Joko (20 page)

After descending some distance down the bluff, Johnny took his eyes off the path long enough to see if the smoke was still there above the trees. He found himself in free-fall, staring at blue sky, then a blur of green. Then there was only blackness.

Consciousness returned to Johnny with a vengeance. His leg throbbed and his face felt like someone had been standing on it. He was moving; being carried; and he smelled Jocko’s musky odor. Johnny opened his eyes and found himself pressed against Jocko’s back; his chin draped over the sasquatch’s furry shoulder.

Johnny lifted his head. Jocko’s shoulder was sticky with blood. He tried to speak but managed only a faint groan.

Around him the forest was moving by with astonishing speed.

Jocko, it seemed, was taking huge strides, perhaps running.

Each step brought a stab of intense pain to Johnny’s left leg.

He woke up fully, just as Jocko stumbled and they both tumbled into a creek full of large round boulders and broken branches. He managed only to take a quick breath before they hit the water, hard.

Johnny didn’t remember screaming, only a green blur and blinding white pain.

jony hert

tak to man

mak leg fix

good man swan.

help joko jonny

Johnny smelled bacon, salt pork, crisping nearby. Someone was chopping wood. When he tried to open his eyes he could only see out of one of them. A bandage held the other shut.

He was staring at the ceiling of a cabin made of rough-hewn cedar boards. He turned his head toward a light. The cabin was dark but for a space in the center of the roof. From it a shaft of sunlight burst into the gloom.

Johnny’s first thought was that he might have died, and this was a holy light from above, but when he moved, his leg told him it was no dream, and certainly not heaven. He managed to pull himself up on his elbows to see the room, but his head swam and his forehead hurt. “I’m making a business of getting hurt, I guess,” he muttered as his fingers explored bandages on his forehead and leg.

He thought of Jocko.

“Damn,” said Johnny. “What the heck?”

He didn’t have to wait long for an answer. A door swung open and a stout man entered the room. The flood of morning light nearly blinded Johnny. He squinted in shocked surprise and must have let out a yelp, because the man paused instantly.

“You feeling better, boy?” The man said in a soft, friendly voice. He closed the door and walked to the fireplace. He dropped a load of wood he’d been carrying and turned to face Johnny.

“A most remarkable thing, boy,” he continued. “Found you out by the wood pile last evening – asleep or dazed. At first I took you for dead.” He cocked his head and smiled. “Well, I guess you’re not a
memelos tillikum
just yet after all. Eh? Or am I wrong? Dead people can’t eat. Can you eat?”

The man took two more steps toward Johnny and paused by the cot with his hand extended. “Name’s Swan, James Gilchrist Swan. Some call me Judge, but the Indians just use Swan. Who might you be?”

At first Johnny didn’t react. He was still trying to figure out what had happened to him.

All he knew was he was in the company of men again, but he was also relieved to find himself still firmly rooted in the world. He looked again at the man called Swan. With his eyes better adjusted to the dim light, he studied the room. The cabin was small and made of rough -hewn boards lashed together with rope or twine. A fireplace was built into the middle of the dirt floor. Johnny thought the place looked like it had been built by a savage.

“Not Heaven, that’s a sure thing,” whispered Johnny.

But Johnny had to admit that the man calling himself Swan made an acceptable St Peter. He had a fatherly way about him and a kindly face covered with an unkempt but modest grey beard. A fur hunter’s cap and a plaid jacket unbuttoned to reveal a well fed girth, reminding Johnny of Santa Claus, but the soiled blue wool pants and oversized well-worn boots dispelled that illusion.

He talked like a man of substance and seemed to have a good nature, so Johnny felt he might be able to trust the man.

Certainly a glance down at his carefully bandaged leg testified to the man’s charitable nature.

Johnny lifted up a bit and cleared his throat. “I’m Johnny, sir. John Tilbury.”

Swan smiled and nodded politely. “Pleased, I’m sure, Mr Tilbury.”

Johnny put his hand over his bandaged eye and groaned as his head started to swim.

Swan patted his shoulder. “Best to lie back and get your bearings, lad. I made you some willow tea for your ailments.

But if you can, try to tell me how you feel. Your leg?” He handed the small cup of steaming brew to Johnny.

Johnny took it and sniffed the tea. It smelled like the bark Jocko made him chew. He knew it would help the pain, so he downed it in one gulp.

“Good man,” said Swan, taking the cup. “I’ll make some more later.”

Johnny lay back on the cot. “The leg feels better than the head, I guess, but I ain’t tried to get up. Is it broke?”

“Oh yes. I’m afraid it is,” replied the man. “And it appears you nearly put your eye out. But I set the leg, a simple break it was, and I wrapped it in bark and leaves, an Indian trick. Mind you, I’m no doctor.” Swan pulled up a chair and sat down beside the boy. “But it’s plain to see you’re in no shape to walk. You’d best lay up a while, John Tilbury. And since you certainly didn’t walk to this cabin, I have to ask how you got here.”

Johnny said nothing. He remembered his last thoughts before blacking out. Jocko had brought him here. Jocko knew that Johnny was hurt, so he brought him to Swan, to people.

Swan didn’t force the issue. When Johnny didn’t immediately respond he got up.

“Well, Johnny Tilbury, may I inquire if you’re hungry or not? Hot coffee?” he continued merrily. “I must tell you this coffee is an estate brand from Columbia. If you like coffee … well, this is very fine indeed.” He picked up a kettle from the edge of the central hearth and poured hot water into a funnel-like can. Immediately, steaming brown brew flowed from beneath it into a tin cup.

Johnny watched thoughtfully, and finally he spoke. “That coffee looks real fine, sir. It’s been a while.”

This seemed to please Swan. “Very well, sir,” he clucked.

“Let me grind some fresh beans. I’ll even put in a little cinnamon or perhaps a touch of sugar?” He looked at Johnny for a cue. “Or are you a purist, Johnny?”

Johnny blinked. “A what?”

Swan laughed. “Would you have it plain?”

“I never had coffee with cinnamon,” said Johnny, trying to come up to Swan’s speed in the conversation. “May I ask, sir, how is it that you’re out here in the mountains? Is this your cabin?”

Swan put some coffee beans in a grinder and began turning the handle.

“Who am I, you ask?” James Swan sniffed. “A diarist; a writer, you might say; out in the woods writing a book about Indians, their culture and such. I’ve been with them. Made sundry notes.” He pointed to a small table stacked with notebooks.

“Indians. Lived with them for a number of years. Learned a great many things. Fascinating people. There’s so few of them left. Someone has to tell their story. I’m from Boston, but currently out of Fort Townsend on the Admiralty Inlet. Purser and clerk a while. Too many white folks. Too much ‘old rye’.”

Swan laughed. “I had to get away to think. Living with them, well, I had to. I couldn’t think, you know. Always something going on I had to look into.” He shook his head, picked up the steaming cup of coffee and brought it to Johnny. He helped the boy sit up and settled on a round barrel that was placed near the table like a chair.

Swan looked around the room. “This cabin belongs to a trapper friend of mine. But as you can see, it’s built after the fashion of the local Indians.”

Johnny took the man to be about sixty years old, as far as he could tell, and this struck the boy as remarkable; an older man, by himself, so far from civilization. He looked down at his own hands. Blood had soaked deep under his fingernails.

Then he felt his leg. Waves of pain shot through his body.

Johnny winced.

“I am pretty sure that the bone is set. I used plaster leaves to set it strong, then reinforced it with sheaths of bark.” He looked at Johnny seriously and leaned forward. “We’ll get you cleaned up as soon as you feel well enough. That willow tea I gave you should soon help with the pain.”

Johnny nodded and took a sip of his coffee. A generous twig of rolled cinnamon bark rested in the cup. He sipped it.

The coffee tasted good. “Ummmmm,” he said in appreciation.

Swan smiled openly. “It’s fine coffee.” He chuckled. “One of God’s many pleasureful gifts.” He sipped his own, almost religiously.

Johnny relaxed and felt his shoulder muscles loosen. He felt sure he could trust the gentleman. He might even trust him with his story.

Swan looked at Johnny. “All right, now. You’ve tried the coffee. Now how about some biscuits and bacon? I have no eggs but I do have some excellent cured ham. What will it be?”

“Whatever you can spare, I guess. I am truly grateful to you, sir,” he said politely. “I don’t want to impose.”

“Not at all, son,” said Swan, getting up.

For the moment, that ended their conversation. Johnny watched the man move about the cabin. From the wooden crates set here and there it appeared Swan had just arrived at the cabin. The place smelled as though it had been shut up for some time.

As he watched the man arrange his cooking implements on a metal rack set near the fireplace, he wondered about Jocko. Had he just dropped Johnny and left? He decided the sasquatch was probably out in the forest watching the cabin.

“What’s the weather out?” he asked Swan.

“It’ll rain soon,” said the man without looking away from his mixing bowl.

Swan explained he had returned to the cabin after an unsuccessful grouse hunt and found Johnny unconscious, leaning next to the cabin. He mentioned there were footprints in the mud near the front of the house and said he suspected it must have been Indians that had brought Johnny to the cabin, but he knew of no Indians in the area who went barefoot.

“You’re wearing Brogans, nice ones at that, so I know those footprints weren’t yours. Also, when I took off your shoes, those feet of yours sure stank a lot but they weren’t muddy. And another thing, whoever dropped you off didn’t stay. There’s mud all aroun d the cabin, but I saw only a few prints. They were near you and struck deep in the mud, like the person that made them was carrying something, something like you, perhaps.” Swan glanced at Johnny to see if there was any reaction, but he found none.

“You’ll have to pardon me,” he said. “I don’t mean to sound like a Pinkerton Man. I’m just a hellishly curious person. I wouldn’t force a story from you that you aren’t predisposed to tell.”

One side of Johnny sympathized with Swan. No doubt if their situations were reversed Johnny would be asking the same questions. But another side of him – the one that remembered the trouble he probably caused for his aunt, and so many others – was not convinced that it was safe to tell his story. For all Johnny knew, Swan might be, or know of, an agent out looking for Johnny and Jocko at this moment.

On the other hand, Swan’s demeanor, his story, and the conditions Johnny found the man in made Johnny think their meeting was purely by chance. Books and notebooks were stacked everywhere in the cabin. So many, in fact, that Swan must have had to choose his provisions carefully to make room for them. Johnny studied the room more closely as the man busied himself at the fire. Aside from a Sharps rifle and a hunting knife in his belt, the man had no weapons that Johnny could see. Furs on the wall and chain traps hanging from hooks proved it was a trapper’s cabin, as Swan had said.

Swan busied himself by the hearth. He seemed almost serene as he prepared breakfast. He hummed a tune and muttered words that sounded like an Indian chant, but he was focused intently on the biscuits he was making. The man clearly loved to cook.

Suddenly Swan looked at Johnny and stood up. “John

Tilbury, did you say?” Swan scratched his head. “John Tilbury,” he repeated. “That name … I have heard that name recently. But …”

He went back to his cooking, shaking his head.

Johnny stiffened with alarm, but more than that, he grew curious. Swan might have heard of a man overboard from a ship in the area. That kind of story gets around. Now that some weeks had passed, there was plenty of time for word to get around, even back to Yale. Johnny had thought about that a lot. Mostly, he thought about Gert. If only he could tell her he was okay.

Johnny watched the man put the lid on a skillet. “Biscuits will be up soon,” said Swan. “Hope you’re hungry.”

He wondered why Swan wasn’t interrogating him. Had he heard of Johnny or not?

Johnny couldn’t stand it any more.

He took another sip of coffee and said: “You know the name? My name?”

Swan didn’t answer. Instead he began unwrapping a ham.

As he was cutting thick slices from it, he looked over at Johnny and smiled. Johnny’s name sounded familiar, he said, but he couldn’t place where he’d heard it.

“All I know is that I heard a name like it recently. Maybe in Port Townsend. Who knows? I hear lots of names. But, truly, I know no Tilburys.”

Johnny looked around at the furs and skins decorating the walls. A massive set of elk antlers hung from a post, so big they made the cabin seem small. From its various points hung socks of various colors.

Swan put two generous slabs of ham beside a small stack of bacon.

“Should I know it? Are you famous or infamous?” He laughed. “You seem too young to have crossed too many folk.”

“I dunno,” answered Johnny.

“I told you I was a curious fellow. Pay me no mind. If you decide to tell me nothing of yourself and your leg heals and you go on your way … well, that’s fine with me. As a man should, I’ll have helped a person in need. Perhaps one day you’ll be in the position to return the favor. To me or someone else.“

Swan stood up again, put his hands on his hips, then arched his back and shifted his shoulders around, stretching his spine. “Ooooh,” he groaned, “The one bad thing about cooking at a cam pfire is what it does to your back. I should make a fireplace for the cabin, but I’m not here for that, nor can I boast any talent in that particular area. I built one once