Tisha (12 page)

I was afraid I’d be in the way, but they went out of their way to make me feel welcome. I liked Mert the best. He was the one who’d brought me the bear lard. A barrel-chested little man, he was so shy that the first few times I asked him something he took off his yachtsman’s cap each time he answered. They’d dammed up a stream farther on up the slope, he explained to me, then they’d dug a trench from it all the way down to one end of the box. As soon as I was ready, he said, he’d go up and let the water go.

“You worm-eaten dub,” Uncle Arthur bawled, “why you think she came over—ta spend the day with ya?”

Mert started up the slope apologetically. “Somethin’ wrong with his cerebral machinery,” Uncle Arthur complained. “Been goin’ around with ’is hat off too long. Froze ’is brain box.” He rested a hand on the sluice box. It was like a claw. The two last fingers were gone and the rest looked as though they’d been badly burned. Fred told me later that they’d been frozen.

Mert didn’t come back for ten minutes. A few minutes after he did the water began to seep down the trench. Before long it was gushing down and running through the box pretty fast, gradually building up force. As soon as it had a “good head,” as Uncle Arthur called it, the two men started shoveling in the paydirt. The water swept it right through the box. Even rocks as big as a fist clattered along easily. And that was all there was to it, Fred said, whatever gold was mixed in the dirt would drop to the bottom of the box where it was caught in the “riffles,” wood slats. The dirt and rocks were washed through, running down to the bottom of the slope, where they added to the other tailing piles already built up by earlier sluicings during the season. Now I understood what Fred had meant. Pay dirt without water was just ordinary dirt.

It was over in about twenty minutes, when the water ran out, and Uncle Arthur and Mert leaned against the box, sweat staining the back of their shirts. They were both staring down at the muck in the bottom of it. Their final cleanup was down there. Four months’ work with pick and shovel was ended.

I thanked them for letting me come over, then we left. On the way back I asked Fred if he knew how they’d done.

“Not too good,” he said. “They never do.”

“Never?”

He shook his head.

“Then why do they do it?”

“It’s better than working for wages.”

When you looked at it that way, maybe he was right. My father had worked down in the mines all his life, six days a week, and he had nothing to show for it. However little Uncle Arthur and Mert had, at least they were their own men.

“Now that everybody’s done mining, what do they do?”

“Get ready for winter. Trapping’ll start around the beginning of November.”

“Why wait so long?”

That made him laugh.

“What are you laughing for? Is that a dumb question?”

He said, “No,” but he was as amused as Chuck had been at the idea of fruit growing on trees. “You see, when you go out trapping,” he explained, “you’ve got traps to tote, food and supplies, and sometimes you go pretty far. Then you’ve got to tote the furs back. You need a sled for all that.”

“And for a sled you need snow.”

It was a dumb question, all right. We both tried to keep a straight face, but it was no use. One look at each other and we were laughing.

Later on I asked him why the place was called Lost Chicken.

“Somebody found it once, then lost it. By the time they found it again they’d named Chicken Chicken.”

“They must have lost a lot of places, those old prospectors.” Besides Lost Chicken I’d heard of Lost Delta and Lost Fork.

We worked for another two days before my quarters and the schoolroom were finally finished. When they were done you could see the difference right away. Fred had glued the canvas back on the walls where it had been peeling and patched the bad spots, the tables and chairs in the schoolroom were sturdy, and I even had a “blackboard”—a couple of dark green window shades tacked to beaver board. He’d also made me a couch for my quarters by nailing three boxes together. Maggie Carew gave me a mattress for padding, and covered with a blanket and pillows it looked fine. He stayed for supper, and before he left we had a cup of cocoa and some cookies to celebrate.

“I’m really grateful to you,” I told him. “I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t helped me so much.” I meant it too. A lot of people had loaned me things and even lent a hand once in a while, but he’d done just about all the work.

“Forget it,” he said. “I was glad to help out. Maybe I’ll drop by after school tomorrow and you can tell me how you did.”

“Will you?” I’d told him how scared I was.

“Sure.”

We sat talking for a while longer. He didn’t want to go and I didn’t want him to either, which really surprised me. Usually I never knew what to say to boys when I was alone with them. But with him it was just the opposite. Here we’d been together for practically three whole days and I felt I could have gone on talking to him the whole night. I’d never met any boy like him. He said he’d only gone as far as the sixth grade in school, but he read everything he could get his hands on and he was interested in everything—history, current events, motors, even metallurgy. He’d taken me for a walk to show me around and pointed out all kinds of rocks and minerals, white quartz with glints of pyrite in it, lodestone, feldspar. I’d never heard of most of them. He said he had a book about them and when I
asked him if he’d lend it to me so the class could start a rock collection he said he’d be glad to.

He was just getting ready to leave when there was a knock at the door. It was Mr. Vaughn. “I brought you over the flag,” he said.

It was for the pole outside. He’d had one of his daughters wash it for me.

“Thanks,” I told him. “You didn’t have to bring it over special, though. The girls could have brought it with them in the morning.”

“No trouble,” he said.

He kept standing in the doorway. “Schoolroom all done?”

“Ready and waiting. Did you want to see it?” I asked him.

“Wouldn’t mind at all.”

He came in and nodded to Fred. Fred said hello, then he said he’d better be going.

“Not before we show off your handiwork,” I said.

I brought the oil lamp and the three of us went inside. I showed him the blackboard Fred had made, the shelves. He’d even made a couple of shelves low down for the two little kids I’d have. Mr. Vaughn just glanced around. He didn’t seem too interested. “It’ll do,” he said.

I was a little disappointed. The least he could have done was tell Fred he’d done a good job, but all he said to him was, “Well, you’ll be able to get back to your own work now.”

Then I realized he’d come over just to see what we were doing. It embarrassed me and it made Fred feel uncomfortable too. He walked out right after Mr. Vaughn did. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I called after him.

Before I went to sleep I went into the schoolroom again. I stood behind my table and imagined the kids sitting in front of me. It felt exciting. The room looked wonderful. I’d scrubbed the Yukon stove so it looked almost new and it was all ready with kindling and logs. On one of the shelves there was a whole row of books—a few readers, a dictionary I’d brought with me, and the old encyclopedia someone had contributed. I’d kept
a few of the rocks Fred had pointed out to me when we took a walk, and they were sitting on another shelf. It was just a big bare room now, I thought, but in a few weeks, after the children began to draw and make things, it would look more like a schoolroom. Looking at the empty tables and chairs, I thought of so many things I wanted to say to the class that I went back inside my quarters and started jotting them down. They were things like our being as much a part of America up here as the people in any of the forty-eight states, and how important it was for all of us to be fine, well-educated citizens. When I went to bed I was so keyed up it was hard to fall asleep.

School was supposed to start at nine, but by a quarter to they were all outside, so I went out and brought the folded flag with me.

With the oldest boy helping me, I ran it up to the top of the pole and then we all said the Pledge of Allegiance. Right then and there I knew I couldn’t say one of the things I’d planned on. They all sounded too highfalutin’ and phony. In fact, once we were in the schoolroom I couldn’t say anything at all. I had stage fright. For a full minute the whole class stared at me silently and, completely tongue-tied, I stared back at them. The only sound was everybody’s breathing and the squeak of the floorboards.

“How do you like the schoolroom?” I finally managed to croak.

“Real spiffy,” Jimmy Carew said. He and his little brother and the Vaughn girls had seen it already, and so had Isabelle. Robert Merriweather and Joan Simpson
hadn’t. They all looked around, murmuring their approval. I was proud of it. Fred had done a wonderful job. All the tables were covered with oilcloth and he’d painted the place with some pale green paint we’d found in Mr. Strong’s store. The color was a little on the bilious side, but it brightened the room up and made it look larger.

“It smells good,” Joan Simpson said. She was six years old, blue eyes, blond hair. I’d have to teach both her and Willard Carew to read.

After we found seats for everyone I wrote my name across one of the shades and said I was glad to be here. Then I shivered. “Before we go on,” I said, “does anybody know how to build a fire in that stove?”

The schoolroom was so chilly that everybody sat with coats and parkas on. I’d tried to work the Yukon stove, a squat black metal affair a little bigger than an orange crate, but couldn’t get a fire going in it. Out of the many hands that volunteered I picked Robert Merriweather. Twelve, he was the oldest of my three boys and big for his age.

He showed me right away what was wrong. I hadn’t used enough kindling. “Also,” he said, “you didn’t open the damper enough. You need a good draft when the fire first starts.” After he filled the stove with more kindling, he placed a couple of slender logs inside, then a couple of hefty three-foot logs on top of them. “You see,” he said, “this kind of stove is made for long logs, so you don’t have to keep feeding it so much.”

“What do you know about that?” I said. “I thought all stoves were alike.”

“Oh, no,” a few children protested.

“Some you have to put small pieces in, like a cook-stove, some large like this one,” Elvira Vaughn said.

“That one’s real ornery,” Jimmy Carew said.

They loved the idea that here I was a teacher and I didn’t know something. I’d intended to spend the morning getting acquainted and had rehearsed how I was going to start off asking them about themselves, but I didn’t have to. Since they’d already taught
me
something,
they didn’t think twice about asking me questions.

“How come you don’t know anything about stoves?” six-year-old Willard Carew asked.
“Everybody
knows about
stoves.”

“Well, they don’t use wood stoves very much where I come from.”

“Then how do they cook?”

“Can anybody tell Willard?”

Robert Merriweather raised his hand. “I can. They use gas stoves. We had one before we came here to Alaska.”

“What’s a gas stove?” Willard asked.

Robert looked at me to see if I’d let him go ahead. He seemed to be the kind of a boy who’d always been kept in check, and he was self-conscious. I nodded to him.

“You turn on a switch and put a match to the burner and it lights right up. It’s a million times better’n a wood stove.”

From there we went on to talk about furnaces and steam heat and fireplaces.

“My father says a fireplace is the biggest waste of wood there is,” Eleanor Vaughn said. She turned to her twin sister Evelyn, who was as husky as she was. “Isn’t that right?”

“That’s right.”

“Ah, your father knows everything,” Jimmy Carew said sarcastically.

After we decided which chairs and tables would be most comfortable for everybody and who would sit with whom, I asked them what they thought they were coming to school for.

“’cause we have to,” Jimmy answered. That brought a laugh.

“All right, that’s one reason. How many want to?”

Everyone’s hand went up.

“Wonderful. Why?”

The hands went up again. I called on Jimmy’s brother Willard. “There’s nothin’ else to do,” he said with typical six-year-old honesty.

“Another reason. Next.”

“To learn readin’, writin’ and ’rithmetic,” Eleanor
Vaughn said. She and her twin looked exactly like their father, the same big teeth and stern frown.

“Fine,” I said. “What else?”

Silence.

“Nothing else? Anybody here know how to play the harmonica?”

“I do,” Robert answered.

“Anybody want to learn?”

“Me,” Jimmy said.

“All right, you’ll learn.”

“Here in school?”

“Certainly. That’s what school’s for—to learn what you want to learn.”

“I’d like to learn sewing,” Elvira Vaughn said.

“Me too,” I said. “I’m terrible. Any good sewers here?”

Isabelle Purdy raised her hand.

“Think you can show Elvira how?”

“Sure,” she said.

“That takes care of sewing. Anything else anybody wants to learn, they can learn it—as long as they keep up with their work. Maybe we can even learn a little bit about each other, like where we’re all from.”

The Purdys had come from Canada, we found out, the Carews from Pennsylvania. It gave me a chance to use one of the few teaching aids I had—a big map of the U.S. and Canada. It was my pride and joy and I wasn’t about to pass the chance up.

“Where are you from, Teacher?” Elvira Vaughn asked me. Like her two sisters, her first name began with an E, but there the resemblance ended. She was slender and demure, not as sure about everything as they were, and more curious.

“I was brought up in Colorado.”

“Where’s that?”

“Who can show us on the map?”

Isabelle Purdy raised her hand, went to it and pointed to Colorado.

“Where would you say that is?” I asked her.

“Ma’am?”

“What part of the United States—North? South? West?”