My Name Is Not Easy (47 page)

A Weak Spot or a Secret Strength

MARCH 12, 1964

LUKE

—

Luke is in the woods, lying on the sun-speckled ground, trying not to think heavy thoughts—trying not to feel the kinds of things heavy thoughts always make him feel—but it’s impossible, because thinking and feeling are roped together now, roped together with something heavy. As soon as he starts to think, the hurt rises to the surface like a dead body, and as soon as he is reminded of the hurt, he can’t help but think the kind of thoughts that make it worse.

It goes round and round like that. Like a dog chasing its tail.

He’d been boxing that morning with Sonny, and that had helped. Father Mullen had been watching, the way he always watched, and they were boxing just like Father had taught them to. No mercy. Luke’s body had been fl exed hard as a fi st, his mind focused, his feelings turned off . Th

at’s what Luke

liked best about boxing. To box well, you had to turn your feelings off .

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

Now, lying on his back in the piney woods, he takes a deep breath and tries to make himself feel, again, the cold control of a boxer. Make his mind forget everything else, even that one thing that had happened after they fi nished boxing.

He was dancing back and forth, Sonny’s movements like a shadow of his own, both of them waiting for the other to leave an opening. Both of them closed. Luke’s fi sts coiled up so tight against his face they felt spring-loaded. Sonny sway-ing back and forth like a bear.

Luke could feel the punch, simmering deep inside, his feet shifting into place, his eyes locking onto Sonny’s. Winding up. But just as his arm left his side, Sonny shoved a sudden jab. Luke hadn’t even seen it coming. Sonny was just too fast.

Luke’s return caught Sonny square in the nose, all right, but before he could fi nish it off , Sonny threw another punch.

A perfect uppercut, shoving Luke right up off the fl oor and slapping him down like a fallen tree.

Sonny was left-handed, like a polar bear. In the heat of the match, Luke had forgotten and been caught off guard. Twice.

He fell into Sonny hard, and they both went down and it was over, Sonny sitting on the fl oor, and Luke shoving himself upright, wiping blood from his nose. Both of them grinning and breathless.

It felt good. Like together they’d whipped something.

Something important. Like they’d been working together, trying to move something huge, and it had suddenly broken loose and rolled away.

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A W E A K S P O T O R A S E C R E T S T R E N G T H / L u k e

“Short match,” Father said. Father Mullen did not like short matches.

“Sonny’s got a mean left hook,” Luke said, giving Sonny a sideways grin.

Sonny stood up, reached down, and grabbed Luke by the wrist, pulling him up, grabbing him hard. And that’s when it happened.

Mullen was saying something, and Sonny was saying

something else, and Luke understood that maybe he was supposed to be saying something back, but he couldn’t because all of a sudden his ears were echoing and the sound of their voices was receding.

We lived in the dark that time, underground. We lived underground because it was too cold on the surface, too cold to even go
outside, some days. Th

e leader had to test the cold fi rst, licking a
spot on his wrist and sticking it up and out the door, past the thick
layer of mastodon skins, sticking it out for just a second to see how
fast the spot turned white with frostbite. Testing to see if it’s too
cold to search for meat that day. Th

at’s how we lived.

He saw it clearly.

Th

en he snapped back into the conversation, staring at Sonny and Father Mullen, who were still talking about boxing as if nothing unusual had happened.

I know this because I was there,
Luke thought suddenly.
I
was the leader, testing the safety of the frozen world with my own
skin. I was there.

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

“Your opponent will always have a weak spot,” Father Mullen was saying. “Remember that.”

Now, lying on his back in the woods, Luke thinks about this from all angles, his eyes still closed, his wrist stinging.

My wrist is a weak spot,
Luke thinks.
Or maybe it’s a strength,
a secret strength.

Or maybe it’s both.

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Our Story

MARCH 1964

“Look, Father.”

Junior put the newspaper on Father Flanagan’s desk. It was wrinkled, like dirty laundry, but the headline still rolled across it, sturdy as a tank: “Project Chariot Still On.”

It was the front page of the fi rst issue of
Tundra Times,
a newspaper covering Native news statewide. Th