Heroes of the Frontier (29 page)

“Woody Guthrie,” he said, standing still, holding his guitar case.

“This will sound strange,” she said to him, “given I don't know anything about music, but for a while I've had some music in my head, and ever since I heard you guys playing, I've wondered if you could help me.”

“You have music in your head?”

She gave him an imploring look that said
Please don't mock
.

“No, no,” he said. “I get it. You need a composer?”

Josie didn't know if it was composing or something else she had in mind. “I don't know,” she said. “I think if you play some chords, I would know which ones were the sounds in my head, and we could go about it that way.”

“Hm,” he said, staring at the grass, a private smile overtaking his face. Josie knew he was thinking this was some excuse to get him in bed. She needed to keep this linear, and this required a lie.

“We're up here for a few weeks while my husband is in Japan on business,” she said, happy her children were not near, hearing this canard. “But when I saw you guys playing, I had this thought. I could compensate you guys. I couldn't help noticing that dental care might be welcomed among some of your band. I'm a dentist.”

Cooper rubbed the stubble on his cheek. “So, lessons in exchange for dental care?” he said. He seemed to find this a perfectly rational transaction.

“Not exactly lessons,” Josie said, and explained that she wanted him to play, and she could listen, and when she heard something she liked, she might tell him to play it more, and faster or slower. She would know what she wanted to hear once she heard it. That she had no musical aptitude, but she knew music, or had heard it, and had composed countless tunes in her mind, or had thought of them at least, flashes here and there, but couldn't articulate the music in her head, or write music on paper, or even know which instruments made which sounds.

Cooper nodded slowly, taking it all in.

“Makes sense,” he said.

“Where were you?” Paul wanted to know.

“Over there,” she said. “Just near the trees.”

For some reason she didn't want to explain the hootenanny circle to him just yet, though she couldn't figure out why. Paul, being all-knowing, knew she was withholding, made this clear with his searching and disappointed eyes, but he didn't press it.

“We're hungry,” he said.

They walked through town, looking for a grocery store, expecting to find a small market, but instead, at the end of the main road, there was an enormous store, big enough to fit everyone in town. And in front, next to the entrance, was an incomprehensible thing: a pay phone. “Come,” Josie said, gathering coins. They set up in front of the booth, Paul and Ana and Follow, watching the locals come and go into the store, restocking their barbecues and picnics. Josie's stomach leapt. She had been living for weeks utterly removed from her Ohio life, from Carl, Florida, lawsuits, possible police pursuit.

“Ready?” she asked her children.

“For what?” Paul asked.

“Nothing,” Josie said, realizing she was asking herself, and knowing the answer was
God, no
. She dialed the number without thinking. A distant tinny ring came through the line.

“Hello?” Sunny's chandelier voice.

“Sunny, it's me,” Josie said, and looked down to Ana, whose eyes opened wide. Josie's eyes filled.

“Oh Josie honey,” Sunny said, “where are you now? I talked to Sam. She said you left without saying goodbye.”

Josie pictured Sunny in her house, the same house, sitting in her dining room, where she liked to take phone calls as she watched hummingbirds alight on the feeder she'd installed.

Josie did a messy job of describing something of their trip since seeing Sam. It seemed years since they were in Homer.

“I always wanted to go up there,” Sunny said. “Too old now.”

“Shush,” Josie said.

“Carl called,” Sunny said, and seemed to be waiting for some expression of shock, but Josie couldn't breathe or muster words. Given Sunny's age, Josie wondered: Could she have given Josie's location away?

“What'd you tell him?” Josie asked.

“Oh, I didn't answer. I didn't call back. Should I?”

“No, no. Please don't. I'll call him.”

Ana was reaching for the phone, and Josie relinquished it. “Hi,” she said. “This is Ana.” For a minute Ana held the phone close to her face, nodding occasionally. She tended to forget the listener couldn't see her, and thought facial signals would suffice. Losing interest, she handed the phone back to Josie.

“Josie,” Sunny said. Her voice had dropped an octave. “Did you know she died?”

“Who died?”

“Evelyn Sandalwood.”

Josie did not know.

“It was just five days ago,” Sunny said. “She was undergoing some procedure related to the cancer.”

Josie said nothing.

“You didn't know—oh god, that's what I figured. Josie?”

“I'm fine,” she said, but heard a hoarse tremble in her voice.

“Helen took the liberty of calling your attorney. Apparently nothing's changed. But you probably could have assumed that.”

Josie had no idea what to say. She looked around her, to the tops of her children's heads. Ana was stroking Follow's tail, while Paul was watching one of the parade floats, now disassembled, drive home.

“All that struggle, it meant nothing,” Sunny said. “She gets nothing from it all. She's dead. You get nothing. It's senseless. But Josie.”

“Yes?” Josie said.

“They did not defeat you.”

Josie knew this. “I know,” she said, then felt a surge of strength. What she was feeling was not defeat, but triumph. She was thinking: Evelyn, I flew north of your rage. She thought of Evelyn's son-in-law, the lawyers, all their devious eyes, and she thought,
I flew north of your anger. I flew away and felt none of it. I was gone. I am gone.

“You've had plenty of reasons to doubt,” Sunny said.

But Josie did not feel doubtful. She felt invincible. She felt like continuing. She needed nothing she did not have there with her. She had Sunny's voice, she had Ana, she had Paul. She told Sunny that she loved her, that she would call again soon, but she wasn't sure when that would be. She had planned to call Carl, too, but now she felt that could wait. Enough news from home for today.

“Gotta leave him outside,” the checkout woman said. She'd seen the kids and Follow all this time, and when they tried to enter with the dog, the woman was ready.

“It's a she,” Ana told her, but the woman did not care.

They tied Follow to a pole outside. “We'll be quick,” Paul told Follow, who was dancing around in a way that implied they would return to find that she'd peed or defecated on the sidewalk. Josie made a mental note to buy plastic bags.

“Bright,” Ana said, and the three of them spent a full minute standing in the doorway, the store seeming an acre wide, two dozen rows of food stocked seven feet high. It had only been a few weeks since they'd been in a store like this, but it seemed like years. The customers were the same people she'd seen at the parade and the park, denim and baseball hats, but now Josie felt foreign among them. Under these lights, amid all this abundance, everything so clean, the antiseptic floors and blue-white lights, she was uncomfortable.

“Can we use the real bathroom?” Paul asked.

“If you can find it,” Josie said, and Ana went with him.

Josie grabbed a cart and went about quickly loading into it everything they needed—rice, beans, cans of soup and corn. Evelyn Sandalwood was dead. She thought of the funeral, all that anger. Sunny had sounded so old. What was she now? Seventy-five. Seventy-six. Josie would need to see her soon. Oh god, she thought, thinking of Sunny older still, unable to care for herself. What would happen then? Some combination of all the young women she'd helped would come to her aid. Josie would need to see her. Josie would be there for her. Oh god, she thought. She missed Sunny desperately at that moment. She wanted to call her again, see her immediately. But then her mind reversed itself, insisting that she needed to keep moving. That she was healthier here, that she and her children were growing far beyond what she could have imagined a month ago. Did that mean they could never return to their former lives? No decisions were necessary now, she knew. Right now they would get food, and would return to the cabin, and then what?

Paul and Ana emerged from the bathroom. They filled the cart with bread, canned juice, regular milk, powdered milk, cereal, granola, vegetables, an array of meats, and brought it all to the woman who had barred Follow's entry.

“Can we go see her?” Paul asked.

“Stay on the sidewalk,” Josie said.

Before she was finished paying, though—$188, a crime, a travesty—they were back. “There's a lady there,” Paul said.

“Mean one,” Ana said.

Josie paid, left the bags inside and followed the kids outside. Standing over Follow, holding the dog's leash, was a large woman with black hair streaked in blue. “This is my dog,” she said.

“Excuse me?” Josie said.

“Where'd you take her from? Do I need to call the police?” The woman was wearing a puffy vest and jeans, and had already taken out her phone. Paul's eyes were wet. Seeing his state, Ana began to cry, the tears like tiny plastic jewels tumbling down her face.

Josie explained that Follow had been all the way over the ridge, in the mine, at least two miles from town, that the dog had been scared and desperate. “Your dog followed my children home,” she said. “We fed her and took care of her.”

“No one lives there,” the woman said, meaning the mine. “I think I need to call the sheriff.”

“We're house-sitting,” Josie said, already feeling the need to leave this conversation, this woman, her posture aggressive, her eyes wild with indignation. Paul and Ana were standing behind Josie now, hiding. Josie knew the dog was lost—the woman was clearly the owner—and the town was small, and this woman likely knew everyone in it. “We saved this dog,” Josie said. “My kids rescued her.”

The woman leaned back and crossed her arms, nodding and smiling, as if she'd heard this hustle before. It was all Josie could do not to say
You don't deserve this dog
or
Go to hell
but she knew they needed to get away, to evaporate. “Let's go,” she said, and hustled her weeping children back into the store, where they gathered their bags and went out the rear exit.

“It's okay,” Josie said as they walked to the trailhead, knowing it was not okay. Paul shuffled behind Josie and Ana, sighing, his shoulders collapsed. “She's got a good home,” Josie said over her shoulder, knowing that was not true, either. In an effort to cheer up her brother, Ana was walking with her hands down her pants.

“Hands in my pants!” she roared, and Paul rolled his eyes.

They were almost at the trailhead when Josie realized they couldn't go there, either. Not in the light of day. The chances were remote, but the woman who owned Follow might have reported that a woman with two children had found her dog there, might be squatting out there, were likely to steal other animals and care for them.

“Hold on,” she said, and looked around her. There was the RV park ahead, a woman working on a satellite dish installed on her roof. There was a seaplane flying low over a row of pines. And beyond the trees, there was the Yukon. “Let's go there. Picnic.”

They settled at the bend of the river, Ana finding a sharp stick and wetting its tip in the water. She brought the point to her nose.

“Smells clean,” she said.

They ate sullenly and watched an unmanned dinghy pass, taken downstream by the current. Josie thought of Evelyn, wanting to conjure some sadness for her death, but felt only the waste of it all, the misplaced rage, the inevitability of victims begetting victims.

“Getting darker,” Paul said, pointing to the leaking light.

“Let's hustle,” Josie said. She was carrying the groceries in six plastic bags, three dangling from each hand. Paul and Ana had pleaded to carry their share, but she knew they would relinquish them in minutes, so she balanced the weight and they walked swiftly.

“Too dark,” Ana said.

By the time they arrived, night had come on, and the RVs in the park were bathed in moonlight. It was a quarter-moon, tinged with orange and pink, and not bright enough to guide them.

“Sorry,” Josie said.

There was one store open nearby, a gas station they'd passed that looked to have a convenience store attached, so she brought the kids along the frontage road and under the bright lights and into the store. She had eight dollars left with her, and held out hope that the store would have some smaller model of light, the kind of thing attached to a keychain.

They had no such thing. She sent Paul all over the store to no avail. They had one flashlight for sale, a forty-five-dollar machine that seemed capable of signaling planes and ships.

“You have just a regular flashlight?” she asked the woman behind the counter.

“Sorry,” she said. “We have candles, though. You lose power?”

Apparently there had been some power outages related to the wildfires, and the store had had to stock up on candles. They'd sold out three times in the last month, the clerk explained. And so Josie left the gas station with a twelve-pack of candles, each with a tin rim to catch the wax, and a pack of matches. With these they would make their way through the forest and over the ridge and back to their cabin.

“We get our own?” Paul asked.

Josie was sure that the only way she could manage to get her children aboard for this task, walking through a black forest at nine o'clock with only candles to guide their way, would be to allow each of them to hold their own.