Alaska (157 page)

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Eskimo. She moved from one small dark house to the next, answering questions about her childhood and what life was like in Colorado; but she also listened as local tales were told about walrus hunts and who in the village was best at tracking the great bowhead whales as they moved north and south with the seasons. However, what assured her acceptance in the community was the speech she gave one night in the gymnasium, to which most of the residents came to see how their new teacher conducted herself. The announcement billed it as 'Right and Wrong,' and some attendees were loath to appear because they thought it was going to be a missionary harangue.

How surprised they were! What Kendra did was stand before them as an unsophisticated, likable young woman from Utah and share with them the conceptions and misconceptions she had brought with her regarding Eskimo life: 'For some reason I'll never know, the American school system decided years ago that third grade was the ideal year to teach our children about the Eskimos. Books are written and study kits provided, and one company even sells equipment for building an igloo. I taught the Eskimo unit three times and I was real big on igloos. I had everyone living in an igloo. So when I fly in here in Mr. Rostkowsky's superjet, what do I find? Not one damned igloo.'

Her use of the near-swear word shocked some, delighted the majority, and on she went irreverently ridiculing her misconceptions about Eskimo life. In vivid words, gestures and appealing incidents, she made fun of herself, but when she had the audience laughing with her, she suddenly became serious: 'My study books also told me much that was true about you people. They told of your love of the sea, of the way in which your brave hunters go out to fight the polar bear and catch the walrus. They told me of your festivals and of your northern lights, which I have never seen. And I hope that in the years we shall be together that you will teach me the other truths about your way of life, because I want to learn.'

She made a special effort to make friends with her principal, and at first she found the tall, awkward man ill disposed to make friends with anyone, much less with a brash young teacher who might replace him as the leader of the school.

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Things remained so tentative that one day in late August, when she had been rebuffed more than once, she intercepted him on their common porch and said boldly: 'Mr. Hooker, will you come in for a moment?' and when he was seated uncomfortably in her bed-sitting room she said: 'Mr. Hooker . . .' and he interrupted: 'Call me Kasm.' She broke into laughter and said: 'They told me about your name. You handled that elegantly, I must say,' and he smiled thinly.

She said: 'I've come a long way to serve in your school and I can't do my job properly without a lot of help and guidance from you.' He nodded and said: 'You'll have my full cooperation,' but she would not accept this weak assurance: 'The children tell me that you lost your last teacher because you treated her as if she were a pariah.'

'Who said that?'

'School children. They said you made her cry.'

'She was incompetent and Mr. Afanasi knew it. He was the one who suggested that she'd be better off in the Lower Forty-eight.'

'But you could have helped her, Mr. Hooker ... I mean Kasm.'

The tall man sat with his hands gripping his knees in an attitude of jealous self-protection, then grudgingly admitted: 'Perhaps under different circumstances . . .'

'You'll not have that problem with me, Kasm. I like it here. I'm eager to teach, but even more eager to help you and Mr. Afanasi run a good school.' Her subtle use of Afanasi's name reminded Mr. Hooker of the fact that she had already built a solid friendship with that powerful citizen, and he began to relent, but just as he was about to say something conciliatory, the most important sound of the year echoed through the village, the belching smokestack of a vessel signaling its approach, and even staid, citizens ran about the summer streets, shouting: 'Here comes the barge!' And there it was, a huge repository of goods hauled along by an old tugboat.

Its arrival launched two days of celebration, the pouring out of a vast cornucopia when the rewards of previous labors were delivered as if in obedience to some magic command: now came the cases of canned goods, a truck, a boat with an outboard motor, a forklift, stacks of clean lumber, the new hammers, the lengths of bright cloth, the books, the new lanterns with improved wicks for when the electricity failed.

And always there were those modern inventions that made life in the dark months more livable: a television set, several tape recorders with two cases of batteries, a dozen basketballs and a shortwave radio. To watch the yearly barge disgorge 960

itself at Desolation Point was to become a part of Eskimo life at a remote outpost, and Kendra was easily caught up in the activities. But she was not prepared for Mr.

Hooker's gesture of friendship. When young men in their pickups began to bring from the shore the huge boxes and bundles assigned to her, he stepped forward, stationed himself in her cache, and supervised the orderly storage of her year's food. 'We want you to get started right,' he said.

The big surprise this year came on the second day toward the end of the unloading, when the supply of new snowmobiles came ashore. In Desolation even children had skidoos, as they were called, and it was not uncommon for a single family to have three of the noisy and dangerous machines. But after some dozen had been brought ashore, several watching boys whistled, for two deckhands came onto the ramp with a radically improved red-and-blue SnowGo-7, with wide treads, a molded plastic windshield and racing type handlebars, four thousand dollars even.

'Who ordered that?' the boys cried in great excitement, and in response to many such queries, a handsome young fellow, graduated from school two years ago, stepped forward to claim the prize. A woman told Kendra: 'Jonathan Borodin. His father and uncle worked at Prudhoe. Earned a fortune.' Kendra recognized the name of a family she had not met, the proud Borodiris who kept to the old ways, as opposed to Vladimir Afanasi, who accepted many aspects of the new. She wondered how the traditional Borodins had agreed to allow their son a snowmobile; it was a contradiction. But here the wondrous machine was, and as Kendra watched young Borodin push it proudly away she realized that it was going to monopolize both his imagination and his life. Turning to the woman, she asked: 'Did he do well in school?' and the answer came: 'Very well.

He could have made it in college.'

'Why would his family waste so much money on a snowmobile? Instead of college?' and the woman replied: 'Oh, he went. Last year. To a fine college in Oregon. But after three weeks he got homesick. Missed ”the smokin' and the jokin' ”on our village streets at night. So back he came.'

Toward evening, after everything was carted away, the citizens of Desolation gathered at the shore to watch the barge weigh anchor and head north to Barrow, where it would unload the remaining cargo. How mournful it was to see the huge craft move off, to be absent for a whole year, the lifeline of the area, the big solid reminder that there was another world down toward Seattle. But especially-meaningful was the moment when the barge sounded its foghorn in 961

parting salute, for with this echoing sound the people of Desolation said to one another: 'Well, now winter begins.'

Kendra spent the rest of August and the first week of September continuing to familiarize herself with the village: the wind-beaten houses, the long, dark runways that served as protective entryways, the pits dug into the permafrost where meats were stored, the lake beyond the southern end of town from which fresh-water ice would be cut and melted later for drinking water wherever she looked she found evidence that these Eskimos had been wrestling through the centuries with their arctic environment and had found acceptable solutions. So as she sat in the evenings playing Bingo with the women of the village, she studied them with admiration and never a shred of condescension.

They, in return, took it upon themselves to indoctrinate her properly, warning: 'You must have someone help you make clothes for winter.' As they said this they pointed back over their shoulders toward the Chukchi Sea, whose ice-free waves came to within a few yards of the village: 'Come December when the wind howls in off the ice, you got to be warm,' but Kendra was astonished at the prices she would have to pay for her gear. 'It starts with mukluks,' they said. 'Keep your feet warm, you win the battle.'

She learned that she could go two routes: 'You a beginning teacher, not much money, store sells cheap Sorrel Packs, made by machine, rubber, felt insoles and liners, pretty good. You want to be like Eskimo, you get mukluk, oogruk sealskin for soles, caribou for tops coming to the knee, mouton socks, total cost maybe two hundred fifty dollars.'

Kendra reflected only a moment: 'If I'm in Eskimo land because I wanted to be, let's go whole hog. Real mukluks.'

Her parka, the soul of the visible Eskimo costume, presented the same options: 'J.C.

Penney makes a good commercial one, three hundred dollars, and lots of Eskimos wear them, because real ones too much.'

'How much?' and the answer made her head swim: 'Skins, sewing, trim to protect face .. .' On and on the list of strange items continued: 'Total about eight hundred dollars.'

The figure staggered Kendra, who had never been allowed to spend over forty-five dollars for a dress, so after a deep breathing pause, she asked: 'Would I look silly wearing real mukluks and a store-bought parka?' The women consulted among themselves on this significant problem, then gave a unanimous answer: 'Yes.' Without further hesitation Kendra said almost happily: 'Then I'll go for the Eskimo parka.'

Not wishing to offend the Eskimo women with a question about money, she waited till she was alone with the Hookers: 962

'How can these poor women afford such prices? And the money they throw around at Bingo?'

Mrs. Hooker broke into laughter: 'Miss Scott, these women are loaded! Their husbands make enormous salaries when they work in the oil fields at Prudhoe. And of course, they all get that yearly bonus from the government.'

'What bonus?'

'We don't pay taxes in Alaska. The oil money flows so fast, the government pays us.

I hear it'll be close to seven hundred dollars this year.'

Kasm broke in: 'Haven't you noticed that most Eskimo houses this far north have two or three abandoned snowmobiles in the front yard?'

'I was going to ask about that,' and Kasm explained: 'With the easy money it's cheaper to buy a new one than to have an old one repaired. So they cannibalize them. Steal parts from one machine to repair another.'

When the seamstresses decked Kendra in her new winter gear, with the fringe of the hood covering her face and her voluminous clothing masking the outlines of her body, she became one more Eskimo woman, a round, waddling, well protected bundle, and she began to perspire. But the women assured her: 'In December it may not be warm enough,'

and again they pointed ominously at the sea: 'The winds from Siberia. You'll see.'

And now one of them said solemnly: 'Your name now Kunik. Means snowflake.

She, me, all, we call you Kunik,' and as Kunik, the new teacher continued her campaign to understand Eskimo ways and be accepted in the community.

On opening day of her school, Kendra received a series of surprises, some pleasant, some not so. When she came into the cavernous room which could have supported forty high school students, she found on her desk a bouquet made from seaweed and a kind of heather from the tundra, and never had she received any flowers that carried more emotional impact. Her breath caught as she tried to guess who had made this gesture of friendship, but she could reach no conclusion.

When a ship's bell on the schoolhouse roof rang and the sixteen students filed into the school, thirteen turned left for Mr. Hooker's elementary classes, while only three, a girl and two boys, came toward her section. When these three were seated at the front of the room, the place looked positively vacant, and she realized that it would be her job to fill it with activity and meaning. She was the schoolroom, not the books or the huge structure which had cost half of nine million dollars.

Only she could make this inanimate place vital, and she was determined to do so.

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These young people, round-faced, dark-haired, black-eyed and obviously eager, were prepared to help her breathe life into this cavern, but although she had come to know each of the three during the summer, she had not then appreciated how Asian they were in appearance when placed in a school situation. They were Eskimos and she was proud to be their teacher.

It was customary in many Eskimo schools for the teacher to address her collected students as 'You guys,' words which had a fine sense of familiarity, and from the beginning Kendra used the phrase freely. When she wanted to instill a feeling of comradeship she addressed her class as 'Hey, you guys, let's get on with the math problems.' But when she felt it necessary to establish discipline, she used 'Now listen here, you guys, knock off the horseplay,' and then they knew she meant business and order was restored.

Intuitively she liked her students, and after the first tentative questions and answers, she concluded that she had three above-average pupils, but before she could begin her serious teaching, there was an interruption which modified the whole day and indeed the entire year.

Vladimir Afanasi came into the room leading by the hand a frightened little Eskimo girl, fourteen years old, and before he had shown the terrified child where to sit, he took Kendra out onto the porch and said: 'Her name is Amy Ekseavik, last name in four syllables. Her parents are the pariahs of our village. They fish upriver six months at a time. Live in a hovel down at the far point. Amy's been in school at best seven, eight weeks a year.'

'Why is such a thing allowed?' and Afanasi said: 'It isn't. I put the Barrow police on them. She must go to school, so her parents have brought her here to live through the winter with Mrs. Pelowook.' Coming back into the classroom, he went over to the child and said: 'These are your classmates, Amy, and this is your teacher, Miss Scott.'