Bo at Iditarod Creek

by Kirkpatrick Hill

Graf straightened up and thought for a minute, then he quietly turned and blundered his way across the tailings, trying hard not to make any noise. When he got to the place where the tailings were packed harder, he started to run.

  He ran all the way home and burst into the quiet house. Jack was still asleep.

  Graf shook him by the shoulder, and Jack snorted and coughed, then turned over with a groan. Graf shook him again. Jack opened his eyes and focused, then scowled fiercely. “What’s wrong?”

  “Renzo,” said Graf. “He’s sick.” Jack sat up, puzzled, waiting for the explanation.

  “He’s living in the piano box.”

  “Piano box?”

  “The one Miz Eller’s piano came in.”

  “Where’s it at?” asked Jack, looking a lot smarter now.

  “Way behind the Ellers’. He’s sick. He wouldn’t come with me.”

  “How do you know he’s sick?” asked Jack, pulling on his socks.

  “I just do,” said Graf.

  Jack looked hard at him.

  “Never saw you get anything wrong yet,” he said and began to lace up his boots.

  “We have to bring him here,” said Graf.

  “I figured that’s what you had in mind,” said Jack.

  Jack picked up Graf to save time and carried him to the piano box, half running, Graf telling him which way to go. Graf told him to be quiet when they got near.

  “You think he’s going to run?” asked Jack.

  Graf just bit his lip. He didn’t know.

  Jack took in the dead fire and the pile of spruce twigs. He slid the box front away to look at Renzo still sleeping. Saw his tattered blanket, the parka, the piles of dead grass. Saw a half-empty box of crackers in the corner. When he pulled the blanket away, they could see Renzo’s face in the bright sunlight, dirty and thin.

  Jack bent down and picked him up with one scoop, his skinny legs dangling down, and when Renzo stiffened and cried out, Jack rumbled, “Hush. You’re coming with us.”

  Renzo put his head down and buried his face in Jack’s coat. Graf was feeling better now. Jack was like a big stove.

  Renzo would be warm now.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  BRUISES

  BO WAS BACK from the horse barn, sitting on the front step in the spring sun, eating one of the last biscuits from breakfast. She took one look at Graf and what Jack was carrying, and she darted to open the door for them.

  “Get the bathtub,” Jack ordered. Bo dashed to the back of the house, lifted the tub off its nail, and dragged it into the kitchen. Jack laid Renzo on the couch and waited a moment to see if he would stay put. Jack bobbed his head at Renzo to tell Bo and Graf that they should watch him. Then he filled the long tub with hot water from the stove.

  “Get two big towels from the shelf,” he said, “and wait in your room. Boy might want some privacy.”

  Bo and Graf peeked through their bedroom curtain as Jack put Renzo in the long tub and soaped him from hair to toes, talking gently.

  Bo and Graf couldn’t hear what Jack was saying; they could only hear the low rumble of his voice. Jack lifted Renzo out of the tub and stood him up to dry him. Impossibly thin legs, ribs standing out. He was a rainbow of bruises. Yellow and green and purple everywhere.

  Jack pulled his big flannel shirt off and wrapped it around Renzo. Then he carried him to Arvid’s rumpled bed and pulled up the covers. Renzo closed his eyes again after one wild look at Jack.

  “Go get Carmen,” Jack told Graf.

  Then he told Bo to get Eero and Stig. When they came back with Bo, Jack pulled back the shirt to show them the bruises.

  “Some old ones, some new ones,” said Stig after a minute. “He never got these the usual kid way.”

  “Back and front,” said Jack. “Legs too,” he said, showing them the spindly legs, colored all over.

  “How’d those boys at the mine let his old man get away with this?” Stig asked, his voice tight.

  “Looks like he was too smart to put marks on the kid’s face,” said Eero.

  Renzo kept his eyes closed, his face expressionless and tired.

  “Marshal’s still in town,” Eero said. “I’ll get him.”

  Graf slipped quietly in the door, breathing hard from running. “Carmen says she’ll be right up,” he whispered.

  Jack gave Bo some money. “You and Graf go get some clothes for the kid. Tell Sidney what you need them for; he’ll figure it out.”

  Bo and Graf got back with a bundle Sidney had thrown together—some way too big undershirts and shorts, a pair of wool socks, and a striped miner’s shirt.

  Carmen came. She looked hard at Renzo, his black curls still wet and his face shiny from the soap, and laid her ear on Renzo’s chest. Renzo’s startled eyes snapped open, but he didn’t pull away.

  Carmen looked up at all the faces in the bedroom doorway.

  “Maybe just a bad cold.” Bo didn’t think Carmen sounded very certain. “His lungs don’t sound too bad, not like pneumonia or anything. But mercy, when do you think he ate last?”

  “Crackers,” said Jack. “That’s all he had in the box. Crackers.”

  Carmen nodded at one of Renzo’s skinny arms. “Looks to me like this arm’s been broken.”

  “God almighty,” Jack groaned. “I carried him like that with a broken arm?”

  “No, no,” she soothed him. “Old break, I think. See how it’s sticking out here, like it didn’t knit together right?”

  Bo was sure everyone in the room was thinking the same thing about how Renzo’s arm had been broken.

  Eero and the marshal came, looking stern. And Arvid was right behind them, mouth in a tight line, so Bo knew he’d been told about Renzo.

  When the marshal had looked at Renzo’s bruises and his arm, he asked, “Who did this to you?”

  Renzo looked down at his bruises as if he hadn’t noticed them before. The marshal waited stubbornly, his jaw jutting out to show he wasn’t going to stand for any nonsense. There was a long silence, everyone waiting.

  “I fell down,” said Renzo softly.

  * * *

  WHEN THE MARSHAL was leaving, he told Jack and Eero and Stig that kids who are hurt by their parents usually won’t tell on them.

  “Most pitiful thing you’ll ever see, kid battered, broken bones, say, ‘Oh no, my mom never meant to hurt me. It was an accident.’ Or ‘I’m just clumsy.’” He opened the door. “I’m going out to Willard’s to get his old man now.”

  “Well, if he tries to take the kid, it ain’t going to happen,” said Jack grimly.

  * * *

  LATER, THE MARSHAL came to tell them what he’d found out at Willard Dredge. Arvid shooed Bo and Graf away. “Don’t want the kids to hear this,” he said.

  But Bo and Graf listened anyway.

  The men at the Willard dredge were shocked when the marshal told them about the kid.

  “Donatelli’s been gone for almost a week. He got his last pay for his winter work and just disappeared. They weren’t surprised because they’d been getting on him about the way the boy was neglected. They figured he left the country and took the kid with him. Never dreamed the kid took off on his own. And they never knew the kid was beaten, or they would have done something.”

  The marshal spent two days with Sherwin at the wireless shack sending wires to Bethel and Fairbanks to see if Donatelli had left Iditarod Creek on any of the planes that had landed in the last few weeks. They tracked him to Fairbanks.

  “What I figure is he got worried when the boys at the mine were getting worked up about the way the kid was treated. Cook especially. Bet he’s left the country. Bet he’s on one of them freighters out of Valdez or Seward.”

  “Can you find out if he’s gone?” asked Arvid.

  “Maybe,” said the marshal. “Take some time, and depends on if he’s using his real name. I’ll see what I can see.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  QUIET

  RENZO GOT A LITTLE STRONGER ev
ery day, but Jack kept him in bed most of the time. He borrowed another cot from Hardy’s endless supply and set it up in Bo and Graf’s room, crossways at the foot of Graf’s bed.

  Renzo’s breathing was better, and he didn’t cough so much.

  But he slept a lot. Every time he woke up, Jack would bring him something to eat, and every day Renzo ate more than he had the time before.

  A few boys from the Willard dredge visited, joked with him, brought him things—a new pocket knife that made him smile, a harmonica. Nita came too, softly talking to him in Yup’ik.

  But still Renzo was quiet, didn’t say much except to Bo and Graf when they were alone. It was worrisome how removed he was.

  And he would go poker-faced sometimes, especially if one of the boys said something kindly meant. He just didn’t seem to know how to handle a thing like that.

  “Way I figure it,” Jack told the boys, “is he’s afraid he’s going to cry. You know how it is, you’re feeling miserable, but you got it in hand, you’re holding up. Then someone says a kind word, and you lose it. Worst thing in the world when you’re troubled, sympathy.”

  Everyone nodded. They all knew how that was.

  Arvid sent away for jackets and boots and socks, shirts, Levi’s, and underwear. When they came on the mail plane, Jack organized Renzo’s clothes—new jacket and three pairs of jeans on the hooks, a sweater, two shirts, underwear, and socks neatly folded on the shelf over Renzo’s cot. Then he patted the stacks of new clothes with satisfaction.

  “That’s better,” Jack said. “You can get dressed and go outside some now. Not for very long. And you got to wear this wool sweater or the jacket and a hat. Not summer yet, and there’s not enough meat on your bones to keep you warm.”

  * * *

  “I NEVER HAD but two pairs of pants in my life,” Renzo told Bo that night. “Didn’t know you could have more.”

  “When we got Graf, he only had one pair,” Bo remembered. “And me, I only had one diaper!”

  “Your pa’s big on clothes, ain’t he?” Renzo said.

  “It’s just he wants everyone to be clean,” she said. “Sometimes he’ll make me change in the middle of the day.” She made her voice go all Southern and slurry and put her hands on her hips the way Jack did. “Child, get out of that sorry mess and change your pants! I think you attracts dirt like honey brings flies!”

  Renzo barked his first laugh since he’d been with them.

  “Well, he made me take off my shirt so he could sew a button on,” he told her, looking amazed.

  Bo was sure that it had been a long time since anyone had ever bothered about Renzo’s buttons or whether his clothes were clean.

  * * *

  AFTER THEY’D FINISHED lunch one day, Jack got up and put on his work gloves. Time to split wood.

  Renzo looked up at him and said quietly, “I could do the wood now.”

  Jack looked startled. He circled his chin with his thumb and forefinger while he thought, looking at Renzo with narrowed eyes.

  Then he said, “You look pretty skookum now. I’d say that’s an offer I can’t refuse.” Jack tossed him the gloves, and Renzo’s face lit up.

  After Renzo went out the door, Bo and Arvid and Graf looked at Jack reproachfully.

  “Way I figure,” said Jack, “he don’t like to feel useless. If we let him work like the rest of us, he’ll feel more at home.”

  It seemed to be the right thing to do. When Bo and Graf went to bring the split wood in to the wood box, they could see Renzo was happy to be working, his ax high on every upstroke. It didn’t seem to tire him at all.

  When the marshal wired news about Renzo’s father, Jack and Arvid told him at the dinner table.

  “Marshal says your father left Alaska last month, boat out of Seward,” Arvid said. “I’d say he’s not coming back. What do you think?”

  Renzo just looked solemn and shook his head. He didn’t know.

  “Did he tell you he was leaving?”

  “I could tell.”

  “You went to the piano box before he left?”

  Renzo gave a short nod, yes.

  “Why’d you take off like that?”

  Renzo stared at Arvid. Then he said, “I didn’t want to go with him.”

  “I guess not,” said Jack, looking dangerous.

  * * *

  ARVID AND JACK eased Renzo into the bunch that came in the morning for school.

  Eero started him on the alphabet, and soon everyone was helping him with his reading and arithmetic. He was like Graf—he’d learned to read labels and signs early. It wouldn’t take much to teach him the rest.

  Renzo was clearly astounded at the talk around the table. He would look from face to face, searching, not sure how to take the jokes and teasing and complaints.

  At night, after they were in bed, Bo and Graf and Renzo whispered until one of the papas bellowed at them to go to sleep.

  “Don’t want to be dragging you three out of bed in the morning!” Arvid said.

  Bo told him her story and then she told Graf’s story, and she told him so much about all the people in Ballard that he said wistfully, “I wish I could see them.”

  But he never told them his story.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  ANOTHER BOY

  ONE NIGHT JACK was going off to the hotel to fix the draft on Hardy’s big woodstove.

  Bo handed Jack his work gloves, and Jack stuffed them in his pocket. Then he looked straight at Arvid with his two-dimple smile.

  “Well?” he said.

  Arvid didn’t ask “Well what?” He raked his thick fingers through the straight yellow hair over his forehead, all the way to the back where his bald spot was growing, and looked fierce.

  “Soon as I saw him, I knew he was going to be number three,” Arvid growled. “Hell, I think I knew it first time the kids talked about him. Got a sixth sense about it after these first two we picked up.”

  Bo beamed. They were talking about Renzo!

  Jack put his big hand on Bo’s head. “And you be quiet,” he said. “Let me and Arvid handle this, you hear? Can’t come straight at Renzo with anything. Got to go at it sideways.”

  Bo nodded happily.

  Jack and Arvid both burst into huge rollicking laughs at the same time. “Three kids,” muttered Arvid. “Three.”

  “Don’t you say an ever-lovin’ word,” Jack warned Bo.

  * * *

  THE NEXT MORNING at breakfast, before Arvid went off to do his welding, Jack puttered around the kitchen as usual, humming. Bo and Graf and Renzo were already eating, and Arvid was putting wood in the stove.

  Jack put a plate of bacon on the table and said, casually as could be, “Bo? What do you reckon we should do with Renzo, here?”

  Bo looked shocked, and so did Graf and Renzo. But she didn’t miss a beat.

  “He has to stay with us, Papa. We have to keep him. You know that.”

  “Just what me and the Swede was saying,” said Jack. “What’ve you got to say, Graf?”

  “I’m the one who found him,” said Graf, crabby, illogically.

  Renzo stood up so suddenly he knocked the chair over. Then he just slipped out the back door and disappeared.

  Bo and Graf were worried.

  “He didn’t even have his boots on,” Bo fretted.

  But Jack told them, “Leave him be. He’ll be back. You know he’s not good with feelings.”

  * * *

  RENZO CAME BACK at suppertime, slipping in the back door as quietly as he’d left. Jack and Arvid were finishing off a big pot of beans and cornbread, and Bo and Graf were just starting the dishes.

  Arvid got up, took Renzo’s plate of food out of the warming oven, and set it on the table. Renzo sat down looking a little shamefaced. But he picked up his fork and started on the food, hardly taking a breath between bites.

  “Well, now that you’ve taken a vacation and thought it over, I take it that you came back to say yes,” said Arvid, laughing.

 
Renzo studied the beans and cornbread on his plate, and then he looked up at them for a second, gave a short manly nod, and began eating again.

  Bo and Graf and the papas smiled at one another, their eyes happy.

  “Our family just got bigger,” said Arvid, as if he was talking about the weather.

  “True, true,” said Jack just as calmly. “Got ourself another boy.”

  They knew better than to make a big fuss. If there was anything Renzo could not deal with, it was fuss. They’d learned that much.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  BACK TO WORK

  THE ICE WAS MELTING off the dredge ponds, and the mining season was about to start up again. All the men who had gone Outside to spend their money and see their families came back.

  They told about the hard times they’d seen Outside. That was called the Depression. Everywhere people had no jobs, and in the cities, people stood in lines to get something to eat at the soup kitchens.

  “I tell you boys,” Zeke said, “we’re lucky to have jobs.” They all agreed with him. Even if they wished they didn’t have to work around the noisy dredge, they would keep on because some of them had family out of work. They had to send money.

  Still, they had wonderful stories to tell about the world out there: the new music they’d heard, the movies called talkies they’d been to, the flying demonstrations, barnstormers with an idiot riding on the wings, the plane that went around the world in eight days. The World Series. Babe Ruth. Will Rogers.

  They brought Bo and Graf presents—jigsaw puzzles, jump ropes, jacks, and new records. “Keep Your Sunny Side Up!” “If You Knew Susie.” Bo played her favorite—“Ain’t We Got Fun?”—so many times Arvid begged for mercy. “Not again,” he’d groan, so Bo only played it when he was not in the house.

  Best of all was Cracker Jack. Delicious popcorn with caramel and peanuts. There were surprises in the box—tin whistles and little cars and all sorts of things. Bo and Graf wanted to open all the boxes of Cracker Jack at once to get the prizes right away, but Arvid said not to be greedy, and he put them up on the high shelf to dole out one at a time.