There was a long moment. No one moved or spoke. Then, slowly, the Harlans began to walk away.
Dad looked around, saw how easily they’d culled him from the herd.
Leni watched their friends and neighbors get into their vehicles and drive away, boats thumping along behind them on trailers or in pickup beds. Matthew gave Leni a long, sad look and finally turned away.
When they were alone, just the three of them, Leni glanced at Mama, who looked as worried and scared as Leni felt. Neither had any doubt: this would push him over the edge.
Dad stood still, eyes blazing with hatred, staring down the empty road.
“Ernt,” Mama said.
“Shut up,” he hissed. “I’m thinking.”
After that and all the way home, he said nothing, which should have been better than yelling, but it wasn’t. Yelling was like a bomb in the corner: you saw it, watched the fuse burn, and you knew when it would explode and you needed to run for cover. Not speaking was a killer somewhere in your house with a gun when you were sleeping.
Inside the cabin, he paced and paced. He muttered to himself, shook his head as if he were hearing something he didn’t like.
Leni and Mama stayed out of his way.
At suppertime, Mama put some leftover moose stew on the stove to heat up, but the rich aroma did nothing to ease the tension.
When Mama put dinner on the table, Dad stopped suddenly, looked up; the light in his eyes was scary. Muttering something about ingratitude and bitches with bad attitudes and pricks who thought they owned the world, he stormed out of the house.
“We should lock him out,” Leni said.
“And let him break a window or tear a wall away to get in?”
Outside, they heard a chain saw whir to life.
“We could run away,” Leni said.
Mama gave her a wan smile. “Sure. Yeah. He won’t come after us.”
They knew, both of them, that Leni might (might) be able to get away and have a life. Not Mama. He would track her down wherever she went.
They ate dinner in silence, each watching the door carefully, listening for an early warning sign of trouble.
Then the door cracked open against the wall. Dad stood there, crazy-eyed, hair covered in sawdust, holding a hatchet.
Mama lurched to her feet, backed away. He swept in, muttering, yanked Mama into him, drew her outside, and dragged her down the driveway. Leni ran behind them. She heard Mama talking to him in that soothing voice of hers.
He pulled Mama toward a pair of skinned logs that created a giant barricade at the end of their driveway.
“I can build a wall. Put spikes on the top, maybe razor wire. Keep us safe inside. We don’t need the g-damn compound. Screw the Harlans.”
“B-but Ernt … we can’t live—”
“Think of it,” he said, pulling her close, a hatchet hanging from one hand. “Nothing to fear from the outside world anymore. We will be safe inside. Just us. That son of a bitch can turn Kaneq into Detroit and we won’t care. I’ll protect you, Cora. From all of them. That’s how much I love you.”
Leni stared in horror at the logs, imagining it: this thumbprint piece of land walled off at the joint, cut off from the bit of civilization that would now be Out There.
There was no one who would stop her dad from building a wall or shutting them away, no police who would protect them or come in an emergency.
And once he finished it, bolted the gate shut, would Leni—or Mama—ever get out?
Leni glanced at her parents: two thin figures, angled together, touching with lips and fingers, murmuring about love, Mama trying to keep him calm, Dad trying to keep her close. They would always be the way they’d been, nothing would ever change.
In the naïveté of youth, her parents had seemed like towering presences, omnipotent and all-knowing. But they weren’t that; they were just two broken people.