Tisha (34 page)

“I guess you’re glad to be back,” I said.

“I sure am,” he answered.

“You back to stay?”

“Uh-huh.”

We both started to say something at the same time, then like Pierre and Gaston we told each other to go ahead and talk first. We were so polite you’d have thought we were the king and queen of England. “I was just going to say,” I said, “that I guess you heard about my taking Chuck and Ethel.”

“Me and everybody else in the Forty Mile,” he said.

“What did you think?”

“That it was just the kind of thing I’d expect you’d do.”

He meant it as a compliment, but I couldn’t help kidding him. “Oh you would, would you?”

“Yes, I would. That’s the way you are.” The way he said it made me feel like glowing, but then I had to go and put my foot in it.

“Why’d you come over?” I blurted out, and as soon as I did I was sorry. I should have kept things light. Instead I had to open my big mouth and force things.

“I wanted to see you one more time,” he said.

“You going away again?”

“No.”

“Oh.”

“I just came over to say good-bye.”

“That’s stupid.” There I go again, I thought, saying exactly the wrong thing. “I mean I told you in my letter
that I wouldn’t act any way around you but like a friend. Didn’t you believe me?”

“Yes I did, but—”

“Well, then why do we have to say good-bye? Can’t we even be around each other, be friends?”

He shook his head as if he was tired. “I shouldn’t even have come over,” he said. “I just can’t make you understand.”

“No, you can’t,” I said, trying to get angry. If I didn’t I was afraid I’d start crying and I wasn’t going to do that. I’d cried enough already. “I can’t understand why two people who like each other aren’t even entitled to look at each other … Fred, you’re the one person around here who really means something to me … I love you. I love you very much. I don’t want you or anybody in your family to be hurt, and I swear that none of you will be because of me. Can’t you believe that?”

His elbow was resting on the table. Impulsively I put my hand on his. “Oops, wrong thing,” I said, pulling it back. “See, I’m learning already.”

He almost smiled, but not quite. “Do you know why I left Steel Creek?”

“Because they treated you lousy there.”

“That was part of it, but not the whole thing. I knew when I went that the men wouldn’t be too friendly. The only reason I was hired in the first place was because the foreman is a friend of my father, so I got what I expected. But I finally realized that there wasn’t any point in staying there. The reason I went was to take the pressure off you and my mother, but after a while I realized that I could do the same thing even if I came back. All I had to do was make sure that you and I stayed away from each other. That way everybody’d be happy.”

“Except you and me.”

He shrugged, then he got up.

“I guess you won’t be at the next dance, then.”

“I’ll be out on the trap line.”

I got up too. “How about the one after?”

“Same thing.”

He hadn’t taken off his parka. It was untied at the throat and his neck was the color of coffee and cream, his face darker. I remembered how he’d smelled of wood smoke every time he held me.

Inside the schoolroom we could hear Nancy and the children tossing rope rings onto the wooden post. Chuck must have made a ringer because he shouted excitedly.

Fred said, “Anne, if you ever need me, if you ever need me for anything at all, I’ll be here. That’s what I came over to tell you.”

“Thanks. Should we shake hands now or something?”

He just stared at me without saying anything for the longest time. “I didn’t mean that,” I said finally.

“I know. But I meant what I said.”

He went past me to the schoolroom door. Opening it, he told Isabelle it was time to go. A couple of minutes later they left.

“What did he say?” Nancy asked me.

“Good-bye.”

A few days later, when it rained, Mr. Purdy showed up for Isabelle. The following week Mrs. Purdy came over for her. Like Fred, it just wasn’t in her nature to stay mad at someone. We had a cup of tea before she took Isabelle home. She didn’t pay any attention to Chuck and Ethel at all except to glance at them once in a while, then her eyes would go right past them as if they didn’t exist. But she knew they were there. Chuck was working on a spear and doing a beautiful job on it. He’d found a piece of metal somewhere, cut a groove in the end of the spear and fitted it in and tied it with rawhide, then he’d painted it and added some ptarmigan feathers. It was turning out to be a work of art. When he showed it to Mrs. Purdy, she managed a grudging compliment.

“How long you take care them, Ahnne?” she asked me.

“They’re with me to stay. I wouldn’t give them up for the world.”

She shook her head disapprovingly. “You are foolish.
There are many people who do not like this, a fine white girl who is teacher ruin reputation with such children.”

“Frankly, I think they’ve finally stopped caring one way or the other.”

“This is not so. Here in bush we all live together—like people in one house with many rooms. You have most important room in whole house. If people have argument with you they cannot come here. They do not wish this to happen.”

“They don’t come here anyway. I don’t have anything to do with most of the people here.”

“Ah, but you are wrong. I tell you long time ago, Ahnne, you are verree important person in settlement.” She waved a hand around the room. “Here children come school—my Isabelle, Vaughn girls, Carew children, others. All these people must be friendly with you—talk with you. People come here for dance. They must talk with you or not come. You have keys Mr. Strong’s store. People come store must talk with you. If they tell you truth, no more can they come. Better not to tell truth, be friendly, talk. Yet inside”—she tapped her heart—“they very angry.”

I’d never thought of it that way, but Mrs. Purdy was right.

“I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it, Mrs. Purdy.”

“Indeed, Ahnne, there is something make you happy, make everybody happy.” She looked over at Chuck and Ethel, picked up a handful of air and threw it towards the door.

“She pretty little girl,” Chuck said after she and Isabelle left.

“She’s not a little girl, Chuck. She’s Isabelle’s mother.”

“She mudda? No fool?”

“No fooling.”

At the next dance I couldn’t help thinking about what she’d said. Maggie Carew was the only person who’d said anything directly to me, but when I looked around the room I realized that there were a lot of others who felt the way she did.

The schoolroom was as crowded as it had been for
the Thanksgiving dance. Even though the weather outside was foul, now that it was February people wouldn’t pass up the slightest opportunity to get out and go somewhere. With the wind howling outside most of the time and the days still dark, you needed to be around people more than ever, especially if you lived alone.

Elmer and Jeannette Terwilliger had come with the Carews and they brought the baby along. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything so tiny in my life as that baby. It was about two months old and just about perfect in every way, but blanket and all I bet it didn’t weigh more than nine or ten pounds.

“Nine and a half,” Maggie said, holding it while her daughter and Elmer were dancing. Everybody’d been standing around it oohing and ahing and carrying on and you couldn’t blame them. There was something about a baby that just made you feel good, especially here. Her name was Patricia.

“Can I hold her?” I asked her.

Maggie handed her over to me. She was sleeping and I rocked her a little. “Like to have one like that?”

“I sure would.”

“You won’t as long as you got those two,” she said.

The music stopped and the sets broke up. Jeannette came over with her husband. She smiled and put her hands out for the baby. I handed her over.

“How’s my perfect gem?” she cooed to her. “Huh? How is she?”

“Same way she was a minute ago,” Maggie said drily.

“Think she’s pretty?” Jeannette asked me.

“She’s beautiful.”

“I wish she’d eat more,” Jeannette said.

“She’s doin’ fine,” Maggie said.

“No, she’s not, Ma. She don’t eat enough.”

“’cause you hold ’er too much. Everytime she cries or makes a whimper,” Maggie said to me, “there she is holdin’ ’er and rockin’ ’er and not givin’ ’er a chance to get up an appetite.”

“Oh, Ma,” Jeannette sighed.

Robert Merriweather came over. “Teacher, the kids want to know if you’ll get a square together with us.”

“Sure.”

I collected Jimmy Carew, Joan Simpson, Elvira, Lily and Chuck, which made seven with Robert and myself. Then Uncle Arthur joined our square and took Lily as his partner. Jimmy paired off with Joan, Robert Merriweather took me, and Elvira paired off with Chuck. I should have had better sense than to let Elvira and Chuck be partners, but I wasn’t thinking. No sooner did the two of them join hands than Mr. Vaughn called out loud enough so everybody looked his way. “Elvira, come over here!”

I knew right away what he was mad about, but it was too late to do anything about it. Elvira went to where he was sitting alongside Angela Barrett.

“Don’t you know any better?” he yelled at her. “How many times have I told you not to have anything to do with that kid? How many times?” He didn’t wait for her to answer. He just slapped her. “Go on home,” he said to her. She ran out, tears streaming down her cheeks. I wanted to go after her, but it would just have made things worse.

The whole room was quiet, everybody either looking over at our square or at Mr. Vaughn. If I’d had Angela Barrett’s muscles I’d have gone over and told him exactly what I thought of him, and what I thought of him would have made what Jake Harrington said to him sound like a Sunday-school lecture. As it was though, I just stood there blushing with embarrassment and wishing one of the women still sitting down would take the empty space alongside Chuck.

Mrs. Purdy played a few notes on the accordion and that broke the silence. Ben Norvall, who was standing up on a box, pointed to our square. “One more lady over here,” he called, “one more lady.”

Jeannette handed her baby to Maggie, came over and took Chuck’s hand, and the dance was on again.

I didn’t have too good a time after that. I kept thinking of Elvira back in the cabin all by herself and blaming myself for it.

When the
Home Sweet Home
waltz was played I ended up with Joe Temple. By that time Chuck and Ethel were fast asleep so, leaving Robert Merriweather
to watch them, I went over to the roadhouse with him. Maggie gave us the table by ourselves again.

I wasn’t very good company. Joe tried to cheer me up, telling me not to blame myself for what happened. “I shouldn’t have let you have those two in the first place,” he said.

“Why not?”

“It’s not doing you or anybody else any good.”

“It’s keeping them out of that village.”

“And you in the dog house. I’m even getting the cold shoulder for giving them to you.”

“You worried about it?”

“Not me. I would if I were you. Everybody’s getting crankier and crankier. There’s no telling what they’re liable to do.”

I didn’t think anything more would happen, but I was wrong. The next time Mr. Strong came in he brought me a letter from Nancy’s mother. Mrs. Prentiss didn’t mince any words:

I didn’t show Nancy the note, but I told her some of what her mother had said. When we sat down for supper that night she burst out crying right after we started to eat. I was hit pretty hard myself. She’d become almost like a sister to me.

She begged me to go over and talk to Mr. Strong, ask him if he wouldn’t talk to her mother and try to convince her to let her stay for at least a while longer. “Please, Anne,” she said. “If anybody can do it, he can. My mother respects him, and if he was to tell her how much I’m learning and how my being with you isn’t doing me anything but good, she’d let me stay.”

Finally I did. He was alone in the store when I went over and he listened to everything I had to say, then shook his head. “Her mother wants her home,” he said.

“Nancy thinks if you’d talk to her she might change her mind.”

“In all good conscience, madam, I cannot do that.”

“She deserves the break, Mr. Strong. She’s been working so hard.”

“Be honest with me. Do you think she could pass the eighth-grade exam if she were to take it today?”

“She’d have a better chance if she could stay a little longer.”

“Would she pass or not?”

“… I think so.”

“In that case I believe she is better off at home. She can continue studying on her own.”

“You really think I’m a bad influence on her.”

“I am under the impression, madam, that you do not care one way or the other what I think.”

“I admire you very much, Mr. Strong. I always have and I always will.”

He cleared his throat. “There is nothing I can do,” he said, “and that is the plain truth.”

Before I went out he said, “Generally the school board in Eagle would have made up their mind by this time whether or not to retain your services next year. We have not done so as yet, but we will do so by the end of next month, then we shall telegraph our decision to the commissioner in Juneau. I’m sure you realize what I am trying to say.”

“Yes, I do.” I had until the end of March to change my ways.

“I hope, madam, you will not disappoint me.”

The next morning, after I told the class that Nancy was leaving, we didn’t even pretend to work. None of us wanted to see her go, and until about eleven o’clock, when we heard the stable door across the way bang open, we had a little party for her.