Tisha Read online

  The weather didn’t keep anybody from coming to the dance, though. Just about everybody showed up. They were really something, those dances. Before everybody arrived the old-timers would sit around playing cribbage or rummy, and Fred would take out his banjo so that the rest of us could play musical chairs. By the time it was 8:30 the schoolroom and my quarters were jam-packed and we were ready. Then with Fred on banjo, his mother on accordion and Ben Norvall playing the fiddle and calling, everybody stomped and swung their partners so hard the dirt kept jumping up between the floorboards. And that Friday was no exception. It got so hot we didn’t even need the stove after a while.

  I had as much fun watching as dancing, especially when Rebekah Harrington was on the floor. She was almost as heavy as Angela Barrett, but she swung around and do-se-do’d like a young girl. Now that it was colder she wore about half a dozen skirts, and as the dance wore on she worked herself into such a sweat that she kept taking them off, one after the other.

  She’d started showing up at school every so often again, but if the school board objected to it they didn’t say anything to me, so I let her come. They didn’t want to tangle with her husband Jake again. She must have been studying with Lily at home because she knew her letters. Whenever I gave my beginners drill with flash cards I could see her lips moving, naming the letters as I held them up. She wanted to learn to read, I knew that, but so far I hadn’t tried to work with her. I intended to, though, as soon as I felt I could do it without getting into trouble over it. She was just about the happiest person in all of Chicken. It didn’t seem to bother her in the least that the women in the settlement snubbed her. It didn’t bother Jake either. “Goddammit, boys,” he told a bunch of miners in the roadhouse one night, “if you had the brains God gave you, you’d mush out to that Indian village and bring yourself back a squaw.” Rebekah and his little girl Lily had been with him. Picking up Lily, he’d stood her on the table. “Take a look at that beauty, will ya—black as the ace of spades, but I love her! And that goes for my woman too. You want to look down your nose at me, you go on ahead. She ain’t the Rose of Sharon, but goddammit, I got myself the fattest, cleanest, hardworkingest woman any man here ever warmed up to on a cold winter’s night!”

  “Got biggest mouth in whole No’th country too,” Rebekah had murmured. She hadn’t looked too happy, I didn’t blame her, but Jake just laughed, crooked an elbow around her neck and gave her a fat kiss on the cheek.

  She plumped herself down alongside of me and Maggie Carew right after the square dancing was over and Uncle Arthur was winding up his gramophone.

  “How you doin’, Tisha?” she asked me.

  “Fine, Rebekah. How about you?”

  She let out a long sigh of satisfaction. “Ah, I have lotsa fun me. Like dance too damn much. How you doin’, Miz Carew?”

  “Gettin’ by,” Maggie said.

  “You make plenty money tonight,” Rebekah said. “Everybody they too hungry when dance over, they maybe eat table and chair. What you think?”

  “Whatever money I make you can be a damn sight sure I’ll earn it.”

  “By golly,” Rebekah said, sympathetically, “you tell truth. Not easy make cook for so much people.”

  Maggie got up. “I better get along. Gotta start preparin’.”

  Rebekah fanned herself with her hand. “Whew—too damn hot, I think.”

  I had to smile. “Too much dancing, I think.”

  “Ah, I like have good times. Life short. Today you here, laugh, tomorrow you go in ground, everybody shovel dirt on you.”

  Uncle Arthur had put on a waltz and the kids who were still awake were the first ones out on the floor. Two or three of them were already asleep on my bed along with Rebekah’s Lily. Jimmy Carew was dancing with Joan Simpson, while one of the Vaughn twins was trying to wrestle Mert Atwood around the floor. As usual Fred danced the first waltz with his mother. They were so graceful that most people just stood on the side and watched them. He glanced over at me and we gave each other a quick smile. I’d looked over Uncle Arthur’s records and made sure about the label on Home Sweet Home. It was green, all right.

  As the evening wore on I kept looking over at Uncle Arthur whenever I could, hoping I’d spot that label. I saw him start to put it on once and so did Fred, but he took it off again when he saw the two of us head for each other.

  It was almost two o’clock before he slipped it on. I was talking with Nancy and the next thing I knew Joe Temple was tapping me on the shoulder and grinning down at me. Except for the way he treated Mary Angus, I didn’t have anything against Joe, but I was so annoyed I felt like going over to Fred and saying, “Why don’t we let them all go over to the roadhouse and you and I stay here together?” It must have showed, too.

  “Don’t look so peevish,” Joe said when we were waltzing. “You could have ended up with old man Vaughn.”

  That would have been something. Ever since the school-board meeting he hardly nodded to me.

  “And you could have ended up with Angela Barrett.”

  When the waltz ended, I went to get my coat. I caught Fred’s eye and we both kind of shrugged as if to say that’s the way we knew it would be.

  The roadhouse was so crowded it took almost an hour before everybody was served. Even Willard was carrying plates back and forth.

  Joe had taken out a pipe and was smoking and I was almost finished eating when Maggie came over.

  “How’s the grub?” she asked.

  I told her the truth. It was delicious. Nancy and I had cooked up some salmon bellies and sauerkraut a couple of times, but Maggie’s was the best I’d tasted. She’d saved Joe and me the little table against the wall, and had even put a candle on it.

  “Good to see you two together,” Maggie said. “You make a nice couple.”

  “That’s a coincidence,” Joe said, “we were just talking about getting married.”

  “Wouldn’t hurt either of ya,” Maggie said. “Keep you both out of trouble. ’Specially her,” she added before she walked off.

  I felt like telling her that if he married anybody he ought to marry Mary Angus. Back in Evansville once there’d been a boy who’d gotten a girl into trouble and there wasn’t one woman in town who didn’t think that the right thing for him to do was marry her. And he did, too. If Mary hadn’t been an Indian everybody here would have felt the same, but because she was they didn’t give a hoot. They even took Joe’s side, which was worse. Maybe she wasn’t right in doing what she did, but she wasn’t the first woman who’d ever made a mistake like that and she wouldn’t be the last.

  I looked over to where Fred was sitting with his mother and I wished I was there with them. Everybody at the table was having a good time exchanging tall stories, and Ben Norvall’s turn was next. He sat combing his moustaches with his fingers while people kept suggesting stories they wanted to hear him tell again.

  The second time he’d showed up at school I’d had to take Maggie’s advice and tell him that he couldn’t come in unless he took a bath. Face black, hair matted, filthy pants held up by wire and string, he looked like he’d come out of a cave. Even so, not wanting to hurt his feelings, I weaseled around a little, saying that I didn’t personally find the way he looked and smelled offensive, but that I had to protect the health of the children. The truth was that, even keeping as much distance as possible between us, I still came near the edge of a dead faint a couple of times.

  I’d brought him into my quarters to tell him in private, and he’d been very understanding. He’d had no idea, he’d said, that the children’s health was endangered. Now that he did, he would take steps to remedy the situation. The next time he showed up he was a different man. Bathed, and dressed in clean clothes, he fairly glowed. He’d even bought a new pair of heavy duty suspenders to hold up his pants. The only drawback was that now his face was washed you could see all his blackheads sprouting like potato eyes.

  He was a good storyteller though. The one he told this time was about a
partner of his who’d died on him in the middle of winter.

  “I didn’t know what to do with that sucker,” Ben was saying. “I couldn’t tell when the marshal’d be out to pick up the body and he was beginning to smell worse than a siwash fish stew. I couldn’t leave ’im outside because there was a blizzard blowin’ and he’d a been covered by drifts so high I wouldn’t be able to find ’im till spring. Had an outside cache, but he was too damn heavy for me to lift him up to it.”

  “What’d you finally do?”

  “Well, you’re not gonna believe this, but it’s God’s truth. I just took ’im out and propped him against the side of the cabin, left him there for about two hours till he was frozen stiff, then I stored him up in the cache.”

  “I thought you said he was too hard to lift.”

  “Too hard to lift in one piece, I meant. But stiff like he was all I had to do was snap off his arms and legs, then throw ’im in the cache piece by piece. The marshal was a little peeved when he had to collect him, wanted to file charges against me for desecratin’ a corpse, but I explained the situation to him and he was as decent as you please. I heard later that after the undertaker got through with that sucker not a soul was the wiser.”

  Ben’s story was followed by a few more from others, each one wilder than the one before. When they were ended I asked Joe if he’d seen Mary lately. He said no.

  “I don’t mean to stick my nose in, Joe, but she really needs some help. She goes out trapping and she shouldn’t.”

  “I thought you said you don’t mean to stick your nose in.”

  “I don’t, but I just can’t understand why you treat her the way you do.”

  “I don’t treat her any way at all. I haven’t even seen her in over a month.”

  “That’s what I mean. Don’t you care anything about her at all?”

  “Why should I?”

  “Because she’s a human being.” Because she had two children by you was what I wanted to say.

  “Hey, are you a social worker or a teacher?” he asked sarcastically.

  We didn’t have much to say after that, and in a way I was sorry I’d said anything about it at all. He wasn’t a bad guy. He’d made a pass at me once, but when he saw I wasn’t interested he hadn’t made a fuss about it.

  We left a few minutes later. He was quiet all the way back to my quarters, so I knew he was irritated with me. I didn’t realize how mad he really was, though, until we reached the porch and I thanked him for taking me to supper.

  “Forget it,” he said. “You taught me a lesson. I tried to help you out tonight by keeping you and that Purdy kid away from each other. Well from now on I’ll mind my own goddamn business and you mind yours.” Then he turned away from me and walked off.

  XI

  “Fred!”

  “Hi, Anne.”

  “Come on in, it’s freezing.”

  Nancy and I had just finished going over a math problem when he’d knocked. I’d heard he’d been back from the trap line for a couple of days and I was wondering when he’d be over. If Nancy hadn’t been there I’d have given him a hug, I was so glad to see him. He’d lost a little weight from being on trail and eating and sleeping in rest cabins, but he looked wonderful.

  He didn’t stay long. I walked out with him on the porch before he went home.

  “You ready for a snow picnic?” he asked me.

  “Sure.”

  “How about Saturday?”

  “That’s swell. Where do you want to go?”

  “We’ll go over to West Fork,” he said. “It’ll take about two hours to get there, so I’ll pick you up around nine.”

  He was going to kiss me, but he glanced over at the Vaughn cabin and changed his mind. “I’ll see you Saturday,” he said.

  Before that Saturday came Mrs. Purdy paid me a visit after school. When I opened the door I couldn’t have been more surprised to see her. She smiled up at me from under a beautiful hat of otter fur that made her look as chic as a Paris model. She needed something from Mr. Strong’s store, she said, but I had the feeling she wanted to talk with me in private.

  Inside the store it was cold enough so that you couldn’t smell the usual collection of musty odors. All she wanted, she said, was a can of peppercorns. She was going to make a pepper-pot stew and had just run out. She stuffed the pepper in the pocket of her fur coat, and as I was writing it down, she said, “You are going on snow picnic with my Frayd he tell me.”

  “On Saturday.”

  “He like you very mush, Ahnne,” she said.

  “I feel the same way about him.”

  “I understand why he likes you. You are attractive. Wear nice clothes. Yet I do not understand why you like him so much. He is only boy. He make no money, have no house, have nothing. Is that not so?”

  “I never thought about that.”

  “Not wise. You are pretty, Ahnne. Many men like marry you. Some day you marry man who have mush money, give you big house, many things … Frayd, he give you nothing.” She said it as if he were a dismal failure, and I almost had to smile.

  “Mrs. Purdy, why don’t you tell me what’s really on your mind?”

  She laughed, a lilting laugh full of good humor. “I see why you teasher, Ahnne. You are …” She stopped and tapped a mittened hand on the counter, searching for the word she was thinking of. She shook her other hand in frustration. “… Intelligent,” she said, sighing with relief. “Someday,” she added, exasperated, “I get new tongue. This one—agh.” We both laughed at the face she made. Then she was serious.

  “Please, Ahnne,” she said slowly, “do not like him. It is not good … You savvy what I say?”

  “Mrs. Purdy, do you think that Fred and I have done anything wrong?”

  “No. I not say this. I say only that now there is mush trouble. Three days ago Mr. Strong come see me. He tell me of you and Frayd. Tell me Frayd like you too mush. People know, and it is very bad. I am shocked he tell me this, Ahnne. I not know. When Frayd he come home I talk with him. He say it is true, and I weep. I am afraid, Ahnne. People will not talk with Frayd like before. Not talk with me, with my husband, and my Isabelle.”

  “Then maybe they’re not your real friends, Mrs. Purdy.”

  She shook her head impatiently. “Ahnne. You are young, not understand. People here not like see white man, dark woman. Mush worse they not like see white woman, dark man. You like my Frayd too mush, Ahnne. Better to close book on that. Too many tears come your eyes, too many pains in your heart … I ask you—I tell Frayd you not like him anymore. Yes?”

  I didn’t want to hurt her for anything in the world. “Mrs. Purdy …”

  “Ahnne, I beg of you.”

  “I’m sorry …”

  She was angry, but it only lasted a few seconds, then she collected herself.

  “I say good night to you, Ahnne,” she said, “but first I tell you something make me sad almost to cry. You must come my house no more.”

  She started to say something else. Instead she turned and went to the door.

  “Mrs. Purdy!”

  She went out. I turned off the oil lamp I’d lit and went after her, locking the door as quickly as possible. By the time I caught sight of her she’d gone around the back of the store and was moving toward the shortcut home.

  I called to her, but she didn’t turn around. And as her tiny figure kept moving away I felt almost the same way I had years before when my Grandmother Hobbs had stood in the road and waved good-bye to me.

  For the rest of the week I was afraid that when Isabelle came to school she’d tell me that Fred wouldn’t be able to make it on Saturday. Knowing how much he loved his mother, I knew he’d want to hurt her even less than I did.

  When Saturday morning came, though, he was outside with his sled almost on the dot of nine. It was still dark out—the sun wouldn’t be up for a couple of hours yet—but it looked as if it was going to be clear.

  As soon as I came out I saw that Pancake wasn’t his lead dog th
is time. He’d put Pancake at wheel instead, directly in front of the sled, and harnessed all the malamutes up front with Shakespeare in the lead. Fred had taught me enough about sled dogs so I knew why. It had snowed again a few days before and the dogs would have to break trail part of the way. The heavier dogs like Pancake would be more likely to break through the snow and have tough going. The lighter malamutes would pack it down.

  Shakespeare was really anxious to show what he could do, or maybe he knew Pancake was back there watching him, because as soon as I was tucked in the sled and Fred yelled “Mush!” that whole team took off as if it was their picnic they were going on.

  Once we were out of the settlement, Fred launched into a chorus of Oft, Susanna and they really pushed into their collars. For the first hour we moved along at such a good pace and it looked so easy that I asked Fred to let me try driving.

  “Might be a little hard for you,” he yelled.

  “No it won’t.”

  “We’ll be hitting some hummock ice soon, so maybe you better wait.”

  “I’ll bet you I can do it.”

  “You sure now?”

  “Positive.”

  We changed places and it seemed so easy at first I wondered why he’d hesitated. I started to sing Ta-ra-ra-boom-dee-ay and all the dogs worked so hard that for the first time Shakespeare wasn’t setting the pace. But between having to jump off to keep the sled from tipping and trying to manipulate the lead lines, I found out that it took a lot more strength than I thought to keep the sled on trail. I finally decided to give up when we hit the hummock ice. It was like going over slippery rocks. Sweating and hardly able to breathe after a while, I said, “Fred, maybe you ought to take it.”

  “You sure you want me to? You’re not doing bad at all.”

  “I’m getting a little tired.” It was all I could do to hold onto the handles.

  “There’s only about another quarter mile before we’ll hit the ridge, then it’ll be downhill.” He didn’t turn around and I didn’t realize he was trying not to break out laughing.