Free Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Page B

said. “Make yourself at home.” The sewing machine hummed and the radio droned on. Julie stepped outside and sat down on an oil drum. The streets were hushed for it was the rest hour. She did not know how long she sat in quiet terror, but it was a long time. Presently a little girl came around a rusted ship’s engine, pulling a smaller girl by the hand.
    “Come on,” she ordered the reluctant child. “It’s time for the blanket toss.” As they hurried along, other children gathered from all directions and clustered in front of the community house. Several men unfolded a huge skin. Eskimos and tourists took hold of it. A child got in the center, bounced, and then was flipped twenty feet up in the air, like a toy rocket. Giggling, the child kicked her feet as if she were running, and came gracefully down.
    Julie looked away. Snow buntings whirled around the house, an Arctic tern darted over the ocean, and the waves lapped the ice that was piled high on the shore. She was desperately homesick for Mekoryuk. She dropped her head on her knees.
    “Julie?” a tall girl tapped her arm. “I’m Pearl Norton, Pani NalaGan.” She began speaking in Innuit. Julie shook her head.
    “We’d better use English,” she said. Pearl nodded and laughed.
    “I said, ‘Let’s go to the quonset.’” Julie jumped to her feet and followed Pearl around a broken box, over a battered auto door, and into an alley. In silence they passed the wooden hotel, where a tourist was huddled on the porch out of the wind; then they stepped onto the main street, where the stores stood. Crossing the street they entered an enormous quonset hut. When Julie’s eyes had adjusted to the dim light she could see a dozen or more young men and girls, some in blue jeans and field jackets, some in kuspucks and parkas. They were seated at tables or leaning against pinball machines as they listened to rock and roll music. Pearl bought a Coke, got two straws, and they sat down at a table near the door.
    “I know how you feel, Julie. I was married last year,” Pearl began. “Don’t pay any attention to it. No one does. All you have to do is leave the house or run away and everything’s forgotten. Most of these arrangements are for convenience. I’m sure you are here to help Nusan make parkas and mittens for the tourists.” Pearl leaned back. “Even in the old days they didn’t make kids stick with these marriages if they didn’t like each other. They just drifted apart.”
    Julie listened, her head swimming in confusion ... Daniel, marriage, parkas, tourists, jukeboxes, pinball machines ... divorce.
    “I must go,” Julie said. “Can I talk to you again?”
    “I’ll meet you here tomorrow. All the kids come here to have fun.”
    Daniel was gone when Julie stepped into the kitchen and nervously glanced around.
    “Do you know how to sew?” Nusan yelled from the floor where she was cutting a short length of rabbit fur.
    “A little,” Julie answered as she unzipped her coat and folded it carefully.
    “You shall know a lot when I’m through with you,” Nusan replied and pointed to a large box in the corner. “Yard goods and rickrack. We have to make thirty parkas for the airlines by the end of the month. They lend them to the tourists who come here. None of them know how to dress. They’d freeze without parkas.” Nusan threaded a needle and whipped the rabbit fur onto the top of a mukluk. She glanced up at Julie.
    “You’ll do nicely,” she said. “You’re smart and you’re pretty.”
    Julie saw little of Daniel that summer and even less of him after school started. And so, by October she was beginning to enjoy her new home. She cooked and sewed for Nusan, studied at night, and had a few hours in the afternoon when she met Pearl at the quonset.
    As the months passed, the letters from Amy became the most important thing in Julie’s life and the house in San Francisco grew more real than the house in Barrow. She knew each flower on the hill