Alaska (129 page)

Innocently, Tammy asked: 'Why would anyone want to damage an R&R ship?' and he gave her a long lecture about how there were always misguided souls who refused to appreciate the good things that others were doing for them. He explained how the welfare of Alaska depended upon the benevolence of the industrial geniuses in Seattle who looked after the interests of everyone in Alaska. Pleased by having such an attentive and apparently brilliant audience, he progressed to explain how Alaska would never qualify for statehood but how, through the years, it could rely upon Seattle for constructive and parental leadership.

When she had heard enough of this nonsense, she interrupted: 'My mother's people, way back, fought against the Russians, then against the United States, and now against you people in Seattle. I think my children and their grandchildren will continue the fight.'

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'Because we're entitled to be free. We're intelligent enough to run our own state.'

Flashing fire, she stared at R&R's future owner and asked: 'Has your father ever told you how my father, an illiterate immigrant working for sixty dollars a year, solved the mechanical problems in your father's cannery? And then left to start a business of his own? And taught himself to read, and use a slide rule, and acquire lots and lots of land that no one else thought useful? Mr. Ross, if my father was bright enough to do all those things, he's certainly bright enough to run a state government, and I know a hundred others like him ... in all parts of Alaska.'

And as she spoke, young Venn became so enchanted that he dogged her throughout the remainder of the trip, eager to share her vision of an Alaska about which he had never been told. She was flattered by his attention, but on the last night out, when others were celebrating, she detached herself from him, waiting cautiously for an appropriate moment, then tore away an expensive newel post decorating the grand stairway and tossed it into the icy waters of Coo'k Inlet.

The splash in the dark waters reflected light from one of the ship's portholes, and it had scarcely died when she felt herself caught by strong arms, whipped about, and kissed passionately on the lips. 'I've always thought,' Malcolm Venn said quietly as they walked the upper deck, 'that when my father spoke of those early days at Totem Cannery the sinking of the Montreal Queen,

the fight over the salmon in the Pleiades River . . .' He paused, afraid lest he say too much, but then he blurted out: 'I'm sure my father was in love with your mother.'

'Of course he was,' Tammy said. 'Everyone knew that. Mother told me: ”Mrs. Ross understood the first moment we saw each other. And she wasn't going to let no goddamned Tlingit marry a boy her daughter might want!”'

Young Malcolm laughed at the idea of anyone's wanting to prevent a marriage with a girl like Tammy Ting, and they kissed again.

IN THE BITTERLY COLD WINTER OF JANUARY 1935

the small towns in the vicinity of Thief River Falls in western Minnesota, close to the Canadian border, were experiencing the full terror of the Great Depression.

In Solway, John and Rose Kirsch with their three children were living on one meal a day. In the tiny village of Skime, Tad and Nellie Jackson, also with three children, were close to starving, and in Robbin, right on the border of North Dakota, Harold and

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Frances Alexander had four children to worry about, with no assured income of any kind. This part of Minnesota was being strangled.

In the crossroads of Viking, a mile or so northwest of Thief River, a tall, gawky farmer named Elmer Flatch left his wife, Hilda, and their daughter, Flossie, in their barren lean-to with its wood-burning stove and led his sixteen-year-old son, Leroy pronounced LEE-royinto the woods north of town with a solemn warning: 'Son, we ain't comin' out of these woods withouten we got ourself a deer.' Grimly the two Flatches marched into the small forest, well aware that they were hunting out of season: 'If a warden tries to stop us, LeRoy, I'm a-gonna let him have it full in the face. Be ready.' And with these two determinations to get a deer and protect themselves in doing so the two hunters left the dirt road and plunged into the woods.

In the open spaces there had been drifts of snow, some quite deep, but in the scrub forest, last timbered in the early 1920s, the January snow was sparse, just thick enough to show tracks where animals had crossed it, so during the first hour and a half in the silvery shadows Elmer reminded his son how to identify the various animals that shared the woods with them: 'That'n's a hare, you can tell by the big hind marks. Elbow of the leg leaves a dimple.

This'n? Maybe a wood mouse. This'n, for sure, a rabbit. That'n a fox, I do believe.

Not many foxes in these parts.'

As the father probed the secrets of the forest, he felt a sense of well-being, even though he had not eaten a full meal in three days. 'Ain't nothin' better in this world, LeRoy, than huntin' on a winter's day. Yonder has got to be some deer.' From his earliest days in Minnesota he had been convinced that beyond the next rise there would be deer, and that he could find them. His assurance was justified by his remarkable record in bagging deer where others could not, and on this day, when venison was not sport but almost life-and death, he tracked with exceptional care.

'Down thataway, not much, LeRoy. Over thisaway, maybe,' but as the morning passed without even a track showing where deer had been, the two men for at sixteen, LeRoy was a responsible partner with a sure manner of handling his gun began to feel the first signs of panic, not in wild gestures, for the Flatch family never engaged in such display, but in the tenseness which gripped the pits of their stomachs.

'LeRoy, I'm wore out. What do you think?'

'There's got to be deer. Vicarious got one last month. They told me at the store.'

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At the mention of his Finnish neighbor, Elmer Flatch stiffened. He did not cotton to the Finns, Norwegians and Swedes who clustered in this part of Minnesota; they were decent enough neighbors but they were not his kind. He stuck with people carrying names that were more American, like Jackson, Alexander and Kirsch. The Flatches, if he understood correctly, came originally from Kentucky, via Indiana and Iowa, 'American as far back as you can count.' But now he asked his son: 'Where did Vickaryous say he got his deer?'

'I didn't see him, but the men in the store said it was at the edge of the clearing.'

Admitting a kind of failure, Elmer told LeRoy: 'Let's head for that clearing, the big one,' and his son said: 'That's the one, if I understood right.'

At the clearing they encountered nothing, not even tracks, and now the incipient panic intensified, for they simply dared not go home without something to eat: 'If'n we see rabbit or a hare, LeRoy, bag it. The women got to have somethin' they can chew on.' The boy made no response, but as shadows began to lengthen his fears increased, for he knew what despair there would be in the lean-to if they returned empty-handed.

It had been more than a week since anyone in the Flatch family had tasted meat, and even the bag of beans no longer had sufficient contents to stand upright in the corner.

But twilight deepened, with no sign of deer, and what would otherwise have been fifteen minutes of snowy grandeur as night descended upon the Minnesota hills became instead a cause for anxiety. Elmer Flatch, a man whose major pride lay in his ability to go out with his gun and feed his family, faced the disastrous situation of not only failing to find meat but also being unable to buy the poorest canned substitutes at the Viking store.

It was now dark, but Elmer, who like most good hunters kept account of the moon, knew that what he called a 'three quarters waner' would soon begin to show, and he instructed his son: 'LeRoy, we're stayin' out till we get us a deer,' and the boy nodded, for he was as reluctant as his father to return to the women of his family with no food.

The two men moved cautiously in the dark, with the father reminding his son: 'Don't leave my side. I don't want to be shootin' at you in the shadows, thinkin' you're maybe a deer.' What he really meant was: 'Don't wander over there among the trees and then blaze away at me when I make a sudden noise,' but mindful of his son's youth, he refrained from embarrassing him.

They came upon an open glade which ought to have had deer, but none showed, and when they returned to the woods

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they were in almost total darkness for about half an hour, but then, as they approached another opening, the waning moon rose above the surrounding trees, and a comfortable light suffused the scene, but it disclosed no tracks. At midnight, when the moon was climbing to its apex, the two were still surrounded by empty forest and the father began to grow weak, hunger overcoming him, but he tried to hide his condition from his son, pausing now and then to catch his breath, something he had never had to do before, given his lean frame and his capacity for endurance.

It was nearly two in the morning when the Flatches came upon a moonlit opening across which deer had recently traveled, and at the sight of tracks, Elmer felt a surge of strength, and with masterful commands he vectored LeRoy off to the right, keeping him in sight to prevent a shooting accident, and with great caution moved forward among the trees.

They saw the deer. Among the shadows it saw them and darted away. LeRoy almost wept as the animal's flag twisted and darted to safety, but his father merely bit his lower lip for a moment, then said: 'We're on their trail, LeRoy. Over there we catch ourself a deer.' And with a fortitude that astonished his son, Elmer Flatch started in pursuit of the deer he knew he must have: 'We'll follow it till sunset tomorrow if we have to.'

An hour before dawn the two Flatches came upon a solitary doe, handsomely framed in fading light from the declining moon. Mustering all his control, Elmer whispered to his son: 'Fire when my right elbow drops. Aim just a little forward in case she leaps ahead.' Then he added: 'Son, we got to get this one.'_

Meticulously the two Flatches leveled their guns, protecting them from the moonlight lest a sudden glint startle the doe, and as Elmer signaled with his right elbow, the two fired, dropping her as if she had been struck by lightning. When Elmer saw her fall, he could feel himself falling too, from exhaustion and the sudden relief of having found food, except that as he started to go down, LeRoy caught him: 'Sit on the log, Pop. I'll cut her throat.' And while Elmer sat in the frozen moonlight, again close to fainting from hunger, LeRoy ran across the opening and began to prepare the deer for carrying.

It was a long walk back to the Flatch lean-to, and the sides of deer were heavy, but the two men walked as if joy were pulling them forward; they seemed to receive strength and sustenance from the mere presence of the bloody meat upon their backs, and as they approached their destination and saw the wisp of morning smoke coming from wood recently

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thrown upon the fire, LeRoy began to run, shouting: 'Mom! Flossie! We got us a deer!'

Unfortunately, his cries alerted the Vickaryous men on the farm nearby, and when the Finns learned that their neighbors had shot a deer, two men and two women came to the Flatch home: 'We ain't had food for three days, Mr. Flatch.'

The starving settlers studied one another, the four Flatches from back east, the two Vickaryous couples twenty years out of Finland. They were tall and straight, all eight of them, and lean and hardworking. Their clothes were presentable, especially the Finns', and they were at the end of their rope, all of them.

'You got to let us have something, Mr. Flatch,' one of the Vickaryous women said, and Hilda Flatch moved forward with a knife: 'Of course,”and she knelt down to cut off a sizable chunk of venison. As she did, one of the Vickaryous women burst into tears: 'God knows we're ashamed to b
eg.
But in this cold . . .'

As the four women were butchering the deer, a guardian angel appeared as if sent by heaven to succor these families. He appeared in a used Ford, badly treated over the past fifteen years, and at first the men in the lean-to thought he might be a game warden. 'He don't get this deer,' Elmer whispered to the others, and one of the Vickaryous men told his group: 'Careful, but don't let him touch that meat. Just don't let him do it.'

The visitor was Nils Sjodin, from a government office of some kind in Thief River Falls, and he carried with him a remarkable message and the documents to back it up. Seated in the lean-to, with the eight people clustered about him, he said: 'Glad to see you got yourselves a deer. Food's scarce in these parts.'

'Who are you?' Hilda Flatch asked, and he replied: ”The bringer of good tidings,'

and with that, he slapped upon the wooden table a pile of papers which he invited everyone to inspect. Since farmers in this part of Minnesota respected education, all in the shack were able to read, even young Flossie Flatch, and in the next moments they received first notice of the revolution that was about to engulf them and their neighbors in this northern part of the United States.

'Yep!' Mr. Sjodin said with the enthusiasm of a Methodist minister or a farm-equipment salesman. 'Every word it says here is true. Our government is going to select eight, nine hundred people from areas like this, people really down on their luck through no fault of their own, and we're going to ship you, all expenses paid, to a valley in Alaska ... cabbages weigh sixty pounds each . . . never saw anything like it.'

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'To what purpose?' Hilda Flatch asked. All her life she had dealt with flimflam artists and she judged Mr. Sjodin to be the next in that engaging parade.

'To start a new life in a new world. To populate a paradise. To build an area of great importance to the United States our new frontier, Alaska.'

'Isn't it all ice up there?' Elmer asked.

Mr. Sjodin had been waiting for just this question. Producing three new publications, he spread them so that all could see, and for the first time in their lives, the Flatches and the Vickaryouses saw the magical word Matanuska. 'Look for yourselves!'