Tisha (6 page)

Outside, Mr. Strong had untied a badly sagging load on one of the animals and laid the contents out on the ground. He and the Indians who’d ordered stuff were stooped around it They had their money ready as he handed them their goods: a frying pan for one, kerosene lantern for another, canned milk, a teapot The others just looked on.

The onlookers made way for Cathy and me when we came out, and Cathy introduced me to them in their own language. I caught the words
“skooltrai”
and “Chicken” as she explained who I was. Then she reeled off their names to me, almost all of them Biblical: David Solomon, Paul Joe, Ruth James, Isaiah John. The older people nodded pleasantly. The younger ones, especially the girls, were kind of shy. They giggled when they were introduced. The ones with babies carried them on their back in a blanket. The older women, like most of the men, looked listless and tired, half of them with cheeks that had a hectic flush and eyes that glistened. I didn’t know until Cathy told me a little later that they were the symptoms of TB. Half the village had it. The sores on some of the children were from glandular TB, Cathy said.

“You got chewing gum?” a squat, flat-featured woman asked me after Cathy introduced her as Mary Magdalene.

“Mary, where are your manners?” Cathy said.

“Hunh,” Mary said. “I not need manners. Need chewing gum.”

Cathy took me from one end of the village to the other. There wasn’t much to see, but the more she showed me of it the worse I felt. I’d always thought of Indians who lived in the wilds as being strong, proud people able to live off the land, but here there were up to seven and eight people huddled in small one-room cabins. Through a couple of open doors I could see that except for some crude bunk beds, a stove and a few chairs and boxes, most of them were bare. The caches that squatted on poles in back of many of them should have been packed with dried meat and fish. Most of them held pitifully little, Cathy told me.

“They won’t be empty in the winter, though,” Cathy
said bitterly. “We’ll be using them for the dead, keep them there until we can bury them in the spring.” She saw the look on my face. “Sorry,” she said. “It doesn’t take much to get me started. You’ve got your own troubles.”

I couldn’t understand it. “Why do they live this way?”

“It’s not an easy question to answer. Anyway it’s too long to go into now. The main thing is not to judge what you see here by white standards. Most of these people didn’t meet whites until about thirty or forty years ago. Up to then they were living in the Stone Age.”

“What kind of Indians are they?” I asked her.

“Athapascans. That’s the general designation for all the Indians up here. Then that’s broken down into tribes. These people are Kutchins—Takhud Kutchins.”

On the way back we passed a huge caldron boiling over an open fire. The odor from whatever was bubbling around in it was awful. An old crone, her spindly legs bowed so badly they looked like they were going to snap, was trying to get something out with a wooden spoon. But she was too short and couldn’t reach over without almost falling in. Cathy said something to her in Indian, took the spoon and tin enamel plate from her and scooped out some pieces of salmon. When she handed it back the old woman took it gratefully. She had only a couple of teeth in her mouth and two lines of tobacco juice ran down each side of her chin.

“What’s that cooking in there?” I said.

“Fish head, animal guts, rice. It’s the dog pot. For them.” She waved a hand toward one of the dogs. The old woman sat down on the ground and began eating. “That’s Lame Sarah. That little boy who’s going along with you—Chuck—he’s been living with her. As you can see, he hasn’t been eating steak and potatoes. She can barely take care of herself. Thank God he’s getting out of here.”

When we were ready to leave, the old woman and Chuck were standing by one of the mules, which had an old beat-up saddle on it. She was buttoning up Chuck’s mackinaw. When she finished, she hugged him to her,
murmuring endearments. He was only half listening, though. His eyes were on the mule and he looked worried. It towered over him the way Blossom did over me, and I knew exactly what was on his mind. The old woman let him go.

“Up we go; Chuck,” Cathy said to him. She tried to lift him into the saddle, but he pulled away from her. “No!” he yelled. He was scared and I didn’t blame him. A few of the kids were looking on, kind of anxious and envious at the same time. Cathy kneeled down in front of him. “Chuck, if you want to see your mother you’re going to have to ride that mule.”

Mr. Strong came over and asked what the matter was.

“He’s a little afraid to get on,” I said.

“Is that right,” he said. Without another word he grabbed the back of Chuck’s mackinaw, lifted him bodily and plunked him down on the mule’s back. “You stay put,” he warned him, “savvy?”

Terrorized, Chuck didn’t answer, but he looked as though he were about to cry.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Cathy said. I didn’t say anything, but I agreed with her. Mr. Strong acted as if he hadn’t heard her.

“We are about ready to go, madam,” he said to me. He glanced down at Cathy’s feet. “Are you too destitute to buy shoes, Miss Winters?”

Before we left her house she’d slipped on a pair of black rubbers over her moccasins. I noticed that a few of the Indians were wearing the same thing.

“What makes you ask?” Her voice was cold as ice.

“I know the Indians are accustomed to wearing such footgear, but I’ve never seen respectable white women do so. They prefer shoes. From the rear I might have taken you for a squaw.”

“Nobody asked you to look at my rear.”

He got red, and I almost blushed myself. I would never have been able to say anything like that to an older person. Not that Cathy was being fresh or disrespectful. She was just giving tit for tat, but if it had been me I would have just shut up.

“Are you ready, madam?” he asked me.

After he boosted me up, he went down the line once more for a last check of everything.

“Do me a favor, Anne,” Cathy said. She tossed her head in Mr. Strong’s direction. “For all he cares, Chuck is just another piece of baggage—maybe less. Look after him, will you? He’s hardly ever gone further than a few miles out of this village and he’ll be scared to death.”

“I’ll look after him.”

Cathy spoke to him in Indian, pointing to me a couple of times. “Remember,” she said, “if you need anything you speak English. If you get scared, or you have to go to the toilet, you tell the teacher here, savvy?”

“Aha,”
he said.

“No more
aha,”
Cathy said. “From now on it’s yes, understand?”

He nodded.

“I say yiss and I tell Tisha.”

She reached a hand up to me. “Good luck.”

“Good luck to you, Cathy. I wish we’d had more of a chance to talk.”

“Drop me a line when you get to Chicken if you feel like it.”

I told her I would.

The pack train moved out then. We followed the curve of the river, and the last I saw of the Indian village before it disappeared behind us was the white wooden cross that stood on top of the church. Then that disappeared over the tops of the trees. I was glad when it was gone. The whole place was awful, and I just couldn’t see any reason why they couldn’t clean it up. I didn’t want to say it to Cathy, but I wouldn’t have stayed there for five minutes.

Mr. Strong slowed down and let the pack train move ahead. “I trust you’re feeling much better, madam,” he said when Chuck and I reached him.

“Much.”

“Good. I would like to make up for some of the time we have lost.”

“It’s all right with me, but I don’t know about Chuck.”

He was still scared stiff, just barely managing to hang on.

“Don’t worry about him,” Mr. Strong said. “These Indians can take anything … What did you think of that young lady back there?”

“I liked her.”

He was still angry, and I thought he was going to say something about her, but he changed the subject. “We will stop for lunch in a couple of hours, then push on until nightfall. We will spend the night at the O’Shaughnessy roadhouse. I trust you will bear up until then.”

I would, but I didn’t know about Chuck. Indian or whatever, he was only a little boy and he was going to need rest along the way.

He made out all right as long as we stuck to the river bank, but once we veered off and started going through rough country he looked as though he was going to be sick.

“Do you want to stop, Chuck?” I asked him. Pale and sweating, he was too miserable to answer.

A few seconds later the mule jumped over a dead tree and he went tumbling off. He landed on his hands and knees and didn’t get up. Instead he started to retch. By the time I was able to get Blossom to stand still long enough to get off, Chuck had thrown up and was crying.

I led him over to the tree, sat down with him and put an arm around him.

Mr. Strong made his way back to us a few minutes later leading both Blossom and the mule.

“He fell off,” I said.

Mr. Strong wasn’t too happy. “Is he hurt?”

“No, but he’s pretty badly upset.”

Mr. Strong waited until he was able to stop crying, then he said, “Chuck, I think maybe you go back home, huh? I give you your stuff, you go home.”

Chuck looked stricken. “You no want me?”

“You fall off mule. No can ride. We ride far, sleep tonight long distance from here, ride more tomorrow. Too tough for you.”

“I ride,” Chuck promised. “You take me I no fall down no more.”

Mr. Strong raised a finger. “You fall once more you go home, savvy?”

He tried as hard as he could and my heart went out to him for it, but it was a losing battle. He managed to stay on for another mile before he fell off again. It made me wince, but he scrambled right to his feet and ran after the mule, trying to get it to stop. It wouldn’t though, and he stood in the trail, tears of anger streaming down his face. “Sumbitch mool!” he called after it “Dirty black sumbitch white mool!”

I stopped Blossom. In a couple of minutes Mr. Strong would be coming back. “Chuck, do you know your way back to the village from here?”

“Yiss,” he said.

“Maybe you can try again when Mr. Strong comes through next time.”

He wrung his hands. “Tisha,” he said earnestly, “you talk Mista St’ong me? You talk him? Say one more time Mista St’ong he let me come I stay on goddamn mool. I stay on, Tisha, I stay on.”

“I’ll talk to him, but I don’t think he’ll listen to me.”

He wrung his hands again, glancing up the trail, then dropped his hands in defeat. I felt terrible for him.

There was a big boulder a short distance away. I headed Blossom over to it and stopped him beside it.

“See if you can climb up and get on with me.”

He clambered up and somehow we got him on in back of me. Then we rode on, his arms tight around my waist. Up ahead, Mr. Strong came in sight. He looked at me questioningly.

“He asked me if he could ride with me for a while,” I said. “I’m getting pretty good now. I don’t mind.”

Whether he believed me or not, he wheeled his horse without saying anything. Chuck’s head leaned against my back.

“Tisha?”

“Yes?”

“You one helluva good white woman,” he said, tightening his arms around my waist. It made me feel good when he did it.

Somehow we made it to the next rest stop. How I didn’t know, but we did. This time it was a sagging old
cabin that had sunk into the ground about a foot. I had to stoop down when I went through the door. Inside it was dark and dingy, half of it floored with planks and the other half dirt. A man and his wife owned it and from the way they acted you’d have thought they’d taken vows of silence. After the man asked Mr. Strong how the trip had been they hardly said anything. The man gave Mr. Strong and me a basin of water to wash with while the woman began ladling out some stew she had on the stove. When Mr. Strong finished washing, the man threw the water outside. He didn’t fill the basin for Chuck. I said that Chuck would probably want to wash up too, but he didn’t pay any attention to me. Mr. Strong sat down at the table and indicated the other place that had been set. “Sit down, madam.”

“Isn’t Chuck going to eat?” He’d sat down on the floor beside the stove and was leaning against the wall.

“You hungry, Chuck?” I asked him. He nodded up and down a few times.

Mr. Strong said, “I am not being paid for his transportation, madam. I’m doing it out of charity. Rest assured, he can take care of himself.”

“I’ll be glad to pay for his meal,” I said. “Is that all right?” I asked the woman. She looked at Mr. Strong and he nodded, so she got a bowl for Chuck, cut a slice of bread and handed them to him where he sat. He finished off every bit of it.

We had a half hour before we were to leave and I spent part of it showing Chuck how to ride the mule. “You say whoa when you want him to stop, say giddap and give him a little kick when you want him to go.” It took a little while for him to get it, but once he saw he could control the animal, he stopped being afraid. By the time we were ready to go, he was having fun. “Giddap, mool,” he said, and we were off.

The longer we rode together, the more I liked him. If he was sore—and he had to be—he didn’t complain about it. Instead he’d jump down every so often and lead the mule along. Walking didn’t seem to bother him at all. Sometimes, when the horses had tough going, he even drew way ahead of us. When we caught up with
him, he’d lead the mule over to a rock or a log and clamber back into the saddle without any help.

“I told you, madam,” Mr. Strong said to me the first time he did it. “These Indian kids are hardy.”

Our next overnight stop was the O’Shaughnessy road-house. It was run by a pleasant Irishman with a thick accent. Since I was a woman he gave up his bedroom, and I shared his bed with his wife, a plump Indian woman who saw to it that Chuck was well fed and bedded down in a warm sleeping bag in our room. I tucked him in and was going out when he called to me. “Tisha … You talk me?”

He wanted company. He was scared being in a strange place. I sat down on the sleeping bag. “I bet you’ll be glad to see your mother,” I said.