But when you’re a big kid at Sacred Heart School and you know your grandfather and his brothers used to kill Eskimo trespassers . . . well, that kind of talk just makes you tough.
And Sonny was plenty tough.
Now, Amiq was marching his Eskimo pawns right past
Sonny’s table—on the Indian side—acting like he owned the place. Evelyn glared. “Who say they gonna be here?” she muttered.
Amiq stopped dead in his tracks and turned around real slow. “We say,” he said, staring right at Evelyn. And smiling a great big smart-aleck smile. Like he was laughing at her.
Evelyn’s eyes got black as water under river ice. You didn’t 31
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have to know her to see she was not the kind of girl who let people laugh at her. “Yeah? So whatchu doin’ here?” she snapped.
Amiq just stood there, grinning down at her.
“Scouting,” he said, like he was some kind of cowboy or something.
Th
at word made Sonny’s chest tighten. Scouting.
If there’s gonna be any kickball around here, Sonny thought,
it’s not gonna be my head.
Amiq sauntered over to the heart of the Eskimo table, grinning down at Chickie as he passed and winking at Donna.
To Sonny’s surprise, Donna blushed.
Chickie shoved another forkful of gluey fake potatoes into her mouth. All of a sudden she was missing Swede really bad. When Swede had told her about going away to boarding school, he never said anything about fake potatoes, that’s for sure. Th
e only thing he said was that she was going
to a place called Sacred Heart School and she couldn’t bring her hula hoop. He’d looked right square at the hoop and said it, too: “You can’t take it with you, Chickie. Sorry, girl.”
But that was okay by Chickie because you can’t go
anywhere on a hula hoop and Chickie had known forever that the one thing she wanted to do in life was to see what it’s like to live in a place where the roads don’t quit rolling at the end of town.
Th
at hula hoop had been the only hula hoop north of
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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e the Arctic Circle, too. It had come north to Kotzebue on the barge, which is how Swede always ordered stuff for the store.
Which is why Chickie always got to eat real potatoes instead of fake ones.
“Real potatoes taste a whole lot better than fake ones,”
Chickie announced.
“I don’t care for potatoes,” Donna said quietly.
Chickie put her fork down with a sigh and studied the dry brown meat, slimy vegetables, and wedge of pie. At least the pie looked good. She took a bite of it, just to see, watching the nuns, who still stood by their food in the food line. It was apple pie with real apples and it did taste good.
Apple pie is as American as Wheaties and milk. Th at’s what
Swede said one time. Not that they ever got Wheaties and milk at home. Th
ey’d probably get lots of Wheaties at Sacred
Heart, though, lots of Wheaties with this lumpy powdered milk. Canned milk was better. Why couldn’t they have canned milk? Chickie took another bite of pie and looked at Donna sideways.
“I wonder if that tall nun is the one who does the baking,”
she said. In fact she was pretty sure that the tall one, Sister Mary Kate, was the pie baker, but she fi gured she ought to be polite, her being new and all. Aaka Mae said she had a tendency to be bossy, and she wanted to be sure not to be too bossy with her new roommate, her fi rst friend at Sacred Heart School.
Th
e nuns were starting to put the food away now, and
Donna had turned to watch them. Chickie turned, too. An old priest was standing next to the wall by the door, all draped 33
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in black. He looked like a black cat, that’s what Chickie thought. Like a big black cat waiting to catch something live in his skinny old claws. Donna looked at him, too, but only for a second. Th
en she looked away quick like she already
knew that priest, already knew all about him.
Chickie looked back at the nuns, but she could still feel that priest watching them. It made her skin prickle. She quickly took another bite of pie, studying the way the nuns were putting away the food.
“Th
e tall one is Sister Mary Kate,” Chickie told Donna, helping herself to more pie. “I wonder if she’s going to teach us how to cook. She’s a good cook, don’t you think?”
“Maybe it’s the other one who makes the pies,” Donna said.
Chickie almost laughed out loud. She didn’t want to be rude or anything, but that skinny old nun disappearing into the kitchen with stringy beans looked way too mean to make a pie this sweet.
Chickie looked back at the priest, but he wasn’t looking at her and Donna, she realized suddenly. He was watching the boys. Boys take a lot more watching than girls do. Th at’s what
Chickie fi gured.
“Did your mom teach you how to cook?” Chickie asked Donna.
She tried to say it real easy like a normal kid would say it, a kid with a mom. But Donna gave her a funny look anyhow, like she knew.
“I never learned to cook,” Donna said quietly.
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I N D I A N C O U N T R Y / S o n n y a n d C h i c k i e It’s true that a person can tell things about another person without anybody saying it. For instance, you can almost always tell by their hair which girls have mothers and which don’t.
Chickie’s hair was wild as a snowstorm, whereas Donna’s was tame as black syrup. Chickie teased a piece of pie crust back and forth across her plate, suddenly self-conscious.
“I don’t have a mother,” Donna said.
Chickie looked up, surprised. Donna took a bite of her own pie and didn’t say another word.
Two of the Eskimo kids were talking to each other in Eskimo, and Chickie could see right away that the priest did not like this. Not at all.
It’s true that some people get mad when they can’t understand what other people are saying, and Chickie could tell that this priest was one of those kinds of people. She looked back at Donna, but Donna wasn’t looking at the priest and she wasn’t looking at Chickie, either. She was looking straight out the window, her eyes empty, like she’d gone someplace else, someplace where priests couldn’t go.
Chickie looked out the window, too. Th
e moonlight was
shining on the yellow-leaved birch trees outside, making them twinkle and dance in the wind. For a fraction of a second, it got so quiet, Chickie swore she could even hear the sound those leaves were making.
Sonny felt a sudden chill in the air and looked around. Most of the other kids were still busy shoveling their mouths full of food, hungry after a long day of missing home. Th ose two
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Eskimo brothers were talking together in their own language.
Sonny watched them closely, trying to fi gure out what they were talking about.
“Horse meat!” the bigger one muttered, unaccountably.
Horse meat. An English word nobody ever used, laced into an Iñupiaq sentence. Weird.
Before Sonny even had a chance to fi gure it out, the whole room went dead quiet, and everyone looked up, as if by instinct. Th
at old priest was striding toward the Eskimo table, black a
s a storm cloud, shaking the whole place into an electric silence. He stopped right next to those two brothers and towered over them, tapping his hand with a ruler.
Some of the other kids might have wondered why he
needed a ruler at dinnertime, but Sonny already knew, and so did Amiq. Th
e two of them eyed each other without meaning
to.
Checkmate, Sonny thought, watching Father and ducking his head. Even without looking he could feel Father, standing there like a big black bishop in a game of his own—a bigger, meaner game.
And then the only sound in the whole room was the sound that ruler made, smacking that kid’s hand. Hard.
Sonny still didn’t look. No one looked. Th
ey all sat there
leaning into each other, one body of kids with a whole lot of dark, averted eyes.
Th
at Amiq should have warned his kids about Father, Sonny thought, glancing sideways at Amiq. He should have told them.
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How Hunters Survive
SEPTEMBER 7, 1960
LUKE
—
It’s still dark outside, like this is the kind of place that’s always gonna be dark. And I can’t sleep.
All I can hear is the sound of other boys breathing. I think maybe I hear the whole place breathing—every last one of them. Nuns and priests, girls and Indians, all of them fast asleep. Bunna looks tense, even in his sleep, clutching Isaac’s toy gun. He didn’t think I noticed that he had it, but I did.
Some of the younger kids are making little hiccupping noises, hunched into their blankets, trying not to let anyone hear them crying.
I wonder if Isaac’s asleep now, too, wherever they took him. I try real hard to imagine him sleeping—snoring soft with that twitchy little sleep smile he gets. But no matter how hard I try, all I can see is his tear-streaked face, pressed up against the black window of that car, disappearing into tree-shaped shadows.
I stare up at the ceiling, wishing a person could go from 37
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one place to another, just like that. I’d make myself go from this lonely bed at Sacred Heart School to my own bed back home, curled up with my brothers—both of them.
I have never in my whole life been spanked, and I’m wondering what’s so bad about Iñupiaq that they have to make your hand sting for speaking it. I can still feel those Iñupiaq words, warming the back of my throat, only now it feels like the sounds got twisted around somehow . Like if I try to say a word, it’s gonna come out bent.
But I know for sure what I gotta do now. I lean over the side of the bunk and shake Bunna hard.
“Bunna. Wake up. It’s time,” I say real soft.
“Time for what?” he asks, his voice loud and groggy.
“Shhh. Time to go home.”
“Where’s our stuff ?” He’s wide awake now, whispering.
“We don’t need stuff .”
“I’m taking Isaac’s gun,” he says, his voice rising a bit.
Isaac’s toy gun is on the bed, next to him. He slept with it, I just realized.
“Go ahead,” I say. “Take it.”
Outside it’s dark, but there’s a moon slung low, and the dirt road that leads away from the school is lit with a shadowy light. It’s the same road that priest drove down when he took Isaac away, his car spitting stones and dust. At the end of that road is the highway that leads north to Fairbanks and south to Anchorage. If we can fi nd Isaac and hitchhike north to Fairbanks—and then get a message to Uncle Joe somehow—we can get home. Uncle Joe has a friend who fl ies planes.
38
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H O W H U N T E R S S U R V I V E / L u k e
“I’m hungry,” Bunna says. “We oughtta eat fi rst.”
“Eat what? Horse soup?”
Th
is shuts him up.
We’re coming up on the place where the school road turns out onto the highway. Th
ere’s a cabin on the corner there and
it has its lights on.
“Wait here,” I tell Bunna, but he don’t listen. He follows right behind me like a shadow.
“What the heck you doing?” he asks.
“We gotta fi nd Isaac. Maybe this is where they’re keeping him. Stay low.”
We sneak up to the window of that cabin and peek in.
Part of me already knows we aren’t going to fi nd our brother in there. Th
e other part is desperate enough to look any-
where.
Inside is an old Indian man sitting there, all alone, wearing dirty brown coveralls, staring at his stove and drinking coff ee. He’s got his back to us, and the hair on the back of his head looks matted, like he just woke up. He looks mean, even from behind. When he stands up, I duck down quick, my heart pounding. Now what?
I think about my grandpa’s uncles, killing all them Indians, but I don’t feel that brave. All I feel is a sudden need to get off that road and out of sight.
“We gotta cut through the woods behind,” I whisper.
Bunna looks at those big old black trees, moving their branches back and forth like fi ngers. “What about Isaac?” he says in a small voice.
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“I don’t know where they got him. We gotta go get Uncle Joe to help us.”
Bunna is still looking at the trees. “I’m not going in there,”
he says.
I don’t want to go in there either. “You rather stay here?
Th
at what you decide?”
“No,” Bunna whispers. “I never.”
“Okay then.”
Bunna and I never been in woods before, and right away we don’t like it. Th
ere’s things on the ground you can’t hardly
see: roots and rocks and bushes and pieces of tree. Th ings that
make it hard to walk. And the trees lean in so close that when you look up, you can’t even see the sky.
Th
is place is not right. You’re supposed to be able to see things when you’re outside. You’re supposed to be able to look out across the tundra and see caribou, fl ickering way off in the sunlight, geese fl ying low next to the horizon, the edge of the sky running around you like the rim of a bowl. Everything wide open and full of possibility. How can you even tell where you’re going in a place like this? How can you see the weather far enough to tell what’s coming?
Bunna trips, and there’s a sudden pounding sound that makes my heart stop cold, makes me grab him hard.
“It’s only birds,” Bunna says fi rmly. Like he’s trying to convince himself.
“Whatcha trying to do, get us killed?”
“It’s only birds, Luke,” he repeats, but his voice doesn’t sound all that sure.
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“Yeah, well, you gotta be more careful.”
Th
at’s when we hear the crack of something way bigger than birds, something crashing through the woods behind us and veering off through the bushes in front: a big bull caribou.
“Tuttu,” Bunna breathes, and we both relax. Th is place
feels better now, with caribou in it.
“And us without a real gun,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Bunna,. “We coulda had real meat.”
I’m not sure what we would have done with a dead caribou, us trying to run away, but I don’t say this to Bunna.
We look off toward whe
re that tuttu went, and we can see light up that way, like the woods is letting go. Without a word we both start running and suddenly there it is: a big, wide-open chunk of tundra, right in the middle of the woods.
We race out onto it, laughing and shoving at each other and falling onto our backs, staring straight up into the star-span-gled sky where the pink of dawn is just starting to spread. We breathe deep. Th
e whole sky breathes with us.
“Feels almost like home,” Bunna says. “You think we can make it, really?”
I guess he’s thinking about that long bus ride we took getting here and that longer plane ride.
“Yeah, sure. People hitchhike. We just gotta get onto the highway,” I say, trying to pretend it’s that easy, not wanting Bunna to know the truth: I can’t fi gure out where the road’s at.
Hard to tell anything in the middle of all these trees.
Bunna sees him same time I do—that mean old Indian, standing there at the edge of the tundra, holding a gun. We 41
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both jump, dumb as ptarmigan. He must have seen us, must have followed. He walks toward us real slow. Hunting.
“What you doin’ out here?” His voice is raspy.
“Going home,” Bunna says before I can stop him.
Th
e old man’s frown lifts just a bit. “You kids from the school?” he asks.
“Were,” Bunna says.
“We’re headed home,” I add quick, giving Bunna a look.
“Road’s that way,” old man says, tilting his head as he runs his fi ngers over the barrel of his gun. Bunna and I shift, uncomfortable.
“You boys making too damn much noise. Scarin’ the animals.”
When he moves toward us with that gun, we know we’re done for, and both of us jump up and start running like our bodies are connected by one single muscle, a runaway muscle. We run out across the tundra and off through the black woods, leaping over fallen trees and rocks and bushes without even looking back, not once.
My Name Is Not Easy Page 4