Sharon Sala - The Healer

The Healer

Book Jacket

When I was a little girl, my paternal grandmother, Katie, who hailed from the hills in Tennessee, always had a remedy of her own design for whatever ailment I had. Her rule of thumb was if it didnt kill a horse, it wouldnt kill a kid.

I used to pray not to get sick when I spent summers with her, because I didnt want horse liniment rubbed on my wounds any more than I wanted the tea she boiled up for me to drink.

Then one summer I showed up with a wart on my hand. Little did I know, but I was due for one of Grandmas spells. Just when I thought shed forgotten about the offending knot, she dragged me out of bed in the middle of the night, took me outside, wrapped an old dishrag around the wart on my hand, then began to turn me in a circle beneath the light of the full moon.

As I turned, she began to chant. Ive long since forgotten the words. All I remember is what happened when she was done. She took the dishrag, buried it under the back porch, then sent me to bed.

I lay there under the sheets scared out of my mind, uncertain as to my fate. I should have known not to fret. Within a week, the wart was gone. My grandmother thought nothing of it. Shed done what she intended to do. But for me, she was forever branded into my mind as a healer with astounding ways.

So it is with love and affection that I dedicate this book to the healer in my life: Kathryn Cooper Smith.

One

Snow Valley, Southern Alaska: 1977

T he rangy gray she-wolf, still thin from the passing winter, paused at the edge of the tree line above the valley. As she lifted her nose and sniffed the air, the hair on the back of her neck rose. She could smell the danger. Every instinct she had told her to turn and run, but the pup beside her had needs she couldnt provide.

At that moment the pup whined. When she turned and licked its dusty face, it wiggled with pleasure. As much as she would like to lie down, time was not on her side. She nudged the pup gently until it latched on to her pelt. With a single whine of reassurance, she started forward, confident that it would follow as she started down the gentle slope into the valley below.

The spring sunshine in Snow Valley was a welcome respite from the bitter Alaskan winter and the months without sunlight. It took a special kind of people to be at peace with a world that had months without sunlight, then months without darkness, but the native Inuits were just such a people. It took more than funky geography and quixotic weather patterns to stagger them. Theyd been here for centuries and were at peace with their world.

Today, a brisk wind was coming down from the slopes, whipping among the simple wood-frame buildings housing the hunting camp and the small contingent of people who lived there, popping and yanking at the fresh laundry the women had hanging on their clotheslines.

A bush pilot named Harve Dubois, originally from Biloxi, Mississippi, had a small house on the south edge of the tiny settlement, next to the landing strip, which was the only way in and out of the camp. Hed been in residence for almost twelve years now and considered himself a replanted Alaskan.

During the different hunting seasons, he flew hunters in and out of the area with his Bell Jet copter. In the off-seasons, he had a propensity for hibernation, at which times he retreated to his cabin with a case of Jim Beam and a grocery sack full of paperback thrillers.

Doctor Adam Lawson lived on the other edge of the hunting camp. Hed been brought in more than six years ago on a mercy mission when an unfortunate hunter had met up with a pissed-off grizzly. The hunters gun had jammed, and then the grizzly had jammed him up one side and down the other. By the time the doctor had patched the hunter up enough to be flown out, hed fallen for the people and the place. Hed come back the next spring on his own and had been there ever since.

A man named Silas Parker was the owner of the camp and lived and worked in a small, two-story A-frame. The lower floor was devoted to a sort of grocery and dry goods store, in which he stocked a wide variety of ammunition and a lesser amount of canned and dry goods. The second floor, which amounted to two very small rooms, was where he lived and slept.

The rest of the residents of Snow Valley were mostly Inuit and had been here longer than God. At least, that was what Harve claimed. Adam Lawson figured it was just the opposite. God had put them here. Theyd just had the good sense to stay. The Inuit men were good hunting guides, and a large number of them were often away from the camp with hunting parties for long periods of time, which periodically left the women and children alone.

The recent good weather had spawned a flurry of expeditions, which meant the women were taking advantage of extra time alone to do a little spring cleaning. With the below-zero temperatures behind them, the good weather also allowed their children to play out in the fresh air and sunshine.

Some of the older children were involved in a game of softball. Others were playing tag or hide and seek. A pair of six-year-old twins who went by the names of Shorty and Bubba were sitting in the middle of the road that snaked through the village, drawing pictures in the dirt with sticks.

As they sat, a strong burst of wind lifted the dirt in which they were playing, blowing bits of grass and sand into their eyes. Shorty, the older twin, frowned and closed his eyes, while Bubba, the taller one, quickly turned away, shielding his face from the debris. As he turned, he happened to look up the road. Seconds later, he jumped to his feet, squinting his eyes against the sun, unable to believe what he was seeing. Then suddenly reality surfaced. He grabbed his twin by the hair, and started pulling on him and screaming, Run, Shorty, run!

Shorty reacted without question. Together, he and Bubba ran full tilt for their house, which was less than fifty yards away, screaming as they went. Their screams brought not only their mother, Willa, running, but others, as well.

Mama, Mamawolf! Bubba screamed as he pointed up the road. Willa needed only one look to begin echoing his cries.

Wolf! Wolf! she screamed, and began shoving her boys toward the house as the other women began a frantic search for their own children, desperate to get them inside.

The she-wolf stopped. She heard the screams. She smelled their fear. It was all the warning she was going to get. She wantedneededto run in the opposite direction. But the pups tug on her hair matched the tug of instinct that kept her from abandoning it to an uncertain fate. It was that fierce, motherly instinct that gave her the courage to continue on, moving slowly with her head lowered to accommodate the little brown pup now clinging to her ear.

Silas Parker heard the commotion. Curious, he put down the cans he was shelving and moved toward the front door. It didnt take him long to see what was happening. A big gray wolf was coming into the village. Her walk was slow, and sometimes she staggered, with her head low to the ground. There was only one reason he could think of as to why a wild animal like that would come into the camp.

Rabies.

Silas had once seen a man die from the disease and didnt want to ever witness such suffering again.

He ran behind the counter, lifted his rifle from the rack on the wall, grabbed a handful of shells from a box beneath the counter and began loading the rifle on the run.

Get inside! Get inside! he shouted, as he started down the road. He wasnt much of a shot, which meant he was going to have to get closer to ensure a hit, and he didnt want to have to be dodging kids and women to take aim.

Another woman came out of her house with her rifle as Silas ran past. He could hear the unsteady sound of her breathing as she struggled to catch up.