Joko (5 page)

But Johnny couldn’t relax. And it wasn’t Jocko. As evening fell he left the shed to get some supper with the money Doc had lent him earlier. He’d already taken care of Jocko’s needs with a dusk raid on a nearby lettuce patch.

Johnny planned to take Jocko out to his aunt’s home a couple of miles from town. He’d go out there, get the buckboard, and hitch up Tilly, his aunt’s trusted steed, to haul Jocko to safety. But now he felt weak and dizzy. He knew that after he ate he’d be able to think more clearly.

A thousand miles down the coast an agent for the Barnum Circus had received a cable about Jocko. The message was relayed immediately to the great showman himself, in Sarasota, Florida:

APE-BOY FROM MOUNTAINS CAPTURED ALIVE

STOP

YALE BRITISH COLUMBIA STOP

NO LIE STOP PLEASE ADVISE STOP

T. Paterson, Los Angeles, California

The response was even more brief. In a sentence, Barnum’s wealthy hand reached out to steal Jocko’s future:

SPARE NO EXPENSE BRING APE-BOY TO

SARASOTA BY ALL MEANS STOP

Barnum, Sarasota, Florida

By the time Johnny entered Mitzie’s Restaurant, he’d decided not to take any action to rescue the ape-boy until he had a better idea what his friends were planning. Now that he was out of the musty shed and away from Jocko he wondered why he’d felt so protective of the ape-boy.

As Mitzie put her famous berry pie before Johnny the door of the dining room opened and Collins and the Mayor entered the restaurant. They surveyed the room. Spotting Johnny, Collins said something to the mayor and they walked over to his table.

“Hi, Mayor Hayes,” said Johnny, trying desperately to remain calm.

“Good evening, boy,” said the mayor. “The word around town is that Mitzie has done herself proud this time with that berry pie. Is that right?”

Johnny nodded nervously. “Well, I ain’t tried it just yet, Mayor, but the Doc said it was real good.”

“Well, I won’t keep you from it.” Hayes smiled. “By the way, what’s this business I hear about some bear in the railroad shed?”

Johnny winced, then tried to cover it by shoving the first bite of pie into his mouth.

“Mmmmmm,” smiled Johnny. “Sure is good pie.” He chewed with relish, buying time to think of a good response.

“Mmmm,” Johnny said. “
Real
good pie! You gotta try it, Mr Mayor.”

“Did you ever find the bear?” asked Collins.

Johnny looked up at him and swallowed hard. “We found one up at the pass, yesterday, near the tunnel. It fell off the bluff or got hit by a train. We saw it layin’ by the tracks and took it to Doc Hannington.”

“Hannington treated a
bear
?” laughed the mayor.

“Well, it was hurt. And Ned, the engineer, said we might just sell it to the zoo. It hurt its head and doc was the only one in town, you know, who can fix … well, it had a big cut behind its ear, and …”

As the boy began to ramble about the bear the mayor lost interest. “Collins, here, says he saw nothing in the shed when he looked.”

“That’s right, mayor sir. We guess the bear ran away when we left the door open.”

Johnny was afraid of saying too much so he filled his mouth with another piece of pie and began to chew slowly.

“I see,” said the mayor. “Sorry to hear you lost your bear, young Tilbury. I can’t see a zoo wanting it, though. Any zoo around would be full of bears.” Hayes looked at Collins and shook his head. He seemed slightly annoyed. “Well, Johnny,” said the mayor as he looked around the room for an empty table. “Give my regards to your aunt.”

Still chewing, Johnny nodded politely. Mayor Hayes and Collins left Johnny to his pie and settled into a table across the room.

Johnny felt relieved. He didn’t want to try to spirit Jocko out of Yale that night. He was tired and figured that by now his aunt would know he was in town. He decided that the best thing to do was go to his aunt’s and bring the old blue buckboard to town the next morning under the pretext of moving some things for a friend.

Johnny swallowed the last bite of dessert and left his m oney on the table. He did his best to look casual as he left the restaurant and returned to the shed.

When he arrived everything was normal. Jocko lay curled in his cage. Johnny turned up the lantern to get a better view.

In the pale amber light the flickering shadows made Jocko appear to take several forms at once: a bear, an ape, then a man.

“A trick of the light,” muttered Johnny as he checked the latch on the cage.

Jocko still seemed to be asleep, so Johnny grabbed his satchel, locked the shed, and began the long hike to his Aunt Gertrude’s house.

A bright half-moon lit the road, and as he walked he thought about his encounter with the mayor and smiled. He felt really good about himself.

Within the hour Johnny arrived at his aunt’s farm.

His uncle, Jimmy Wescott, had been dead many years, it seemed. Johnny couldn’t even remember what the man looked like, but he ran a good farm and built a solid stone house that Johnny suspected would last two hundred years.

Johnny loved the way the house was built into a hillside, to make the place warmer in the winter. As his uncle intended, the house was built like a fortress. There were even special slits in the walls where rifles could poke through. The westward expansion and its trials had left its mark on everyone. Things had gotten a lot tamer around Yale since the house was built. Now those rifle holes were filled with planks and mortar.

As Johnny approached the farmhouse, he smiled at all those memories he had of the place. After Jimmy died in a fall from a buckboard, his aunt had struggled to keep the farm running.

“Jimmy always said my cooking would kill him, but Tilly got him first,” Gert would say. Then she would add, “Lord knows I miss the old coot.”

Johnny was glad to see the lights in the house still burning. Their glow illuminated old Tilly out in the field beside the house. She whinnied a call of recognition to Johnny as he approached the porch, and he called out to her. “Okay, Tilly, you can go back to sleep now.”

The door opened and Rocky came bounding out past

Gertrude’s skirt, barking gleefully.

“Hey, Rocky. Hi, Aunt Gert!” Johnny said as he grabbed the wagging pooch around its middle. “Now I gotcha!” He swung the dog back and forth, and Rocky growled a happy protest as he tried to lick Johnny’s face. The black and white spaniel was a good heft for Johnny but he held on tight.

Rocky groaned and strained to be put down.

“Oh, Johnny, put him down, now. He’s too old for those antics! I thought I’d see you yesterday,” she said, wiping wet hands on her white apron.

Johnny put Rocky on the ground and the happy dog ran in wide circles around the two, barking playfully.

Johnny told his aunt that he’d gotten tied up doing some business in town.

“I heard something about a bear,” she said. “Saw Stan Sams yesterday. He said you and Doc Hannington were carin’ for some animal, maybe a bear.” She assessed Johnny from head to foot with a critical eye. “That true?”

Johnny rolled his eye and said: “Oh, there ain’t much to that. Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”

Johnny loved his aunt Gert because she was like his mom. Often sisters are different, often alike, but the marvelous thing about Johnny’s mom, Dorothy, and his aunt Gert was that they started out very different but in later life they looked and acted alike. At least it seemed that way.

Now that his mom was dead, and his father gone, Johnny hungered for family and his aunt was it. If he couldn’t trust her …

She seemed to accept his story. When they got inside the house she set about boiling some water. “Some tea or hot cocoa, John?”

Johnny yawned. “I ain’t too hungry but I sure am tired.”

His aunt looked him over now that she could get a good look at him. He looked tired, as he’d said. “Well, John, you
do
look done in. Maybe you and me oughta hit the sack and do our talking over breakfast?”

Johnny smiled. “I’ll take some of your famous egg bread, if you please, ma’am.”

Johnny’s nose woke up before he did. Dreaming of a big mess of …

“Egg bread this mornin’, Johnny!” called Gert. Johnny rolled his feet off the bunk and sat up. His eyes fixed on his aunt, holding two eggs and leaning into the room. She looked as though she’d been up for hours. A painful thought, since he hadn’t even heard the rooster crow yet. But the truth was that the rooster had crowed hours ago.

Johnny rubbed his eyes. Then he saw Jocko’s face emerge from the dark patterns behind his closed lids. It looked at Johnny. Johnny stared at it. His body froze.

The image started to fade, but as it did so he thought he saw Jocko’s face distort in anguish and fear. Johnny blinked.

The fireplace was burning brightly. It had been a cold night.

“How many pieces?” his aunt asked.

“Pieces?” asked Johnny, still blinking sleepily.

Yesterday came crashing back to him. The mayor.

Costerson. Ned. Jocko.

Johnny pulled on his breeches and shuffled into the kitchen. “I gotta borrow the wagon.”

She looked at him. “How many pieces of egg bread?”

“Oh. Three, please.”

“Why do you want the wagon?” asked Gert, flipping a piece of wet bread onto the hot buttered griddle. Johnny watched it sizzle invitingly as he fastened his suspenders to the clean green breeches his aunt had left out for him.

“I promised some friends I’d help ’em move some stuff.”

“You promised
my
wagon to your friends?” she said in mock alarm. “I suppose you promised them the horse, too?”

“And the dog,” Johnny smiled. “Is that done yet? It smells good.”

“John Tilbury. What on earth are you up to?” Gert turned around, holding the spatula like a sword.

Johnny hated to lie, especially to Gert. He had never been much on religion, but he believed in God. He figured God made things the way they are, and that meant the way things are is truth. So, Johnny concluded, if God was anything He is truth. Johnny thought the things most folks call the Devil are the false things. The lies. So it was difficult for Johnny to lie, especially to his mom’s only sister.

“That’s not all,” he said, sitting down at the kitchen table.

He almost hoped his aunt didn’t hear.

But she heard him plainly. “Johnny, sit down, have breakfast, and tell me.”

He told her everything. About Jocko, the train, Ned and Doc Hannington. But when he told her about Jocko he left out some details, like the strange mental link between the ape-boy and himself. Not that he didn’t want her to know, he simply had no idea how to describe it.

But he told her Jocko took to him. But Gert knew animals took to Johnny. She called it his ‘talent’. No one else described it that way. She made it sound like a gift.

By the time he had finished relating the story, his aunt was sitting across from him at the dining table. “You’re right to trust Doc Hannington,” she said. “He won’t let you down.”

His aunt stared out into the field next to the house. The sun shone on ripening sunflowers and a dark jay swept a bug from the air. Waiting for the inevitable advice, Johnny scraped the last of the breakfast from his plate. But after a few minutes she still was silent. Finally he could stand the silence no more.

“Well, let’s hear it,” he said.

She looked at him and smiled. “Hear what?”

“You got more to say, but you ain’t sayin’ it, that’s what!”

“Johnny, don’t pester me. I’m thinkin’.”

“Well, what about the wagon? Can I take it or not?”

“Of course you can, Johnny. You know it’s yours to use if you ever need it. But what are you planning to do with it?”

“I want to bring Jocko here, but not permanent like. Maybe keep him in the shed or somewhere, ’til I can figure out what to do. I have the feelin’ he wants me to take him back to where we found him.”

“You think this Jocko sees you as a way to get back?”

“I think so, yes. But who else does he have? I know where we found him.”

Rolling her eyes, Gertrude began gathering plates from the table.

“Land sakes, Johnny,” she sighed. “Lord knows you’re a special one. That’s no lie.”

Without another word she went out the door and called the dog. “C’mon, Rocky,” she called, “get the scraps!” Then Johnny heard her call after him. “Be sure to mind Tilly’s right hind hoof. She picked up a stone a while ago. We got it out but her hoof might still be sore.”

“I will,” promised Johnny. Looking back at the kitchen clock he saw that it was later than he’d thought. He quickly pulled on his boots and ran out the door and up the short path to the barn.

Hurriedly Johnny hitched Tilly to the wagon and jumped aboard. He waved to Gert as he gathered the stiff leather reins in his hands.

“Mind Tilly’s hoof, now,” called his aunt.

“Don’t worry, Aunt Gert.” Johnny released the wooden hand brake. Hearing the creaking brake, Tilly threw back her head and lurched into action. The horse seemed to know Johnny was driving, judging from the spring in her step. There seemed to be no sign of a sore hoof, so Johnny straightened in the seat and pulled the reins tight.

As the wagon entered the town Johnny heard the train whistle as it signaled its approach to Yale. The sun was now high and bright in the blue sky. The mountains seemed so close as to rise from the edge of town. To the west of town Cedar Bluff glowed brightly, looming above the green forest.

“Must be the noon run,” Johnny said to the horse. “I bet Ned’s aboard.”

When Johnny got to the shed he could see the lumber train sitting on a siding. He was thinking about Jocko as he climbed out of the seat and tied Tilly to a tree limb, but when he saw the train his mind returned to his job, something he had barely thought about in the last two days.

Johnny’s weekly shift had ended when they found Jocko.

He realized that his two days had flown by.

“I’ve spent my weekend off baby sitting an ape. Jeeez.

Tomorrow I’ll be back to shoveling coal.”

Johnny searched his pocket for the key to the padlock. As he fumbled he noticed that the padlock had been replaced with a different one.