Tisha (32 page)

He smiled. “It hasn’t stopped you so far. Go ahead, take the kids. Do what you like with them. Just remember they’re still part savage.”

“If they are it’s probably the part they got from you.”

I thought he’d get mad at that, but he didn’t. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Forget it.”

I started to go. “I can still have them?”

“They’re all yours … Wait a minute.”

He walked over to one of the burlap sacks and ripped it open. Peering inside, he pulled out first one, then another black fox pelt. They were perfectly matched and worth a lot of money. He fluffed them out then clamped the snouts together and draped them around my neck.

“Peace offering,” he said.

The way he was smiling made me feel sorry for him. His cabin was neat, and he was pretty well off, but when it came right down to it, all he had was a comfortable place to be lonely in.

“Thanks, Joe.” I said. “Will you do me one more favor? Don’t say anything to anybody. There’s no use in anybody knowing until Mr. Strong comes in.”

He said he wouldn’t.

Outside, when I got to the edge of the hill and looked down, I couldn’t bring myself to push off. I was scared I’d run into a tree.

“What’s the matter?” Joe asked.

“It’s pretty steep.”

“That it is.”

I put the skis together and sat down on them. “Don’t laugh,” I said. “Give me a push.”

He pushed me off. Halfway down the skis separated and I went tumbling. The skis went on down without me.

I could hear Joe laughing. “Still in one piece?” he called. He didn’t have to raise his voice. It carried clearly.

“Just divine.” I did a quick dance step that made him laugh even more, then I collected the ski poles and the furs and walked and slid down the rest of the way. He was still in a good mood when I reached bottom and started strapping on my skis.

“So you think we’re all mean, eh?”

“Sometimes. Not most of the time.” It felt strange to be talking with him as if we were in the same living room and not a quarter of a mile apart. “How about you? You really think this is such an awful place?”

“Sometimes. Not most of the time … Sometimes I
stand up here and I look out over everything, and then I think, it’s all mine. All of it. I don’t have to buy it, pay taxes on it or worry about it. It’s mine.” He was quiet a few seconds and I thought he was going to go on. Instead he just said, “Well, goodnight, kid.”

“Goodnight, Joe.”

I felt good all the way home.

Ethel was asleep, but Chuck was still up. When I told him the news he let out a yell and hugged me. “I know you make him say yes, Tisha, I know you make him say yes!” He was so excited he didn’t fall asleep until after ten.

“What do you think Mr. Strong will say?” I asked Nancy later on. He’d be expecting to take Chuck and Ethel back to the Indian village along with Mary’s body.

“He’ll be speechless,” Nancy said.

“Be nice if everybody else was too.”

“Don’t you worry, they won’t be.”

On the days Mr. Strong came into the settlement I always let the class out about fifteen minutes before he arrived. On those days there were always at least one or two visiting dog teams tied up by the roadhouse. They belonged to miners and trappers who’d mushed in either to pick up goods or to send stuff out. One minute they’d be lying in the snow all quiet, maybe sleeping, the next they’d be lifting their heads, then getting up and stretching. After that, between them and the local dogs it was pure pandemonium—barking and howling that kept getting louder and louder until owners and drivers put a stop to it. Sure enough, if it didn’t happen to be a stray animal or a stranger that had started them off, fifteen minutes later Mr. Strong’s
horse-drawn sled would come rumbling into the settlement How they could tell he was on the way nobody knew, but they could.

This time they started barking right after lunch. As soon as the class heard them everybody stopped work and listened, waiting to make sure it wasn’t something else. Even though it was just about the right time there was no guarantee it was Mr. Strong. There wasn’t even a guarantee he’d come in at all on the day he was supposed to. Too many things could hold him up: heavy drifts, a sudden storm or an accident. Now that it was February the weather was especially freakish. The past few days you couldn’t even hang out wash. No sooner would you get it on the line than it froze, and then the wind would bang it up against you hard enough to hurt.

So we were quiet, listening as the barking became more and more excited. And finally someone down by the roadhouse yelled out exactly what we wanted to hear: “Wahoo-o-o-o! The dogs say he’s a-comin’!”

After I let the class go I threw a sweater around my shoulders and went out. The air was flying white and it was colder than it usually was when it snowed. I ran across the road to check the fire in the stable. I always started it in the morning when Mr. Strong was due in, then kept it going all day. After the long, miserable trip his horses had, the least they were entitled to was a warm stable. After I put another log in the stove I filled the feed bags, then ran back to my quarters. There were a lot more dog teams tied up near the roadhouse than usual, I saw. The word was out that prices at the Seattle Fur Exchange were at their highest now and everybody was shipping their catch out.

Fifteen minutes later everybody including me was waiting outside the post office, stomping around to keep warm.

Jimmy and the rest of the kids were busy piling up snow at the edge of the settlement. They did it every time Mr. Strong was due in, built a barrier a few feet high just so they could watch Mr. Strong’s horses kick it to pieces when they went through it. Chuck and
Ethel were with them, making their contribution. As soon as we heard the jangle of the bells in the distance the kids came running over to the crowd. Ben Norvall leaned down over Chuck. “Been happy staying with the teacher, have ya?”

Chuck said, “Yiss. Tisha make good grub me.”

“That’s the way to a man’s heart,” Ben said. His moustache was peppered with snowflakes. “Bet you’ll sure be sorry to go back to that Indian village now.”

“I no go back,” Chuck said. “I stay here.”

“Is that so?” Ben looked at me inquiringly, but I pretended not to be paying attention.

Uncle Arthur was on the other side of me.

“B’gawd, missis, it was good of ya to take care of the little tykes. I ain’t the marryin’ kind, but if I wuz I’d ask for your hand and take these two to boot.”

“Then they could all go up to the Indian village and live happily ever after,” I heard Angela say to somebody.

Jake Harrington came over with Rebekah and Lily. “Howdy, Teacher.”

“Hello, Mr. Harrington.”

“How’s my woman doing in school?”

“Fine.”

“Hope so.” He smiled. “I can’t get a lick of work out of ’er these days with all the studyin’ she’s doing. Next thing you know she’ll want to go to college.”

We heard the bells and everybody got quiet. A few minutes later the sled materialized, rocking and tinkling and crunching its way toward us.

Mr. Strong was standing up looking like a big bear, furred from head to toe, cracking his whip and urging the two horses on. He didn’t have to, they wanted to get here as bad as he did, but it made a good impression on everybody and showed he was on the job. As soon as the horses smashed through the snow barrier the kids had built, they tried to head over to the stable, but Jake Harrington and a couple of other men ran out and shied them back towards the post office. They’d had a rough trip, you could see that. The corners of their mouths dripped blood from where the frozen bit
had torn them up and their blankets were hung with icicles. The two of them were just one big cloud of steam.

There was somebody sitting up front alongside Mr. Strong. As soon as the sled stopped he jumped down and yelled at the men who were crowding forward. “Just hold on, all a you! Lemme get my wife and baby out.”

It was Elmer, Maggie Carew’s son-in-law. He moved to the back of the sled where somebody was already pushing up the covering canvas from underneath. When he pulled it back, there was Jeannette, swaddled in a cocoon of furs. She started to hand Elmer a little bundle wrapped in blankets, but Maggie was already alongside of him and said, “Give ’er to me!”

While he helped Jeannette down all the women crowded around Maggie to have a look at the baby. She wouldn’t let them see it though. She headed right over to the roadhouse with it, not even taking a peek herself. If they wanted to see it, they could come over later, she said. She wasn’t about to let it catch its death out there in the cold.

I got all my mail, then went back to my quarters with Nancy and the children. There was a letter from Lester Henderson, and he didn’t have very cheering news. It wasn’t that he didn’t like my work or think I wasn’t doing a good job. “Your reports are thorough and your pupils seem to be making excellent progress,” he wrote. “Personally, I’m more than satisfied with your work, especially since this is your first year.”

I knew what that meant. People had written to him about me, and the chances were that the school board in Eagle wouldn’t want me teaching there. I tried not to let it bother me too much, but it did. I wanted to teach
in Eagle. It was close by and I knew what it would be like. On top of that Maggie Carew was moving there, and even if she wasn’t crazy about me, she was somebody I knew. I didn’t relish the idea of going to some strange place where I’d have to start all over again.

After supper, Nancy started to get dressed up to go over to the roadhouse. What with everybody coming in from all over to send out their furs it was kind of an occasion and there was going to be a dance and partying. I had to go over to Mr. Strong’s store to go over all the accounts with him and give him the cash I’d taken in, but I kept putting it off until Nancy was all dressed, then I couldn’t put it off any longer. “I’ll be back soon,” I told her.

Joe Temple was banging away at the piano when I went by the roadhouse and everybody was singing
Yes, Sir! That’s My Baby.
I was hoping the store would be empty, but Mr. Vaughn, Harry Dowles and a couple of other men were sitting around the oil-drum stove when I walked in. The place was suffocating with heat and tobacco smoke. Harry Dowles shifted his quid of chewing tobacco and asked me if I was coming over to the roadhouse.

“I don’t think so,” I said. I didn’t want to drag Chuck and Ethel over there, tonight of all nights.

“Too bad.” He spat into the big tin can sitting by the stove. “Fred Purdy’s liable to show up.” Harry’s wife was the one who’d taken back the washboiler from me when I threatened to quit if Chuck didn’t stay in the school. Because he and his wife weren’t on speaking terms, they were always asking other people to relay what they wanted to say to each other. Once they trapped me between them, and for over fifteen minutes they drove me crazy repeating to the two of them what they could have told each other in a third of the time. They were both peculiar people, and it made me nervous to be around them. Him more than her. With a pale pudgy face, some missing front teeth, and eyes like little pieces of black coal, he looked like an evil snowman. He was always acting as if he knew something you didn’t, and I thought he was just being smart
now, so I didn’t pay him any attention. But then he said, “I’m givin’ you the straight goods, Teacher—ain’t I, Walt?”

Mr. Strong was leaning over the counter going over some figures. He nailed one of them with his pencil and looked up at me over his glasses. “Fred came in with me,” he said.

“How come I didn’t see him?”

“He jumped off at Stonehouse Creek and siwashed it from there.”

Harry Dowles chuckled. While I went over the accounts with Mr. Strong I knew they were all giving each other know-it-all looks in back of me, but I just pretended I wasn’t any more affected than if I’d just been told it was snowing outside. I wouldn’t give them the satisfaction. I kept hoping they’d leave before I talked with Mr. Strong about Chuck and Ethel, but they stayed put. After we finished tallying up I was about to mention it, but Mr. Strong beat me to it.

“Too bad about Mary Angus,” he said.

“Yes, it was.”

“We all have to take the sunset trail sometime or other,” somebody said.

“That’s the truth,” Harry Dowles said.

“I’ll be bringing the body back to the Indian village,” Mr. Strong said. ‘I won’t be paid for it, but it’s my duty. It was commendable of you to look after the two youngsters.”

“I didn’t mind at all.”

“You may bring them over here tonight if you wish. I can give them a couple of sleeping bags. Or if you don’t mind I can pick them up before I leave tomorrow.”

“You won’t have to do either,” I said. “They’re going to stay with me.”

He peered at me over his glasses again. “I don’t understand.”

“I’m going to keep them for a while. I don’t think they ought to go back to the Indian village just yet.”

Mr. Vaughn made a snorting noise and Harry Dowles spat. He must have missed the tin can because I heard
the squirt sizzle against the stove. “Kinda got your hands full as it is, don’t ya, Teacher?” he asked.

Mr. Strong frowned at him. “I’m having a conversation with this lady, Mr. Dowles. I’d be pleased if you wouldn’t interrupt.” He turned back to me. “Madam, I’m sure your intentions are good, but those children belong among their own people.”

“I want to keep them with me, Mr. Strong.”

“I believe that you are all of nineteen years old—”

“No, I’m twenty now.”

“Since you have not reached the age of consent, I don’t see how you are entitled to take charge of children that do not belong to you.”

“I already spoke with Joe Temple about it. He said it’s all right with him.”

“For how long do you intend to keep them?”

“I don’t know.”

“I asked you a simple question because I am afraid you are on the verge of making a grievous error. How long do you intend to keep them?”