Alaska (159 page)

In late December when Kendra surveyed her larder, she spotted those items which she had added to her order at the last moment, intending them to be a reward for her students, and now she dragged them forth, especially her pecans, Karo and cans of kumquats in heavy syrup. Enlisting the help of two women who had children in school, she made huge stacks of pecan-filled pancakes, links of canned sausage, piles of cookies which she decorated with the colored crystals she had ordered, and gallons of a sweet acid fruit punch made from powdered concentrate.

When all was ready, Kendra invited the entire school plus all the parents and the couple Amy lived with, and no attempt was made to bar curious neighbors who wanted to see what was happening in the school gym. Among those who gate-crashed was Vladimir Afanasi, who complimented Kendra on her gala affair and the friendly way in which she introduced the women of the village to kumquats, but the highlight of the affair for the children was the pecan-filled pancakes, and at the end of the feast even Amy Ekseavik admitted grudgingly: 'They were good.'

As Kendra watched Mr. Afanasi move off to talk with men of the village, she saw that he had in tow a stranger, and in her first glance at this white man, apparently from the Lower Forty-eight, she was swept by an impression which she would never forget: that he was someone of importance who had been sent to Desolation not by accident but in the completion of some grand design. He was young, medium tall, well 970

groomed and had an engaging smile. He did not look her way,. but his blond hair was so outstanding among the Eskimo men with whom he stood, that she could not help glancing at him, and when a break came in the entertainment the students had arranged, she wandered casually over to where Afanasi was speaking, and when he saw her coming he moved toward her as if he had divined her intentions, took her by the hand, and led her directly to the young stranger: 'Miss Scott, may I present my counselor-at-law, Jeb Keeler.'

'Welcome to our school festival, Mr. Keeler, Counselor ... ?'

'Dartmouth and Yale Law,' Afanasi explained, 'and he's invaluable to this community.'

'You mean you work here?' she asked, and eager for the opportunity, Afanasi spelled out the unique relationship young Keeler had to the village and its citizens. Kendra was impressed and asked: 'Do you have a house here?' and Jeb replied: 'I stay with Mr. Afanasi. Most of my work is with him, and it's convenient.'

She lingered with the men several minutes more than necessary, then became aware of her intrusion and excused herself awkwardly, revealing the favorable impression the young lawyer had made upon her. But this was not an embarrassment, for she had made the same impression on him. He had once told his mentor, Poley Markham: 'I kissed the beauties at Wellesley and Smith goodbye,' and he had, but in neither Juneau nor Anchorage, where he continually met people in his legal work, had he met any women who interested him, and now to find in Desolation a young woman as attractive and able as Kendra seemed to be a dividend not to be ignored.

As the gala ended, he maneuvered his way toward where Kendra stood bidding the women of the village goodnight, and as the last of the guests left he asked: 'Would you have breakfast with me tomorrow? At Vladimir's, of course, but we cook up some mighty good chow.'

'I would like that,' she said with a disarming smile. 'But you know, Mr. Afanasi is my boss, and I have to be in my classroom at eight.'

'I'll pick you up at six.'

'But why so early?'

'I have a lot of questions I'd like to ask,' and she nodded.

She was up before five the next morning, and was waiting impatiently when at a quarter to six a knock came at her door, with Jeb Keeler standing on the stoop to escort her to Afanasi's for breakfast. As they walked through the dark, her arm linked in his, she sensed that he was just as eager for this conversation as she, and the idea pleased her enormously. It

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was her first real date between peers, a planned affair with excitement on each side, and she was gratified in some inexplicable way that it was occurring so far north of the Arctic Circle.

After breakfast Afanasi had the good sense to improvise a meeting on village matters, which took him quickly from his house.

'You come here on legal matters?' Kendra asked, and on this invitation Jeb explained his relationship to Poley Markham and the services the two lawyers had provided the Desolation corporation. From there he led her through the intricacies of the Native Claims Settlement Act, on which he had become something of an expert, so that when Afanasi returned, she was able to ask him: 'What do you think the result will be in 1991, when you Eskimos gain full title to your lands?'

'You've been talking heady stuff, eh?' He poured himself some coffee and sat with them for the next hour, discussing frankly the perplexing problems his people were facing: 'I'm happy about the condition of our local Desolation unit. With sober advice from Poley Markham at the beginning and Jeb here in recent times, we've protected ourselves. Haven't lost money, haven't made a great deal, but have held on to our land constructively. But the big corporations? Ah, now I'm worried. The good ones prosper, the poor ones are in danger of going under. And if they do, when 1991 comes around they'll be eager to sell out to businessmen in Seattle.'

'Could that happen?' Kendra asked, and Jeb broke in: 'The wolves are gathered at the campfire. Just waiting for 1991 and a chance to grab millions of Alaska's finest acres. Once gone, the Natives will never be able to recover them. A whole way of life shot to hell.'

As they discussed this mournful prospect, Jeb's strategy became clear to Kendra, and she respected him for it: 'I think that about half the big corporations are doomed.

Technically they're in bankruptcy now, or close to it. I judge that those lands are already lost, unless the federal government steps in with some kind of rescue operation.

But I do believe that many of the village corporations can be saved and their lands protected far into the future, and that's what I'm trying to accomplish with the ones I work for.'

At this point Afanasi became almost poetic in his defense of the Eskimo's traditional relationship to his land: 'My land is not this empty tundra, measured in white man's acres. My land is the open ocean, frozen solid in winter, highway for walrus and seal and bowhead whale in spring and summer. Enough safe land for the houses of my village, enough free

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ocean to ensure the harvest of the sea on which we've always depended.' He snapped his fingers: 'Come on, Miss Scott, quarter to eight. You ought to be in your classroom!'

and he led Kendra and Jeb to the school.

JEB KEELER'S COUNSELING WITH THE CORPORATION leaders required him to remain in Desolation for nine days, and each evening spent with Kendra deepened his interest in her; he found her an intelligent, alert young woman with concerns paralleling his own, and with the shy kind of humor that a man like him appreciated. He wanted a woman to be almost his equal in brain power, but not to be too aggressive about it. He particularly esteemed her maturing attitudes toward the Eskimos, a people he had taken under his protection.

'At first when I looked at their dark, scowling faces I thought: They hate the world, but then I discovered that they were merely marking time till they sized me up. Once I passed muster, they blossomed like peach trees in spring.' When he agreed that it took time to interpret the apparent reticence of the Eskimos, she wanted him to meet her four students, so he arranged his duties with Afanasi so that he could spend the afternoon in her class, and there he made a great hit with the three students from Desolation but no impact whatever on Amy Ekseavik, who glared at him as if he were the enemy.

This so challenged him that at the conclusion of his stories about hunting caribou in northern Canada and his skiing days at Dartmouth, he bade the three local students a warm goodbye but asked Amy to stay for further discussion. Dropping her head, she peered at him from behind dark bangs and reluctantly agreed.

'You said nothing in class,' he began, 'but I could see that you had more questions than any of the others, and I'm sure yours would have been the most interesting.

Tell me, what was it you wanted to ask?'

Chin on her chest, hair covering her eyes, she mumbled: 'Do all men like you have white hair?'

'It isn't white. It's what we call blond. Sort of like Miss Scott's.'

'In magazines I see lots of women with hair like yours. Never no men.'

'There are a great many of us around, Amy.'

'Why you come here? What for?'

'I bring papers from the government in Juneau, in Washington. You know the big capital in Washington?'

'Sure.' The firmness of her response encouraged him to ask 973

her a variety of questions well calculated to test the accumulated intelligence of a girl of fourteen, and both he and Kendra were surprised at the depth and scatter of her learning. Finally he turned to arithmetic, and again she surprised him with her facility: 'Amy, you're one of the brightest girls your age I've ever met. You see many things you never talk about, don't you?'

Obviously pleased but also deeply embarrassed at this probing of her secrets, she finally raised her face slightly, looked directly at Jeb, and gave him one of the widest, most encompassing smiles he had ever received. From that moment on, Jeb and Amy were partners, and whereas Kendra had been unable to thaw the self-frozen child, Jeb brought out all the hidden warmth that nestled in this taut bosom, and the more Amy revealed of herself and her extraordinary gifts of perception and understanding, the more Kendra and Jeb realized that they had discovered a burgeoning human being who could achieve almost anything to which she directed her unusual mind.

'We've got to organize it so she can get to college later on,' Jeb said, and Kendra agreed: 'She's practically ready now. I'm sure the University of Washington will have scholarships for a girl like this.'

That evening, Jeb's last in Desolation, they wandered for some time in the darkness, with the thermometer at minus twenty-nine. The cold, with almost no humidity, was bracing rather than destructive and they almost reveled in it. 'Not many American lovers wandering about in minus-twenty-nine,' Jeb said, and she drew back: 'I didn't know we were lovers,' and he said: 'We could be, tonight.' And when they reached the Teacherage he wanted to follow her inside, but she rebuffed him: 'No, Jeb,' but then she weakened her answer by reasoning: 'Everyone in the village would know by morning,' and he said: 'Ah ha! You wouldn't mind if we were in some neutral place like Anchorage,' and her silence betrayed the fact that this was her precise attitude.

She embraced him with ardor and lingered on her doorstep so that he could respond again and again. He was by all odds the most desirable young man she had ever met, a lawyer with deep respect for the law, a friend to the Eskimo and, as he had proved in his adroit thawing out of Amy Ekseavik, an adult who could project himself into the world of children. She was in love with Jeb, and under different circumstances, where their privacy would be ensured, she would have been ready to prove it, but since she shared the Teacherage with her principal and the prying eyes of the villagers, she had to be constrained.

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'Jeb, you're the most precious thing to enter my life in a score of years. Please, please let's keep in touch.'

'If you feel that way, and me the same, why not let me in?' and she said, with no great firmness: 'Here, it's not possible,' and he asked: 'But if you came to Anchorage on a visit? Would it be possible then?' and she said: 'Don't rush me,' which he interpreted properly as: 'Probably.'

HER ATTENTION WAS DISTRACTED BY A CHAIN OF EVENTS

engineered by Vladimir Afanasi, who seemed determined to prove that Alaska was both bizarre and unique. On the first of January he learned that payments from the oil fields at Prudhoe Bay were going to be several times what his board had anticipated, and he announced in public meeting: 'Good! It frees our hands,' and that afternoon he called for Harry Rostkowsky to fly him out to Barrow, where he caught the Prudhoe Bay plane to Anchorage. There he took a hotel room at the airport, visiting intensively with the local managers of all the dozen international airlines that flew over the North Pole to Europe, and in the end he found that the best price for what he had in mind would be with Lufthansa, which refused to allow German business to be lost to some other airline.

With a firm contract for at least as many round-trip tickets as he needed, he hurried back to Desolation, and at a big meeting in the gymnasium revealed his plans: 'Citizens of Desolation, by careful supervision and our good luck in having teachers like Kasm Hooker and Kendra Scott, we have in our village one of Alaska's finest Molly Hootch schools.' The crowd applauded as Mr. Hooker waved to them: 'But it's difficult to sustain morale and learning in the winter months that loom ahead.' He stopped here and allowed general discussion of this irrefutable truth: to run a school even this small was most difficult when there was no daylight.

'What you propose doin' about it?' a fisherman asked, and Afanasi evaded giving a direct answer: 'I have never wanted to run a parochial school here in Desolation.'

'What's parochial a man asked, and a woman replied: 'Catholic,' and Afanasi corrected her: 'It can mean Catholic, you're right, but in another sense it can also mean narrow-minded or limited.'

As he paused to allow this to sink in, Kendra thought: What in the world is he leading up to? and she looked for a clue from her principal, who shrugged his shoulders, for he too had been left in the dark.

'We want our students to understand the world south of the Arctic Circle, don't we?

Isn't that why we fly our basketball 975

teams down to places like Juneau and Sitka? Why our dancers and Eskimo Olympians compete in Fairbanks? Well, this time we're going to broaden their horizons in a way not tried before. Ten days from right now, just about all of our students, two of our teachers, three of our board members and three mothers to act as chaperones are going to fly in a chartered plane to Anchorage, board a Lufthansa superjet and fly to Frankfurt, Germany, where we will have classes on the history of Central Europe, after which we'll fly to six other German cities to see what a major European nation is like.'