Tisha (5 page)

Breakfast the next morning was solemn. The big main room of the roadhouse was cheerful and clean, the board floors almost bleached white. There were flower boxes on the window-sill. The whole place was so spick-and-span it made me uncomfortable, but not half as uncomfortable as the Prentisses did. All ten of them, including Nancy, sat at the long table sullenly, as though someone had cheated them and they were angry about it. I wished Mr. Strong was here, but he’d eaten already and was out getting the animals loaded up. After Mrs. Prentiss introduced everyone in the family to me they didn’t say a word. She seemed to dominate them like a circus lion tamer with a cage full of cats. After a couple of minutes of silence, she looked at them with cold green eyes. “Ever see a finer lookin’ bunch?” she said contemptuously. “Talk your ear off, don’t they? My nine mules—happy as sunshine, the whole lot of ’em.”

“How long you been teaching?” she asked me a minute later.

‘Two years.”

“You must have started when you were in diapers.”

“I’m older than I look,” I said.

“What do you think of somebody who’s had plenty of schooling and still can’t read?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “There could be a lot of reasons.”

As soon as Mr. Prentiss finished his breakfast and got up, the rest did also. I thought at first that maybe none of them wanted to be left alone with her. But as soon as they were gone I realized they knew she wanted to talk to me alone.

“I got a favor to ask you,” she said. “I want my Nancy to stay with you at Chicken.”

I was too surprised to answer.

“I’m willing to pay, mind you,” she went on, as if that meant I didn’t have any excuse for refusing. “I’m not asking nothing for nothing.”

“But Nancy and I don’t even know each other, Mrs. Prentiss.”

She brushed that aside. “That doesn’t matter. You’re a teacher. My Nancy can’t read too good and I think you could help her.”

“But I don’t even know if I’ll have room for her. I’ve never been to Chicken.”

“There’ll be room. And if there isn’t she’ll sleep on the floor.” When I didn’t say anything, she found another argument. “Look, Teacher, you’re a cheechako. You don’t know the first thing about this country. Nancy could be a big help to you.”

“Let me think about it,” I said, wanting to get away.

Mrs. Prentiss’ tone changed. She stopped pushing. “I’ll give it to you straight, Teacher. I don’t know you, it’s true. I don’t know anything about you, but I think you’d be good for Nancy. I’m talking to you because she asked me to. I could send her to school in Eagle, but she doesn’t like that Mrs. Rooney, says she’s more interested in men than in teaching. Besides, the kids there call her bonehead because she can’t read.”

The door to the kitchen was ajar and I had the feeling Nancy was behind it, listening. I got up. “Let me think about it,” I said again.

The stable next to the roadhouse was almost as neat as the roadhouse itself, with plenty of fresh hay all around, and a clean stall for a cow. Mr. Strong Was almost ready to lead the animals out. When I told him the story, he didn’t seem surprised at all. “It’s a good idea,” he said.

“But we’re complete strangers.”

“That has nothing to do with it, madam,” he said. “If I were you I would take her.”

“Why?”

“You’re new to this country. You’re going to be all alone. Living in the bush isn’t easy for anyone, much less for someone like you. Nancy can teach you a great deal.”

“Suppose we don’t get along?”

“You can always send her home.”

I stayed in the stable, trying to decide what to do. I thought about Miss Ivy. If she was in this situation, I knew, she wouldn’t have thought twice about taking Nancy. She’d been my teacher in high school, and if it hadn’t been for her I’d probably never have become a teacher myself. When my family had broken up and my mother couldn’t support me anymore she’d taken me in and treated me as if I were her own daughter. She hadn’t made any bones about it either, just took me in and kept me with her until I graduated, as if she wasn’t doing anything but what was simply right and proper.

When I thought about it that way it seemed to me that taking Nancy to live with me wasn’t a big thing at all—especially since what Mr. Strong had said was true. I
didn’t
know anything about living in the wilds. Having someone like Nancy to show me the ropes would make things a lot easier. I could help her and she could help me.

Before the pack train left I told Mrs. Prentiss that it was all right, and she said she’d send Nancy out with Mr. Strong some time in the next few weeks.

I hadn’t seen Nancy around at all, but as we were moving out she appeared around the corner of the roadhouse. “Bye, Teacher,” she called.

“Bye, see you soon.” I smiled.

She didn’t smile back.

From Steel Creek on the going was easier. Right from the start I felt better. The air was nippy, but I was well bundled up. Besides the suit of long underwear I was wearing, Mrs. Prentiss had given me a pair of bib overalls one of her boys had outgrown, a pair of his boots and a flannel shirt. With Mr. Strong’s coat on top of it all, I didn’t have to worry about being cold.

My flowered hat was in such bad shape that I gave it to Blossom. With a couple of holes cut in it to let his ears through, it really looked almost rakish on him. I settled for an old wool pom-pom hat that I could pull down over my ears. I was feeling so good I started paying attention to the country.

All during the trip down the Yukon I’d kept wondering what it was that made this country so different from what I’d known so far. I’d thought it was the bigness, but it wasn’t only that. It was the rawness. Back in Oregon the trees billowed out fat and heavy even at this time of year. Here they were tattered, leaner and tougher—the tall spruce looking like huge giants ready for a scrap. Everything was that way, like the thick groves of willow that some animal had chewed half up, stripping the bark from them. They just kept on growing anyway, unkillable. Even the clouds overhead seemed to move faster. The air was all charged up, as if something was going to happen.

I’d have thought that with all the noise the cowbells were making, we wouldn’t see hide nor hair of any wild animals, but it was just the opposite. The noise made them curious, and every so often I’d look off and see something watching us. Once it was a whole bunch of foxes. They were frisking on a shelf when we came on
them, two blues, a couple of blacks and one cross fox. They stopped fooling around and just stared at us as nervy as you please, then went right back to what they were doing.

I’d always thought wolves traveled in packs until I saw one all by himself maybe a hundred yards off the trail. I’d never seen one before, but I knew right away it had to be a wolf. It looked bigger and meaner than I’d imagined, long snout, heavy ruff around the neck and eyes as calculating as the Devil’s. He paced us for almost a mile, sometimes showing up ahead of us, and I’d have sworn he was thinking as clearly as I was. “You can bet on that,” Mr. Strong said. ‘He smells the horses—hopes maybe one of them will drop dead.”

He gave up hoping finally and disappeared.

We were a few hours out of Steel Creek when a settlement appeared in the distance—a line of about fifteen cabins set back from the banks of the Forty Mile River. A few small boats were pulled up on the bank and there were some food caches standing on poles in back of the cabins.

“An Indian village,” Mr. Strong said. “We’ll stop there.”

I’d seen a couple of Indian villages from the river-boat coming down the Yukon, but never close up. Before that I hadn’t even known there’d be Indians in Alaska. I thought there’d be Eskimos. This village looked so picturesque I couldn’t wait to get there.

But when we drew near I was shocked. It was a shanty-town, worse than any of the worst sections I’d seen in all the coal towns I’d lived in. There might have been three or four decent-looking places, but the rest were hovels, sway-backed cabins and sagging shacks that were patched with everything the owners could get their hands on—tarpaper, rotting planks, scraps of galvanized iron, even old animal hides. The whole place looked as if all the garbage and slop from Eagle had been dumped here. Rusting tin cans, rags, paper, shreds of hide, bottles and fishbones littered the ground. There was no breeze blowing and the stench that hung over everything was nauseating. I was glad it was chilly. If it had been hot it would have been unbearable.

As we rode in people stared at us from doorways. I’d thought that the Indians I’d seen at Eagle were poor, but these people had nothing. They made me think of pictures I’d seen in a stereoscope once of starving Negro sharecroppers, except that these faces looked Oriental. The clothes were the same, though: worn dresses that hung like sacks on the women, patched and baggy overalls on the men. On one man we passed I recognized the frayed jacket of a riverboat captain.

Mangy dogs, half starved and chained to stakes, snarled and leaped at us as we went by. They were jerked back and landed in their own dung. A few children kept pace with us, giving the horses plenty of room. Barefoot and in rags, noses running, they were having a good time. One little boy, with open running sores all over his head, tripped over one of the dogs and barely avoided being bitten. Another boy had the same kind of sores all over his neck. They were from tuberculosis, I found out later.

We stopped in front of a frame house that had paint peeling all over it. I thought that maybe it was where the chief of the village lived because a lot of the Indians were gathered in front of it. Mr. Strong seemed to know everybody, greeting a few people by their first name.

“Betty, how’s little Charles Lindbergh?” he asked a mahogany-colored woman who was holding a tiny baby. The dogs all over the village were making such a racket he almost had to yell.

“He’s fine,” she yelled back, lifting the baby a little to show him off. “Strong like bear.”

“Skooltrai
here?” Mr. Strong said.

The woman nodded and at almost the same time the door to the house opened. An Indian and a white girl came out, and no two people could have looked more different than they did. Maybe it was because the girl was so beautiful, but I thought the Indian was one of the ugliest men I’d ever seen. He was tall and thin, the skin over his cheekbones drawn so tight that it glistened, and his eyes were small and set wide apart. His shirt was open at the throat and his neck looked as
though somebody had once wound barbed wire around it, it was so covered with scars.

They were followed by a little boy. He must have been about eight years old and you could see he was part white. Like the other kids, he was as skinny as a rail.

“Good day, Miss Winters,” Mr. Strong called to the girl. Up to then he’d been smiling and friendly with everybody, the way you’d be with children. But he didn’t look friendly now. “This young lady is bound for Chicken,” he went on, “and she needs a short rest. I would appreciate it if you would accommodate her.”

The girl didn’t act any friendlier to him than he did to her, but she came right over to me.

“I’ll give you a hand,” she said, reaching up.

She was really lovely, with bright blue eyes and long black hair tied back with a red bandanna. She was wearing moccasins, but even then she was taller than I was.

“I’m Cathy Winters,” she said, after I was able to stand by myself.

“Thanks,” I said. “I’m Anne Hobbs.”

She indicated the tall Indian beside her. “This is Titus Paul.”

I told him I was glad to meet him, but he didn’t return the compliment.

She asked the little boy to get her mail, then brought me into the house. Her place was less than half the size I’d thought it was from the outside, one dingy room with a cracked brown linoleum on the floor and a tiny bedroom. She helped me off with my coat and I plopped down on a battered couch.

“I hope I’m not putting you out.”

There was a small table in the center of the room with the remains of a meal on it and I smelled the delicious odor of fried fish.

“Not at all. Titus and I just finished eating some grayling he caught this morning. Plenty left over if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks. This is all I need.”

“Want to wash up?”

“I sure do.”

She set about getting a basin and a washcloth and I just sat back and watched her move around. She had on a dress that was as beautiful as her figure, some kind of homespun embroidered with Indian designs around the hem and the half-length sleeves. It was tied with a leather thong at the waist. She looked so smart and neat that even if I hadn’t been so sweated up and grimy I’d have been jealous of her.

The little boy came in then and put her mail on the counter.

“This is Chuck,” Cathy said, taking a pitcher and dipping it in a barrel of water. “He’ll be keeping you company the rest of the way. Chuck, I’d like you to meet Miss Hobbs.”

He was too shy to look at me.

Cathy tipped the pitcher over the hand basin and poured the water in. “Oh come on,” she said to him. “Is that the way I taught you to say hello? Go on,” Cathy encouraged him. “She won’t bite you. She’s a teacher just like me.”

“Please … to … meet you,” he said gravely.

“I’m pleased to meet you too,” I said.

She told him to run along and he went out, grateful to get away.

After I washed up I felt a little better, and over a cup of coffee I found out why her place was so small. She was the schoolteacher here and these were her living quarters. The rest of the house was the schoolroom. I admired her. She didn’t have much of a place, but she’d certainly made it comfortable. There were books all over and all kinds of Indian articles on the walls—a quiver full of arrows, bows, a couple of wooden ceremonial masks and dozens of other things. A colored framed print of Jesus that hung on one wall looked out of place.

“Are you here all alone?” I asked her.

“Sure.” She must have realized what I was thinking because she said, “I know how you feel. I felt the same way when I first came. But there’s nothing to be afraid of here. If you like, I’ll show you around. You should walk a little anyway—get the kinks out.”