The Haunted Igloo (3 page)

“
Besides me,” said Cordell with a big
grin. “I’m your first weakness, eh?” He crossed his arms over his
broad chest and watched as she searched the box again.

“
Conceited!” She turned the empty box
upside down. “No magazines?”

Cordell shook his head.
“Oh, I guess I forgot to ask. Jean-Paul was gone, and I must have
been thinking of him.” He glanced around at Jean-Paul, then back to
Lise. “I’m sorry.”

Then his face brightened and he went
outside. In a few minutes he was back with another parcel.

“
I almost forgot. This is especially
for you. Your handmade Eskimo boots brought many compliments, with
orders for more next year. This is what they bought
today.”

Lise cleared a spot for her package at one
end of the table. She sat down to untie the twine as Jean-Paul came
over to watch. She smiled at him, her fingers trembling as she
worked with a stubborn knot.

“
It feels like Christmas!” she said
with a wink, opening the package at last. “Oh Cordell! Oh, how
beautiful!” She gently fingered a length of light blue tweed. “This
will make a lovely skirt ... and muslin for shirts and ... and
batiste for chemises and baby dresses ... threads and needles and
buttons.” She looked at Cordell, who stood watching with a wide
grin on his handsome face. “Oh, Cordell, you thought of
everything!”

Cordell tapped his
forehead. “Sure! Whenever you mentioned wanting something, I made a
mental note.”

Lise laughed and winked at
Jean-Paul again. “Well, now we know what’s wrong with your father’s
head. It’s nothing but a big notebook.”

“
Full of empty pages!” Jean-Paul
giggled.

Cordell playfully swatted
Jean-Paul on the rear and laughed heartily. “Everyone knows my son
takes after his father, eh?” To Lise he said, “There’s something
you haven’t found yet.”

Lise placed items to one
side as she searched further. Then finally she exclaimed, “Yarn!
How did you manage to find this? There wasn’t any last time.” She
hugged the soft, yellow yarn to her cheek.

“
Old Troika was at the trading post,
and when I mentioned our new baby coming, she hobbled back to the
boarding house and returned with the yarn. Said she’s had it for a
long time, and since her fingers are too stiff to knit anymore, she
was giving it to you anyway.”

“
How thoughtful of her!” said
Lise.

Jean-Paul touched the yarn
and said, “You can make a sweater for our baby, Ma. I hope it likes
yellow.”

Lise’s eyes became misty.
“A tiny yellow sweater, yes, if I can remember where I put my
knitting needles.” She shivered suddenly and pulled her shawl
closer to her throat. “This old cabin’s so cold and drafty. I can’t
picture caring for an infant here…”

Jean-Paul looked to see if
his father had noticed Lise’s sudden depression. From the look on
Cordell’s face, he certainly had. He wore a slight frown, his lips
pursed tightly.

Their home was an old
prospector’s cabin. And, like most buildings in the Arctic, the
building leaned to one side a little. This was caused by shifting
permafrost and alternate freezing and thawing. There were tiny
holes between some of the logs, and cold air seeped in no matter
what repairs Cordell made. On one wall hung a heavy blanket to
cover some of the larger cracks.

Of the three rooms, two
were small bedrooms. The main room was bigger than both bedrooms
combined, and was both kitchen and living area. The cabin was
crowded, for the Ardoins had brought many personal belongings from
their home in Quebec.

Lise had brought her
rocking chair, and Cordell, of course, his typewriter, which sat on
a plank desk at one end of the cabin. A small bookcase contained
reference books, some novels, and a volume of poetry by Robert
Service. (Jean-Paul’s favorite poem was “The Spell of the Yukon.”)
There were also children’s storybooks, mostly fairy tales.
Jean-Paul insisted he had no use for these anymore. But he
sometimes read them when there was nothing else. There was a large
family Bible and a hand-tinted photograph of Cordell, Lise, and
Jean-Paul, taken when Jean-Paul was six-months-old.

The wall next to the outside door was
cluttered with parkas hanging on wooden pegs, dog harnesses,
hunting supplies, and other odds and ends. That area looked more
like the inside of a barn than a house, for it was a catchall for
nearly everything one might need to make life livable in the grim
polar climate.

The kitchen was cluttered
as well, with open shelves containing dry food supplies and an
assortment of dishes. On the walls hung kettles and other utensils.
Meat, fish, and other perishables were stored outside in a
rock-covered cache, the rocks to keep out wild animals. A large
oil-burning stove both cooked the food and heated the
cabin.

Lise had searched her
ragbag for scraps to make a braided rug. She had also made curtains
for the front windows. But Cordell’s favorite was a cross-stitched
sampler that read:
There’s no place like
home, even if it is cold
!

Behind the cabin was a
small shed with a smokehouse attached. And Cordell had built a
lean-to at the south end of the cabin to shelter the dogs. But the
thick-furred huskies preferred sleeping beneath snowdrifts. Lishta
had used the shelter only when she had her puppies.

Lise complained about their temporary home
and was cold most of the time. But Jean-Paul found the cabin warm
and friendly. There was nearly always the smell of something good
cooking on the stove or in the oven. Right now, it smelled of
cinnamon and apples, a pie, probably, made from dried apples they
had brought with them the year before.

Now, Cordell watched his
wife for a moment as she absently caressed the skein of yarn.
Finally, he spoke. “I bought oil for the stove. I’ll bring some
in.”

Jean-Paul watched his father leave. He sat
at the table and pulled off his boots. The pup came over and
sniffed his feet, then tried to take a bite of his toes. He laughed
and pushed her away.

“
Have you thought of a name for her?”
his mother asked, looking at the pup.

“
I like the name Sasha,” Jean-Paul
said. “It’s Greek. I found it in Father Cortier’s old book of
names.”

“
Sasha. Why, yes, that’s
lovely.”

“
It means ‘helper of man.’ That’s what
sled dogs are.”

The pup barked at
Jean-Paul’s boot. She pounced on it and sank her sharp baby teeth
into the leather.

“
No, Sasha!” Jean-Paul scolded, using
her name for the first time. He took the boot away from her. “If
you’re going to be a helper, you can’t chew up my
boots.”

He put the boot with its mate, which was
already forming itself to the shape of his lame foot.

Lise smiled. “Looks as
though you’ve got enough to keep you busy for the next few months.”
She became thoughtful. Then she said, “Maybe I need more to
keep
me
busy. I
really should visit Troika, and thank her for the yarn. And there
are always Eskimo women going to the trading post. I should get to
know them, since you go to school with their children.”

“
I’ve seen some of them at school
talking with the teacher.”

“
Well, of course, I don’t speak their
language,” said Lise, watching Sasha tug on Jean-Paul’s boot in
spite of the scolding.

“
Pa says you make good
kapik
. That’s Eskimo for
coffee. And you know that
nakomik
means ‘thank you.’”

Lise smiled. “So, how could
I speak with the Eskimo women? Like this?
Kapik
kapik
kapik
.
Nakomik
kapik
nakomik
. I
would sound like a woodpecker!”

Jean-Paul giggled, his dark
eyes flashing. “Well, Sasha and I will keep you company while you
make yellow sweaters and tiny boots for my new brother or sister.
And strong
kapik
for Pa.”

Jean-Paul stood and removed
his plaid lumberman’s shirt and mackinaw pants, until he stood in
his outdoor flannel underwear. “I can tell you another word.
Okalerk
.”

“
What does
okalerk
mean?”

“
It means Arctic hare. That’s what the
boys at school call me.”

Lise raised her brows. “Oh?
You never told me that.”

“
It’s because I walk like a
rabbit.”

Lise’s mouth fell open.
“You do not! Oh, Jean-Paul, you don’t walk like a rabbit! Oh,
dear!”

Jean-Paul grinned shyly.
“Well, I limp.”

His mother’s voice was
gentle as she replied, “Yes, it’s true that you limp, Jean-Paul
darling. But you do not hop like a rabbit.” Then she added with a
twinkle in her soft gray eyes, “Why didn’t you wiggle your ears and
nose at them?” She wiggled her nose like a rabbit.

Jean-Paul got a sudden case
of the giggles. It was just like her to try to cheer him by making
a joke. He laughed himself to tears, and when he stopped he said,
“I hope our baby has good feet.”

Lise ruffled Jean-Paul’s
curly hair. “The baby’s feet will be fine.” She sighed. “I suppose
I’ll have to dress my infant in caribou skins. I was thinking more
of soft fox fur. Go out and trap me an Arctic fox, you
scamp!”

Jean-Paul was happy to see
the smile on his mother’s face.

“
Pa won’t let me use the traps,” he
said seriously. “But I’d sure like to.”

“
Your father’s right,” Lise said.
“They’re too heavy and dangerous for you. In a few years you’ll be
big enough to trap by yourself.”

____________

T
he next evening, after supper, Cordell sat down at his desk.
He uncovered his old, stiff-keyed typewriter and slipped a sheet of
paper beneath the platen. He sat back and stared at it. He rubbed
his whiskery chin, thinking. He looked up at the ceiling, thinking.
He mumbled under his breath, thinking and thinking and thinking. He
groaned, then let out a long sigh. Cordell did everything
except
write.

Lise dried her hands and
hung the towel on a hook over the sink—a single cracked and stained
sink with a pail below the drain to catch the water. There was no
plumbing at all in the cabin. Even their drinking water was melted
ice and snow.

She stepped outside and got
the skinned rabbit Cordell had put there earlier: tomorrow’s
supper. Inside again, she began cutting the shiny, pinkish-gray
meat, putting pieces into an old iron pot filled with salted water.
The rabbit was almost frozen, and Lise stopped often to warm her
cold hands. As she worked, she glanced across the room at
Cordell.

“
Writer’s block?” She wrenched a hind
leg from the carcass and dropped it into the pot.

“
It’s coming together wrong,” said
Cordell, leaning back in the chair. The old wooden chair creaked
and groaned. “The outline doesn’t fit anymore. My characters are
writing their own book!” He pushed his huge fingers through his
thick dark hair, as if by doing so the words would tumble out of
his head onto the paper. His curls sprang loose and returned to
their original position over his forehead. “It seems I have two
choices. I can make a new outline, or throw this story out and
start another. There are thousands of stories inside my head
hammering to get out. Except for this one.”

Lise chuckled. “Sounds as
though you’d better let the characters do the work.” She laughed
again, and dropped another chunk of meat into the pot.

“
Humph!” said Cordell with a scowl.
“You think they’d be better writers than Cordell
Ardoin?”

He did not think it funny
that he couldn’t make the words come.

Lise finished cutting the rabbit. Then she
added a spoonful of sugar and another cup each of flour and water
to the sourdough starter in the crock on the counter. She stirred
it well and covered it with cheesecloth. Tomorrow the cabin would
smell of freshly baked bread.

Suddenly Lise felt out of
sorts as she finished her work and sat down in the rocker. She took
up her sewing. Holding the needle up to the yellow lamplight, she
stabbed at the eye until the thread slipped through. She licked her
fingers and twirled a knot in the end of the thread, preparing to
hem squares of soft material from an old bed sheet for diapers. The
thought of washing diapers by hand was depressing. Melting tub
after tub of snow for water. Well, at least there was plenty
of
that
. Angrily,
she stuck the needle into the material and promptly pricked her
finger.

“
Ouch!” A drop of bright red blood
bubbled out of the wound. She stuck her finger in her mouth.
“You’re not the only one with problems, Cordell Ardoin! The next
book you write should be set in the South Pacific! At least we’d be
warm!”

Cordell seemed not to have
heard. He pulled the paper from the typewriter and scribbled a note
at the left margin.

Jean-Paul tumbled with
Sasha on the far side of the room. At the sound of his mother’s
voice, he stopped to listen. He knew she was unhappy, being so far
away from her family when a baby was coming. His father was sad
sometimes, too. After a moment of listening, he pulled on his parka
and took the pup outdoors. No one noticed him leave.