CHAPTER 35

The New House in Town

BY LATE APRIL, PILES OF MELTING SNOW TURNED THE ground to muck so hungry it would suck your boots off. The old-timers called this season break-up, the time when the frozen river cracked open and began to move again. Mother called it a mess, and Terpsichore agreed. By late May the ground would dry out enough to plow. That’s what the optimists said, anyway.

Meanwhile, Pop laid out planks between the house, the barn, the henhouse, and along the side of the road to the school bus stop so the girls and Mother could avoid the mud and come home with the number of shoes they started out with.

Mother insisted that Matthew play in the house or the barn. Pop agreed. “Don’t want the mud to suck Matty down to his eyeballs!” He reached over to tickle Matthew on his tummy.

“Eye-balllls, eye-balllls!” The word made Matty giggle more than the tickle.

But this season brought good things too. True to his word, Mr. Crawford took the Johnsons into their woods to tap the birch trees before they budded out and the sap turned sour. For two weeks, Pop and Terpsichore hauled home fivegallon buckets full of sap. For hours, each batch steamed up the kitchen with a sweet smell that made everyone hungry for pancakes. Terpsichore was already planning a birch syrup glaze for salmon and chicken, and a dollop of syrup on the morning oatmeal and in mint tea.

• • •

One sunny day, when the snow remaining on the mountaintops etched a jagged line against a densely blue sky, Pop came back from town with something held behind his back. “Special delivery for Clio Johnson!” he said. With a flourish, he held out something wrapped in burlap and twine.

Mother approached cautiously. “It looks like a bundle of sticks.”

Pop jingled the metal tags on each bundle with one finger. “Come this summer you won’t say that,” he said.

Mother leaned down to read the tags. “Sitka—that’s some kind of rugosa, I think.” She looked up at Pop.

He grinned. “Right as usual, Clio.”

“Nutkana—is that a rose too? And a rubrifolia. Three roses!”

“I said you’d have roses in Alaska, and here they are. I read the nursery catalog at the store, and these roses are all supposed to be good in Alaska. In fact, the nutkana is the rose that grows wild along the roadsides here.”

Pop held the prickly sticks out of the way as Mother moved in for a hug.

• • •

On one of the Johnsons’ Saturday trips into town for supplies and for the story hour Terpsichore still gave twice a month at the library, she noticed someone had chopped down trees and graded dirt on a plot of land not far from the school. “Who’s getting ready to build in town?” she asked.

“I hadn’t heard about anyone building there,” Pop said.

“I’ll find out,” Terpsichore said. While the rest of the Johnsons were in the general store, Terpsichore tromped through the mud to the big colony map by the post office that identified everyone’s parcels. The mystery parcel, which looked like about five acres, was surrounded by colony land, but was in a different color. Who owned that land?

Terpsichore balanced on the loose boards serving as a sidewalk over the mud to the architect’s office where two other men were looking at plat maps.

“Mr. Crawford?” one of them said, as he read the name on the plat map.

The other one shrugged. “Nobody I know.”

But of course Terpsichore knew. It looked like Mr. Crawford was going to build in town, just as he said he might last Christmas.

Terpsichore raced back—as fast as one could race through the muck—to the construction site. This time Mr. Crawford himself was there.

“Are you building a house, Mr. Crawford?” she asked.

He slid off the papery brown covers of a couple of spruce tips and popped them in his mouth like popcorn. “You guessed right, Miss Terpsichore. I bought that land when I first moved down from Nome, then decided I wanted to be farther out. But now I plan to spend at least the winters in town, and eventually year-round if things work out right.”

“What kind of things?” Terpsichore said.

Mr. Crawford smiled but changed the subject, pointing out where various parts of the house would go. “The kitchen will face east, toward sunrise, and I’ll have a study, bedroom, dining room, a bathroom with a claw-foot tub, and maybe an extra room just in case I think of another use for one. What else do you think a house needs?”

“Mother misses a real bathroom, a water pump right in the kitchen, a generator for electricity, a windmill by the well to bring up water, a music room—one with a piano of course—separate bedrooms for all the children . . . Well, I guess you don’t have children.”

Mr. Crawford patted Terpsichore on the head. “No, Miss Terpsichore, I never had children, but if I did I’d have wanted a kid just like you.”

All the way back home, Terpsichore felt a lightness on top of her head, right where Mr. Crawford touched it, right where the soft spot was on a baby’s skull. Even though she wasn’t musical, someone would like a kid just like her.

Pop wasn’t one to have to keep up with the neighbors, but when he saw the look on Mother’s face when she heard that Mr. Crawford had ordered a claw-foot tub, Pop started enlarging the tiny corner room that had the chemical toilet. He also ordered a real bathtub. Without running water they would have to heat water on the woodstove, then carry buckets of it to the tub. It would be a tub, though. One Mother could soak in for an hour. He dug a gravel-lined ditch for the water to drain into. He made a washstand for a pitcher and basin and laid a linoleum floor. It looked like a real city bathroom even if there was no plumbing.

When it was done, the whole family circled around the bathroom door to admire the result. “I thought you were against running up more debt, Mr. Johnson,” Mother said. “If we leave in a few months it’s a waste of money.” She pretended to be mad, but her mouth twitching toward a smile showed she was pleased.

“I admit we had lots of problems at first, Clio, but look what progress we’ve made already! We have a school and a hospital and plans for churches . . .”

“Won’t we want to stay?” Terpsichore asked.

Cally and Polly nodded in agreement with Terpsichore.

“Only if I vote to stay,” Mother said. “You haven’t changed the bargain, have you?” She narrowed her eyes at Pop. “Or are you just trying to sway my vote.”

“Of course I am.” Pop smiled.