Leni kept replaying it over and over again as she waited for her dad to pick her up from school. She’d wanted to say yes and mean it. She wanted it more than she’d wanted anything in a while.

But her parents weren’t community barbecue people. Community anything, really. It wasn’t who the Allbrights were. The families in their old neighborhood used to have all kinds of gatherings: backyard barbecues where the dads wore V-necks and drank Scotch and flipped burgers, and the women smoked cigarettes and sipped martinis and carried trays of bacon-wrapped chicken livers while kids screamed and ran around. She knew this because once she’d peered over the neighbors’ fence and seen all of it—hula hoops and Slip ’N Slides and sprinklers.

“So, Red, how was school?” Dad asked when Leni climbed into the VW bus and slammed the door. He was the last parent to arrive.

“We learned about the U.S. buying Alaska from Russia. And about Mount Alyeska in the Chugach Mountain Range.”

He grunted acceptance of that and put the vehicle in gear.

Leni thought about how to say what she wanted to say. There’s a boy my age in class. He’s our neighbor.

No. Mentioning a boy was the wrong tack.

Our neighbors are hosting a barbecue and invited us.

But Dad hated that kind of thing, or he used to, in all the other places they’d lived.

They rattled down the dirt road, dust billowing up on either side, and turned into their driveway. At home, they discovered a crowd of people in the yard. Most of the Harlan clan was there, working. They moved in wordless harmony, coming together and drifting apart like dancers. Clyde had that cage thing and was milling logs into boards. Ted was finishing the cache, pounding boards to the side stanchions. Donna was stacking firewood.

“Our friends showed up at noon to help us prepare for winter,” Dad said. “No. They’re better than friends, Red. They’re comrades.”

Comrades?

Leni frowned. Were they communists now? She was pretty sure her dad hated the commies as much as he hated the Man and hippies.

“This is what the world should be, Red. People helping each other instead of killing their mothers for a little bread.”

Leni couldn’t help noticing that almost everyone had a gun holstered at his or her waist.

Dad opened the bus door. “We’re all going to Sterling this weekend, to fish for salmon at Farmer’s Hole on the Kenai River. Apparently these king salmon are a bitch to land.” He stepped out into the soggy ground.

Mad Earl waved a gloved hand at her dad, who immediately bounded off in the old man’s direction.