Alaska (155 page)

The man's name set her guessing as to what history it summarized, and it was easily seen that the first name was Russian, but what the second signified she could not guess: Probably Eskimo, how musical! and she repeated it aloud several times. But it was the next two paragraphs that captured her imagination, and in just the way the insidious drafters had intended: You will not be teaching in some frontier shack. Not at all! Desolation Consolidated, one of the most modern and well-equipped schools in America, provides facilities for both elementary and high school and was built three years ago on a budget of $9,000,000. It sits atop a slight rise overlooking the Chukchi Sea and on a good day from your schoolroom you will see whales playing just offshore.

But the thing that makes teaching at Desolation a rich experience and don't be scared away by the name, because we love it and so will youis the children. You'll have in your classes children of the most exciting heritages: Eskimo, Russian, those who sprang from the New England whalers who used to frequent Desolation, and children like yourself who came from missionaries and occasional businessmen who settled here.

To see your class in the morning, their faces bright in 947

the arctic light, is to see a cross section of the best that America can provide, but if they are to attain the promise of which they are capable, they will need your help. Would you like to join us in our bright new school?

The invitation was so enticing that it dazzled her. She saw herself walking up the flight of steps leading to the big new school, which must have been built of marble to justify the budget of $9,000,000, and down the splendid corridors to her well-appointed room where some two dozen or more pupils of all colors awaited her, except that they all looked like the little girl on the National Geographic cover, with big fur hoods and wide scarves about their faces.

Only their eyes peeked out at her, bright and very eager to learn.

When she left her quarters in the lodge to join the others for the Friday evening meal, she looked about for the young man from Canon City, and went up to him with a boldness she had never before displayed: 'Are you the man who wrote to Alaska?'

'Yes. Name's Dennis Crider, Canon City. Join us.'

She explained that she was with the contingent from Grand Junction: 'Kendra Scott, elementary school. May I have this chair?'

'You sure may. You interested in Alaska?'

'I didn't know I was when I came through those doors. But that correspondence you let me read! Wow! Are you thinking of going up there?'

'I'm thinking. That's why I wrote. And from the speed with which they responded, they must be interested too.'

'But how did you know whom to write to?' and he replied: 'Just State Education Department, Juneau, Alaska. Didn't even know if I had the right name or address, but they forwarded it to the Eskimo districts.'

'Are you considering it seriously?' and her questions became so pointed that both she and Dennis ignored the others at the table as they delved rather deeply into the possibility of chucking their jobs in Colorado and heading for the North Slope of Alaska, wherever that was; they had no map of the region, but deduced from things said that it was near the Arctic Ocean and that beyond it there was nothing but the North Pole.

They spent all Friday evening and most of Saturday analyzing seriously what steps would have to be taken if one were shifting to the far north, and the more they talked, the more practical it became for them to make the move. But Dennis pointed out a condition which had not appeared on Kendra's sheet: 'If you are accepted, you should plan to be on the job

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by the end of the first week in July so as to complete your plans for the winter.'

'That poses no problem,' Kendra said, but when she finally went to bed, she could not sleep. Ideas and images were thundering about tumultuously in her mind, and some of them were not flattering: What made me use those horrible words? Such words aren't a part of me. Or are they? She speculated on the possibility that she might be two people, the Kendra that her mother had groomed and pruned so carefully, acceptable to the world, and a subterranean Kendra of such tortured ambiguities that she was afraid to dig into them.

After a restless night, Kendra rose for an early breakfast, found Miss Deller sitting alone, and asked: 'Could I talk with you?'

'Yes, I noticed that you and Dennis Crider were in pretty deep consultation. Things getting pretty heavy between you two?'

'No, we were talking about Alaska. What I wanted to know, what's the time difference between here and Alaska?' Like many sensible people, Kendra assumed that a librarian knew everything, but the confusion which ensued would have disabused any listener.

The two young women spent about ten minutes trying to decide whether Alaska was ahead of or behind Colorado, and then another fifteen minutes arguing heatedly as to what ahead of and behind

meant. They even discussed seriously whether the International Date Line ran east or west of Alaska, and what it meant regardless of where it ran.

They were rescued by a pedantic geography teacher, a man from Montrose, who explained: 'Your question about the date line isn't foolish, not at all. Strictly speaking, it ought to cut the Aleutian Islands about in half. Eastern part Monday, western part Tuesday, the same as Siberia. But everybody agreed that it would be better if all of Alaska were on the same day, so the line takes a furious twist, first to the east so that all of Russia can be Tuesday, then an even bigger one to the west so that all of Alaska can be Monday. And then it jogs again to get on track.'

'But what about the time difference?' Miss Deller asked, and he replied: 'I can't explain anything that complex unless I explain it thoroughly.'

'Proceed, Dr. Einstein,' and he surprised them by admitting: 'I'm not sure I can give you the right answer,' and the librarian said with a friendly smile: 'But you sound as if you understand everything,' and he said: 'Trouble is, I know too much, and they've been changing the rules on me.'

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Asking the waiter to fetch a sheet of paper from the desk, he took out the three colored pens he carried as part of his teacher's equipment, and sketched a surprisingly accurate outline of the Alaskan peninsula: 'At the university we had to make reasonable sketches of all the continents, but now I get just a bit hazy,' and he drew in eight lines of longitude. 'I know there ought to be eight of them from east to west, but how exactly they're numbered, I don't remember. Let's say the date line should run here. That's one-eighty, as you know.'

'I didn't know,' Miss Deller said, but he assured her that it was. 'That makes this one way over here next to Russia one-seventy east, and this one over here at the eastern edge of Alaska, one-thirty west. That is such a very wide span that it ought to have four different time zones. Geographically speaking, it's entitled to them.

So Alaska ought to have the same difference in its times as the continental United States does. When it's twelve in New York it's nine in Los Angeles. When it's eight in eastern Alaska it ought to be five at the western tip in Attu.'

'Isn't it?'

'No. It's all screwed up. Alaska used to have three different time zones, with the eastern part the same as Seattle, and most of the rest something else and the Aleutians something else again. But I read the other day that they've changed everything around, so now I don't know what the score is. But I suggest we call the telephone company,'

and when they did, they got hold of a bright girl who said: 'I haven't a clue, but I know how to find out,' and she called someone in Denver who said: 'Anchorage is two hours behind us. Nine o'clock here, seven o'clock in the morning there.'

When the geographer sat down, Kendra astonished them by saying: 'I'm going to call.

He may not be out of bed, but he will be at home.'

'Call whom?' Miss Deller asked, and Kendra showed them the memo she had brought with her: Vladimir Afanasi, 907-851-3305. Call collect.

'Are you crazy?' Miss Deller asked, and as Kendra said: 'Maybe,' the librarian hailed Dennis Crider as he entered the breakfast room: 'What have you done to this perfectly normal young woman?' and when he heard Kendra's plan he said flatly: 'That's insane.

It must be the middle of the night up there.'

'It's seven o'clock in the morning, and I'm calling Mr. Afanasi.' With that, she went to the pay phone, put in a dime, dialed zero, and said in a controlled voice: 'Person-to-person collect to Alaska,' and she gave the number. Within less than 950

a minute a deep, husky voice came on the wire: 'Hello, this is Vladimir Afanasi.'

'I am calling about the teaching job,' Kendra said, and for the next five minutes she outlined her credentials, gave a list of people Mr. Afanasi could call if he wanted verification, and then stood with her mouth agape as Afanasi said with the most careful attention to his words: 'Before we go any further, I must inform you that I am not empowered to make you a specific offer of any kind. That must be done by our superintendent in Barrow, but since I'm president of the board, I think I can assure you that you sound like just the young woman we're looking for. You've read the details?'

'I've memorized them.' At this, Afanasi broke into laughter which concluded with a remarkable statement: 'Miss Scott, I think the superintendent will be offering you a job this afternoon.'

Clapping her hand over the phone, she turned and said: 'My God! He's offering me a job!'

Then came two questions she had not anticipated: 'Any conspicuous facial blemishes?

Any crippling?'

She appreciated these questions for their frankness: 'If I were crippled, not badly, would you hire me?'

'If you could get around, more or less, it wouldn't make a damned bit of difference.'

'I want your job, Mr. Afanasi. I'm not crippled. I have no disfigurement. I'm a very ordinary person, in every way I think, and I love children.'

'Send me two photographs, and ask two of your professors at BYU they have one hell of a football team and your principal and clergyman to rush me references. If all's as you say, I'm sure the superintendent will offer you the job. You know the salary?'

Thirty-six thousand. It sounds enormous.'

'Are you applying because of it?' He did not wait for an answer. 'There's a restaurant in Barrow up the line, hamburger with no onion, no cheese, seven dollars eighty-five cents. Enchilada with limited sauce, eighteen-fifty.' When she gasped, he said: 'But with your experience you'll qualify for forty-four thousand dollars, and that's what I'll be recommending to the superintendent.'

She bit her lip lest she say something foolish, then said softly: 'Mr. Afanasi, I won't be sending you a recommendation from my pastor. He would get my mother and the whole community lined up against my going.'

'You haven't told your mother?'

'No. And I mustn't till it's all settled.'

There was such a long silence in the booth, with Kendra's 951

face indicating that no one was speaking, that her friends assumed that Mr. Afanasi had broken off communication, and they were about to console Kendra, when they could hear coming over the phone the conclusion to the interview: 'Miss Scott, if you didn't have problems, you wouldn't be interested in this job. Everybody who calls has problems forcing them to drastic behavior. I hope yours are manageable. If they aren't, don't come to the North Slope.'

Without hesitation Kendra said: 'I told you I was a very ordinary girl and my problems are ordinary.'

'I think you're telling me the truth. Now prove it.' And that was how Kendra Scott of Heber City landed a teaching job at Desolation Point, Alaska, at a starting salary of $44,000.

HER FLIGHT WEST FROM PRUDHOE BAY INTRODUCED HER

to the vastness of her new home, for a tourist folder in the pocket before her said: 'Believe it not, Alaska has one million islands and three million lakes,' and as she looked down she saw the sun reflected from a wilderness mosaic of lakes, thousands of them and some not so small. I guess you have to accept their figures, she thought.

Some country!

She landed at Barrow at ten-twenty on a bright July morning, and as soon as she entered the airport to claim her bags she was hailed by a rough voice: 'That you, Miss Scott?'

and she saw coming toward her an unkempt man in his fifties. Extending his big hand, he said: 'I'm Harry Rostkowsky. I fly you down to Desolation.' When he saw her three big bags, he said brightly: 'You must be expectin' to stay awhile. Last one could take it only three weeks. That's why there's an opening.' 'But the brochure said there'd be an indoctrination period here at Barrow, three days in the new school,'

and he laughed: 'Normally there is, but they need you in a hurry. Climb in.'

The brief flight at low altitude provided Kendra with an excellent introduction to her new home, for she saw below her only the bleak, treeless tundra with its myriad lakes between Barrow and Desolation and the dark, ominous Chukchi Sea beyond. In the entire flight between the two settlements she saw not a sign of human existence, and when Rosty spoke to her through the intercom, she responded: 'Emptier than I thought,' and he pointed with his left hand back toward the east: 'And it stays this empty all the way to Greenland.'

'When we land at Desolation, will you point out Mr. Afanasi for me?' and he replied: 'I won't need to. He is

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Desolation. And they're lucky to have him.' Then he added: 'He'll be your new boss, and you'll never have a better.'

Now came the long swing out over the sea, the swift drop in altitude and the sliding approach to the southern tip of the peninsula nomadic Eskimos had used as their base from time to time during the past fourteen thousand years. 'That's my new home!'

she called to Rosty and she saluted Desolation Point, now an established settlement.

She was astonished how vulnerable to the arctic sea its frail dwellings seemed to be, pinched as they were between the Chukchi on the west and a sprawling lagoon to the east. But she soon forgot their plight, for she was trying to spot the new nine-million-dollar school. She could not locate it among the scatter of small homes, so she supposed it must have been positioned inland to protect it from floods that might sweep in from the sea, but when she scanned the surrounding areas she still could not find it.