My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850) (30 page)

We followed the directions he gave us, winding our way, Trusty by Will’s side, along the tidy gravel paths. Mr. Litchfield kept his cemetery neat and orderly, just like his house.

Then we found the headstones—Mama’s, and Harold Litchfield’s, and Maureen Litchfield’s. Will and I studied them quietly in the cold wind barreling across the fields and cemetery. I’d like to say I felt something strong—sadness, anger, something—when I stared at Mama’s headstone, reading over and over the simple epitaph: “Rita Litchfield, 1915–1949, Rest in Peace.” Had she found peace? Had the wreck been an accident…or on purpose? Had she killed herself, and her new husband, because she couldn’t stand the thought of being tied, again, to a family? Why was she so restless, so sad?

There were some questions I’d never quite find the
answers to. I suppose that I should have felt frustrated, at least.

But all I felt was nothing, except cold in the howling wind.

“I think Mr. Litchfield blames himself,” Will said. “But he shouldn’t. I don’t think his wife is right, that it’s his fault they died.”

I pulled him to me, wanting to protect him from the sharp wind. “I think…sometimes, people just do what they think they have to do. And Mama was unhappy with us, but it sounds like she was just as unhappy without us. And that misery had nothing to do with us. We didn’t cause it, and we couldn’t fix it. It was just…hers.”

As soon as I said that, I felt something after all, staring at her grave. Relief. And release. At last, I could let Mama go. I didn’t need to understand everything about her. I just needed to understand that her choices weren’t, in the end, about me, or Will, or even Daddy.

“Do you think we should tell Mr. Litchfield that?”

“I think he’s starting to understand that, and that’s why he told us everything he did.”

Will frowned. “But I don’t understand why his sister-in-law would just send us out here, to remind him. Do you think she blames him, too?”

I shook my head. “No. I think she wanted him to see that the children his son’s wife left behind turned out OK anyway.”

“We did?” Will said. “Well, maybe I did, but you can be pretty annoying sometimes.”

Even standing at Mama’s grave, my little brother made
me laugh. For a long time after that, we stood quietly, hugging each other in the harsh Montana wind.

Finally, we made our way back to Mama’s car—no,
my
car now—and our camper. There was a note under the car’s windshield wiper from Mr. Litchfield: He was cooking dinner, which we were welcome to share with him, and we could also camp there for the night, if we wanted to.

W
ill and I took Mr. Litchfield up on his offer.

Mr. Litchfield made bologna and cheese sandwiches, and pork and beans on his wood-fired stove. The kitchen just had one small table and two chairs, so we ate the sandwiches and beans in the parlor, balancing our plates on our laps. The room was lit by the fire and a kerosene lamp on a side table next to Mr. Litchfield’s easy chair.

After dinner, I washed up the bowls and stew pot in the kitchen, and when I came back out to the parlor, Trusty was settled in front of the fire again, and Will finally showed Mr. Litchfield his deed and said that we were on a trip to see his land, and taking Trusty with us, because Trusty really belonged in Alaska. He talked about how he wasn’t sure how Trusty had ended up in Groverton, and about how we’d rescued him from a mean scrapyard owner, and how Trusty didn’t bark but made a good watchdog anyway. He didn’t say anything about being sick or how we had left in the middle of the night.

Mr. Litchfield hung on to every word Will said, even as he got a length of wood from his back porch and a whittling
knife from his pocket and started working the wood. I wondered what he was making.
He’s lonely,
I thought, watching him whittle as Will talked. Then Mr. Litchfield put his whittling aside and the two of them pored over the deed and atlas in detail. Finally, Mr. Litchfield stood up stiffly from his chair and lit another kerosene lamp sitting on a quilt chest.

“Will, all this talk of this trip of yours has made me hungry again,” he said. “Would you go slice us up some of Jean’s pie? Rattle around in the kitchen and it won’t take you long to find plates and such. And get a few more slices of bologna from the icebox for Trusty, here. There’s milk in the icebox if you want it.”

Will looked at me and I gave him a little nod. He put his deed and the atlas on the quilt chest, next to the kerosene lamp, and headed back to the kitchen.

Mr. Litchfield picked up the deed, stared at it, running his thumbs over it. “That’s quite a sense of adventure the two of you have,” he said. “Makes me long for my younger days—but I’m content, I reckon, to live out what’s left here. Maureen and I had a lot of good years here—and some tough ones, too.”

He put the deed back down on the quilt chest and gave me a hard look. “Is Will strong enough to finish the trip?”

I shifted uncomfortably in my chair. “Of course.”

“He’s sick. I can tell. I’ve gone to see plenty of sick folk, to make arrangements before they die, and I’ve learned to recognize the look, even in a young one’s eyes. I’ve been the undertaker for Shelby for near on four decades.” He pointed his pipestem at Trusty, who hadn’t followed Will to the kitchen, but who had perked up and was on alert for his
return. “Some animals, particularly dogs, can sense it, too. It’s almost like they smell it in a person. If they like the person, they’ll get very loyal and protective.”

That sounded crazy, I thought, the idea of Trusty sniffing cancer in Will. But then I thought of MayJune and her crazy homespun remedies and way of seeming to know when we were coming, or when we’d need something—like a camper.

I blinked back the sudden moisture in my eyes and said quietly, “Yes, Will is sick. Lymphoblastic leukemia. He’s on medicine that’s maintaining him for now, but in a few months…well. That’s why we’re on this trip.” I blinked again, but it was too late. The tears rolled down my cheeks anyway.

Mr. Litchfield nodded. “It’s good,” he said. “Good you’re on this trip.” He paused. “Good you came by.”

At that moment, Will came in, three plates of pie and a glass of milk and bologna on a tray. He distributed the food, Trusty gobbling his bologna quickly. Mr. Litchfield and Will dug into their pie, and Mr. Litchfield said, “Mmmm-mmm. That Jean’s a nag, but she can bake.”

I was full, but I took a bite of the pie anyway, just to be polite, and before I knew it, I’d eaten the whole slice. Mr. Litchfield was right. His sister-in-law could bake a wonderful pie. As good as Grandma’s.

That night, Will and I slept in the camper in Mr. Litchfield’s front yard. Trusty was still wary about the camper, so he slept up on the porch. I was worried he’d be too cold, but Will told me I was being silly, that after all, the dog was a
husky
.

For a long time, I lay awake, cuddled down under my
blanket, listening to the soft, even rhythms of Will’s breathing. I thought about everything we’d learned, everything Mr. Litchfield had said, and finally I decided that he was right—it was good we were on this trip. It was good we’d come by to see him.

Then, at last, I fell into a long, deep, dreamless sleep.

When we woke up the next morning and crawled out of our camper’s tiny sleeping area, we saw that the red rickety truck was gone. But Mr. Litchfield had popped open the back hatch of the camper, where there was a small workbench and above that built-in cabinets.

He had left a paper sack on the workbench. We opened it and sorted through the contents: bologna, cheese and bread, two slices of the apple pie wrapped in wax paper, and two maps, of Glacier Park and British Columbia. There was also a tiny wooden figure, a likeness of Trusty.

There was a note, too:
These maps are from my and Maureen’s honeymoon, so they’re old, but they have some more detailed roads than your atlas. If you can make it to Dawson Creek, you should be able to take the Alaska Highway up to Tok. The carving of Trusty is my thank-you for listening to an old man. Good
Luck. Noah Litchfield.

“The maps are good,” Will said, closing his hand carefully over the wooden figure of Trusty and putting it in his pocket. “The atlas just shows the main roads in Canada.”

Disappointed that Mr. Litchfield had taken off that morning before we awoke, I looked to the place his truck had been parked. “He must have had some errand or appointment in town….”

“Nah,” Will said. “Lots of folks just don’t like saying good-bye.”

Like Mama. And Mr. Cahill and Jimmy…

Will grabbed a slice of bologna to take to Trusty, who was stretching himself awake on Mr. Litchfield’s porch. A little later, on the morning of October 28, we set off. It took us just a few hours to get to Glacier National Park, and we spent the day there, exploring as much as we could before nightfall, driving along Going-to-the-Sun Road, stopping at St. Mary Lake, Logan Pass, and Lake McDonald Valley. We didn’t talk much, just stared at the lakes and majestic mountains and forests and fields as if we had been starving for these sights our whole lives and couldn’t take in enough fast enough. Will wanted to see a bear. We didn’t, but he seemed just as pleased by seeing elk and deer and fox, and a bald eagle swooping down from the sky to land at the top of a soaring pine tree.

Part of me wished we could stay there forever, making time stop.

But inevitably, dusk fell, and I hurried us to our car. At the back of the camper, I made bologna and cheese sandwiches for us to eat while I drove. There was one slice of bologna left.

“Go on,” Will said. “Give it to Trusty.”

My heart was pounding as I walked up to him. He stared at me warily. I held out the bologna, bracing myself for Trusty to jump me as he had in our basement, to snap up my fingers along with the bologna. But he gently took the bologna between his teeth and gave the slightest tug. I let go, and he ate it.

That day, after studying Mr. Litchfield’s maps, we decided to abandon our plan to go over the mountains through Calgary and instead mapped out a more direct route on smaller
roads. So we drove west out of Montana across the tip of Idaho into British Columbia and stopped at Kootenay Bay, where the ferry was closed for the night, so we spent the night in the camper alongside the road. The wind and rain rocked the camper, so Trusty crawled in with us, falling asleep between us.

The next morning, we crossed on the ferry. I noted the signs saying the ferry closed after October 31. It was October 29. I figured we needed at least another four days to get to Tok, another day or two at best to find that square inch. How would we get back? I pushed that worry from my mind. I’d figure that out later.

That night, we pulled off to the side of the road and made a small fire. I heated vegetable soup for supper. When I started the car back up, Will frowned. “Aren’t we spending the night in the camper?”

“I feel fine. How about you nap, and I’ll just drive?”

He looked wary, but didn’t argue. I took one of the Dexamyl, washing it down with strong coffee. Soon Will was sleeping in the front seat. Trusty was relaxed in the back, apparently no longer thinking he needed to keep a vigil over Will. I drove, drove, drove, the car lights picking out the road.

The darkness seemed perpetual. I popped the Dexamyl, snatching a few hours’ sleep here and there. I vaguely remember at some point asking Will why it was so dark all the time if we were heading toward the land of the midnight sun, and him rolling his eyes and pointing out that midnight sun happened in the summer, and above the arctic circle—and that we were traveling in late fall. I remember thinking how smart my brother was. I remember,
vaguely, a surge of joy at making it at last, on November 1, to Dawson Creek, and cheering in the town’s center at the 0-mile marker for the Alaska Highway.

“We’re almost there,” Will said, grinning. “All we have to do is stick to the Alaska Highway now!”

We had 850 more miles to go.

Sometime later, I startled awake. I could barely see for the snow swirling down in the night, but I felt our car going too fast, swerving, and I was screaming something. The headlights picked out the edge of the road. We were on a curve around the side of a mountain, but I had us heading off an embankment. I swerved, jerking our car back to the right side of the road, but hit something—maybe a rock tumbled down from the mountain, or a chunk of ice. After the thud, the front driver’s side tire blew. We started careening again on the slick road. Somewhere in the midst of this, I slammed on the brakes. A few seconds later, our car came to a stop.

I sat for a second, shaking all over except in my hands, which were clenched around the steering wheel so hard that they felt fused to the plastic.

I looked over at Will. He was staring, wide-eyed, at me. “That…that cougar…I don’t think you hit it.”

I nervously pulled my hands away from the steering wheel. “What are you talking about? I hit a rock or chunk of something, Will. Your imagination—”

He looked at me disbelievingly. “You don’t remember swerving around that cougar in the road? Just seconds ago?”

I put my head to my shaking hands. My head was pounding and my heart racing. My hands were sweaty. The
Dexamyl had kept me awake so that I could drive for hours at a time, but now my body was taking over, demanding sleep in spite of the drug, and I knew I must have fallen asleep while driving. I didn’t remember seeing a cougar, but in my glazed-over state I must have, and reacted instinctively. In fact, the last I distinctly remembered, it was twilight, not night. And it was clear, not snowing.

“Where are we?” I asked quietly.

“We passed through Whitehorse a little while ago.”

“Show me the map,” I said.

Will turned on the flashlight and focused it on the map, already spread out over his lap. It looked like we were about twenty miles out.

“We passed a roadhouse, a little ways back,” he said. “We could walk back there—”

“With a possible injured cougar on the prowl?”

“I think you just clipped it. If you hit it at all.”