My Name Is Not Easy (44 page)

Th

e line between Sacred Heart and the café was scratchy
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E S K I M O R O D E O / L u k e

with static that time, just like it is now with the radio. Mom’s voice had sounded scared and confused.

“Amau?” she had said, using my old nickname.

She sounded like a person not quite awake, a person unsure about what’s real life and what’s dreaming.

“Amau?” Her voice had wavered. “Th

at you?”

Th

ere was this lump in my throat the size of an iceberg, and I was suddenly so homesick, I could barely breathe.

“Yeah, Mom. It’s me.”

Suddenly, I had to pull the phone away from my ear

because Mom was screaming so loud it hurt, screeching like a hundred thousand seagulls. Calling out for Uncle Joe and for every other uncle, aunt, and cousin I got like they were all right there, sitting in the café with her, waiting. And maybe they were.

“Joe, Mae, come here! It’s Amau! Anna! Look who’s on this phone right here! Dora! Dora! It’s Amau! He’s alive! Isabel!

He’s alive! He’s alive, Rachel—come hear! Right now! Alice—

guess who this is right here, it’s Amau! He’s still alive!”

I’d forgotten how many relatives I had until right at that exact minute when Mom started punctuating every other word with their names.

“Esther! Donald! It’s Amau. Helen! Amau? Amau, is that really you?”

“Yes, Mom. It’s me.”

“Oh praise God, we thought you died . . . Joe! Joe! Come here right now!
Qilamik!
”

Th

e sound of her voice taking off across the phone line
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

like a fast car without a driver had made me start to laugh, crying at the same time. And in between the laughter and the tears, I was feeling every kind of feeling there was to feel, like I was fully alive for the fi rst time since Bunna died. It felt really good and hurt really bad, both at the same time.

Suddenly I realize that the phone in my hand has quit ringing.

“Hello? HELLO?”

I had gotten so lost in remembering, I’d forgotten that I was calling again.

“Hello, I . . .” Suddenly, I don’t know what to say or who to say it to. My thoughts and feelings are wadded up inside so tight that the words get squashed fl at.

“Smythe’s place. Hello?” It’s Uncle Joe’s voice, rich as whale meat.

“Uncle Joe?”

“Luke? Th

at you? Hey, guy! When you coming home?”

“I’m not sure,” I croak, almost ready to cry for happiness, it’s so darned good to hear his voice. “Christmas maybe?”

“Yeah well, you have to come home,” he says.

“I’m going to have to work hard next break to get enough money to get home,” I say. But my voice catches on the word
home
. Th

en there’s another silence. A silence that feels as long as forever.

Th

em damn Catholics.

I’m not sure if he really muttered it or not, but all of a sudden it feels like we turned a corner somehow.

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E S K I M O R O D E O / L u k e

“Hey, guess what?” Joe says suddenly. “Guess what I got now—a new kinda rodeo.”

Rodeo?

“Yeah,” Joe says, laughing suddenly at some joke of his own. “Rodeo with horses, mechanical horses, just like you guys got down there at that school.”

I don’t tell him that we don’t got no rodeo at Sacred Heart School, mechanical or other. I just smile because something in his voice makes me feel like laughing. Th

e sound of Uncle

Joe, just being himself, is suddenly the best thing in the whole world. If he wants to think we got cowboys with our Indians here, let him.

“Rodeo just like the Indians got. Just like them cowboys.

Eskimo rodeo.” Th

en he laughs long and loud.

And Uncle Joe’s laughter, smooth as seal oil, reaches all the way across the two mountain ranges that separate us, across all the rivers, right up into the offi

ce here at Sacred Heart School,

where I stand in the growing darkness, smiling.

“No kidding,” Joe says. “Eskimo rodeo. And you sure can catch caribou with this thing.”

“Caribou?” I have no idea what he’s talking about.

“Sure,” Joe says. “Bring that old gun with you when you come home, and I’ll show you how it works. Pretty slick.”

Suddenly there’s a lump in my throat as big as Sacred Heart School. Joe doesn’t know about his gun, the gun that was supposed to be mine when I got old enough to take the kick.

I already took the kick.

“Th

e gun was with Bunna, Joe,” I whisper.

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

“What?” Joe says.

I can tell by the way his voice cracks that he heard me, but I say it again, anyhow. “It was in the plane. With Bunna.”

And then there’s another silence, like his voice got cut off . It’s a silence empty as fog that reaches down across the God-forsaken tundra, over the mountains that claimed my brother and straight through this valley prickly with blue black spruce.

“Well, hey,” says Joe, like he’s warming his voice up. “Never mind that old gun. Just a piece of tin, right? Wait’ll you see this new one I got.”

I don’t say anything.

“Luke?”

“Yeah?” It’s all I can manage.

“Hey, this new gun?” Uncle Joe’s voice sounds shaky. I nod as if he could see me. “You know what? It’s got a site that’s never more than a hair from right. No jokes. Wait’ll you try it.”

It’s totally dark now, but when I step out into the bitter-cold November night, it feels good, like coming home, somehow.

Th

e stars are pricking through the dark sky same as always, like nothing diff erent has ever happened or ever will, and all of a sudden, I like that.

I have that letter, the one I saved. It’s been there in the bottom of my drawer all this time—the letter from my little brother Isaac. In Texas. In Dallas, Texas. I never burned it like I said we should. I saved it. It wasn’t much, but it’s enough
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