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 said, “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.