Katrina OF HAIRY HILL

The Kovals of Hairy Hill School was out at four o’clock on this wonderfully warm spring Friday in May 1933, and all the students were looking forward to the weekend. Katrina Koval linked her arm in Rosie Halwa’s, and the two high school friends strode down the hill toward home. As they chatted away, their peals of laughter could be heard echoing back from the hill behind them. “Ah! Think of it, Rosie, next week we will be through with high school! We must do something special this weekend! What do you say to that?” “Katrina, you understand that I get very few breaks. What with two little sisters and two little brothers, and now with our baby Larisa, all needing attention, I have precious little time to myself. I really do want to help my mother. She is the one who needs some diversion. But go ahead; tell me what you have in mind. It would be wonderful to do something exciting for a change.” “Actually, I was wondering if you would be game to go up Hairy Hill into the cool woods and then climb higher to the crater. I really feel that spring fever hit me.” Katrina stopped to see Rosie’s reaction. Rosie released her arm from Katrina’s and gave her friend a questioning look. “Going into the woods is fine, but going higher up to the crater, I’m not sure. That crater has been so mysterious and scary for as long as I can remember, and you know the Cree Indians say that it has been cursed and brings bad luck.” They were almost home by now, and when Rosie turned to go through her gate, they had not come to a decision about climbing the hill. Alisa Koval, dressed fashionably in a suit of brightly colored cotton print daytime pajamas, was in the front garden, weeding the rose bed. She was enjoying the balmy spring day and looked up as she heard her seventeen-year-old daughter’s voice. “Mom!” Katrina called, “Are the twins home yet? I have plans for tomorrow’s outing, and I am sure Stacie and Sophy will be quite delighted. Maybe you could come to the woods with us, too. That would be a nice change for you, wouldn’t it?” “Oh, my dear Katrina, the twins will love that, but count me out. I still have flowers in the hothouse that need to be transplanted into the flowerbed. There should be no more frost to damage them. But let’s go in. I think Hanika is making some pierogies for our supper. We can help her pinch the dough together.” But before mother and daughter went in, they stopped on the front doorstep and looked out over the vast, seemingly endless expanse of beautiful grassland and early green grain fields that rippled in the breeze, like waves on the sea. “Mom,” Katrina spoke in a hushed voice, “Is it possible that this is where the buffalo used to graze and the Indians made their home? That wasn’t too long ago. Actually, you were born in 1900, only five years before Alberta became a province. Isn’t that so?” Alisa started to add that her parents immigrated to Canada in 1896, but she did not get to finish her sentence, as the twins came charging through the gate. “Guess what we saw?” Sophy squealed. “Two crows!” Stacie shouted. Together, they chanted: “One crow sorrow, two crow joy, three crow letter, four crow boy!” They were thirteen years old, but still had a lot of childhood in them. Sometimes they were quite grown up, and at other times, just plain childish, like now. “What’s all the racket going on?” Hanika, their Ukrainian live-in helper, came out. Her hands were dusted with flour and tucked into the pockets of her apron. “I’ve got the water boiling and ready to put the pierogies in to cook. So now that the girls are here let us go in and get ready for supper. How about Mr. Alex?” “Hanika, Alex is still in Edmonton and will not get back till Monday. So we women can enjoy our supper in the kitchen tonight,” Alisa responded as she ushered her daughters into the house.