“Helga,” Mr. Mann said, his thick German accent falling heavily on the single word.
“Will Mr. Donohue be having supper?” Mrs. Mann asked, the ladling spoon held high in her hand. “We can probably stretch the meal to accommodate another. With enough bread.”
“No. Thank you, Mrs. Mann, but I’ve remembered an appointment. Most important, must dash. Perhaps I’ll stop by the Savoy later, Fee.” He tipped his hat to Mrs. Mann and disappeared with unseemly haste out the back, the door to the yard slamming shut behind him. How odd.
Angus said, “Mary fell into the river, and I happened by and helped her out. She couldn’t go home so wet, so I brought her here to get dry. Mrs. Mann hung her dress on the line, so I gave her your robe to wear while she warmed up.” He stopped talking and looked at me. “Please, Mother.”
“I’ll be leaving. I don’t want to cause any trouble,” Mary said. A healthy helping of defiance filled her black gaze; defiance with a generous amount of contempt and perhaps a touch of fear lurking beneath. I remembered what it felt like, hating someone who, for no reason but a circumstance of birth, had power over you.
“Fell in the river, did you? Must have been dreadfully cold. That cabbage smells heavenly, Mrs. Mann. I’ve always loved cabbage. I am simply starved. Let me wash my hands, then you can tell me something about yourself over dinner. Mary, is it? I should be able to find a housedress you can wrap a belt around a few times to make reasonably respectable. It will do in a pinch. Angus, why is your hair wet?”
* * *
Angus MacGillivray instinctively touched his hand to his head. His hair didn’t feel wet. He patted down a slick at the back and avoided his mother’s questioning eyes.
He glanced at Mary, who was pulling the long sleeves of the dressing gown back to reach for a spoon.
Angus had found Mary in the river. Someone said they’d seen a bear a couple of miles outside town, fishing in the river. Angus and his friends, Ron and Dave, were hoping to get a look at it. They’d been trying to walk carefully, without making any noise, but Dave could never stop complaining for long. He was telling them that that his father said the bear was dangerous and should be shot before it got closer to town. Guns weren’t allowed in Dawson: Dave’s father had a lot to say about that also.
Angus had been out in front, tired of Dave’s whiny voice. He came to a stop so quickly the other boys bumped into him. “Shush,” he warned.
Something was in the river. Not big enough to be a bear. A dog perhaps, or a wolf—that would be almost as good as a bear.
Tendrils of long dark hair moved across the top of the brown water. A head bobbed to the surface, a wave washed over it, and when the wave passed, the head was gone.
The three boys ran to the bank. “A woman, I think it’s a woman,” Angus said.
They’d been warned that this spot got very deep, very fast. Without stopping to think, Angus MacGillivray jumped into the swollen river.
It was late June, after an exceptionally hot spring, but this was the Yukon River. The shock of the cold took his breath away. His boots, which he hadn’t thought to remove, pulled at his legs, trying to drag him under. The water was over his head. But he was young and well-fed and a good, strong swimmer, and she was only a few yards away. In seconds he reached the churning water where the woman had been. Her skirts billowed up behind her, and she was easy for his reaching arms to locate. He hauled her to the surface and set off in a one-armed crawl back to shore. She was small. Even waterlogged, she felt like a doll in his arms. She fought him and cried out for him to let her go.
When they reached shore, Ron and Dave grabbed the woman by the arms and dragged her out of the water. Angus crawled onto the bank and collapsed onto his back, gasping for air.
While the woman retched up a goodly portion of the Yukon River, Angus struggled to his knees and crawled over to her. She was lying on her stomach where the boys had placed her. Ron and Dave sat on their haunches, wide-eyed, as unsure of what to do now as Angus. He touched her back lightly.
She groaned and rolled over. “You stupid boy.” Her flat nose and dark eyes were red, and her breathing was laboured. “Why did you do that? I’m not worth you risking your life.” She began to cry.
The boys watched her. Eventually she struggled to her knees, then to her feet, and without another look at her rescuers, took a wobbly step toward the river.
“No!” Angus jumped up. “Nothing is as bad as that.”
She looked over her shoulder, naked pain in her eyes. “What do you think you know about life, child?”
“I know I don’t want to go swimming again,” he said. “The water’s cold.”
Ron and Dave watched through wide eyes, saying nothing.
The edges of the woman’s generous mouth turned up slightly. “Then not today. Not here. But there are other days, other places. And you won’t be there, young boy.” Her English was almost perfect, but a bit too stiff, too formal, as if she had been taught it in school, not in life. She touched the cheap cross hanging from a chain around her neck.
“Look,” Angus said, “you’re soaking wet; it’s getting late. Why don’t you come home with me? My ma’ll have something you can…put on.” He almost said “wear”, but his mother was so much larger than this slight figure, nothing she owned could possibly fit. “Until your clothes dry, I mean.”
Her dark eyes travelled down his long, thin body. “You must be older than you look. You think I’m going to pay you in return for my life?” She raised her eyes to look directly at him.
Ron tittered, and after looking confused for a moment, Dave let out a bark of an embarrassed laugh. Angus flushed. The boys had been running unsupervised on the streets of Dawson long enough to know exactly what she meant.
“I don’t want you to die of chill, that’s all. My ma will be home soon, and if she isn’t, Mrs. Mann, our landlady, will be there.”
“Angus,” Ron said in whisper, “let’s go. It ain’t none of our business what she does.”
Angus half-turned away from the woman and tried to keep his voice down. “She might try it again if we walk away and leave her here.”
“You can’t take her home, for God’s sake!” Dave said, not bothering to whisper. “Your ma’ll tan your hide if you let her put a foot in the house.”
“Why would she do that?” said Angus, whose mother had never so much as paddled his diaper, never mind tanned his hide.
“She’s an Indian, you idiot. You can’t invite a squaw into a white woman’s house.”
“Indian?” Angus asked, feeling like a fool. When they’d come over the Chilkoot Pass last year, his mother had hired Indian packers to carry their goods. He’d seen a few women working as packers, but only from a distance. They’d all been heavy-set, muscular, bundled up in clothes suitable for the high mountain passes. This woman was tiny, frail almost, but the dark complexion, black hair, and flat cheekbones should have told him. Would it have made a difference if he’d known it was an Indian woman throwing herself into the cold Yukon?
He turned to face her. She had begun to slowly pick her way back towards town, dragging sodden skirts behind her, shivering with cold in her light blouse.
“Wait,” he shouted, running after her and catching her by the arm. “You can still come with me, at least long enough to get dry and warmed up. Our landlady always has lots for dinner, to make our lunches the next day, so she’ll have enough to set an extra place.”
She turned and smiled up at him. She had a nice smile, he thought, kind. And sad. Her face was wet, river water mingling with her tears. “You’re a nice boy.” She touched his cheek with one small brown hand. “You go home to your