me on father's knee, with my nose in his buckskin shirt, and
even to this day the wood smoke in camp brings back that wuff, whereas
summers his boots smelt fishy. What happened first or afterwards is all
mixed up, but there's the smoke smell and sister Maggie lying in the
bunk, all white and froze.

There's fish smell, and Polly who used to wallop me with a slipper,
lying white and froze. And yet I knew she couldn't get froze in summer.

Then there's smoke smell, and big Tommy, bigger nor father, throwing up
blood. I said he'd catch it from mother for messing the floor, but
father just hugged me, telling me to shut up. I axed him if Tommy was
going to get froze, too. Then father told me that Tommy was going away
to where the milk came out of a cow. You just shove the can opener into
the cow so--and the milk pours out, whole candy pails of milk. Then
there's great big bird rocks where the hens come to breed, and they lays
fresh eggs, real fresh hen's eggs--rocks all white with eggs. And
there's vegi tables, which is green things to eat. First time you swell
up and pretty nigh bust, but you soon get used to greens. Tommy is going
to Civili Zation. It's months and months off, and when you get there,
the people is so awful mean they'd let a stranger starve to death
without so much as "Come in." The men wear pants right down to their
heels, and as to the women--

Mother comes in and looks at father, so he forgets to say about the
women at Civili Zation, but other times he'd tell, oh, lots of stories.
He said it was worse for the likes of us than New Jerusalem.

I reckon Tommy died, and Joan, too, and mother would get gaunt and dry,
rocking herself. "'The Lord gave,'" she'd say, "'and the Lord hath taken
away; blessed be the name of the Lord.'"

There was only Pete and me left, and father wagging his pipe acrost the
stove at mother. "They'll die, ma'am," I heard him say, and she just
sniffed. "If I hadn't taken 'em out doors they'd be dead now, ma'am."

She called him an injun. She called him--I dunno what she didn't call
him. I'd been asleep, and when I woke up she was cooking breakfast while
she called him a lot more things she must have forgot to say. But he
carried me in his arms out through the little low door, and it was
stabbing cold with a blaze of northern lights.

He tucked me up warm on the komatik, he hitched up the huskies, and
mushed, way up the tickle, and through the soft bush snow, and at sunup
we made