My Name Is Not Easy by Edwardson, Dahl (the reading list TXT) 📗

O F F E R I N G S / L u k e

I don’t, but I don’t say this to Bunna. Bunna expects me to just take care of it somehow, like I’m supposed to take care of everything, which makes me think about Isaac, again, his face pressed against the back window of the car, disappearing into the trees that time, and about me and Bunna running away through those same trees and getting caught, and Father saying it’s our job to go out there and hunt for them. Somehow I’m always supposed to take care of it, but how?

And all of a sudden, I’m mad. Mad enough to hit somebody. Hit Father Mullen, maybe. Hard.

Instead, I box at Bunna—Bunna, wrapped in his towel, his hair standing up every which way. Bunna ducks and laughs and tries to box back.

You can’t get mad when you box. Th

at’s what Father Mul-

len says. When you box, you have to put all your feelings away, because if you let your feelings get in the way, you might make mistakes.

Father Mullen never makes mistakes.

Father is perfect when he boxes, like a dancer moving just right to the beat of the drum. Like the dancers I can see when Junior plays his tapes, dancers moving to the sound of the drums until the beat of the drum and the movement of their bodies turns into one thing, one perfect thing. I never fi gured out a word for that thing, but I see it in the way Father Mullen moves when he shows us how to box, boxing all by himself against a boxer nobody else can see. After a while that boxer gets so real, you could almost see the outline of his shadow, right there next to Father, throwing feints. Trying to fool him.

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

Father Mullen is never fooled.

Th

e trick is to always be two moves ahead of your opponent.

Th

at’s what Father Mullen says, punching at his shadow.

Th

at’s why when Sister Mary Kate said I had to show them how to cut a moose, I never said I don’t know how. Guess they think us boys up North are born with knives in our hands.

Guess it’s okay to let them think that.

Th

e trick is to always keep them guessing about what you know and what you don’t know.

“But Luke,” Bunna says again, “we don’t know nothing about cleaning a moose.”

Th

e bathroom is still steamy from the showers, and the mirrors are all fogged up, so when you try to see yourself, it’s like looking through smoke.

“Sure we do,” I say, running my fi nger across the steamy mirror, watching Bunna’s eyes pop out. “We watched Uncle Joe before, lotta times.”

“Yeah, but that’s caribou.”

“So? Moose got four legs just like caribou. Cut them into pieces. Same way.”

“Yeah, but how you get the skin off ?”

“You pull, remember? Th

e skin always pulls right off , like

gloves.”

“Yeah, but . . . you ever done it before?”

I sign my name on the mirror, taking time to make it neat.

“No, but you know how Mom always says it, right? We’re Eskimo, and . . .”

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B U R N T O F F E R I N G S / L u k e

“. . . Eskimos know how to survive, ” Bunna chants.

I nod my head. “And that’s exactly what we’re gonna do.”

L—u—k—e, I write. I make the tail of the “e” long and straight and draw a harpoon on the end, a hunter’s harpoon.

We’re gonna survive.

Father Flanagan drives us out to fi nd the dead moose. He drives the old Sacred Heart bus—military trash, Amiq calls it, because it was the bus the base was going to throw away but gave to us instead.

Th

e birch trees shiver their skinny black branches against the sky, a straggling of yellow leaves clinging to them. Chickie and Donna sit in front of me, Donna by the window, her face pressed against the glass. I tap my foot on the fl oor, part nervous and part excited. Bunna looks at my foot, and when he sees the way I’m tapping, he starts acting nervous, too.

I quit tapping and shove my foot under the seat.

Th

at’s when I feel it—something under the seat, some-

thing soft and lumpy like a dead body. I bend down to see what it is, and Bunna bends down, too. Bunna sees it before I do: Father Mullen’s mail bag. It looks smaller under there, like a little brown animal. Before I can stop him, Bunna slides it out and pulls it open. When we see what’s in there, there’s no stopping either one of us. Right on top is a letter that has my name on it: Luke Aaluk, handwritten in big, square letters.

And it’s already been opened, too. Somebody with a razor-sharp knife has slit that letter all the way open, right along the top edge, side to side.

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

Suddenly the bus lurches, and everyone is standing up, trying to see out the window. Nobody sees me slide that letter into my pocket, easy as sliding a knife into its sheath. Nobody sees me kick that mail bag back under the seat. Everybody’s too busy looking at something else.

“Up there. Right there!” somebody cries.

It’s the moose,