Gloria stepped down from the chair. “Fixed that—easy peasy when you know what you’re doing.” She turned to look at the rest of the Johnsons’ tent and ran a finger over the linen tablecloth on the rough-hewn table that the CCC made for every tent. “Pretty snazzy!” she said. “No way my mother would wash and iron a tablecloth. We use a wipe-down oilcloth on our table.” She picked up a fork and squinted at the back. “Sterling silver! You guys must have been rich. How did you get into the program?”
Before Terpsichore could answer, Pop burst into the tent, followed by Cally and Polly, Mother and Matthew. “Is everyone all right?”
“Mom was baking a cake!” Cally said.
“The tent almost burned down!” Polly said.
“We almost died of smoke inhalation with that infernal woodstove,” Mother said. “I wish we could have brought my Hotpoint electric range. Oh, but I forgot.” She blew her bangs out of her eyes. “Here in the Alaska wilderness there’s no electricity.” She stomped out of the tent.
Pop followed and stood outside beside Mother to address the crowd that had just gathered, all poised to fight a fire. “Just smoke,” he said. “And the only casualty was a cake.”
Terpsichore heard laughter from the crowd.
“Anyway, we don’t need your water, but it makes me proud to know I have so many neighbors who are ready to help.”
Terpsichore peeked outside to see Pop wave to the Wilcox family, who had shared their tent the first two nights. She saw Mendel and his folks too. They had all brought buckets of water.
Terpsichore heard someone say, “Hey, are those the twins who sang in church last week?”
As Terpsichore scraped the charred remains of the cake into the trash can, she could imagine how tickled the twins were at being recognized.
Gloria stepped away from the tent opening, where she had been listening to the gossip too. “I see Mom and Dad in the crowd, but before I go I’ll get you started on using a woodstove so you can make something that bakes fast, like biscuits, to make up for the lost cake.”
“Good idea,” Terpsichore said. “It would be great to learn from an expert!”
Together the girls measured flour into a bowl, sprinkled in a dash of salt, cut in shortening, mixed dry milk powder with water, and lightly kneaded the dough. They rolled out the dough on the breadboard, and cut out the biscuits.
Gloria peeked in the firebox and the oven. “The oven has cooled off some but it won’t take long to get it revved up again.” She fed a few sticks of wood into the firebox.
“How can you tell when it’s hot enough?” Terpsichore asked.
“After you’ve used a woodstove for a while, you just know, like you know how much milk to add to your biscuits—it just feels right.”
Gloria stood again on the chair. “Here’s how you adjust the heat. You start with the damper wide open, that’s handle facing up the smokestack, so the fire gets lots of air, then adjust down about halfway once it gets going. Not too far down, though. You do have to let the smoke escape, as your mother found out today.” She laughed as she stepped off the chair.
Terpsichore felt disloyal about laughing at her mother, but Gloria’s laughter was contagious. “She sure did! But although Mother doesn’t know how to use a woodstove yet, she won the senior piano prize in her last year at St. Olaf College.”
“Wow! So where’s her piano?” Gloria asked.
“She sold it for food,” Terpsichore said. “When the lumber mill closed down and Pop lost his bookkeeping job, we were just as poor as everyone else.”
“So I guess up here, we all start out equal,” Gloria said. “Same woodstove, same tent, same forty acres. Do you think we would have been friends if we lived in the same small town down below?”
“I think we’d be friends anywhere,” Terpsichore said.
“Me too.”
Bing! At the sound of the timer, the girls jumped and Terpsichore opened the oven to golden brown biscuits.
“You’re a natural!” Gloria started to take off a biscuit to sample, but dropped it back on the cookie sheet and sucked her burned fingers.
“Here’s a spatula,” Terpsichore said. Together, the girls arranged the biscuits on two plates and carried them outside, where folks were still gathered.
“Nothing like a little fire scare to get to know your neighbors,” Pop was saying.
Mother looked flustered. It was not the way she would have wanted to be introduced to Palmer society. But Terpsichore smiled at everyone. Perhaps now they would remember her as the girl who baked perfect biscuits.
CHAPTER 15
A Visit to a Place of Their Own
AFTER CHURCH SERVICES IN THE COMMUNITY CENTER, Pop took off his tie and slipped behind the sheet dividing Mother and Pop’s part of the tent from the children’s cots. He emerged in overalls. “The sun shines, kiddles! Get into your dungarees and get ready for a picnic on our own farm.”
Terpsichore, Cally, and Polly pulled out the boxes under their cots to retrieve their dungarees and long-sleeved shirts. Once they had wriggled out of their dresses and into play clothes, they were ready for an adventure.
Mother hadn’t bought pants yet, but she did change into her oldest cotton dress. While Matthew stood in his makeshift crib, banging on the sides to be let out, Mother made sandwiches, wrapped them in newspaper, and slipped them in a tote bag. She tied on her straw hat draped in mosquito netting, a hat she’d dubbed her “Matanuska veil.” She scooped Matthew up in one hand and the sack of supplies in the other. “I’m ready, Harald.”
“We’re ready too,” the twins chorused as they tied the chinstraps on their own netting-shrouded hats. Terpsichore followed suit. They all burst out of the cocoon of their tent to see where their new home would be built.
Pop took Matthew from Mother and lifted him up on his shoulders. As they headed out of the tent city, Terpsichore breathed in the scent of spicy spruce and wild roses. Wherever there was a clearing, spiky lupine, seas of bluebells, and purple fireweed bloomed. Even the mosquitoes were on good behavior, resting as the day warmed. For the first time since they left Wisconsin, Mother hummed.
After following the railroad tracks south for half a mile, they cut east on a new dirt road Pop had helped build. At the third survey stake, they turned off the dirt road to a stump-spotted trail.
Mother tripped over a sun-hardened mud rut. “This is a road?”
“It’s just the first stage,” Pop said. “The tractors and teams of horses will be in next week to pull stumps and level it out.”
“Humph!” was all Mother said. She wasn’t humming anymore.
After half an hour, they were still walking.
“Are we there yet?” That was Cally.
“I thought you said it was close to town,” Mother said. “We must have walked two miles already.”
“We’re almost there,” Pop said. “And our lot is closer than the ones that are twelve miles out by the Butte, or out by the lakes west of town.”
“Caw! Caw!” The deep-throated, raspy call echoed from the top of a spruce tree. The raven sounded as unhappy about the human invasion of his forest as Mother sounded about being there.
Terpsichore raced ahead to find lot seventy-seven. How blissful to see the sun! How blissful to run without shoes pulling off in the mud! At each stake, two or three town-blocks apart, she checked the numbers. Seventy-one, seventy-three—seventy-seven! She waved back at the rest of the family. “I found it!”
Mother looked at the solid stand of timber. “So where does the house go, Mr. Johnson? I don’t see enough cleared land for our tent, let alone a house and barn.”
She turned to look along the land cleared for the road, where she had a sliver of a view of the Chugach Mountains. “At least when land is cleared we’ll get to see the mountains.” She pointed toward a prominent peak south of Palmer. “That,” she s
aid, “that is what I want to see outside my kitchen window. Does it have a name?”
“If it does, I don’t know it,” he said. “Maybe I’ll name it after you. We’ll call it Clio’s Peak.”
For a moment, as she squinted toward Clio’s Peak, Mother smiled.
However, a scowl returned when a squadron of mosquitoes swarmed out of hiding. With a white-gloved hand, Mother reached up past Pop’s shoulders to bat at the ones buzzing around the netting draped over Matthew’s baby-sized baseball cap. “Bad mosquitoes,” she said.
“Bad ’toes,” Matthew said. “Bad ’toes bite!”
“We’ll have a great view of the mountains after our turn with the sawyers and bulldozers,” Pop said. “And we can face our tent right at those Chugach Mountains if that’s what you want.”
“And then we get our own horse?” Cally and Polly’s words stumbled over each other’s in their rush to be the first to ask.
“That’s the plan,” Pop said.
Mother raised her eyebrows. She didn’t need words to say what she thought of the planning process in Palmer.
Pop turned to Terpsichore, who gazed back toward town instead of investigating their land. “Aren’t you excited about getting our garden planted?”
“I am,” Terpsichore said. “But I hope Gloria won’t be too far away. We’ll be so spread out when we all move out of the main camp.”
“Once we get that horse and wagon,” Pop said, “it will be easy to trot into town for errands and visits. You can see your friends then. And of course you’ll see them at school.”
“Whenever we’re not buried in snowdrifts,” Mother said. She scratched another mosquito bite on her leg. “Terpsichore, is it true that even some of the teachers wear trousers?”
“It is,” Terpsichore said.
“Our teacher too,” said Cally and Polly.
“Mr. Johnson, I can’t believe I am saying this, but if I’m to survive this summer, I will need to order a pair of trousers,” Mother said.
CHAPTER 16
Summer Plans
ON THE NEXT TO LAST DAY OF SCHOOL, ALL THE OLD notices on the bulletin board in the entry hall were replaced by a new notice and sign-up sheets:
Have Fun This Summer!
Boys’ Baseball
Girls’ Baseball
Boys’ Basketball
Girls’ Basketball
4-H—Animal Husbandry
4-H—Domestic Arts
4-H—Agricultural Science
Mixed Chorus
Band
At lunch break, students clustered around the bulletin board, signing up with their names and plot numbers. Gloria signed up for mixed chorus and tried to convince Terpsichore to sign up too, so they could do something together.
“It’s my sisters who can sing,” Terpsichore said. “But maybe the agricultural science group would be fun.”
“You’re kidding! You’d be in with a bunch of boys in overalls who want to see who can grow the biggest rutabagas.”
“My dad and I had a good garden in Wisconsin,” Terpsichore said.
“It would be fun to do something together, too,” Gloria said. “Do you play basketball?”
“Do I look like I do? Ever heard of a four-foot, six-inch basketball player?” Terpsichore asked. “It would be nice to be on a committee that does something useful. What this town really needs is a library.”
“I like to read too, but I don’t think you’ll get much support to build a library when folks are still living in tents,” Gloria said.
“We don’t need a building for a library,” Terpsichore said. “We need books.” She chewed on the inside of her lower lip as she thought. Just before the bell rang to go back to class, Terpsichore went back to her desk and carefully tore out the last page of her lined tablet. With Gloria hovering over her shoulder, she printed a heading and held it up for Gloria to read.
“Perfect!” Gloria said. “Let’s pin it up!”
While Terpsichore held her sign-up sheet up near the bottom of the board, Gloria tacked it into place. They both stood back to admire their work, and then signed their names and plot numbers:
Terpsichore Johnson, #77
Gloria LeClerc, #101
They had just started an official Library Society.
By the end of the last day of school, there was one other name on the sign-up sheet:
Mendel Theodore Peterson, #91
It didn’t register with Terpsichore that Mendel wasn’t going to be moving twelve miles out of town near the rocky knoll everyone called the Butte. He had listed space number ninety-one—which was, as the raven flew, only five plots away from space seventy-seven.
CHAPTER 17
The Library Society Meets
ON SUNDAY AFTER CHURCH, TERPSICHORE, GLORIA, AND Mendel sat on folding chairs around a card table set up in the corner of the community center farthest from the isolation ward that had been set up for sick children behind a canvas wall.
“Burned any cakes lately?” Mendel asked.
“That was Mother, not me,” Terpsichore answered. “Now that Gloria showed me how the damper works, I can bake a perfect cake. And perfect muffins and cornbread too. But let’s get to library business.
“Since I’ve volunteered in both the public library and the school library back in Wisconsin, I should be the chairman of the society and one of you could be secretary and one of you could be the treasurer.”
“Just a minute,” said Mendel. “We have to vote. Besides, a girl can’t be chairman. I nominate myself.”
“Boys aren’t men either. And you can’t nominate yourself; someone else has to nominate you.”
Mendel and Terpsichore glared at each other. “I’m certainly not going to nominate an annoying know-it-all!” Terpsichore said.
“And I’m not going to nominate a bossy girl!” Mendel said.
“Another reason,” said Terpsichore, “you can’t be chairperson; it has to be someone close to town, where we’ll set up the library. You’re clear out at the Butte.”
“Not anymore,” Mendel said. “We swapped with a family who wanted to be close to their old friends from Michigan who had plots at the Butte. We’re right by the river now, on space ninety-one. We’re closer to town than you are.”
Terpsichore looked for sympathy from Gloria. She got it.
“I’m not sure this is proper parliamentary procedure either,” Gloria said. “But why don’t we say we’re all candidates and vote?”
“Good idea,” said Mendel as he tore strips of paper from his tablet and passed them out. He took his newsboy cap from his lap and placed it on the table. “Put your votes in here.”
Terpsichore cupped her hand around her ballot while she deliberated. It might not be polite to vote for yourself, but if you were obviously the most qualified and if the whole committee was your idea, you should be the head of it. She bent over her ballot and wrote “Terpsichore Johnson” and placed it in Mendel’s hat. Mendel and Gloria added their votes.
Gloria reached in and unfolded the first ballot. “One vote for Mendel Peterson.” She held it up for inspection.
Terpsichore looked at the precise printing on the ballot. Mendel’s for sure. He had voted for himself too.
Gloria passed the hat for Terpsichore to draw out the next ballot. “Gloria LeClerc,” she read. From the bitty circle dotting the i that was Gloria’s vote.
Terpsichore passed the hat back to Mendel. “Trip Johnson,” he read.
“I didn’t write Trip, I wrote—”
“Ha! I knew it!” Mendel bounced in his chair, pointing at Terpsichore and showing off his full set of braces. “You voted for yourself.”
“You did too,” Terpsichore said.
Gloria rapped her pencil again for order. “We all did, and we’re getting nowhere. Let’s think about who will
do the best job of leading the committee.”
“I have money-making ideas, and you can’t have a library without money,” said Mendel.
“I’ve actually worked in two kinds of libraries,” said Terpsichore.
“And I can keep you two from wasting all our time by arguing,” Gloria said.
In a second round of voting, Mendel still voted for himself, and Terpsichore and Gloria voted for each other.
A third round of voting. This time there were three votes for Gloria. She stood and curtseyed. “As your new chairperson, I’d like to suggest that since Mendel has money-making ideas, he should be treasurer, and since Terpsichore knows about how a library works, she should be our operations manager.”
Terpsichore nodded. Operations manager sounded almost as good as chairperson. Mendel shrugged. Treasurer would do.
“Operations Manager, what should be our first priority?” Gloria said.
“Just a minute,” Mendel said. “I think our first priority should be to choose a name. ‘Library Society’ sounds like a bunch of snooty tea-sippers.”
“You might not like the name, but at least I had the idea of taking action to start a library,” Terpsichore said. “So what’s your great idea?”
“Actually,” Mendel said, “you just gave me an idea when you said you took action. How about the Library Action Committee?”
“Library Action Committee,” said Terpsichore, trying out the words. The name did sound stronger. “I like it,” she said.
“I like it too,” Gloria said. “It’s unanimous?”
Mendel and Terpsichore nodded.
“Okay, then. Back to the operations manager. How should we start?” Gloria said.
Terpsichore had already thought about it. “Even without money to work with, we could start Saturday story hours, like we used to have back in Little Bear Lake.”
Gloria bounced in her seat. “I was in drama club, so I’d be good at that.”
Terpsichore sighed. She’d been hoping to do the story hours herself. “My teacher used to let me read picture books to the first-graders when they came in to the library.”
Sweet Home Alaska Page 7