It might sound weird, but I’d never really thought about the two of them being together. Mom never once said she loved him that I could remember. It was always, “I thought your father was so exciting,” or “Your father wasn’t quite like anyone I’d ever met.”
“Do you know how we met?” Dad asked.
“You were in an airport,” I said.
“She was heading back to Seattle from her cousin’s wedding,” he said. “And I was heading to Anchorage. I was going to drive tour buses around a glacier. She thought I was funny. We sat in the bar together because her flight was delayed and my connection wasn’t for a couple of hours, and I liked her so much that I walked up to the counter and asked for a ticket on her flight instead.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said. “I knew you met in an airport, but I didn’t know that.” I sounded stupid to my own ears.
“If you know what you want, don’t let anything stand in your way,” he said. “If you want something, you make it happen.”
“I want to go home,” I said.
His face fell. “You are home,” he said, but it sounded hollow.
“I want to go back with Griff. It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone,” I said. “I won’t tell them you’re here. I’ll tell them . . . I don’t know. I’ll figure something out.”
He shook his head. “Sorry, baby bear, but that’s not possible.”
“I’m supposed to be in school,” I said.
“You’ll learn plenty here,” he countered. “Things that are a lot more useful than the names of a bunch of dead old white guys.”
I pulled my foot up on the chair and curled my arms around my knee. I had to keep my bad leg on the ground. It didn’t like to bend like that anymore. “I can’t hunt. I can’t fish. I can’t even walk very well,” I said. “How am I supposed to live out here?”
“I’ll teach you all of that,” he said. Then his face lit up. “Hey, now. What do you mean you don’t hunt? Didn’t your mom tell me you won some kind of medal?”
“For archery,” I said. “When I was thirteen. And that’s not hunting. It’s shooting a target.” My ears burned. I’d taken up archery because my mom told me that my dad was really into it. I’d stopped when she’d let slip that he was into bow hunting, and my vegetarian, animal-loving sensibilities had been wounded.
“It’s not so different. The target just happens to be a deer or a rabbit. If you scare them into moving, you’ve lost half the battle. It’s all about getting up close. Which means moving slow and steady, just like you’ve got to with your leg,” he said.
“Too bad we don’t have a bow.”
He slapped his thigh, suddenly excited. “Come over here.” He walked to the bench under the window. He lifted up the seat, revealing a storage area underneath. There were two rifles inside, both of them with gleaming wood stocks. And something wrapped in cloth.
Dad unwrapped it and held it out. It was a bow: compound, with pulleys and a sight. Not as fancy as some I’d seen in competitions but still much higher tech than the stick-and-string basics. It was dark green, mottled like camouflage. A hunting bow.
I turned it over in my hands. It wasn’t the kind I was used to. Our bows were modern, but they were simple. This looked like complicated machinery compared to those, but really it was all the same concept. This would just be easier to pull and hold steady, and the sight would certainly make it easier to aim, once I got used to it.
“I don’t want to shoot animals,” I said. But I did really want to shoot that bow.
“You don’t have to just yet,” he said. “So long as you eat what I shoot. I should be able to bring in plenty for the two of us. Especially the way you eat.”
“Are there arrows?” I asked, trying to sound disinterested and failing.
“Wouldn’t be a very good bow without them,” Dad said with a laugh. He rummaged in the storage space and came up with a quiver filled with about forty arrows. “That’s all we’ve got, but if you want to keep using it, I can always have Griff buy you some more.”
“Maybe . . . maybe I could go practice, tomorrow,” I said.
“I know the perfect spot,” Dad said. He was grinning so wide it made his cheeks round and red.
I plucked at the string with my fingernail. “Dad?” I said.
“What is it, baby bear?”
“Why’d you leave?” I asked.
He got quiet. “I never could sit still for long,” he said. “Or stay too far from the stars. I’m not made for that life. A mortgage and neighbors and taxes to pay. Your mom was so pretty and so clever I could quiet down that part of me for a while. But eventually who I am caught up with who I was trying to be, and it wasn’t exactly a fair fight. I figured I would go live on my own, have an adventure, just for a year. One year up in Alaska, I said, but your mom didn’t understand. So we fought, and she said that if I left, I shouldn’t come back. And I took her at her word.”
“You didn’t have to leave,” I said.
“I did, baby bear,” Dad said, shaking his head sadly. “Maybe you don’t understand that, but I’m hoping that you will someday. When you get to know me. When you get to know this place and what it’s like out here.”
I don’t remember what I said, but I know what I’d say now:
I will never understand it.
I will never understand why you would choose even a place as beautiful as this over your family. Over your child.
I will never understand why you couldn’t at least come and visit.
I will never understand why you thought that it was a good idea to bring me out here.
I will never understand why you left.
I will never understand why you left me.
I will never understand why you left me here.
I will never
I don’t