The following morning Nicky was counting the knots in the unpainted rafters above her head, enjoying the soft mattress—so much nicer than the block of foam in the RV, or her clammy sleeping bag—when Josie rose and started doing yoga. A steady stream of guttural humming emerged from her throat.
“Hey,” she called over to Nicky. “Are you awake?”
She came over in her yoga pants and tank top and sat on the edge of Nicky’s bed.
“How’s the view out the window?” she asked. Nicky rose and they both parted the curtains and set their foreheads against the salt-spotted glass.
Across the blue water, the morning sun hovered above the tree-covered mountains, glinting off the tips of waves. Islands clustered with evergreens speckled the ocean. A fishing boat left a frothy V in its wake as it motored toward the far horizon.
“Whoa! This looks like a postcard. Does this open?” Josie said, trying to pull up the sash. “Probably all salt-encrusted.” She found her phone and started taking photos through the glass.
As Josie fooled with Instagram, Nicky crossed the room and peered out the window over Josie’s bed. Just as Aunt Mall had promised, the forest was their backyard.
A valley filled the space beneath the craggy mountains. A few wisps of fog caught in the treetops. Far back, Nicky could see one treetop looming over the others, with a mossy crown. How tall that tree must be—hundreds of feet, she thought. Taller than the geyser at Yellowstone. Taller than any of the oaks or black walnuts in Uncle Max’s hedgerows, where deer hunkered down in the fall, hoping they wouldn’t be spotted by hunters. The trees only still there because the families who cleared the land had judged the dips, where the sun didn’t reach, unfarmable. Instead, they used the hedgerows as dumps, dragging old farm machinery and hoops from barrels and wheels from carts into the shadows to corrode back into the soil.
“Want to switch beds?” Josie called, scrolling through the photos she had taken. “That way you can stare into those trees, and Watermelon can get better light. And I can see the ocean.”
“Sure,” Nicky said, thrilled at the suggestion. “I’ll make your bed if you make mine.”
“Deal,” Josie said.
Nicky heard voices downstairs and recognized Clete’s. Then she heard socked feet on the creaky steps leading up to the attic.
“Hey!” Josie said, pulling the covers to her chin as Clete appeared. “Ever heard of knocking?”
“My mom sent me over to fix the attic for you,” he said in a soft voice.
“We can fix the attic ourselves,” Josie said.
“You don’t have to be so mean,” Nicky said as Clete retreated down the stairs. “He’s just shy.”
“Then you two will be like peas in a pod,” Josie said, climbing off the bed and searching for a hair tie. “I can’t wait to finally meet up with Veronica. We’re going for a walk. She’s going to tell me about the totem poles in the park.”
“Can I come?” Nicky asked in a small voice.
Josie turned to her. “You know how Mom always said we should tell each other when we see things? Well, I’m sorry to say it, but you’ve just kind of been a daddy’s girl since we left Danville. You don’t think for yourself. I don’t think you’d get along with someone like Veronica.”
Before Nicky could respond, Josie finished putting up her hair, zipped on her fleece, put on her slippers, and disappeared downstairs.
Nicky turned back to the window. That wasn’t true. She thought for herself all the time. In fact, that’s all she had wanted to do this past month as they hurtled in their RV across the United States: get to a place like this attic where she could stare up at the rafters and think for herself. And a daddy’s girl? Maybe she got along better with her dad than Josie did, especially over these last few months. But that didn’t make her a daddy’s girl.
She dressed and went downstairs. Sunlight streamed through the halls, lighting up the cherry-wood wainscoting along with black-and-white photos of wooden schooners, just their three masts showing above the waves. In the kitchen, their father stood at the counter stirring pancake batter. Clete had a full glass of orange juice in front of him and strummed chords on their father’s guitar.
“Hey, kiddo!” their father said. “How was the attic?”
“It smells up there,” Josie said, pouring herself coffee.
“I was asking Nicky,” their father said. “And J, the coffee was a treat on the ferry. That’s your last cup.”
Josie laughed. “Okay, dad,” she said sarcastically, opening the refrigerator. “Where’s the cream? We don’t even have milk?”
“Used it all for pancakes,” he said. “Sorry.”
“Fine,” Josie said, seizing her mug. “I’ll drink it black, just like Mom.”
Nicky examined her father in the Alaska light. Over the course of crossing the country, he had started smiling, even if the smile was crooked, and only came from the corner of his mouth. This morning he smiled fully, at least until Josie mentioned their mother.
“What is that, Clete? ‘Three Little Birds’? Sounds good.”
“It’s a song I made up.”
“Really? Nice one.”
“Be honest, Clete. The attic smells like rotting mice,” Josie said, glancing out the window as she sipped her coffee. “In fact, this whole island seems like a place where humans go to shrivel up and die.”
“Josie…” Their father sighed.
“What? You can’t even tell the difference between morning and night with the sun never setting. It’s like some weird limbo the rest of the world has forgotten about.”
“Just—please,” he said. He gestured toward a mason jar on the table. “Clete was just telling me how, in the spring, the spruce around here make bright new tips. Aunt Mallory and her family collect the tips from their island, and boil them down with sugar to make spruce tip syrup. He brought us over a bottle.”
“No kidding,” Josie said, lifting the jar and inspecting the handwritten label. “No bottled tree blood for me, thanks. That’s like eating babies, and I’m a vegetarian.”
Clete stopped playing guitar, sipped his orange juice, and watched Josie. When their father gave him another pancake, Clete tipped the syrup bottle, and the bright red liquid spread over his plate.
“You know, Clete, that’s what I used back in Danville, when I made guitars,” their father said as he poured the rest of the coffee into a mug. “Sitka spruce. Maybe even from this island.”
“Maybe,” Clete agreed, cutting his pancakes with the side of a fork. “Though I think all the wood from the Norseman is cut into cants.”
“What’s a cant?” Josie asked.
“A block of wood. It’s what the mill makes, before shipping the lumber off the island.”
Their father rested his spoon on the table. “To the Lower 48?” he asked.
Josie scoffed. “You’ve been here, like, twelve hours, and already you’re talking like an Alaskan. How about ‘the continental United States.’ ”
“Clete,” their dad said, sitting down at the table. “What can you tell me about bears in Sky River Valley?”
The smile disappeared from Clete’s face. He set down his plate. “As long as you make noise when you’re in the woods, you’ll be fine. But a lot of them live in there.”
Their father considered this. “I guess they’ll be hibernating soon.”
“Not if the chainsaws wake them up,” Josie said. “Veronica told me they could start cutting that forest in just over a week, before school starts. Not this Monday, but next.”
“What do you think will happen with the vote? Your mom said people are on the fence,” their father asked.
“I don’t know,” Clete said. “We lost all our tourism money because of the virus. People need jobs, and land to build houses. Most people on the island have at least some association with the mill.”
“Is this guy Lars, your father’s boss, such a bad dude?”
Clete shrugged. “Dad says he’s worked hard to build up the mill after he took control of it, and he’s given people jobs. He sponsors baseball teams, and ran the Chamber of Commerce. He gave us wood to build our cabin.”
“He sounds like someone who cares about making sure people have jobs,” their father said.
“Fishing is a job, isn’t it?” Josie interrupted as her father dropped a pancake onto her plate. She picked up her knife and started to saw through it. “Seems like you self-quarantine on your boat. That’s what Veronica and I are going to talk about today, for her speech to town on Wednesday. She should be here any minute.”
Clete turned to her. “Veronica Deschumel?”
Josie nodded.
“How do you know her?” he asked. “And what do you know about fishing?” Suddenly he didn’t seem so shy.
Josie sat up, obviously taken aback by his tone. “We learned to fish in Pennsylvania. With my mom and her brother, at his pond,” Josie responded. “And Veronica’s the head of DDF. Don’t you know that?”
“Yes,” he said evenly. “Her parents came from Seattle a few years ago. Her mother’s from Metlakatla and is Tsimshian. Mr. Deschumel runs Jackson Cove Convos. They live on Janie’s Alley, out on the road toward the mill.”
Josie nodded. “We’re talking about the same person. I did my tryout speech for her on this topic, about how we shouldn’t touch the earth for the next one hundred years, and Veronica said it was awesome. Then she asked if I could help her with her speech this Wednesday at the town hall.”
“What do you mean, not touch the earth?” Clete asked, an edge growing in his voice. “What about, like, walking on it?”
Josie paused, then smiled. Nicky could see that Josie hadn’t expected a fight this morning, but was more than happy to engage. There was nothing Josie liked more than a good debate.
Their father rose to flip a pancake, and Nicky took his seat, prepared to kick Josie under the table if she needed to.
“What if people can’t find other jobs?” Clete said. “I mean, we don’t just fish and hunt for food up here. Most things arrive on a barge from Seattle. There are no cows, for example. People need money for milk.”
Josie’s wooden chair creaked as she sat back. Nicky knew she was considering her angle of attack. “People here on your island will chop down the trees, take the fish, dig the gold, until there’s nothing left. That’s what people do. They’re really no better than termites. Unless agitators like Veronica and I speak out against people like you, and your father, break the trend, then extraction will continue. We need to change the will of others, to make them understand.”
Clete shook his head. “My dad taught me how to cut down a tree at the age of five, so we could put a roof over our heads and warm ourselves in winter. I’ve grown up watching him at the mill. He built that house out of trees we processed together. People on this island depend on wood. We live in a forest, after all.”
“That’s exactly my point!” Josie said. She set her slippers on the floor and leaned forward. Nicky nudged her shin, but Josie just moved her legs away. “Someone has to stop you Alaskans, because you obviously can’t stop yourself.”
Nicky’s father butted in. “Josie! You need to watch your tone.”
“What. You think I should speak politely while the world burns? While everything I’m supposed to ‘inherit’ disappears?”
Clete swallowed another drink of orange juice, smiling at Josie’s air quotes. He narrowed his eyes, focusing on her. “So you don’t think we should ever cut down a tree? What about the chair you’re sitting in?”
“No,” Josie said, unscrewing the lid of the spruce-tip syrup, smelling it, and making a face. “I think the earth has been through enough. It needs to convalesce. That means to recover, like you recover from being sick. If we even ever recover. It might all be a lost cause. Trust me, if I could live somewhere other than this apartment, a place where things weren’t made out of wood, I gladly would.”
“Okay, okay,” their father said. “We get the point, J.”
“What about Uncle Max?” Nicky asked. If she couldn’t kick her sister beneath the table, she decided she’d just take Clete’s side. “He cuts hay and corn. People here cut trees. What’s the difference?”
Josie flashed her a look, then reached across the table to chop off a pat of butter. Nicky hardly ever took on her sister, at least in a debate.
“You’re right, Nicky. It is the same idea. The same thing that humans have been doing for ten thousand years. Specifically, white men. Go somewhere, destroy the land, repeat. Except the moment has come when people like me realize we either keep doing this until we kill ourselves, or we stop. Uncle Max’s land is already spent. You know that better than anyone, with all the time you spend wandering around up there. He grows corn, soy, hay. True, you’ll say, there are those trees, beeches and oaks and maples that Uncle Max probably would have cut down to send his kid to college like the rest of the farmers in Pennsylvania, except he didn’t have kids. Or to buy a new pickup, a snowmobile, whatever.”
“We call them snowmachines in Alaska,” Clete said.
“I’m not Alaskan,” Josie shot back. “In fact, I shouldn’t even be living on this island, considering that it was stolen from Indigenous people. But I’m here, and I’m going to do everything I can while I am to work with Veronica to empower others.”
“Why not do that for Pennsylvania?” Clete asked.
“Pennsylvania’s done for. Mowed over. It’s too far gone for anyone to make a difference. So is the rest of the United States, from what I’ve seen over the past three weeks. Sure, we make ourselves feel good by recycling our plastic, or using LED light bulbs. Maybe we use laundry detergent that won’t kill frogs in the Susquehanna River. But who are we kidding? Yellowstone, and the rest of the national parks in the country, are becoming open-air museums. We saw it for ourselves at the geyser. Look, but don’t touch. There’s still a chance in Alaska. There’s still hope.”
“I agree, at least with some of what you’re saying,” Clete said slowly. “But I think you need to consider that you just arrived on an island where people have been existing for ten thousand years. You can’t just tell others what to do. I mean, you might have good intentions, but you don’t know the details.”
Josie pushed her plate away. “Apparently I have to, because no one on this island except Veronica and maybe the rest of DDF understands.”
“Josie, you are being disrespectful to your cousin,” their father said. “You need to apologize.”
“Give it a rest with the Dad-in-charge voice,” Josie said, rising from the chair and grabbing her coffee mug. “It’s not like you have better answers. You dragged us all the way to this island, and now that we’re here, we’re just as lost as we were in the beginning.” Josie brushed past their father, then turned to stand in the doorframe. “The truth is, we always will be lost, because it was Mom who gave us direction. Without her, we’re bouncing around like a bunch of free electrons.”
“That’s so not true,” their father whispered.
Josie tromped down the stairs. “I’m going to Totem Park with Veronica!” The door slammed behind her.
After a moment their father faced the sink and turned on the water. Then he just stood there.
“I can help, Uncle Dan,” Clete said quietly.
He gripped the hot and cold knobs, as if for balance. Water splashed up from the dishes. To Nicky’s surprise, her father turned away from the running water, lifted his guitar from the couch, and left the kitchen. Nicky listened for the creak of the stairs as her father went outside to look for Josie. Instead, she only heard the moan of the hinges as the door shut, followed by a few notes as her father began to play another sad song.