"Love at Fourteen" (1961)(a light teenage romance)

Love at Fourteen (1961)
(A Light Teenage Romance)


(Christopher Hunter) I was fourteen years old when I met her, it was the summer of 1961, in October I’d be fifteen, and her, she I think was all of 16-years old when we met. I never blamed her for not meeting me at the tree, or calling me thereafter, I didn’t search for her either, she did ask now and then though about me, throughout the years, she ask how I was, if I was alright. I never talked about her to anyone, what for, it was just a summer romance, perhaps a lost summer, and the only one she and I, Nancy Pit and I that is, would enjoy together—the fancy-free exuberance of youth would embezzle us.
Perhaps I was dim, but a handsome young man I was when I met her, Jill set me up, wanted me to meet her; Jill lived across the empty lot from me, I hung around with her brother somewhat—Donald (or Donny), I suppose we were all friends in the neighborhood back then, Jill, Donny, and the other twenty or so young kids, and me, and here comes Nancy, a stranger but Jill wanted us to meet and I was curious. And I liked her fresh long wavy red hair, some freckles. She was peaceful to be with. We both seemed to be on fire, free as birds, but of course, no one is free when they fall in love, or think they are falling in love. Kind of a Catch-22; your emotions imprison you somewhat.
My body, I remember was hard, muscle hard, I was weightlifting at the time, and my mind had a stone wall around it, it seemed. I was weightlifting as I said, and sso my body was toned, and this one day I was bringing dirt back and forth from the empty lot to Jill’s father’s house, in a wheelbarrow. And she looked, I mean really looked with staring and blazing and desirable eyes at my sweaty body, my muscles glowing as afternoon turned into dusk—wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow. She followed me, told me she like what she saw. She looked at me as if I was so much, enough, perhaps too much, perhaps much more than what I really was. She had thought I was her age, as we had met and talked for the first month of the summer, then she found out she was two years older than I and left well enough alone, said little to nothing on the subject.
She was the first girl I suppose I ever dreamed of, one I could become comfortable with anyways.
The summer of 1961, was a hot one in St. Paul, Minnesota, and a growing one for me—we, Nancy and I, went to the drive-in-movies together, her and I and Jill and her boyfriend that is. We even went to Indians Mound (which was a distance from the neighborhood, having to crossover to a nearby hill, across a wobbling wooden bridge, perhaps from the Civil War days, and up some other hills and into a patch of trees, hidden from the Mississippi Avenue, where the police often monitored; we met the neighborhood gang there and drink (Roger and Doug, Big Ace and Lorimar, Donny and Jill and Mike, Ronny and another Nancy was there, Sam would marry her in a few years, and there was Larry the tough guy of the neighborhood, and so forth). It was during the second month of this summer I and she laid down under the gazing stars, foliage all around us, leaves piled high against thick old trees with thick bark on them, and she lay on top of me, and we rolled about, and I felt myself become excited, thus, I stopped—it scared me, I wanted to obey my impulse, my desire, but my mind said no, and Nancy was not fighting hers. I never regretted it, I think she did though, but I never exactly understood it, why I did stop. The best conclusion I can come up with was pregnancy; and I suppose I was a tinge bashful, and unsure of the situation.
She could have had any guy in the neighborhood, but her heart was alive for me, so it seemed, she even seemed to need me, and was never ungrateful; she made me feel as if I had some magical power over her, that she was breathless over me—perhaps my imagination, but it was as I felt, and if it was a way woman captivate men, she was working me quite well.
She often rubbed my back, I liked the touch of her doing so, and those were the last nights, and the last month of the summer, we’d see each other—hence, she seemed to pick up that habit more frequent, and with less doubt.
After we left that last night, the night she and I carved our names into a tree by my grandfather’s house, where I lived—near what the neighborhood called the turnaround—we told each other we’d meet in six years, I knew it was the last night—the very last night we’d ever see each other but I did for once what my heart and desires commanded, not what my head rationalized out (for I knew she’d soon return to Jill’s house and in the morning be gone). Anyhow, we stood by the tree and carved our names in three, hugged each other, tight, so very tight I think I could have broken her bones, had I not let go when I did.
We parted, she had some tears on her cheeks, but with smiles, the farther she walked in the twilight, the moon guiding her with the arch lights, down across the empty lot where we played baseball, and to Jill’s house, I watched as I walked up my steps to our screened in back door, until she simply became a shadow in the night, a it seemed so unreal, as if the magic that we thought was present, had just busted like a balloon, popped. Is this how love was, I asked myself. Is this was facing me in the future, I asked myself. What was I in store for? I looked a last time, and even her silhouette was gone.

As the years passed, she’d ask about me now and then, Jill would mention it, and then Jill got married. I had dreams, many of them of her, and perhaps she knew that I would—for she had planted them perhaps, only to blossom years later, but she got married, I heard unhappily, but it must have worked out later on for at the age of nineteen-years old, I never heard of her again. And I left it alone. Not sure why, perhaps not wanting to intrude, perhaps she felt I might someday come on a big white horse and rescue her. But I liked how it ended; it was like a romance in a book, happily. And I suppose what more can you ask for. It was a time when neither of us had any baggage you could say, a time when we grabbed the moment, and although it could have been more in-depth, we left that part out, and became good if not great friends. Should I ever meet her again, I can surely say, “Wasn’t a great back then?” And I think she’d really, with a smile and hug, and kiss on the cheek, “Oh yes, yes indeed, it was magical!”

(10-30-2007)(Revised and reedited 4-28-2998)

Ataata ((The Grandson)(A Shrot Story in the Canadian Arctic))

Ataata ((The Grandson)(A short story in the Canadian Arctic))


I never got to know him real well, my grandfather, after father bought me into a small Eskimo village it was in 1905, and I was ten-years old. I would be adopted, adopted into a system, somewhat, we came into a circle of relatives a family circle, not allied by blood, and the reasoning behind this was to strengthen our family bonds. My father would exchange wives now, my mother for another’s wife, our village was a hundred miles away and there was only twenty of us in the community, I was adopted by my grandfather for a year, and my real father now called him by his name Sorqaq—I now was called Ataata, the grandson. Now my mother and father exchanged partners as I said, in the village, wives willing for the exchange, and after a year I had a brother, I don’t know who his father was but it didn’t matter to us, for mother traded husbands three times during this period, and he was given to a certain family, one we shared with. We had new blood in our family, and that was important. In addition to a new brother, we as a family had an alliance. My mother was called Qaassaaluk, and my father, Itukusuk, and my name was Natuk, and the child born to my father’s exchanged wife was called Natuk, this is how we identified family related kin. Natuk the younger’s mother was called, Qaammaliaq (the month of the Moon, which is January). We lived a hundred miles away, in what was called a peat house.
Sorqaq, was a very mysterious grandfather, he had squinty eyes, and a thin looking beard, and a mustache, and long hair, and was said to have Whiteman’s gold, and he drank their whisky, and he had a rifle, things we only saw once, and heard about thereafter.
My sister, was not worthy of much, but she was my sister, Uummannaq, and she was four years younger than I, when I was fourteen, she was ten, she was born in 1899; my new brother 1906. Mother was going to kill her, leave her out in the cold to die, a custom of ours for it is hard to feed everyone, and we needed hunters not young girls to feed, but she begged father and so we kept her, but the other two, father insisted, and thus, the great bears or walrus, or dogs one or a few of those creatures, had a meal that evening, and in turn father would kill the great bear sooner or later, and we’d eat him—so it all came back to us one way or another, so father would say.
This is what I remember when I was growing up. We had a sledge and kayak, and several dogs, and mother had a beautiful necklace, she would give to me someday, she said, I say it, it had ivory trinkets, on it, such as the igloo, a Eskimo woman, and a salmon fish, a female narwhal, a seal made of ivory. Mother was a small woman, but stern, strong and enduring.
We had strict group laws and values and they were preeminent. I must tell you what happened to my brother, or perhaps I should say, half brother, with the same name, his father and mother were killed by a great white bear, now he was a orphan, and it is not good to be such, he was ten-years old when this became his fate, and I twenty. He had no rights in the village, and was sent to ours, but he had no rights there either, but he was given a chance, and orphans are relegated to the lowest level, and he was given a small igloo to live in (Natuk the lesser).
I told him, he had to make extraordinary efforts to improve one’s status, lest he be left out far on the ice by himself, with the bears, for in truth he was a burden on everyone.
In time I had built him up to high spirits, and well I did, for he proved to all those around him, he could bring himself up alone (nobody knew of course I assisted him now and then, taught him a few tricks my father and grandfather had taught me).
I had found a harpoon out by the little island off in the water—the river to be more exact, and left it so Natuk the lesser could find it. I told him where I put it, and where the arctic Canadian walrus basted in the sun, which was on the island, and when it was disturbed by hunters, they would swim to the shoreline, and on the bank is where he was to hide when this happened, and then he needed to spear one of the smaller seals that followed its parents, or a baby walrus. And he did this, and learned how to get food for himself, thereafter.
Many times I’d come out of our home, and visit him in the night in his igloo, he would be shivering, if not there, he’d be huddled in the katak outside with a blanket, he was not allowed inside our family unit where we had a fire. After I had finished my meal, I visited him often, and baring some scraps, if he did not have any, and wood for a small fire.
When he was twelve, and I twenty-two, my father would address him as inulupaluk (poor little man), and one day my father surprisingly gave him an oil lamp, but he’d have to find his oil. He was not allowed to join the hunt with us, or others, so he took his harpoon, and would go to where the island was, and wait on the bank, when it was solid ice, he would creep over to the island, and try to find meat. During these trying days, it was hard for my father to even feed the dogs, let along an orphan.
It would be in time though, Natuk the lesser, would become a legend. Here is what took place:

For he was without father or mother, nor was he adopted, nor would he ask for food from igloo to igloo like so may orphans did, for he told me once, if I depend on them now, I will forever, and thus, die in the process, and die a miserable life, hoping I’d get fed; thus, he refused to beg. Although he was somewhat blood, one must remember, this only makes him kinship bilateral, and was not binding for other families to feed the orphans in such cases. For all were related somehow to one anther.
At the age of fourteen, Natuk, was making harpoon heads used in Kayaks, which is called unaaq. A simple thing for many but also an artful thing; he learned how to make a bow drill, which enables the Eskimo to cut through a piece of bone. It also serves to light a fire in the central Arctic, thus by necessity, he learned many things in this area: Hew could put on a demonstration, buy putting a piece of dry wood covered with cottony plants, and light it. In return many folks came to him, offered him fish, or its equivalent, and thus he became a wealthy trader. He lived to the ripe old age of 104, born 1895, died 1999.

Written 4-26-2008