The Unlikely Allies (6 page)

“It won’t help. When it goes down again, it’ll just seem colder.”

The two women sat there quietly, Orva simply staring into the fire. There was a stolid hardness about her, and Mallory thought,
She’s just like this land.
Mallory offered up a prayer before asking her companion, “Orva, will you let me tell you about my God?”

“You can if you want, but it won’t do any good.”

Mallory smiled at the invitation and began. “There is one God, Orva. He made all of this. He made the whole world and the stars and the sun and the moon. And He made us, you and me.”

“He made everyone, you say?”

“Yes, of course.”

“He’s not a very good maker, then. I’ve seen some pretty pitiful specimens.” Orva grinned and downed a swallow of her whiskey. “Go on. Tell me some more about this maker of yours.”

Mallory struggled to get her message across, and finally she spoke about Jesus. “We were all so bad that there was no hope for any of us,” Mallory said. The wind had died down, and an immense silence rested on the barren landscape. It was as if everything in the world had died and all was totally silent. Mallory’s voice sounded
thin and weak as she said, “God was holy and righteous. And He sent his Son to save us.”

“To save us from what?”

“From hell.”

“Hell? What’s that?”

“It’s a place where people go forever who are lost and die in their sins.”

“And what is this hell like?”

“It’s a place of burning fire.”

Orva laughed and hugged the jug to her chest. Her eyes gleamed, and her teeth glowed white against her dark skin. “That’s where I want to go, then. I’ve never been warm in my whole life. Yes, I want to go to hell.”

Mallory was speechless. She struggled to find a way to explain what she meant, but no words would come. Finally she said, “For you and your people, I guess hell would be a place of eternal ice, with no fire and no warmth.”

Orva blinked. “I wouldn’t want to go to a place like that. I’ve had enough of that kind of misery.”

Mallory did not know how to say what was on her heart. “Jesus is the Son of God, and He came to give us peace. To make everything right.”

“He’s got a big job on His hands,” Orva said sardonically. “How does He propose to fix the mess we’re in?”

“He came to earth and He died for us.”

Orva grew still and fixed her dark eyes on Mallory. “He did?”

“Yes,” Mallory said, encouraged at the woman’s interest. She went on to speak of how Jesus was born without an earthly father, and this also interested her.

“He had no father? Just a mother? That can’t be.”

“It was the only time it’s ever happened. God was His father, and Mary was His mother. So He was God and man.”

“It makes a nice story,” Orva said with a shrug. “This is what you’re going to tell my people?”

“Yes, all about Jesus.”

Orva slowly uncapped the jug, took a swallow, and expelled her breath with a gust. “Well, it’ll make a good story to tell when there’s nothing else to do.”

****

For four long days Mallory Winslow struggled with the hardest journey of her life. She had thought it was hard to live in Africa under the blazing sun, fighting the heat and mosquitoes and other bugs and dangers of wild animals. But every day now she longed for an hour under that hot African sun. She had not bathed or changed her clothes, and the travel seemed endless. The landscape changed very little. Sometimes new snow would fall. Once she woke up to find the tent buried two feet deep, and it had taken all of the fortitude she could muster to come out and face the world. True, it was beautiful in its pristine stillness, but it was white and unbroken and treacherous.

It was almost noon by her watch on the fourth day of travel when Orva stopped short. “There.”

Mallory was stumbling forward, concentrating on not falling down, when she looked toward the horizon. Her heart gave a queer lurch at the sight of movement.

“My people.”

“How can you tell?”

“I have eyes, don’t I? Come.”

Mallory struggled forward, excited by the opportunity of meeting Orva’s family. As they approached, she saw that a large herd of reindeer was digging at the snow to get at the vegetation underneath. She had never understood how they could survive in this inhospitable land, but obviously they had done so for hundreds of years.

When they drew closer, she could make out human figures, and she also saw a group of tents scattered in a random fashion. The reindeer grazed about them, and their arrival had attracted the attention of a number of people, who were
walking toward them. She could see they were all wearing reindeer-skin boots and heavy coats.

“They won’t be too glad to see me,” Orva said. She halted the reindeer in front of the small group and spoke in the Lapp language.

The man who replied was short and broad.

“This is my father, Jagg—and my mother, Remu,” she said in Norwegian. “This woman’s name is Mallory.”

Jagg’s face was lined and seamed and had the texture of old leather. He had no beard, and his eyes looked Asian. When he spoke, his Norwegian was broken, but he ignored Mallory and said, “You come back. I told you, you’d have to obey me.”

Orva laughed. “That would be different. I’ll see if I can follow your rules for a few days, and then we’ll see what happens.” She grabbed Mallory’s coat sleeve. “You’ll be interested in this woman. She’s come to tell us about a new god.”

“We have gods enough already.”

“Not like this one, you haven’t.” Orva turned and went over to two young people standing nearby who were dressed exactly like their parents. “How are you, Lorge?”

“I’m glad you’re back, Orva.”

“This is my brother, Lorge,” Orva told Mallory. “He’s fifteen. And this is Mayda. She’s twelve.”

“I’m glad to meet you all. It was good of Orva to bring me. I couldn’t have made it without her.”

“Here, I brought you a present.” Orva rummaged around in the sled until she found one of the jugs she had brought. She handed it to her father, and Jagg’s eyes brightened.

He uncapped it and smelled it, then grinned and took a drink. “That’s good,” he said, expelling his breath lustily. He turned to Mallory. “What’s this about a new god?”

Mallory wished for a more graceful introduction, but she saw she had to do the best she could. “I would like to stay with you awhile, and when you think it’s right, I’d like to tell you about my God.”

“You have better manners than some,” Jagg said, staring at Orva, who was grinning at him. “You can stay for a while.”

Relieved, Mallory nodded. “Thank you very much, Jagg. I’ll try to be no trouble.”

“You got anything to eat?” Orva demanded.

“Yes,” Remu said. “It’ll be ready in a few minutes.”

“Good. I’m starved,” Orva said.

The family’s reindeer-skin tent was not large. The family ducked into the doorway one at a time, and Orva’s mother went to work, taking the lid off a pan that was on the fire in the center of the tent. An opening at the top of the tent permitted some of the smoke to escape. The stench was awful—a mixture of unwashed bodies, cooking meat, smoke, and some other
odors Mallory could not identify.

“You sit there,” Jagg said as he sat down not far away.

“Thank you.” Mallory sat down, and Orva’s brother came and sat beside her. She turned and saw he was examining her as if she were a strange creature.

“What’s your name again?” he asked.

“My name is Mallory. You speak very good Norwegian.”

“I go to school, my sister and I. We learn there. Do you speak Lapp?”

“I’m afraid not.” Mallory smiled apologetically. “Maybe you could teach me.”

“It’s not hard.”

Mallory laughed. “Not for someone born here, but it might be very hard for me.”

Mayda sat silently on the other side of Mallory as Lorge talked incessantly.

“How old are you?” he asked.

“I’m twenty-two. And you’re fifteen, your sister said?”

“Yes. Do you have a mate?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?” Mayda demanded. “Is something wrong with you?”

“No, I hope not. I just haven’t found a husband yet.”

The young people were intensely curious, and Jagg watched the exchange as his wife took the pan off the fire and apportioned the meat into several wooden bowls. She handed one to Mallory.

Mallory said a blessing silently and then watched the others to see what they would do. They were picking up their meat with their fingers and biting into it, so she did the same. It was tough and had a wild taste to it. “Very good,” she said. “What is it?”

“Why, it’s reindeer meat!” Remu said.

“You’ll get lots of that around here.” Orva said with a grin. “Fried or boiled or raw. That’s what you’ll eat.”

“You live off the reindeer, then.”

“Yes,” Jagg said. “We make our clothes and tents from their hide. We eat their meat and drink their milk.”

“How many reindeer do you have, Jagg?”

Apparently this question was too difficult, for Jagg thought hard, then said, “Many.”

“I know,” Lorge said. “We’ve got six hundred and twenty-three. My father’s a very rich man.”

“I’m glad to hear that. It must be nice to have so many reindeer.”

After the meal was over, Orva disappeared and Lorge offered to show Mallory around. She took advantage of the boy’s hospitality and spent the afternoon wandering through the camp with him. “How do you know which reindeer are yours?” she asked as they approached a massive herd.

“We cut their ears with a special mark.” He showed her his family’s mark on the nearest animal.

“I see.”

Lorge peppered Mallory with questions too, and she enjoyed their conversation, finding him a bright and curious young man.

“Do you think you’ll ever leave here?” Mallory asked.

“And go where?”

“Maybe go to work in a city.”

“No, I like it here,” Lorge said. “This is my country, and these are my people.”

Late in the afternoon, the family had another meal of reindeer meat. Mallory brought out some cans of vegetables from the sled and opened them up to share with the family, and they were delighted to eat them.
They must get awfully hungry for green things,
she thought.
I know I would.

After supper, the rest of the family relaxed around the fire while Remu worked on a pair of reindeer mittens she was sewing.

“Too much trouble to put up the tent,” Orva told Mallory as Mayda opened her mouth in a huge yawn. “You sleep here.”

The fire was now very small, and the cold was closing in. She’d had no intention of sleeping with the family, but Orva took it for granted.

Mallory went to the sled to get her sleeping bag, then lay down where Remu indicated she should sleep. She was so exhausted the sound of voices quickly began to fade as she felt a body pressed against her on one side and then on the other. The smell was awful, but she had to admit that in the bitter cold, two were definitely better than one, and a whole family was better than two. She knew she would have a hard time adjusting to this life, but it was where God had put her, so she ignored the unaccustomed smells and drifted off to sleep.

****

A week had passed since Mallory and Orva had arrived, and Mallory was concerned at how quickly her food supplies were dwindling. She realized that she would soon be reduced to the same diet as the Lapps, and she dreaded it.

She was sitting quietly by the fire with Remu, toasting a bit of reindeer meat, when Orva appeared with a man. He was short and squat, as were all the Lapps, but somewhat older than Jagg, Mallory thought.

“This is Tarjin,” Orva said.

“I am glad to know you, Tarjin.”

“Tarjin is worried about you.”

“Worried! Why would he be worried about me?”

Orva’s face was expressionless except for a light of humor glinting in her dark eyes. “I told him you had no man, so he says you can be his number two wife.”

“What!”

“Don’t worry. His first wife is old. When she dies, you’ll be number one. He has more than four hundred reindeer.” Orva grinned at her mother. “You’d better take him up on his offer. It’s a good one.”

Mallory could see that Orva was making fun of her, and she resolved not to let it get to her. Hoping she was not offending the man, she said to him politely, “Tarjin, I thank you for your kind offer, but I do not want a man at this time.”

Tarjin shook his head and walked away without another word.

“I didn’t mean to hurt his feelings,” Mallory said.

“Don’t worry. You wouldn’t be any good for him anyway. I doubt if you could skin a reindeer if your life depended on it.”

Mallory laughed. “Well, I had my chance, and I turned it down. Thank you, Orva.”

Orva studied the slight form of the tall woman. “You’re not going to do any good here with your Jesus. You might as well go home.”

“I feel confident that this is where God wants me to be, so I’d like to stay awhile longer.”

****

A month had passed since Mallory had rejected Tarjin as her husband. She had run completely out of supplies and was reduced to living on charity, which meant eating nothing but reindeer milk and meat. She tried to help with the work as much as she could, but her contributions were rather pitiful.

Life there was monotonous and she became bored. She wrote letters, which she could not mail. She read her Bible. She wandered around in the darkness meeting the people and
had learned many names. She could now distinguish between them and had found out that the Lapps had a subtle sense of humor. She had also found out that they had the same problems as other people.

One day she asked Jagg if he thought people would come to a service if she planned one, and he shrugged his shoulders. “They’re free to come if they want.”

The service took place in the open, since there was no tent large enough for them all to meet inside. A group of some twenty people, mostly women and children, stood around her to listen. It felt strange to have a service in the dark, but with the light of a fire reflecting the snow, she could see everyone’s face.

“I’d like to tell you about a man named Jesus, who is my Savior,” she began. She had asked Lorge to interpret for her since some of the older people spoke no Norwegian, and he did so happily. She spoke for twenty minutes, and she saw no response at all.