My Name Is Not Easy (39 page)

“I mean where are you
really
from?” he said, like Kotzebue was just some sort of excuse I always made.

“Kotzebue,” I said, turning away from him to watch the Sacred Heart trees sweeping by the window.

“But where’s your family from?” he persisted.

“Where’s
yours
from?”

“Fairbanks,” he said. “First generation.”

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

All of a sudden Bunna turned around, glaring. “What the heck’s that supposed to mean?” Bunna said. But he was looking at me when he said it, not O’Shay. And he was looking with a protective sort of look, too, looking me right straight in the eye. I looked right back, very glad for the fact that it was starting to get dark and nobody could see me blush. Michael O’Shay never said another word.

When Father stopped for gas, I got off the bus and went over to the edge of the woods and just stood there, breathing in all the warm, starry darkness. And I don’t mean the air was warm, because it wasn’t. Th

e warmth came from someplace

inside me, someplace so deep and private, it made me feel like I was sparkling, too.

“You like that guy?”

Bunna’s voice came out of nowhere, and his words were just as surprising. He had walked over, away from the others, and now he was standing right next to me. His voice made his words sound more like an accusation than a question.

I was so surprised I said, “What guy?” which was a dumb thing to say because I knew perfectly well who he was talking about.

“O’Shay.”

Did I like O’Shay? Skinny know-it-all Michael O’Shay?

“No. I don’t like him.”

I guess I was supposed to say something else, something smart and funny, but everything smart and funny dried up in my mouth with surprise. Bunna was jealous!

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E S K I M O K I S S / C h i c k i e

All of a sudden it felt like I’d grown extra limbs and didn’t know what to do with them. I shoved my hands into my pockets and stared up at the night sky. It was like I was seeing it for the fi rst time ever. Th

ere were so many stars! Where did

they all come from?

Bunna was watching them, too, now.

“What do you call that one, the one with the three stars right there in a row?” he said.

“Orion’s Belt,” I said. Swede taught me that one ages ago.

“
Tuvaurat
,” Bunna said softly. “Th

at’s three hunters, return-

ing from caribou hunting.” He waved his arms off vaguely into the direction where those star hunters might have been hunting.

“See the horns over there?”

All of a sudden I did. I really did. A pile of horns. And before I even knew what was happening, Bunna leaned down close and kissed me. Kissed me right there on the edge of the sparkling black woods halfway to Fairbanks, beneath stars that looked like caribou horns. And I kissed him back, too, kissed him for a long, long time.

Bunna’s lips were soft and warm, and he smelled like Palmolive soap and laundry detergent and hair grease, and right then and there I decided that mixture of Palmolive soap, laundry detergent, and hair grease was probably the best smell in the whole wide world.

Eskimo kiss,
I thought, and that thought made me smile, walking back to the bus with Bunna, our arms touching in a way that felt totally natural, like it was the way things were supposed to be.

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

“Next year we gonna have a new bus,” Bunna said as

he slid into the seat beside me. He was talking to Michael O’Shay, like it was some kind of challenge, but Michael didn’t respond—he just stared out the window into the darkness.

“And that bus is gonna have real soft seats, too,” he whispered to me.

But I didn’t care anything at all about our new bus anymore. And I didn’t care about the old one, either, bouncing along in its rickety old way. All I cared about was Bunna’s hand holding mine, our fi ngers lacing together, back and forth, learning a new language all the way to Fairbanks. It was a language about love—holding on and letting go, holding on and letting go.

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Forever

JUNE 15, 1963

LUKE

—

We used to watch movies in the community center in the summer, sometimes. Th

e ones with Roy Rogers and John

Wayne and all those cowboys. Bunna liked Roy Rogers best, but me, I liked the rodeo. I liked the way those cowboys came shooting out on their bucking broncos, hanging on for dear life and never letting go, no matter what, waving and smiling at the crowd. Th

ose broncos tossed them up and down and

waved them back and forth like fl ags, but they never let go.

Tough, them guys.

In the summers back home, me and Bunna and Isaac used to play along the beach late at night. We always got to go boating, sometimes, with Uncle Joe or one of the others, staying out there all night long, watching the midnight sun circle the sky, slung low on the horizon late and rising up toward the middle near dawn.

Now Isaac’s gone for good, which nobody talks about, and
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