Joko (11 page)

“Did you find the trail?” she called as Johnny got down from the wagon. Then she saw Jocko’s dark figure. He was facing the rear of the wagon, looking into the darkness.

“Ooops,” she said, “I guess not. Is he all right?” She moved to get a better look.

“No, Aunt Gert,” Johnny answered. “Jocko ain’t sick, ’cept maybe in his heart.” He glanced back at Jocko. “I think his folks left him. Don’t ask me how I know.”

“No, sir,” said Gert. “I’m way past askin’ questions like that. B’sides it ain’t hard to see how unhappy he is. Maybe some strawberries will make him feel better. I was making shortcake.”

Jocko stayed slumped in the wagon. Even when Gert brought some strawberries from the house and waved one under his nose, there was no reaction.

“Jocko,” said Johnny. “Jocko! Look at me.” Johnny reached in the wagon and touched Jocko. Only then did the mountain-boy respond. Jocko looked into Johnny’s eyes.

“Finally,” said Johnny under his breath. “Jocko,” he began again. “You can’t stay in the wagon all night!”

Jocko got up, then turned and pointed back toward the road.

Johnny was perplexed. “What? I’m not taking you back to the woods, if that’s what –”

Jocko jumped from the wagon and ran around the corner of the house.

Horses were com ing up the road. Moments later the two riders were upon them. It was Bill Costerson and Ned.

Johnny and Gert stood near the wagon, unhitching the horse. Adrenaline coursed through Johnny’s body, but he tried to stay calm.

Ned dismounted and began to tie up his horse.

“Hi! What goes, Ned?” Johnny forced a smile. “Hello, Mr Costerson.”

Costerson didn’t dismount, nor did he answer. He tipped his hat and nodded to Johnny’s aunt.

“Ma’am,” he said, leaning on his saddle horn.

Costerson smiled and then looked toward the corner of the house where Jocko had gone. “What goes? Well, if that was our sasquatch high-tailing it out of here, I guess Jocko goes.”

Ned laughed, looking back at Costerson. But the man’s expression didn’t change.

“We need to talk, Johnny,” said Costerson.

“Coffee,” Gert said. “I’ll make some coffee.” She turned and went into the house.

The two men ignored her, focusing their attention on Johnny as he continued to untie Tilly’s reins.

“What do you want, Ned?” asked Johnny, speaking as calmly as he could manage.

“Your aunt’s makin’ coffee, ain’t she?” Ned looked again at Costerson. “I guess we could stick around for a cup. That okay with you, Bill?”

“Well, let me finish with Tilly’s –” Johnny started to say.

But Costerson interrupted.

“We’re here lookin’ for that monkey-boy. Barnum’s circus wants him. They’re offering big money.” He looked again at the corner of the house. “We think he’s here.”

“Why do you think that?”

“He ain’t on the train. That’s for sure. And since you’re so close to him we figured he might be here. If he is – well, let’s put it another way. What if you and Jocko were to go to Florida together?” So saying, Costerson dismounted and tied his horse’s reins to a post next to the porch.

“Listen to him, John!” urged Ned. “This is your big break.

Think about it. Unless you want to shovel coal the rest of your life.”

Johnny walked to the porch steps and sat down. He realized that, for the moment, he was in control. He hoped Jocko was still running and not looking back.

But Johnny knew Jocko was nearby. He had nowhere else to go. As before, he didn’t know how he knew this, but it was a lot more than a hunch. In fact Johnny was sure that he could have pointed to where Jocko was hiding.

Johnny sighed. “You’d pay me, too? How much?”

“A thousand dollars, Johnny,” said Costerson. “I can get that much easy. And all you need to do is go on a boat to Florida. You’ll be back before winter.”

Johnny noticed that Ned was scratching. His skin showed several mosquito bites. Johnny figured Ned and the railroad agent had been hiding in the woods near the farm when he and Jocko arrived.

“We talked to Doc Hannington,” said Ned. “But we ain’t said nothin’ to anybody else.”

Johnny looked at Ned. “I don’t care who you talk to.”

“Yes, you do. We all do,” Ned argued. “For God’s sake, Johnny, that buck’s worth a lot to Barnum. Hell, John, he’s already writing the publicity.” Ned pawed the dirt with a boot heel.

Costerson had been listening to their conversation. “We want to keep this between us.”

Aunt Gert came to the porch. “There’s coffee if you’d like it, gentlemen.” Without waiting for an answer she went back inside. Johnny admired her politeness and composure. He guessed she was feeling very much like he did at that moment.

For some reason Costerson elected not to go inside. He looked around and chose a heavy wooden chair on the porch.

“I’ll just stay here if you don’t mind, boys.”

“Suit yourself, Mr Costerson,” said Johnny. Then he and Ned entered the house.

Underneath the porch, Jocko looked up as Ned and Johnny’s boots clomped noisily into the house. He could see Costerson’s spurs glinting through the cracks in the floorboards. A large centipede wiggled in front of him. He was hungry but knew centipedes were poisonous.

Johnny was glad to get Ned away from Costerson. He thought he smelled Jocko when he was on the porch. Since he wasn’t on the porch Johnny knew he could only be one place: under it. He wondered if Costerson would catch a whiff of him, too.

Gert served coffee to Johnny and Ned when they sat down at the kitchen table. The smell of freshly baked bread lingered in the air.

“Thank you, ma’am,” said Ned, picking up his cup.

Gert didn’t answer. She was facing the window. Johnny could read her expression without seeing her face.

“Well then, Ned?” Johnny raised his eyebrows.

“Look, Johnny,” Ned said, putting down his cup. “We didn’t want to come barging in on you like this. But we was talkin’ to Doc and –”

“Did Doc Hannington send you here?” interrupted Johnny.

“Naw! He told us he’d been out here to see about Gert’s foot or something but I, well, you can see she ain’t limping.”

Ned’s eyes darted around nervously. “But, that ain’t important. We were wondering, though, how you got ol’ Jocko off the train.” Ned leaned toward Johnny.

Johnny looked at him straight-faced. “We? You mean you and Costerson.”

“Yeah. We was wonderin’. How did you do it?”

“I didn’t, Ned. I went to town to see how Jocko was doin’ and he was gone. You took him away without a word to me or anybody! Now you come out here blamin’ me ’cause you lost him?”

Ned thought for a moment. “Now, just a minute, John. If you didn’t let Jocko loose, then who did?”

Johnny looked at Gert. He could tell she was listening, pretending to be working near the stove.

“Look, Ned. Here’s what happened.”

Johnny told Ned how he had gone to town, found the train pulling out and Jocko missing, then the chase … everything.

When he finished his recounting of the previous day’s events, Johnny looked at Ned earnestly, “I don’t know why I’m so sure of this, but all Jocko wants is to get back to his family.

He ain’t some animal to put in a cage, Ned. I can’t sell him out. Not for any amount of money. Dammit, Ned, he’s like a human. We don’t make slaves of people no more. It just isn’t right.”

“But, Johnny,” Ned argued. “Jocko ain’t a person. He’s an animal. Animals get sold all the time. It ain’t like we’re slavers or nothing! Hell, John, you can make money off this. You’d sell your horse for a thousand bucks, wouldn’t you? And you know that horse better’n the ape. Right?” Ned was grinning, obviously proud of his argument.

“I told you, Ned,” said Johnny, “Jocko ain’t no animal. You go ahead and think the way you want, but …”

Gert was facing them and wiping her hands on an apron.

“You boys want more coffee?” she asked. She looked toward the door. Costerson was standing outside the screen door watching the conversation. He opened the door when she looked at him and stepped inside. He was holding his rifle.

“What’s that for?” Gert demanded.

“What? The gun?” Costerson smiled and took a handkerchief from his back pocket. He began wiping the barrel of the Enfield. “Just cleanin’ my gun, ma’am. No offense. Passin’ time is all.”

“You can do that well enough outside,” she said. “Not to be rude, but I don’t know you and you’re not actin’ in a friendly way.”

“I’m sorry, Ma’am,” said Costerson, and he went back to the porch.

When he was gone Gert walked straight to a cabinet and took out a large cap and ball pistol. She placed it on the counter where she was working.

Ned didn’t waste a second. “Johnny, we saw Jocko here, plain as day, and we want to take him. We mean to take him and we all want you to come with us. This is a chance of a lifetime, Johnny. I can’t see what keeps you from jumpin’ at it.

But I got to tell you this.” He thought for a moment. “Whether you come or not, Jocko’s comin’ with us. Costerson said he ain’t takin’ no for an answer.”

The situation was becoming more dangerous than Johnny anticipated. As an agent for the almighty railroad, Johnny figured, Costerson could probably get away with anything.

But Ned had been Johnny’s friend for years. Only somewhat older than Johnny, Ned had been promoted to engineer the year before. Jobs like that were hard to come by, and it had been the answer to Ned’s dreams. But it also meant that his first loyalty was to the railroad, not his friends.

Johnny now knew that Gert was his only ally. He stared at the moon shining through the kitchen window and wondered if others were out there in the dark watching the farm.

It had been a long day. Johnny was tired and wanted an end to all the disruption in his life. It was bad enough that he lived in two homes, his little place above the shoe store in Lytton, which he hadn’t been back to for nearly a week, and his Aunt Gert’s farm. He hadn’t been on a regular schedule for years now that he worked for the railroad. Life was confusing enough. Now here was Jocko, turning Johnny’s world upside down and his emotions inside out.

And now Johnny was sitting in his aunt’s kitchen with his best friend giving him an ultimatum: uproot his life and go with Jocko to Barnum’s Circus halfway around the world, or be a Judas and turn Jocko over to Ned and Costerson.

It was obvious to Johnny from the way Ned acted that he had faith in Johnny being ‘reasonable’ about the proposition.

But it was also obvious that Costerson, who stood outside the house holding a rifle, did not share Ned’s view. Costerson was on the porch, like a policeman, swiping a handkerchief back and forth along the rifle’s stock and scanning the woods for signs of Jocko.

Johnny’s aunt, meanwhile, was trying to be as unobtrusive as possible, but she was very close to anger.

Twice she had asked Costerson to come off the porch and have some coffee or pie, but Costerson repelled all invitations with a thin veneer of gentility.

“No thank you, ma’am, I’m just enjoyin’ the night air. Just pay me no mind at all, if you please.”

Gert turned her attention to Ned. “Well then how about you, Ned, more coffee?” Ned barely heard her. He was focused on Johnny and the pistol Gert had placed on the counter.

“No, no thanks, Mrs Wescott.” Ned waited while Johnny deliberated.

Finally, Johnny spoke: “I can’t just run off. What about my job? What about
your
job, Ned? You got a train to run! What are
you
going to do?”

Ned laughed. “It’s not
m e
that’s going anywhere, John.”

Johnny slammed his fist on the table. “Look, Ned, I’m really sick of this,” he snarled. “You come in here …” He stopped himself, took a deep breath, then continued: “Look.

You saw Jocko light out when you showed up. He didn’t ask my permission to go. I can’t make Jocko do what he doesn’t want to. That’s the way it is. You think I have some power over him. Well, Hell, Ned. I got no power at all. Now, if you want to fault me for carin’ about a poor ape-boy, well, that’s fine. But that doesn’t get you Jocko.”

Under the porch Jocko was waiting for the men to leave. He jumped when the sound of Johnny’s fist on the table rang through the structure of the house. It made Jocko hit his head lightly on a floor beam, making a soft thud. Jocko gritted his teeth hoping Costerson didn’t hear the noise.

Jocko had a pretty good idea what was going on and where everyone was standing. Lying on his back he could see Costerson through a crack in the floorboards. He studied the man.

He knew that the man was holding a gun and that it could kill, but Costerson had no idea that Jocko lay just a few inches beneath his feet.

Jocko wondered what would happen next. He was very tired and in spite of being afraid he was ready to fall asleep at any moment. Lying on his back in the cool dirt under the porch was almost too much for him. He had to fight to keep his eyes open. Then he heard Costerson walk to the screen door again.

In the kitchen Johnny was letting himself get angry. He figured that Ned and Costerson really had no idea how connected Johnny and the sasquatch had become. They wanted the money Barnum had promised them but had no way of knowing whether they had a chance of collecting or not.

Thankfully, Jocko had run off when they showed up. They needed Johnny’s help if they were ever going to catch the ape-boy. He couldn’t see any way that they could force him to help if he didn’t want to.

Johnny decided that Costerson’s stroking his gun was just for show, but he was back at the screen listening to every word. Without being invited he stepped into the room. As he did so Gert moved over to the counter where the pistol lay, and turning to face them she leaned against the counter with her hands behind her.

Costerson removed his hat. He stood there for a moment with his wide brimmed Stetson in one hand and his Enfield in the other, then he rested the gun against a bookshelf near the door and walked over to an empty chair at the table. Without waiting for an invitation he s at down.

Johnny and Ned looked at him blankly.

“Gentlemen,” he began. “I couldn’t help but hear the discussion you were having about this Jocko matter.” He looked at Gert as he took a cigar from his vest pocket. “May I smoke, ma’am?” he asked politely. Gert nodded as she got a little tin ashtray from a cupboard and put it in front of the railroad agent.