My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (26 page)

“Now, honey, your tea is just ginger root. Good for soothing the stomach. And for energy.” She lifted her sparse eyebrows at me. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”

I sipped my tea and then said, “I don’t suppose you have a tea or poultice or broth for Will that will make him…better?”

For the first time since I’d met her, MayJune looked truly sad, her face and mouth drooping. “Honey child, I wish I did.” She shook her head. “I wish I did.”

I stared down into the amber liquid in my cup, focusing on the scent and feel of the steam, forcing my tears to retreat, to seep back in deep down with all the hurt I was holding back. If I was going to do what I planned to do, I had to be steely and not let that hurt out, not while Will was still here on this earth, needing me.

And then I looked up at MayJune, and told her my plan.

She didn’t show any surprise or judgment as I told her that I’d been honest with Will about his approaching death, or that I’d promised to take us to Alaska. She just nodded like it made perfect sense. When I finished talking, she said, “Well, you know, tonight your daddy and Miss Bettina are away, helping with that terrible fire. Who knows how long they’ll be?”

I stared into my now empty mug and turned this over in my mind, understanding what MayJune was suggesting. What better time than tonight, while everyone was distracted?

“Lenny’s still up,” MayJune said softly. “He could hook up that teardrop trailer to your mama’s car right fast, while I get together some teas and herbs for you and Will and Trusty.”

I looked up at MayJune.

And then I nodded.

Back at our house, Will and I worked quickly, assembling what we needed on the back porch.

Our blankets from our beds would go in the trunk, but first, we spread them out on the back porch and yard, so we could drop other items on top, to be bundled up and dragged to our car through our yard and the neighbor’s behind us. (I’d parked on Maple, not wanting our nearby neighbors who might not be at the plant to see a trailer hitched to Mama’s car.)

Our winter coats and hats and gloves from the front closet, even though they hadn’t been aired out for the season and would smell like mothballs.

From the kitchen, two each—plates, spoons, cups, knives, forks. A saucepan and a frying pan, a spatula and a wooden spoon, and a box of kitchen matches. Bread, crackers, peanut butter.

From the basement fallout shelter, jars of home-canned peaches, apples, strawberry jam. Jars of green beans (including one jar of Miss Bettina’s pickled beans), corn, carrots, tomatoes, beets, potatoes, and vegetable soup made from a little of all the leftover vegetables whenever there wasn’t enough of any one type to fill a quart jar.

All the foodstuffs would go in the trailer.

All of Will’s medicines in a pillowcase on the passenger’s side floor.

Will’s Sterry Oil United States and Canada road atlas, the one he’d gotten from Jimmy and had already marked with two possible routes to Tok, Alaska—that would go in the glove compartment.

And from the basement, we got the empty suitcases that had once been filled with Mama’s old costumes and clothes—one for each of us. I told Will to pack two pants, two shirts, a spare pair of shoes, one pair of pj’s, his toothbrush, and as many pairs of socks and underwear as he could fit in.

Small choices
, I thought as I quickly started packing my suitcase. All that time I’d been slowly taking Mama’s clothes to remake for myself, I hadn’t known that I was emptying the suitcases so that we could fill them again for this adventure.

It all seemed so easy in the minutes I spent filling my suitcase with a skirt and peg-leg jeans and two blouses and pajamas—as if all the difficult events of the past months had happened so that in that moment we’d have everything we needed: the trailer from MayJune, the car and suitcases from
Mama, extra food for the taking from Daddy’s bomb shelter, even the atlas from Jimmy. As if the trip was meant to be.

I sent a quick prayer up to God—in case he was listening on that warm, Indian summer night—that the trip would be as easy as our hasty packing. Then I hurried over to my dresser and opened my lingerie drawer. I pulled out several bras and undergarments, and then reached to the bottom for the envelope that held the money I’d been saving to go to New York to become a seamstress.

I’d like to say that I felt no reluctance about getting out that money, knowing it would be gone by the time we got back from Alaska, but I’d be lying. My heart clenched, knowing how hard I’d worked to save it.

As I pulled the bills out, my fingers brushed the letter Mr. Cahill had sent the week before. On impulse, I decided that I’d take the letter with me. I put half the money on one side and half on the other, telling myself that the letter was just a handy divider, that I’d take money from the front of the envelope on the way to Alaska, and that way I’d know we’d have enough for the return trip.

I hesitated just a moment, studying my other hidden items—Jimmy’s Blue Waltz Sachet and the bottle of Dexamyl from Babs. I left the sachet but took the Dexamyl, deciding that if I used them carefully—maybe just taking half pills—they’d help me stay awake for long stretches of driving. I put the money envelope and the pills in my purse, dropped the lingerie in my suitcase, and then shut the suitcase.

I was about to leave my room when I thought that we should leave a note for Daddy. I picked up my sketchbook from the top of my dresser, and on a page in the back,
scribbled a hasty note:
Daddy—Will and I are fine. I just needed to get him away from all the hullabaloo over him getting his deed. I have his medicines. We will call soon.

I hesitated. I’d never written a note to my daddy before. I wondered if I should sign it “Love, Donna,” but then thought that that didn’t really fit how we were with each other, even with our new, careful peace. So I signed it “Sincerely, Donna.”

I felt a little pang as I pulled out the note and started to put my sketchbook back on my dresser, so I opened my suitcase and tossed in the sketchbook and my pencils.

Then I picked up my suitcase and the note and stepped out of my room. Will’s room was quiet and dark. He and Trusty were, I knew, waiting for me at the kitchen door.

I went down the stairs, through the living room, and to Daddy’s bedroom. I put my suitcase on the floor. In one hand I held the note I’d just written. My other hand shook as I took hold of the doorknob. My heart pounded. I had vague memories of being in that room, with Mama, while she sang and stared into the mirror and brushed her hair, but I hadn’t been in there since she’d died—if not literally, then to us—not even to clean.

A memory, flimsy and unprovable as a ghost, flitted across my mind’s eye, of watching Mama apply makeup over and over, because she kept crying and ruining it, then wiping it off, while her handkerchiefs piled up on my parents’ bedroom floor beside me like little drifts of sullied snow.

I turned the knob, and returned to the present with a switch of a floor lamp. The bed was neatly made with a chenille bedspread. Daddy’s work clothes were thrown over the back of a small chair. His dresser top was empty.

I started to leave my note there, but then I saw, in the
corner opposite the chair, Mama’s dressing table, undisturbed after all this time.

I drifted over to it and stared down at the photos clustered around a small glass tray covered with perfume bottles, their bottoms stained dark with dried fragrance. Still, the air in this corner of the room was heavy with familiar scents—tea rose, jasmine. Mama.

All the photos were of her.

All from before Will and I were born. Photos of Mama singing in the Tangy Town club where she and Daddy had first met. Mama in the outfits I’d cut up. Mama in her wedding dress—not Mama with Daddy—just Mama, with a careful, composed smile, perfectly beautiful in the dress I’d cut up and remade into the dress I was wearing. I picked up the photo, the note dropping from my other hand, my fingers then wandering to the lace on my shoulder….

In that instant, I stopped worrying or caring about what Daddy would do or think about us going away. I knelt, swept the note up in my hand, and crushed it in my fist. Then I put it in my purse. Somewhere en route to Alaska, I’d throw it away.

I still held the photo of Mama in her wedding dress. I should replace it, I knew, but in a cruel impulse, I added it to the contents of my suitcase. I shut the bedroom door. In the kitchen, Will and Trusty waited for me.

Will held his framed deed flat, like a platter, on top of which was a box.

“What’s that?” I asked.

He revealed the Alaska diorama that I’d crushed. He’d straightened it out as best he could. He shone a flashlight inside the diorama. “I added you!” he whispered.

I stepped forward, peered inside. There I was—a construction paper, glue, and toothpick version of me. Right by the toothpick flag from my first date with Jimmy.

“We don’t need…” I started to say that we didn’t have room in the car or camper for anything but necessities. Instead, I said, “Just carry it on your lap.”

Will grinned, and I opened the kitchen door. We stepped out on the back porch and stared at everything we’d assembled. It seemed overwhelming, but I took a deep breath and started, “First, we’ll get the suitcases out to the car, and then we’ll bundle everything else up in the two blankets and drag them to the car, except the food; that we’ll—”

Suddenly a figure stepped out from behind a sycamore tree. I grabbed Will and pulled him toward me. Trusty lunged, knocking the figure to the ground, standing on him.

“Get him off me,” Jimmy gasped.

I let go of Will and rushed over. Trusty looked up at me and bared his teeth.

“Trusty, come here, boy,” Will called quietly. “It’s OK.”

Trusty stepped off of Jimmy. The dog trotted over to Will but kept looking at Jimmy.

“Why’d he do that? He knows me,” Jimmy said.

“Because you jumped out of the shadows and seemed like a threat,” I snapped. “What are you doing here?”

“I couldn’t stand to go home after what happened at the news conference. I had no idea that Dad was going to use Will like that. I knew my presence wouldn’t be welcome at the mill, as much as I would like to help with the fire. So I drove around awhile and couldn’t stop thinking about you and Will. So I came over to check on you, and saw your car when I drove down Maple, and a trailer attached to it. I
figured you were up to something and wouldn’t come to the front door, so I decided to come to the back and…What are you up to?”

“Nothing,” I said.

He looked past me to the suitcases and blankets covered with food and coats on the porch. Then he looked back at me.

“We’re going to spend some time at MayJune’s, is all,” I said.

“Then why the trailer? And where did you get it?”

“It’s MayJune’s trailer. You know how tiny her house is.”

“We’re going to Alaska!” Will said. I groaned. He went on. “We’re leaving tonight, and we’re taking Trusty, and we’re going to see my land.” He sounded giddy at the prospect.

“I want to go with you,” Jimmy said.

My heart fell. “That’s…that’s not a good idea. Your parents…school…”

“What about your dad? And school for you?”

I thought about the photos—all of Mama—on the dresser in Daddy’s room. “Daddy won’t care,” I said. “Your parents will. And we have a reason for missing school anyway. You don’t.”

“Donna, I want to do this. I want to help you. I know I…I was too harsh to you about Mr. Cahill. It was just that…when I thought…when I saw that sketch—well, I should have talked to you, should have listened to you more, but I didn’t. I was an idiot. So I could make up for it now, by going with you. I could help drive and pay for gas. We’d get there sooner.”

I hesitated. I didn’t want Jimmy with us. I wanted this to be just my and Will’s trip.

On the other hand, Jimmy made a good case. Plus he knew we were going. I wasn’t sure I could trust him not to tell anyone.

“You don’t have anything packed,” I said.

“I can buy a few clothes somewhere along the way,” he said.

Suddenly, the light inside the kitchen of the house behind us went on. I held my breath and thought,
Please don’t come outside
. After a minute or so, the light went out.

As I slowly exhaled, Jimmy said, “I can help you get all this to your car.”

“What about your car?” I asked, still reluctant to let him come with us.

“Follow me to my house and wait on the corner. I’ll park my car where I usually do and then come back to your car. Deal?”

“Sure,” I said. After all, we could use his help in quickly packing Mama’s car and the camper. I wasn’t sure, though, if I’d wait for him at the corner down from his house, or drive off without him.

I
didn’t drive off without Jimmy.

I waited for him at the corner, just as he’d asked, studying the route in the atlas Will had marked out. By the time Jimmy got to my car, Will and Trusty were curled up, asleep, in the back, Will clutching his framed deed like it was a teddy bear, the diorama on the backseat floor. I’d kept out the blankets after we’d gotten everything loaded into the camper and car. One blanket was folded beneath Will’s head like a pillow, the other covering him up, Trusty covering his legs and feet.

Jimmy got in the car and we didn’t say anything. Late on the night of October 22, I just started driving to Alaska, heading out of town on State Route 35, as if we were going to Miami Valley Hospital in Dayton.

As I drove through Dayton and continued on 35, my heart pounded so hard that I could barely breathe as we crossed into Indiana. This was the farthest Will and I had ever been from home and the first time we’d been out of Ohio.

As we passed through Richmond and then Muncie, the road seemed less and less like a thread tying us back to
Groverton, until finally it was simply a road. What lay behind us suddenly didn’t matter, just the next mile and the next and the next.

I drove until 35 intersected with U.S. Route 30 and then, just as Will had marked out in the atlas, I headed west. By then we were relaxed, making quiet comments every now and then about some small hamlet we’d pass by, or a farmhouse with lights still on. In Joliet, Illinois, south of Chicago, we found an open gas station—a great relief, since the gas indicator showed we only had an eighth of a tank left. Will stirred awake while the attendant filled the car. Jimmy took him to the men’s room and I studied the map of Illinois, mostly to distract myself from Trusty, who was standing up, his ears perked forward as if he were on full alert, staring after Will, even though Will had told him to stay.