فصل 10

TEN

“Come on, sleepyhead!” Mama called up bright and early the next morning. “Time for school.”

It sounded so ordinary, something every mother said to every fourteen-year-old, but Leni heard the words behind the words, the please let’s pretend that formed a dangerous pact.

Mama wanted to induct Leni into some terrible, silent club to which Leni didn’t want to belong. She didn’t want to pretend what had happened was normal, but what was she—a kid—supposed to do about it?

Leni dressed for school and climbed cautiously down the loft ladder, afraid to see her father.

Mama stood beside the card table, holding a plate of pancakes bracketed by strips of crispy bacon. Her face was swollen on the right side, purple seeping along the temple. Her right eye was black and puffy, barely open.

Leni felt a rise of anger; it unsettled and confused her.

Fear and shame she understood. Fear made you run and hide and shame made you stay quiet, but this anger wanted something else. Release.

“Don’t,” Mama said. “Please.”

“Don’t what?” Leni said.

“You’re judging me.”

It was true, Leni realized with surprise. She was judging her mother, and it felt disloyal. Cruel, even. She knew that Dad was sick. Leni bent down to replace the paperback book under the table’s rickety leg.

“It’s more complicated than you think. He doesn’t mean to do it. Honestly. And sometimes I provoke him. I don’t mean to. I know better.”

Leni sighed at that, hung her head. Slowly, she got back to her feet and turned to face her mother. “But we’re in Alaska now, Mama. It’s not like we can get help if we need it. Maybe we should leave.” She hadn’t known it was even in her head until she heard herself say the terrible words. “There’s a lot more winter to come.”

“I love him. You love him.”

It was true, but was it the right answer?

“Besides, we don’t have anywhere to go and no money to go with. Even if I wanted to run home with my tail between my legs, how would I do it? We’d have to leave everything we own here and hike to town and get a ride to Homer and then have my parents wire us enough money for a plane ticket.”

“Would they help us?”

“Maybe. But at what price? And…” Mama paused, drew in a breath. “He would never take me back. Not if I did that. It would break his heart. And no one will ever love me like he does. He’s trying so hard. You saw how sorry he was.”

There it was: the sad truth. Mama loved him too much to leave him. Still, even now, with her face bruised and swollen. Maybe what she’d always said was true, maybe she couldn’t breathe without him, maybe she’d wilt like a flower without the sunshine of his adoration.

Before Leni could say, Is that what love is? the cabin door opened, bringing a rush of icy air with it, a swirl of snow.

Dad entered the cabin and shut the door behind him. Removing his gloves, blowing into the chapel of his bare hands, he stomped the snow from his mukluks. It gathered at his feet, white for a heartbeat before it melted into puddles. His woolen tuque was white with snow, as were his bushy mustache and beard. He looked like a mountain man. His jeans appeared almost frozen. “There’s my little librarian,” he said, giving her a sad, almost desperate smile. “I did your chores this morning, fed the chickens and goats. Mom said you needed your sleep.”

Leni saw his love for her, shining through his regret. It eroded her anger, made her question everything again. He didn’t want to hurt Mama, didn’t mean to. He was sick …

“You’re going to be late for school,” Mama said quietly. “Here, take your breakfast with you.”

Leni gathered up her books and her Winnie the Pooh lunch box and layered up in outerwear—boots, qiviut yarn tuque, Cowichan sweater, gloves. She ate a rolled-up jam-smeared pancake as she headed for the door and walked out into a white world.

Her breath clouded in front of her; she saw nothing but falling snow and the man breathing beside her. The VW bus slowly sketched itself into existence, already running.

She reached out with her gloved hand and opened the passenger door. It took a couple of tries in the cold, but the old metal door finally creaked open and Leni tossed her backpack and lunch box on the floor and climbed up onto the torn vinyl seat.

Dad climbed into the driver’s seat and started the wipers. The radio came on, blastingly loud. It was the Peninsula Pipeline morning broadcast. Messages for people living in the bush without telephones or mail service. “… and to Maurice Lavoux in McCarthy, your mom says to call your brother, he’s feeling poorly…”

All the way to school, Dad said nothing. Leni was so deep in her own thoughts, she was surprised when he said, “We’re here.”

She looked up, saw the school in front of her. The wipers made the building appear in a foggy fan and then disappear.

“Lenora?”

She didn’t want to look at him. She wanted to be Alaska-pioneer-woman-survivor-of-Armageddon strong, to let him know that she was angry, let it be a sword she could wield, but then he said her name again, steeped in contrition.

She turned her head.

He was twisted around so that his back was pressed to the door. With the snow and fog outside, he looked vibrant, his black hair, his dark eyes, his thick black mustache and beard. “I’m sick, Red. You know that. The shrinks call it gross stress reaction. That’s just a bunch of bullshit words, but the flashbacks and nightmares are real. I can’t get some really bad shit out of my head and it makes me crazy. Especially now, with money so tight.”

“Drinking doesn’t help,” Leni said, crossing her arms.

“No, it doesn’t. Neither does this weather. And I’m sorry. I’m so damn sorry. I’ll stop drinking. It will never happen again. I swear it by how much I love you both.”

“Really?”

“I’ll try harder, Red. I promise. I love your mom like…” His voice dropped to a whisper. “She’s my heroin. You know that.”

Leni knew it wasn’t a good thing, not a normal mom-and-dad thing, to compare your love to a drug that could hollow your body and fry your brain and leave you for dead. But they said it to each other all the time. They said it the way Ali McGraw in Love Story said love means never having to say you’re sorry, as if it were gospel true.

She wanted his regret, his shame and sadness to be enough for her. She wanted to follow her mother’s lead as she always had. She wanted to believe that last night had been some terrible anomaly and that it wouldn’t happen again.

He reached out, touched her cold cheek. “You know how much I love you.”

“Yeah,” she said.

“It won’t happen again.”

She had to believe him, to believe in him. What would her world be without that? She nodded and got out of the bus. She trudged through the snow and climbed the steps and entered the warm school.

Silence greeted her.

No one was talking.

Students were in their seats and Ms. Rhodes was at the chalkboard, writing, WWII. Alaska was the only state invaded by Japanese. The skritch-skritch-skritch of her chalk was the only sound in the room. None of the kids was talking or giggling or shoving each other.

Matthew sat at his desk.

Leni hung her Cowichan sweater on a hook alongside someone’s parka, and stomped the snow from her bunny boots. No one turned to look at her.

She put away her lunch box and headed to her desk, taking her seat next to Matthew. “Hey,” she said.

He gave her a barely-there smile and didn’t make eye contact. “Hey.”

Ms. Rhodes turned to face the students. Her gaze landed on Matthew, softened. She cleared her throat. “Okay. For Axle, Matthew, and Leni, turn to page 172 of your state history books. On the morning of June sixth, 1942, five hundred Japanese soldiers invaded Kiska Island, in the Aleutian chain. It is the only battle of that war fought on American soil. Many people have forgotten it, but…”

Leni wanted to reach under the table and hold Matthew’s hand, to feel the comfort of a friend’s touch, but what if he pulled away? What would she say then?

She couldn’t complain that her family had turned out to be fragile and that she no longer felt safe in her home, not after what he’d been through.

She could have said it before—maybe—when life had felt different for both of them, but not now, when he was so broken he couldn’t even sit up straight.

She almost said, It will get better, to him, but then she saw the tears in his eyes and she closed her mouth. Neither one of them needed platitudes right now.

What they needed was help.

IN JANUARY, the weather got worse. Cold and darkness isolated the Allbright family even more. Feeding the woodstove became priority number one, a constant round-the-clock chore. They had to chop and carry and stack a huge amount of wood each day, just to survive. And as if all of that weren’t stressful enough, on bad nights—nightmare nights—Dad woke them in the middle of the night to pack and repack their bug-out bags, to test their preparedness, to take their weapons apart and put them back together.

Each day, the sun set before five P.M. and didn’t rise until ten A.M., giving them a grand total of six hours of daylight—and sixteen hours of darkness—a day. Inside the cabin, the Dixie cups showed no new green starts. Dad spent hours hunched over his ham radio, talking to Mad Earl and Clyde, but more and more of the world was cut away. Nothing came easily—not getting water or cutting wood or feeding the animals or going to school.

But worst of all was the rapidly emptying root cellar. They had no vegetables anymore, no potatoes or onions or carrots. They were almost to the end of their fish stores, and a single caribou haunch hung in the cache. Since they ate almost nothing but protein, they knew the meat wouldn’t last long.

Her parents fought constantly about the lack of money and supplies. Dad’s anger—kept barely in check since the funeral—was slowly escalating again. Leni could feel it uncoiling, taking up space. She and Mama moved cautiously, tried never to aggravate him.

Today, Leni woke in the dark, ate breakfast and dressed for school in the dark, and arrived at her classroom in the dark. The bleary-eyed sun didn’t appear until past ten o’clock, but when it did show up, sending streamers of brittle yellow light into the shadowy lantern- and woodstove-lit classroom, everyone perked up.

“It’s a sunny day! The weatherman was right!” Ms. Rhodes said from her place at the front of the classroom. Leni had been in Alaska long enough to know that a sunny, blue-skied January day was noteworthy. “I think we need to get out of this classroom, get a little air in our lungs and some sunshine on our faces. Blow out the winter cobwebs. I’ve planned a field trip!”

Axle groaned. He hated anything and everything that had to do with school. He peered through the rat’s-nest fringe of black hair he never washed. “Aw, come on … can’t we just go home early? I could go ice fishing.”

Ms. Rhodes ignored the scruffy-haired teenager. “The older of you—Matthew, Axle, and Leni—help the littles put on their coats and get their backpacks.”

“I’m not helping,” Axle said flatly. “Let the lovebirds do everything.”

Leni’s face flamed at the comment. She didn’t look at Matthew.

“Fine. Whatever,” Ms. Rhodes said. “You can go home.”

Axle didn’t need more encouragement. He grabbed his parka and left the school in a rush.

Leni got up from her seat and went to help Marthe and Agnes with their parkas. No one else had shown up for school today; the trip from Bear Cove must have proven too harsh.

She turned back, saw Matthew standing by his desk, shoulders slumped, dirty hair fallen across his eyes. She went to him, reached out, touched his flannel sleeve. “You want me to get you your coat?”

He tried to smile. “Yeah. Thanks.”

She got Matthew’s camo parka and handed it to him.

“Okay, everyone, let’s go,” Ms. Rhodes said. She led the students out of the classroom and into the bright, sunlit day. They marched through town and down to the harbor, where a Beaver float plane was docked.

The plane was dented up and in need of paint. It rolled and creaked and pulled at its lines with every slap of the incoming tide. At their approach, the plane’s door opened and a wiry man with a bushy white beard jumped down onto the dock. He wore a battered trucker’s cap and mismatched boots. The smile he gave them was so big it bunched up his cheeks and turned his eyes into slits.

“Kids, this is Dieter Manse, from Homer. He used to be a Pan Am pilot. Climb aboard,” Ms. Rhodes said. To Dieter, she said, “Thanks, man. I appreciate this.” She glanced worriedly back at Matthew. “We needed to clear our heads a bit.”

The old man nodded. “My pleasure, Tica.”

In her previous life, Leni wouldn’t have believed this man had been a captain at Pan Am. But up here, lots of people had been one thing on the Outside and became another in Alaska. Large Marge used to be a big-city prosecutor and now took showers at the Laundromat and sold gum, and Natalie had gone from teaching economics at a university to captaining her own fishing boat. Alaska was full of unexpected people—like the woman who lived in a broken-down school bus at Anchor Point and read palms. Rumor had it that she used to be a cop in New York City. Now she walked around with a parrot on her shoulder. Everyone up here had two stories: the life before and the life now. If you wanted to pray to a weirdo god or live in a school bus or marry a goose, no one in Alaska was going to say crap to you. No one cared if you had an old car on your deck, let alone a rusted fridge. Any life that could be imagined could be lived up here.

Leni stepped up into the plane, ducking her head, bending in half. Once inside, she took a seat in the middle row and snapped her seat belt in place. Ms. Rhodes sat down beside her. Matthew lumbered past them, head down, not making eye contact.

“Tom says he’s not talking much,” Ms. Rhodes said to Leni, leaning close.

“I don’t know what he needs,” Leni said, turning back, watching Matthew take a seat and strap his seat belt tight.

“A friend,” Ms. Rhodes said, but it was a stupid answer. The kind of thing adults said. Obvious. But what was that friend supposed to say?

The pilot climbed aboard and strapped himself in and put on a headset, then started the engine. Leni heard Marthe and Agnes giggling in their seats behind her.

The float plane engine hummed, the metal all around her rattled. Waves slapped the floats.

The pilot was saying something about seat cushions and what to do in case of an unscheduled water landing.

“Wait. That means a crash. He’s talking about what to do if we crash,” she said, feeling the start of panic.

“We’ll be fine,” Ms. Rhodes said. “You can’t be Alaskan and be afraid of small planes. This is how we get around.”

Leni knew it was true. With so little of the state accessible by roads, boats and planes were important up here. In the winter, the vastness of Alaska was connected by frozen rivers and lakes. In the summer all of that fast-moving water separated and isolated them. Bush planes helped them get around. Still, she hadn’t been in an airplane before and it felt remarkably unsteady and unreliable. She clutched the armrests and held on. She tried to sweep fear out of her mind as the plane rambled past the breakwater, clattered hard, and began lifting into the sky. The plane swayed sickeningly, leveled out. Leni didn’t open her eyes. If she did, she knew she’d see things that scared her: bolts that could pop out, windows that could crack, mountains they could crash into. She thought about that plane that had crashed in the Andes a few years ago. The survivors had become cannibals.

Her fingers ached. That was how tightly she was holding on.

“Open your eyes,” Ms. Rhodes said. “Trust me.”

She opened her eyes, pushed the vibrating curls out of her face.

Through a circle of Plexiglas, the world was something she’d never seen before. Blue, black, white, purple. From this vantage point, the geographical history of Alaska came alive for her; she saw the violence of its birth—volcanoes like Mounts Redoubt and Augustine erupting; mountain peaks thrust up from the sea and then worn down by rocky blue glaciers; fjords sculpted by rivers of moving ice. She saw Homer, huddled on a strip of land between high sandstone bluffs, fields covered in snow, and the Spit pointing out into the bay. Glaciers had formed all of this landscape, cut through and crunched forward, hollowing out deep bays, leaving mountains on either side.

The colors were spectacular, saturating. Across the blue bay, the Kenai Mountains rose like something out of a fairy tale, white sawlike blades that pushed high, high into the blue sky. In places, the glaciers on their steep sides were the pale blue of robins’ eggs.

The mountains expanded, swallowed the horizon. Jagged, white peaks striated by black crevasses and turquoise glaciers. “Wow,” she said, pressing closer to the window. They flew close to mountain peaks.

And then they were descending, gliding low over an inlet. Snow blanketed everything, lay in glittering patches on the beach, turned to ice and slush by the water. The float plane swerved and banked, lifted up again, and flew over a thicket of white trees. She saw a huge bull moose walking toward the bay.

They were over an inlet and descending fast.

She clutched the armrests again, closed her eyes, prepared.

They landed with a hard thump, and waves pounded the pontoons. The pilot killed the engine, jumped out of the plane, splashing into the ice-cold water, dragging the float plane higher onto the shore, tying it to a fallen log. Slush floated around his ankles.

Leni got out of the plane carefully (nothing was more dangerous up here than getting wet in the winter), walked along the float, and jumped out onto the slushy beach. Matthew was right behind her.

Ms. Rhodes gathered the few students together on the icy shore. “Okay, kids. The littles and I are going to hike over to the ridge. Matthew, you and Leni just go exploring. Have some fun.”

Leni looked around. The beauty of this place, the majesty of it, was overwhelming. A deep and abiding peace existed here; there were no human voices, no thumping footsteps, no laughter or engines running. The natural world spoke loudest here, the breathing of the tide across the rocks, the slap of water on the float plane’s pontoons, the distant barking of sea lions lumped together on a rock, being circled by chattering gulls.

The water beyond the shore ice was a stunning aqua, the color Leni imagined the Caribbean Sea to be, with a snowy shoreline decorated with huge white-covered black rocks. Snowcapped peaks muscled in close. Up high, Leni saw ivory-colored dots scattered on the impossibly steep sides—mountain goats. She reached into her pocket for her last, precious roll of film.

She couldn’t wait to take some pictures, but she had to be judicious with the film.

Where would she start? The ice-glazed beach rocks that looked like seed pearls? The frozen fern fronds growing up from a snow-rounded black log? The turquoise water? She turned toward Matthew, started to say something, but he was gone.

She turned, felt icy water shushing over her boots, and saw Matthew standing far down the beach, alone, his arms crossed. He had dropped his parka; it lay inches away from the incoming waves. His hair whipped across his face.

She splashed through the water toward him, reached out. “Matthew, you need to put your coat on. It’s cold—”

He yanked away from her touch, stumbled away. “Get away from me,” he said harshly. “I don’t want you to see…”

“Matthew?” She grabbed his arm, forced him to look at her. His eyes were red-rimmed from crying.

He shoved her away. She stumbled back, tripped over a piece of driftwood, and fell hard.

It happened fast enough to take her breath away. She lay there, sprawled on the frozen rocks, the cold water washing toward her, and stared up at him, her elbow stinging with pain.

“Oh, my God,” he said. “Are you okay? I didn’t mean to do that.”

Leni got to her feet, stared at him. I didn’t mean to do that. The same words she’d heard spoken by her dad.

“There’s something wrong with me,” Matthew said in a shaky voice. “My dad blames me and I can’t sleep for shit, and without my mom, the house is so quiet that I want to scream.”

Leni didn’t know how to respond.

“I have nightmares … about Mom. I see her face, under the ice … screaming … I don’t know what to do. I didn’t want you to know.”

“Why?”

“I want you to like me. Sometimes you’re the only thing … Oh, shit … forget it.” He shook his head, started crying again. “I’m a loser.”

“No. You just need some help,” she said. “Who wouldn’t? After what you’ve been through.”

“My aunt in Fairbanks wants me to come live with her. She thinks I should play hockey and learn to fly and see a shrink. I’d get to be with Aly. Unless…” He looked at Leni.

“So you’ll go to Fairbanks,” she said quietly.

He sighed heavily. She thought maybe it had already been decided and he’d been waiting to tell her all along. “I’ll miss you.”

He was going. Leaving.

At that, she felt an aching sense of sorrow expand in her chest. She would miss him so much, but he needed help. Because of her father, she knew what nightmares and sadness and a lack of sleep could do to a person, what a toxic combination that could be. What kind of friend would she be if she cared more about herself than him?

I’ll miss you, she wanted to say back to him, but what was the point? Words didn’t help.

AFTER MATTHEW LEFT, January got darker. Colder.

“Leni, would you set the table for dinner?” Mama asked on a particularly cold and stormy night, with wind clawing to get in, snow swirling. She was frying up some Spam in a cast-iron skillet, pressing down on it with her spatula. Two slices of Spam for three people was all they had.

Leni put down her social studies book and headed for the kitchen, keeping her eye on Dad. He paced along the back wall, his hands flexing and fisting, flexing and fisting, shoulders hunched, muttering to himself. His arms were stringy and thin, his stomach concave beneath his stained thermal underwear top.

He hit his forehead hard with the heel of his palm, muttering something unintelligible.

Leni sidled around the table and turned into the small kitchen.

She gave Mama a worried look.

“What did you say?” Dad said, materializing behind Leni, looming.

Mama pressed the spatula down on a slice of Spam. A blob of grease popped up, landed on the back of her wrist. “Ouch! Damn it!”

“Are you two talking about me?” Dad demanded.

Leni gently took her father by the arm, led him to the table.

“Your mother was talking about me, wasn’t she? What did she say? Did she mention Tom?”

Leni pulled out a chair, eased him into it. “She was talking about dinner, Dad. That’s all.” She started to leave. He grabbed her hand, pulled so hard she stumbled into him. “You love me, right?”

Leni didn’t like the emphasis. “Mama and I both love you.”

Mama showed up as if on cue, put the small plate of Spam alongside an enamel bowl of Thelma’s brown-sugar baked beans.

Mama leaned down, kissed Dad’s cheek, pressed her palm to his face.

It calmed him, that touch. He sighed, tried to smile. “Smells good.”

Leni took her seat and began serving. She poured herself a glass of watery, powdered milk.

Mama sat across from Leni, picked at her beans, pushed them around on her plate, watching Dad. He muttered something under his breath. “You need to eat something, Ernt.”

“I can’t eat this shit.” He swept his plate sideways, sending it crashing to the floor.

He shot up, strode away from the table, moving fast, grabbed his parka off of the wall hook, and wrenched the door open. “No g-damn peace,” he said, leaving the cabin, slamming the door behind him. Moments later, they heard the bus start up, spin out, drive away.

Leni looked across the table.

“Eat,” Mama said, and bent down for the fallen plate and glass.

After dinner, they stood side by side, washing and drying the dishes, putting them away on the shelves above the counter.

“You want to play Yahtzee?” Leni finally asked. Her question held as much enthusiasm as her mother’s sad nod.

They sat at the card table, playing the game for as long as either could stand the pretense.

Leni knew they were both waiting to hear the VW rumble back into the yard. Worrying. Wondering which was worse: him being here or him being gone.

“Where is he, you think?” Leni asked after what seemed like hours.

“Mad Earl’s, if he could get up there. Or the Kicking Moose, if the roads were too bad.”

“Drinking,” Leni said.

“Drinking.”

“Maybe we should—”

“Don’t,” Mama said. “Just go to bed, okay?” She sat back, lit up one of her precious last cigarettes.

Leni gathered up the dice and scorecards and the little brown and yellow fake-leather shaker, and fit them all back into the red box.

She climbed up the loft ladder and crawled into her sleeping bag without even bothering to brush her teeth. Downstairs, she heard her mother pacing.

Leni rolled over for her paper and a pen. Since Matthew had been gone, she’d written him several letters, which Large Marge mailed for her. Matthew wrote back religiously, short notes about his new hockey team and how it felt to be in a school that actually had sports teams. His handwriting was so bad she could barely decipher it. She waited impatiently for each letter and ripped them open immediately. She read each one over and over, like a detective, looking for clues and hints of emotion. Neither she nor Matthew knew quite what to say, how to use something as impersonal as words to create a bridge between their disparate lives, but they kept writing. She didn’t yet know how he felt about himself or the move or the loss of his mother, but she knew that he was thinking about her. That was more than enough to begin with.

Dear Matthew,

Today we learned more about the Klondike Gold Rush in school. Ms. Rhodes actually mentioned your grandma as an example of the kind of woman who set out North with nothing and found—

She heard a scream.

Leni scrambled out of her sleeping bag and half slid down the ladder.

“There’s something out there,” Mama said, coming out of her bedroom, holding up a lantern. In its glow, she looked wild, pale.

A wolf howled. The wail undulated through the darkness.

Close.

Another wolf answered.

The goats screamed in response, a terrible keening cry that sounded human.

Leni grabbed the rifle from the rack and went to open the door.

“No!” Mama yelled, yanking her back. “We can’t go out there. They could attack us.”

They shoved the curtains aside and opened the window. Cold blasted them.

A sliver of moonlight shone down on the yard, weak and insubstantial but enough to show them glimmers of movement. Light on silver fur, yellow eyes, fangs. Wolves moving in a pack toward the goat pen.

“Get out of here!” Leni yelled. She pointed her rifle and aimed at something, movement, and fired.

The gunshot was a crack of sound. A wolf yelped, whined.

She shot again and again, heard the bullets thwack into trees, ping on metal.

The screaming and bleating of the goats went on and on.

QUIET.

Leni opened her eyes and found that she was sprawled on the sofa, with Mama beside her.

The fire had gone out.

Shivering, Leni pushed back the pile of woolen and fur blankets and restarted the fire.

“Mama, wake up,” Leni said. They were both wearing layers of clothing, but when they’d finally fallen asleep, they’d been so exhausted they’d forgotten the fire. “We have to check outside.”

Mama sat up. “We’ll go out when there’s light.”

Leni looked at the clock. Six A.M.

Hours later, when dawn finally shed its slow, tentative light across the land, Leni stepped into her white bunny boots and pulled the rifle down from the gun rack by the door, loading it. The closing of the chamber was a loud crack of sound.

“I don’t want to go out there,” Mama said. “And no. You’re not going alone, Annie Oakley.” With a wan smile, she pulled on her boots and put on her parka, flipping the fur-lined hood up. She loaded up a second rifle and stood beside Leni.

Leni opened the door, stepped out onto the snow-covered deck, holding the rifle in front of her.

The world was white on white. Snow falling. Muffled. No sounds.

They moved across the deck, down the steps.

Leni smelled death before she saw it.

Blood streaked the snow by the ruined goat pen. Stanchions and gates had been torn apart, lay broken. There were feces everywhere, in dark piles, mingled with blood and gore and entrails. Trails of gore led into the woods.

Wrecked. All of it. The pens, the chicken yard, the coop. Every animal gone, not even pieces left.

They stared at the destruction until Mama said, “We can’t stay out here. The scent of blood will draw predators.”