Joko (53 page)

When the train left, Johnny cried a bit, but not until Swan was out of sight. Now the wagon rolled once more back to the Tilbury farm with Johnny, Jack, Gert, and Rocky. Things were much as they had been when Johnny’s adventure began a year before, except that seated beside Johnny was Jack; a new member of his family, riding proudly in the open for all to see.

Johnny looked at Jack and smiled.

Jack watched the horse’s head bobbing up and down and considered its viewpoint. Tilly always seemed glad to be hitched to the wagon. Her life was utterly dependent on the humans.

Jack wondered how dependent on humans he had

become.

The idea took seed in his mind, nurtured by the darkness he’d felt from Costerson. Jack had some thinking of his own to do.

Was what Jack felt from the railroad agent the same thing that caused a person to beat the teeth out of an innocent Indian? Jack wondered if what he’d felt in Costerson was also a part of himself.

Jack looked at Johnny and asked him a question in the best English he could muster. “Who Johnny hate?”

“What kind of question is that?” said Johnny.

Jack thought for a moment, then repeated the question.

This time Johnny realized he suddenly had a chance to find out what was bothering the sasquatch.

“I hate what some men do,” he said carefully. “I hate Costerson for what did to you, put you in a cage. Hurt you.

Tried to sell you to Barnum.”

“Jack in cage,” said Jack. “Johnny with men.”

Johnny suddenly felt on the defensive. He felt accused.

“I wouldn’t have put you in the cage,” Johnny protested.

“Costerson did that. I set you free.”

“Costerson hate? Hate Jack?” asked Jack.

Johnny wasn’t sure what Jack was getting at, so he decided to let Jack do the talking. He thought of the link but resisted the urge. He had noticed that Jack could ‘feel’ or understand people through his link, but they only ‘felt’ Jack when he wanted them to.

In the back of the buggy on a bench that served as a toolbox sat Gert with Rocky at her side. She was pretending to be dozing but Johnny knew she was listening. He was wondering what she thought when the sasquatch spoke again: “Hate. Why hate?”

Suddenly Johnny remembered Jack touching Costerson.

Johnny smiled.

“When he grabbed you … you linked with him …
you
felt
him
!”

Jack just looked at him blankly.

“I told you he was a no good son-of-a …”

“Johnny!” said Gert. “There’s a lady present, you may recall!”

Jack looked over his shoulder at Gert. “What is hate?” he managed.

Johnny answered. “What is hate?” he began. “That’s a question for Swan, I think.”

He looked back at his aunt. “Isn’t that right?“

Gert shrugged. “Perhaps. It’s not a difficult question, though. Doesn’t everyone know what hate is?”

Jack seemed confused. He looked back and forth at

Johnny and his aunt.

“That’s a good question, Jack,” Johnny continued. “Hate makes men angry. Then sometimes they hurt things.”

Seemingly frustrated with the dialog, Jack grabbed

Johnny’s wrist. But Johnny pulled his arm away. “No, Jack!

We’ve got to talk like normal folks.”

Jack looked at Johnny in surprise and sadness. Johnny knew Jack was disappointed, but he kept to his word, convinced that if Jack was going to join humanity he would have to stop depending on their link.

Jack was quiet until Johnny nudged him. “Okay, Jack, you tell me what hate is.”

Jack didn’t answer. He had received some very sobering information during the brief link with Johnny. Johnny didn’t know this, of course, so when Gert asked him before bed what he thought of the discussion with Jack, Johnny simply said: “Useless.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” his aunt said. “Practice makes perfect, you know.”

That night the two boys lay in their bunks on opposite sides of the room. Jack, the light sleeper, slept on the side of the room where Johnny’s toy chest used to be; the place where the moon made a pool of light so bright that sometimes Johnny could play toy soldiers at midnight.

The sasquatch was dressed in a nightshirt that displayed his hairy legs. Jack didn’t like bedclothes. His sheets and blankets were always on the floor by morning. Gert said it was a waste that she even bothered to make the bunks. After a while she began pinning down the sheets under Jack’s mattress and told him to use a comforter if he got cold. But Jack never got cold. Waking in the night, Johnny would sometimes see Jack staring out the window. Jack saw every sunrise while Johnny nearly always slept through them.

If someone asked, Johnny would say that he and Jack were like brothers. In reality, though, the sasquatch was still a complete enigma to Johnny, behaving in ways both strange and unpredictable. As Jack became more like a human his mysterious qualities didn’t disappear, but became subtler.

Johnny was sure that the human side of the sasquatch would ultimately prevail. All Jack needed was time and some paperwork.

Nite

calls

Jack

hom

Johnny decided to ask the doctor how they could legitimize Jack. He thought a birth certificate was all they needed. The doctor suggested, however, that a naturalization certificate was a more credible goal. “People will believe he’s a foreigner, but they won’t believe he’s from this side of the ocean, I promise you.”

Hannington suggested that Swan might be better equipped to make that happen. Jack had, according to their

‘official’ story, arrived in the United States. He said that if Johnny wanted to make Jack legal any time soon, Swan should start the process immediately. Gert’s view was more
laissez faire
than the doctor’s. She believed, as Johnny did, that Jack was well on his way to becoming human. She said Jack would decide his own fate, not Johnny or the paperwork.

Meanwhile, Johnny had other things on his mind. First love had hit him hard. He found his thoughts full of Ginny and he tried to be with her as often as possible. Gert wondered how their relationship would affect the sasquatch. Some nights she found herself alone with only Jack and Rocky.

Sometimes, when the doctor and Gert went out, Jack had only the dog for company.

Jack was comfortable with being alone, but another side of him was not. And though he liked the dog, Jack found no comfort in his company. Jack didn’t understand why humans kept dogs. He assumed it was to keep other wolves away.

Jack also wondered about horses. Like dogs, horses didn’t behave like the other animals of the forest. Deer, antelope, caribou, moose or mountain goat; none of them would ever allow humans near them, so the first time Jack saw a human riding on a horse he was completely amazed.

Jack had tried to link with Gert’s horse, curious to know what she was feeling. But as far as he could tell, Tilly was no different than any other beast. He guessed that horses and dogs are comfortable in herds or in packs; that they eventually learned to accept humans as family. But what of cats? Why should such an independent animal bond with humans?

Jack enjoyed his time alone at the Tilbury farm. It gave him time to think. Some days he would go off into the forest before morning and wait until after Gert and Johnny left for work to return to the farm.

His contributions around the store were becoming so minimal that Johnny and Gert rarely missed him during the day. Sometimes Jack would slip out the back of the store and take the shortcut overland back to the farm. Neither Gert nor Johnny seemed concerned with his independence. They never protested when next they saw him, nor would they linger at the farm in the mornings calling his name.

One day at the shop he was helping Gert and he

wandered into the dressing room where a woman was changing. She screamed so loud he ran out of the store.

Despite not knowing his crime, he got an angry lecture from Gert that Johnny later was unable to explain. Jack didn’t understand any of it. Not even when Johnny touched him. He knew only that the dressing room was off limits.

But Jack learned quickly. He never made a mistake twice, and this seemed to satisfy Gert. But other women in town were cautious around Jack and he had to learn not to pay attention to them. He could feel their discomfort when he looked at them. Jack soon became overwhelmed by Gert’s rules and grew to dislike being there. As the weeks progressed Jack was rarely seen in town. When people spoke to him he rarely answered or even acknowledged them.

Sometimes, when he wasn’t needed at the store, he’d visit the doctor, who always welcomed Jack into his house. But when patients arrived he usually found himself on the street wondering where to go.

Jack missed Swan. The man had inspired Jack to learn all things human. Alone at the farm, Jack would find a book and try to read it, but if there were pictures he found them compelling. Often he’d lose interest in the words entirely. His favorite book had pictures showing scenes of whaling. They showed people who sailed the seas in great ships and killed animals like the one he’d seen from the canoe with Johnny and Swan. The drawings told Jack what these men had done; the killing of whales, and the perils they endured in that pursuit.

What attracted Jack to the book was its simple title:
Moby Dick
. Swan had explained the story to him, or tried to. He wanted Jack to read the words. But every time Jack opened the book he became absorbed in the half dozen or so engravings it contained. He stared at them for hours, especially the one that showed Ahab in the storm, bellowing in rage at a white whale big as a mountain. Ahab’s face was so expressive. Jack stared at it, hoping the face would reveal the reason for the man’s rage. Why did the man want to kill so huge a beast? Did such a beast exist? Jack remembered the Orca. But it didn’t look like
Moby Dick
.

Jack’s people had no writing, drawings, totem poles or paintings; not even rock drawings or carvings in a tree, nothing that might tell the world of their presence. If the sasquatch had ever made what Swan called ‘art’, it was erased from the landscape long ago. The sasquatch that raised Jack feared everything marked by men. Jack was supposed to be repelled.

But the opposite was true. Alone at Gert’s cabin, Jack thumbed through every book in the house; books of maps, an illustrated and illuminated Bible; even a book called a Montgomery Ward Catalog. The latter was, to Jack, a glossary of everything humans could own. The books became a magical window into the trappings of the physical world of man. To Jack they were also a preview of things and places he might one day see first hand.

Jack remembered Swan’s drawing in the Indian lodge.

That night he had watched Swan all night as the man created a great crow on a plain wooden board. Jack memorized Swan’s movements. Later, Jack found that he could recall it so well that he could duplicate it on paper.

But Jack didn’t understand why Swan did the art, or its significance to the Indians. As he sat and stared at the pictures in
Moby Dick
he wondered if he was looking at the thoughts of the artist. Could humans communicate thoughts or ideas with pictures, as when Johnny and Swan recognized the crow in his book? All Jack knew for sure was that the pictures spoke of things that were written in the book. Swan told him that.

One night after dinner Gert told Johnny that the sasquatch seemed lonely.

“Jack likes to be on his own,” said Johnny.

“What makes you so sure?” she argued.

With a pang of guilt, Johnny realized that he’d been ignoring Jack. With Ginny on his mind, there was room for little else. Johnny decided to take the sasquatch to a carnival in Lytton with Ginny, Ned, and Polly. By now, Johnny thought, Jack should be more comfortable in large groups of people, and he might even have fun on the rides.

It was a spur of the moment decision. Johnny hoped his friends wouldn’t mind. So when he arrived in front of Ginny’s house, her surprise at seeing Jack sitting in the wagon worried him. To his relief Ginny seemed genuinely happy to see Jack.

“Hello, Jack,” she said. “Glad you came along.”

As they rode to Lytton Jack watched the woods, thinking of his kin. He wondered if they were watching from the shadows.

Would they recognize him? He doubted it.

Ginny had brought a lunch basket, which she put next to Jack in the back of the wagon. “I brought some fruit along, Jack.

You can have a banana or an apple if you wish.”

Jack looked at the basket. He knew better than to rummage through people’s packages. Ginny unhinged the latch on the wicker lid and opened it. “I brought lots of fruit.

Go ahead.”

Jack chose a banana.

“What do you say, Jack?” asked Johnny.

“Ba-na-na,” said Jack. “Go ahead.”

“No,” said Johnny, winking at Ginny. “You say … thanks, madam.”

Ginny smiled and kissed Johnny’s cheek as she got comfortable next to him. “That’s okay, Jack. You don’t have to thank me.”

The wagon reached the Lytton fairgrounds by early afternoon. The park, which was next to the local school, was already crowded. The smell of cooked meats, fresh pies, corn on the cob, humanity and manure all mingled in the air as they surveyed the scene. Jack was reluctant to leave the wagon. Even when Johnny called Rocky and he found himself alone, he didn’t want to move.

Johnny tied the horse to a fence along the edge of the park where Tilly could graze with other horses in the shade of some tall oaks.

“You can talk to your friends, here, Tilly,” joked Johnny, pointing to the horses nearby. “Don’t let anybody take the wagon.”

Johnny checked his money while Ginny surveyed the crowd for signs of Ned and Polly. She saw them waiting near the entrance to the fair. “There they are,” she said, waving wildly.

Polly saw Ginny, waved back, and pulled Ned toward them. They met in the middle of a gravel road, all talking at once.

“Come on,” shouted Ned. “We’ve been waiting a half hour for you slugs. Let’s go in.” He handed Ginny and Johnny each a blue ticket. “You both owe me five cents.”