Bo at Ballard Creek Read online

  They had a beautiful swirled design on top. Unakserak touched the swirls gently.

  “This is picture of the wind,” he said.

  * * *

  FOUR DAYS LATER, Milo got a wire from Hank. He sent Clarence over to the cookshack with it. “Milo thought you’d like to hear the latest,” Clarence said.

  Arvid raised his eyebrows, surprised.

  Jack knew what he was thinking. “Probably wants to let us know what’s going on because of Bo. Her being the little boy’s best friend and all.”

  “Oh,” Arvid said. “Sure.”

  Clarence handed the wire to Jack and sat down at the table. Clarence was happy to come to the cookshack, because Jack always had something good for dessert.

  Jack unfolded the wire Clarence had brought. He read it to himself and then he read it out loud to the boys.

  Everyone’s gone trapping now, so I can’t find anyone who knows about the father or the little boy. Might have come from further downriver, Kaltag maybe. I’ve sent out a wire to every wireless station, so we’ll know something soon, when everyone comes back to the village before the snow gets rotten.

  Jack folded the wire and handed it back to Clarence.

  “Wouldn’t think it would be so hard to find out who someone was, would you?” Arvid said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  THE WIRE

  BO AND OSCAR and Lena took the little boy to Big Jim’s house to visit one night after supper. The women were all sitting on the floor, legs stretched out, sewing, smoking their pipes. Bo loved the way the smoke curled around, dancing, and the way the smoke ran away, scared, when someone opened the door.

  The men were telling stories.

  Big Jim especially liked to tell stories about the dooneraks. Those were little devils or mean spirits who were all around. Sometimes the dooneraks helped the anagok, the medicine man, but mostly they weren’t helpful at all.

  Bo and the other children would get so scared listening to the doonerak stories they had to hug each other all the way home, and Bo would beg Lena or one of the other big girls to go across the bridge with her.

  The boy hung on tight to Bo’s left hand, and he held on to Oscar’s right hand, but his eyes were shining when he watched Big Jim. Big Jim acted out all the parts, made himself big and brave, or shrank down to show how afraid he was. The little boy smiled sometimes when Big Jim did something sudden—threw his arms up in the air or jumped to his feet. Bo watched the little boy and whispered to Oscar, “He’s not as scaredy-cat as I am,” and Oscar laughed.

  There were other long, not-so-scary Eskimo stories about ravens and other animals that turned into people, too, and Bo liked those stories better.

  The old-time Eskimos were supposed to memorize those stories, every single word, every single gesture. Gracie, Jonas’s mama, had told Bo and Oscar how it was done.

  “They’d practice over and over,” she told them, “say it night after night, same way they raise their voice same place, same way they show with their hands the things in the story. Then their mother or someone would tell them that it was finally right. And then they could say they had that story, that story was theirs, it belonged to them. Then they would start to learn another.”

  Clara could tell the old stories, but she didn’t tell them the same way; she hadn’t memorized them.

  “I don’t have this story,” she’d say apologetically. “I have to tell it badly.”

  That night at Big Jim’s, Clara told the story about the man who was mean to his dogs. He had to come back to life as a dog and be owned by a mean person.

  “Sometimes, if someone is mean to animals,” Clara said, “when he dies, he goes to the dog village, and all the dogs can bite him and hit him with sticks like he did to them.”

  Bo wished it were true.

  * * *

  MILO TOLD ARVID that the little boy was eating a lot. Arvid said he could see that his cheeks were fatter, his eyes not so sunken in.

  “Now that he’s had hotcakes, he’s a syrup addict. I don’t think he ever ate anything but meat and fish before,” said Milo.

  Arvid made the boy a pair of overalls so he didn’t have to wear Bo and Oscar’s hand-me-downs. The little boy patted the front bib and looked down at his legs. He was very proud of those overalls.

  The little boy was getting used to everyone. When he was pleased, he smiled a big smile now, his eyes round and shining.

  But Bo never heard him laugh until one night when Cannibal Ivan was a little drunk and tipped his chair back too far and fell to the floor.

  The little boy’s laugh crashed out, and everyone in the roadhouse started to laugh too—because Cannibal looked so funny and because it was so nice to see the little boy so gleeful.

  He didn’t exactly take up laughing in a big way, but sometimes Bo could get him to screetch with delight if she spun him around really fast on the bar stools or if she pretended something silly with Bear and the red velvet bear.

  Milo got another message from Hank.

  People I’m talking to think the father was a deaf man who was from a camp halfway between Nulato and Kaltag. Called him a wild man because he wanted to stay in the woods. Didn’t get along with his own people. Had a wife, but she died when the baby was born. It was a boy, they knew. I’ll wire when I’ve found some relatives.

  Milo and Jack talked that over. “Might be the kid just speaks Indian, no English,” Milo said.

  “Yeah, or if his father was deaf, might be the kid never learned to talk. Think that’s possible?”

  Milo shrugged. “Well, we know he’s not deaf, anyway.”

  * * *

  ONE NIGHT Bo brought the little boy to the cookshack to eat dinner. He ate a big supper of roast sheep and mashed potatoes sitting at the cookshack table between Lester and Paddy, who both admired the amount of food he could put away.

  After the boys had gone off to the bunkhouse and Bo and Jack had cleared the dishes away, Bo gave the little boy some paper and a pencil and set him to work at the end of the table. He loved to try to draw, but he didn’t have any idea in this world how to hold a pencil.

  They could hear someone outside sweeping the snow off his feet, and then Milo came in, his face red from the cold. Milo went right to the stove to warm up. He held his hands over the stove, turning them to both sides. Then he pulled a paper from his pocket.

  “Wire from Hank.” Bo could tell from Milo’s face that this time Hank had some news for them.

  Arvid took the paper and read it out loud to them.

  Found an aunt who lives in Kaltag. She says the boy’s name is Grafton. She thinks he was born at Allakaket. She says she can’t take the boy, too many of her own, but to send him to the orphanage at Nulato or Holy Cross.

  Bo and the papas looked at each other.

  “Well, at last,” said Arvid.

  Bo went to the table and took the boy’s hand.

  “Your name is Grafton,” she said.

  He looked at her, shocked.

  “Looks like he recognized that,” Jack said.

  The little boy went back to his drawing. “Say Grafton,” she begged him. But he wouldn’t say it. He just kept drawing.

  “Grafton,” said Milo. “That’s the name of a doctor was at Allakaket. Must be twenty Indian kids named Grafton after him. Maybe those church women at Allakaket got some kind of record on this boy.

  “Well, no way to get him to Nulato now,” said Milo. “I’ll wire Hank, tell him that he’s got to tell the aunt we won’t be able to send him to Nulato till the river’s open, another month at least,” said Milo, and he left.

  There was a silence in the cookshack while they all looked across the room at the little boy. Grafton. He had the pencil clutched in his fist, not holding it the right way at all.

  Bo glared at the papas and whispered fiercely, “You said the nun looked mean.”

  Jack looked unhappily at her. “That was a long time ago,” he said.

  Bo folded her mouth into a line,
the way Jack did when he was thinking hard or feeling unhappy. “We need to keep him,” Bo said.

  “Now, Bo,” said Jack, and Arvid growled at her, the growl that meant not to be foolish.

  Arvid and Jack looked at Grafton. “Got to teach him how to hold a pencil,” said Jack in a grumpy way. Then they both looked at Bo, both scowling. Grafton didn’t look up, just kept fisting his pencil around.

  Bo looked at the papas, her eyes wide. It was her begging look.

  The papas looked at each other under their eyebrows and were quiet a long time.

  Finally Arvid groaned. “Great god almighty.”

  Jack’s mouth was twisted sideways, which meant his mind was troubled. At last he said, “If this don’t beat all.”

  He and Arvid looked at each other, pulling their worst faces.

  Bo waited, looking first at Arvid, then at Jack. It was taking a long time.

  “Should have seen this coming,” said Arvid. He groaned again.

  “Hell,” Arvid said. He got up heavily, as if he weighed a thousand pounds. He put his palms on the table and leaned forward to look sideways at Jack, asking a question with his eyes.

  Jack made a lot of faces, each one worse than the last. Finally he rubbed his head fiercely and said, “Well, what the hell.”

  Bo stood up so fast she knocked a chair over.

  Jack grabbed her by the arm. “Don’t you say a word,” he said. “Don’t you say nothing to him. Don’t want to talk about something that ain’t going to happen. Don’t say nothing to nobody.” He scowled at her so severely she bobbed her head up and down fast, to show him she agreed.

  “We’ll tell Hank to ask the aunt if we can keep him,” Jack said, very slowly and carefully. Likely she’ll say no. She don’t know us, never saw us in her life.”

  “And we’ll tell Clarence not to tell nobody nothing. That Clarence talks too much,” Arvid said crossly.

  Bo looked so radiant that both of the papas frowned down at her.

  “It ain’t going to happen, Bo,” said Arvid. “No use getting your hopes up. It ain’t going to happen, and that’s the truth. All we’re going to do here is try. No harm in trying. And you don’t say a word, not a word, or the deal is off. You hear? No deal if you talk.”

  Bo shook her head so hard she felt dizzy.

  She would not say a word.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  MORE WAITING

  BO THOUGHT SHE HAD a hard time waiting for things—the airplane, Christmas, Gus’s Cat—but there was never such a hard time as waiting for Grafton’s aunt to tell Hank if they could keep him.

  The days went slowly, slowly. The snow began to sag, the river ice looked tired, and the days grew longer and longer. But still no news. Grafton’s aunt was still at the trapline, wouldn’t be back for a while, Hank wired.

  Everyone in town knew what Jack and Arvid were trying to do. Bo swore she’d never told anyone, never, and Clarence said he was not the one who told. But everyone knew.

  “Stands to reason,” said Milo when Jack asked him how he knew. “The way you two are, the way Bo took to the boy. Stands to reason.”

  When Bo brought Grafton to the cookshack, Jack and Arvid got very busy doing this and that, trying not to pay any attention to the two children.

  “Don’t want to get too attached to him,” Arvid told the boys. “Going to be bad when we have to send him away.”

  “Too late for Bo,” Peter said. “She’s got her heart set on him.”

  Too late for everyone. Now that Grafton wasn’t afraid of anyone, he was full of curiosity. He climbed up next to Lester at the cookshack table and stroked Lester’s shiny copper hair. The look on Grafton’s face made the boys laugh.

  “Guess he’s never seen such a wild hair color,” said Paddy.

  Grafton took hold of Philipe’s hand with the two missing fingers and examined the empty place sorrowfully. He looked up into Philipe’s face as if he were asking how it happened. He examined them all in the kindest manner. He had such a sweet way about him the boys couldn’t help but get attached to him.

  He took Jack’s huge hand and turned it over, palm up and back again. Jack’s palm was light, and the top of his hand was chocolate brown. Grafton looked at his own little palm and the top of his hand, and then ran his hand along the line on the side of Jack’s hand that divided the colors. He seemed very pleased with Jack’s hand.

  Grafton talked now, too. Not long sentences or anything, just short words, mostly in English, sometimes in Eskimo. Whatever words seemed right at the time.

  He wrapped his arms around Arvid’s big leg and looked up into his face. “Big,” he said.

  “Yes,” he’d say when Bo asked him if he wanted to play outside, or “Hurry up” or “Niaq!”—stop that!

  When Milo asked him what he wanted for breakfast, he’d always say, “Hotcake.” Except once, after he’d been visiting Unakserak and Nakuchluk, he said to Milo, “Gravy,” instead of hotcakes. Bo thought Milo would never stop laughing about that.

  He didn’t talk much, but everyone liked to listen to his funny growly little voice.

  “Couldn’t be said to be a chatterbox,” Sol said.

  “I think he understands everything, though,” said Milo. “If I tell him to do something, he does it, so it stands to reason he understands English.”

  After a while Grafton took to repeating words. When Cannibal Ivan read a magazine with him, Cannibal would point to a picture and tell Grafton the name. Grafton would say the word, and when Cannibal showed him the picture the next day, Grafton remembered the word.

  “Got a good memory,” Cannibal said.

  Everyone in Ballard Creek taught him words, and he learned fast.

  One day Bo pointed to her bear. “Bear,” she said. To herself. “Bo.” To Milo. “Milo.” Then she pointed her finger right in the middle of his chest and waited. He looked at Bo steadily and growled, “Grafton.” Milo and Bo cheered.

  She pointed to the red bear. “What’s his name?”

  “Conkers,” said Grafton.

  “Oh!” said Bo. She didn’t know what to think about that. “Milo, what does Conkers mean?”

  Milo pulled his mouth down in an I-don’t-know way and shrugged his shoulders. “Never heard of it,” he said.

  Grafton smiled a tiny smile at Milo and Bo, looking pleased at all the carrying on. “Conkers,” he said.

  He learned everyone’s name after that.

  * * *

  BO AND EVALINA and Grafton were playing in the sawdust pit under the saw frame. Sawdust was a good thing to play in at this time of year because it was warm. It soaked up the thin spring sunshine.

  Bo’d just covered Evalina with sawdust when she saw Clarence coming from the wireless shack and heading across the bridge to the cookshack. Bo’s heart felt strange, as if it were being squeezed. She grabbed Grafton’s hand, and they ran after Clarence.

  The boys were just sitting down to lunch when Clarence got there. Bo and Grafton were right behind him. Everyone stared at Clarence, who was keeping his face very still.

  “Wire from Hank,” he said in a strange voice.

  Jack searched Clarence’s face, and then he took the wire from Clarence and read it.

  Marshal at Kaltag talked to the aunt soon as they came back from trapping. I told him to tell her that you were two of the finest fellows who ever lived and you already took in one orphan and are raising her fine. And you’d send her a present.

  The marshall wired back—

  Jack stopped and looked at Bo and then he read,

  She said yes, and when will her present come.

  Bo burst into tears and hugged Grafton, who tried to push her away. “Crazy!” he said.

  The boys whooped and thumped each other on the back while Bo whirled around the kitchen in a frenzied dance. Grafton began to look scared. Sandor stood up and put his hands over his heart.

  “Grafton, welcome to the family,” he said.

  Jack and Arvid smiled at eac
h other. They shook hands. Jack picked Grafton up and held him high over his head, smiling his biggest smile. Grafton struggled indignantly, so Jack put him down.

  “Got us a boy,” Arvid said.

  “We do,” said Jack, and they shook hands some more.

  Jack told Bo to sit down with Grafton and eat lunch.

  “We’ll explain it all to him when you’ve finished. Right now he looks as if we were all gone out of our heads.”

  Everyone was smiling so hard they could hardly eat. At last lunch was finished and the boys went back to work, but not until they’d all shaken hands with Jack and Arvid and had hugged Bo and Grafton.

  Arvid told Bo, “Don’t say anything now. Let us break it to him easy.”

  “I’ll get that old cot out from the storage shed,” said Jack. He slammed out the back door and came back with the cot, a thick quilt, and a pillow.

  He put the cot right next to Bo’s bed and then he patted the cot and called Grafton to him.

  “You’ll sleep here,” he said. He tucked Grafton’s red bear under the quilt with his head on the pillow. “He’ll sleep here, too,” Jack said.

  Grafton was looking wide-eyed, like he did when he didn’t understand.

  Arvid pulled up a chair by Grafton and sat with his elbows resting on his big thighs.

  “Well, here’s the thing,” said Arvid. He looked worried, studying Grafton’s face.

  “See, Bo says she really needs a brother. That’s you. And me and Jack, we really need a boy—that’s you, too. So do you think you’d like to live with us here at the mine?”

  Grafton’s eyes stretched round.

  Bo couldn’t stand being quiet anymore. “Jack will be your papa, and Arvid will be your papa, and I will be your sister!”