Julie of the Wolves (14 page)

Two children burst out of a house, put a board across a barrel like a seesaw, and took their positions standing on either end of the board. They began jumping, sending each other higher and higher, and coming down on the board with incredible accuracy. Miyax had seen this game in Barrow, and she watched the flying figures with fascination. Then she slowly lifted her eyes and concentrated on the houses.

There were two green houses near the wilderness. She was debating which one was Kapugen’s when the door opened in the smaller one and three children tumbled out. She decided he must live in the other one—with the windows, the annex, and two wooden boats in the yard.

A woman came out of Kapugen’s house and hurried across the snow.

“Of course,” Miyax thought. “He has married. He has someone to sew and cook for him. But I can still help him with the oxen.”

The woman passed the church and stopped at the mission door. She was engulfed in light for an instant, then the door closed behind her. Miyax arose. It was time to seek out her father. He would be alone.

Her feet skimmed the snow as she ran down the hill and across the road, where the children were hitching a dog to a sled. They giggled, and Tornait answered their high birdlike voices from inside her hood.

As Miyax neared the green house she took Tornait in her hand and ran right up to the door. She knocked.

Footsteps sounded from a far corner of the house. The door opened and there stood Kapugen. He was just as she remembered him—rugged, but with dark gentle eyes. Not a word came to her mind. Not even his name or a greeting. She was too moved by the sight of him to speak. Then Tornait peeped. She held him out.

“I have a present for you,” she said at last in Eskimo. The feather coat rustled and Tornait’s amber head pulled into the covering like a turtle.

“What is it?” Kapugen’s voice was resonant and warm and seemed to come from the seashore at Nunivak where the birds sang and the sea was framed with the fur of his parka. “Come in. I’ve never seen such a bird.” He spoke English and she smiled and shook her head. He repeated his invitation in Upick. Miyax stepped across the threshold and into his home.

The big room was warm and smelled of skins and fat. Harpoons hung on the wall, and under the window was a long couch of furs. The kayak hung from the ceiling, and a little stove glowed in the center of the room. Kapugen’s house in Kangik looked just like Kapugen’s house in seal camp. She was home!

Tornait hopped to the floor, his feather coat blooming behind him like a courting ptarmigan. He ran under a fur.

“He wears a coat!” Kapugen laughed and got down on his knees to peer at the bird.

“Yes,” Miyax said. “He is the spirit of the birds. He is a golden plover.”

“A golden plover, the spirit of the birds? Where did you hear that?” Kapugen arose and pushed back her parka hood.

“Who are you?”

“Julie Edwards Miyax Kapugen.”

The great frost-blackened hands ran softly over her face.

“Ee-lie,” he whispered. “Yes, you are she. You are beautiful like your mother.” He opened his arms. She ran into them and for a long time he held her tightly.

“When they sent you to school,” he said softly, “Nunivak was too much to bear. I left and began a new life. Last year when at last I was rich I went back to get you. You were gone.” His fingers touched her hair and he hugged her once more.

The door opened and the woman came in. “Who have we here?” she asked in English.

Miyax saw that her face was pale and her hair was reddish gold. A chill spread over her. What had Kapugen done? What had happened to him that he would marry a gussak? What was his new life?

Kapugen and his woman talked—she loudly, Kapugen quietly. Miyax’s eyes went around the room again. This time she saw not just the furs and the kayak, but electric lamps, a radio-phonograph, cotton curtains and, through the door to the annex, the edge of an electric stove, a coffee pot, and china dishes. There were bookshelves and a framed picture on the wall of some American country garden. Then she saw a helmet and goggles on a chair. Miyax stared at them until Kapugen noticed her.

“Aw, that,” he said. “I now own an airplane, Miyax. It’s the only way to hunt today. The seals are scarce and the whales are almost gone; but sportsmen can still hunt from planes.”

Miyax heard no more. It could not be, it could not be. She would not let it be. She instantly buried what she was thinking in the shadows of her mind.

“Miyax,” the wife said in bad Upick, “I teach in the school here. We shall enroll you tomorrow. You can learn to read and write English. It’s very difficult to live even in this Eskimo town without knowing English.”

Miyax looked at Kapugen. “I am on my way to San Francisco,” she said softly in Upick. “The gussaks in Wainwright have arranged transportation for me. I shall go tomorrow.”

A telephone rang. Kapugen answered it and jotted down a note.

“I’ll be right back,” he said to Miyax. “I’ll be right back. Then we’ll talk.” He hugged her. Miyax stiffened and looked at the helmet.

“Ellen, fix her some food,” he called as he put on his coat, a long American-made Arctic field jacket. He zipped it with a flourish and went out the door.

Ellen went into the kitchen and Miyax was alone.

Slowly she picked up Tornait, put on her sealskin parka, and placed the little bird in her hood. Then she snapped on the radio, and as it crackled, whined, and picked up music, she opened the door and softly closed it behind her. Kapugen, after all, was dead to her.

On the second bench of the river above town she found her tent and pack, threw them onto her sled and, bending forward, hauled on it. She walked on up the river toward her house. She was an Eskimo, and as an Eskimo she must live. The hour of the lemming was upon the land, cycling slowly toward the hour of Miyax. She would build snowhouses in winter, a sod house in summer. She would carve and sew and trap. And someday there would be a boy like herself. They would raise children, who would live with the rhythm of the beasts and the land.

“The seals are scarce and the whales are almost gone,” she heard Kapugen say. “When are you coming to live with us in San Francisco?” called Amy.

Miyax walked backward, watching the river valley. When the last light of Kangik disappeared, the stars lit the snow and the cold deepened far below zero. The ice thundered and boomed, roaring like drumbeats across the Arctic.

Tornait peeped. Miyax turned her head, touched him with her chin, and felt his limpness. She stopped walking and lifted him into the cold.

“Tornait. What is wrong with you? Are you sick?” Swiftly opening her pack, she took out some meat, chewed it to thaw it, and gave it to the bird. He refused to eat. She put him inside her parka and pitched her tent out of the wind. When she had banked it with snow, she lit a small fire. The tent glowed, then warmed. Tornait lay in her hands, his head on her fingers; he peeped softly and closed his eyes.

Many hours later she buried him in the snow. The totem of Amaroq was in her pocket. Her fingers ran over it but she did not take it out. She sang to the spirit of Amaroq in her best English:

The seals are scarce and the whales are almost gone.

The spirits of the animals are passing away.

Amaroq, Amaroq, you are my adopted father.

My feet dance because of you.

My eyes see because of you.

My mind thinks because of you. And it thinks, on this thundering night,

That the hour of the wolf and the Eskimo is over.

Julie pointed her boots toward Kapugen.

Born in Washington, DC, on July 2, 1919, Jean Craighead George loved nature from an early age. Her parents, aunts, and uncles, all naturalists, encouraged her interest in the world around her, and she has drawn from that passion in her more than one hundred books for children and young adults.

In the 1940s, after graduating from Pennsylvania State University with degrees in science and literature, George joined the White House Press Corps. She married John Lothar George in 1944 and moved to Michigan, where John was attending graduate school. Her husband shared her love of nature, and they lived for a time in a tent in the forest. They began to write novels together, with Jean providing illustrations. Their first novel,
Vulpes, the Red Fox
, was published in 1948.

Following the birth of their first child, the Georges relocated to New York, living first in Poughkeepsie, then in Chappaqua. The family welcomed wild animals into their backyard, to stay for as long as they wished, but the creatures always remained free to return to the wild. Many of these temporary pets became characters in the stories George wrote with her husband.

After winning the Aurianne Award, the American Library Association’s prize for outstanding nature writing, for
Dipper of Copper Creek
(1956), George began to write on her own, at first continuing to illustrate the books herself. She won a Newbery Honor for her third novel,
My Side of the Mountain
(1959), which tells the story of Sam Gribley, a young boy who runs away from home in New York City to live in the Catskill Mountains in Delaware County, New York. The book was adapted into a film by the same name in 1969.

In 1963, divorced from her husband, George and her three children, Twig, Craig, and Luke, began to travel around the country, visiting parks and preserves to learn about the plants and animals that thrived there. These experiences were the inspiration for many of George’s novels, including what is perhaps her best-known work,
Julie of the Wolves
(1972).

In the summer of 1970, George and her youngest son, Luke, visited the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory near Barrow, Alaska, one of the northernmost cities in the world. In preparation for a
Reader’s Digest
article, George studied the wolves living on the tundra nearby, learning about the animals’ social structures and intricate methods of communicating through sound, sight, posture, and scent. One day, George saw a very young girl crossing the tundra alone. The image remained with her as she began to write
Julie of the Wolves
, the story of an Inuit girl who escapes her abusive husband and survives in the wild by joining a wolf pack.

Julie of the Wolves
was awarded the Newbery Medal in 1973. The book was a finalist for the National Book Award, and it was selected by the Association for Library Service to Children (ALSC) as one of the ten best American children’s books of the previous two centuries. A film adaptation was released in 1987, and George later wrote two sequels about her Eskimo heroine,
Julie
(1994) and
Julie’s Wolf Pack
(1997), and shorter illustrated stories about the wolves,
Nutik, the Wolf Pup
(2001) and
Nutik and Amaroq Play Ball
(2001).

George also wrote sequels to her first award-winning novel,
My Side of the Mountain. The Far Side of the Mountain
(1990) and
Frightful’s Mountain
(1999), along with the picture books
Frightful’s Daughter
(2002) and
Frightful’s Daughter Meets the Baron Weasel
(2007), relate the further adventures of Sam Gribley and his peregrine falcon, Frightful, as they live off the land in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. George and her daughter, Twig, published their
Pocket Guide to the Outdoors
(2009), a practical companion volume to the books.

George has written more than one hundred books in the last five decades, including the Thirteen Moons series (1967–69), comprised of illustrated chapter books about wild animals in their natural habitats through the seasons of the year. Most recently, she has collaborated with illustrator Wendell Minor on more than a dozen picture books for younger readers, including the Outdoor Adventures series.

In addition to this extensive list of fiction for children and young adults, George published an autobiography,
Journey Inward
(1982), in which she reflects on her life as a writer, naturalist, and single mother. George still lives and writes in Chappaqua, New York.

Jean Craighead George (bottom left) in Ontario, Canada, in 1923 with her twin brothers, John and Frank Craighead; mother, Carolyn; and next door playmate. Jean’s brothers were a great source of inspiration, and worked as photographers, naturalists,
National Geographic
writers, champion wrestlers, and, finally, grizzly bear biologists. Jean also attributes her love and appreciation of natural history to her teacher and father, Dr. F. C. Craighead, a forest entomologist and zoologist.