My Name Is Not Easy (25 page)

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

city name on the top, but I can’t read it because it’s smudged.

Part of it says DA.

When I slip that letter back into its envelope, the sight of that knife-cut edge along the top makes me boxing mad
.

“Your opponent will always have a weak spot,” Father Mullen says. “Don’t ever forget that.”

When I think about Isaac swimming in some hot place, I feel cold and my chest gets tight, because swimming is like a weak spot for us. Us Eskimos are not swimmers. If we fall into the ocean back home, we don’t swim. We get pulled out quick before the cold kills us.

At least Isaac is okay, though. You could tell he’s okay by the way he makes his letters, real neat, forming the words as smooth as leaves falling.

How’d Isaac learn how to climb a tree, anyhow?

“What are we going to do with the letter?” Bunna whispers.

For some reason, I think of Abraham getting ready to burn his son Isaac.

“We gotta burn it,” I say, imagining what Father Mullen would do if he found out we took it.

“How come?”

“Never mind,” I whisper.

Father Mullen is teaching us boys to be boxers all right, and that’s okay by us, too. We will always stay two moves ahead of our opponent, and we will always look for his weak spot. And we will not throw any punches until we have a clear shot, no matter how long it takes. Father didn’t
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B U R N T O F F E R I N G S / L u k e

have to teach us that one; we already knew because we’re hunters.

“But how we gonna burn that letter when we don’t even got matches?” Bunna says.

Never mind. We’ll fi nd a way. We will always fi nd a way.

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Military Trash

MARCH 1962

CHICKIE

—

It’s snowing outside, making everything in the whole world seem bright and quiet, and I have a new diary. Swede sent it to me, and I’m trying to write in it, trying to record things, which is just about impossible, bouncing down this frozen road in our beat-up old bus. We are returning from a trip to Fairbanks, where our basketball team beat the team at the Catholic school there. We won because Sonny is tough and Amiq is fast and Michael O’Shay, that new boy, is just plain tall.

“Dear Diary,” I write, but the “a” and “i” get turned around and it says, “Dear Dairy.” Which makes me mad because I’ve written it in ink, and there is no turning back. I’m writing to a dairy instead of a diary.
Dumb!

I look out at the falling snow, glittering in the late afternoon, and I feel warm and protected somehow. It’s getting close to dinner, and the boys are talking about food, and even though the snow outside muffl

es us, they are managing to

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M I L I T A R Y T R A S H / C h i c k i e
make more noise than a herd of elephants, which is typical of boys.

“Man, I sure wish Sister knew how to make caribou soup like Mom,” Bunna says.

“Or dry fi sh like my grandpa,” Leo Pete says. Leo Pete lives right by the school, and his grandpa catches salmon in the river. Leo’s grandpa is the one Luke and Bunna are afraid of, even though they don’t ever say it.

Amiq snorts.

“Why don’t you pups worry ’bout something more

likely, like maybe Sister Sarah’s gonna turn into an astro-naut?”

Luke and Sonny start to laugh at this one until they suddenly realize they are both laughing at the same thing, which makes them start to frown instead. I swear, those two. Always bristling like dogs over the same bone. And Amiq’s holding the bone. As usual.

“Who you calling a
pup
?” Leo asks, narrowing his eyes.

Amiq nudges Junior, sitting in the seat right next to him, his nose stuck in a book. As usual.

“Hey, Junior, you hear some yapping?”

Junior looks up, pushing his glasses up on his nose all dreamy-eyed.

“Mapping?” he says, and everybody laughs, even Sonny and Luke together.

Th

at’s the thing about Junior. He’s kind of on everybody’s team. I mean he’s so spacey, it’s like he’s in a totally diff erent universe. He never takes one side or the other. Like a referee
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

without a whistle, he just kind of drifts around on the edge of the game.

“I am traveling in an old bus with a bunch of wild

boys who are making a bunch of noise about nothing,” I write.

All of a sudden there’s a sound like a gun going off , and Sister Mary Kate jumps up like she’s been shot. Th

e bus

sputters to a stop, and there’s total silence. Father Flanagan leans out from the driver’s seat.

“Not to worry, boys and girls, not to worry,” Father calls out. “Just a spot of engine trouble, nothing to fret over.”

He looks out over the top of his glasses at Sister Mary Kate, who, of course, blushes. Th

en he jumps down out of

the bus, and the boys all crane their necks, trying to see what he’s doing. I’m guessing pretty much every boy on this bus knows more about engines than Father.

“Our bus broke down, and Father is going to fi x it,” I write.

“Man,” Bunna mutters. “Why can’t we have a real bus, like the kind they have at
real
schools?”

“Now, Bunna,” Sister Mary Kate says, “we must not covet what others have. We must be grateful for the Providence the Lord has provided.”

“Oh, Lord,” Amiq says, folding his hands and looking up toward the roof of the bus with what he thinks is a pious look.

“Th

ank you for providing us with military trash. We are not worthy.”

Sister acts like she doesn’t hear him, but you can tell she
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