The religious sect had descended from a band of immigrants who’d broken off from the Russian Orthodox church during the Great Schism of the seventeenth century, and later, during the revolution, fled Russian persecution, immigrated to China, then Brazil, then Oregon, before this particular group feared society encroaching, influencing their children. They moved to the Kenai Peninsula in the early nineteen-sixties, beyond the end of the railroad line, past Caboose, then still called Herring Town, and staked their claim to hundreds of acres beyond the Winkels’ own vast acreage.
At first everyone pitied the Old Believers. A child died in a fire and a woman was badly scarred trying to save her daughter. “They’ll never make it through another winter,” locals predicted about the small group of long-bearded men and scarf-headed women. But then a baby girl was born, and the Believers saw the tiny new life as an encouragement from God. In the spring they began to fish and cut timber. They built wood houses, painted them bright colors—blue and green and orange, and more Believers came from Oregon. They built a domed church. Eventually they too divided over religious differences and the strictest of the group ventured deeper into the woods. But both groups lived separated from the rest of the world, exempt from laws other than their own rituals, unchanged since the seventeenth century, which they believed were from God. Back in the Seventies, Kache’s dad said they ignored a lot of the fishing laws, and when the fishermen had a slow year, they often blamed the Old Believers.
“They’re lowly.” Kache recalled Freida—his mom’s bridge partner—spitting the words across the kitchen table one night. His parents adamantly objected.
But his mom had her own concerns. “I just worry that they’re so steeped in religious tradition that they have no awareness of equal rights. I’ve heard they marry those poor little girls off when they’re thirteen.”
Freida’s husband, Roy, said, “I’ll tell you where I want equal rights. Out on that water, that’s where.”
His mom said, “I wonder if those young girls even have a prayer.”
“Bets,” Roy answered, “they pray all damn day.”
No way would an Old Believer woman step outside her village except to run an errand in town. Look at Gram’s afghan, those photographs, the magazines, back from 1985 and before. Even the Ranier Beer coasters. Nothing has changed. It’s like sitting in 1985 with a woman from 1685—if she even is an Old Believer. What if there’s poison in the tea? (He set down his cup.) If the tea doesn’t kill me, her husband is going to come in and shoot me.
Kache wanted to ask her many questions but the despair rose from his spinning mind, settled in his throat, and he was afraid that if he spoke too soon he too might succumb to tears. He’d fallen smack dab into that day when he’d sat in this living room, a little high, playing his guitar, tired from having done his chores and Denny’s as a way of apologizing, waiting for the three of them to drive up and pile in the door with stories of their weekend. His dad would be gruff at first. But once he’d seen that Kache had not only finished the chores, but cleaned the awful mess from the fight, repaired his bedroom door, even gone down to the beach and emptied the fishing net, all would be forgiven.
Jesus.
The dog stayed at her feet, watching Kache. A husky and something else, maybe a malamute … it didn’t have a husky’s icy blue eyes, but big brown loyal eyes.
“What’s your dog’s name?”
A long silence before she whispered, “Leo.” Leo’s ear went up and rotated toward her.
“Are you into astrology or literature?” he asked, mostly as a joke to himself.
But she surprised him and said. “Tolstoy. Almost I name him Anton.”
His mom would be proud. “You have good taste. So …” He smiled. “I guess we’ve established the fact that we’re not going to kill each other.” He picked up the tea and sniffed. “Although I’m not sure I trust your tea.”
She lowered her chin. “I would not poison.”
He tried a smile again that still went unmet. “Fair enough. I do have some questions.”
“Yes.” She placed her hands on the knees of her jeans—his old jeans, actually. He recognized the patch his mother had sewn on the right knee. Denny and he used to tease her because sometimes she sewed patches on their patches.
“How long have you been here?”
She studied her hands as though she’d just discovered them, let a moment pass before she held them out, fingers splayed.
“Ten days?”
She shook her head.
“Ten months?”
Again, no.
“Ten years?”
A nod.
“How old are you?”
“I am twenty-eight years old.” With this, her eyes filled again and she quickly wiped her face.
“Do you know my Aunt Snag?”
She shook her head.
“You came with your folks? Where’s your family?”
“I have none.”
“Who lives with you here?”
She shook her head, kept shaking it.
“But you haven’t been here by yourself. Tell me who else has been living in my house.”
Her hands went over her ears now.
Kache took a deep breath and lowered his voice. “I’m not angry. I’m confused.” She finally looked up, but not directly at him. “I don’t know who you are and who else might come barging through the door with a gun.”
“I am alone.”
“I’m wondering if you’re an Old Believer?”
She nodded again, one slow dip of her head.
“With an entire village? Big family? Ton of kids? But you’re not wearing a long dress.”
With this she stood, and the dog rose and followed her to the stairs.
“Wait. Nadia, please. I need some answers here.”
She turned, whispered, “I cannot.” She was tall, sturdy. She’d rolled up his jeans and cinched them with a belt. Her back faced him again, her gold drape of hair, which had been tied up the night before, reached past her waist. The Old Believer women he’d seen shopping in town always covered their hair with scarves.
He let her and the dog go upstairs. The door to his old room clicked shut.
No signs of anyone else other than his own family—and those signs flashed loudly everywhere he turned. He went through the house, amazed again and again by how much remained exactly the same. Most of his mother’s books filled the walls, as neat and full as rows of corn, although some books were upside down and others stood in small stacks here and there throughout the rooms. The photographs along the top of the piano, on the bureaus and hanging on the stairwell, each one dusted clean and placed as he remembered them. In the bathroom there were even Amway and Shaklee products. His mom had been such a supporter of Snag, his dad would complain that the products were taking over the household; stacked five rows deep in the barn, the pantry, the cupboards. Enough, apparently, to last at least twenty years.
He turned on the faucet. Pipes seemed to be in working order. In the pantry, garden vegetables—rhubarb and berry jams, dried mushrooms, canned salmon and meats. Tomato sauces, soups, sauerkraut, relishes. Potted herbs along the windowsill next to the old kitchen table. He went down into the root cellar, stocked with boxes of potatoes and onions, hanging red cabbages and some dried fish and meat. Carved tally marks all over the wall. He didn’t count them, but it looked like it could be enough to account for ten years. Or a lot of dead buried bodies. The family’s old refrigerator held