Joko (2 page)

“Jocko the ape-boy,” said Ned, laughing. “Hootin’ it up!”

The doctor looked at Ned blankly, and then he too left the cabin.

Outside, Johnny stood breathing deeply. The doctor told Johnny they would all need to have a sit down on the matter and assured him he wouldn’t let anything happen to the animal.

“I don’t know what we’re dealing with here, John. That thing in there is a local myth turned real. There’s lookin’ to be some money in this thing for everyone, especially you.” He put a hand on Johnny’s shoulder and squeezed. “Think about that, Johnny.” The doctor looked into Johnny’s sad eyes.

“Whatever we do, the important thing is we just don’t want to jump before we see how deep the pond is. This is a once in a lifetime moment, I think.” He glanced around and paused for a deep breath. Then he took out a cigar and slowly, methodically, went through a cigar lighting ritual that ended in a great smoke ring that dissipated in the breeze.

Yale was a town whose mayor thought he ruled a piece of New York City despite a population of only a hundred fifty permanent citizens and perhaps five times that many loggers, pioneers, trappers, farmers, and mountaineers living on the outskirts and supporting the local economy. As a railroad depot, Yale was a thriving establishment. To its mayor, Judge Clarence V. Hayes, the town was as upstanding as its name would imply.

Most of the permanent residents respected nature and enjoyed their life on the edge of civilization, but every winter brought a cold reminder of how vulnerable they were to being cut off and out of the human chain. Everyone knew that without the rail line the forest could consume Yale.

The wilderness could kill; by avalanche or biting cold; through adventure and misadventure; so most of the locals of Yale, British Columbia owed Doc Hannington a lot. He’d been trying to keep them alive for over thirty years.

“Whatever you or I may think about this,” said the doctor gravely, “well, I think we have to try to put it aside and think again. Hell, Johnny, you know what I’m trying to say, don’t you? This is important.”

“I guess I do,” said Johnny, and he returned with the doctor to the shed.

When they reentered the cabin they found the three other men standing pretty much where they’d left them. Someone had lit a lantern so there was more light inside.

Johnny looked back at the ape-boy. He was holding a potato.

Ned looked over at Johnny and grinned out of the side of his face.

“Gave him the spud, Johnny, but I don’t think he figured out what it is, yet!” Ned laughed nervously.

Johnny could see the creature wasn’t thinking about the potato. It rolled the thing over in its hands as it stared at the faces of the men.

“That’s good, Ned,” said the doctor.

“Yeah. Good,” said Johnny.

From his first moments with Jocko, Johnny had been feeling that things were not really good, as the doctor had said. He didn’t know when exactly it had happened, but Johnny found himself caring for the foundling as though it were somehow his responsibility. He had, after all, been the one to first see it lying beside the tracks. Since Johnny had the next two days off, and no plans for the weekend, he was the logical caretaker for Jocko until the others could figure out their next step.

Johnny listened to the men discuss the creature’s fate as he watched the animal crouching inside its cage. Every time he looked into the ape-boy’s eyes he found them looking right back at him. The eyes spoke to him, like a person; appealed to him. Johnny realized he had to act on Jocko’s behalf.

Trouble was, he didn’t know why he felt compelled to do so.

To Ned, the doctor, and the others, Johnny had always been a harmless gangly kid, listening on the sidelines, easy to overlook because of his retiring ways. People liked Johnny and trusted him for reasons he’d never fully understood. They also took him for granted.

Once, Ludlow Hawkins, the biggest bully in school, had told him about a girl he secretly loved. Right out of the blue,

“The Lud” just blurted it out to him one day after school. He wanted Johnny to tell him how to handle the girl; what to say to her to make her like him. Johnny was dumfounded, but somehow found the courage to tell Ludlow to ‘just be nice’ to the girl. As it happened Ludlow got the girl. From that moment on Johnny never had to worry about the bullies at school as long as Ludlow was around.

But Johnny wasn’t the kind to take advantage. He had more important things on his mind than school politics. He always seemed to know what was important and what wasn’t.

Johnny knew that the world was about to leap into a new era. The signs were everywhere. Industry was expanding in the cities and new fangled machinery was everywhere you looked. Empires were forming and sending ripples into the wilderness.

Now, listening to the men talking in the doctor’s parlor, he kept thinking of Jocko and how this hapless animal would react when he fully confronted mankind. He was reminded of the mayor. They had all agreed earlier that for the moment they would keep a lid on the presence of the ape-boy for the sake of all concerned, but each of them knew the person they didn’t want to find out about Jocko was Mayor Hayes.

“… sideshows …”

Costerson and Craig were talking to Dr Hannington about Barnum and his ‘big circus sideshows ’. The words called Johnny from his musings back into the conversation.

Costerson looked at the doctor.

“Doc, do you think this thing is some kind of native animal?” he said with some scorn in his voice. “How do we know it ain’t some Indian thing? I mean you know how them Indians can be, Doc. It looks like ya crossed an Indian with some animal!”

But the doctor just shrugged his shoulders without comment.

Craig looked around. “Let’s keep it down, gents.”

“Oh, pshaw, J.C., ain’t nobody gonna hear us.”

Ned looked at this watch. “It’s nigh to eight thirty. If the train is late back to Lytton … well, that
will
cause some notice.

I suspect the lumber’s loaded by now. We’d best get back to it.”

It had been two hours since they had brought their strange baggage to town and dropped it in the railroad shed.

Walking back to the railroad yard, they paused. “Look, Johnny, Doc.” Costerson leaned toward them. “It’s agreed, then. We don’t tell anybody, ’specially the mayor. We don’t do anything until tomorrow. We’ll be back on the a.m. run.”

Doc and Johnny nodded.

“In the meantime I’m going to see to that wound on its head,” Doc said. With that the men split up, the three railroad men toward the train and Doc and Johnny toward the shed.

As Johnny and the doctor approached the door to the shed they paused.

“I don’t know what we should do, Johnny. I suspect you’re as confused as I am. I’m going to skip over to my house and pick up some things to fix this boy’s head. Why don’t you go in and see to Jocko? He seems to like you. We don’t want him makin’ more noises. Go ahead and, well, try to keep him quiet. We gotta find out what it eats.” With that, the doctor headed down the path.

Johnny undid the lock on the shed. He looked back at the doctor, pacing resolutely a hundred yards down the road.

Doc Hannington was a good soul, but Johnny knew the doctor cared more about people than animals. He seemed to care about Jocko, but that could change.

Johnny had planned to stay at his aunt’s place west of Yale, as he often did when he had to take the morning run. Or now, during summer, when he worked odd shifts at the firebox while the regular coalman, Scott Yerlich, was having episodes of gout brought on by the heat. This was the case this weekend, so he wasn’t due back to Lytton for two days.

Pausing at the door, Johnny considered going over to his aunt’s but realized that would take the better part of an hour to get there and back. Plus, he didn’t want to explain his being out all night to her. Johnny felt duty-bound to watch over Jocko, so he went back inside the railroad shed.

The lantern hung near Jocko’s cage, and Johnny could see the animal was squatting uncomfortably on the thick wire mesh floor of the cage. The mesh was roughly nailed to the flooring and many of the sharp nail heads protruded. Tufts of bear fur still clung to a nail head that stuck straight up a quarter inch in the middle of the cage. Jocko was managing to avoid it.

Without hesitation Johnny picked up handfuls of straw and began putting it into the cage, trying to cover the nail. Jocko’s eyes followed Johnny’s movements. He did nothing for several seconds. Then he shifted his weight slightly. Johnny stopped what he was doing and waited.

“I just thought you might need some softer stuff on the floor’s all.” Johnny looked into Jocko’s eyes, continuing to pack handfuls of straw over the nail. “Did you try the potato? I don’t see it.”

Jocko considered his next move carefully. The human was presenting a gesture of friendship. His extended hand was an invitation to be touched – to link. If the human was a friend, Jocko would know in the linking.

Jocko hesitated a second as he wondered: Had his people ever linked with humans? The human was removing his hand from the cage. Jocko had to act.

Johnny didn’t see Jocko move, but he found himself in the vice-like grip of a hairless hand and Jocko was a foot closer to his face. Johnny held his breath and looked down at the hand, then back into the creature’s eyes. Johnny tried to pull free, but the grip remained firm. He gasped and pulled harder but realized that the arm that held him, while a good deal smaller than his, was much more powerful. Then, oddly, when Johnny’s mind registered fear, Jocko gently released his hand.

Johnny fell backward then sat up and stared at Jocko.

The ape-boy was stacking the straw over the nail in his cage, as Johnny had done.

“You thanked me by returning my arm,” said Johnny.

With the nail well padded, Jocko sat down and curled his knees toward his chest. He and Johnny spent several minutes simply staring at one another, studying each other’s faces.

Jocko spoke, but not with human words. His voice reminded Johnny of a chimpanzee. But it was different, more human.

“Poooaaaaamu Tsssstaaaa,” it said.

“Poooaaaaamu Tsssstaaaa,” it repeated, looking at

Johnny meaningfully.

Johnny’s eyes widened. “What?”

“Tssstaaa … Jonnni.”

“You’re talkin’,” exclaimed Johnny, covering the top of his head with his hand. “I don’t believe it, no sir.”

“Tssss ta Jonnii pooooaaaamu tsssaaaaah,” said Jocko, looking into Johnny’s eyes.

Johnny was dumfounded. An animal had actually spoken to him. But he sobered a bit when he recalled what J.C. Craig had said; that the thing “might be part Indian, part bear.”

Johnny could see that the ape-boy’s arms were longer in proportion to his body than a human’s but his legs were roughly the same. While thick black fur covered most of the animal’s back, his chest was bare in places. At the waist the hair began to grow longer than elsewhere on the beast’s body so his genitalia weren’t visible. His hands and feet were for the most part free of hair and the skin was like coffee with cream.

“Tssss ta Jonnii,” the ape-boy repeated.

No
, thought Johnny,
it’s not calling me by name. That couldn’t be
. As it moved around in the cage, Johnny found the smell of the ape-boy strangely familiar yet decidedly unpleasant. In fact the shed was becoming unbearable for Johnny in spite of his fascination with Jocko. He walked over to the wall, pushed open the hinged boards that sealed the shed’s single window, and sniffed the sweet night air.

And so did Jocko.

Out there among the rocky pinnacles, the bluffs and the pines, out there under the moon, his people were moving.

Moving far away. And every second that passed put Jocko farther away from them. One day he would leave, but it wasn’t supposed to be this way.

Some minutes passed as Jocko gazed out the open window. He began to moan softly.

Johnny sat down and listened. He knew there was nothing he could do for Jocko and he was becoming annoyed with his recurring impulse to release the ape. The night was closing in and he didn’t want to be alone. He looked around and found a dusty horse blanket. After shaking the dust out of it outside he went back to the side of Jocko’s cage. He saw another blanket and threw it to the edge of the cage. Jocko carefully let a finger glide through the bars and come to rest on the blanket. In a single stroke the finger curled and the blanket slid into the cage. Jocko looked at it and picked it up.

He turned it over and over. A fat spider fell out and crawled toward the edge of the cage. Jocko picked it up and ate it, barely distracted from his examination of the blanket.

The sound of it crunching between Jocko’s teeth nauseated Johnny at first, but Jocko’s matter-of-factness about it made the event easy to overlook. Johnny realized he hadn’t eaten since breakfast. He decided to head over to the restaurant and bring back some real food for Jocko to try.

Johnny smiled and got up. Jocko looked at him.

“Some grub is what we need,” said Johnny, pointing to his mouth. Jocko looked at him blankly. “Some grub!” Johnny repeated, rubbing his stomach.

“Oh, you’ll see soon enough, Jocko.” And Johnny left the shed.

After the door closed Jocko looked at the lantern. He watched flies dance in the light.

“Jo-ko,” he said.

Johnny was back within the hour. He had managed to talk the cook at the restaurant out of half a roast chicken, some carrots, a raw turnip, and some onions. He handed most of it to Jocko, saving a drumstick and a couple of carrots for himself. Mitzie had just made some popovers and gave Johnny two. Johnny kept both of those for himself. Nobody loved popovers more than Johnny.

Jocko sulked in the cage. His nose was the only thing animated about him. He stared at the food, sniffing the alien substance. Cooking was new to Jocko because anything relating to fire was for men only. Campfires, fireplaces, forest fires. To Jocko it was just a matter of the scale of the evil. All fire was evil.

He could see that the food was warm. Hundreds of generations living in the deep woods and the high country had given Jocko and his kin the ability to see heat. To Jocko, the chicken sat glowing in the corner of the bear cage. He looked at Johnny, who had devoured his chicken and carrots and was now savoring the top crust of the first popover. Jocko could see the heat curling upward out of the hot interior of the roll. He regarded Johnny’s attitude toward the popover. He could feel Johnny’s delight.