Tisha (24 page)

“Cab, I do want to go home,” I said.

He understood, but he didn’t care. Fred hadn’t let go of my coat, and Cab tried to take it from him again. “Lemme have that,” he said.

“It’s all right, Cab,” Fred told him. “I’ll take her home.”

“You will like hell,” Cab said. “Let it go.” Fred looked at me, but before he could decide what to do Cab shoved him. Fred let my coat go and fell against the counter. “I said I’ll take ’er home, goddammit, ’n’ I mean what I say!”

I was scared now. The whole place had gotten quiet, and everybody was watching to see what was going to happen. They weren’t only watching, either. They were waiting, waiting like a pack of wolves for Cab to do their dirty work. They’d been wanting it to happen, planning for it to happen, and now they were licking their chops. Now I knew why Uncle Arthur had finally put the
Home Sweet Home
waltz on when Fred and I were close. Anything to get Cab riled up more. And Fred knew it. I could see by the way he was looking at everybody. He was cornered, being forced into a fight with Cab.

“Now you hightail it outta here, half-breed,” Cab said to him. He was wound up like a spring. He wanted to fight bad, you could see it in the way his shoulders moved, as if he was going to shake himself apart any second if he didn’t start lashing out. I felt sick to my stomach.

“I don’t want any fightin’ in here,” Maggie Carew said. “The two of you want to settle it, go on outside.”

“That’s fine with me,” Cab said.

“Cab, I don’t want to fight with you,” Fred told him.

“Thought so,” Mr. Vaughn said. “He’s going to crawfish.”

“Sure is,” Angela said. “Even an Arkansas Jew’d be fighting by now.”

Cab wasn’t listening to anybody anymore. He had blood in his eye and he kept moving his shoulders the way a kid does when he’s excited about something and wants to get to it.

Fred moved away from the counter. He’d gone dead white around his mouth and he was all tightened up, so I was surprised he could walk so easily. He went over to get his parka where it was hanging on a hook, and took it down. Cab rushed over to him and gave him another shove that sent him flying into a whole bunch of men. They pushed him right back and he went bang up against Cab. Cab must have thought Fred was coming after him because his fist went out and he hit Fred in the mouth. It was just a glancing punch, but Fred’s lip started to bleed and it kind of stunned him. That did it for everybody. Mr. Carew and another man grabbed Cab, two others grabbed Fred, and they hustled them both out the door. I kept trying to get them to stop, and I yelled out to Cab that if he wanted to he could take me home, but nobody was listening to me.

So there Fred was, out in the middle of the snow, his parka still hanging over his arm and Cab staring at him wild-eyed, going into a slight crouch, telling Fred to get ready. And everybody was really having a good time now. “Slam’im in the mush, Cab.” “Chew’im up!” “Paste ’im under the tab!” Not one of them was rooting for Fred.

I went over to Joe Temple. “Joe, get them to stop, please.”

“And get myself slugged? No thanks.”

Fred was still trying to get out of it, not raising his hands or doing anything but watching Cab. “Come on, boy,” Cab said, “get ’em up.”

“I told you, Cab. I don’t want to fight with you.”

Then Cab started to move in, all crouched up like an animal, his fists going as if he was winding up yarn, his eyes all wild. I was scared, really scared. I thought Fred would be too and I wouldn’t have blamed him, but he wasn’t. I almost didn’t recognize him for the expression on his face. It was the strangest expression I’d ever seen on anyone, the look he might have had on trail when he was all alone and in trouble and it was only him against an enemy. At that moment I didn’t know him at all.

I tried to go over to him, but Angela Barrett grabbed me. She was as strong as a wrestler.

“Let me go, Mrs. Barrett.”

“You just settle down,” she said thickly, “or he won’t be the only one to get the shit knocked out of ’im.”

What happened next made everybody jump. There was a big explosion and I caught a flash of flame out of the corner of my eye and smelled the sharp odor of burnt powder. It was Rebekah’s husband, Jake Harrington, standing there holding Mr. Carew’s thirty-aught-six over’n’under. Everybody froze and my ears were ringing so I could hardly hear what he was saying. He’d fired into the air, but now he was pointing that shotgun straight at Cab. “Go on back inside, Cab,” he told him quietly.

Cab was drunk, but he wasn’t so drunk that those two barrels staring him in the face didn’t sober him a little.

“This is none a your business,” he said to Jake.

“Only tryin’ to do you a favor, Cab,” Jake said.

“It’s not him you’re doing any favors,” Mr. Vaughn said. “It’s the breed.” He was standing in back of Cab.

“It’s him,” Jake said. “’cause if he tries to hit that boy I’m gonna kill ’im. So maybe you better move outta the way.”

You can bet Mr. Vaughn moved, all right. And he wasn’t the only one. Everybody standing near Cab moved away too.

“What do you say, Cab? It’s cold out here.”

Cab said something he ordinarily wouldn’t have said with ladies present, but he could be excused for it.
Then he slouched back into the roadhouse and everybody else started moving back in too. I pulled away from Angela.

“C’mon, Fred.” I took his arm.

“Anne,” Nancy called after me, “I’ll stay here a while.”

All the way back to my quarters Fred was trembling so hard I thought he was going to fall down. Inside, he slumped into a chair. I built up the fire.

“Did he hurt you?”

“No. I’m trying to hold my supper down.”

After a little while he picked his head up. “I could use an aspirin.”

I gave it to him along with some water. His chin was smeared with blood and his lip was a little puffy. I got a wet cloth and gave it to him. He went over to the mirror and dabbed the cut. I felt it was partly my fault. If he’d been badly hurt I’d never have forgiven myself. The thing that bothered me the most, though, was how everybody had really wanted to see him beat up.

“I’m glad you’re not hurt too bad.”

He almost smiled. “Me too. I just wish there was some way I could keep my mother from finding out about it.”

“All she has to do is take one look at you.”

“Well, at least she won’t have to know what it was all about.”

“What’ll you tell her?”

“Oh, that Cab just got drunk and took a poke at me. This is a mess,” he said. “Anne …” He started to say something else, but just then Nancy came in carrying my coat.

I went outside with him when he was ready to leave.

“I’m sorry, Fred.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“I kind of feel it is.”

I waited for him to say something, but he didn’t.

“Why are you looking at me like that?” I asked him.

“No reason.”

“Fred …”

“What?”

I wanted to say, I love you. Instead I said, “Can you
kiss me good night or does your mouth hurt too much?”

He leaned down and his lips just barely touched mine. Then he hugged me so tightly it took the breath out of me. Before he walked off the porch, he stared at me in a way that gave me the most awful feeling, as if he’d pushed me away or shut me out. I wanted to call him back, ask him to stay a little longer. But I didn’t. I just stood there, looking at all the cabins strung along the snow.

Far off to the northwest a flickering yellow glow appeared in the distance. Fred had told me it came from a peat fire that had been smoldering in the tundra ever since last summer. The snow had partly smothered it, but once in a while it burst into flame anew. It blazed up now, as if somebody had just lit a big collection of candles. Then it went out I started to feel chilly and went inside.

Nancy was just slipping her nightie on.

“Thanks for trying to warn us,” I said.

She murmured something, then pulled back the blankets and got into bed with her socks on. A little later when I climbed in beside her, her head was underneath the blankets. She poked it out while I was still curled up in a ball, trying to get warm.

“Anne?”

“Mm …”

“Jimmy told me that Mr. Vaughn told his father you’re gonna have a baby by Fred. He said that come spring you’ll be swoll’ up like a poisoned dog. I told him it was a damn lie.”

I wondered why she was bringing it up now—then I realized she must have heard me ask Fred if he was able to kiss me goodnight. She’d probably been shocked. As good friends as she and I were, she still couldn’t see how I could like Fred so much. She was waiting for me to deny what Mr. Vaughn had said. All of a sudden a picture came into my mind that made me smile—a little quarter-Eskimo baby toddling around the room looking exactly like Fred. It was so vivid I had trouble keeping my voice even. I said, “If it’ll make you feel any better, Nancy—no, I’m not going
to have a baby. I’ll tell you the truth, though. If I was I’d want it to be Fred’s.”

Right after I said it I was sorry. I had no right to shock her like that on purpose. The silence was so thick you could have cut it with a knife.

“Nancy … try to understand. Will you?”

Her answer was a long time coming.

“I’m trying, Anne,” she said, her voice troubled. “I’m trying. But it sure is hard.”

“Fred went over to Steel Creek,” Isabelle told me Monday morning. As soon as she’d showed up for school I’d asked her about him. Every time I thought of the look on his face when he left Friday night, I’d had a sinking feeling. I had the same feeling now.

“When did he leave?”

“Early yesterday morning. Did you know he was in a fight?” she asked me, wide eyed.

“Yes, I did. When is he coming back?”

“As soon as he can, I guess.”

I asked her what he’d gone for, but she said she didn’t know. I asked Nancy if she had any idea why he might have gone to Steel Creek, but she said there was nothing she could think of.

His father showed up for the mail when Mr. Strong came into the settlement a few days later.

“How’s everybody in the family?” I asked him while we were standing on line outside the post office.

“Fine,” he said. “They all say hello.”

“What did Fred go to Steel Creek for?” I asked him.

“See some people over there. He ought to be back in a few days.”

I had the feeling he was holding something back and
I wanted to ask him more about it, but I couldn’t bring myself to pry any more.

There was a letter for me from Lester Henderson. He wrote me that he’d received the first monthly report I’d sent him at the beginning of October, and he was very satisfied with it. Then he went on to say that he’d received letters from a few people in Chicken.

His letter was dated November 6th, three weeks before, and it sounded as if he’d heard from plenty of people. They must have started writing him around the end of September, just about the time Mr. Vaughn and the school board came down on me. I could imagine what they must have written him since then about Rebekah, and about Fred too.

I wrote him back that I was going to do the best I could. More than anything else, I told him, I wanted to justify the faith he had in me. I told him all about Rebekah too, why I’d taken her into the school and what had happened because of it. If he felt she shouldn’t be sitting in, I said, I’d tell her she couldn’t come.

There was a letter from Cathy Winters too, inviting me up to the Indian village for a few days during Christmas vacation. She’d written to me right after the whole business about Chuck coming to school had happened and since then we’d written to each other a few more times. I wrote her that I’d love to come if I could arrange transportation. “If I can, I’ll be there around
Christinas day. That way I can come back with Mr. Strong when he comes through there on the 27th.”

Those next five or six days just seemed to drag by. By the time Fred was due back, every time I’d hear footsteps outside I’d think it was him, and if anyone came up on the porch I’d feel that little jolt of expectancy. But it was always somebody else.

Uncle Arthur came over right after dark one afternoon. He wasn’t his usual flinty self, and at first I thought it was because he knew I still wasn’t feeling any too friendly towards hin after what happened. “Mert Atwood asked me if you’d mind comin’ over to see him,” he said.

“Do you know what for?”

“He needs to see you, missis. He’s feelin’ poorly.” From the way he said it and the hang-dog look he had I knew right away something was wrong. Mert had been sick for the last few days.

“You want me to go with you?” Nancy said.

“I think Mert wants to see ’er alone,” Uncle Arthur said.

I got my parka, put on a couple of pairs of wool socks under my moccasins and we started out. “Is it very bad?” I asked him.

“It isn’t good.” He’d gone over to Mert’s cabin a few days ago, he told me, when he hadn’t seen smoke coming from the stovepipe. If he hadn’t found him, Mert would have frozen to death.

“Damn fool,” Uncle Arthur said crossly, “I alluz told him he don’t eat right. Fries himself up them bannocks all the time. What good’s bannocks do ya? Nothin’ but flour and water. He don’t eat right, don’t do nothin’ right. Don’t even know enough to close ’is own door. Every damn summer he leaves it open when he goes out and lets some bear wander in. Then you know what he does? Stands around cussin’ and swearin’ at that bear until the poor dumb animal’s too scared to come out. So he comes over to my place and tells me to come on and bring my gun. An’ I have to shoot it. Now isn’t that just cockeyed dumb?”