Julie of the Wolves

by Jean Craighead George

  That night she unzipped a small pocket in her pack and took out a battered letter from Amy.

  . . . And when you get to San Francisco, we will buy you summer dresses, and because you like curls, we’ll curl your hair. Then we’ll ride the trolley to the theater and sit on velvet seats.

  Mom says you can have the pink bedroom that looks over the garden and down on the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge.

  When are you coming to San Francisco?

  Your pen pal, Amy

  “The theater,” she whispered, “and the Golden Gate Bridge.” That night she slept with the letter under her cheek.

  In the evening of the following day Miyax hastily put on her clothes and crawled up the frost heave. Like a good puppy she got down on her stomach.

  “Amaroq,” she called. “I’m ready to go when you are!”

  The wind blew across the wolf den, shattering the heads of the cotton grass and shooting their seedlets south with the birds. No one answered. The wolves were gone.

  Part II

  MIYAX, THE GIRL

  THE WIND, THE EMPTY SKY, THE DESERTED earth—Miyax had felt the bleakness of being left behind once before.

  She could not remember her mother very well, for Miyax was scarcely four when she died, but she did remember the day of her death. The wind was screaming wild high notes and hurling ice-filled waves against the beach. Kapugen was holding her hand and they were walking. When she stumbled he put her on his shoulders, and high above the beach she saw thousands of birds diving toward the sea. The jaegers screamed and the sandpipers cried. The feathered horns of the comical puffins drooped low, and Kapugen told her they seemed to be grieving with him.

  She saw this, but she was not sad. She was divinely happy going somewhere alone with Kapugen. Occasionally he climbed the cliffs and brought her eggs to eat; occasionally he took her in his arms and leaned against a rock. She slept at times in the warmth of his big sealskin parka. Then they walked on. She did not know how far.

  Later, Kapugen’s Aunt Martha told her that he had lost his mind the day her mother died. He had grabbed Miyax up and walked out of his fine house in Mekoryuk. He had left his important job as manager of the reindeer herd, and he had left all his possessions.

  “He walked you all the way to seal camp,” Martha told her. “And he never did anything good after that.”

  To Miyax the years at seal camp were infinitely good. The scenes and events were beautiful color spots in her memory. There was Kapugen’s little house of driftwood, not far from the beach. It was rosy-gray on the outside. Inside, it was gold-brown. Walrus tusks gleamed and drums, harpoons, and man’s knives decorated the walls. The sealskin kayak beside the door glowed as if the moon had been stretched across it and its graceful ribs shone black. Dark gold and soft brown were the old men who sat around Kapugen’s camp stove and talked to him by day and night.

  The ocean was green and white, and was rimmed by fur, for she saw it through Kapugen’s hood as she rode to sea with him on his back inside the parka. Through this frame she saw the soft eyes of the seals on the ice. Kapugen’s back would grow taut as he lifted his arms and fired his gun. Then the ice would turn red.

  The celebration of the Bladder Feast was many colors—black, blue, purple, fire-red; but Kapugen’s hand around hers was rose-colored and that was the color of her memory of the Feast. A shaman, an old priestess whom everyone called “the bent woman,” danced. Her face was streaked with black soot. When she finally bowed, a fiery spirit came out of the dark wearing a huge mask that jingled and terrified Miyax. Once, in sheer bravery, she peeked up under a mask and saw that the dancer was not a spirit at all but Naka, Kapugen’s serious partner. She whispered his name and he laughed, took off his mask, and sat down beside Kapugen. They talked and the old men joined them. Later that day Kapugen blew up seal bladders and he and the old men carried them out on the ice. There they dropped them into the sea, while Miyax watched and listened to their songs. When she came back to camp the bent woman told her that the men had returned the bladders to the seals.

  “Bladders hold the spirits of the animals,” she said. “Now the spirits can enter the bodies of the newborn seals and keep them safe until we harvest them again.” That night the bent woman seemed all violet-colored as she tied a piece of seal fur and blubber to Miyax’s belt. “It’s an i’noGo tied,” she said. “It’s a nice little spirit for you.”

  Another memory was flickering-yellow—it was of the old men beating their drums around Kapugen’s stove. She saw them through a scarf of tiny crystals that was her breath on the cold night air inside the house.

  Naka and Kapugen were on their hands and knees, prancing lightly, moving swiftly. When Naka tapped Kapugen’s chin with his head, Kapugen rose to his knees. He threw back his head, then rocked back on his heels. Naka sat up and together they sang the song of the wolves. When the dance was over the old men cheered and beat their paddle-like drums.

  “You are wolves, you are real wolves,” they had cried.

  After that Kapugen told her about the wolves he had known on the mainland when he went to high school in Nome. He and his joking partner would hunt the wilderness for months, calling to the wolves, speaking their language to ask where the game was. When they were successful, they returned to Nome with sled-loads of caribou.

  “Wolves are brotherly,” he said. “They love each other, and if you learn to speak to them, they will love you, too.”

  He told her that the birds and animals all had languages and if you listened and watched them you could learn about their enemies, where their food lay, and when big storms were coming.

  A silver memory was the day when the sun came over the horizon for the first time in winter. She was at the beach, close to Kapugen, helping him haul in a huge gleaming net. In it was a beautiful white whale. Out of sight on the other side of the whale, she could hear the old men as they cheered this gift from the sea.

  The whale was a mountain so high she could not see the cliffs beyond, only the sunlit clouds. Kapugen’s huge, black, frostbitten hand seemed small as it touched the great body of the whale.

  Not far away the bent woman was dancing and gathering invisible things from the air. Miyax was frightened but Kapugen explained that she was putting the spirit of the whale in her i’noGo tied.

  “She will return it to the sea and the whales,” he said.

  Walking the tundra with Kapugen was all laughter and fun. He would hail the blue sky and shout out his praise for the grasses and bushes. On these trips they ate salmon berries, then lay in the sun watching the birds. Sometimes Kapugen would whistle sandpiper songs and the birds would dip down to see which of their members had gotten lost in the grass. When they saw him and darted away, Kapugen would laugh.

  Fishing with Kapugen was murky-tan in her memory, for they would wade out into the river mouth where the stone weirs were built and drive the fish into nets between the walls. Kapugen would spear them or grab them in his hand and throw them to the men in the wooden boats. Occasionally he skimmed after the biggest cod and halibut in his kayak and he would whoop with joy when he caught one and would hold it above his head. It gleamed as it twisted in the sun.

  Summers at seal camp were not as beautiful to Miyax as the autumns and winters, for during this season many families from Mekoryuk came to Nash Harbor to hunt and fish and Kapugen was busy. Sometimes he helped people set nets; sometimes he scouted the ocean in his kayak as he searched for seal colonies.

  During these hours Miyax was left with the other children on the beach. She played tag and grass ball with them and she pried prickly sea urchins off the rocks, to eat the sweet meat inside. Often she dug for clams and when Kapugen returned he would crack them open and smack his lips as he swallowed them whole.

  The Eskimos from Mekoryuk spoke English almost all the time. They called her father Charlie Edwards and Miyax was Julie, for they all had two names, Eskimo and English. Her mother had also called her Julie, so she did not mind her summer n
ame until one day when Kapugen called her that. She stomped her foot and told him her name was Miyax. “I am Eskimo, not a gussak!” she had said, and he had tossed her into the air and hugged her to him.

  “Yes, you are Eskimo,” he had said. “And never forget it. We live as no other people can, for we truly understand the earth.”

  But winters always returned. Blizzards came and the temperatures dropped to thirty and forty below zero, and those who stayed at hunting camp spoke only in Eskimo and did only Eskimo things. They scraped hides, mended boots, made boats, and carved walrus tusks. In the evenings Kapugen sang and danced with the old men, and all of their songs and dances were about the sea and the land and the creatures that dwelled there.

  One year, probably in September, for the canvas tents were down and the campground almost empty, Kapugen came into the house with a sealskin. It was a harbor seal, but had so few spots that it was a rare prize.

  “We must make you a new coat,” he had said. “You are getting big. Since your mother is not here to help us, I will do her work. Now watch and learn.”

  The skin was metallic silver-gold and so beautiful that even the velveteen parkas of the children from Mekoryuk paled by comparison. Miyax stroked it lovingly as Kapugen lay her old coat upon it and began to cut a larger one. As he worked he hummed, and she made up words about the seal who wanted to be a coat. Presently they became aware of the distant throb of a motorboat. The sound grew louder, then shut off at the beach. Footsteps crunched, the cold air rushed in the door, and there was Martha, Kapugen’s aunt. She was thin and her face was pinched. Miyax disliked her immediately, but was spared the necessity of speaking nicely to her, for Martha had words only for Kapugen.

  She talked swiftly in English, which Miyax barely understood, and she was angry and upset. Martha shook her finger at Kapugen and glanced at Miyax from time to time. The two were arguing very loudly when Martha pulled a sheet of paper from her pocket and showed it to Kapugen.

  “No!” he shouted.

  “We’ll see!” Martha screamed, turned around, and went toward the boat where a white man waited. Kapugen followed her and stood by the boat, talking to the man for a long time.

  The next morning Miyax was awakened as Kapugen lifted her up in his arms and held her close. Gently he pushed the hair out of her eyes and, speaking softly in Eskimo, told her she was going to live with Aunt Martha.

  “There’s a law that says you must go to school . . . and I guess you should. You are nine years old. And I must go to war. The government is fighting somewhere.”

  Miyax grabbed him around the neck, but did not protest. It never occurred to her that anything that Kapugen decided was not absolutely perfect. She whimpered however.

  “Listen closely,” he said. “If anything happens to me, and if you are unhappy, when you are thirteen you can leave Aunt Martha by marrying Daniel, Naka’s son. Naka is going to Barrow on the Arctic Ocean. I shall make arrangements with him. He is like me, an old-time Eskimo who likes our traditions. He will agree.”

  Miyax listened carefully, then he put her down and hastily packed her bladder-bag, wrapped her in an oilskin against the wild spray of the sea, and carried her to the boat. She sat down beside Martha and stared bravely at Kapugen. The motor started and Kapugen looked at her until the boat moved, then he turned his back and walked quickly away. The launch sped up a huge wave, slammed down into a foaming trough, and Kapugen was no longer visible.

  With that Miyax became Julie. She was given a cot near the door in Martha’s little house and was soon walking to school in the darkness. She liked to learn the printed English words in books, and so a month passed rather happily.

  One morning when the air was cold and the puddles around the house were solid ice, an old man from seal camp arrived at the door. He spoke softly to Martha, then pulled his hood tightly around his face and went away. Martha came to Miyax’s bed.

  “Your father,” she said, “went seal hunting in that ridiculous kayak. He has been gone a month this day. He will not be back. Bits of his kayak washed up on the shore.” Martha stumped to the fire and turned her back.

  Julie ran out of the house into the dark morning. She darted past the store, the reindeer-packing house, the church. She did not stop until she came to the beach. There she crouched among the oil drums and looked out on the sea.

  The wind blew across the water, shattering the tips of the waves and shooting ice-sparklets north with the storm. “Kapugen!” she called. No one answered. Kapugen was gone. The earth was empty and bleak.

  Gradually Julie pushed Kapugen out of her heart and accepted the people of Mekoryuk. The many years in seal camp alone with Kapugen had been dear and wonderful, but she realized now that she had lived a strange life. The girls her age could speak and write English and they knew the names of presidents, astronauts, and radio and movie personalities who lived below the top of the world. Maybe the Europeans once thought the earth was flat, but the Eskimos always knew it was round. One only needed to look at the earth’s relatives, the sun and the moon, to know that.

  One day as she walked home across the snowy town she caught up with her schoolmates, Judith and Rose. Their boots squeaked in the cold and their voices sounded far away, for the temperature was far below zero. Judith invited her into her house and the three of them huddled close to the oil stove. Judith and Rose chatted, but Julie’s eyes wandered around the room and she saw for the first time a gas cooking stove, a couch, framed pictures on the wall, and curtains of cotton print. Then Judith took her into her own room and she beheld a bed with a headboard, a table, and a reading lamp. On the table lay a little chain on which hung a dog, a hat, and a boat. This she was glad to see—something familiar.

  “What a lovely i’noGo tied!” Julie said politely.

  “A what?” asked Judith. Julie repeated the Eskimo word for the house of the spirits.

  Judith snickered. “That’s a charm bracelet,” she said. Rose giggled and both laughed derisively. Julie felt the blood rush to her face as she met, for the first but not the last time, the new attitudes of the Americanized Eskimos. She had much to learn besides reading. That night she threw her i’noGo tied away.

  English and math came easily to her, and by the end of the year Julie was reading and writing. That summer she worked at the mission beside the church sweeping the floor and greeting the visitors from the lower states who came to see real Eskimos. She read the encyclopedia when there was nothing else to do.

  The next year Julie worked at the hospital on weekends. After school she cut out dresses in the domestic science room and sewed them on the electric machines. She bobbed her hair and put it in rollers to make the ends curl.

  One Sunday, as she was coming home from the hospital, a jeep pulled up beside her and a gussak hailed her. He leaned on the steering wheel, a warm smile on his face.

  “I’m Mr. Pollock. I own stock in the Reindeer Corporation here on the island,” he said. “And I have a daughter your age. The last thing she asked me before I left San Francisco was to find a girl in the town of Mekoryuk on Nunivak Island and ask if she would like to exchange letters. How about being her pen pal?”

  Julie needed no explanation for that term. Many letters came into the mission from children in the States who wanted to write letters. She had never done so before, but now she was ready.

  “I would like that,” she answered.

  “My daughter’s name is Amy,” he said, taking a letter from his inside pocket. “She told me to give this to the nicest girl I could find—and that’s you, with your twinkling eyes and rosy cheeks.”

  Julie smiled and slowly took the extended letter, then skipped off to open it in the privacy of the mission library. She was enchanted by what she read:

  Hello, my new friend,

  I am Amy Pollock and I have blue eyes and brown hair. Next month I will be twelve years old, and I hope I’ll be five feet tall by then. I have a quarter of an inch to go. I wear a size nine dress and a size six shoe, w
hich my mother finds embarrassingly big. Frankly, I like my big feet. They get me up and down the steep hills of San Francisco and shoot me through the water like a frog when I swim. I am in the eighth grade and am studying French. I hate it, but would like to learn Eskimo. My father goes to Alaska often and he has taught me a few words. They are pretty words that sound like bells, but I can’t spell them. Can you? How do you spell the word for “daylight?” Quaq?

  I take dancing lessons, which l love, and I also like to play baseball with the kids that live on our hill. When I grow up I think I’ll be a dancer, but it is an awful lot of work. One of the dancers at the San Francisco Opera House said so, so maybe I’ll be a schoolteacher like my aunt and have the whole summer off.

  Last month at school we saw your island on a television show. It was so beautiful, with the birds flying over it and the flowers blooming on its hills, that I wanted to write to someone who lives there, a girl like me.

  Here is a picture of my house. That is me standing on one foot on the patio wall. Please write soon.

  Your new friend,

  Amy

  P.S. When are you coming to live with us in San Francisco?

  Julie folded the letter and whispered to herself: “Daylight is spelled A-M-Y.”

  The wonders of Mekoryuk dimmed as weekly letters from Amy arrived. Julie learned about television, sports cars, blue jeans, bikinis, hero sandwiches, and wall-to-wall carpeting in the high school Amy would soon be attending. Mekoryuk had no high school. The Eskimo children of the more prosperous families were sent to the mainland for further schooling, something which Aunt Martha could not afford. But, she thought, if she married Daniel, perhaps Naka could send her to school.

  As the winter passed, Martha became irritated with her. She nagged Julie for wearing her hair short, and complained about Judith. “She’s disrespectful of her parents,” she snapped. “And she’s bad.”That’s all she would say except, “The old ways are best.”