Bo at Iditarod Creek

by Kirkpatrick Hill

  Then suddenly they could see the little town. It was in a narrow valley with low rounded hills all around, but the houses weren’t in the hills, and the beautiful tundra was buried in gravel. Arvid tipped his fedora back and shook his head in wonder.

  “Will you look at this,” Jack said. “Heard about it, but never thought what it would look like.”

  It was a strange sight. Bo thought the town looked like a bunch of children had been playing with toy houses and had just put them down any old way. All the houses and stores and other buildings were laid out all higglety-pigglety on vast stretches of rough gravel. The gravel—called tailings—was what was left after the gold had been taken out of the rocks.

  And nowhere a tree or a bush. Just heaps of gravel and scattered buildings on the tailings. No beaten paths between the houses like in Ballard. Just tailing piles.

  “Where are the trees?” Bo asked.

  “Under these tailing piles, I guess,” said Jack. “Everything covered with gravel. Never saw so much gravel in my life.”

  Bo gave Jack a sorrowful look. “No tundra,” she said.

  When the six good horses stopped at their barn, Jack and Arvid unloaded their freight and carried it into the barn. Charlie the Tram said they could pick up their boxes the next day when they found a place to live. Then they set out for the hotel.

  A few men stopped on the way to say hello to them, but it wasn’t like Ballard Creek, where everyone in town came to meet the scow.

  “Zeke said five hundred people live around here, counting all the mining camps,” said Arvid. “So they’re not like people at Ballard Creek, crowding around, happy to see a new face.”

  “How many people is five hundred?” said Bo, who had a problem with big numbers.

  “About five times more than Ballard Creek,” said Arvid.

  “Oh,” said Bo, looking blank.

  “Yep, been a long time since I was in a place with so many people,” said Arvid. “It does take you back a bit.”

  People on the boardwalks, going in and out of stores, and she didn’t know a single one of them. It gave her a strange feeling, and she held Jack’s hand tighter. Graf looked as if he felt the same way, so Arvid hoisted him up and carried him the rest of the way to the hotel.

  The terrible noise of the dredge never stopped. “Sounds like a never-ending train wreck,” Arvid muttered.

  Then they saw something so strange they all stopped still.

  Along the top of the gravel pile came a big Caterpillar bulldozer. A Cat.

  It was pulling a house behind it on a big skid called a go-devil. A whole house, painted yellow, with a tar paper roof and even curtains at the windows. There was a little girl leaning out of the window on one side of the house. And she was waving at them!

  “Look at me!” she shouted.

  Bo and Graf looked openmouthed at their papas. Jack’s eyes went wide. “Beats me what she’s doing there,” he said.

  “Don’t look safe to me,” said Arvid.

  “I didn’t know houses could move,” Bo said.

  “Not a thing you’ll see very often,” said Jack. “Except here. Here I’m told they move houses all the time.”

  Bo stared at the house inching its way along behind the Cat. The little girl had left the window and was waving at people from a window on the other side.

  “Why, Papa? Why do they move them?”

  “These houses are sitting on the gold, that’s why. When the dredges get finished digging up the gold in one place, they have to turn around and go dig up the ground someplace else. And sometimes that someplace else is under the houses, so the houses have to move.”

  “Do they move every day?”

  “No, but often enough,” said Jack.

  “Will we live in a house that has to move?”

  “Not if I can help it,” said Jack grimly.

  Some other men stopped to watch the house. They introduced themselves to the papas and then turned and called out rude things to the man who was driving the bulldozer.

  “God almighty, Dave, can’t you get up a better head of steam than that?” and “Going to be snowing at that rate before you get it moved!”

  “That’s the third time they moved that house,” one man told Jack.

  Jack looked amazed. “You wouldn’t think a house could stand that treatment more than once.”

  “Oh, it takes its toll all right. Porch goes back on all crooked, or the house gets out of plumb, trim falls off, that kind of thing. Never quite the same once they’re moved, but near every building you see here’s been moved once, and a lot of them more than once. You get used to it. My old place is going next.” He pointed off in the distance. “Picked a place right next to Frenchie’s there, down at the end of that tailing pile.”

  “You can just pick a new place for your house?”

  “Oh, got to get permission from the mine owner, of course, but they’re not fussy.”

  “How come people don’t put their houses up on the hills where they won’t have to move?”

  “Couldn’t get water up there, could they? Every-one in town has well water now. Move to the hills, and they’d have to go back to hauling water from the creek or melting snow in the winter. They don’t care much where they live long as they got a water pump in the house.”

  Bo tugged at his shirt. “The little girl, Papa.”

  Arvid looked down at her. “This is Bo, and she wants to know about the little girl in the house,” Arvid said.

  “Oh, that’s Edna. Spoiled rotten. Does what she wants, whenever she wants. That’s Edna for you!”

  “I’d tan her hide, was she mine,” said the other man.

  Arvid was staring at the moving house. “I’d be in a cold sweat, was I pulling that house,” he said.

  They watched the house and the little waving girl for a minute. The men were so friendly, with happy faces, that Bo began to feel better about Iditarod Creek. And one of the men had hair coming out of his ears in an interesting way.

  “Well,” said Jack, “we need to get the kids settled, get a good meal in them first thing. Could you point us to the hotel?”

  The men told them they couldn’t miss it, next street over, tell Hardy we sent you, and they went off laughing.

  The hotel was just where the men had said it would be. It was a two-story building—a real one, not just a pretend one like the ones in the ghost town.

  A big sign was painted on the front between the upstairs windows: INTERNATIONAL HOTEL. Bo smiled happily. Those letters were as tall as she was.

  They all stood on the boardwalk outside the hotel and looked at the notice pinned by the open front door. BREAKFAST SERVED 6 TO 12, LUNCH SERVED 12 TO 1:30, AND DINNER 6 TO 7:30.

  “Made it for breakfast,” said Arvid, looking pleased.

  A man with a dirty apron around his middle and a dish towel over his shoulder came to the door and shook hands with Jack and then Arvid. He was so short he had to tip his head back to look up into their faces.

  Then he squatted and shook hands with Graf and Bo. It didn’t happen very often that people got down low to talk to them. Bo liked that because it was hard to look up all the time and just see under people’s chins when they were talking. She liked this Hardy.

  “Just off the tram, eh? Got some nice empty rooms for you,” he said. “And got breakfast warming in the oven. You like mush? Ham and eggs?”

  He stood up and looked at the papas. “Working for Petrovich, right?” he said. Jack nodded. “He’s over at Olnes Creek right now, had coffee here before he left. Said you’d be coming along soon, your bunch. He’ll be back in no time.”

  Hardy jerked his head at Bo and Graf. “Guess you won’t be living in the bunkhouse with this crew. He’s got some houses he rents out this side of the creek. Probably settle you in there.”

  He winked at Bo and Graf. “Kids in town’ll be glad to have some fresh blood,” he said. Bo slid her eyes at Graf to see if he was worried about the blood business.

&nb
sp; Hardy pointed them to a long table in the back of the hotel, which was already set with thick plates and mugs.

  “Breakfast in a jiffy,” he said.

  Hardy brought the coffeepot from the big cookstove at the back of the room and poured coffee for Jack and Arvid. He pushed a can of milk and a big bowl of sugar across the table to them.

  “Been wanting a good cup of coffee,” Jack said. But Bo could tell that after he took a sip, he didn’t think it was a good cup because he put milk and sugar in it, which is what he always said could make bad coffee taste better.

  Some men from town came into the hotel and crowded around Jack and Arvid, shaking hands, and some of them helped themselves to coffee from the pot on the stove and sat down with them.

  Jack and Arvid had to tell where they’d come from, and why the Ballard Creek mine folded, and what kind of boat they had and if the engine had silted up on the Yukon. The men joked about working for Petrovich, who they said was a wild man. Bo looked quickly at Jack and Arvid when they said this.

  “Done that before,” said Arvid. Bo reminded herself to ask Arvid about the time he’d worked for a wild man.

  The men told them there were four big dredge mines around Iditarod Creek: Petrovich’s, Eller’s, the Kilbourne, and furthest away, the Willard dredge. And there was one sort of medium kind of mine, Donal Sather’s, which didn’t have a dredge but had a Cat and a big digger. All the mines were working twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, because summer was very short.

  While the men were talking, Bo and Graf tipped back their heads to look at the strange lamp in the middle of the ceiling.

  Arvid smiled when he saw what they were looking at. “That’s an electric lamp. Don’t need coal oil for those lamps. You don’t do nothing to the lamps. The light just comes down the wires.”

  Bo and Graf looked at Arvid suspiciously. “I’ll show you!” he said. He stood up and put his hand on a chain hanging down from the lamp. “Watch closely!” he said and pulled the chain. The lamp turned on.

  “See?” He pulled the chain again and the light turned off. Bo and Graf looked at each other, astonished.

  All the men at the table laughed at Bo and Graf. “Same way I felt first time I ever saw electric light,” one of them said.

  * * *

  BO HAD THOUGHT a hotel would be something different than a roadhouse, but it wasn’t. It was just like the roadhouse in Ballard, really. Just a little bigger. Sleeping rooms were upstairs, and downstairs there was a big table where everyone ate and a lot of little tables and chairs where people could play cards. Bo saw that one table had piles of worn-out magazines. She nudged Graf and pointed. They both loved magazines.

  There was a big gramophone, almost like the one Milo had in the roadhouse at Ballard Creek. Bo looked to see what records the hotel had. She couldn’t read, but she could tell that some of them were the records they’d had in Ballard.

  Over the long bar was a big mirror just like the one in Ballard, just like the one in Bonanza City. Bo was about to ask Hardy why bars always had mirrors when she saw that a lot of framed pictures were hanging up on one side of the mirror. Pictures of fancy-looking families. All the women were wearing big hats.

  “Who are those people all dressed up?” asked Bo.

  Hardy walked over to the wall with the pictures and tapped the first one with his finger.

  “They all mined around here. Took those pictures just before they left Iditarod Creek in the fall, all of them going home for the winter, going Outside. That’s Ray Dunfey, his wife and kids.” He touched the next picture. “And this here’s Clyde and his family, and his two brothers who mined with him.

  “And this here’s the Mason crew, from over the hill. They all died on the Sophia,” said Hardy. “Before you was born. They caught the last boat to Juneau, and that boat they was on got in trouble, and they all drowned. Fifteen of them from here, good people.”

  “There’s children,” said Bo. She was sure the hotel man didn’t mean they’d all died. Not the children.

  “Right. That’s Micky, right smart little guy, and his sister, Emilia, and that’s Jambo, they called him, just twelve, and Carla, belonged to those people on the end. ’Bout broke our hearts here in Iditarod Creek.”

  Bo stared at the picture. Those children had died.

  “Three hundred fifty-five people died on that boat, most of them from the mining camps around Alaska, going out for the winter.” Hardy unrolled his sleeves, then rolled them back up very carefully. “Twelve years ago,” he said. “In 1918.” Hardy stood still, looking at the pictures, and then he said, “They never even heard that the war ended.” He walked back to the sink and began to wash the beer mugs again.

  Bo’s throat was tight. Those happy people died right after the picture was taken. All of them together. And the children never got any older.

  “There was a dog,” said Hardy over his shoulder. “Swam to shore. Only one that lived.”

  Hardy came back to the bar to stack the beer mugs he’d been drying. He pointed to another picture he had pinned up. “This here is the way the town looked at first,” said Hardy. “Used to be laid out real neat, like an Outside town. Before the dredges ripped it up.”

  All the pretty little houses in the picture were sitting neatly on nice straight streets, and there were grass and flowers in the yards. And trees. Now the houses seemed all tumbled around, set down any which way and looking pretty bedraggled. And there certainly weren’t any trees or flowers anymore. Bo couldn’t believe it was the same town.

  Iditarod Creek was not an ordinary place.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SWEARING

  TWO SKINNY BOYS, bigger than Bo, were lurking about the hotel door, peeking in at them. They looked a lot alike, with straight brown hair falling in their eyes.

  Bo was so happy to see someone near her own age it never occurred to her to be shy. She took Graf by the hand and walked to the door.

  “I’m Bo, and this is Grafton,” she said. “He’s my new brother.”

  “He don’t look that new to me,” said the biggest boy in a puzzled kind of way.

  “I just got him a little while ago,” said Bo.

  The boy looked at her intently as if he expected her to say more, but when she didn’t, he said, “This here is my brother Leroy, and I’m Will.”

  Leroy gave Will a cross look.

  “No one calls me Leroy, which is a stupid name,” he told them indignantly. “Our pa told me that’s because my ma said it was her turn to name a baby. And she picked a sissy name.”

  “Leroy,” said Bo slowly, trying it out.

  “Is sissy,” growled Graf. Bo looked at him, shocked. It was the second time that Graf had given his opinion about something. She gave his hand a tiny shake to remind him not to say just anything that popped into his head.

  “What do they call you?” asked Bo.

  “My pa calls me Buddy, and so does everyone else. Except Ma.”

  “That’s like me,” said Bo. “I have a real name—that’s Marta—but everyone calls me Bo.”

  Graf looked at her so sharply that Bo remembered no one had ever told him that she had another name besides Bo.

  The boys kept looking through the door at the papas.

  “Wow,” Will breathed, “they’re really big.”

  “Yeah,” said Buddy.

  He turned to Bo, his face full of admiration. “Is that one your father?” he asked, pointing to Arvid.

  “We have two fathers and no mother,” said Bo. The two boys blinked at her, their faces still.

  The boys were silent for a moment and then Buddy said, “That’s good. If you had two mothers, that could have been bad. Because mothers are the most bossiest ones.”

  Bo thought about the mothers she knew in Ballard Creek, and she thought it was the fathers who were bossiest there. But she didn’t want to disagree with the boy.

  “Want to come and play with us?” Will said.

  “I’ll ask,” said Bo
.

  Arvid was sitting at the end of the table, so she got up on her tiptoes to whisper in his ear. Arvid looked at the boys in the doorway and then gave Bo a worried look.

  “Maybe later, Bo,” he said. “We need to get settled here. Find out what’s what. Maybe you and the boys could play outside the hotel here for a bit, but don’t leave. Stay on the boardwalk. Okay? Lots we have to do yet.”

  Buddy and Will and Bo and Graf sat on the boardwalk with their legs dangling down.

  “Do you know the girl in the house that was moving?” asked Bo.

  “Oh, that’s Edna,” said Buddy. “She said she was going to stay in the house when they moved it, and her ma said no, she wasn’t going to do no such thing, but Edna always does what she wants, so she hid inside and her ma didn’t see.”

  Will and Buddy smiled at each other in a pleased sort of way, so Bo could tell they liked it that Edna didn’t listen to her ma. They didn’t seem to have a good idea about any kind of mothers, really.

  “How many kids live here?” Bo asked.

  “Hardly any,” said Will. “Me and Buddy and Edna, and she’s only here in the summer because her folks leave in the fall after cleanup. And there’s a new kid, lives out the Willard dredge. We never seen him, though. So that’s four kids, and now you two.”

  Bo looked disbelieving. “That man at the ghost town, that Zeke, he said there were five hundred people around Iditarod Creek.”

  “Yeah, but they’re all men, mostly. It’s all mining camps here.”

  “Where’s the school?”

  “Not enough kids for a school,” said Buddy. “We told you, just us and Edna and that new kid.”

  “You don’t go to school?”

  “Oh, we have school, all right. Our ma teaches us. Calvert courses.”

  “What’s that?” Bo asked.