Sweet Home Alaska

by Carole Estby Dagg

Terpsichore thought about last year, when she’d helped her school librarian. She loved the feel of the wooden pen with the metal nib as she dipped it into the darkest of dark india ink. She loved the smell of library paste, the satisfying thump of a date-due stamp onto the ink pad, and the look of the date on an official date-due card.

  Mendel slid the catalog back. “All this fancy-schmancy library stuff? I don’t give a tinker’s dam—”

  “Don’t swear!”

  “D-a-m, not d-a-m-n. Tinker’s dam isn’t swearing. A tinker used to use a temporary ridge of clay to help patch a hole in a pan or teakettle or whatever he was soldering back together to keep the solder where it was needed. When he was through, he scraped off the dam and it was useless. When I say something isn’t worth a tinker’s dam, I’m saying it isn’t worth diddly.”

  “You—you insufferable pedant! I don’t care about the origin of tinker’s dam. It still sounds like swearing, and supplies aren’t diddly!” Terpsichore scooped up her catalog and held it protectively against her chest.

  “I joined this committee to get stuff to read, not to buy stampers and india ink so you can play library lady.”

  The meeting of the Library Action Committee was adjourned at 11:57, but before doing so they voted, two to one, that subscriptions would be ordered for Scientific American and Modern Screen, and approved the expenditure of one dollar for stamps, stationery, and envelopes for the operations manager’s plan to solicit donations.

  CHAPTER 20

  Little Tent in the Big Woods

  MANY FAMILIES HAD ALREADY MOVED TO THEIR PLOTS and now it was the Johnsons’ turn.

  A green army truck with half a dozen men riding in the back and a Caterpillar tractor pulling a flatbed wagon bumped and grumbled down the half-empty row F and stopped in front of the Johnsons’ tent.

  “They’re here, Mother!” Cally and Polly slipped through the tent flap and tugged on Mother’s skirt. “They’re here!”

  As the movers jumped off the back of the truck, the team leader called out, “Let’s move it!” Pop took his place with the crew circling the tent. With one heave, the tent rose on its wooden platform and slid onto the back of the flatbed wagon.

  Terpsichore helped load all her mint and vegetable starts onto the flatbed along with the tent.

  When it was time to go, Mother and Matthew got in front with the driver of the truck, and Pop, Terpsichore, and the twins crowded into the open back.

  The truck had just rumbled to a start when Terpsichore stood, gripping the side of the truck bed so hard her fingers were white. “Where’s Tigger? Oh my gosh, I haven’t seen her all morning! I have to find her!” She swung one leg over the side of the truck to jump off, but Pop pulled her down to sit.

  “Terpsichore, we have to leave now. The crew has other families to move today, and I’m sorry but they can’t wait on a cat.”

  “Tigger came all the way from Wisconsin to be with us. I can’t leave her! How will she find us?” She pictured Tigger coming back from her morning hunt for breakfast and finding an empty tent site. She’d howl mournfully and wonder why Terpsichore had abandoned her.

  “Cats and dogs are good about finding their people, and Tigger is a smart cat,” Pop said. “And if she hasn’t found us by tomorrow, we can come back and look for her.”

  Terpsichore’s mouth trembled and her eyes blurred with tears. “Tigger trusts me. I told her I would never leave her and now I’m leaving!”

  Pop scooped Terpsichore into his lap. “I promise I’ll help you look for her, but we have to go.”

  Mother looked through the window of the back of the cab and motioned for Terpsichore to sit next to her, but Terpsichore shook her head.

  “We’ll help you look for her too,” said Cally, patting Terpsichore’s shoulder.

  “Yes, we promise,” said Polly, patting the other shoulder.

  The sympathy just made Terpsichore cry louder.

  • • •

  At the Johnsons’ lot, another crew was finishing clearing an acre for the tent and chore yard. Each time a fifty-foot tree fell and shook the ground, Cally and Polly clapped and yelled “Tim-berrr!” At first, Matthew howled and hid his face in Mother’s shoulder, but Cally and Polly’s enthusiasm was catching. Soon Matthew clapped and cheered along with the twins.

  Mother pulled Terpsichore to her with the arm that wasn’t holding Matthew. “Tigger would be terrified to be around all this noise and commotion,” she said. “If we had brought her with us, she probably would have run off to hide.”

  “But at least she would know where we’re going to live now,” Terpsichore said. But Mother was probably right. Saws scraped and screeched as they removed limbs from each tree. Roaring Caterpillar tractors pulled logs to trucks headed to the sawmill to be squared off on three sides.

  Laura Ingalls’ father would have had to work weeks with his hand tools to do what the CCC crews could do in a day!

  When there was enough land cleared for a barn, a house, and all the outbuildings, Pop helped the crew slide the tent off the flatbed truck to its new location.

  Before leaving, the CCC dug the Johnsons a pit for their very own outhouse. Terpsichore held boards steady while Pop sawed and nailed. Most folks cut a crescent moon into an outhouse door for light and ventilation. Father cut out a J, for Johnson. Terpsichore still didn’t like outhouses, but at least now they didn’t have to share.

  Terpsichore was happy for the long hours of sunlight. Before going to bed, she found a trowel and the mint plants she’d potted in nail kegs. She divided the clumps of mint and planted some along the road in front of the tent and some by each turning between the main camp and lot seventy-seven. Tigger had a good nose. She hoped the mint would help her find her way to her new home.

  CHAPTER 21

  A Farm of Their Own

  FIRST THING IN THE MORNING, POP AND TERPSICHORE hitched a ride with one of the moving crews back to the tent camp. They called until they were hoarse, but no Tigger.

  While they were in town Pop picked up their allotment of Orpington and Sussex hens and some lumber to build a coop. They found someone driving toward lot seventy-seven and piled the lumber and their crates of chickens in the pickup bed and rode home with their load.

  While Cally, Polly, and Terpsichore took turns holding the boards steady, Pop sawed and nailed. It was a fine coop, with double-sided walls insulated with straw. When Pop showed off the coop to Mother, he said, “If we don’t get our house built before winter we could always live here with the chickens.”

  She stomped off back toward the tent, yelling back over her shoulder, “You’d better be in jest, Mr. Johnson!”

  Next, Terpsichore finished clearing roots and stones from a patch of ground next to the tent. She raked the ground smooth, and used a hoe to mark furrows for her vegetable starts. This first garden wouldn’t be big by Alaska standards, but it was just as big as the garden she and Pop had in Wisconsin.

  Mother came out of the tent holding Matthew’s hand.

  “Dig!” Matthew said. “Matty dig too!”

  “Okay, you can dig too.” Terpsichore gave him a little trowel and set him down several feet away from the ground she’d prepared for the garden. Mother helped her erect tripods out of scrap lumber on either side of the tent door.

  “I love pole beans,” Mother said as she reached up with twine to bring three poles together at the top. “Their flowers are as pretty as sweet peas. In a couple months they’ll be almost as pretty as the roses by our old house.”

  She sighed and bustled away to check on Matthew, who had unearthed a pile of small stones that he was lining up in a row. “Mama!” he said. “Choo-choo! Go fast!”

  Terpsichore smiled to hear Mother laugh, even though her heart was still heavy with worrying about Tigger.

  “Your rock train won’t go very fast,” Mother said, “but maybe your father can
make you a train that can.”

  • • •

  Two days later came the day Cally and Polly and many of the colonists had been waiting for. The horses were arriving at the train station! The twins hopped from one foot to the other and took turns holding the ticket for a horse.

  The ground began to vibrate and the train whistle sounded. With squealing brakes and clouds of steam, the engine slowed and stopped beside the platform. Terpsichore coughed at the bits of coal dust in the air. She hadn’t wanted to come. She had wanted to stay by the tent in case Tigger came home.

  From inside the cars came the sounds of shuffling hooves and anxious neighs. Railway workers heaved open the sliding boxcar doors, and one by one, they led horses down a ramp to the loading platform. Some horses skittered and balked at the ramp, others meekly stepped down.

  “Which horse is ours?” Polly asked. The twins continued to hop from one foot to the other.

  Cally and Polly already had a name picked out: Smoky, after the book Smoky the Cowhorse. Terpsichore couldn’t count the number of times she had read it to them. The twins were determined to find a horse that fit the name. They saw black horses, chestnut horses, white horses.

  Cally grabbed Polly’s arm. “See him?” She pointed to a horse that was mousy gray with wisps and speckles of lighter gray across the back and flanks that looked like drifting smoke. His legs were darker gray, and he had a perfect white blaze down the center of his face.

  “Smoky! Here I am!” Cally waved. Polly waved too.

  Someone else grabbed his halter and started to lead him away, but Cally bolted from the platform. “Smoky, it’s me!”

  Polly and Pop sprinted after her, but Cally was already doing her own negotiation.

  “This horse’s name is Smoky. And I know I was meant to have him. Here, Smoky.” She held out a half-grown carrot she had pulled from Terpsichore’s garden.

  The horse nickered, and with soft lips took it from Cally’s hand.

  Cally’s eyes were wide, and she almost forgot to breathe.

  “Looks like this horse is yours, all right,” the man said. “I’ll go pick another horse. Doesn’t matter to me which one it is, as long as it can pull a plow.”

  “He’s big,” Polly said when she caught up with Cally. “Look at his feet! They’re as big as dinner plates.”

  “I was almost afraid of him,” Cally said, “but I read all the books at the Little Bear Creek Library about horses, and I knew Percherons were gentle.”

  “Can we ride him home?” Polly asked.

  “He’s big enough to carry all three of you girls, but let’s let him get used to us first,” Pop said.

  Leading Smoky, the Johnsons trooped home. Cally and Polly were happy to have the horse they’d always wanted. Pop was happy that they had a horse so they could enlarge the garden. Mother was happy that they had a horse that could pull a wagon with all the Johnsons in it back and forth to town.

  Terpsichore trailed farther and farther behind. How could she be happy without Tigger? As she passed each clump of mint marking the way to the Johnsons’ new home, she called out “Tigger, Tigger!”

  Finally, near the last clump of mint, a furry, orange-striped bundle bounded out of the woods and leaped to Terpsichore’s shoulders, nearly knocking her over.

  “Tigger! Tigger found me!” Terpsichore yelled. She trotted to catch up with the rest of the family as Tigger dug her claws into Terpsichore’s sweater to avoid being bounced off.

  Now all the Johnsons, including Smoky and Tigger, were home.

  CHAPTER 22

  Our Children Are Dying

  MOTHER RETURNED FROM TOWN ONE DAY WITH NEWS that several of the children who hadn’t yet moved out of the tent city were sick. Measles and scarlet fever were spreading easily from tent to tent.

  On July 7th, Ingrid Soderlund died of scarlet fever. Oscar Eckert died on July 9th.

  On the day of the funerals, the community center was packed elbow to elbow, but since the twins were singing, the Johnsons sat up front alongside the Soderlunds and Eckerts. The CCC workers had made caskets of red fir, scaled down for a four-year-old and an infant. Terpsichore breathed in the scent of candles and the wild roses surrounding the coffins. She tried not to think of the bodies inside, but there they were: two dead bodies just ten feet in front of her.

  After the homily, Pastor Bingle boosted Cally and Polly to a bench just in front of the coffins. They squeezed hands and began to sing “Jesus Loves Me.” Their pure voices wafted over the heads of the gathered colonists. As they sang the last two verses, the two verses the little kids usually didn’t sing in Sunday school, Terpsichore could imagine Jesus hovering over the bodies, ready to carry them away to heaven.

  Jesus loves me! Loves me still, though I’m very weak and ill;

  From His shining throne on high comes to watch me where I lie.

  Jesus loves me! He will stay close beside me all the way;

  If I love Him, when I die He will take me home on high.

  • • •

  After the service, Ingrid’s and Oscar’s parents hugged Cally and Polly. “Thank you. It was perfect.” They were too upset to say more.

  Other adults, still dabbing handkerchiefs at noses and eyes, had the twins floating on praise. Mother kept a hand on Cally’s and Polly’s shoulders to make sure everyone knew the singing twins were her daughters.

  “You little dears!” one grown-up said.

  “It was just like listening to angels,” another said.

  One stranger noticed Terpsichore standing close to her mother. “You must be very proud of your sisters.”

  Terpsichore knew she was expected to be proud, so she smiled and nodded.

  On the way to their wagon, the twins held hands and pranced through the rain, perky with all the praise for their singing. Mother kept pace with them and Pop carried Matthew, holding his hat as an umbrella for him.

  Terpsichore lagged behind, walking at a somber pace suitable for leaving a funeral, but as the rain increased from a mist to a serious downpour, she had an excuse to run. She passed the rest of the family, gradually increasing the distance between herself, her parents, and the twins. After the smoking stove, she had hoped that she would be known as Terpsichore, champion biscuit maker. She was still just the unmusical Johnson.

  • • •

  Back at lot seventy-seven, Pop shook out his coat, leaving a puddle by the tent opening. Terpsichore wrinkled her nose at the smell of the coal fire in the stove, wet diapers, and gray-green mold that bloomed in patches along the tent seams that never quite dried between sessions of rain. She shrugged off her wet coat and hung it on a nail.

  Pop handed Matthew back to Mother, who worked his flailing arms out of his coat and placed him in his crib. Terpsichore shuddered. The packing box crib looked too much like another coffin.

  Mother must have thought the same thing. “What if it was Matthew or one of the girls in those coffins? Counting the little girl who died of measles last month, that’s three children dead now.”

  Terpsichore thought about what would happen if she died of scarlet fever or measles. There’d be a Terpsichore-sized coffin balanced on two sawhorses. The twins would sing again, of course. Maybe they would cry a little as they sang. Instead of being sorry Terpsichore was dead, the congregation would be sorry the singing twins had lost their sister.

  Mother took down a brown bottle of cod liver oil from a shelf and shook it in Pop’s face. “Our babies are dying and what does the colony administration do? Ship up a boxcar full of cod liver oil! What we need is a doctor, and a hospital, and I don’t see any signs of getting them. We have to take the children home on the next ship out of Alaska.”

  At the words cod liver oil, Terpsichore’s throat contracted and her stomach lurched. Just the rotten fish smell was enough to make you gag, but then there was also the slimy, sludgy textu
re. It was like swallowing slugs.

  Pop reached toward the cod liver oil bottle to put it back, but Mother banged it back on the shelf herself. “This colony was President Roosevelt’s idea.” Mother hissed the words. “Well, it’s nice for the six hundred CCC men who are getting paid to work here, but not so nice for a thousand people who are suffering because of the idiocy of whoever’s in charge here.

  “I’m not the only one wishing we could move back home,” Mother continued. “Half the colony is planning to either go back home or strike out on their own somewhere else in Alaska.” She put her hands on her hips, waiting for a response.

  Pop guided Mother down to sit beside him on the bench and put his arm around her shoulder. His eyes paused briefly on Cally, then Polly, then Terpsichore. His calming gaze was as effective as a hug. “Your mother is upset because this project hasn’t gone the way we expected. I agree with her. I worry too, about how we’re all going to get our houses built before snowfall.”

  Mother turned her head to blow her nose on one of Pop’s large handkerchiefs. When she turned back she said, “I doubt if the people making reports to Washington, D.C., have admitted how fouled up it is here. Does President Roosevelt even know what we’re going through, abandoned in the wilds of Alaska Territory?”

  Terpsichore remembered that President Roosevelt said his projects were carefully planned, like building a ship, but the phrase she heard most often when people talked about colony administration was ‘messed up.’”

  Mother started crying again. “I heard the original plan was to wait a year to send up families, wait until houses and schools and a hospital were built. I feel like some idiot sent up a thousand people as casually as sending up a load of pipe fittings or paper towels.”

  Despite the snags, Terpsichore wasn’t ready to give up on Alaska yet. She remembered the part in President Roosevelt’s speech where he said people should let him know when work could be done better. She said, “Maybe we should write to the president and let him know what’s going wrong here. Maybe all the colony administrators are afraid to tell him how messed up it is.”