down pillows. They rose and fell with her deep breaths. She moved fast despite her size, wiping the counter now, putting away a pepper grinder, a bottle of salad dressing with Paul Newman’s mug on it. She closed the refrigerator door.
There was the memory of Kache, sitting on the kitchen stool, dark curly head bent over his guitar, then opening that same door and standing in front of the assortment of cold food like the refrigerator was some god requiring homage. How many times had she swatted him, told him to close the damn door? “A million? A billion?”
Since the day she had to put her mom into the home, Snag had been talking to herself. Before that, sometimes all Lettie had added to the conversation was, “Is that right, Eleanor,” but it was something.
No one but her mom still called her Eleanor. Around age nine she came home from fishing the river alone for the first time, holding up a decent-sized salmon. “Look, Daddy. I caught a fish all by myself.”
Her daddy laughed and pulled the hook out of the side of the poor fish. “Eleanor,” he said, “what you did was snagged yourself a fish.” Glenn, jealous that he was the same age and had yet to catch or even snag anything, started calling her Snag. The name took hold and never let go. Most of the town’s newcomers thought the name came from the fact that she had a gift for selling. It was true. Whether someone needed Mary Kay or Jafra cosmetics, Amway detergent, or a new house, Snag was the person to call.
Real estate had been particularly good to her. She preferred to live in her simple house, but she waxed poetic about the benefits of a sunk-in tub or a granite countertop. Lately she’d stepped back from showing houses. She’d made enough, and she wanted to give the newbies a shot. The one element in life that had come easily to Snag was money and she didn’t need to be piggy about it. She still sold products for the pyramid businesses, but more as a service to the citizens of Caboose than out of her own need. The only thing she couldn’t sell anyone on was the idea of getting the town mascot, the old Caboose parked at the end of the spit, moving again. But she didn’t have time to dwell on that now.
She climbed into the car and took a deep breath. Kache. “He’s going to want to kill me, and I can’t blame him one bit.” She wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her rain jacket, surprised to see a black smear across it. She wore the mascara for the first time in years in honor of Kache’s homecoming. It was the brand she’d demonstrated at kitchen tables, rubbing it on a page of paper, then dropping water on it, holding the paper up so the drop ran down clear as gin. Now she smoothed her fingers under her eyes: more black. She licked her fingers, ran them over and over her face, took the balled-up tissue from under her sleeve and wiped more. She adjusted the rearview mirror to check herself. “Aw, crap,” she said. It looked like someone had struck oil on her face. With all her finesse for cleaning, Snag sometimes felt that her biggest contribution to mankind was making a mess of things.
At the small Caboose airport, Kache recognized Snag before she turned around to face him. You couldn’t miss her height, a half inch shy of six feet. Long-limbed like he was, hair cropped short, with much more salt than pepper now. She was his father’s twin and they bore a strong resemblance—the deep dimples, the large gray eyes—maybe that’s why Kache had always thought of her as a handsome woman. Her back expanded, her shoulders hung limp in her hooded jacket. She fidgeted with her sleeves, touched her face. Many times that sad spring before he’d left, Kache had seen her cry with her back to him, as if she might protect him from all the grief.
He sighed, kept standing there, observing her broad back. How was it that you could leave a place for twenty years, stay away for twenty years, and walk right smack into the very center of what you left behind, like it was some bull’s-eye for which you were trained to aim?
“Aunt Snag?” He touched her arm and she jumped.
“Kache! Of course it’s you.” As tall as she was, she still had to stand on her tiptoes to swing her chubby arms around him. “Oh hon, look at you. Your momma and daddy would be so proud.”
He held her soft face, wrinkled a bit more, though not as much as he’d expected, but a little … dirty? Streaked with something. With Snag it was more likely mud than makeup. He smiled. Their eyes stayed on each other for a long minute. There was a lot to say but all he got out was, “Let’s go see Gram.”
Snag blew her nose, blew some more. “She’s not herself. And I tried and tried, but I couldn’t keep up. It’s a decent place, though. It is. We can stop on the way home.” She pulled his head down, ruffled his hair, like he was eight years old instead of thirty-eight. “You look so handsome. Kache Winkel, you’re home. Is that your only bag?”
He nodded. He’d packed the few warm clothes he still owned, along with the old holey green T-shirt he would never throw out, the one that said, No, I don’t play basketball. Denny had it printed up for him because at six foot six inches, Kache had gotten tired of being asked. And he’d packed the only item of his mom’s he’d taken, her favorite silk scarf, which had smelled of her perfume for years after she died. Snag asked him where his guitar was but he shrugged, as he had whenever she’d asked him in Austin. She raised her eyebrows, opened her mouth, but let the question go, just as she had before.
Even in the middle of winter Austin didn’t get this cold. In the car he rubbed his hands together and felt the pull and release of resistance and surrender; the place lured him back in, then yanked him hard with long lines of memories: Denny buying him beer at that very liquor store, which still sported the same flashing orange sign; his mom rushing him into that very emergency room when he was nine and had split his knee open. That same hardware and tackle shop his dad got lost in for hours while Kache waited in the truck, writing lyrics on the backs of old envelopes his mom kept in the glove compartment for blotting her lipstick. Kache wrote around the red blooms of her lip prints.
Some things had changed, sure, and yet not enough to keep away a hollow, emanating ache.
But it was breakup. Here, early spring was the depressing time of year, when the snow and ice gave way—cracking, breaking, oozing—as if the earth bawled, spewing mud everywhere, running into the darkest lumpy blue of the Cook Inlet and Kachemak Bay.
“Thought we might get to see Janie. Couldn’t get away from work?” Snag said, glancing at Kache. He shook his head. “You’re awfully quiet. For you.” She smiled and fiddled with the radio while she drove, then turned it off. It was true that Kache’s dad had dubbed him Chatty Kachey, but that was a long, long time ago. “Ah, a break from the rain.”
“We don’t get enough in Austin. I’d like a good watering.”
“In a few weeks you’ll be soaked through to the bone, I’m betting. Fingers crossed we’ll have a decent summer. Since you don’t … you know, have to get back to work … You’re staying a while, aren’t you, hon?”
“I’m thinking a few weeks.” That was the goal, anyway, if he could stick it out. It would get easier in a day or two. He wanted to hang out with Snag and Lettie. Face the things he needed to face, get out to the homestead. Snag had said a nice family was renting it. He’d try to fix whatever out there needed fixing, do whatever needed to be done for Lettie and Snag, hold it together, be strong enough to look it all in the face so he could get on with his life. Janie was right. It was way past time.
Snag pulled the car into the parking lot of the low brick and concrete building. “She’s a lot weaker, Kache. She asks about you still, though. It depends. Some days she’s clearer than most of us, and some days she’s cloudy, and some days she’s plain snowed in.”
He got out and held open the glass door—flowery pink and green wallpaper and paintings of otters, puffins, and bears on the walls of the lobby.
He nodded approval. “Not bad, considering.”
“Believe me, it’s much better than the third world prison camp they call a nursing home down in Spruce.” She smiled wide. “Hello there, Gilly.”
“So