My Name Is Not Easy (58 page)

en, all of a sudden she knows that Sister

is
here, as much a part of the place as that little hollow of snow and those waving willows. Donna feels her presence as sharp as birdsong, same as always. More real than Father Flanagan’s voice, washing over the top of them like water.

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

Holy Mary, Mother of God. Pray for us sinners now and at
the hour of our death.

Luke sees a fl ash in the woods, and he’s pretty sure that nobody else but him sees it. Imagine that: an Eskimo from the tree-less tundra knowing enough about the woods to see the old Indian before any of the rest of them see him. But there he is, solid as rock, old Mr. Pete, standing in the cemetery right next to Luke and Chickie.

“What
you
doin’ here?” he says to Luke, his voice whispery rough. And for a second Luke is scared, just like the fi rst time.

Th

en he sees the smile. Th

e old, knowing smile, the one that

says, “I jokes.”

“Sending Sister home,” Chickie says.

“She already gone home,” the old man says.

Yes, yes she did,
Luke thinks, suddenly.

“A heart attack is merciful. A heart attack is so merciful.” Sister Mary Kate mutters the words over and over, for days and days, her eyes fi lling up with tears. Luke feels bad for her because even though she never understood a lot of things, Sister Mary Kate was always good to them. But he can’t see how a heart attack is merciful. In fact, he can’t see anything at all merciful about death, period. He doesn’t even like the sound of the word
mercy
. Tastes like fake sugar, bitter on the tongue.

Th

ey say Father Mullen went down to the beach in Seward right before the tidal wave came in.
Tsunami
. Th is is the word

they use. Probably hit him broadside, like a giant two-by-four.

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G O O D F R I D A Y

Th

at’s what Luke thinks. Swallowed him right up, just like Jonah.

What did Mullen think when he saw that wave coming?

Wrath of God
. Th

e words fl ash through Luke’s mind with

a sudden rush of sound and sense.

If he were still a kid, he’d want to warn Bunna about Father coming. Tell him to run quick, to get the heck out of there. Now he thinks maybe it’s the other way around, maybe old Mullen better watch out for Bunna. But then he realizes that even that’s not right. Th

ose two have gone to diff erent places, Bunna and

Mullen. Luke knows this as sure as he knows anything.

Bunna’s place is with Aapa and Aaka out on the tundra, wide open and golden and full of caribou. Hunting in the sunshine, the way it always shines in the summer at midnight back home. Soft and silent and dreamlike.

In Mullen’s place there’s a God that gets his energy from punishing people in a heaven so full of the righteous, a person could hardly breathe without pissing someone off . Luke almost laughs out loud: Bunna wouldn’t be caught dead in a place like that.

He can’t quite explain it about that earthquake, but it’s like things were crooked before, and now they’re not. Like they weren’t lined up, but now they are.

Th

e earth is like that,
Luke thinks.
Flipping over and over
and over again, trying to right itself, always trying to right itself.

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Epilogue ~ A New Gun

1965

LUKE

—

Th

e dogs are howling with voices that say a plane is landing, but there’s no plane, no distant buzzing in the clouds. It’s a new sound making them howl—Uncle Joe’s snow machine, come roaring into the yard, bright red and shiny new, the sound of it banging up against our ears like a blizzard against an old shed door.

I like it.

Uncle Joe is kneeling on the seat on one knee, holding hard onto that machine’s handles like it’s a big animal that needs taming. Isaac sits behind him, grinning hard. His face has grown up, but it’s still the same old face, and every time I look at it, it feels like a miracle.

We found him with that ad in the Dallas paper:
Looking
for Isaac
. It took a lot of people helping—kids and adults, both. O’Shay’s dad did the legal stuff , and Father Flanagan found the money. But we did it. We got him back.

Me and Mom stand at the doorway, watching that snow
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E P I L O G U E ~ A N E W G U N / L u k e
machine fl ash past us, watching its runners carve a wide circle in the snow. Th

e dogs lunge at the ends of their lines, yapping

at the edge of that circle like it’s a border to a new country, their mouths snapping open and shut with a voiceless violence. It’s like a movie with the sound turned off , watching those dogs lunge and snap into the roar of that machine.

Th

e sun against the snow is bright enough to burn your eyes.

“Too much racket!” Mom hollers. “You gonna shake

peoples’ ears off .”

Joe cuts the engine and steps off the machine, never even hearing Mom. He has his gun, his brand-new gun, and he stands in front of that snow machine with that gun strapped across his back like a hunter with a big, shiny catch.

“How you gonna hunt with all that racket?” Mom calls.

Even though it’s quiet now, the sound of that machine echoes in our ears, and Mom is yelling like it’s still a competition between the two of them.

“Forget the noise!” Isaac hollers back. “It’s the speed that counts!”

“Th

is thing goes fast enough you could jump on the back of a running caribou,” Joe hollers, then winks at me. “Or rope

’em riding by.”

Mom is kneeling down next to Pakak, her lead dog, trying to calm him down, a wisp of gray hair falling across her cheek.

“And what good’s all that speed if it can’t even fi nd its way home in a storm?” she asks Pakak.