Bo at Ballard Creek

by Kirkpatrick Hill

  The weasel wasn’t orphaned or hurt; it just started to live under Olaf’s storage shed where he kept the mining tools.

  “He’d poke his head out to look at all the customers promenading in the yard, and I was worried he’d go after the ptarmigan. Thought I’d have to get rid of him. He must have been pretty young to change his ways. He started to come out and eat when they were finished, and pretty soon, he was sitting up on the winch with the raven looking down at me, and now him and Dog are best friends. I named him Calvin for the president, but to tell you the truth, I think Calvin’s a girl.”

  Olaf stepped out the cabin door to call the animals to him. It was time for lunch.

  He had a special loud whistle, two little fingers stuck in the corners of his mouth. SCREE! SCREE!

  Bo had tried and tried to whistle like Olaf since she was small, but she still couldn’t. Just a lot of air leaked out around her little fingers. Big Annie tried to make the whistle too, but she couldn’t do it either. She and Bo laughed at each other.

  “I whistle just with my mouth,” said Annie. She did, but it was a very weak sound compared to Olaf’s whistle.

  “Chuck, chuck,” Olaf called.

  The weasel ran across the yard to Olaf, his back humpity-humping like a hurrying caterpillar. All of Olaf’s other children came too, none as fast as the weasel, but all coming.

  Olaf set four beat-up tin pans and one gold pan on the bench by his cabin door. He scooped dry oatmeal from a bucket into one dish. “That’s for Harvey,” he said. Bo set the bowl carefully in front of the ptarmigan, who was making his best sound—like the winch engine at the mine—start-up slow, faster, faster. Harvey bent his head immediately to the dish and went to work. Peck, peck, peck.

  Then Olaf gave Bo a bowl with some special crackers he’d baked from fish and oats. “Put some of those in Harvey’s pan, too,” he said. Bo did and then wiped her hands on her overall pants because the crackers smelled so terrible.

  Olaf went in the cabin and came out with a tin plate of table scraps—left over hotcakes and last night’s stew. “Put these in Dog’s dish,” he told her, “the gold pan. That’s his dish. But save some for Shine, too. He likes scraps better than anything.”

  Olaf and Bo put out dried fruit and oatmeal for Fred the porcupine, boiled fish for Calvin the weasel, boiled fish and the rest of the scraps for Shine the raven. And a few fish crackers for everyone.

  “Dog eats everything, and so do Shine and Calvin. They aren’t fussy,” Olaf said. “Fred and Harvey are the fussiest. But both of them, porcupine and ptarmigan, can get their own food around here if they don’t like what I give them. The weasel, too, for that matter.”

  Just Shine and Dog relied on him for their food—Dog because he was so old, and Shine because he was crippled.

  Now that they’d eaten, Dog and Calvin were stretched out together in the warm sun, back to back. Bo squatted down and stroked their warm fur, Dog’s all messy and tattered, the weasel’s coat sleek brown, his belly white. They both stretched a little when she stroked them, then settled back to sleep.

  Bo looked around at all the animals in the yard—Dog and Calvin, Harvey the ptarmigan, Fred the porcupine, and Shine the raven. When she was with them, she felt all stuffed up with crying and laughing at the same time.

  When she’d told Jack about that mixed-up feeling before, he’d said that feeling was love. “And a damned uncomfortable feeling it is sometimes,” he’d said.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  BO RUNS

  BIG ANNIE AND BO left Olaf when the sun was a little lower. Jack and Arvid always told her not to stay too long when she visited. Everyone had a lot of work to do in the summer.

  Bo stopped to look at a grove of aspens growing together straight and tall. She liked the way the aspen leaves shimmered and danced on their stems, as if the whole tree was shaking. Birch leaves didn’t do that. The aspens had pale greeny-gray bark, which was a color Bo loved. It wasn’t in her crayon box, so she didn’t know what that color was called.

  They were halfway home when Bo practiced skipping. She’d been trying hard to learn how, but it was impossible until Lilly told her to sing a song in her head so her feet would keep the rhythm. That worked, so she was singing “Skip to My Lou” to herself and skipping very nicely.

  But after a bit, skipping—taking such little steps—made her feet feel tight, held back. She was wearing her summer moccasins, which were so light on her feet she felt she could skim along the road like a dragonfly. It was a rule not to run in the woods because bears—even dogs—would chase anything that was moving fast. It was their nature. And she was never to get ahead of the person with the gun.

  But the trail was hard and dry—perfect—so she stopped skipping and started to sprint.

  “You’re just like a dog,” Jack used to say. “Got to break out running from time to time.”

  Bo had just remembered that she wasn’t supposed to run or get ahead of Annie. She’d almost stopped so Annie could catch up with her when she saw an orangish shape in the willows. She turned her head to see what it was and stumbled with shock.

  It was the grizzly.

  He had been eating something small and bloody, a rabbit maybe, and Bo had startled him. He stood up quickly to look at her with his little black eyes. Then he dropped to all fours and started after her—just loping, not full speed.

  “Annie!” she screamed, and fled, terrified, though she’d heard it said a hundred times never to run from a bear. “Annie,” she screamed, “Annie!”

  Big Annie was right behind the bear. “BO, LIE DOWN NOW!” Annie screamed. “NOW! NOW!”

  Bo did, just fell flat on the trail and hid her face in the dirt.

  The minute she did, she heard Annie’s gun, a huge noise right over her head. And she heard the grunt the bear made and the sound of him hitting the ground. Still she didn’t lift up her head. Another shot, and then another one.

  Annie was talking to herself in Eskimo as she ran up to Bo—“yaqhii, yaqhii, yaqhii”—oh my, oh my, oh my. Bo felt Annie’s strong hands lift her up. “Yaqhii, yaqhii,” was all Annie could say. She pushed Bo’s head against her shoulder and rocked her back and forth for what seemed like a long time.

  Finally, Bo lifted her head off Annie’s shoulder and looked behind her. There was the bear, an orangish heap in the trail right behind her.

  His face was so sweet that Bo started to cry. She hated it that he was dead, that there was a puddle of blood pooling under his soft fur.

  Annie wasn’t a big woman and shouldn’t have been carrying a big girl like Bo, but she didn’t put Bo down; she just looped her rifle on its strap over her shoulder and carried Bo all the way back to the mine.

  Annie and Bo got to the cookshack just as all the boys were sitting down to lunch. As soon as they saw Big Annie’s face, they knew something was wrong.

  Jack put the plate of caribou down and took Bo from Annie’s arms. All the boys froze in place, silent, waiting to hear what dreadful thing had happened.

  “Is it Olaf?” Jack said.

  Annie shook her head. She sat down on the chair Jack put out for her, and he handed her a mug of water.

  Annie was so upset she forgot her English. She started to tell them in Eskimo what had happened, so they all looked at Bo to tell them what Annie was saying. Then in the middle of a sentence, Annie switched to English.

  “That bear going around here, he was by the trail. Bo was running. The bear started to chase her, just slowly, long legs just stretching out.” Annie showed with her hands how the bear’s legs had looked taking long steps.

  “I couldn’t shoot, or I’d hit Bo too. So I yell for her to lie down. And she just laid down right that minute. Just falled down like she was dead. And I shot the bear before he reached her. If she didn’t lie down, he would have had her. She just do what I say, and I shoot. She do what I say.”

  “Jesus, Annie,” said Lester. He got up from his bench and came over to her. “I want to shake your
hand.” Sandor jumped to his feet and bent down to give Annie a hug.

  Jack tightened his hold on Bo. “Annie,” said Jack, but he didn’t finish what he was going to say. Bo could feel a quiver all through Jack’s big body.

  Arvid had been swearing softly in Swedish since Annie told them about the bear, patting Bo’s back with his big hand. The boys took turns coming up to Annie to shake her hand, to touch Bo’s hair or squeeze her shoulder.

  “You did just right, Bo. You did what Annie told you,” Lester said.

  “By god, I don’t know if I could have done it,” said Peter.

  “Good girl, Bo,” Karl said, patting her.

  Bo felt terrible that everyone was praising her. She had done what she’d been told never to do. She looked up into Jack’s eyes.

  “I was running, and I wasn’t supposed to. And I just couldn’t stop running. He wouldn’t have chased me if I didn’t run. I wish he wasn’t killed.” Bo hid her face in Jack’s shirt and began to cry that hard kind of crying that makes your mouth square.

  “Maybe he wasn’t going to hurt me,” Bo sobbed. “He had a nice face.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  FOURTH OF JULY

  FOURTH OF JULY was the most important time in Ballard Creek. All the miners out at the creeks came in for it, and everyone wore their best clothes for the big dinner at the roadhouse. Lilly made Bo a new dress, pale pink with a dark pink sash around the waist.

  Jack looked at the dress and sighed. “I can just imagine what you’re going to do to this,” he said. “Roughneck like you shouldn’t be wearing any girlie colors.”

  The boys were excited about the Fourth, especially about all the contests. They argued back and forth over the long table about who was going to win what, and they made bets with each other. There was the wood-chopping contest, arm wrestling, knife throwing, and target shooting. And of course the footraces.

  Jack would be busy for days, getting ready for the Fourth.

  He would make ten or fifteen pies, and after that, he’d make the doughnuts. Everyone in Ballard Creek loved doughnuts, and Jack was the only one who could make them.

  Bo was busy helping Jack. First Jack made the piecrust dough. When he’d rolled out the circles of crust, Bo’s job was to pick the mosquito bodies out of them. Then Jack could put the crusts in the pan and spoon in the filling. The mosquitoes were thick this summer. Jack burned Buhach powder in the cookshack to keep them down, but when they died in the smoke, they just fell straight down onto the crusts while Jack was rolling them out. It was a great nuisance.

  Jack made pumpkin pies with canned pumpkin, blueberry pies with last year’s blueberries, apple pies with the dried apples in the pantry, and rhubarb pies with the new summer rhubarb.

  Bo hated rhubarb—slimy, horrible stuff. But lots of people said that was their very favorite kind of pie. When she was little, Bo used to be surprised that people didn’t like the things she liked and liked things she hated.

  “It’s not in nature for people to all like the same things,” Jack told her. “What you always got to do when you’re the cook is make sure there are plenty of choices. That way you’re safe. Don’t got to listen to whining.”

  That’s why he made four kinds of pies so everyone could have the kind they liked best. When they were all baked, he set them on the pantry shelf and covered them with a cloth. That was one job done for the Fourth of July.

  The next day, he started the doughnuts. When the first two hundred were done, he tossed them in the big bowl with sugar, and that was the doughnuts done for that day. Bo must put them in big tins to keep them fresh, stacking them carefully so they wouldn’t get squashed. The next day, Jack made another batch because there would be a lot of people at the Fourth of July, and doughnuts were what they looked forward to all year. Four hundred doughnuts were not too many.

  The boys all knew when Jack was making doughnuts. “Can smell them all the way to the tailing piles,” Lester said. So they came into the cookshack when they got a chance and raided the tins.

  “Nothing like fresh doughnuts, nothing in this world,” said Alex. “If there’s a heaven, which I doubt, it’ll be fresh doughnuts every day, many as you want.”

  * * *

  ON THE FOURTH OF JULY, everyone gathered at the grass field by the riverbank. Bo and Jack brought the doughnut tins to town in a wheelbarrow, and when they got there, Jack tumbled the doughnuts into a big galvanized tub so everyone could help themselves while they watched the fun. Four hundred doughnuts fit just right in the tub.

  The races for the kids were first. Bo and Oscar couldn’t win any of them, because the other kids were much older. Only Evalina was slower than they were because she was just four. But Bo and Oscar got in all the races, anyway. They didn’t care if they never won.

  There were three-legged races and gunnysack races for everyone, kids and grown-ups together. And wheelbarrow races, which Bo hated because the one who was the wheelbarrow had to walk on his hands. So Oscar always did that.

  Arm wrestling was next, and of course Jack and Arvid couldn’t be beat, so they had to wrestle each other. Sometimes Jack won, and sometimes Arvid won. But they were the only miners who won anything.

  Sammy won the knife-throwing contest; Big Annie won the target shoot again; and Della won the wood-chopping contest. She beat Philipe and Lester easily. The boys slapped their thighs and bent double teasing Philipe and Lester. “Fourteen! Fourteen years old, and a girl at that!” they chortled. But Philipe and Lester were good sports and picked Della up and rode her around on their shoulders while everyone cheered.

  The most exciting race was the footrace, all across the field by the river, around the roadhouse, and back. Milo said it was just a little over a mile.

  The boys from the mine were left in the dust. Charlie Sickik, Oscar’s father, and Budu, Atok’s father, were faster than any of them. “Well, stands to reason,” Milo told Arvid. “Those guys walk hundreds of miles in the spring and the fall after the caribou, and another hundred going uphill after the sheep. Our Eskimos is tough.”

  After the games and races, everyone went home to put on their best clothes and to get the food they’d cooked for the big dinner—fried rabbit and spruce hen, caribou dry meat and smoked salmon from last summer, roasted caribou and sheep, and moose soup. There were bowls of macaroni and rice, last year’s blueberries and cranberries, mashed potatoes, and a huge pile of bannocks Gitnoo had made. And of course seal oil.

  The women had set the long table with fifty places and had decorated the walls with flags and red, white, and blue bunting. It looked beautiful.

  The first thing Bo did was drop cranberries on her new pink dress, which made a dreadful stain. She looked up quickly to see if Lilly had noticed.

  “Don’t worry,” Jack whispered to her. “It’s not ruined. Little vinegar’ll take care of that spot.”

  While they were eating, the speeches started. Big Jim started them off, and then Milo, Jimmy the Pirate, Siwash George, and Budu had their say, and still there were more speeches to come. Bo wondered why it was always the men who made speeches.

  When Bo and Oscar had eaten everything they could eat, they slipped down from their chairs and crawled under the table, in the middle where no one could kick them. “Too much talking,” Oscar said. The speeches went on for a while, and Bo and Oscar went to sleep until it was time for dessert.

  Jack got up and cut all the pies in eight pieces and passed them down the table. Nakuchluk brought out two big bowls of akutaq and passed those around as well.

  While everyone was eating dessert, people would call out for songs. Tomas Kovish loved to be invited to sing. He sang sad songs about things like birds, and his voice wobbled in an interesting way.

  Lester and Bo were called on to do their best song. Lester had taught Bo how to look frightened: she swept her arms out at the side, held her hands by her mouth, made a round mouth like an o, and opened her eyes very wide, like the lady in the music hall had done. Bo loved doi
ng that. Arvid said she was a natural-born ham.

  Everyone knew Lester and Bo’s song, so they sang the chorus with them:

  Oh, don’t go in the lion’s cage tonight, Mother darling,

  For the lion looks ferocious and may bite.

  When he gets his angry fits,

  He may tear you all to bits!

  Oh, don’t go in the lion’s cage tonight!

  Then Big Jim, Dinuk, and Charlie Sickik went to the storeroom and brought out their drums. Big Jim’s was almost as big as he was, but the others had the smaller drums.

  “Eskimo turn now!” cried Big Jim.

  Unakserak and Budu and the rest of the Eskimo men jumped up to dance to the drumming, along with two young ones, Sammy and Peluk, who’d been learning the dances from Big Jim most of the winter.

  Then the women made a line in front of the men. They stood still in one spot, their feet neatly together, and moved just their hands and arms, perfectly matching each other’s movements.

  The men’s dancing was much more energetic. They jumped and crouched and made powerful gestures. Everyone cheered the most for Unakserak, who looked fierce and dangerous while he danced.

  The drumming made Bo feel all wild inside. She wanted to jump up and dance, too. She would ask Big Jim if he would teach her the dances.

  Then the women cleared the plates and dishes, and the men pushed the tables back against the wall. It was time for everyone to dance.

  Bo danced two times with Oscar and once with Jonas, though his mother, Gracie, had to make him dance with Bo. Jonas said he was eight and didn’t like to dance with little girls. She danced with Lester and Peter and Johnny, and then Arvid asked for a polka so he could teach Bo how to do it. Everyone lined up and swept all the way down the length of the roadhouse and back again, twirling and twisting and stomping. That polka was the most fun of all.

  Jack loved to dance, but all the women said he was a terrible dancer.