To her own amazement Chris heard herself saying, “This isn’t a Godforsaken place.”

She opened the door, closed it, stood a moment on the little gritty porch. Along the pathway plodded the muffled figures. Far down the road, as they reached the creek, she saw that they took off their Sunday shoes and donned the waterfront mukluks they carried in their hands, and waded across the icy shallow water that divided the little settlement On the opposite shore they left the boots on the creek bank and put on the shoes. They walked on. A row of boots, dozens of them, strewed the ground. How could they tell them apart when they returned for them? Older men and women. The pink and blue and green velveteen parkas were sleeping after last night’s dance.

The church bells rang across the wind-buffeted July ice pack. Catholic bells. Methodist bells. Baptist bells. Presbyterian bells. The neat white-painted mission houses of worship. They all sounded alike across the crystal clear air, across the dust-fine Arctic sand, across the grinding ice floes.

24

Letter from Czar Kennedy to Dave Husack

August 12 1953

Dear Dave—

I am writing this long hand and mailing it to the house instead of the office because I figure there are some things that even Etta Gurkin does not have to know. You know an old watch dog like Etta sometimes they get so use to guarding the boss and screening everything and everybody that comes in, why they get mixed up and are likely to bite a friend by mistake. Usually I dictate letters as you know, I am not much of a hand for writing even if I do own the biggest circulation newspaper in Alaska. I don’t pretend to be a writer like old Storm the publisher of that handbill called the Northern Light. My education quite when I was twelve years old back in Massachusetts, so I let the reporters and the editors do the writing and I just stick to the unimportant things like the papers policy and the money end. I am pretty good at that as you might have noticed and I am not too proud to use a dictionary when I come across a word I am not sure of. Well there I go again I find latly I catch myself rambling a little that is an old man’s trick and I am not what you could call an old man yet so I better watch myself. You probly do the same thing and don’t tell me you don’t because I have caught you at it and too polite to call your attention. Anyway I am better at talking or clamming up than writing.

Here is the thing. This letter is for you and Louisa both. That is another reason why I am sending it to the house. It was mighty kind of you both to offer to take my Christine in to live at your beautiful house during her first year at the University at least, and I want to thank you for this again and tell you I won’t forget it. I would have liked that fine and it would have been a wonderful thing for Christine but you know how young people are nowdays. Independent they have got to be independent they say but I notice that when it comes to taking the money handouts they kind of overlook the independents for a minute.