Alaska (142 page)

the man said in some irritation. 'This is my daughter Sandy, and why in hell didn't that ship, whatever it was . . . ?'

Nate felt it prudent not to reveal that he had come from an American destroyer, but he did ask, 'Are you Americans?' and when the man snapped: 'We sure as hell are,'

he confided: 'They wanted to know if the island had any people on it.'

This infuriated Krickel, who almost roared: 'Of course it's inhabited! They know that back in Dutch Harbor You come from Dutch?'

863

Nate refused to answer this, so the man continued: 'The officials in Dutch know I have the lease on Lapak. Blue fox.1

'What?'

'I have the whole island. I grow fox here.'

'You mean . . . the little animals?'

'I lease the whole island. Let the fox run wild.'

'What do you do with them?'

'Ship them to St. Louis. They've been buying our Aleutian pelts for seventy years.'

Nate halted the conversation by asking: 'Where's the best place for me to stay?'

and Krickel said: 'Our cabin. Down where the village used to be. Mind if we ride there with you?' so the rubber boat was refloated, the gear repacked, and the girl placed in the rear as the two men took oars and rowed swiftly down the bay, with the high mountains of Lapak guarding them. As they neared land, Nate informed his passengers: 'You know that the Japs bombed Dutch Harbor?' When they expressed shock, he added: 'And they captured Attu and Kiska.'

'Kiska!' Ben cried. 'I had my grays on Kiska. It's less than three hundred miles from here. Much less.'

And now for the first time the girl spoke. She was seventeen, with a big placid face that bespoke a native mother and a smile that warmed the island air. She was neither tall nor slim, but she did have a grace in the way she carried her head, cocked to one side as if she were about to laugh, that made her a delightful little elf, even in the rough clothes she wore. It was midsummer, and her man's shirt was carelessly buttoned, revealing a tawny skin that looked as if it was intended to be kissed.

'We're glad to have you here,”she said from the stern of the boat, and she smiled so engagingly that Nate knew he must clarify the situation right now: 'My wife has a smile like yours. But she's from Outside. I'm Athapascan.'

The girl laughed and pretended to spit in the bay: 'Aleuts, Athapascans not a good mix.'

'Are you Aleut?' Nate asked, and her father broke in: 'Is she! Her mother doted on the Russian Orthodox. Named Sandy for Alexandra, last Russian tsarina, the one they murdered in that cellar . . . What date was it, Sandy?'

'Ekaterinburg, 17 July 1918. Every year Mom made me dress in black and she did, too.

She used to call me her little tsarina,' and Ben added: 'Her name was Poletnikova, my wife's, that is.'

When they reached the deserted cabin which Ben occupied when trapping his fox on Lapak, Nate explained just enough of his mission to quieten any apprehensions they might have: 'The government has removed all Aleuts to the mainland.

864

Camps in the south. We think the Japanese have done the same on Attu and Kiska. Camps somewhere in Japan. I came to see if this island, and maybe Tanaga, is free.'

'If they're on Kiska,' Krickel said, 'they'll be coming here next. Maybe we ought to get out . . . now.'

Nate explained that the army men would not be coming back for eight days, at which Sandy chuckled with that freedom that was so appealing: 'Our boat wasn't due for eight weeks. If there's war, like you say, they'll probably never come.'

Krickel asked: 'What if the Japs move east before your boys move west?'

Nate showed them his radio: 'To be used only in extreme emergency. They promised they'd come get us . . .' As soon as he said this he stopped; there was no reason why these strangers should know of the two other explorations.

But Sandy caught the slip: 'Us?' and he said quietly: 'Yes, they meant if there were any people like you on the island.'

It was her father who said: 'If the Japs are that close, they might fly over at any time. We better hide your boat,' and he carried the oars as Nate and Sandy dragged the heavy rubber craft well inland and concealed it behind some trees and under a little nest of branches.

Two days later an airplane, followed by two more, flew low over the island, but they were from the 11th Air Force in Dutch Harbor, so Nate ran out and signaled them with two white handkerchiefs as he had been taught. His message was simple: 'No Japanese.

No signs of any.' He had no prearranged signals for explaining the presence of the two Americans, but when the planes returned to check his message, he wigwagged: 'No Japanese. No signs,' and then led Krickel and his daughter to where they could be clearly seen. The lead plane dipped its wings alternately and flew back toward Dutch Harbor.

His remaining days on Lapak were some of the best Nate would know during this strange war, for he found Ben Krickel to be a fascinating raconteur about life in the Aleutians, while Sandy was a bright young woman who seemed to know a great deal about life in Alaska: 'The churches in Kodiak fight something awful. The Russian Orthodox, that's what I am, thinks it's so high and mighty. The Catholics know they're superior to everyone else. And the Presbyterians are quite impossible. Pop's a Presbyterian.'

Nate found his keenest delight in talking with Sandy and walking with her to the old sites on the island. One morning when they returned for lunch her father summoned them both before him in the old cabin: 'Nate, you told us honest 865

that you were a married man. Seems mighty young to me, but so be it. You and my daughter, no foolin' around. You hear that, Sandy?' He said that Sandy's mother was dead and that if the war hadn't come, Sandy was to have attended Sheldon Jackson School in Sitka when they returned to Dutch Harbor with their furs: 'No foolin', you understand?'

They said they did, but that afternoon such matters were forgotten, because when a lone plane flew over the island and they ran out to greet it, they saw that it bore strange markings, which had to signify that it was Japanese.

'My God!' Ben shouted. 'They've seen us!'

He was right, for the plane wheeled and came back low, its guns blazing. If there were people on Lapak, they had to be Americans and therefore the pilot's enemies.

He struck no one on that first run, but upon his second try he came perilously close to the cabin, and on his third, lower and slower, he would certainly have wiped them out had not at this moment two American planes sped in from the east. There was a furious air battle, with all advantages to the Americans, for they were higher and they flew in close tandem, one protecting the other. But the Japanese pilot showed skill and courage, and after throwing one of his pursuers off his track, he turned his nose upward, gave his engine an immense burst of gas, and tried to escape to the west, toward Attu.

But the second American plane had not been deceived by his maneuvering, and as he tried to speed past, this plane turned sharply and threw a full blast from his guns right into the fuselage and engine of the Japanese plane. It exploded and pieces fell across Lapak Island, the corpse of the pilot landing somewhere in the high western mountains. In a graceful sweep, the two American planes reformed, turned west to authenticate the breakup of the enemy plane, then flew a salute to the three American watchers.

His brush with death, the first he had ever had to face as a real possibility, launched a major change in Nate Coop, but even if someone had pointed out what was happening, and especially why, he would not have believed it. The rough treatment he had received from the Matanuska settlers when he sought to marry one of their daughters had scarred him; he had accepted their assessment of half-breeds as worthless and not entitled to the respect accorded white people. In a score of insulting ways it had been hammered into him that he was of a lower category, and he had accepted this judgment. But now to see what a superior young woman Sandy was wise, informed, neat when she wanted to be, and qualified in every way to take her place in Matanuska society or 866

any other, despite her half-breed status made him reevaluate himself, and what struck him with great force was that Sandy spoke excellent English while he could barely manage the language, and he swore to himself: If an Aleut can learn, an Athapascan can. And he saw both Sandy and himself as acceptable American citizens, real Alaskans tied to the earth and children of it, and in respecting her he came to respect himself.

On the night before the destroyer returned, Nate borrowed Ben Krickel's lantern and in its flickering light composed a letter to his brother-in-law, LeRoy, in which he spoke of meeting on a remote island a wonderful girl named Sandy Krickel: 'She's just the right age for you and you've got to meet her as soon as possible, because you'll never do any better.' Then he added a sentence which revealed his resentment of past treatment by the Flatches: 'You'll be surprised to hear that she's American-Aleut, like me, and I tell you this even though you gave your sister merry hell for going with me.' He ended with a prediction: 'When you see her, LeRoy, you'll grab her, and I'll be your best man, and later you'll thank me.'

But that was not the end of the letter, because when he showed it to Ben Krickel for his approval, Ben scratched a postscript: 'Young man, your brother-in-law is telling the truth. Signed, Her Father.'

On the eighth day, as planned, the destroyer returned to Lapak Bay and the fox trappers said farewell to the volcano. The captain, a very junior lieutenant commander, shouted at Nate as he climbed out of his rubber boat: 'Who in hell are those two?' and there was great excitement when Nate yelled back: 'Ben Krickel and his daughter Sandy.

They farm foxes here,' and the captain said: 'They warned us anything can happen in the Aleutians.'

At supper that night the young officers insisted that Miss Krickel dine in their mess, a cubbyhole barely big enough for six places at table, and when Nate looked in from outside and saw how even the captain was paying court to Sandy, he muttered to himself: ”That little beauty will be able to handle herself anywhere.'

THE DREAMLIKE DAYS THAT NATE SPENT WITH THE FOX

farmers were the last easy ones he would know for the next year. As soon as the destroyer landed him back at Dutch Harbor, his superiors interrogated him about the possibility of building an airstrip on Lapak. He told them, in his usual grunting monosyllables: 'No chance. Some good ground at 867

beach, but no. Too much hills.' However, Ben Krickel was prepared to lecture them rhapsodically on Lapak, but after an hour of listening to his outbursts they reported: 'He knows a hell of a lot about foxes, nothing about airstrips. Lapak is out!'

They turned their attention to Adak, midway down the Aleutians and a big inviting island, but they knew little about it. Word was passed: 'Anyone here familiar with Adak?' and Krickel volunteered: 'I used to raise foxes there,' so a scouting team was organized under the direction of a gung-ho Air Corps captain named Tim Ruggles, known to his friends as 'a hero waiting to happen,' and he chose for his Alaskan guides Krickel and Nate Coop.

Because no one knew if the Japanese had already occupied Adak, the trio underwent intensive training in small arms, machine guns, map work, and the sending of coded messages by radio.

DURING THE TRAINING NATE LEARNED OF AN UNUSUAL development in the case of Sandy Krickel: instead of being shipped south to an internment camp, like the other Aleuts, she had, because of her father, been temporarily classified as a Caucasian and given a job typing at headquarters, a low, long wooden building owned by a fishing company.

Nate saw her twice and found her to be even more enchanting in her office dress than she had been in men's clothes on the island.

She was therefore in the office when General Shafter and two other generals from the Lower Forty-eight flew out to Dutch Harbor to complete plans for the occupation of Adak. The high brass had come to the Aleutians in General Shafter's plane, which meant that LeRoy Flatch was in the pilot's seat, so that when the generals entered the headquarters building LeRoy trailed along. While the officers moved into an inner room for their discussions, he was left in the reception area where Sandy was typing, and as he idly watched her from a chair propped against the wall, he thought: She must be the kind of half-Aleut Nate wrote about. If his girl's as lovely as this one, he showed good judgment. And he spent some time analyzing the pretty typist: You can tell she's Oriental. Gosh, you might even take her for a Jap. But she's not too dark and she sure has style. Those teeth and the smile to go with them. Wow!

He became so fascinated by who the girl might be that finally he rose, sidled aimlessly toward her desk, stopped, and said: 'Pardon me, ma'am, but could you be one of the Aleuts I've been hearing about?'

Smiling easily and with no sense of embarrassment, she 868

said: 'I am. Aleut and Russian and I guess a little English and Scotch.'

'You speak ... I mean, better than I do.'

'We go to school.' She typed a few words, then smiled again: 'What brings you out here to the end of the world? Secret, I suppose?'

'Yep.' He did not know what to say next, but he did not want to leave her desk, and after a silence which was painful for him but not for her, he blurted out: 'Were you here when this place was bombed?' and she said: 'No.' She was about to say that at that time she had been with her father on a remote island, gathering pelts from their blue foxes, and that would have disclosed that she was indeed the girl of Nate's letter, but at this moment Nate's scouting team, led by the feisty captain, tramped into the office on their way to be interrogated by the three generals, and Nate, surprised by the unlikely presence of his brother-in-law, cried: 'LeRoy! What you doin' here?' Then he stopped, stared at Sandy, and said: 'You've met?' When LeRoy nodded, Nate said: 'This is Sandy Krickel. And her dad, he added the stuff to my letter.'

'And I meant every word of it,' Krickel said as he disappeared into the smaller meeting room, dragging Nate along with him.