Bo at Ballard Creek

by Kirkpatrick Hill

  “And you will be our son,” said Arvid.

  Grafton smiled his secret smile and looked at his stocking feet.

  “Do you think he understands?” Jack asked in a worried way.

  “He only smiles like that when he’s happy,” said Bo.

  And that was how Bo got a brother. Not in the usual way, but a good way, just the same.

  * * *

  THERE WAS, of course, a big party at the roadhouse to celebrate, and Jack made a big cake with a picture of Conkers in red frosting on the top, which pleased Grafton very much.

  Bo spent a lot of time thinking backwards.

  “What if Max hadn’t been early on his mail run that day? Grafton might have frozen! What if he had been frozen and the doctor had to cut off some toes or fingers? And what if his auntie didn’t have too many kids already? And what if it hadn’t been winter and Milo sent him off right away and we didn’t get to know him—”

  “Stop, Bo!” said Arvid. “You’re making me dizzy.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  NOTHING LASTS FOREVER

  ONE SUMMER MORNING just after the cleanup, Gitnoo suddenly turned from doing the dishes, bent to hug Bo, and kissed her. Gitnoo’s black eyes were brimming with tears.

  “I miss you when you’re gone,” Gitnoo said in Eskimo, and the tears slid down her face.

  “Gone?” said Bo.

  Then Gitnoo picked Grafton right up straight off his feet and kissed his cheeks.

  “We can’t stand it, you go.”

  Jack looked alarmed.

  “What’s she saying?” Jack asked.

  “She said we’re going away, me and Grafton.”

  Jack looked down at his shoes and shook his head. “I should have known how it would be. Seems like everyone in Ballard Creek knows everything before it’s even happened.

  Gitnoo was sobbing into the dishpan now, so Jack hugged her and then he bent down to Bo.

  “We didn’t want to tell you till we knew what we were doing for sure.” He tilted her chin with his forefinger. “The boss told us last night he’s closing the mine. We have to go work somewhere else. Not enough gold this year either. Done run out of ground.”

  Bo pushed his hand away and glowered up at him.

  “I don’t want to go,” she said.

  “I don’t want to go neither, Bo. Never felt so bad in my life. But we all got to have a job, and there’s no jobs here anymore.”

  Grafton pressed up against Jack’s big leg.

  Bo took Graf’s hand. “We can’t go. He just got used to everyone,” Bo pleaded.

  Jack sat down and took Bo on one knee, Grafton on the other.

  “It’s about to break my heart, too,” he said.

  And that was how Bo and Grafton learned they were going to have to leave their home at Ballard Creek. And that nothing lasts forever.

  * * *

  FOR A WEEK, everyone at the mine was busy making plans. They had Clarence send dozens of wires here and there, looking for work. When Bo asked, “Where will we go?” Arvid and Jack would shake their heads. Didn’t know yet.

  But in a few days, Clarence brought a wire to the cookshack. After Arvid read it, he pointed to a place on the map. “This is where we’re going. Across the Yukon here. Iditarod country. Got a big mining operation there. Lots of mines. We’ll be at a mine right here on Innoko Creek, and Lester and Paddy are going to work at another mine a few miles from us. So you’ll see them every time they come to town.”

  “Oh,” said Bo with a sudden rush of gladness. Lester and Paddy would be nearby.

  “It’s not so very far away,” Bo said. She leaned against Arvid’s belly and looked hard at the map. Grafton looked too, clutching Conkers, his eyes wide and sad.

  “Well,” Arvid said slowly, “it don’t look far on the map, but it’s a long boat trip. Nearly a month. Fast going down the Koyukuk and the Yukon, but when we cut across to the flats, we’ll be against the current all the way. That takes time.”

  Bo suddenly looked up at him. “But where will everyone else go?”

  “They got it all worked out,” Jack said. “Sandor and Alex are going to be partners and work a claim out on the creeks, near Olaf.”

  “Oh,” said Bo happily. “Near Olaf.”

  “The boss is going Outside, says he’s finished with mining. Peter says he’s staying here, going to be one of the old-timers. Figures he’s too old to go anywhere else. Then Karl’s partnering up with Nels Niemi.”

  Bo smiled. “They can talk Finn together all the time, then.”

  Arvid thought a minute. “Guillaume and Philipe and Dan, Siwash George, Fritz, and Andy are going to Fairbanks. Still plenty work in Fairbanks.”

  “Who will Gitnoo work for?” asked Bo. Arvid shook his head. He didn’t know.

  * * *

  NOW THE MINING CAMP was always full of people from town. They helped the boys close down the camp, box up the tools, and cover the shaft carefully so no one could fall down it.

  Sandor and Alex and Karl took what they needed for their new lives on the creeks, and Olaf took the extra window glass from the blacksmith shop for his cabin. Big Jim and Charlie Sickik and Dinuk and all the other men took home everything else that wasn’t needed—old shovels and rope and all the old lumber. They took the woodstoves from the bunkhouse and the kitchen and all the stovepipe.

  The women came and took home the food that Jack had hoarded—dried milk and oatmeal, rice, flour, and sugar—and dozens of useful things from Jack’s kitchen. They sent the children across the bridge in a steady stream with bags and wheelbarrows and carts full of groceries and dishes and pans.

  The scow took away the boiler and the big bucket from the shaft, the huge kitchen stove, and all the tools and cable and rubber hose that the boss had sold to other mines.

  Nothing from the Ballard Creek Mine went to waste.

  Bo and Graf spent every minute they could with Oscar and Evalina.

  “You remember this when you’re gone,” Oscar kept telling them. They must remember the saw pit and the spring and the magazines in the roadhouse, Oscar said. They must remember the little frogs who lived in the grass lake by the river. They must remember everything.

  “I’ll never forget anything, Oscar,” Bo told him.

  “Unakserak told me he don’t remember when he was a little boy,” said Oscar. “I think you might forget us.”

  “No, Oscar,” said Bo. “I never will ever forget.”

  * * *

  THERE WAS a going-away party that lasted all night, with speeches and speeches and more speeches. They talked about everything that ever happened since the mine had opened. “Remember when…,” they’d start, and soon everyone would be laughing.

  All the women pestered the boys to dance. “Last time I dance with you,” Dishoo would say and cry a little.

  Everyone who was leaving got a present. Yovela and Lilly made waterproof canvas pants and jackets for Bo and Graf. “For the river,” Lilly said.

  Nels’s sister, Asa, brought new sweaters she’d knitted for them, and Clara brought summer moccasins, big ones that were not meant for this summer, but to fit them next summer. Olaf brought Bo one of Shine’s feathers to remember him by.

  Every present made Bo cry.

  After the party, the boys moved on, one by one. And in a short while, Bo and Graf and the papas were on their way, too.

  They left Ballard Creek early one morning before everyone was awake.

  “Just can’t stand to say good-bye,” said Jack. “I think it would surely kill me if everyone came to see us off.”

  Budu and Big Jim had built them a sturdy poling boat, and Jack and Arvid loaded it with all the things they had to take with them. They had each moved on so many times before they knew just what to take and how to wrap it all in oilcloth and tarps to keep it safe from the river.

  There was one thing that was different, though. The boys had given them their Victrola. When it wasn’t raining, it sat near the bow on a box Jack m
ade, steadied with rope braces in case they hit some rough water.

  The music they played reminded Bo of the people they’d left behind, and all the good times—the dancing in Milo’s roadhouse, Lena playing “Bye-Bye, Blackbird,” over and over, Tomas playing his Caruso records for them.

  “Papa, every song makes a picture jump into my head. Gitnoo and Oscar and the boys and Milo and everyone. It makes my throat hurt.”

  Jack pulled Bo against his knee and covered her little hand with his big one.

  “Look here, Bo. It’s not like they dropped off the Earth or something. They’ll be our friends forever. You’ll write letters just like you wrote to Johnny, and everyone will write back and tell you all the things been going on.”

  “Johnny never wrote back to me,” Bo said.

  “Well, he did, you just never got the letter yet. You know how the mail is.”

  Bo began to think about what she’d put in her letters, how excited Oscar would be when he got her letter, and how excited she’d be when she got letters from Oscar, and from everyone—Yovela and Lilly, the old-timers and Olaf and all the others.

  Arvid was poling the boat, watching ahead for snags. He suddenly turned and beamed at Bo. “How about someday we’ll get in one of them airplanes and surprise them? Fourth of July, maybe, when everyone’s there, not scattered all over.”

  Bo squeezed her hands together. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, on the Fourth would be good,” she said, imagining how it would be, what it would be like to fly in one of those planes.

  After she’d thought about that for a while, she looked in the box under the bow for Milo’s favorite record. After she put it carefully on the turntable, Graf wound up the Victrola, and they sat hunched on the toolbox with their knees under their chins singing away, “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” the silly way Milo used to sing it.

  Down the long, winding Koyukuk and down the silty Yukon, down the Innoko and the Iditarod, Bo and Graf and the papas played their music.

  All the way to their new home.

  Kirkpatrick Hill was born into a mining family: her father was a miner as was her grandfather. When she was little the family lived at the Cleary Hill Mines near Fairbanks, Alaska—a place much like Ballard Creek. She says: “I almost always write about true events and my characters are often based on actual people. I couldn’t make up anything more interesting than things that really happened.”

  Hill taught elementary school for more than thirty years, mostly in the Alaskan bush, and she has written eight books about Alaska for young readers. Her previous books include the award-winning Toughboy and Sister, Winter Camp, and The Year of Miss Agnes.

  She lives in Fairbanks in the winter and in the Yukon River village of Ruby in the summer.

  kirkpatrickhill.com

  LeUyen Pham has illustrated numerous popular books for children, including Freckleface Strawberry by Julianne Moore. She is also the author and illustrator of Big Sister, Little Sister and All the Things I Love About You. She lives and works in San Francisco.

  http://www.leuyenpham.com/

  I’m indebted

  to Arnold Captain for his bear story—

  Arnie was the one who fell down flat and his dad, Billy Captain, did the shooting—

  to Harold Tilleson for checking all the mining facts,

  and to Alan James, wireless expert.

  Henry Holt and Company, LLC

  Publishers since 1866

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  New York, New York 10010

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  Henry Holt® is a registered trademark of Henry Holt and Company, LLC.

  Text copyright © 2013 by Kirkpatrick Hill

  Illustrations copyright © 2013 by LeUyen Pham

  All rights reserved.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hill, Kirkpatrick.

  Bo at Ballard Creek / Kirkpatrick Hill; illustrated by LeUyen Pham.—First edition.

  pages cm

  Summary: “It’s the 1920s, and Bo was headed for an Alaska orphanage when she won the hearts of two tough gold miners who set out to raise her, enthusiastically helped by all the kind people of the nearby Eskimo village”—Provided by publisher.

  ISBN 978-0-8050-9351-3 (hardcover)—ISBN (invalid) 978-0-8050-9894-5 (e-book)

  1. Alaska—History—1867–1959—Juvenile fiction. [1. Alaska—History—1867–1959—Fiction. 2. Fathers—Fiction. 3. Adoption—Fiction. 4. Eskimos—Fiction.] I. Pham, LeUyen, illustrator. II. Title.

  PZ7.H55285Bo 2013 [Fic]—dc23 2012046055

  eISBN 9780805098945

  First Edition—2013

  eBook edition June 2013