Tisha Read online

  Not everybody, of course. Along with some others, Uncle Arthur and Mert Atwood were on my side. Uncle Arthur said it didn’t matter that much one way or the other, but Mert was hopping mad. He was in the classroom when Elvira took the dishes home and right then and there he made me go over to Mr. Strong’s store with him and bought me a whole new set. I didn’t want him to because I knew he didn’t have much money. None of those old-timers did. They pulled maybe five or six hundred dollars worth of gold out of the ground in a season, which just about got them by, but Mert insisted.

  Joan Simpson’s parents invited me over for supper a couple of nights after it happened and they thought it was funny. A young couple out of Idaho, they’d built themselves a sturdy little cabin on Forty-five Pup. A pup was just a little creek that branched off a bigger one, and Forty-Five was so named because it branched off of Chicken Creek at a forty-five degree angle. They’d made a nice life for themselves. Tom Simpson had been a carpenter and his wife Elizabeth had been a seamstress, so they were pretty self-sufficient. I spent a nice evening with them.

  “Don’t pay it any mind,” Tom said. “That Vaughn gink is just a blowhard. I heard that when he lived up at Fort Yukon he was all for forming a branch of the Ku Klux Klan, but he couldn’t get any takers.”

  The one person who surprised me was Mrs. Purdy. “I think you have make mush trouble for yourself, Ahnne,” she said when I was over at the house one night. “Many people not like what you have done.”

  “That’s not the half of it,” Fred said, smiling. “I can tell you in one word what they think—ugh!”

  Mrs. Purdy frowned. “I do not see the joke, Frayd. It is bad for this Indian boy to be in the school.”

  “Why, Mrs. Purdy?”

  “Can you not see, Ahnne? He is dirty, ignorant What you call a … a …” Her hand fidgeted in the air as she tried to think of the word.

  Fred leaned his cheek on his fist. “Bad example,” he said.

  “Yes. Thank you. It will be different, Ahnne, if Chuck is clean, neat. He is not. He is dirty and smells bad.”

  “That’s simple,” Fred said to me. “Tell him to take a bath.”

  “I’ve been thinking of it.”

  “Mary’s got to pack water pretty far,” Fred said, “but even if she didn’t she wouldn’t force him if he didn’t want to. Indians are kind of easy on their kids.”

  “Think she’d mind if I gave him one?”

  “Not at all. He would, though, I’d bet.”

  Mrs. Purdy shook her head. “It would be better, Ahnne, if you leave this boy Chuck alone. People look at him and think all native children are like him.”

  Fred groaned. “Ah, Ma …”

  “‘Ah, Ma,’ you say. I say I would like Mary Angus to go back to Indian village and take her children with her.”

  “Yeah,” Fred said drily. “You want her to go back so bad you were the first one to say I ought to bring her over some wood. Tomorrow I’ll go over and haul it all back.”

  Mrs. Purdy didn’t think it was funny. “We must help those who need our help. We cannot let her freeze. But she does not belong here and the boy does not belong in this school. It was the same with Rebekah Harrington when she came to the school. That was not good,” she said to me.

  “How about the old-timers then? They drop in whenever they like. If they can do it, why can’t Mrs. Harrington?”

  “Rebekah is different,” she said. “People do not respect her.”

  “If they don’t, then what does it matter what she does—whether she comes to school or anything else? As far as I’m concerned, as long as she doesn’t disturb the class she has as much right to sit down in that schoolroom as anyone else.”

  Mrs. Purdy shook her head. “Ahnne, you are young. You do not know what is in the heart of people here. I know. My children know. You must be careful.”

  She was really upset, and it made me realize something. She wanted to fit in, be like everyone else, and any native who didn’t was a reflection on herself. And suddenly I realized too why Mr. Purdy acted the way he did, never saying anything when I was around and just going off by himself. He’d done the same thing tonight. He was ashamed of Mrs. Purdy, ashamed that she was Eskimo, and Mrs. Purdy knew it. It was hard to believe, but I knew down deep it was true, and I felt sorry for him.

  Later on Fred walked me home. The ground was as hard as concrete and slippery with leaves. The trees were so bare now that during the day you could see the game trails running through the woods. I put the hood of my parka up right away.

  “Your mother really worries about what people think of her, doesn’t she?” I asked Fred.

  “Well, it took her a long time to make friends around here.”

  “I kind of felt bad arguing with her.”

  “You didn’t say anything wrong.”

  I slipped on some leaves and he grabbed me. When he let me go we were both a little self-conscious. We kept trying not to bump into each other all the rest of the way. When we reached the schoolhouse we were walking a couple of feet apart.

  “Anything you need to have done in the classroom?” he asked me.

  “You’ve done so much I don’t like to ask you.”

  “I’ve got plenty of time till trapping season.”

  I told him I could use some cubbyholes for the kids to put their stuff in, and he said he’d come by some time in the next few days.

  Chuck stayed.

  How he was able to put up with the way the other kids treated him, I didn’t know, but he stayed. They made life miserable for him. The only thing I couldn’t blame them for was not wanting to sit near him in class. He smelled something awful. It was partly my fault, because with everybody giving him such a bad time, I couldn’t bring myself to tell him he smelled as bad as Ben Norvall.

  If the kids talked to him at all it was just to make fun of him. They mimicked his accent and called him Ol’ Man Yiss. “Are you half-baked or half-breed?” they’d ask him. “You got a siwash bitch for a mother and a father who don’t even know your name.” “Go back to Louse Town,” they told him. “That’s where you belong.”

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if he could have held his own with them, but when they made him mad he couldn’t think fast enough in English to talk back to them. He’d just stand there getting red in the face with fury and wind up stomping off.

  No matter how many times I talked to them about it, it didn’t do any good. Once they even waylaid him after school and threw rocks at him, chasing him all the way home to his shack. When I mentioned it to Mr. Vaughn and Maggie Carew they said they couldn’t do anything about it. Mr. Vaughn hated him so much that sometimes I even thought he put the kids up to some of the things they did.

  One afternoon, after Chuck had left the room, he dragged Chuck back in by the scruff of his neck. Chuck was terrified. His pants were open and he was trying to hold them up and keep from tripping at the same time.

  “Here’s your star pupil,” Mr. Vaughn said. “He’s so civilized he doesn’t know enough to use the privy. I caught him squatting out in back.”

  He walked out leaving Chuck standing in front of the class, his own waste all over his pants and the class laughing. He looked so pathetic I didn’t know whether to burst into tears or go out and tell Mr. Vaughn exactly what I thought of him. I took Chuck into my quarters and cleaned him up as best I could, but he smelled awful—worse than he had before. I told him to stay in my quarters and when school was over I did what I should have done when he first came. I got all my pots out, filled them with water and put them on the stove. Then I took him over to the store with me. There we picked out a couple of good warm flannel shirts for him, two pairs of bib overalls and some socks. He loved them, but back in my quarters, when I told him he was going to have a bath before he could put them on his jaw dropped.

  “Aw no, Tisha.”

  “You want those new clothes?”

  “Yiss.”

  “You want to come to school?”

&nbs
p; “Yiss.”

  “Then you’re going to have to take a bath.”

  In he went, and while he was bathing I went over to the store and picked out a couple of pairs of long underwear. The pair he had on were shot.

  When he was finished and all dressed up he looked like a different boy. I let him see himself in the big piece of mirror I had. “Like yourself?” I’d given him a shampoo and combed his hair.

  He smiled. “Look too much good.”

  “We’re going to do this once a week,” I said. Even with scrubbing we hadn’t been able to get all the dirt off him. Some of it was just too deep. The water in the washtub was black and scummy. After he helped me throw it out in back, we sat down and had something to eat.

  “What bastid, Tisha?” he asked me.

  “A bastard?”

  “Yiss.”

  I tried to think of a way to explain it without hurting his feelings, but finally I just had to come out with it. “Well, a bastard is somebody whose mother isn’t married. There’s nothing bad about it. As a matter of fact a lot of famous people were bastards.” That didn’t come out the way I meant, but Chuck didn’t care.

  “Evelyn and Jimmy call me one bastid. Say I no got fodda.”

  “Sure you’ve got a father. Everybody’s got a father.”

  “Why them kids they no like me?” he asked me.

  “They don’t know you yet, Chuck. That’s the way kids are sometimes. You’ll just have to give them time to get used to you. When they get to know you better and see what a fine boy you are they’ll like you a lot.”

  “You know me?”

  “I think so.”

  “I wait. Pretty soon them kids they know me too.”

  When the kids saw him the next day they almost didn’t recognize him. It didn’t make them any friendlier to him, though. When they found out I’d given him a bath and got him some new clothes they called him teacher’s pet. But he kept coming. Whatever he had to put up with it was better than just hanging around that awful shack he lived in. I thought I’d been poor when I was a kid, but he didn’t have anything. The lunches he brought were the worst I ever saw—stringy rabbit that was half-cooked, or fried bannocks that were little more than flour and water. After a couple of days I started making him sandwiches.

  I had to admit that I was fond of him. I couldn’t help it. There was just something about him that was so good and steady that it made me furious when the kids picked on him.

  He dropped over to see me on Saturday and brought his little sister with him. She was a beautiful little thing, long black hair, delicate nose and big brown inquiring eyes.

  “She name Et’el,” Chuck said. He tried to get her to say hello to me, but she was too afraid. She hid in back of him. “She like too much you give brode.”

  I cut a slice of bread I’d baked that morning, smeared it with butter and honey and gave it to her. She gobbled it down so fast I was afraid she might throw it back up. She didn’t though. Two more slices disappeared the same way.

  Chuck brought her into the schoolroom and showed her some of his work, his leaf book, a couple of spelling papers and a picture of a moose he had drawn.

  Before the two of them left I asked him where he liked it better—the Indian village or here.

  “Indian village,” he said. “Kids no play me here.”

  “I guess you’ll just have to give it more time.”

  “I don’ know, Tisha. I wait and wait and wait for them kids know me. They never know me.”

  “Sooner or later they will.”

  He sighed. “I hope maybe you be right. I wait too long I be old man like Uncle Arthur.”

  IX

  “Is it time yet, Teacher?”

  I looked at my watch. It was one minute to twelve. “Almost. Everybody’s books and papers put away?”

  They all answered yes, anxious to get out. The pack train was due in some time after lunch and this time I’d told them they could have the afternoon off. The first time Mr. Strong came in I’d kept school right up to the last minute, not wanting the school board to feel I was shirking my duty. But there’d been no point to it. All the class had done was waste time.

  Mr. Strong hadn’t been fooling when he said that the pack train coming in was a big day for the settlement. It was the only link we had with the outside world, with newspapers and magazines, mail from friends and relatives Outside, and supplies we’d ordered from the general store in Eagle. Everybody primped up a little, maybe not in Sunday clothes, but in the best and cleanest weekday ones, and the women put on a little rouge. Outside the schoolroom it was usually quiet during the day, with maybe just the sound of somebody sawing wood or doing some hammering, or a dog barking. But when the pack train was due in the miners for miles around drifted in starting about eleven o’clock, and the dogs all over the settlement had to take note of each arrival and try to out-howl each other about it. The whole settlement livened up and the class was too excited to work. Not that I blamed them. I was pretty excited myself. Today especially, because Nancy was coming in.

  From now on I wouldn’t have to eat supper all alone and I’d have somebody to talk to at night. I was getting lonely. She hadn’t shown up the first time Mr. Strong came in and I was afraid that maybe she or her mother had changed her mind about her staying with me, but Mr. Strong had told me she’d be out with him on this trip.

  “School’s out for the day!” I yelled, and a minute later the classroom was empty.

  The pack train didn’t come in until late—almost three. By then it had started to snow again and it looked as though it might stick. Fred had come in to pick up his family’s mail and he was playing Softball with some of the kids, batting out easy flies to them. I was playing too, when all of a sudden the dogs all over the settlement began to bark and howl, raising a racket in their kennels. It meant that Mr. Strong was pretty near. We were having a good time, so we kept playing while everybody who’d come in from the creeks started emptying out of the roadhouse and others came straggling out of their cabins. I yelled for Fred to pop one over to me, and he hit one that went over my head. The ball hit the side of the Vaughn’s storm entry just as Mr. Vaughn came out. He picked it up and the kids started yelling and waving for him to throw it to them, but he didn’t. He walked over to me with it, his mackinaw collar turned up to hide his big goiter.

  “What are all these kids doing out of school?” he asked me.

  He knew as well as I did why they weren’t in school, but he couldn’t pass up the chance to let me have it.

  “I gave them the afternoon off,” I said.

  “Who says it’s up to you when they should have a holiday?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Vaughn, I didn’t think there was anything wrong in it.”

  “I suppose you don’t see anything wrong in playing with them like a wild Indian either. I’ve seen you do it during recess.” He turned to Angela Barrett and a few others who’d come up. “You ever see a teacher carry on that way?”

  “Not in any school I ever went to,” Angela said.

  “Not in any I ever went to either,” Mr. Vaughn said. “You’d better start watching your step.”

  I turned beet red, too embarrassed to say a word. He didn’t like me and he didn’t make any bones about it. Merton Atwood had come up, the black flap he’d made for his yachtsman’s cap pulled down around his ears.

  “What’re you pickin’ on the girl for?” he asked Mr. Vaughn.

  “I’m trying to get her to act like a teacher.”

  Mert came to my defense. “What do you mean, act like? Girl’s the best schoolmarm this place ever saw.”

  “The next time you want to take time off,” Mr. Vaughn said, “you get permission from the school board.”

  Mert spoke right up again. “What’re you talkin’ about? Ever since I can remember, these kids been gettin’ the afternoon off when the pack train’s due in.”

  “You mind your own business. No little snotnose is going to decide how to run th
ings here. We were here long before you arrived,” he said, pointing a finger at me, “and we’ll be here after you’re gone. You’re too damn smart for your own good.”

  “You don’t have any right to speak to me that way, Mr. Vaughn.”

  “I’ll speak to you any way I damn please.” He pointed that finger at me again. “One more word out of you and I’ll smack all that smartness right out of you … Go on,” he challenged me, “let’s see how fresh you can be now.”

  He was really working himself into a rage, and I began to feel weak in the legs. I was embarrassed too. Everybody was watching, and more and more people kept drifting over from the post office to see what was going on. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t dare try to reason with him because he’d have slapped me as soon as I opened my mouth. I was even too scared to move.

  Fred’s hand touched my arm. “C’mon, Anne.”

  He started to lead me away and I went along willingly.

  “Good thing your boyfriend has more brains than you have,” Mr. Vaughn sneered. “I was just getting ready to take you over my knee.”

  He kind of sniggered, and Angela Barrett laughed too.

  That did it. Fred whirled around. “You won’t lay a finger on her,” he said.

  Mr. Vaughn looked as if he’d just heard something he couldn’t believe. “What did you say?”

  He walked over to us with blood in his eye. Fred was still holding the baseball bat and he drew it back without saying a word. All of a sudden I knew he’d use it if he had to. I heard Mert say, “Good boy, Fred,” and I didn’t know whether I felt more proud of Fred or scared of Mr. Vaughn.

  “Are you threatening me?” Mr. Vaughn said.

  “You touch her or me and I’ll let you have it,” Fred said.

  He looked Mr. Vaughn straight in the eye when he said it and Mr. Vaughn knew he meant it. It made him swell up so I thought he’d burst his goiter.

  He had a cruel wide mouth and teeth like one of those fish that swim way down in the deeps. He was a full head taller than Fred and he’d have chewed Fred up right then and there if he could have. He was afraid of that bat, though.