Joko (48 page)
Authors: Karl Kofoed
“I’m sorry, Johnny.” The doctor shook his head. “The question on our minds, Johnny, is if Jack can join human society. Or, for that matter, if he wants to join society.”
Swan leaned back in his chair and folded his arms over his chest. “I can’t imagine that one night of conversation with Jack will answer that for you, sir.”
“Or for any of us,” said Hannington.
Johnny released Jack’s hand. “I think Jack is telling us that for some reason he is apart from his family, some reason other than being lost, I mean.”
“Interesting,” said Swan. “Explain, please?”
Hannington seemed dubious. “And what would you think that reason to be, Johnny?” he asked politely, trying not to sound too patronizing.
“I think Jack isn’t a sasquatch,” said Johnny.
Swan’s eyebrows raised. “Interesting,” he said again.
“I’ll say it is,” added Doctor Hannington. “Then, Johnny, you’re saying that Jack is a half breed? Human and …”
Johnny shook his head. “Could be. I don’t know.”
Gert leaned forward. “Is that what you saw, Johnny? I don’t see how …”
“Maybe,” said Johnny. “I only know what I saw. In my mind. I saw people like Jack, but they weren’t exactly like Jack. They had a different shape. There were only a few standing in a field … big ape-men. With human faces, I think.”
“This is most strange ,” said the doctor. “If I hadn’t seen it for myself … I …”
Swan laughed. “Johnny’s assessment is correct, I think.
But there is no doubt that your assessment is also quite accurate, Doctor.”
Later that evening the doctor and Johnny’s aunt attended a social event, leaving the house to Johnny, Jack, Swan, and the dog. Swan, with his host’s permission, made some strong coffee but said very little. Johnny sensed Swan’s tension but was unsure of its cause. He remembered how he himself had felt, when he was far from home. Johnny knew Swan liked being asked his opinion on things.
“What do you think of Doc Hannington?” asked Johnny.
“Everybody likes him.”
“That’s a can of worms, John. Hannington has managed to get my goat more than once, but whether I like him or not makes no difference. I would hope that he’s going to do right by you and your aunt, and Jack too.”
Johnny smiled. “I’ve known him all my life. It’s an unusual situation. When he last saw Jack he was in a cage headed for the circus.”
Swan nodded. “From my conversations with him last night, he still sees Jack that way. He’s a good man but he sees Jack as a beast. I’m sorry to put it so bluntly, John.”
Johnny shrugged. “That was last night. He can’t think that now.”
“I am not so sure, Johnny. I think he’s afraid of Jack, when you’re not around.”
Johnny considered Swan’s words carefully. “That may be.
But is that so strange? Aren’t you a little bit afraid of him, too?
You can’t hold that against Doc Hannington.”
“Only if he holds it against Jack,” answered Swan, looking at Jack. “When people are afraid of something …”
Jack listened to their conversation. He was aware that Johnny and Swan were on his side, but he also realized that he was still the lone wolf, the outsider.
He sat next to the dog, stroking its fur and pretending not to be listening to the humans. But he heard, and he understood what they said, although not every word. They might as well have been saying: “Aoooooo,” for all it mattered.
The only sasquatch word that mattered. ‘Aoooooo’. He’d heard it all his life. ‘Aooooooo’!
The dog bolted when Jack made the sound, and the hairs stood straight up on Johnny’s arms.
“No you’re not!” corrected Johnny. “You are Jack.”
“Aaaaooooooooooooooo,” repeated Jack.
“Jack,” Swan said, “we all feel like a lone wolf, Aaoooo, at one time or another. Look at what you’ve accomplished, Jack.
You’re living with people on a regular basis. That’s got to be a first for your people.”
Johnny looked at Swan as though he was crazy. “Do you expect him to understand that?”
Swan raised an eyebrow. “As a matter of fact I do. He knows me. I’ve found that when I expect him to understand he
does
understand.”
“Well,” said Johnny. “May be so.”
Swan ignored Johnny. “You are family now, Jack. If not in the beginning, certainly now. Saved Johnny and me from the earthquake and Bolk. You’ve saved us from the flood and from the hands of our fellow humans. I can think of no better way to repay those good services than to proclaim you a member of my family and an honored friend.”
Rocky came slinking back into the room. Jack looked at the dog as he listened to Swan. Despite Swan’s attempts, he seemed sadder than ever.
“We’re not helping him,” Johnny said, sitting next to Jack so he could make contact. “Swan’s right, Jack. We are all lone wolves. He is. I am. We are all, as you said, aoooooo.”
Jack stared coldly into Johnny’s eyes and then looked at the dog. Johnny sighed deeply and scratched his head.
Swan patted Johnny on the shoulder. “Maybe we’re trying too hard.”
“May be.”
Outside the cabin the last rays of sun painted the world crimson. Johnny, Jack, and the dog moved to the porch and sat on the steps. The dark trees etched the sky as the colors changed with the clouds to the west. There was no wind to break the stillness. Jack stared into the shadows. His eyes moved as if following creatures unseen. Johnny noticed, looking to see what caught Jack’s attention, but he saw only blackness.
Having moved to a porch chair, Swan sat happily next to an oil lamp, smoking his meerschaum and penciling notes in a journal.
Johnny sighed. He remembered the many campfires and memories the three had shared; the hearth at Swan’s cabin, the Indian villages, the night on the stony unnamed beach where he watched sparks from the fire mingle with the canopy of stars while Swan told him secrets from the world of science.
Jack sat on the porch floor in the shadow of Swan’s chair.
He had assumed his defensive crouch, with a knee pulled up tight to his chin. Johnny understood the force that kept Jack nearby. It was the same thing that brought them both back to Yale. Home.
A hungry mosquito found Johnny’s wrist. With a slap he crushed it. “Damn,” he said. “No sassafras around here, I guess.”
Johnny easily coaxed Swan into the house and Rocky followed close on their heels.
When he heard the door close, Jack took his diary from inside his shirt. . He opened it, took a small, stubby pencil from a pocket, and began to write.
JonNy swan
frendS
At breakfast the next day Johnny’s aunt suggested that Johnny and Jack help finish a changing room in the back of Gert’s shop. Everyone agreed that if the sasquatch was ever to fit into human society he’d need gainful employment.
“No better place to start than in retail,” offered Swan cheerfully as he helped Gert clear away the breakfast dishes.
“My, my, my,” laughed Gert. “I never thought I’d have a dress shop. And if I did I surely never thought I’d have a sasquatch helping me fix it up.”
Johnny scowled at her. During the night he’d lain awake worrying about Jack. Now that their travels had ended the sasquatch had to learn how to live as humans do. He’d expected Jack might leave soon after they returned to familiar territory, but that hadn’t happened. He wondered if a creature used to being on the move all his life could learn to stay in one place and whether Jack actually understood what ‘work’ meant.
By morning Johnny was convinced that Jack wasn’t prepared for life among humans. When Gert mentioned the job, Johnny grew quiet. His mind raced over what perils might befall the sasqu atch, and he wondered how long it would be before Jack’s unusual strength and abilities attracted unwanted attention or, even worse, got him into trouble.
Then there was Costerson. What if he returned to town?
How long would it take for an agent of the railroad to find out that Johnny had returned? Would he recognize Jack? Would he demand his money back or, worse, send Jack to Barnum’s circus?
When he had brought up his concerns to Gert and Swan, they both said that a low profile was the best way to proceed.
Gert thought that news of Johnny’s return wouldn’t have much impact on the town. He hadn’t been gone that long.
Certainly the opening of a new store in town was of more consequence. She said Yale was still a small town full of busybodies, but the population had matured since the Gold Rush and people didn’t pay much attention to strangers now that the troublemakers and opportunists had moved on to Alaska.
But Johnny wasn’t convinced. He remembered the trouble in Port Townsend, a town full of strangers. And there was still the mayor and others who certainly remembered the mysterious ‘bear’.
“Stories like that don’t go away,” said Johnny.
Gert and Swan didn’t agree. They thought Jack would eventually blend in, like so many other strangers who’d come to Yale in recent years.
In spite of Johnny’s reservations, he found himself responsible for explaining to Jack the work they’d be doing at Gert’s store.
“Wednesday. As good a day as any to begin a new life,”
Johnny mused as everyone, including the dog, got into the wagon. Rocky barked loudly as though he, too, was proclaiming a new chapter in their lives. Swan sat in the front of the wagon next to Gert. He planned to inquire about passage to Port Townsend, and to fill the rest of the day he planned a hike to the Frazer River.
Johnny and Jack were put to work as soon they arrived.
Gert took them to the back of the shop and equipped them with broom, dust pan, buckets, rags, scrapers, and the brushes and peach colored paint she’d chosen for the dressing room.
“You’re on your own, Johnny,” said Gert. “I have a lot of sewing to do today.”
Once they were left to their own devices, it became clear to Johnny how much he’d have to teach the sasquatch before they could actually begin work, but there was their link and Johnny was grateful to be able to use it. Johnny held the sasquatch’s hand and verbally described the steps they would have to make the back room into a ‘fitting room, fit for ladies’, as Gert had said.
Jack seemed to understand. His eyes fell on the brooms when Johnny mentioned them; then on the buckets and brushes that stood against bare walls, coated by dusty webs.
Finally, when Johnny finished Jack’s orientation, he asked if he understood and Jack nodded confidently. But when Johnny began to pick up the refuse that filled the corners of the room, Jack simply stood and watched. Finally Johnny had to literally put materials in Jack’s hands and repeat a few times what he expected him to do.
After an hour of this Johnny grew frustrated. “I can’t do both our jobs , Jack,” he said in exasperation.
Jack stared at Johnny. He’d worn the same expression on his face after killing the bear; a look of sadness and confusion.
Johnny forced a smile. “This is just your first day on the job. Nobody expects a good job right away. You’ll be okay, Jack. This is all brand new.”
Johnny reached out to touch Jack but the sasquatch pulled away. He snatched the broom Johnny was holding and began swatting a pile of debris. A cloud of dust filled the air.
“Johnny home. Not Jack,” said the sasquatch.
Part XIII
Jack– A MAN
The summer of 1877 was warmer than other years. Summer grasses replaced wildflowers, and British Columbia’s greening helped everyone forget the harshness of an icy winter. Logging trains became more common along the edge of the Frazer Gorges. Gold was farther from men’s minds and logging the order of the day.
For a couple of weeks Johnny and Jack toiled at the rear of Gert’s dress shop. Swan took a room over the restaurant.
He said he’d acquired a fondness for Mitzie’s biscuits, but Johnny knew Swan was uncomfortable staying with Doctor Hannington. Gert was aloof to any tensions between the men in her life. She seemed more consumed by her shop than the fact that a sasquatch worked there. Certainly life had become unusual since Johnny and Jack returned home, but she was a pragmatic woman with a new business to run.
Jack’s cover story proved to be a complete success. No one in Yale ever questioned if he was really from Samoa. As Johnny suspected, folks in Yale had seen their share of strangers. Jack’s being from a distant country adequately explained his physical appearance. At the same time, Johnny knew that what really allowed the sasquatch into society was the fact that everyone who knew him spoke up for Jack, even Yale’s best physician.
Johnny and Jack finished the dressing room sooner than expected, and Gert happily began hanging curtains. Johnny was confident, finally, that he and Jack had become a successful team. Jack demonstrated that if he understood what was expected of him he became an eager and effective partner.
Jack liked the activity Johnny called ‘work’. He decided it was necessary to humans because they lived in buildings and kept things that needed constant repair. It was obvious that humans built the houses and wore clothes for protection from the real world. From what little he had seen of their world, the humans seemed better off for having these things. After all, it wasn’t man who had to stay hidden in the forests or run the snowy ridges.
Like the talking and writing, Jack understood that work was just another part of being human, but much of what he was told to do mystified him. He understood painting the walls when he saw how much light it brought into the room, but removing dirt from the floors made no sense to him. Every time one entered a building the dirt came back with them.
Why not have dirt floors like the Indians did?
And what of the Indians? Why were they kept separate from the other men – the men who worked the machines?
One kept camps in the forest while the other cut down the forests to make cities. Why did they live so differently? Jack remembered the Indian attacked for no reason in Port Townsend. Why? Jack wondered if he would ever know.
Strangest of all to Jack was the acceptance he received from the people in Port Townsend and Yale. None of them attacked him when he walked the streets with Johnny. They let him pass unchallenged, often with a smile. Why did his kin fear humans so much? They didn’t seem dangerous. And from the little physical contact he had with humans, they seemed quite weak.
On Friday night everyone gathered at Gert’s for a dinner featuring fresh asparagus and rhubarb pie. Swan contributed a side of beef ribs to the fare and the doctor brought a quantity of homem ade beer. By sundown everyone had eaten their fill and had gathered on the porch. Gert, Swan, and the doctor sat in deck chairs sipping juleps that Swan had prepared according to a recipe of Mrs Watson’s.
“Mint makes this drink wonderful this time of year,” said Swan. “But I’d favor myself with it more frequently if I had access to mint the year round.”
Hannington raised his glass. “Here’s to Mrs Watson, whom I’ve not had the honor to meet. The charm of this concoction would be lost, I think, if we could have it year round.”
Swan laughed. “You have my point, sir.”
Before dark Johnny, Jack, and the dog had taken a walk down the road to Abel’s Quarry. Johnny brought his .22
‘squirrel gun,’ saying he was going to teach the sasquatch to shoot.
Gert caught sight of Johnny’s white shirt coming up the road. “Here come the boys.”
The three elders could read the disappointment on
Johnny’s face. “I didn’t hear any shots,” said Swan. “Did you forget your ammunition?”
“Jack wouldn’t touch the gun,” said Johnny.
“What did you expect?” asked Gert. “Jack is afraid of guns.”
“I thought by now he’d be up to it,” replied Johnny. “I thought shooting a gun might help him adjust to our ways.”
“An admirable idea, Johnny, but I wouldn’t have expected it to work, either.” Swan lit his pipe and laughed. “At the cabin this winter Jack made me feel like a criminal every time I touched my rifle.”
Jack stood next to the porch apart from the rest of the group. Looking at Jack, Johnny realized the sasquatch was changing faster than Johnny had thought possible. Topped by a flat brimmed bowler hat, with his hair tied back, Jack looked very much like an Indian. His dark form blended with the shadows of the trees.
“I don’t know,” said Johnny. “There’s something about him lately. He’s harder to reach. Something’s bothering him, but I don’t know what it is.”
Jack disappeared. No one, not even Johnny, saw him go.
Jack walked the forests all night. The moon, when it rose, was large and round, nearly full.
The night was like a friend. A friend who understood. It talked to him as it always did. Now it was asking him questions; making him wonder about the humans.
But at Swan’s cabin it was no different. Jack would stand at the window while the two humans slept. He remembered that their snoring often silenced the sounds of the night.
Jack raised his chin to feel the night air on his lips. It told him a deer was close by. No, two deer. He thought of Johnny.
Johnny couldn’t feel the deer.
“Always teaching …” said Jack, aloud.
The deer crashed away through the forest in fight.. He froze, stunned. What had he done?
Jack had spoken his thoughts.
Johnny’s face was covered with mosquito bites.
“How long were you out there waiting for him?” asked Gert when he entered the room. “My Lord, you look to have the pox. Look at you.”
Johnny frowned. “It’s my fault. I shouldn’t have tried to make him use a gun. I just thought …”
Swan came in the from the front porch. He was up early making notes in his journals.
“No sign of Jack?” asked Swan.
Gert shook her head in disgust. “Johnny was waiting on the porch all night.”
Swan squinted out the kitchen window. “I reckon he got a lesson too many. That so, John?”
Johnny shrugged. “My fault, I guess.”
“Well, it’s Saturday,” reminded Gert. “Jack picked a good day to run off. Your uncle Jimmy used to have his binges on Friday night. Very considerate … of his boss, at least.”
Swan made no comment other than a raised eyebrow.
“I think Jack is having trouble tryin’ to be human,” said Johnny, sitting down at the kitchen table. “I was just starting to think that he’d fit in around people.” He rubbed his eyes sleepily. “If he’d done this at Port Townsend I’d understand.
And then there’s the linking thing …”
Swan looked back at Johnny. “What about it?”
“It doesn’t work all the time.”
“What do you mean?” asked his aunt.
“I used to think that I … we … could link whenever I wanted us to,” continued Johnny. “But now I realize that it’s Jack that controls it. Every time I wanted to link with Jack it was him that made it happen all along. Like he allowed it.”
“Interesting …” said Swan.
They were quiet for a while, thinking about Jack. Swan seemed to take it in stride.
It was Johnny who had the problem. He seethed with frustration, as if Jack had betrayed him.
“Calm down, Johnny,” said Gert. “Stop fretting.
Everything’s fine.”
“I understand how he feels,” said Swan. “At least I think so. That link between them. It’s a special bond they have.”
Swan reflected for a moment and smiled. “Did we tell you about our Christmas?”
“You both did,” said Gert. “It’s a Christmas neither of you will forget, I’m sure. And I think you are both feeling betrayed.” Gert poured some flour into a bowl. “Jack is different from us. It’s not that he’s just another person, but he’s another kind of person. I’m not really sure we can call him a person. Doc Hannington has been trying to tell you that for days, now.”
Johnny exploded. “Jack’s no animal!” he yelled as he stormed out the door.
Gert dropped the mixing bowl. A cloud of white flour bloomed at her feet. “Lord!” she said in disgust.
“Oooops!” said Swan, looking at Gert sympathetically. “I’ll straighten this out, Mrs Wescott. Don’t you worry.” Swan offered to help clean up the spilled flour but she shooed him after Johnny with a wave of her hand. Swan left the house and nearly tripped over Johnny, sitting on the front steps.
Swan sat down next to him. “She didn’t mean it that way.
She’s … well …”
Johnny glared at him. “I know what she meant,” he snarled. “And you’re not so different. Not really.”
Swan hung his head. “Only human, like the rest,” he said with a sigh. After a moment he got up and went back into the house.
Johnny heard the door close. Sweat trickled down his face and dripped onto the bare boards between his shoes. He squinted at the edge of the forest. There, amid the shadows, he thought he saw Jack. It wasn’t a shadow, but Johnny couldn’t be sure until it moved into the light. Jack was dressed exactly as when Johnny had last seen him. Johnny smiled, pleased to see the sasquatch was still wearing his hat and shoes. Jack hated shoes.
The sasquatch walked calmly toward Johnny.
“Why did you run off?”
“Run … off,” parroted Jack.
“You know what I mean,” Johnny insisted. “Was it the gun?”
Jack sat down next to Johnny. The dog came over to
Jack, wagging his tail. Giving Jack’s outstretched hand a lick, Rocky sat down and, like Jack, stared off into the forest.
Johnny didn’t really expect Jack to account for his sudden flight. At that moment he didn’t really care. Jack’s being home was all that mattered.
“I hoped you’d come back,” said Swan.
Johnny and Jack turned to see Swan and Gert at the screen door. Gert smiled broadly. “Nice to have you back, Jack.” She turned and disappeared into the kitchen. Swan opened the door and stepped outside. His cup of coffee steamed in the brisk air.
“Good to have you back, my friend,” said Swan. “Trying to sniff out your kin, I suppose?”
“Good … friend,” said Jack, smiling, but ignoring Swan’s question.
“Well, at least he’s talking,” said Swan. “Though I’m not sure what he’s saying.”
“I’m not so sure talking means much to Jack,” said
Johnny.
Swan took his pipe from his shirt pocket and filled it with tobacco. “Perhaps you are right, John. Though I’m loath to admit it, words are often superfluous.”
“Superfluous?” answered Johnny.
“Useless … fruitless,” continued Swan, “Sometimes words only reinforce what we already know.”
Johnny nodded and looked at Jack. “Is that so, Jack?”
“That is so,” said the sasquatch.
Johnny just stared at Jack for a moment, then shook his head in disbelief, looking wide eyed at Swan. “He understood you!” Johnny exclaimed. “I didn’t understand you but
he
did?”
Swan roared with laughter. “I wouldn’t spring to conclusions, Johnny.”
Sitting down on the porch, Swan noticed Jack’s shoes had sustained considerable wear. “We should have Jack fitted with special shoes, I think. That slit I made is widening. It was only a temporary fix, and I didn’t expect him to do any serious hiking.”
Johnny smiled and looked at Jack’s feet. The shoes they’d bought for Jack were the widest available, to accommodate his wide feet and large big toe, but they proved a poor fit and Jack often acted as if his feet hurt. Swan finally cut a slit in both shoes, near the base of his big toe. It gave Jack’s bulging big toe the room it needed. Now one toe, his left, was showing through the hole.
“What about Jack’s furry feet?” asked Johnny. “What would the cobbler say?
Swan scoffed. “You suppose the cobbler will think Jack is a sasquatch?”
Johnny thought for a moment. “You’ve used that argument before.”
“And I’ve been right, yes? Relax, Johnny and enjoy this nice morning. You worry too much.”
“I think you’re not giving people enough credit.”
“Perhaps I am underestimating people,” said Swan.
“Maybe some could sniff out the sasquatch. I think how we act around Jack is more important than what we say about him. If we simply act as though Jack’s a member of our family, which we do, then I think people will simply follow along.”
“Well, I’m not shaving his feet,” said Johnny. “So we may as well take our chances.”
“Monday,” answered Swan.
Jack seemed content to be back. Gert invited him to forage in the garden but warned him not to eat any green tomatoes or to pull up any of her young turnips or carrots.
That left Jack only the peas, rhubarb, and young greens like lettuce. It was still early in the season and the garden was just beginning to produce.
Jack took Gert’s cue and brought a modest picking of lettuce and a handful of peas to the breakfast table, where he sat contentedly munching them and drinking a glass of milk while Johnny, Swan, and Gert ate biscuits and gravy.
Johnny felt relaxed and happy, and soon he and Swan were talking again about life in the wilderness. In the middle of one of Swan’s yarns Jack spotted a bull moose walking brazenly toward Gert’s garden. He pointed to the window.
Rocky stood at the screen door barking as Gert peered out the window.
“Oh my goodness!” she exclaimed. “Oh, dear. I knew I should have fenced in that garden.”
“Have you ever had moose nose, Johnny? A succulent feast fit for a king, I dare say.” He smacked his lips.
“Moose nose?” said Johnny.
Swan went to the gun rack and removed a single barrel shotgun. He checked its load and headed for the front porch.
