Left Behind

Evelyn was an Alaskan Indian who lived in a fishing village on the Bering Sea.

She lost her home when her mother was murdered by her drunken father.

She was force to go to school in Fairbanks for the first time at age 10.

She graduated from high school as a functional illiterate.

She worked for years as a food server.

She married and had children.

He abused her.

She took it.



I watched her face as the soft light danced over it. A hint of gray in her hair, crow’s feet hanging around her Asiatic eyes, I thought she was beautiful and pulled her closer to me. A smile broke her usually stoic features and she patted my hand. Her face softened into a look of contentment and again the light played over the beauty of her face.



Then her husband abused her oldest child, sexually.

She turned him into the authorities.

He went to prison.



That smile meant much to me. She always seemed to be waiting for something with infinite patience. It was easy to imagine the light on her face came from a small fire instead of her TV. What must it had been like to sit in a camp shelter waiting, like her ancestor, waiting for the hunter fishermen to return out of the frozen grip of winter. What had kept her from going mad as I would have in those circumstances? Her face betrayed nothing, only her hands moved, which always were busy with her crafts.



The State took her children and gave them to her husband’s family.

Since they said she did not make enough to support them.

She turned to drugs, hit bottom, and bounced.

Then I came into her sad story.



She did not laugh often and when she did it was not the same way I did. Instead of a high ha-ha-ha-ha of my people, it was the low ho-ho-ho-ho of her people. I had discovered how to make her laugh at her work. The manager gave her five things to do before they let her clock out. I watched her work like a dog to finish and it was clear she had been going like this all day, so when she finished she quickly slipped into the empty toy section on the way out and cut one. In mock astonishment I admonished her, “Evelyn!” She laughed and laughed, almost getting into hysterics by the time we got to the truck. I was able to even add my own fart to our gaiety.



I was nice to her and made her happy.

She clung to me as her last hope.

I moved away without her.

She hit bottom again,

And lay there.



All her friends were alcoholics or reformed alcoholics. It was as if the village Indians came to Fairbanks to die. I had 200 hours of volunteer policing with the Fairbanks Police department and knew, no matter how many times we scraped them off the streets they seem to want to return, like beluga whales, despite our best efforts to save them. Twenty-three bodies were found that year after the snow melt.


The villagers never gave up on the lost. Two, three, four years later, they would come up to us with a picture and ask, “Have you seen my friend.” The veteran police said it was all right to tell them we last saw them hanging around the bridge. When the city put up the chain link fence, they cut holes in it.



Her throat was cut by a 20 year old Indian boy.

While she was passed out on the couch,

During a Christmas block party.

Just for the fun of it.

He was drunk.



My Uncle took eight people with him when he crashed head on into another car. My neighbors remember him from before I was born and gave him this epitaph, “he would fight a telephone pole.” Some lessons you should not have to learn the hard way. It is the Irish and Indian blood in me and is why I don’t drink.



I could have saved her.



End.

Note: Evelyn only know one curse word, “you son of a gun.” Those are strong words in an Indian fishing village on the Bering Sea.



George T. Everette, Jr.