Joko (4 page)

Finally, after a few seconds, Collins pulled his head back and stepped down by the men. He wore an expression of doubt as he brushed cobwebs from his hair. Then he smiled.

“I think your anim al got away. There’s nothing in there but an empty cage.”

A train whistle sounded in the distance. Collins looked toward the station. “Well, I’ve some business to attend to, gentlemen. I wish you good luck in finding your animal.”

Johnny struggled with the rusty padlock on the cabin door.

When it finally squeaked open he peered inside. Jocko sat in plain sight on top of the empty cage eating lettuce. He looked up as the door opened and he saw four surprised faces staring back at him. He recognized them, especially Johnny, and showed them his teeth. Johnny closed the door and replaced the padlock.

“Told ya so,” said Collins. “Sorry to be the one …” He began walking toward the railroad station. “See you at the Fair, I suppose, Mr Craig. And I hope you find your bear.”

When Collins was out of sight they all looked at one another in surprise. Johnny, completely dumfounded, reopened the door and went inside. Jocko was out of his cage, but for some reason Johnny felt no fear.

The men stayed outside watching Johnny as he approached Jocko.

“Be careful Johnny,” Ned whispered, “What are you doing?”

Johnny stopped a few feet away from Jocko, then looked back at the faces at the door. “You better close it. We don’t want any escapes.”

The door closed. A few moments later the faces reappeared looking in the window.

Still seated casually on his cage, Jocko looked at Johnny, then at the men. He seemed completely at ease.

Johnny looked at the doctor. “By the way, is anyone else around out there?” The three faces looked in all directions.

“None that we can see, Johnny,” whispered Ned.

Johnny knew that he was the best person to take care of Jocko, and he was glad that the group had charged him with the job of keeper. If they hadn’t, he would have volunteered.

Johnny stood looking at Jocko who had risen to his feet.

They regarded one another with caution and curiosity.

Jocko acted at ease, but he was terrified. He had always known that it is suicide to exhibit fear. Predators smell it and it just encourages them. To Jocko that rule applied to human predators as well.

As he looked at Johnny his mind raced. He was lost –

utterly lost.

His loss of consciousness and his having been moved a long distance put Jocko in an unprecedented situation. His family was far away. He knew that because he could not sense them.

How had he gotten here? He tried hard to remember.

What was it that had carried him to this place? What was that sound he’d heard?

Jocko looked at Johnny. He knew the human was his only link to his family.

Out there somewhere was a trail and on that trail were his family. Perhaps they were asleep. After all, it was daytime.

Or maybe they found the favorite patch of snowberries they had grazed since he was a boy. Perhaps they were there already. Eating the earth fruit. Smelling the sweet fragrance of the summer. Jocko yearned for his kin, and the only way to return to them would be with Johnny’s help.

In spite of the midday sun warming the shed, Johnny felt a chill. It was not the temperature that caused his shiver. It was an image in his mind: snow fields, a mountaintop; a driving, howling wind; blinding, stinging ice. He saw footprints fading in the blowing powder. Prints that vanished. Then, only snow.

Johnny blinked and realized he was looking into Jocko’s eyes and the ape-boy was holding his wrist. He heard a sound. Ned was at the window, looking puzzled.

“What’re you up to, Johnny?” he implored. “Are you hearin’ us? Don’t let the monkey get a hold o’ you. Johnny, listen … there’s a spade behind ya.” Then, “Geez … I’m gettin’ my gun.”

Ned’s face disappeared from the window, and Doctor

Hannington replaced him. The doctor called to Johnny.

Heeding the warning, Johnny stepped away from Jocko and turned toward the window.

“Doc, look. Everything is all right.” Johnny stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dungarees. “We got to let this be for a while, Doc. Tell Ned he don’t need his gun. I can tell you Jocko isn’t gonna hurt me.”

“Very well, Johnny,” said Doctor Hannington. Then he left the window shouting after Ned. In a few moments they were both back at the shed.

“What?” Ned’s red face appeared again at the window.

“Time. We need to buy us some time, Ned,” said Johnny.

“We need to work this together.”

J. C. left the window. “Doc!” he said quietly, and the doctor’s face disappeared from view.

Costerson returned from town, carrying a rifle. Ned stepped away from the window to greet him.

“Costerson, got your ’75. Whooooah! Plannin’ to hunt game?” Ned called out loud and clear so Johnny could hear.

Craig closed the dus ty wooden shutter and darkness consumed the cabin. Johnny felt his way to the window and pushed on the shutter. It wouldn’t budge.

Next to the window a convenient knothole allowed Johnny to see what was happening outside. He could see Ned, J. C., and Doctor Hannington standing in a tight circle talking to Costerson, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying.

Johnny was going to yell a protest but he suddenly remembered Guy Cousteau at Mitzie’s restaurant. The logger, burly as he was from years hauling timber, was obviously very afraid of the railroad agent. Johnny strained to hear the conversation.

As Johnny watched the men’s lips move he tried to fill in the words, but he was no lip reader. Paranoia gripped him as he stared at his best friends, laughing at something Costerson said.

Johnny stepped back from the wall and looked at Jocko, who was crouched on his cage watching him. “These people are my friends,” he told the ape-boy. “What’s getting into me?”

Not since Johnny was a little boy had he let dark thoughts like these torture him. He felt the way he had when his father, a trapper, came home drunk with no beaver pelts, complaining of Indians raiding his traps. He would usually end the evening taking his frustrations out on little Johnny.

Johnny thought of his helpless mom, how desperate she would get. She never hit Johnny. She didn’t think it was right.

He wished she was still with him, especially now. What could he do? He thought of Aunt Gertrude and her sage advice. “Do what you want to do,” she would say. “But follow your good heart, son. If I ain’t with you, that’s who you should listen to. In your heart is the good Johnny, the Johnny I love.”

When the human turned his back on him, Jocko shifted his weight slightly so that his relaxed crouch became that of a coiled sprinter, ready to bolt from the cabin. His powerful muscles locked into place and his eyes narrowed as his animal instincts calculated the precise distance to the door.

Then Jocko looked at the human’s back. He knew the door wasn’t solidly shut. And he knew he was fast enough.

But where would he go? Back to where he lost his family?

Where was that? Beyond the dark spot in his memory.

The humans – this human – held his only hope of finding it.

Jocko looked at the bright light that outlined the unbolted door. He could try to find the ravine he’d fallen into. But the boy had the answers. And now the boy was exhibiting total trust by turning his back on him. Why had his traditional enemy – a human – done such a thing?

Jocko stared at Johnny in astonishment.

Johnny realized that he had turned his back to a wild animal.

He looked quickly over his shoulder. Jocko was still squatting on the bear cage, looking at him. Jocko seemed to appear different to Johnny every time he looked at him. At that moment Johnny saw in Jocko a person very much like himself, even physically. The way Jocko leaned slightly with one hand on the cage seemed very human.

Johnny spoke to Jocko: “This is weird, Jocko. I don’t know if you get a word of what I’m sayin’.” Johnny lowered his eyes.

“You ain’t no monkey, like in a zoo.”

He took a deep breath. “That’s what they think. They think you’re a thing.” He gestured to the window. “Even if they don’t think that now, they will sooner or later.” He paused for a second. “Are you hearing this?”

Jocko gave no sign that he understood. He listened intently, that was for sure, but whether Johnny had gotten through to him remained to be seen. Johnny decided that he had to proceed on faith alone. “Anyway, Jocko. I got a feeling you aren’t up on our human ways. If they start to be afraid of you, they might … Oh Jocko, I don’t know. Those are good guys out there. But …”

By now Johnny’s eyes had fully adjusted to darkness inside the cabin. He saw Jocko’s head turn toward the window. Then the ape-boy’s eyes met his own.

Jocko was slowly becoming sure that the human was hearing his call for help. He blinked and smiled gratefully
.

“Damned if you don’t understand me,” said Johnny.

Johnny had always known animals could understand people. But he also knew animals’ feelings weren’t supposed to matter. As his dad said: “A dog watches his master. A cat watches the milk pail. Simple as that. No use givin’ ’em credit they ain’t due.”

Johnny had been sensitive to animals all his life. He never had the stomach for hunting, but he knew the woods. He accepted hunting and trapping as a way of life, like logging.

But he didn’t like the killing.

Everyone who knew Johnny also knew he had a way with animals. Dogs and cats loved him. Horses let him ride.

Johnny said he simply understood them, and they seemed to understand him. Deer would eat from his hand. Perhaps it was a knack. Whatever it was, “the trick” was difficult for him to explain because he didn’t understand it.

Once, when Johnny was still a baby, his mom was hanging out laundry in the yard one summer day with Johnny playing nearby. Suddenly a squirrel came hopping toward him. He remembered being fascinated with the animal and its large bushy tail.

The squirrel continued to hop toward Johnny until it was a just foot from the boy, still not seeing him. Johnny’s mom took notice at that point and watched as Johnny charmed the squirrel into his lap. It was there a full minute, she would later tell her neighbors, “… and the squirrel never showed no fear.”

Johnny wanted to be normal, even though he knew he knew he wasn’t.

He tried to remember his mom; how she bragged about him to her sister Gert. Even when others called him weird, his mom was proud. She called him gifted, and special. Because of her, he knew what it was to be loved. And, when he should have been bathing in that love, he was taking it for granted.

“It’s a strange thing John does,” she told Aunt Gert. “He can disappear to a critter. They don’t seem to see him until he wants them to.”

“It’s your way,” his aunt had told him. That was a long time ago. Now Johnny was nineteen and no closer to understanding his gift.

Jocko understood the young human. He heard a soft voice in him. The boy was wondering, as was Jocko, “What would the other men do?”

“So here’s the thing, Jocko,” said Johnny, lowering his voice to a more solemn tone. “The best thing to do is for you to get back in that cage. You opened your cage, and got out. I know you did. But the others don’t believe you could do it. That’s what matters.”

He looked at the window. Jocko’s actions parroted

Johnny’s.

By now Johnny could see Jocko clearly and he took a moment to study the ape-boy’s face. Devoid of excessive hair, Jocko’s countenance looked human. He had wide cheek bones, a pronounced but not obtrusive brow, and fairly thick eyebrows. His ears poked out obtrusively through a shock of tangled red-brown hair.

Johnny considered that if Jocko had the benefit of an expert barber he might actually pass for human. “Jocko,”

Johnny said. “For your own good, you’ve
got
to get into the cage. I give you my word that I won’t let them hurt you. But if you run, I don’t know. Two of them have rifles and are probably good shooters. You can’t outrun a bullet.”

Jocko listened intently, then climbed back in the cage.

“You won’t be sorry, Jocko, I promise,” said Johnny with a smile of relief. Then he slowly slid the latch into place.

When the men returned to the shed, and found Jocko in his cage with Johnny standing beside it, they all hooted and clapped happily. “How did you manage it?” asked Doc Hannington.

Johnny thought for a moment, then shrugged his shoulders. “I just told him to get in the cage.”

Costerson laughed derisively. “You
told
him to?”

“Right.” Johnny nodded sternly.

To his surprise, no one else questioned Johnny about how he’d communicated with Jocko. All that seemed to matter was that Jocko was safely in his cage and Johnny had done his job.

Costerson continued a conversation he was having with Craig about having read that P. T. Barnum was losing money and needed a star act. The doctor and even Ned got excited at the prospects. Costerson said he’d already sent ‘a feeler telegram’ off to Barnum.

After a while everyone began to notice that the shed had acquired a thick musky smell. Johnny, who had been in the shed for a while, didn’t notice it until Ned mentioned it. The smell came from Jocko. Johnny guessed the group of humans clustered around the cage was making the ape-boy nervous.

It amazed Johnny that, when Collins had pushed his face inside the shed, he hadn’t smelled Jocko. There was only one answer. Jocko had somehow managed to vanish. There was no other explanation. But when he said as much the other men laughed, and Doctor Hannington suggested in a patronizing tone that Jocko had simply hidden from Collins’ view.

“Okay, what about the smell?” asked Johnny. “It’s pretty thick in here. You said so yourself, Ned. So why didn’t Collins smell him?”

“We know nothing of Collins’ olfactory conditions,” said the doctor. “And I think he smokes cigars.”

Johnny didn’t pursue the issue, but he knew there was no way Collins could have overlooked the ape-boy. When he pushed his head in the window he’d have been so close to Jocko that he could have touched him. He would surely have smelled him. But Collins was long gone and, judging from the fact that Mayor Hayes never showed up at the shed, he really hadn’t seen the ape-boy.