Tisha (10 page)

It was almost the same thing Lester Henderson had told me when he interviewed me in Juneau. He was the commissioner of education for the whole Territory and when I told him I was worried because I’d never taught in a one-room schoolhouse, he’d told me not to be.

“Forget it,” he’d said. “You’re going to do fine.” He was a big, broad-shouldered man, as easygoing as a Saint Bernard.

I could remember looking out the window of his office and seeing all the ships moored in Gastineau Channel far below. The
Dorothy Alexander
had been among them, the boat that would take me to Skagway.

“It’ll be much easier than you think,” he’d gone on. “I doubt that you’ll have many more than ten pupils, and I know you’ll be able to handle them. What does concern me a little is your age. May I be frank with you?”

“Of course.”

“You’re just about one of the youngest teachers I’ve ever sent into the bush. Ordinarily I’d place you here in Juneau first, or some other more well-populated
place. The only reason I haven’t is that it’s not easy to find qualified people who will go into the bush. Does that surprise you?”

“Yes.” I really was surprised. “When you lectured at my school I figured you’d be swamped with applications.”

“Well I’m not. I hope that doesn’t make you less enthusiastic.”

“Not at all.”

“Good. You see, I fought hard to get these Territorial schools established. It wasn’t easy, but I did it because I believed that where there is even one child who needs schooling—not ten as the law says there must be—there should be a school for him. What I’m trying to say, Miss Hobbs, is that education is so important to me that despite my misgivings about sending a nineteen-year-old cheechako into the bush country, I’m going to send you anyway.”

“A cheechako is a greenhorn, isn’t it?”

“The greenest. You’ve done some reading about Alaska, I see …” He paused, then went on. “Before you leave this office I’d like to give you a bit of advice. I have the feeling that you are a pretty tolerant young lady—young enough to be open to new ideas. Where you’re going you’ll find that most people are not. They have their own code and they don’t take to anybody who tries to go against that code or change it. In short, I hope you’re not going into this job with, well … shall I say missionary zeal?”

“I don’t think so,” I said, but I’d gotten all red. More than once I’d thought of myself as being like a young Florence Nightingale. I had even imagined the smiles on the faces of hardy backwoods parents as their children came home from my log-cabin school brimming over with the learning I’d given them. “I’ve tried to keep my mind open,” I added maturely.

We talked a while longer and he shook my hand warmly before I left. “I want to hear from you,” he said, “and I don’t mean that I want to hear from you only in your regular monthly report. Write to me anytime you need help or advice. Alaska’s a big place, but it’s just like the small town you’ve been teaching in.
We all know each other, and we’re concerned about each other. If there’s anything I can do for you, let me know immediately.”

He’d meant it, I knew, and it made me feel good even now. I’d write to him tomorrow about the books and supplies before Mr. Strong left. But now that I was here I was more worried than ever about being able to handle the job. Teaching in Forest Grove, I’d had everything mapped out for me. There was a system, a time for study, for recess, for lunch, for auditorium, for everything. There was order and routine. Here I didn’t even have a register, I realized, or report cards. I wondered what I would do if I couldn’t control the class. What if they didn’t like me or didn’t want to listen to me?

The more I thought about it the worse I felt. All I had was a high-school education. I knew my subject matter pretty well, but suppose a couple of the children were smarter in some subjects than I was? I didn’t even have a library I could go to for more advanced materials. Suddenly the whole idea of coming here seemed like a big mistake. I was going to fall on my face, I was sure of it …

The sun was streaming through the window when I woke up, but the room was so chilly and damp that my breath steamed. There was still some water left, and Mr. Strong had brought coffee, so I set about making a fire. Five minutes later the room was so full of smoke I had to go out on the porch.

Outside, the sun shone down on hills covered with frost. As though there had been a shower of diamonds the night before, the whole valley sparkled and glittered with the reflected colors of autumn.

Across the road Mr. Strong’s stable was open and I heard him murmuring to the horses and moving around. A few moments later he came out leading four of them, but stopped when he saw the smoke billowing out of my doorway.

“It’s only the stove,” I told him. He nodded and continued to lead his horses to one of the big prospect holes filled with rainwater. Breaking the light crust of ice in a few places, he left them to drink, then made
his way past me. In a few moments he had cleared the smoke from the house.

After he started a fire in the stove, he took me over to his store, a small log building about five cabins away.

The inside of the store was so crowded with things that except for a narrow path to the counter and some sitting space around an oil-drum heater there was hardly room to walk. Canvas parkas, snow shoes, animal traps and just about everything else hung from the ceiling. Odors were all over the place—of wool and cotton from a counter loaded with pants, overalls and long underwear, of furs and hanging slabs of bacon. In front of the heater a deep pan of yellow water gave off the rank smell of cigarette butts and tobacco juice.

Looking the shelves over, I felt a lot better. There was everything here, even tins of butter. Inside of a few minutes, Mr. Strong and I had loaded up two sacks with canned goods, cereal, flour, sugar and other staples. A little while later, after I’d rustled up some bacon, eggs and hot coffee for us on top of the potbellied stove, he paid me my first compliment. “It is heartening to know, madam, that there are still girls around who can make a proper breakfast.” He gave me the key to the store, something he said he’d never done with anyone else. I was to take what I wanted as I needed it, and we’d settle up once a month. In return I agreed that if anyone wanted anything while he was away I would give it out and keep a record of what was bought.

By mid-morning I had the furniture in my quarters arranged fairly nice. I was working in the schoolroom when I heard footsteps on the porch. It was Fred Purdy and what I thought at first were two younger sisters with him. Only one of them was his sister, though. The other was his mother. I doubted she weighed more than ninety pounds. She was even smaller than Granny Hobbs, and cute. She was Eskimo for sure—round dark face, wide mouth and strong uneven teeth. She just seemed to light up when she saw me and I liked her right off.

“Ah, the teasher,” she said. “I am so happy to meet
you. I am Mrs. Purdy, and this is my daughter, Isabelle.”

She put a hand out and it felt small and capable. “My son Frayd have tell me how pretty you are,” she said after I introduced myself. “Before he say only lynx is pretty. Now I see for myself. Indeed, you are very lovely.”

She was like a little queen, and she wasn’t putting it on. She was dressed beautifully too—in a cloth parka that looked like a Fifth Avenue design, and a soft fur hat.

When I invited them in she complimented me on how much I’d done with the cabin. We all sat down and had a cup of tea and talked for a while. Before I knew it I was telling them about the trip out on Blossom, but instead of it coming out the way it really was, it sounded funny, especially the part about my landing on my behind in the mud outside the post office. I never heard anybody laugh the way Fred did when I told the story—with so much fun and enjoyment that it made me laugh myself. By the time I told how I’d walked in here to find hardly a stick of furniture we were all doubled over.

“Indeed, Ahnne,” Mrs. Purdy said, wiping away tears, “there is mush work to do in this place.” She grew serious. “You cannot live here in sush … sush …”

Fred supplied the word. “Conditions.”

“Conditions, yes. Thank you, Frayd.”

“Do you really think it’s so bad?”

“It is not terreebul, yet it is not good. There are many things to do here.” She sent Isabelle out to play, then went around the room, shaking her head. “If you are to live here, you must have home that is comfortable, warm.” She pointed to the baseboard where light was coming in. “This must be fixed or in winter you will freeze to the death. No, this will not do.” She reeled off all the other things that had to be fixed—sagging shelves, loose floorboards, crippled tables in the schoolroom.

“You will work here,” she said to Fred, “and Father will do your chores at home.”

Fred grinned. “Yes, boss.”

“How mush work, you think?”

“Oh … Couple months maybe.”

She smiled. “You wish to open school when, Ahnne?”

“In a few days if I can.”

“You will do it in a few days, Frayd, no?”

“I will do it, boss, yes.”

Before they left Mrs. Purdy asked me if I’d like to come to supper that night. I couldn’t because Joe Temple was taking me over to the roadhouse, so we made it for the next night.

A couple of hours later Fred came back driving a wagon that looked like a long thin buckboard. It had a load of rough boards on it and a big tool box.

We were a little shy with each other at first, but after we worked together for a while we were gabbing about everything under the sun, from the Marines in Nicaragua to Lindbergh’s trip across the Atlantic. I told him I was surprised he knew as much about what was going on in the world as I did.

“One thing everybody does plenty of around here is read,” he said. “There’s not much else to do at night.”

By noontime he’d connected a stovepipe to the cook-stove and run it up through the roof. After we had a fire going in it I made lunch for the two of us—canned ham and-sweet potatoes. “There has to be something else people do here at night besides read,” I said while we were eating.

“Every other Friday night there’s a dance. We’ve been having them at the roadhouse, but as soon as the schoolroom’s in shape well have them there.”

“When will the first one be?”

“You call it. You’re the teacher.”

We decided on a week from the following Friday.

While we worked people kept dropping by to lend me more things they thought I might need, a kettle, some spoons and knives, even an old encyclopedia. I told Fred that I knew people in Alaska were hospitable, but I hadn’t expected it to be like this.

“Everybody wants to do what they can to make you stay,” he said.

“Why should they think I won’t?”

“For the same reason the teacher who was here last didn’t. This is tough country, especially for a cheechako.”

“When do I stop being a cheechako and become an Alaskan?”

“Maybe by the time the river goes out in the spring.”

“What do you mean—maybe?”

He looked at me almost the way Mr. Strong did that day when he’d ridden back to give me his army coat—as if I was a foreigner. Only Fred’s look was a little different. The only thing I could liken it to was the way one forest animal might look at another to see if it was its own kind. If it wasn’t there was no offense taken. The animal just loped off. It gave me a funny feeling.

“Well,” he said, “some people never really become Alaskans. They never get to like it the way it is. They just tolerate it.”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“It’s hard to explain, maybe because it’s something you have to feel inside. All these old sourdoughs around here—they’re real Alaskans. They came here way back before I was born, when there was nothing out here but raw land. They fought the cold and the rivers, built cabins and barely stayed alive. They were lonely and went hungry, froze their feet and their hands and hardly ever took enough gold out of the ground to keep themselves in grub, but they made it.”

“You think I’ll make it?”

“No reason why you shouldn’t. Just make sure you’ve got good footgear and plenty of warm clothes—and take people’s advice.”

“When they give it to you, you mean. Up to now I keep finding things out hit and miss.” I told him about Mr. Strong offering me his old army coat back in Eagle. “When I turned it down he didn’t try to convince me I was wrong.”

“That’s the way it is. If somebody tells you something you have to listen the first time. They won’t tell you twice. They’ll let you find out for yourself.”

“What do you think of Mr. Strong? You think he’s an Alaskan?”

“He sure is. He cuts it a little thin sometimes and he’s tough on horses, but he’s skookum—he’s got guts. The people around here don’t appreciate him much because once in a while he’ll lose some mail or other stuff in the river.”

“Stuff like me you mean.”

That made him laugh. “I heard about that,” he said. Then he went on as though it wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. “What most people don’t realize is that he’s been mushing that trail for over twenty years and no matter what it’s like—blown in, flooded or frozen—he shows up here on time if he possibly can. Twenty-four days out of every month he’s on trail all alone and he’s usually here like clockwork on the eighth, the eighteenth and the twenty-eighth. But if he shows up a day late once in a while, or he won’t pack parcel post out here in summer, people get all riled up at him and start sending letters to Washington D.C. saying the mail contract ought to be taken away from him. Well, he’s still got it—because there’s nobody else can do the job better. You’ll see what I mean after the freeze-up.”

I wondered if he knew what Mr. Strong thought of him and his family, and I had a feeling he did.

We kept working all day and he didn’t go home until a little before Joe showed up.

Joe came in wearing the fleece-lined jacket I’d seen him trying on when I arrived, and he had a tie on. He was surprised I was ready. “I was ready an hour ago,” I said.

“You’re still operating on Lower 48 time,” he said, helping me on with my coat. “You’re going to have to get used to Alaska time.”