My One Square Inch of Alaska (9781101602850)

by Short, Sharon

  “Damned boy poisoned my dog!” Mr. Stedman yelled.

  I squared my shoulders. “Mr. Stedman, how do you know your dog was poisoned?”

  “Stay out of this, girl!” Daddy shouted. I could smell the booze on his breath. He toddled a little, grabbing for my arm, missing. This was the first time he’d talked to me in three days.

  Mr. Stedman was no longer interested in Daddy. He gave me a long, appraising, leering look. “What else makes a dog retch?”

  Gee, Mr. Stedman—how about old fluids from cars, or upholstery filled with rat poop, or starving a dog and beating it and making it so desperate that it will eat anything—how about that, you creepy old man?

  Of course, I didn’t say that. I said, “I don’t know, sir, and I’m sorry your dog is ill. But I’m sure Will had nothing to do with it. He loves animals.”

  “That mongrel isn’t a pet—he’s a watchdog”—spit flew from his mouth as Mr. Stedman yelled at me—“and I’ve warned your brother before, but there he was this afternoon, feeding the thing some kind of meat, but he ran away before I could catch the little rat.”

  It took me a second to realize that by “little rat” Mr. Stedman meant my brother, not the dog. But I couldn’t show my anger.

  “Oh. That meat. Well, that was my fault. I let some meat go bad, I’m afraid, and I paid my brother a dime to dump it at your place after school.”

  I looked at Daddy. “So I guess you’ll have to punish me, instead.”

  Daddy grabbed my arm. As I stumbled toward him, I caught Mr. Stedman’s expression. He was smiling. My stomach turned. He liked the idea of seeing me get whipped.

  “Go to your room,” I said to Will. I didn’t want him to see this. As best I could, I’d have to mute my cries—just like Trusty—so he wouldn’t have to hear it, either.

  Will was paler than ever, paler than seemed possible. He said, “No, Donna, you shouldn’t get whipped, and neither should Trusty. He’s beautiful and strong and ought to be in Alaska and—and he’s just not treated right or fed enough.”

  Mr. Stedman snarled. “You’ve given that worthless dog a name? All it has to do is bark to keep away punks like you, and a few weeks ago it stopped doing that. Why, I oughta put it down—”

  Will jumped up, lunged at Mr. Stedman, hitting at him, but before he could even finish his first swing, Mr. Stedman had his big hand on Will’s head, and suddenly instead of being angry, Mr. Stedman was laughing at my little brother’s ridiculous attempt at assault, at Will’s arms windmilling as he screamed, “No! No! You can’t kill Trusty, you can’t! He doesn’t bark because you beat him, and he’s hungry! No, no!”

  Daddy let go of my arm and shoved me out of his way, lurching for Will. I plunged in between the men again, pulling Will away from Mr. Stedman, and as I did, the blow Daddy was aiming toward Will smacked across my face.

  For a second, the room went silent and dark, but then I heard my name again—“Donna!”

  It was Jimmy’s voice. He was standing in the doorway between the entry and the living room, holding my book bag, staring in horror at our diorama gone mad.

  “Donna,” he said again.

  I felt the blood running out of my nose, I felt Will gasping in sobs, pushing into my waist and chest, and I felt my arms go around him. But I was struck numb from the shame of Jimmy seeing us—seeing me—like this.

  Daddy looked at me, confused, at the blood dripping onto Mama’s remade dress, at the dress itself as if it was somehow familiar. And then he looked at Jimmy. “Who the hell are you?”

  “Jimmy Denton,” he said as if his very name was a dare.

  Flashes of recognition struck both Daddy’s and Mr. Stedman’s faces. Even they, in their rage, knew exactly who Jimmy Denton was, and why it was important.

  But Jimmy didn’t see those flashes. He was looking at me with a mix of expressions on his face—anger at my bloody nose, concern for my well-being.

  But no pity. Thank God, no pity.

  Jimmy spoke again. “And I am here to return Donna’s book bag. She left it in my car. After our date.” I couldn’t repress the thought—That was a date?—or the tickle of giddiness that he’d called it so. He placed my book bag on the chair nearest the door. “I thought I should return it. And meet her father.”

  Suddenly Will broke away from me, running to Jimmy, sobbing out his words: “You have to do something! They’re going to beat Donna! And kill Trusty!”

  Jimmy knelt down, caught Will by the shoulders. “Whoa there, big guy. You must be Will. Donna’s told me all about you. But who is Trusty?”

  “Mr. Stedman’s dog—”

  “Dog don’t have no name,” Mr. Stedman started.

  “Name or no name,” Jimmy said sharply, shutting up Mr. Stedman, “no one is going to kill a dog, Will, and no one is going to beat Donna.”

  I felt a significant pause, as if something very important was being silently decided.

  And then, suddenly, there was a rush of movement. Mr. Stedman muttered good night and hurried out the front door. Daddy shuffled after him, but only to take up his place again on the front porch. Will ran upstairs. Jimmy got out a handkerchief and held it gently to my nose, then pulled me to him, and after a little while he whispered, “Are you going to be all right?”

  Of course I would. I’d survived such scenes before. But I waited just a second, liking the feeling of Jimmy’s arms around me, before I nodded, rubbing my head against his chest.

  I held the handkerchief to my nose for a long time after Jimmy left, alone and shaking in the middle of our living room, knowing that Will and Trusty and I had all been rescued. For now. Knowing that I should feel relieved.

  Finally, I picked up my book bag and started up the stairs, trying to keep the third step from the bottom from squeaking, failing as usual. I just wanted to go to bed, to not think anymore about this crazy, long day, but as I passed Will’s bedroom, he softly called my name.

  I stopped, pushed open his door, went in. His room was, as usual, a mess—shelves stuffed with books and half-made models of cars and ships, and collections, if piles of rocks and feathers and sticks could be called collections.

  He was sitting up in his bed, cross-legged, his too-small pajamas showing his wrists and ankles. In his lap, he had the Alaska Territory diorama that had earned him an F. The grade hadn’t driven him to tears, but his teacher’s comment had—that he was a foolish boy for thinking the territory would ever be a state.

  I sat down on the edge of the bed. “Brush your teeth?”

  Will nodded.

  “Liar,” I said, sounding harsher than I meant to.

  His face crumpled a little. “Donna, I’m sorry about taking the meat to Trusty. I just…felt so sorry for him. I swear I didn’t think Mr. Stedman saw me.”

  “It’s OK,” I said. Who was being the liar now? But Will looked so small and pale, still scared, I supposed, from the awful scene we’d just endured.

  He grinned. “It is OK now, isn’t it? ’Cause of Jimmy. I promise I won’t even make fun of you for having a boyfriend,” he said, but he put a lilt on boy, and grinned wider. “Jimmy fixed everything! Mr. Stedman won’t kill Trusty, and Daddy won’t give either of us a whipping. Look, I made this!”

  Will held out his hand, cupping a crude paste-and-paper sculpture of a tiny dog with pointy ears as big as the whole rest of the dog’s body.

  “Trusty,” Will said, handing the tiny dog to me. “I bet Jimmy could even figure out how to get Trusty to Alaska!”

  I stared into the diorama, at the brown construction paper mountains, and the cotton ball snow, and the tinfoil lake that was supposed to look like ice, and the small pinecones painted green and glued around the lake, and the toothpick beaver dam. And then I looked at the tiny model of Trusty in my hand, and for a moment, I was tempted to close my hand over Trusty, crush the model of the dog, take the diorama and toss it to the floor and crush it, too. I didn’t want the weight of this—Jimmy’s presence making everything right—affecti
ng my relationship with Jimmy, whatever that relationship was now or would become. I didn’t want us to be rescued, like he’d rescued Strange Freddie, turning him into Frederick McDonnell. I wanted Jimmy just for me.

  And there was something else, too, I realized, as my fingers started to curl around the silly little paste-and-paper Trusty.

  People leave.

  Mama left. Mama died.

  I was desperately dreaming of leaving the next year, when Will would be big enough, I hoped, to defend himself against Daddy, or maybe Miss Bettina would take him in.

  But in the meantime, what if Jimmy suddenly realized that he didn’t really want the girl from the right side of the tracks with the wrong-side-of-the-tracks family?

  Daddy had fallen apart when Mama died, and I’d been keeping us together ever since, as best I could. Not doing a great job, obviously, or Jimmy wouldn’t have had to step in downstairs. But what would happen if he went away and things fell apart even worse than before? I didn’t think I’d have the strength to pull us all together, not again.

  I felt Will looking at me, and my eyes flicked up from the paper-and-paste Trusty model. Those wide blue eyes of his…he always knew I couldn’t resist them.

  I uncurled my fingers and placed Trusty across the lake from the toothpick beaver dam. Just to give those beavers a bit of a chance.

  “That good?” I asked.

  Will beamed at me, nodding.

  I carried the diorama back to the bookshelf and put it next to his jar of cicadas. Then I sat back down with him, pulling him to me, and he snuggled up willingly. I wondered how much longer he’d be agreeable to snuggling with his big sister—he was ten, after all—and I said, “Did you get to watch Sergeant Striker tonight?”

  I felt Will’s nod against my chest.

  “Well, I didn’t,” I said. “So tell me what happened.”

  “Well, first there was this miner,” he said, with as much excitement as a whisper can bear, “and he found gold, but he didn’t want the other miners to know….”

  And on he talked, telling me in detail each bit of the show’s plot, which hadn’t changed much in the move from radio to TV. Soon his voice became heavier and heavier, and he barely made it through the cheesy closing line: “Trusty, we can trust this case is closed!” And after that, he fell asleep, his breath slow and soft and even.

  Chapter 9

  The next morning, Daddy’s car was gone. So I recklessly banged pots and pans and spoons and spatulas while taking my time—it was a Saturday—to fix Will a proper breakfast: pancakes, bacon, eggs. I even turned on the kitchen radio and sang along loudly to the hits on WBEX and laughed when Will stumbled into the kitchen, sleepy-eyed and grumpy at being awakened by my ruckus. He was even grumpier when he realized that I expected him to eat that proper breakfast. No passing out from eating just Marvel Puffs. But he cheered up when I told him he could also have Marvel Puffs—if he finished a plate of everything else—and then danced him around the kitchen to Pee Wee King crooning “Slow Poke.” He seemed just fine; his normal self, full of life with rosy cheeks and a sassy attitude. I told myself his loss of consciousness the morning before had been an anomaly.

  We didn’t worry too much about where Daddy had gone.

  Then, as Will and I washed up the breakfast dishes, our telephone rang. It was Jimmy, asking if I’d go with him that night on a double date with Babs and Hank to the Route 42 Motor-Vu, to see the Roman Holiday and High Noon double feature. I hesitated, knowing I was supposed to work that night, but Jimmy hurriedly added that he’d cleared the date with both my grandma and daddy. When had he done that? The night before?

  But I decided not to worry about that. I said yes and, for once, hoped the whole neighborhood was on our party line. Especially Mrs. Baker, from across the street.

  As soon as I hung up with Jimmy, I called Miss Bettina at her dress shop and asked her if she would watch Will at her house when I went out that night if Daddy wasn’t home. Or maybe even if he was home. I was relieved when she said yes.

  For my first official date with Jimmy, Babs loaned me one of her Ayer’s lipsticks, Roulette Red. That night at the drive-in, when Hank called Babs stupid for spilling some popcorn, Jimmy told him to shut up. After that, Hank was nice to Babs. And Babs let me keep the Roulette Red lipstick.

  Jimmy took me out almost every night after that first date—to the Motor-Vu, to the Cosmic Burger, to the Pleasant Valley Orchard parking lot, and sometimes even to Dot’s Corner Café. Grandma always looked so proud when we showed up there. Every now and then, we’d see Frederick McDonnell sitting there, drinking coffee.

  Somehow, it went without saying that I no longer needed to work at the café. Grandma hadn’t stopped passing on the equivalent of my pay to Daddy for my household allowance. She looked proud of me when I walked into church with her. Once, I overheard one of her friends—the Blue Hairs, Will called them—ask Grandma if Jimmy was churchgoing. Grandma shot her an annoyed, what-does-it-matter look and answered, “He’s Presbyterian, which is good enough.”

  Now, like all the teachers at school, Mr. Cahill knew that Jimmy and I were dating, but unlike the other teachers, who seemed to see me with new appreciation and deference, he didn’t seem affected by it one way or another. He continued our professional arrangement without comment, though he surely knew my new outfits were handmade, not special-ordered from Miss Bettina’s Dress Shop, like I told the newly admiring girls at school.

  On the next Saturday, I was hurrying to get dinner on the table for Daddy and Will—tuna noodle casserole, with the crunchy saltine cracker topping that Will liked. Miss Bettina was supposed to come over again for Will. I wasn’t having dinner, because Jimmy had told me he had a special surprise. Babs had loaned me a small vial of her Evening in Paris. I planned to dab it on just before Jimmy arrived. I put together a special outfit, too—a sweater set, a sleek black skirt I’d refashioned from one of Mama’s, and a black leather belt with a bold bronze buckle I’d found in one of her suitcases.

  The belt was unique enough that I worried Daddy might recognize it, but he was sitting at the kitchen table reading the day’s editorial in the Groverton Daily News and muttering angrily, which meant it was a rare one that didn’t support Senator McCarthy’s views. Will was looking at his Roy Rogers comic book just as intently. Daddy and Will’s heads were tilted in the same direction, at the same angle, their mouths pursed and brows furrowed.

  I spooned casserole onto Will’s plate. He immediately started picking out the peas.

  “Will, you have to eat those, too!”

  “I’m not really hungry,” he said, pushing the flakes of tuna away from the noodles and peas. Soon he would have three islands on his plate—peas, noodles, tuna, in a sea of mushroom soup and milk.

  “You have to eat something. You barely touched breakfast—”

  “That’s ’cause it was French toast,” Will said, as if this was an affront.

  “Well, you can’t have Marvel Puffs every day—”

  Suddenly, Daddy pounded the table so hard that I jumped, and the scoop of tuna casserole I was about to put on his plate jumped from my serving spoon back to the casserole dish. I thought he was just annoyed at our bickering, but Daddy growled, “This red commie trash! This Nate Cahill! Who is he?”

  For a moment, our kitchen went silent. There was only the sound of the clock ticktocking over the stove, the tines of Will’s fork on his plate as he poked at his peas, and the thin rustling of the newspaper in Daddy’s trembling hands. His hands got like that if the time between drinks went on too long.

  “Says here he’s an art teacher at the senior high—art, of all things!” He glared up at me. “You have this red trash at school?”

  I could have lied. Daddy had no idea what classes I was in. I wasn’t even entirely sure that he knew I was in my senior year.

  But suddenly, as boring as I found Mr.-Cahill-the-high-school-teacher, I felt angry for Mr.-Cahill-the-artist. I said, “Yes, Dad. I have Mr. Cahill
for art.” That was true. “He’s a good teacher.” Not true.

  Will stared at me, his eyes wide, holding his breath. I glanced at the clock. Jimmy would be at our house in about ten minutes.

  Daddy shoved the newspaper at me. “Does he teach this trash in school?”

  I took the paper, scanned the editorial that had so offended him, and quickly realized that Daddy would not be the only Groverton citizen to be outraged. The true betrayers of our country, Mr. Cahill wrote, were not communists, but those who, like Senator McCarthy, persecuted artists and musicians and writers. A truly free society, he stated, would not fear any kind of artistic endeavor, no matter how startling or odious or beautiful the ideas.

  I looked up at Daddy. “No. Mr. Cahill does not discuss these ideas in class.” My heart thudding, I said, “But in social studies class, we learned that Senator McCarthy supported the Taft-Hartley Act.” That act, passed in 1947, made it more difficult for labor to strike after the surge of the labor movement in 1946. The year Mama died. The year Strange Freddie lost his hand, after Daddy had promised to support safety features at the mill. “So I guess that you also don’t agree with McCarthy on everything. I mean, Strange Freddie told Jimmy that you’d agreed with him about safety features at the mill. Back in 1946. But I guess you didn’t get a chance to speak up, like you promised him.”

  I swallowed hard, knowing that I was taking this risk only because Jimmy would soon be over. And I also knew that I was being cruel, striking back at Daddy for his weaknesses in this way. The color drained from his face. Suddenly, he looked so much older than his fifty years. Quietly, he said, “I’ve made that up to Mr. McDonnell the best way I know how.”

  Tears of instant regret pricked my eyes as I heard Daddy say Strange Freddie’s proper name, just as Jimmy had. I opened my mouth, about to apologize, but there was a banging at the back door. Jimmy, I thought—hoped—even though he always came to the front door.

  But when I opened the door, it was Miss Bettina standing there. “I brought your favorite pickled green beans, Porter. One for now and one for your fallout shelter.” Right after Mama died in 1946, Daddy had built that fallout shelter in a rare burst of energy, saying he wasn’t going to let anything happen to his children.