My Name Is Not Easy (11 page)

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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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

“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 where 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
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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.

Th

e tree branches try to grab us, all right, but we don’t stop until we trip, both of us tumbling together into a dark, black, empty space. It’s like a room, this space, a room made out of trees. Th

e trees surround us like they’re trying to pro-

tect us, and suddenly we feel safe, lying on our bellies in the silvery darkness. We can hear that old Indian walking carefully through the woods, like he isn’t quite sure which way we disappeared. We hold our breath as the sound gets closer and closer and then starts fading away until all we hear is the sound of
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water. We sit up, grinning. On one side of us, a little fi nger of light fi lters through the trees. We stick our heads out. It’s a lip of land that overhangs a river, and across the river the sun is rising. Th

e smell of water gives us energy, makes us feel like we can make it anywhere. We can get Isaac and escape those giant nuns and mean priests and their fog-gray school. I know we can.

We fi nd the road, all right, but it seems like it goes on forever, winding through trees and hills and more trees. Bunna’s started to complain again, and if I weren’t the oldest, I’d be complaining, too. Feels like this road is one big hill with no top and no bottom. We’re winding up the side of it, and there’s a straight wall of rock on one side and—suddenly—nothing on the other. When I look down, my breath gets sucked right out of me. Bunna’s eyes are wide as eggs.

“Holy cow,” he breathes.

Down below us, the side of the road drops off into a deep valley, lined with trees. Th