Tisha (8 page)

Blossom was just aching to break into a gallop and I had all I could do to hold him to a walk. It must have rained here recently, because halfway there we started winding around craters filled with muddy water.

“Keep away from those holes, madam,” Mr. Strong cautioned me sharply when Blossom came close to one. “Some of them are deep. Fall in and you’re liable not to come out.”

I told Chuck to be careful too, then I asked Mr. Strong what they were.

“Prospect holes. Some of them go down forty feet. These miners don’t bother to fill them up after they’ve dug them.”

The ground was pock-marked with them all the way into the settlement and the ground got muddier as we went.

“Looks like everybody’s waiting for us,” I said. There was a whole crowd of people, maybe twenty or thirty, gathered in front of a tiny cabin. It wasn’t much bigger than a hut, but with the American flag fluttering over it I figured it for the post office.

“They don’t have much else to do but wait. It’s a
big day for them. The women curl their hair, everyone spruces up. Some of them even take a bath.”

Whether he was being sarcastic or not, I started grinning. The sweet fragrance of wood smoke wafted over and I felt proud enough to burst. I’d really done it, I thought, I was really a caution. I’d traveled through the wilderness just the way Granny Hobbs had done. Now here I was riding toward a frontier settlement as though it was the most natural thing in the world. Mr. Strong saw the look on my face and he smiled.

“What do you think of it?”

“It looks wonderful,” I said.

It wasn’t anything like the Indian village at all. The street between the creek and settlement was wide, with patches of late grass here and there, no tin cans, no trash. Even from here I could see vegetable gardens in a few backyards, along with dog kennels and stacks of corded wood. As soon as we neared the edge of the place the crowd started calling and waving. Between their hollering and sled dogs doing the same thing in their own way you’d have thought it was the Fourth of July.

The whole place was about three city blocks long, the post office right in the middle, opposite the wooden bridge. The first couple of cabins were a letdown. They were in bad shape, one just a rotted skeleton, roof gone and weeds spilling out the door, the other all boarded up. As far as I could make out, a few others down the line weren’t lived in either. The ones that were lived in, though, were solid and sturdy, with traps, harness, washtubs and all kinds of stuff hanging from posts and railings. One of them even had a dogsled leaning against the side of it.

No sooner did we pass the first few cabins than Blossom broke into a jog and I couldn’t hold him back. We jittered past a cabin that had a young birch tree growing from the sod roof, then almost ran into half a caribou carcass that was hanging from a tripod. Blossom was heading right for the stable, which was on the creek side of the road a little beyond the crowd. Somebody was way ahead of him, though. A man in
knee-length boots ran out to cut him off, yelling and waving a beat-up fedora. Blossom gave up. It was too muddy for him to risk trying to dodge, so he just slowed down and ambled up to the crowd as though that’s where he was headed all along.

A little old man appeared under him and grabbed his rein. “Steady as she goes.” He smiled up at me from under the brim of a yachtsman’s cap, a shrunken pug-nose face and teeth stained from chewing tobacco. “There y’are,” he said, “safe in port. Hop right on down, little lady.”

“Goddamn fool,” another old man said to him. “Can’t ya see she can’t make it by herself? Wait’ll I get a box.”

Everybody who hadn’t moved out to stop the pack animals and help Mr. Strong unload them stood around and stared up at me. If I hadn’t been in Alaska for a couple of weeks I wouldn’t have realized that most people were wearing their dress-up clothes. But now I was used to how drab everybody looked and how old-fashioned their clothes were, so I knew that even though the men’s shirts were wrinkled and you could hardly tell what the original color was, the fact that they had a tie on meant they were dressed up.

Chuck had found his mother, I saw—a slight dark Indian woman who had a little girl by the hand. From the quick glimpse I caught of her as she kneeled down to hug him she looked like a beauty.

I kept smiling and getting smiles in return. A heavy-set Indian woman wearing a shawl gave me a big grin and waved. She had a little girl with her—half-white, I could see. I waved back to her. There were a few other children around, and one little boy in a gray cap and knickers looked away when I smiled at him.

I tried to figure out which building was the school-house, finally realizing that it had to be a big frame house with a homemade flagpole in front of it. It was opposite the stable a little further up. Mr. Strong had described it to me and I knew that my living quarters were in it too, so I was glad to see that it was larger than Cathy’s place.

The second old man came back with a box and set it down. “Here you be, missis.” He was almost hunchbacked, he was so stooped over, with a beard that hung from him like weeping willow.

What with everything else that had gone wrong on this famous trip, I should have known I wasn’t going to make a dignified entrance. I let one foot down while the bearded man tried to steady me. As soon as I put my weight on the box it collapsed right under me and the next thing I knew I was sitting in the mud and everybody was staring down at me. I could hear a couple of the kids laughing and I was so embarrassed I wanted to disappear right then and there.

The old men helped me up and fussed around trying to get some of the mud off me until they were pushed aside by a big burly woman.

“Awright, awright, for Chrissake. Leave ’er alone before you wind up killin’ ’er. I’m Angela Barrett,” she announced. “You’re the new schoolmom, I take it. What’s yer moniker?”

I told her, and she led me over to another woman who was wearing a long navy blue coat buttoned up to the neck. She had a broken nose. “She’s the new schoolmom, awright,” Angela said to the woman.

“I’m Maggie Carew,” tie woman said. “What’s your name, honey?”

“Anne Hobbs.” My skirt was clinging in back of me and I could feel water trickling down my legs. I just hoped it didn’t make me look ridiculous.

“Let’s get you over to the schoolhouse.”

I’d been right about which building it was. When we stepped up onto the porch, Angela Barrett moved to the closer of two doors. It was studded with mean-looking nails that stuck out about three inches. “This here’s the schoolroom,” she said, opening it. “The other door there’s to your quarters. Watch out for them nails.”

As I followed her in my heart sank. The room was big, but it wasn’t like any schoolroom I ever saw, and it was in a shambles. A few assorted tables and chairs were piled in one corner, and some boxes in yet another
corner held old books and papers. Piles of dust and dirt were everywhere, and a few yellowed papers littered the floor, mice droppings all over them. The plank flooring was buckled and warped, higher in the center than it was at the walls. The tables and chairs all sat at an angle and I felt seasick just looking at them. Light came in through windows fogged with smoke and grime.

“Needs a little cleaning up,” Maggie admitted, “but I’ll give you a hand with it.” Her broken nose made her look tough, but I had a feeling she was pretty decent. I guessed she was about forty.

The other room was neater, the same size as the schoolroom, but except for a brass bed that had no mattress, two chairs, and a big potbellied stove, it was empty.

“How do you like ’er?” Angela Barrett asked. She must have weighed two hundred pounds and she towered over me. Her voice was rasping, and there was a red rash on her nose and all around it. I tried to think of something nice to say.

“It’s a good big room.”

“Glad you feel that way,” Angela said. “You’re the one’s gonna be livin’ in it.”

“Do you think it will take much time to get it ready?”

“What do you mean ready?” Angela asked. “It’s ready now.”

Both women were staring at me as if there was something wrong with me. I was almost afraid to ask the next question. “Don’t I have to have a mattress?” I said. “Or blankets, or a table?”

It took a moment before they seemed to realize that I had a point

“Where’na hell’d it all go?” Angela said, as if she’d turned her back for a minute and somebody had snatched everything away. “It’s your fault, Maggie, you’re the school janitor. It’s your responsibility.”

“When there’s no school there’s no janitor,” Maggie said tartly, “and there ain’t been a school here in well over a year.”

“What are we gonna do?” Angela said.

Maggie thought for a minute. “Come on,” she said finally.

Angela and I followed her outside. At the post office, almost all the pack animals had been unloaded. The stuff everyone had ordered was lying on the ground: boxes of candles and flashlight batteries, sacks of flour, crated gasoline cans and cans of kerosene, tied-up bundles of dried fish and a whole bunch of packages of parcel post.

“How about my cornflakes?” the bearded old man who’d tried to help me was saying to Mr. Strong. He could just straighten up enough to look Mr. Strong in the eye. “I had a dozen boxes of cornflakes on order an’ you didn’t bring ’em.”

“They’ll arrive in due time, Mr. Spratt.”

“That’s what you told me the last three times. I ordered them cornflakes by parcel post four months ago an’ they should be here. You got ’em stuck there in the warehouse at Eagle, now don’t ya?”

A lot of people were beginning to mutter that the old man was right, and Mr. Strong was getting mad. “You heard what I said, Mr. Spratt.”

“I heard you. An’ I know you ain’t brought’m ’cause it don’t pay you to bring’m out with the rest of the parcel post right now—take up too much space on them precious horses a yours. Well you damn well better bring’m out next time, or I’m writing to Washington D.C. You got a mail contract says you bring out
all
the mail—not what personally suits ya.”

“Uncle Arthur, hold on a minute if you can,” Maggie broke in. “We got a problem that needs everybody’s attention … This is Anne Hobbs, our new teacher,” she said to the crowd.

“I don’t doubt she’s a teacher,” a quiet voice said from somewhere, “but she sure don’t look new.”

There was some laughing, but Maggie cut it short.

“Miss Hobbs here needs some help,” she went on. “Some of you mutts have borrowed everything there is in the teacher’s quarters. There’s nothin’ left in there and I mean nothin’. I ain’t sayin’ who took what, but it’s got to be packed back here pronto. The poor girl’s got an empty cabin.”

“What do you need, Miss?” a tall good-looking man asked. He was trying on a heavy fleece-lined jacket he must have ordered.

“Just about everything.”

“I’ve got a couple of good Hudson Bay blankets I can spare.”

Angela Barrett snorted. “Leave it to Joe. Gives you a couple of blankets one day, tryin’ to climb under ’em the next.”

“How about the rest of you?” Maggie said.

“We got a good set of tin dishes she can borrow,” a girl of about ten said. She was with two older girls who looked like twins, both of them rawboned and husky. “Can she, Pa?” she asked. A red-haired man beside her nodded.

After that the offers came thick and fast—a broom and pan, a rocking chair, a wash boiler and a dozen other items. One man said he’d taken the chifforobe and would return it. Everybody got into the spirit of the thing, telling me not to worry, they’d take care of me. It made me feel so good that when Maggie Carew asked me if I wanted to say a few words, I was just about able to say thanks and that I was glad to be here.

The men were as good as their word. While I kept busy cleaning and scrubbing up the place the rest of the day, everybody kept trooping in carrying things. Within a few hours I not only had a firm straw mattress for the bed, but also a blanket, a pillow, a table and some chairs. Someone even thought to bring a water barrel. My prize possession was a wood-burning cookstove. It took four men to carry it in, and it was a beauty. Black wrought iron with shining nickel-plated fittings, it had hardly been used. All I needed was a stovepipe and I could start cooking.

The two old men who’d helped me down from Blossom brought me presents. “Uncle Arthur” Spratt, the little bent-over man who’d been angry about his corn flakes, came by with a few jars of wild cranberry jam he’d preserved himself. The man in the yachtsman’s cap gave me a can of bear lard. “It’s kinda sweeter’n the lard you’re used to,” he said, “but you just add a little salt to it and it’s just as good.”

Granny sure knew what she was talking about, I thought. People who go to a new land
are
big people, kind and generous.

I didn’t even have to clean the place alone. Five of my pupils showed up to help. The three Vaughn girls were first—Elvira, the girl who’d asked her father for the tin dishes, and her older twin sisters, Evelyn and Eleanor. Then Maggie Carew’s two children came over. They all went to work with a will, so that by late afternoon the windows were sparkling and the whole place looked and smelled clean. While we were working the man who’d promised me the blankets rode up. “I’m Joe Temple,” he said when he came in. The two blankets he’d brought were almost new. I offered to pay him for them, but he said forget it. “Use them for as long as you like.”

He was good-looking and he knew it. He was too old for me—I figured he was about thirty-two or thirty-three—but I could have thought of half a dozen teachers in Forest Grove that would have taken to him right away. “You’ve got your work cut out for you,” he said, looking around the room. He was still holding onto his riding crop and he slapped it against his boot a couple of times. I’d unpacked all my dresses and hung them wherever I could find a nail. “I haven’t been Outside in a couple of years,” he said, looking at them, “but I thought they were wearing dresses shorter than that.”

“They are. I guess I’m pretty conservative.”

“Not all the time, I hope.” I didn’t know how to take that so I didn’t say anything. “You’ll have to let me take you out to dinner,” he said.