My Name Is Not Easy (24 page)

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

“My,” says one of the teachers in a whispery voice.

Bunna moves in right next to me, squatting down with a grin.

See?
I tell him with my eyes. Th

en I reach up inside the

belly like I seen Uncle Joe do with caribou. But you have to reach a lot farther in to get inside a moose than you do with a caribou, even a baby moose. I’m in up to my shoulder before my hand fi nds the top edge of the guts. I pull hard, and the insides come sliding out just like water. One of the teachers behind me gasps.

“All right then, here’s the heart,” Father says, stepping forward and nodding down at my hand. I look at my hand and realize that I’m clutching that baby moose heart like it might save my life.

“Where’s that sack, Sister?” Father calls.

Sister grabs one of the burlap sacks they brought, and Bunna reaches into the mess of guts and pulls out the
taqtuk
like he’s done it a hundred times. Amiq winks at him.

“Here’s the
taqtuk,
” Bunna says.
Taqtuk
is Bunna’s favor-ite. “What do Catholics call
taqtuk,
Luke?” Bunna whispers.

I don’t know what Catholics call
taqtuk
, so I pretend I’m too busy to talk.

“
Taqtuk
is kidneys,” Amiq says, tipping his head at Sister with a smile.

I know I’m supposed to take the skin off next, and I’m pulling with one hand and punching with the other, trying to separate the skin from the meat like I seen Joe do before with
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caribou, seen Mom do with fox, but the skin won’t separate.

It’s stuck hard, like it’s frozen onto the meat.

“You can’t pull the skin off like it’s a parka,” Sonny says, laughing sharply, like the sound a
tulugaq
makes. He even looks like a raven. Bunna glares at him.

“I seen them pull the skins off caribous,” Bunna mutters.

“Lots of times.”

“Th

at look like a caribou to you?” Sonny says.

Amiq moves over and squats down next to us.

“Naw,” he says, watching Sonny with a sharp eye. “Th at

ain’t no caribou. Stinks like a wet dog.”

Sonny glares at Amiq like he’s just insulted his mother.

Th

is makes me laugh, which makes Sonny glare even

harder.

“Of course it’s diff erent with moose,” I say smoothly.

“With moose you got to cut it up into pieces fi rst, then take the skin off .”

Sonny gets a funny look on his face like he thinks maybe I’m bluffi

ng but isn’t quite sure. Th

at’s when I realize that

Sonny don’t know any more about cleaning a moose than we do. Heck, Sonny probably don’t even know we don’t got moose in our village. How could he? He’s never been that far north, I bet.

Even when it’s cut up into pieces, taking the skin off a moose isn’t easy. You have to use a knife all the way through, separat-ing the skin from the meat very carefully. By the time I reach the last piece, I got it down cold, and everybody is looking at
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

me like I’m the expert. Heck, maybe I am. I’m the new expert moose skinner of Sacred Heart School.

In the cafeteria that night, we eat fried moose meat with gravy, proud of ourselves. It’s not caribou, all right, but it tastes okay. Good, almost. Th

en Father Mullen comes strid-

ing through the cafeteria, whistling. Swinging that mail bag of his. He likes to act like he’s just walking through the room for fun, but the whole room explodes with the sound of kids calling out, “Who’s got a letter?” “Whose package?” Th at letter I pulled out of the mail bag without asking is getting very heavy, and I haven’t even been able to read it yet.

“Hey, look what I got,” Amiq hollers.

It’s a newspaper clipping. Amiq unfolds it and lays it out on the table for everyone to see. Th

ere’s a picture of a bunch of

Iñupiaq guys in a line. It’s not our village, but me and Bunna recognize some of them. Th

e guy at the front of the line is

signing an offi

cial-looking paper. Off to the side, closer, is a

guy with a big smile holding a duck. I’d recognize that smile anywhere.

“Hey! Th

at’s my uncle Joe!” I shout.

Bunna leans over, and we read the headline together:

“Eskimos in Game Law Revolt,” it says.

“What’s that mean?” Bunna asks.

Amiq laughs. “It means your uncle is a good man,

Bunna.”

Kids are crowding around to read the story about the Eskimo revolt, but not me. I’ve gone back to thinking about
my
letter, the one sitting in my pocket with my name on it,
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unread. Th

e one I’m afraid to take out of my pocket. But right now that letter is the only story I’m interested in reading.

We have to wait a long time to read it, though, me and Bunna. We wait until after dinner, when we’re all alone in our room, after all them other guys are in the showers.

When we realize it’s a letter from our little brother Isaac, we hardly dare breathe for fear somebody’s gonna catch us before we get a chance to fi nish it.

DEAR BROTHER,

MY NEW HOUSE HAS A TREE. I KNOW

HOW TO CLIMB MY TREE. DAD IS

GOING TO BUILD A TREE HOUSE. IT

IS HOT HERE AND WE GO SWIMMING.

SINCERELY,

ISAAC

PS HOW COME YOU NEVER ANSWER MY

LETTERS?

Th

ose last words make me clench my fi sts up tight.

Th

e letter has no return address, and I never got no other letters, so how could I answer them? But there’s a postmark on it. I study it close, trying to fi gure out what it means. It’s a circle with a date in the center—AUG 15, 1961—and the word TEX at the bottom. Th

at means Texas, I’m sure. Th

ere a

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