Bo at Ballard Creek Page 9

  “Too big! You step on my toes, you break them,” Clara teased him. So they only danced the slow songs with him, when he wouldn’t be moving so fast, and they could get out of his way if he got dangerous.

  Jack said it wasn’t his fault; it was Mama Nancy’s.

  “She wouldn’t let anyone in the cookhouse dance. She said dancing was the devil’s way of getting your attention,” he said.

  So the people of Ballard Creek danced all night in the golden summer light, and that was another Fourth of July.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  GOING TO FAIRBANKS

  ALL OF SUMMER was spent getting ready for winter. Summer wasn’t very long, but it seemed longer, because the sun stayed up all day and all night. Since it never grew dark in the summer, everyone worked hard all hours of the day and night. It seemed to Bo as if no one in the little town ever slept in the summer.

  In the winter there were just a few hours of sunlight. Everyone was in a hurry then to get chores finished before it grew dark and you couldn’t see what you were doing. You make a lot of mistakes in the dark, Arvid always said.

  Bo had to hurry to bring in the snow to melt in the water barrel and the wood for the wood box. You’re burning daylight, they’d say if you wasted time in the winter.

  But in the summer, there was nothing but daylight.

  There wasn’t much time between cleanup and the new season when the ground froze again. When the freeze-up came, it would be safe for the boys to go underground again to dig for gold.

  The boys worked hard at getting the equipment ready for the winter. Arvid and Alex had taken apart the pump, the buzz saw, the boiler, and the winch, replacing worn parts and cleaning everything carefully. The rocker had to be fixed, the hoses dried and put away, the ladder for the shaft repaired. There was wood to be cut and new handles had to be made for the picks and shovels.

  But some of the boys had other things to do in the summer. They were going to leave on the scow out of Ballard Creek after breakfast. This happened every summer, but it always made Bo unhappy when any of the boys left Ballard Creek.

  Peter had a bad tooth so he was going down the Koyukuk to catch a steamer from Nulato to Fairbanks, where there was a dentist. Bo leaned against Peter’s shoulder while he sat on the bench lacing up his boots.

  Peter looked at her sad face. “I’ll bring you some new rocks,” he told Bo. Bo frowned to show him that she couldn’t be cheered up with rocks.

  “Where will you sleep when you’re in Fairbanks?” she asked.

  “Oh, everyone stays in the Nordale Hotel. Got an elevator in that.” Bo didn’t really know what an elevator was, so Peter said he’d draw her a picture when he finished with his boots.

  Johnny Schmidt was going Outside. That’s what everyone called all the places outside Alaska. He was going Outside to see his old parents in Oregon. They had a farm there, and he was worried because they were getting too old to farm by themselves. He said he would be back on the last scow, but Bo thought the boys said good-bye to him as if it were the last time they’d see him. Jack shook his hand a lot longer than he usually did. When Johnny bent to kiss Bo good-bye, it felt to her as if he was going for good, and she burst into tears.

  Even Charlie Sickik, Big Annie’s husband, was going to Fairbanks. He had a bad tooth too. All winter he suffered, drinking whiskey when it hurt too bad. Milo wired the dentist in Fairbanks to see if he could just pull Charlie’s tooth out himself with his pliers, but the dentist said no because Charlie’s face was swollen. Charlie had to come to see him.

  Charlie was very excited about going to Fairbanks. He’d never been away from the Koyukuk River in his whole life. He talked and talked about all the things he was going to see—automobiles and airplanes and electric lights and telephones, and the new locomotive going to Anchorage. Little Annie and Betty, his twins, made him promise he’d go to see the talkies, that new kind of movies, so he could tell them all what it was like. But when the old-timers and the boys told Charlie terrible stories about dentists, he almost changed his mind about going. Milo had to talk hard to convince him that it wasn’t going to be so bad.

  Karl was going to Fairbanks too. “Just want to see the bright lights of the city,” he said, and all the boys laughed, because Fairbanks wasn’t a city, and there weren’t any bright lights. Fairbanks was just a little mining town with a few thousand people. Which was a lot more people than Ballard Creek had, of course.

  Bo knew why Karl was really going. It was because of old Nels Niemi.

  Everyone knew the story of Nels Niemi. The boys all smiled about it, but Karl didn’t, and neither did Bo.

  Everyone worried about the miners out on the creeks who worked all by themselves. They had no one to go for help if they got sick or hurt.

  Karl was Finnish and so was Nels, so Karl looked after Nels. “Us Finns got to stick together,” he said. They’d talk Finnish together when Karl visited, just so they didn’t forget how. “Easy to forget a language when you don’t use it,” Karl told Bo. “Take Arvid—he don’t hardly know Swedish anymore, just the swear words.” So Karl took Nels some of Jack’s bread every few weeks, brought him his mail, and checked to see that he was okay.

  Every year Nels left Ballard Creek with the gold he’d cleaned up at his little mine a few miles from Olaf’s. Every year Nels said he was going to see his sister in Washington. He hadn’t seen her for twenty-five years, and she was the only family he had left. She wrote all the time, begging him to visit. Nels always told her he was coming.

  And every year when he got to Fairbanks, he lost all his money in a card game or some other foolishness and came back to Ballard Creek shamefaced. “I’ll go see her next year,” he always said.

  Karl didn’t have any family at all, so he felt bad when Nels didn’t make it to see his sister. “If you have a sister, you should do your best for her, show up once in a while, send a letter for her birthday at least,” he complained to the boys after his last visit with Nels.

  The last time it happened, the year before, Bo had been old enough to feel sad with Karl. “Think how his sister must feel,” Karl said to Bo. She thought it would be terrible to wait all those times and never see her brother. She thought it was mean of Nels to hurt his sister’s feelings.

  So this year Karl was going with Nels to keep him out of trouble and to get him on the boat to his sister.

  * * *

  KARL AND NELS had been gone two weeks when Clarence brought a wire to the boss. All the boys were together in the cookshack having lunch, and they stopped eating when the boss said, “It’s from Karl.”

  The boss fished his wire-rimmed glasses out of his shirt pocket and took forever adjusting the wires behind his ears. The boys were rolling their eyes with impatience. Finally he cleared his throat and read the wire to them.

  He’s on his way. I took his money and wired it to his sister. That way he can’t get into any card games on the boat. Not too much trouble he can get into with what’s in his pocket. She’s going to let me know when he gets there.

  The boys all cheered. Bo smiled at Arvid and leaned against him. It made her happy, thinking of Nels finally seeing his sister. She imagined Nels’s sister looking like Olaf’s sister Birgit, with braids around her head, and she imagined how Nels’s sister would cry when she saw Nels. And how they would talk a lot of Finnish.

  “By god,” said Sandor, “I knew Karl could pull it off.”

  Alex said, “What do you think Karl had to do to get Nels’s money off him?” The boys all thought up ways Karl could have managed it until they were all laughing so hard they almost forgot to eat. They weren’t too sure that Nels wouldn’t find some kind of mischief to get up to, but at least he was halfway there.

  * * *

  KARL DIDN’T STAY long in Fairbanks. He was on the next scow that came up from Bettles.

  The night he returned, when everyone was at the roadhouse, Karl handed out presents from his battered old duffel bag.

  “Just like San
ta Claus,” Milo said.

  There were pipes for all the grown-ups in town and fat cigars for the boys who didn’t smoke pipes. There were store-bought kites and candy for all the kids, boxes of ribbons for the big girls, and balsa wood airplane kits for the big boys to put together with glue and tissue. And best of all, there were new records for the roadhouse.

  “These are the latest hits,” Karl told the big girls. They read the titles on the records excitedly—“Yes We Have No Bananas,” “I’ve Got Rings on My Fingers,” and “Toot, Toot, Tootsie.” The girls rushed to the Victrola, arguing over who got to pick the first record.

  When he had finished handing out all these things, Karl called Bo and Evalina to him. “You are the two youngest girls, so I brought something special for you,” he said. He pulled two boxes from his duffel bag, looking very pleased. In the boxes were dolls, beautiful dolls with glossy hair and shiny faces and eyes that opened and shut. He took the dolls out of the boxes and handed the doll with blond hair to Bo and the one with red hair to Evalina.

  “This one has hair like you,” he said to Bo. “Couldn’t find one with black hair like you, Evalina, but you have one with hair like Lester.”

  Bo felt a terrible feeling she’d never felt before.

  She wanted the doll with red hair like Lester.

  Bo and Evalina stood stiff legged, holding their dolls awkwardly, their eyes down. Karl looked at Bo and then at Evalina and then back to Bo again. His happy face changed as he watched them. The big girls, Little Annie, Betty, Della, and Lena, leaned over Bo and Evalina to look at the dolls.

  “Oh, aren’t they beautiful!” Lena breathed.

  But still Bo and Evalina stood rigid.

  Bo looked out of the corners of her eyes at Evalina. Evalina was looking sideways at Bo’s doll with the yellow hair.

  Karl watched them, frowning, and then his face cleared. “Ohhhhh,” he said in a discovering sort of way. He squatted down and took both dolls back again.

  “Here, I’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I forgot to let you choose. Evalina, you’re the youngest, so you get to pick first. Which one do you want?”

  Evalina threw a worried look at Bo. Finally she whispered, “The one with yellow hair.”

  Bo’s smile was radiant.

  “Yes,” she said to Evalina. “That’s the best one for you.” She took the red-haired doll from Karl quickly, afraid Evalina’d change her mind. She smiled her biggest smile and put her hand on Karl’s knee.

  “Thank you for our dolls. Thank you.” She nudged Evalina who was gazing adoringly at her yellow-haired doll. “Say your manners,” she whispered.

  “Thank you,” Evalina said.

  Karl got to his feet and raised his eyebrows a little at the boys who were watching. “Whew,” he said.

  * * *

  THAT NIGHT when Bo was washed and ready for bed, Arvid sat on the rickety chair by the door and pulled Bo between his big knees. He looked into her face. “What do you think about the doll Karl got you?”

  Bo knew that Arvid had seen her behaving badly. She looked at the floor. “I wanted the one like Lester,” she said.

  “Oh,” said Arvid. “That’s a hard thing. Wanting what someone else has. Get jealous when someone has something you want. I guess there ain’t anyone that never happened to. Best when that happens to talk yourself into thinking that what you have is good enough. Worked out okay, because Evalina wanted to swap.”

  Bo looked up at him. “She wanted the one with hair like me.”

  Arvid nodded.

  “When I was five or six, the boy next door got a jackknife. I was real jealous. So I stole it.”

  Bo’s eyes went wide. “You stole?”

  “Mama caught me, made me give it back, gave me a good talking to,” said Arvid. “She read me this place in the Bible says you shouldn’t want what your neighbor has. I hated it when she read the Bible at me. I didn’t want my neighbor’s cow or his donkey, and I sure didn’t want his wife, since he didn’t have one any more than I did, because we weren’t even in long pants yet. I wanted his jackknife.”

  Bo looked up at Arvid and let herself smile. Arvid always made jokes about everything. Even though she tried to stay unhappy, he always made that bad heavy place inside her feel lighter.

  “I think Mama felt worse than I did. On my next birthday, she gave me a jackknife, better than that boy’s knife! That’s mothers for you. Can’t be too hard on their children. By rights she should have told me I could never in this life have my own knife because I stole.”

  Bo relaxed against Arvid’s knee. It was a good thing to know that someone else had done the bad thing you’d done. She hadn’t stolen the doll, of course, but she might have.

  “I never forgot what it felt like, being jealous. Worst feeling in the world. The thing is not to want things, just be happy with what you got.” Arvid tilted her chin up with his big finger. “I know. Easier said than done. I myself couldn’t help being very jealous if someone had a little girl like you and I didn’t have any little girl.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  GETTING READY FOR WINTER

  THE ESKIMO FAMILIES worked hard all summer getting food for the long cold winter. The women did most of the fishing, and the men were gone most of the summer hunting caribou because the caribou migration passed through the hill country north of Ballard Creek twice a year. After the caribou were gone, the men went off to hunt wild sheep in the mountains fifty miles away.

  Jack had seen a caribou migration. He told Bo there might be ten thousand caribou all running together.

  “How much is ten thousand?” Bo asked.

  “A lot,” said Jack. “Maybe if they were jammed together they’d stretch all the way to Olaf’s.”

  Bo tried to imagine such a crowd.

  “Caribou click when they run,” Jack said. “Darnedest thing you could ever hear. All those caribou, running together, not saying a word, just clickclickclick.”

  “How do they make a click?” asked Bo. She was imagining the caribou making clicks with their tongues the way Olaf called his animals.

  “Don’t know,” said Jack. “Something with their legs. Something in there clicking.”

  Jack said sometimes the migration went someplace else. For almost twenty years there were no caribou in the Koyukuk country. “But they came back,” said Jack, “and a good thing, too.”

  Bo longed to see a caribou migration. And hear it.

  Oscar loved fresh caribou meat. “Best thing,” Oscar told her, “is the big intestine. But my dad and mom, they like the heart, tongue, and liver best. Brain, too.”

  Bo didn’t like the idea of any of those things. She didn’t even know what some of them were; she just knew they were inside the caribou. Jack would never cook the insides of anything, she knew.

  Oscar liked stinkfish, too, and that was another thing Bo didn’t like. But when the whitefish run was over, she went to help Clara make stinkfish anyway.

  Clara had dug a deep, narrow hole close to their cabin. She used the same hole every year for her stinkfish.

  While Clara went off to load the fish on her sled, Bo and Oscar knelt by the side of the hole and looked down with interest.

  “Let’s see what it feels like down there,” Oscar said. Bo thought that was a good idea. She sat on the edge of the hole and jumped down feet first. Oscar came after. There was just enough room for both of them. “Didn’t look as deep from up there,” said Bo. They looked up at the patch of sky over their heads.

  “We’d never get out if we were stuck down here by ourself,” Bo said.

  “Sure,” said Oscar. “Just have to dig little holes for steps, and you could climb out, just like you made a ladder.” So they tried to make holes with their fingers, but the sides of the pit were frozen too hard.

  “Should always carry a knife with you,” said Oscar.

  “Get on my shoulders,” said Bo. “Then you could climb right out.” They tried that, but it didn’t work. Although Oscar was s
horter than Bo, he was heavier, and Bo went to her knees every time Oscar tried to climb on her shoulders. Bo got on Oscar’s shoulders then, but she couldn’t reach high enough.

  It was cold in that hole, and there was still some of last year’s fish in it, so they both got smeared with old rotten fish. Bo had a feeling Jack was not going to like that.

  They were both thinking that jumping into the hole was not their best idea when Clara’s face appeared.

  Clara laughed at them. “Oh, my, what were you thinking of?” Then she reached down with her strong arms to pull them out. “Getting heavy, you two,” she complained.

  She gave Oscar a sharp knife and sent them both off to the riverbank to gather grass and willow branches to cover the bottom of the hole. When they’d done that, Clara and Bo and Oscar brought the whitefish from the sled. They were big fish, so Oscar and Bo couldn’t hold them by the gills; they had to hug them to carry them. They slid the whitefish into the pit, piling them on top of each other until the hole was full. Clara covered the top of the hole with grass and sod, and then it was done. They just had to wait until the fish were rotten so they could eat it.

  When Bo got home that night, Jack took one look at her, made a face, and told her to get back on the porch.

  “Take your clothes off,” he ordered. “Don’t want that smell in the cookshack. Put everyone off their food for sure.”

  He got down the galvanized tub from its nail on the wall, filled it with hot water, and set the tub in front of the stove. Then he brought her into the kitchen, his nose wrinkled, and popped her into the bathtub. He used a lot of soap.

  “I thought you didn’t like stinkfish,” he said while he scrubbed her.

  “I didn’t eat any. I was just helping Clara,” Bo said.

  Jack rolled his eyes. “What next?” he said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  FALL

  ALL THE MEN who’d gone to Fairbanks in the summer had stories to tell when they came back.