Sweet Home Alaska

by Carole Estby Dagg

  “Humph,” Mother said. Her nostrils flared, dismissing Terpsichore’s suggestion. “President Roosevelt must get a million letters a month with hard luck stories and complaints. Who’s going to listen to us?”

  Terpsichore tried again. “Maybe you could write to Mrs. Roosevelt.”

  Mother crossed her arms in front of her. “Mrs. Roosevelt gets boxes of letters too,” she said.

  Pop rubbed a thumb against the callused palm of the other hand as he watched the debate between Mother and Terpsichore. He’d worked long days turning their patch of stumps into a farm. How would he feel if all that work was for nothing? Terpsichore kept expecting him to help her convince her mother to write to the Roosevelts, but he didn’t interrupt. Perhaps he thought Terpsichore had a better chance of convincing her mother to give Alaska a chance than he did.

  “A telegram, then,” Terpsichore said. “Everybody pays attention to a telegram.”

  “We don’t have enough money for a telegram telling Mrs. Roosevelt all the things that are wrong here,” Mother said.

  “Don’t tell her everything, then. Just pick the most important thing. Once we have her attention, we can tell her about everything else.” Terpsichore blew her bangs out of her face in exasperation.

  Mother shook her head. “Still, I’m a nobody. Why should Mrs. Roosevelt do anything because of what one person says?”

  “Mother, you have to have confidence, like President Roosevelt said. You can figure out a way to get her attention. Make it dramatic, like what you said when we first got home. ‘Our babies are dying.’” Terpsichore said the words like a heroine on a radio melodrama.

  “Our babies are dying,” Mrs. Johnson half whispered. Then she spoke more forcefully. “Our babies are dying . . . and we have no doctor or hospital.”

  “That’s perfect, Mom!”

  Mother shook her head, as if she could hardly believe what she was about to do to humor a stubborn daughter. She re-buttoned her coat. “Terpsichore, will you watch Matthew?”

  “Can’t I come?” Terpsichore said.

  “I need you to watch Matthew so your father can get back to work in the field,” Mother said. She nodded toward the crib where Matthew stood to watch the activity.

  Terpsichore wished she could hover along the telegraph line following the telegram to the White House. She wanted to be in the room when Mrs. Roosevelt’s secretary rushed breathlessly into Mrs. Roosevelt’s office.

  “Mrs. Roosevelt, I knew you’d want to see this telegram from Alaska right away!” the secretary would say. Then she would hand the telegram to Mrs. Roosevelt.

  Mrs. Roosevelt’s fingers would tremble as she read. “Babies are dying in Alaska? We have to do something!”

  CHAPTER 23

  The Power of a Telegram

  THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT DAY AND THE NEXT, IT rained. Inside the tent, Matthew’s diapers hung like damp white flags of surrender from a line strung from tent post to tent post.

  The evening of the fourth day, Terpsichore was on her cot reading the funnies from a two-week-old Seattle newspaper. She even read the Joe Palooka and Buck Rogers strips she usually skipped.

  Cally and Polly were on their bunks, listless after being cooped up in the tent for three days. “Raining again,” Cally said.

  “We know, Goofus,” Terpsichore said.

  From her upper bunk, Cally poked her finger on a point of the canvas roof where it met the side of the tent. “Ack!” she said, wiping her face.

  Pop threw down his section of the newspaper. “How many times have I told you not to touch the canvas when it’s raining? Didn’t I tell you it would start a leak?” With a sigh, he got up to tug the bunks a few inches toward the middle of the tent to avoid the leak. Mother ducked under the diapers to retrieve a pot to catch the water.

  “I want to go home,” Cally whined. She flopped back dramatically on her top bunk.

  “I want to go home too,” Polly moaned. She flopped back on her bottom bunk.

  “At least you’ve been inside. I was out in the mud all day.” Pop ran his fingers through his damp hair.

  “Does that mean you want to go home too?” Mother asked. Drops of water hit the pot catching the new drips. Ping. Ping. Ping.

  Pop’s hands coiled into fists, then relaxed. “No, not yet,” he said. He sighed as he looked at Cally and Polly, wilted on their bunks; Terpsichore, trying to ignore everybody else and reading two-week-old funny papers; Matthew’s damp diapers; and Mother.

  Pop dug under the twins’ bunk cots and came out with the checkerboard. “All right, who wants to play checkers?”

  Cally let one arm dangle from the top bunk. “Bor-ing,” she said.

  Polly coughed weakly. “I think I’m too sick to play checkers.”

  Mother knelt by Polly’s bunk to feel her forehead. “You don’t feel hot,” she said. “I think you’re just bored too.” She stood in front of Pop, who had gone back to halfheartedly trying to read the old newspaper. “I don’t think Polly is sick now, thankfully,” Mother said, “but what if she were sick? We don’t have a doctor, let alone a hospital.”

  Pop folded his newspaper. “I know, Clio. I know.”

  From far down the tracks, a train whistle sounded. Two long, one short, one long, signaling approach to the Palmer Station. The wavering minor chord of the whistle that echoed in the valley suited everyone’s mournful mood.

  Terpsichore cocked her head toward the sound. “This isn’t the normal daily run from Anchorage,” she said. No one else seemed excited about an extra train, but Terpsichore’s imagination came up with lots of possibilities. Another load of horses to pull the wagons that arrived last month, or a shipment of hammers . . . or maybe a letter from Mrs. Roosevelt! Whatever it was, Terpsichore was going to find out.

  Raindrops had stopped plopping into the pan, and early evening sun brightened the tent. Terpsichore tugged her galoshes over her shoes.

  “Where are you going?” Mother asked.

  “I’m not staying in this tent with a bunch of grumps,” Terpsichore said, looking at the twins. “I’m going to get Mendel and walk to the station to see why there was a special train.” She slipped through the tent flap before her mother could object. Mendel’s tent was on the way and they could go on together to collect Gloria if she wasn’t at the train station herself by the time they got there.

  They hung back as they approached the platform, where an engine with only one passenger car had stopped. Terpsichore waved when she saw Gloria.

  “I heard the extra train too,” Gloria said. “What’s up?” The three edged close enough to hear what the men were saying.

  “Who’s that with Mr. Carr and Mr. Irwin?” Gloria asked, pointing. Mr. Carr, the camp commissioner, and Mr. Irwin, liaison to the colonists, were the only ones they recognized. A group of men and women conferred with each other, and some of them frowned as they looked out at the tents and muddy roads.

  “I thought the colonists had been promised houses.” That was the most distinguished man on the platform.

  Mr. Carr took off his hat and wiped his forehead on the sleeve of his coat. “We’ve had a few snags in getting supplies in the right order, Mr. Fuller. Bound to happen in a project this big.”

  “We were sent here to build a hospital. How are we supposed to if we don’t even have the proper equipment?” The man named Mr. Fuller had a voice loud enough for even the people at the back of the gathering crowd to hear.

  Mr. Fuller shook his head. “Who the dickens is in charge here?” he said.

  Mr. Carr finally said, “I guess I am, but it’s too much for any one or two people to handle. There’s wells to dig, roads to build, houses, barns, and a school to build, land to clear so folks can get a crop in . . .”

  Mr. Fuller’s mouth tightened. “I see,” he said. “Well, we can’t take care of all of that at once, but now that we ha
ve Dr. Albrecht here, and four nurses who’ve volunteered to transfer from Anchorage . . .” He paused to point to the smiling man and four women in the group. “We’d better build them a hospital. Mr. Roosevelt was most emphatic after Mrs. Roosevelt showed him that telegram.”

  Terpsichore gasped. “Mrs. Roosevelt read my telegram!” She grabbed Mendel’s arm on one side and Gloria’s on the other.

  “You sent a telegram?” Mendel whispered. Amazement made his eyes look even more owlish than usual behind his round-rimmed glasses.

  “To Mrs. Roosevelt? Keen-o!” Gloria said.

  “Not me exactly,” Terpsichore explained. “My mother actually sent it, but I suggested that she send a telegram to Mrs. Roosevelt and helped her figure out what to say. Don’t tell anyone, though. I want Mom to think it was her own idea.”

  Mendel held out his hand. “Good work, Terpsichore. My father always said it’s amazing what you can get done if you don’t care who gets the credit.”

  He called her Terpsichore! From Mendel, that was the best compliment she could hope for.

  Terpsichore hugged herself as images ricocheted through her head so fast she could hardly focus on what Mr. Fuller was saying: Mrs. Roosevelt reading the telegram, President Roosevelt sending his friend to Alaska, sick children getting well, and grateful parents saying, “Thank goodness for Terpsichore Johnson, who got a hospital for Palmer.” She had to pinch her arm so she could focus on Mr. Fuller again.

  “I want you to know President Roosevelt takes your concerns seriously,” he was saying. “As one of his trusted advisers and friends, he told me to get the next plane to Alaska. ‘Get those people a doctor and a hospital, and see that it gets done immediately,’ President Roosevelt said, and I don’t intend to disappoint him. I’m leaving tomorrow and I want to see that hospital built before I leave.”

  The CCC man was burly, but his voice came out in a squeak. “Tomorrow? I still don’t have enough hammers for each carpenter.”

  “Some of the colonists must have hammers,” Mr. Fuller said. He turned from the men on the platform and shouted out to the crowd, “I’m depending on you to get the word out. Anyone with carpentry tools should report to the community center.”

  No one in the crowd needed to be told twice.

  They had just started back when they saw Mr. Johnson with Smoky and the wagon. “I came looking for you as soon as I got the wagon rigged,” he said. “I heard what Mr. Fuller said, so I guess I’d better go back for my hammer. Anyone want a lift?”

  Terpsichore, Mendel, and Gloria piled into the back of the wagon.

  At home, Terpsichore burst into the tent. “Mom, it worked! Mrs. Roosevelt read the telegram and she didn’t just send a letter back. She had her husband send someone they knew to get us a doctor and a hospital. The doctor and four nurses are already here and Mr. Fuller—that’s the guy the Roosevelts sent—is leaving tomorrow and he wants to see a hospital built before he goes and he wants everyone with carpentry tools to report to the community center!”

  Mother put her hands to her chest and then patted her reddening cheeks. “She read the telegram! We’re getting a doctor!”

  Pop hugged Mother. “Good work, Clio! We’re proud of you.” Over Mother’s shoulder, he winked at Terpsichore. She winked back.

  In less than a minute Pop had found his hammer and headed to the community center.

  • • •

  The valley echoed that night with the sound of hammers, saws, and shouting, but no one complained. Each blow of a hammer, each whine of the steam-driven sawmill was a sign of hope. The president had personally sent help. The colonists had not been abandoned in the wilderness.

  The saws and hammers were silent by two A.M. Twenty minutes later, Pop entered the tent.

  “Still up?” he said when he saw Terpsichore sitting up on her cot.

  “I think we all are,” Mother said. “Why did everyone stop?”

  Pop took his hat off and put it on Mother’s head. “Because, Mrs. Telegram Writer,” he said, “we finished! Come on, everybody, let’s see what a difference six hours can make!” He scooped up Matthew, and everyone scrambled for clothes and shoes and raced to the wagon.

  From all over camp, colonists swarmed toward the community center.

  Dawn would not come for another two hours, but it was a new day.

  There was the completed hospital, twenty feet by twenty feet. Peeking in through clean windows, Terpsichore saw beds with clean sheets, a stove, and floors still damp from mopping. The new doctor and four nurses were already tucking in their first patients, moved from the temporary isolation area in the community center.

  How could this hospital appear without a magic wand, in only six hours? But it wasn’t magic, Terpsichore thought. It was the power of colonists and CCC men working together with a goal and a plan. She had done what President Roosevelt said he wanted people to do: tell him when things could be done better. He listened, and sent help. If a small hospital could be built in six hours, with everyone cooperating, maybe everyone would have a house before snowfall.

  Terpsichore looked at the faces of colonists around her. People were beginning to hope again.

  CHAPTER 24

  Living off Sea and Land

  “BETTER GO AHEAD AND HIT IT,” MENDEL SAID. “YOU’LL cut yourself if you try to clean a fish that’s still flopping around.”

  Seeing the salmon helplessly flopping, Terpsichore felt its panic. “Don’t let it suffer,” she begged, as her father brought the rock down on the fish’s head.

  “This is going to be gory, Trip,” Mendel said. “You’d better not look. Now, Mr. Johnson, you’re going to want to cut the gills to start it bleeding out. Even when it’s dead, the heart will keep on pumping out the blood. You don’t want the blood to settle in the meat.”

  Terpsichore peeked just long enough to see her father wince as he cut the gills, and then she whirled away from the barbaric scene of fish murder. “La-la-la,” she chanted to herself. She could still hear Mendel’s instructions.

  “Now wash it off in the river and take it over to this rock,” Mendel said. “I’ll show you how to clean it. Start in front of the anus—no, not right on it, because you’ll let out the bacteria in the intestines.”

  Terpsichore took a few steps away, but still couldn’t block out Mendel’s words. “Cut along the middle of the belly,” he said, “but not far enough to hit the organs . . . that’s it, clear up to the gill covers . . . cut off the head—that’s it, right behind the pectoral fin . . . pull off the intestine, scoop out the kidneys—just toss them in the slop bucket. Now saw off the fins and you’re ready to fillet.”

  When Terpsichore turned she saw two bright pinkish orange slabs that no longer looked like a living fish, but like food you might get at the butcher.

  “You’re a natural, Mr. Johnson,” Mendel said. “Give me the slop bucket and I’ll wade out and let the river wash the guts away so we don’t attract the bears.”

  In Wisconsin, the Johnsons had never had to kill what they ate. But Farmer Boy and his family had raised animals to eat. Terpsichore had just never had to think about all the steps between the cow in the field and the roast in the stove.

  Once home, Mother consulted a mimeographed handout that she’d received at the monthly mothers’ meeting on how to can salmon.

  “Some of the women are going for the tin can method, but I’ll stick to jars. It’s what I know, and you don’t have to buy an expensive sealer for the jars.”

  After a moment’s squeamishness, Terpsichore nerved herself to touch the raw fish flesh.

  “At least your father cleaned the fish before he brought them home, which is more than some men do.”

  Terpsichore picked up fillets in both hands and slipped them into the pan of water. “They’re still slimy, though,” she said.

  “The vinegar in the water will cut the slime,
” Mother said. She pulled a fillet out of the water, cut it into chunks, and packed the chunks, skin side in, into pint jars.

  Terpsichore followed her example.

  “Leave about an inch of space at the top,” Mother said, “and while I put the lids on, would you get some water?”

  Terpsichore brought in a bucket of water from the washtub they used as a cistern and poured two or three inches of water into the pressure cooker. Then her mother put in the rack, settled each jar gently into place, and hoisted the loaded pressure cooker to the stove.

  “Don’t forget to open the damper,” Terpsichore said.

  Mother laughed. “I don’t think anyone will ever let me forget that burned cake.”

  Once the canner had let off steam, they loaded in more coal until the pressure gauge went up to eleven pounds, then watched the gauge to keep the pressure there for one hundred minutes. It was long enough to get the next batch of fish ready to go.

  “You know,” Mother said as she cut up more fish, “I didn’t mean for you to cook dinner forever, after Matthew was born. I just needed help when he was keeping me up all night.”

  “It’s all right,” Terpsichore said. “I like to cook.”

  Mother wrinkled her nose as she dropped another fillet into the vinegar water. “I don’t even like fish. But if the government is charging colonists fifty dollars for a nonresident hunting license, I guess we’ll have to settle for fish this winter.”

  “Next summer, though, when we’ve been here a year, Pop won’t have to pay fifty dollars, right?”

  “Right,” Mother said, although she didn’t sound one hundred percent happy. Maybe she was thinking like Terpsichore: If it was this hard to face a dead fish, what would they do with a dead deer?

  Mother wrenched the next jar lid too tightly and had to loosen it up. Since her hands were slimy, she didn’t touch Terpsichore, but nudged her shoulder companionably. “If you can think of twenty ways to cook pumpkin, do you think you can come up with twenty ways to fix salmon so it doesn’t taste so much like salmon?”