My Name Is Not Easy (54 page)

And Junior smiled, too, half awake and half asleep, squinting owlishly into the dark. “It is, isn’t it?” he said.

Th

e woods were dark, all right, but Sonny knew the way. Amiq, in fact, had been the one to show it to him. Th

is thought made

Sonny smile into the darkness. Made him laugh, almost. Th at

crazy Eskimo and his Eskimo hideout. Hiding out from the Indians.

Well, not this Indian. Not this time.

He walked through the woods without a sound—not one single twig cracking, not one stone rolling.

Amiq was right where he knew he’d be, too. He hadn’t even heard Sonny coming. Even now, he had no idea that Sonny was standing right behind him. He just sat there in his darkened hideout, staring morosely at the ground. Sonny leaned forward. Amiq wasn’t just staring at the ground. He was holding something, something small that dangled from a slender chain and twinkled in the moonlight, and he was staring at an empty vodka bottle that lay on the ground by his feet. Looking at it hard, like he expected it to say something.

Th

at bottle had been there longer than Amiq had been staring at it, you could tell. Something about that pathetic old bottle
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

and the way Amiq was hunched over it, clutching whatever it was he clutched, was just too funny. Sonny couldn’t help it; he burst out laughing.

Amiq leaped up, the little chain swinging from his fi ngers like some kind of spent weapon.

“What the hell!” He glared at Sonny. “What are
you
doing here?”

Sonny grinned. “Looking for trespassers,” he said.

Amiq stood there for just a second, his fi sts up at his chest like a boxer. Th

en he started laughing, laughing so hard he

almost cried.

“Oughta beat the crap out of you,” Amiq said, almost choking on the words.

“Try it,” Sonny said.

“I jokes,” Amiq said.

He looked down at his hand. It was Donna’s necklace, Sonny realized, the one she always wore.

“Saint Christopher,” Amiq said with a silly little grin. “Th e

patron saint of travelers.” And they both laughed. “Don’t know how she managed to get it into my duffl

e. Or when.”

Th

en the two of them just sat there in the dark woods, their backs to the empty bottle, staring at the river and at the necklace, swinging from the ends of Amiq’s fi ngers like a bell.

“What kind of mess you got us in now, Amundson?”

“Ain’t your mess, that’s for sure.”

Th

ere was a crack of branches, and suddenly Junior was there with them, with Luke right behind him.

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“Yes it is. It’s everybody’s mess,” Junior said.

He walked over to them in that tentative way he had and sat down right next to them, shoving his glasses up onto the bridge of his nose, like he was trying to apologize for something. With Junior, everything felt like an apology.

“We sort of had this idea,” he said, taking his glasses off and cleaning them on his t-shirt. He gave Amiq a small, near-sighted smile. “Civil disobedience, just like you said.”

And Luke, leaning up against a tree, smiled.

Old man Johnson, owner of Johnson’s Lodge and Bait, gives Junior a funny look when he says he has some papers that need notarizing. For a long moment, Johnson doesn’t say a word, just squints at the papers. Th

en he looks at Junior. Hard.

“Now, Junior,” he says. “You don’t expect me to believe that you had anything to do with that whole mess, do you? I sure never heard you talk like
this
before, the way this letter’s written.” He scowls at Amiq, standing there next to him, then looks back at Junior. “And that ad doesn’t sound at all like you, either, Junior.”

Mr. Johnson stands behind the counter of his store, which is attached to his lodge at the far end of the coff ee shop. Th e

sign that reads notary public hangs behind him on the log wall, framed. He doesn’t even notice Luke, hunched up in the shadows in the corner of the room.

“You’re not trying to say
you’re
the one who wrote ’em both, are you?” Johnson says.

“Yes, sir,” Junior says. “I am.”

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“Says here on this affi

davit you’re taking full responsibility

for the whole thing. . . .”

“Yes, sir.”

“Son, I don’t think you want to do that.”

Chickie picks this exact moment to stick her little blond head into the lodge and stroll breezily over to the counter, where she slides onto the stool right next to Junior as easy as if it’s a classroom and the bell has just rung. She knows Mr.

Johnson—he’s an old friend of her dad’s from back when they both worked for the same trading company.

“Oh, yes, Mr. Johnson, he does want to do that,” she says sweetly. “And so do I.”

“What!” Old man Johnson just about launches himself over the counter. “Are you saying the two of you wrote it together? Come on now, Chickie, you’re daddy ain’t gonna go for that at all, and you know it.”

Chickie smiles. “Well, I’m afraid that just can’t be helped,”

she purrs. “And anyhow, Swede ought to be used to me by now, don’t you think?”

Johnson grins, despite himself, then frowns and shakes his head. “And you want me to notarize them?”

Junior can tell by the sound of his voice that Mr. Johnson is starting to feel trapped.

“Says right there you’re a Notary Public,” Chickie

announces, waving her arm at the framed certifi cation. “And I don’t see why we should have to go all the way to town when you’re right here.” She looks up and smiles sweetly, like a little girl talking to her daddy.

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Old man Johnson shakes his head, muttering, but it isn’t an angry sound. Th