My Name Is Not Easy (13 page)

e priest is laugh-

ing.

“Ah, yes. I had forgotten. Cowboys, eh?”

Bunna scowls. He don’t like to be laughed at.

“Well, I’m sorry, boys, but we haven’t any horses.”

He pats the steering wheel like it’s a dog.

“Guess we’ll just have to make do with this old buggy.”

Th

en he leans down toward Bunna like he’s sharing a big secret. “And you know, I don’t think cowboys hunt horses as a rule. Th

ink about it. How would they get around if they

started eating all their horses?”

Bunna glares at me real quick.

“Yeah,” he says. “How would they?”

We drive on in silence, the priest smiling and still tapping the steering wheel real soft, like maybe it helps him think to tap it that way.

“So you’re the Aaluk boys,” he says at last.

Th

e way he says it is like he already knows, so we don’t say anything.

“And which one are you?” he asks Bunna.

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

“Bunna,” Bunna says.

Th

en he looks at me. “And?”

“Luke,” Bunna says.

“You’re the oldest, aren’t you?” Still looking at me.

I raise my eyebrows.
Yes.

“Well, there’s no point in trying to run off , you know. It’s about 300 miles to Fairbanks, and I doubt you boys could make it that far. And besides, if you try this again, Father Mullen will be the one to come after you.” He gives us a look.

“And believe me, Father Mullen cannot abide a runaway.”

Abide
is one of those church words. I’m not quite sure what it means, and I don’t want to fi nd out, either.

“You’d rather help us hunt, now, wouldn’t you?”

I nod. My mouth is suddenly dry as dust.

“All right then, here’s the deal: You don’t run away anymore. Instead you work hard in school and earn your way by hunting. Th

at’s easy enough now, Luke, isn’t it?”

I nod, and he smiles. He thinks he’s solved everything, thinks everything is easy all of a sudden. He doesn’t know about my name, my Iñupiaq name. My real name is not Luke and it’s not easy, not at all. But I could hunt; he’s got that right.

I’m a hunter, and hunters know how to survive.

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Snowbird

OCTOBER 1960

CHICKIE

—

All four beds in my dorm room have girls assigned to them.

We never knew each other’s names until we got put together in this room. Th

ere’s Donna, who’s Yupik, sitting stone still

on the bed across from me, like she’s in church or something.

And on the top bunks are two other girls named Rose and Evelyn. Rose and Evelyn are Athabascan, and from the way they act, you might think they knew each other before they got here, but they didn’t. Evelyn is from Northway, and Rose is from Nenanna.

Rose and Evelyn are chatting away, but Donna just sits there, like she’s waiting for someone to give her permission.

She always wears this necklace with a big old gold coin on the end of it, and when she gets nervous, she takes hold of that coin and rubs it with her thumb real soft, like she hardly knows what she’s doing. Like maybe it’s magic or something.

Evelyn has put a towel over the mirror on our dresser. She
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

says it’s spooky and I say she’s right because before she put that towel there, I kept seeing people out of the corner of my eye.

And when I’d turn to look, I’d realize that it was just that darn mirror, following my every move like something creepy.

I have decided that I defi nitely do not like mirrors.

Evelyn says her grandpa is the traditional chief of Northway, and Rose says her grandma is like a chief because she tells everyone what to do and everyone listens. I tell them that Aaka Mae makes the best bread in Kotzebue, but she is not bossy. I also tell them that Aaka Mae never runs out of fl our because Swede owns the store.

“Who’s Swede?” Evelyn asks.

“Th

at’s my dad,” I say.

“Why do you call your dad ‘Swede’?” Evelyn says.

I give Donna a look. “Th

at’s his name.”

“What do you call your mom?” Rose says.

I glare at both of them. “I don’t have a mom,” I say. “She died when I was born.”

Everyone gets real quiet.

“My mom left when I was fi ve,” Donna says.

She’s talking so soft, we almost have to quit breathing to hear her. And she’s looking right at me.

Left? Forever? Th

at’s worse than having your mom die.

“Her name was Sister Ann,” Donna off ers.

“Your mom was a nun?” Evelyn says.

I glare at Evelyn for the rude way she says it, but secretly, I really want to know, too. How could Donna’s mom be a nun?

“My parents died from measles. I was raised at Holy Cross
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Mission by Sister Ann. Before she got called to serve somewhere else.”

Rose and Evelyn shift on their bunk, uncomfortable.

Truth is, none of us knows what to say.

“When I was a baby, I thought she was my mother,”

Donna says.

From the way she says it, warming her hand on that gold coin necklace of hers, I’m guessing she still thinks it. I stare at her necklace and swallow hard. “What kind of money is that?”

I blurt it out without meaning to.

Donna looks at me, surprised, then looks down at her necklace like she just discovered it.

“It’s not money. It’s a Saint Christopher medal. He’s the patron saint of travelers,” Donna says. “Sister gave it to me the day she left.”

Seems odd to give someone a traveler’s medal when you’re the
one leaving,
I think. But I don’t say it.

“Did you live with her?” Rose asks.

“Yes,” Donna says.

“Did you sleep in the same bed with her?”