Joko (8 page)

Luckily, it had been a good year and their harvest relatively bountiful. But she had heard stories that the mountain men were giants. How much could one growing sasquatch eat?

After pondering that while she watched Jocko forage breakfast from her garden, she contented herself with the idea that the raspberry and currant patches hadn’t been touched. She trusted that the berries would bring some welcome cash when she sold them as jam to Marshall’s store in Yale. Blackberries, salmonberries, even blueberries, were plentiful around Yale, but red raspberries were less plentiful and fetched a good price. They made good jam for Christmas presents.

Gert was wondering how long it would take Jocko to find the berry patch when Johnny came in with a handful of eggs.

“Tell your friend out there to keep his grazing down,” she said. “We have to face a winter every year, you know.”

There was a cup of coffee waiting for Johnny at the breakfast table, and Rocky was already under Johnny’s seat ready to catch falling debris.

As he sat down, Johnny looked between his knees.

“Move, Rock. You’re leavin’ no room for my feet!” Rocky whined a bit and moved to a place where he could still watch the table.

Gert cherished breakfasts with Johnny as the warmest part of her day. Without Johnny her life would be empty.

Since her sister died, Johnny had become her entire family.

She’d considered leaving Yale and moving closer to a larger community, but those thoughts were forgotten in the day to day realities of maintaining the farm. She didn’t do it alone.

Johnny helped, of course, but he had to work to keep money coming in. Luckily, hands from the larger spreads south of town were usually available during the busier times. That cost some raspberry money, but not all. All in all, despite the loss of her husband, Gert made ends meet. But she didn’t take all the credit.

“The Lord’s been watchin’ over us most kindly,” she often said.

Gert knew what Johnny wanted for breakfast: egg bread, the way only she could make it. As the smell of bacon began to fill the kitchen Johnny breathed a sigh of contentment.

“Thanks, Aunt Gert,” Johnny said softly.

“For what?” she asked, tossing a pat of butter onto a searing hot griddle.

“Well, for not shootin’ Jocko, for one thing.” He smiled. “I mean, you’ve been great to him.”

“No idea what you’re talkin’ about.”

“Yes you do. I know Jocko’s strange, but I owe it to him to help him get home. I’m just not sure what that means.”

Gert stood before the wood stove with a spatula in her hand. She dumped the egg bread onto a plate and handed it to Johnny.

“Here’s yer usuals,” she said. “And as far as
he
is concerned, you better do something before he eats our garden.”

Gert sat down in front of Johnny, pouring hot water into her tea from a tin teakettle.

“I didn’t talk about Jocko last night ’cause you were tired.”

She looked at him in earnest. “But Johnny, you’re right. You have to decide what to do. Those men, the railroad agent and the rest, are likely to come here to see if you know where their monkey is.”

“Why would they do that?” asked Johnny, drinking some milk. “Nobody saw me with Jocko, ’cept maybe the smithy, but he thought Jocko was just a dead dog.”

“You never know what men will do for gold.”

“Jocko sneaked off the train all by himself,” argued Johnny. “I didn’t release him. They’ll figure out he opened the latch to the bear cage himself. And I suspect they won’t find out he’s gone ’til they got to wherever they was goin’. And they wouldn’t trace him back.” He looked down at the dog.

“They might … they just might if they use hounds . They might pick up his trail at the ridge and trace it back to the shed. But then it would disappear.”

His aunt shook her head. “If they ask around, the smithy will tell ’em about smellin’ the dead dog in my wagon.”

Johnny looked down at his food. “Dam n, and I thought we’d be safe here.”

Gert wanted to reassure Johnny they’d be safe, but she knew sooner or later the whole town would know about Jocko. “Secrets don’t last long in small towns, Johnny.”

“Then we have to figure out what to do with him,” said Johnny. “Whatever it is, we have to do it fast. It’s been half a day since he jumped off the train.”

Gert got up and looked through the kitchen window at the garden. She couldn’t see Jocko but knew from the movement in the corn that he was there.

“Johnny, see if you can fetch Jocko to the house. He has to come in here sooner or later. We need to find out if we can hide him in here.”

“No, that won’t work.” Johnny shook his head. “If they come, they’ll have their dogs to smell him out. And if we bring him in here, the dogs will know and they’ll search the house.”

“Damned if they will!” protested his aunt.

“If the dogs don’t smell him inside the house, then maybe they’ll leave,” offered Johnny. “Leave him outside, Aunt Gert, I don’t want you in trouble.”

Gert got up and went to the sink. She began to clean some dishes as she pondered the situation. Finally she said:

“Maybe we’re worried about nothing. Maybe they won’t find his trail.” Gert looked out at Jocko. “You know, if he didn’t smell so bad he might be harder to track. Maybe we should give him a bath just to be sure.”

Johnny never considered giving Jocko a bath, and judging from his smell he doubted if the sasquatch had even been near water.

“A bath?”

“It would really help a lot if Jocko didn’t stink so,” she answered, wiping her wet hands on her apron.

“Make him smell more like us.” Johnny nodded. “But how do we do it? We have to get him into the house.”

“Oh, no we don’t!” argued his aunt. “He gets a bath outside! We don’t want to stink up the house, remember? I’m not partial to soakin’ it down either.”

Johnny found Jocko gnawing on an ear of corn. He showed his teeth to Johnny as the boy approached. “C-Co-orn,” he said, grinning even more broadly.

“I bet you think that’s how humans act; showing their teeth all the time,” said Johnny. “Well, come to think of it, we do show our teeth a lot,” he added with a laugh.

Jocko seemed to know Johnny had something to tell him.

He faced Johnny and reached out with his hand, touching Johnny’s shoulder. Johnny completed the link by touching Jocko’s shoulder. “I really hope this works. I hope you understand me, Jocko.

“Two things – first, don’t eat all the veggies in the garden.

And … well, my aunt wants you to come to the house. She thinks … we think …”

Johnny hung his head searching for the right words.

“You kind of smell, and we, um, think it’d be better if we washed off the smell. So if they come after you with hounds, you’ll be harder to find.” Johnny pointed to the house, where Gert was filling a washtub she’d brought onto the porch.

“Gert’s fixin’ the bath right now.”

Jocko understood. Not the words, but their meaning. He saw, in his mind, an image of himself seated in a metal tub covered with white foam. On one side of him was Johnny, and on the other, Johnny’s aunt.

The image was a wonder to Jocko. He looked deeply into Johnny’s eyes. “Baaaath.”

“Right you are.” Johnny smiled, still touching Jocko’s shoulder.

Again, Jocko presented his teeth to Johnny. “Baath,”

Jocko repeated, and this time Johnny felt something different.

A question. “Oh. What’s a bath? You want to know what a bath is.”

Jocko frowned. He didn’t seem satisfied with what Johnny had told him.

Johnny thought over his words. He felt sure that, through the link, Jocko had a clear picture of what Johnny wanted, but the sasquatch looked confused.

Finally it dawned on Johnny what the problem was. “Oh.

You want to know
why
? Why a bath? I explained that.”

What Johnny didn’t realize was that to Jocko it was the humans who were smelly. To his nose, the farm reeked more of man than animals. To him, the smell of the mountain people was sweet and familiar, in spite of the fact that in the wild he could smell his family for miles.

Still touching Jocko’s arm, Johnny tried again. “We want to wash you so humans and wolves can’t smell you.” Johnny wondered why he’d said ‘wolves’ instead of ‘hounds’.

Jocko understood. He broke contact with Johnny and headed toward the house in long deliberate strides. A large galvanized bathtub was sitting on the porch. When Gert saw Jocko coming in from the garden she picked up a pail and went to the pump beside the house.

Gert and Johnny had done the bath routine a hundred times, inside and out, for themselves and the even the dog on certain occasions they both preferred to forget.

Now it was Jocko’s turn.

He stood in the center of the activity on the large open porch and watched in total fascination as Gert and Johnny hurriedly filled the tub with water. He noted the way Gert’s dress clung to her body in some places and not in others. He recognized the shape of woman underneath, but the clothing fascinated him. As he looked at Gert bending over to lift the bucket he couldn’t help considering the underlying structure.

Suddenly Gert noticed Jocko looking her over.

“Hmmmmph!” she snorted. “What are
you
looking at?” Jocko looked at her blankly, not fathoming her question.

Gert didn’t expect an answer. She walked briskly into the house and appeared, moments later, with a large steaming teakettle, the contents of which she poured into the tub.

Jocko watched the steam rise into the air with great fascination.

Before long the two humans had assembled a warm bath for their guest.

Jocko knew what to do. He’d seen it in his mind in his conversation with Johnny. Without any hesitation he leapt forward in a seated position and landed squarely in the middle of the tub.

Johnny, Gert, and the dog suddenly found themselves in a wet heap on the porch while Jocko sat barely hip deep in the tub.

“Well, it’s a start,” said Gert, laughing. “I should have expected something like that.”

Jocko had answered any questions Johnny might have had about whether the mountain-boy knew about water. His

‘baaaaath’, as he continued to say during the course of the event, was a unique experience for all of them. Strange as it was for Gert, she found the thick, human-like fur on Jocko’s young back pleasant to touch.

Memories began to flood her mind. She returned to a place she had nearly forgotten; the time a youthful Gert bathed with her young husband in a grove of aspen. How long ago? Was it in this very tin tub?

She and Jimmy were building the cabin. It had taken five years of living in tents until they finished the work. The tent was musty and the bedclothes were never dry, but the nights were wonderful.

Johnny looked at her. Her eyes told him she was miles away.

“What?” he asked her.

Gert snapped back to reality, her eyes fixed on the broad expanse of Jocko’s back.

She stood up and went into the house to fetch the rinse water. “I hope this works, ’cause I feel a snap in the air. It’s gonna be cold tonight.”

When she returned with the kettle she added, “I wouldn’t want old Jocko to catch a chill. Maybe we should let him sleep inside, Johnny.”

Gert began pouring warm water down Jocko’s soapy back.

“Anyway,” she said, grunting under the weight of the pot,

“he’ll smell sweet as a petunia for tonight at least. We best take advantage of it.”

It took four towels to dry Jocko, but finally he stood before them devoid of dirt and odor. With his hair slicked down he looked like an Indian boy, perhaps from the Aleutians.

The way his hair grew, combined with his strong shoulder and neck muscles, gave Jocko a more ape-like appearance when he was dry than when wet. For the first time Johnny felt he was really seeing what his new friend looked like. Then he remembered his idea.

“What if we shaved Jocko and dressed him up?”

His aunt looked at him blankly, then she scrutinized the ape-boy.

“Who would he be masquerading as, Johnny? A long-lost cousin from the Northern Territories? Really, John, this day has been more than enough for an old woman like me. Don’t go tellin’ me to fetch Jimmy’s razor.” She laughed. “If I ever tell of this it’ll be after I’m real drunk and someone asks me what’s the strangest thing I ever did.”

When Jocko was finally dry, Gert suggested they introduce him to the rest of the house. Johnny linked with Jocko and told him not to touch anything without permission.

The sasquatch listened intently, but there was no telling if he understood.

They took Jocko by the arm and led him into the kitchen.

When they entered the kitchen Jocko stiffened. It was evident from his expression that he had entered a forbidden world.

The smell of the human dwelling made Jocko’s head swim: many humans had been there, wolves had lived there too.

But there were other smells: potpourri, mace and sage, yeast and sour milk. Tobacco smoke. He knew them all but couldn’t identify any of them. He knew only that all of them were the signs of man.

Jocko noticed the kitchen ceiling, marveling at the even rows of smooth wooden planks. He smelled cedar and pine.

Jocko saw every detail: strangely shaped implements hung near the stove; ashes lay near the hinges of the fire door. A green glass window that turned the outside into a dreamlike colored image. Other windows reflected the room or showed details outside. Everything had been

manufactured and was unmistakably human; things with strange shapes, circles, squares and triangles.

Here, in this cabin, was the totality of three human lives, four dogs, a large lynx, and a thousand other smells, all collected in a single place, a single cave; the sanctum sanctorum of a human family. Forbidden territory to Jocko.

One step at a time. The humans survived this every day –

so could Jocko.

He tried to summon his strength. The bath was a stressful experience, a test of his youthful resilience. All the images and memories that started to flood his mind while in the arms of Johnny and his aunt were beginning to overwhelm him.