On Friday morning Nicky woke to the radio playing downstairs, and Josie pulling on her jeans and searching her bags.
“I can’t find my fleece vest,” she said. “Did you borrow it?”
“No,” Nicky said. She strained to hear the words drifting up to her. It was a deep voice, one she recognized, discussing the vote on Sky River Valley.
Sun streamed through the open window. Today would mark their first week in Alaska. Brisk sea air blew in, ruffling the sheets.
“Where are you going?” Nicky asked as she got up to help her sister look for her vest. Neither of them had unpacked, and clothes were strewn all over the floor.
“To town hall, where people are voting. Veronica and two of her friends from DDF made ‘Save Sky River Valley’ signs. What do you think of mine?”
Josie pulled a two-by-four from alongside her bed and held it up; attached to it was a piece of cardboard that said take care of your children: NO on sky river.
Nicky squirreled through her bag for a fresh pair of jeans. “Can I come?” she asked, excited at the prospect of landing on a way to help the trees. “I can do a sign quickly. Maybe just ‘Save the Valley’ or ‘Don’t Cut Down Our Future.’ ”
Josie set her hands on her hips. “Whose side are you on? At the town hall you stood with Uncle Cliff. Now you’re talking to Dad after he lied to us. And you want to make signs?”
“I already told you, J. I hadn’t ever met Veronica, and I thought you guys were preparing for your speech. You made it clear she was your friend when you took that walk alone with her through Totem Park. I didn’t want to interrupt. I had met Clete and Uncle Cliff outside, and they waved me over.”
“Do you know what it’s like to look out on the crowd and see your sister standing with the enemy?”
“He’s our uncle. Not the enemy. Also, Dad didn’t lie to us. He just didn’t tell us.”
“See? You’re defending him. Nicky, you need to wake up. These adults, they’ve screwed us. Even Dad. Adults are selfish enough to bring us into the world, then leave us gasping for life as they follow their own ambitions. They’re against us. They lie, saying they want to keep us ‘safe,’ or that they’re ‘doing what’s best for us.’ They’re so worried about money and the size of their house that they’re willing to cut down trees that take hundreds of years to grow. What does that mean for you and me, and Veronica? For our children? We’re left with nothing.”
“I know, Josie. I know. Just please. Don’t be so harsh with Dad.”
“Dad…don’t even get me started on him,” Josie continued. “He didn’t only lie to us. He betrayed mom too. She would have thrown up. She never lied. She also never ran away from a problem. The tragedy of it all is, whenever he makes another bad move, we’re forced to go along with him just because we’re not eighteen. That’s so weird and arbitrary.” Josie tore up lettuce, dropping leaves into Watermelon’s tank. Then she grabbed her fleece from under her bed and zipped it to the neck. “Mom’s not innocent either. She wanted to run that emergency room, so she kept going to work. What did that mean for us, her daughters? A life without a mother. Now we’re just stuck following a man who really just wants to be left alone so he can build his stupid guitars.”
“That’s not kind.”
“I DON’T CARE ABOUT BEING KIND!” her sister screamed from the top of the stairs. “Not one little bit.”
They stared at one another. “I don’t recognize you anymore,” Nicky mumbled, turning to her bed and starting to make it.
“Your life is your life, Nicky,” Josie said back. “At some point you’re going to have to stop just standing around waiting to be struck by lightning. Waiting for someone to love you.”
Before Nicky could respond, Josie charged down the stairs, the wooden door rattling in its jamb as she slammed it behind her.
Nicky looked out her sister’s window, watching Josie stride down the gravel road, hands shoved in her pockets. Another argument, another door slammed. When would it end? She climbed over to her bed, parting the curtains. The Old Yellow Cedar towered over the other trees, its fans of needles waving above the crowns of the hemlocks and spruce below. Her mind started to pick apart her sister’s words, but then stalled out. She couldn’t think. Nothing made sense anymore.
Nicky dressed and went downstairs. Her father sat exactly where she left him the night before, with his socked feet propped up on the windowsill. The only thing that had changed was that he was sipping coffee. He had turned the radio off. The newspaper lay spread on the table before him. jackson covers prepare to vote on future of sky river valley. Below it was a photo of the moss-covered forest, and a voting booth at town hall.
“Hey, honey,” he said, turning around as she came in.
“Hey,” Nicky said.
“Sounded like a blowout up there. You okay?”
“I don’t know.”
He stood and poured himself more coffee, shaking the old grounds into the trash.
“You want some of this?”
“I’m okay.”
“Your sister’s still not speaking to me.”
“I figured.”
“I heard Sven on the radio, asking people to vote no on cutting the valley. Seems like all siblings on the island are fighting.” He nodded down at the paper. “I guess I better not start with Aunt Mall.”
Nicky raised and dropped her shoulders.
“Are you mad at me too?” he asked.
She poured herself orange juice, then looked up at him, not knowing what to say. She was mad at him, but she also understood that things had not been easy. She understood he was doing his best. It just wasn’t very good.
Her father pursed his lips and stared at her. “If people vote against the cut today, maybe that will solve the problem. We’ll pile back up in the RV and head back to Danville. Would that make things better?”
Nicky shrugged, pouring granola. “Where would we live? You sold the house.”
Her father pulled on his hat, adjusting the brim side-to-side as he looked out the window. “We could buy another one. I know people at the bank. It’s just—hard,” he continued. “Like you’re trying to hear a tune, and you just can’t quite make it out. I know there’s a right way. It’s just sticking around long enough to hear it.”
Nicky wanted to tell him that he was their father. He should be able to not only hear that tune, but to follow it. Why was it so difficult for him?
“All of this feels like someone else’s nightmare, doesn’t it?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said softly, believing in her heart that the true nightmare was being a kid, like Josie said, and having a leader who had lost the way.
“I should have told you girls about the job,” he said, looking back at her. “That much I know. Uncle Cliff made an unexpected offer the night we went out to the island. Then I met with him and Lars on Sunday, while you and Clete were out on the boat. Lars, he’s actually a really nice guy. He wants what’s best for the island, and also for our family.”
Nicky didn’t say anything.
“The mill—it’s a way of life here. I want us to belong. I don’t want to go back to Danville and be reminded of everything we lost. I want a new start. Lars Ruger has created a lot of opportunity on this island.”
Nicky spooned yogurt into her granola, watching as the golden nuggets sunk into the soft white. “If you were a resident, would you really vote to cut down the trees?” she asked.
He settled back into his chair and recrossed his feet on the windowsill. When he didn’t respond, she said, “I’m going for a bike ride.”
She pulled on her windbreaker, then dragged the bike that Clete had brought her out from the back shed. She coasted down the gravel road, passing Sven’s rusted pickup. At the harbor she turned left, letting the bike roll along the pavement. She climbed the hill past the boarding school where Clete’s grandmother was punished for speaking Tlingit, then crossed the avenue, past the Alaska State Trooper Academy, where Clete might one day stand at attention beneath the American flag.
Her thighs burned as she pushed against the pedals. It felt good to move her legs and breathe in the ocean air. The world had stopped making sense, beginning with her sister, ending with her father, who didn’t even seem able to answer a simple question. She still had this clean air, and her body, and her strong lungs. And for the moment, the trees in Sky River Valley were still breathing.
As she accelerated along the asphalt path built alongside of the road, the land opened up into an industrial area. Trailers, their metal sides coated in rust, with small gardens bordered by salt-splintered wooden fences, looked over the ocean. She pushed harder with her legs, squinting against the glare of the water.
The road curved into Henry’s Bay. She passed the shipyard where they repaired the ferries that had brought her and her family to Alaska. A man welded outside, a shower of sparks rising from where he touched flame to metal. Another man shouted, then laughed, paying no attention as Nicky biked by. Now the road hugged the ocean, just a salt-rusted guardrail and a strip of fireweed separating asphalt from the glistening sea. She remembered the flowers Clete had given them a week ago. Just a few purple petals remained on the stalks, promising fall storms and a dark winter.
As she ran her eyes across the glassy surface of Eastern Channel, she saw a puff of air. The white cone went slack, and blurred as the breeze pulled the whale breath apart.
How thrilled she had been that first morning on the ferry when her father unzipped the tent and announced the humpback whale. This world was hers now. She could look onto the water and not be surprised to see a pod of whales feeding on herring just beyond the lighthouse. To see eagles floating on the currents above the treetops. Smell seaweed drying at low tide. She’d fight for this place, though she wasn’t sure exactly what that meant.
She started up the hill toward Janie’s Alley, where Veronica and her parents lived in a house over the water. Lars Ruger, Cliff’s boss, soon to be her father’s boss, had built his house on a cliff overlooking the ocean. As Nicky stood on the pedals of her bike, thrusting her legs, she could see the Ruger house, an octagon perched along the rocks. The windows blazed in the morning sun. It looked like a castle built over the ocean, ignoring the trees and forest at its back.
Lars had ambushed her sister’s speech, she knew that now. Josie had been right when she said adults only care about money. Lars was the perfect example. Maybe he did care about the jobs, but he also didn’t seem to care about the earth he’d leave behind when he died.
Flush with anger, Nicky considered turning off into his driveway to see if Lars was at home. She’d tell him all this to his face. She pedaled the rest of the way uphill, slowing when she reached the gravel road blasted through rock, leading to his house. Then she started peddling again, before giving her legs a rest as the tires coasted along the smooth asphalt. She had a better idea.
The road drifted into a shallow curve, the shoulders crumbling away beneath the towering spruce in Salmonberry Bay. The air felt colder on her legs, the sun blocked by the tall trees. An eighteen-wheeler truck roared past her, spraying her shins with gravel. The trailer was piled with logs.
Nicky squeezed the handlebars. How was that possible? Had they already started cutting? They weren’t allowed—the vote wasn’t finished. They didn’t even have a road into the valley.
Anxious, she powered up the short hill. At the top, she heard the faint whine of a saw, and she slowed her bike. From the side of the road she peered through a scrim of alders at logs piled in a mud yard tracked with tire prints. Steam poured from the metal roof of the building behind it, which was open on one side, a network of chains and saws feeding logs into the machinery.
Nicky watched as the eighteen-wheeler snaked its way through the mud, coming to a stop at the open end of the mill. She heard the sigh of the air brakes, then saw a construction vehicle with a prehistoric claw lumber up. The truck driver emerged from his cab and went around the bed, unfastening a series of yellow straps and chains holding down the logs.
She watched as the vehicle advanced, a puff of exhaust emerging from the pipe as the pincers closed. The beep of the vehicle echoed against the mountains as it pushed backwards. Then it lunged forward, depositing the logs onto a platform with a bang and clatter that hurt Nicky’s ears. A wave of despair moved over her when she saw spray paint on the cut ends. Under the paint were growth rings, a record of hundreds of winters, some colder than others. All canceled out with the swipe of a saw.
She didn’t care what Lars Ruger or Uncle Cliff said. Or that her father was expected to work at the mill. Josie was right. She couldn’t just stand there waiting to get struck by lightning. She also knew that yelling at people, making speeches, and holding up signs wasn’t something she was good at. She didn’t believe it would actually change anyone’s mind.
She had resolved that morning, as she opened the curtains to Sky River Valley, to do everything in her power to help them. The trees depended on her. This was her chance.
Loading back onto her bike, she turned at the mill entrance and pointed her front tire downhill. She felt the power and the energy of the trees move through her veins. She started along the mud, picking up speed as she headed toward the screech of the saws.