RIVER CHILD

Eliza narrowed her eyes against the summer sun glaring off the Yukon River. In the middle of Walter Thomas' long riverboat, she clutched the seat with both hands. She was afraid to let go to tighten the scarf around her head and she could feel it slipping off. Walter guided the unpainted plywood vessel into a channel that would take them downstream a mile or so from Dawson City to the Indian village of Moosehide. He frowned under his baseball cap, making him look older than his eighteen years. The wind whipped his long black hair around his shoulders. She could see the muscles in his arms stiffen under his shirt. He grasped the motor handle, increasing speed, in complete control. Eliza had agreed to go with Walter, but now she was beginning to regret it. While she was at the Chooutla Indian residential school 400 miles to the south, she had dreamed of being on the river again as she had been when she was very young. But now it felt dangerous and uncomfortable. "Don't worry!" Walter shouted over the high-pitched buzz of the motor. "It's safe. Like walking." Eliza's face relaxed and she gave him a quick, cheerless smile. He glanced at her bare legs. At fifteen, Eliza had the body of a woman, but she was smaller than the other girls her age. Seeing Walter watching, Eliza pulled the skirt of her flowered cotton dress down with one hand and tucked it under her leg more securely. In a few moments they passed the rock slide on the side of the mountain looming over the North End of Dawson City. The massive gash, shaped like the hide of a moose, gave the Indian village its name. A legend said that when an invading party of Indians from the south had camped on the riverbank, the Trondek in the area had danced at the top of the mountain, creating the slide and killing their enemies. Early in the Klondike Gold Rush, before the turn of the century, the Trondek had been forced to settle downriver in Moosehide. The move was meant to keep them away from the chaos of the thousands of Whitemen from the south invading the gold-rich country. A horizontal path, used for fifty years, was clearly visible across the face of the slide. Walter and Eliza were bringing groceries to his mother Annie from town. A few families still lived all year in small log cabins at Moosehide, fishing and working traplines. At Christmas Annie would come into Dawson for a few weeks to visit at her sister's, where Walter and two of his brothers stayed. The three younger children were at the Chooutla school. Rounding a slight bend in the river, Walter steered abruptly right towards the landing where three identical riverboats were moored. The motor groaned in protest, coughed, and nearly stopped. Unconcerned, he teased it back to life and, turning at an angle, let the current push them into shore. The village disappeared from sight as they drew closer to the steep river bank. When Walter turned the motor off, they heard several dogs yelping and howling, warning owners of their arrival. The crunch of gravel scraping the bottom of the boat made Eliza cling to the gunwale. She tried to stand up. "Don't get up yet, eh?" Walter said, stepping past her onto the bow. He grabbed a curled rope and jumped easily out, pulling the boat to shore. "OK. Now it's OK," he said. He held his free hand out to help her, but she stepped over the side without taking it. Water splashed over her shoes. Walter tied the rope to a willow and unloaded two wooden boxes. Picking up the smallest of the boxes, Eliza stumbled up the rough trail ahead of Walter. "Sure has changed, this place," Eliza said when they reached the top. Two rows of a half dozen identical log cabins with sod roofs overlooked the river. Annie's cabin was third in the front row, counting from the small white Anglican church which stood at one end of the village. A few poplar trees as tall as the church steeple separated the church from the largest building in the community, the two-storey school. Putting down her box, Eliza nodded towards the school with its boarded windows. "Not many people now, eh?" "Yeah. School closed last year. So now they got to find places to live in Dawson or send the kids to Carcross." "Carcross! I hate that place. Better not go to school at all." "Well, I liked school. But anyway, that's life, eh? He pointed. "This way to Mom's. Still in the same old place," he chuckled. Eliza reached down for the box she had carried. "Just leave that box. I'll get it later," Walter said. "It's OK. I can do it." She picked it up. "Me, I had to quit school, you know," Walter said as they walked. "Wish I could go, but Ma needs the help I guess." Walter had spent a few months in Carcross but his father was killed in Italy during the War. As the eldest son of six children, Annie kept him home to help the family. He worked as a labourer for the City of Dawson and was paid well. "How come the school closed anyways? Thought that missionary Baptist guy and his wife was here forever." "You didn't hear?" Walter said. "Didn't hear what?" He looked away, grinning in embarrassment. "Well, you know, he was...he was feeling up the kids, eh?" Eliza stopped walking. She shivered. "That's disgusting!" "Yeah. My Ma caught him one day behind the school outhouse with his pants down." He laughed in mild disbelief and stopped on the path. "Damned if he didn't have one of the little Charlie boys with him. A boy! Not even a girl, can you believe it? Don't know which one, but maybe..." "Don't tell me any more about it. I'm not interested," Eliza said. She pushed ahead of him on the trail.