Bo at Ballard Creek Read online

  When he pulled the overparka on top of all the other layers, Bo looked as round and fat as Gitnoo.

  Big Annie would settle Bo and Evalina in the dogsled, and off they’d go, Annie riding the runners and kicking hard. Bo and Evalina loved going with Annie. They never got cold, and even when the sled tipped over and threw them out on the trail, they were so padded with clothes they didn’t get hurt a bit.

  But Bo didn’t like seeing the dead marten Big Annie caught, so she turned her face away while Annie was taking them out of her traps.

  One day Bo woke up to find that it had warmed up during the night and the frost was slowly melting, running onto the windowsills. Jack shut down the drum stove because they didn’t need two stoves now.

  “It’s going to snow, I just know it!” Bo said

  “Yep, warm enough to snow for sure,” Jack said.

  And the sky grew gray, the soft lovely color of pussy willows, and down fell the big soft flakes, tumbling out of the sky.

  Bo stuck out her tongue to catch them, and when they landed on her parka, she could see all their beautiful shapes.

  It was a beautiful snow, heavy and wet, and it lasted for three days. A thin stack of snow teetered on each branch of the birch and aspen trees. When Bo shook the trees, the snow would fall straight down off the branches with a good sound. Shlump!

  At the end of the three days, the riverbank was covered with a beautiful layer of pure white snow, and they could begin sliding. Everyone came out, grown-ups and all, because sliding was not just for kids.

  Everyone who had a sled took turns with the ones who didn’t have one. They all liked Bo’s little sled, which Jack and Arvid had made last year. It went fast because it had iron runners. The big boys would throw themselves belly down on her sled and use their hands to push faster.

  But you didn’t really need a real sled. Nakuchluk gave them a stiff dried caribou skin. That’s what she had used when she was little and she said it was better than a sled. And maybe it was best of all, because lots of kids could pile onto it.

  They got cold when it was almost dark, so they went to the roadhouse, where the grown-ups drank coffee and Milo made the kids cocoa.

  Even though it was dark by then, they went back outside and slid down some more.

  When Bo came home from the riverbank, she was covered with powdered snow, and her eyelashes and the tips of her ruff were all frosted. She was so tired that she fell asleep while Jack was getting her into her pajamas.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  MAIL SLED

  EVERYONE IN BALLARD CREEK knew the mail sled was on its way when all the dogs in town started to howl. The dogs could hear the little bells Max put on the harnesses of his sled dogs long before any of the people in town could hear a thing.

  They were all happy when the winter mail started to come. They could always count on it. Max came seven times in the winter, cross-country from Nenana, only a short run on a good trail. Jack showed Bo on the map.

  “See, trail starts in Nenana, just like the boats, but Max cuts across the Yukon here, up-country, turns left here for Ballard Creek. Just four hundred some miles.”

  In the summer, the mail traveled three times as many miles on the rivers, and you couldn’t tell when anything would get through, what with the ice breaking up and the flooding, fires, and water too low or too high. One summer they didn’t get any mail at all—until the very last scow in the fall.

  In the winter, Max almost always got through, no matter how cold or how bad the trail. He prided himself on that.

  Max stopped his team by the side of the roadhouse where the dog barns were.

  “How’s the trail?” Milo yelled from the doorway of the roadhouse.

  Frost covered every inch of Max’s parka, his big mustache, and the whole load on his big sled. He pushed his parka hood back and put his bare hand on his mustache to thaw it out.

  “Couldn’t be better,” he shouted back. He picked some pieces of ice from his mustache. “Nice and hard, no moose tracks.”

  Charlie Sickik took Max’s dogs one by one to the dog barn. They were big dogs, covered with frost, but still lively. They were happy to be at the roadhouse again, knowing they’d be warm and fed. Bo and Evalina petted them and hugged their big heads. They loved Max’s dogs, and Max’s dogs loved them.

  But Charlie didn’t take Silver to the dog barn. Silver was Max’s lead dog, and Silver went where Max went and slept by his side.

  Oxadak, Oscar’s father, and Dinuk, Jonas’s father, started to unload the sled. They carried the big mailbags into the roadhouse while Max and Silver went inside. Max peeled off his clothes and hung them up on the lines over the woodstove. They’d have to be dry in the morning when he took off again, back down the trail. Nothing, Jack and Arvid had taught Bo, was worse than wet clothes in the winter.

  Milo gave Max a cup of coffee while everyone gathered around the table to hear all the news. Max took a sip of the coffee and spit it back into the cup.

  “I always forget what god-awful coffee you make, Milo,” he said. But he drank it anyway after he got used to it.

  Max took Evalina on his lap and said, “Well, Bo, where’s your partner in crime today?”

  “He goes to school now,” said Bo. This was the first time she was glad she wasn’t in school, because she got to be there when Max came.

  Jack pushed open the big roadhouse door, and a cloud of cold bellowed in with him. Everyone shouted noisy greetings at him, teased him because he hadn’t taken the time to tie the laces on his big boots. It was like a party when the mail came, Bo thought.

  Jack hung up his heavy coat on one of the hooks by the stove and sat at the table. Bo wrapped herself around his huge back and said in his ear, “Do you think my stuff is in the mailbag?”

  “Be surprised if it was,” said Jack. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

  But Bo was sure she’d have a package. Jack had ordered clay and crayons and paint for Bo from a store in Fairbanks a long time ago. Now her crayons were all broken and the paints in their little cups were mostly used up, and she’d never had any clay to begin with.

  Milo set a plate of stew in front of Max. Max fished out a big piece of meat from the stew and held it out for Silver, who took it very daintily with his sharp teeth. Silver was one spoiled dog, all the old-timers said.

  Max tossed the keys for the mailbag padlocks to Oxadak so he could unlock the bags, and then Milo dumped the biggest mailbag on the floor.

  “Hey!” yelled Max with his mouth full. “Take it easy with that! Didn’t bring it four hundred miles through hell and high water for you to bust things!”

  Milo started sorting the mail, kneeling on the floor. Jack helped him because a lot of the mail would be for the mine. They made little piles all over the floor. The biggest piles were for the mine, Milo, and the school, of course. Jack looked up at Bo and shook his head. No package for her. Bo pinched her lips together and tried not to feel too bad. Then Jack grinned at her and took a package from behind his back.

  “Here you go,” he said. Bo hugged the package and smiled.

  Everyone in Ballard Creek got a new calendar from the Northern Commercial Company—1930. Bo unwrapped the mine’s calendar quickly. She wanted to see what this year’s picture was.

  “Ptarmigan,” she said happily. That was Bo’s favorite bird.

  Nels’s sister had a lot of mail, too. She must have a lot of friends, Bo thought. Maybe they were missing her now that she’d gone. But there were no letters for Nels, because his sister was the only one who ever wrote to him, and now she was here and didn’t have to. It made Bo happy to think that.

  Milo made up a little bundle for the miners out the creeks—letters, calendars, and packages—and tied it with string. Big Jim would take their mail to them with his dog team, because he had to check his traps along the trail anyway.

  There were dozens of new magazines with shiny new covers. Tomas Kovish’s magazine had a woman and an airplane on the cover.
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br />   “Look, Bo,” said Clarence. “This is Amelia Earhart. Woman pilot, really famous.” Bo looked at Clarence to see if he was joking, but she could tell he wasn’t. She never knew women could be pilots.

  Miss Sylvia and the children from the school came banging into the roadhouse to collect the school’s mail. Miss Sylvia opened the package from the Department of Education. It was a framed picture of Herbert Hoover, their new president. Bo frowned at the picture. She didn’t like the way he looked at all.

  Cannibal saw her and laughed.

  “He doesn’t have a nice face,” said Bo.

  “That’s what I think, too,” said Cannibal.

  When they got back to the cookshack, Bo opened her package. There was a box of clay in ten different colors, two big tins of watercolors with extra brushes, and most wonderful of all—a big, big box of crayons, thirty-two different colors.

  Bo almost drove the papas crazy asking them to read the names on each crayon.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  BO IS SICK

  CHRISTMAS HAD COME and gone, a wonderful time. Milo had put a lovely little tree in the roadhouse. When they had the Christmas party, the schoolchildren made a circle around it and sang the songs Miss Sylvia had taught them.

  The papas had sent the little bird gold nugget to Fairbanks to be made into a ring, and that was Bo’s Christmas present. It was a perfect fit. She could hardly take her eyes off it for the next few days.

  * * *

  ONE DAY when it was very cold, the kind of cold that turns the sky and the frost on the trees all pink and beautiful, Bo got sick.

  Bo had never been sick before, but she was now. A terrible cough tore at her chest.

  “It hurts,” she said to her papas, who were more miserable than she was, seeing her so sick. A fever made her head funny; it made her think such strange things that the papas looked worried when she told them.

  “It’s pneumonia,” Lilly said. Lilly knew a lot about doctoring. When anyone in Ballard Creek was sick, she would take a hand in getting them well, though she couldn’t do bones. That took a lot of strength, so when there was a broken bone to deal with, people would get Olaf or Big Jim to set it.

  Bo was so sick and her breath was coming so hard that the papas were scared. It was the worst time to be sick, the worst part of winter.

  The nearest doctor was hundreds of miles away at Fort Yukon.

  “At least we can wire him,” Jack said.

  They wired the doctor in Fort Yukon who wired back a lot of questions. He told them to heat a big bucket of water to boiling, then make a little tent with a cloth over her head and let her breathe in the steam. That would help clear her lungs. He said to give her plenty of water to drink and not to worry if she didn’t eat.

  Lilly and Yovela came to sit with Bo so that Jack and Arvid could do some of their work. They made the steam tents for Bo and tried to spoon a little custard into her.

  When the boys came in to eat, they were very quiet, tiptoeing across the floor. They stopped to look in at her through the door to the back room, their faces serious.

  The boys talked at the table about sicknesses. Alex said when he was little, they used to dose everything with kerosene.

  “For pneumonia, they would have made Bo swallow kerosene.” All the boys nodded. They remembered that.

  Paddy said, “And onions. Every time I was sick, my grandma would tie an onion around my neck on a string.” The boys all nodded again. They all remembered about the onions.

  They were quiet then. They knew how bad pneumonia was. And they knew there was no medicine anywhere to cure it.

  While Bo was sick, three Lapps with a small herd of reindeer came through Ballard Creek on their way down to the Yukon. Everyone was astonished by what the Lapps wore: beautiful clothes made of thick wool in brilliant colors, covered with embroidery.

  Jack felt terrible that Bo couldn’t see their clothes because she loved color so much. And he was sorry about the reindeer. Bo had longed to see reindeer. And he was sorry she couldn’t hear their language. Bo loved to hear other people’s talk. One night at the roadhouse, they sang Lapp songs. They were beautiful songs, haunting, and they made the boys sad. Bo loved to hear people sing.

  She didn’t get better. She got worse, and her red face and ragged breath were horrible. She didn’t even ask for Bear, who was sitting on the chair by the door.

  Nakuchluk brought her akutaq, and Yovela brought her a little shirt and pants she’d run up on her machine for Bear to wear. Clara and Dishoo, Big Jim’s wife, brought her some magazines from the roadhouse. The children at school wrote a letter for her with lots of pictures and their names. But Bo didn’t know about these things.

  * * *

  BO GOT MUCH WORSE, and then even worse than that. And then she got better.

  One by one, the boys came, just to stand in the doorway and say hello.

  Siwash George played his harmonica for her, all six songs he knew, and then “Nellie Bly” again because that was Bo’s favorite of the six.

  They told her funny stories about how it was when they got sick. They told her about the kerosene and the onion cures. They told her about the Lapps—she was very disappointed about the Lapps.

  Jack cooked her all the things she liked best—soft things that would go down easily. He held the spoon for her and coaxed.

  “Your favorite pudding, Bo. Pineapple pudding, good for you.”

  The pudding tasted wonderful, but she felt full after a few spoonfuls. She took another bite, because she couldn’t believe she was not still hungry, but she held the custard in her mouth for a while before she swallowed. It was almost as if she couldn’t remember what she was supposed to do with it.

  Jack said, “Never mind. Your appetite will come back. Just eat a little bit is all I ask.”

  The next day, she sat up in bed and ate by herself. She ate a little more than she’d eaten the day before. And the day after that, she crept out of bed and got her shoe box room with the cut-out dolls.

  Her lovely little bird ring hung loose on her finger, and Jack had to wrap some tape around it so it would stay on.

  Then she was getting dressed in the morning, and then she was cutting biscuits, and even though her little face was not as round as it used to be, she was Bo again.

  “You look older,” said Arvid. “No more fat cheeks.”

  Bo still felt strange, as though she had been away on a long trip and was learning what had happened when she was gone.

  “I saw you by my bed, and you were crying,” she said to Jack. Jack’s gray eyes were huge and solemn.

  Finally he said, “We thought you was going to die.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  THE LITTLE BOY

  FINALLY THE DOCTOR in Fort Yukon wired that Bo was ready to do the things she’d done before she got sick. Maybe not walk too far at first. But the papas said she certainly couldn’t do anything like what she’d done before—no sliding for one thing, and certainly no trips with Big Annie in the dogsled.

  Bo wanted to go visiting as soon as she was allowed out of bed. She wanted to see everyone. It had been so long since she’d been across the bridge.

  First she’d stop at the roadhouse, where there would be some of the old-timers and Milo, and then she’d go to see Clara, even though Oscar and Lena were in school. She’d tell Clara to ask Oscar to come over to visit her after he was finished with his chores. She’d missed Oscar more than anyone.

  Then Lilly and Yovela, and then she’d go to Nakuchluk and Unakserak, and Dinuk and Gracie, and just everyone, if she had time before she had to go back to the mining camp for lunch.

  As soon as she walked into the roadhouse, she saw a little boy she’d never seen before. He was sitting at the bar, three stools from the end. Bo was so surprised she didn’t say hello to Milo or Jimmy the Pirate or Sol or Charlie Sickik.

  She walked up to the little boy and looked at him closely. He was a brown boy with pale green eyes. His eyes were exactly the
same color as the aspen bark Bo loved. Bo hadn’t imagined that eyes could be such a lovely color.

  She knew she was staring, being rude, so she blinked twice to stop herself. He had halfway colored hair, not light, not dark. Just brown.

  He was dressed in patched overalls that she knew right away were Oscar’s from last year. They were way too big for the little boy; the bottoms were turned up almost to his knees. He wore Oscar’s shirt, too, the blue plaid worn all thin at the elbows. And he had raggedy moccasins on his feet. The boy looked at her for a minute, alarmed, and then he looked quickly at his feet, which stuck straight out on the stool.

  The old-timers and Charlie Sickik were watching Bo and the little boy intently. Milo was watching too, drying the big sausage platter over and over, forgetting to put it down.

  “Bo,” he said, “this here’s our new little friend.”

  Bo looked a question at Milo, her eyebrows up. She was like Jack and never used words if she didn’t need to. Milo understood her as well as Jack and Arvid did and answered the question she hadn’t asked.

  He shook his head and put his fingers over his lips. “Not now,” he said. Bo knew that meant that whatever he had to say, Milo didn’t want to say it in front of the boy.

  She turned back to the little boy.

  “What’s your name?”

  “We don’t know his name,” said Milo. “He won’t say nothing.”

  Bo considered this. If the boy had a mother and father, they would have told Milo his name. So Bo could already see that this boy was alone. Maybe his mama had walked away like hers.

  Bo set Bear on the bar top and climbed up on the stool next to the boy.

  “What’s your name?” she said in Eskimo. The green eyes looked despairingly at her. She said it in English again. He looked away from her, at his two straight legs, and said nothing.