Authors: Karl Kofoed
Finally he found the key and tried it, but as he expected, it didn’t fit the lock. Johnny looked around then, unable to think of any other action, he called out in a loud whisper, “Jocko.
You okay in there?”
But there was no response.
He looked around. In the distance he thought he saw Costerson step onto the train. Puzzled, Johnny walked around the shed. He found the window slightly ajar. On tiptoes he pushed open the window and peered into the shed.
He remembered the image that had hovered before his closed eyes that morning. Had Jocko contacted him? He couldn’t see every corner of the shed, but he could see that the cage was no longer there.
“What?” he said aloud.
The train gave a whistle heralding its departure. Then it moved slowly, straining under the weight of many log-filled flatbed freight cars.
Johnny searched the dirt near the shed for telltale tracks, but there was nothing. He knew Jocko was gone. Gone from the shed and from Johnny’s mind. In a strange way he began to feel that the whole thing had been a dream. Was that possible?
“No, that couldn’t be!” he said angrily.
Johnny began walking toward the depot. As he approached the station he looked for familiar faces, but there were none to be seen. He headed toward the train station, then turned and ran toward the doctor’s house. As he ran past the shed he stopped.
“Costerson. On the train.”
Suddenly he realized that Jocko was aboard the train. But it was too late. The last cars were pulling away from the station. Johnny could see the caboose about 500 feet away, doing about five miles an hour.
Johnny looked back toward the shed and saw that Tilly was secured to the post, then in a dead run he was off to catch up with the train. He knew it was impossible, because outside of town the grade went downhill, giving trains what Ned called the ‘Yale Booster’. If the train got there before Johnny, there would be no way of catching up with it. But he had to try.
The wind seemed to be with him. Despite the rough stone and brambles at the edge of the tracks, Johnny covered ground at an amazing speed. But as he tried to negotiate the tracks his footing became unsure. The way the wooden ties were laid down seemed to be at odds with the length of his stride. No matter how he tried to adjust his gait, the railroad seemed to be conspiring against him.
Johnny cursed as he stumbled and hit the gravel. He reached groundward and caught the steel rail. Heated by sun and locomotive, it burned his hand, but the pain spurred him to regain his footing. Johnny vowed to keep a better eye on his feet.
When Johnny at last neared the caboose the train began to pick up speed. Its front half had reached the ‘Yale Booster’.
Johnny never got closer than fifty feet from the train. It gathered momentum as it began its downhill run.
Experience told Johnny that the engineers used this boost to help them up the next grade a few miles down the line.
There, the grade slowed most trains to a crawl as they reached the ridge. Johnny would have to catch the train there, or never.
Johnny looked down at his knee. The denim was stained red. “Damn!”
Though his pants were torn and stained, it didn’t hurt too much, and he could still run. But after a mile of running, the patch of blood had grown larger and his knee was beginning to hurt. He tried to jump in measured strides from tie to tie. It was easy at first but was soon hard to keep up. Eventually he chose to run on the rough gravel beside the rails, dodging scrub cactus and brush. At least there he wouldn’t trip and break his ankle.
Johnny ran. Sweat poured down his temples but he kept it up. Eventually, as he came around a tight curve, he could again see the train, going up the grade and beginning to slow.
Johnny estimated that he’d have to run another mile to catch up with the train, and soon he would be going uphill. He was already exhausted. If a steady dry wind had not been blowing on him he might not have gotten this far, he reasoned.
“I
can
do it!” he muttered as he pushed his legs to move faster.
The grade got steeper. Two hundred feet in front of him he saw the caboose slow to a crawl. Johnny put his heart into it, spurred on by hope.
Once again he fell but jumped up, his shirt sleeve torn on a broken tree limb. But he gained on the caboose. He could make out its red painted numbers.
“642,” huffed Johnny. “Gonna git you.”
Then a branch grabbed his waist and he fell. Hard.
Dazed, Johnny tried to get up, but he was already past exhaustion. His head was swimming and the hot summer sun baked and dizzied his brain so that he couldn’t see straight.
Sweat ran into his right eye, stinging mercilessly. And then, almost as a mocking gesture, he heard the train whistle shout to the next town. Johnny looked up in time to see 642 disappear over the hill.
He bowed his head. “Well, that’s the end of it,” he said, resolutely examining his knee.
On his feet again, he trotted to the top of the hill, but the train was gone. Nothing but the wind. Johnny wiped the sweat from his brow. Behind him he heard someone say his name.
Part II
JonNy find me take to Woman
womAn and gOod wolf
lost JonNy help find us tak to man hom
Blood roared in Johnny’s ears. It blended with the sound of the wind, the grasshoppers and the train as it rounded a bend and vanished in the distance. He was exhausted, drenched in sweat.
“John-neee.” The strange voice blended with the wind.
Beside the tracks the forest was thick and foreboding.
Johnny’s eyes strained to see into the shadows, but there was nothing.
“Whoozat?” Johnny called out.
He realized then that he was unarmed, except for a small pocket knife, and totally exhausted; an easy victim. His eyes searched the shadows.
“Who said my name?”
A shadow moved a few feet, then blended into the darkness.
“Hey,” Johnny called out again. “Who’s there?”
Jocko stepped from the shadows eating a handful of leaves. He walked cautiously a short distance into the clearing and stopped, looking up and down the tracks.
“I can’t believe it! Jocko!” Johnny trotted over to the ape-boy.
He was astonished. The only way that Jocko could be here, he realized, was for him to have been on the train, and somehow escaped.
“Whooo boy, Jocko, you sure are full of surprises,” said Johnny as he approached Jocko.
“Joh-nny,” said Jocko.
Johnny stopped. “But why didn’t you just go? Run away?
What are you hanging around for? Go!”
He knew that the longer Jocko stayed around people the more trouble he’d get into.
Johnny looked into Jocko’s eyes. “You can’t stay around here, Jocko,” he said. “You should go back to … whatever you got to go back to.”
There was something in Jocko’s eyes that touched
Johnny deeply. They stood facing one another; neither, it seemed, knowing what to do.
“Joh-nny,” Jocko repeated, then he reached out and touched Johnny’s hand.
When they touched, a link formed.
Jocko knew the human called Johnny was frightened and confused. But, by linking with him, Jocko could see through the human’s eyes The human saw
him
as the beast.
Frustration grew within the ape-boy. He wanted to tell Johnny about his kin; a family he needed to find; a family constantly on the move, traveling at night and sleeping by day. By now they could be far away, and every second they got farther away from where he fell from the bluff.
Had they seen him fall? Had they tried to save him? They might have. But he never heard them whistle. And when he was trapped in the shed, why hadn’t he heard their call? Why hadn’t they called to him?
Jocko remembered being unconscious. They might have thought him dead. If they couldn’t get his body from the humans they would head west, toward forbidding cliffs and high mountains feared by man. Jocko knew that his family might think they had ventured too near the humans. After losing one of their own, they would be trying especially hard to avoid people. If Jocko didn’t find his family soon, he might never find them.
Jocko was now forced to trust his most feared enemy, a human, if he was ever to find his way back to where he’d lost his way. Back to the bluff where the trainmen and Johnny took him.
As he touched the sas quatch, sadness overwhelmed Johnny.
All at once, for some reason, he felt cold and alone.
Jocko let go. Suddenly the feeling stopped.
Johnny wiped a tear from his eye. “God, Jocko. What was that?” Johnny shook his head as Jocko watched him with interest.
Soon the two were walking single file through thick forest.
Jocko guided them smoothly through the undergrowth with amazing speed and efficiency. Occasionally he would touch Johnny and he would know which way to go.
They returned to Yale in a way that kept them hidden and brought them back to where Johnny had left Tilly and the wagon.
Because of the link with the ape-boy, Johnny knew Jocko hoped to go, but he tried to explain that before they could go back to the bluffs they should stop at his aunt’s place for food and maybe some advice.
It wasn’t long before they saw the railroad depot. The two paused, surveying the scene.
Johnny put a hand on Jocko’s furry shoulder. The hair felt like human hair, only thicker. He could feel the muscles move underneath. Jocko looked at him.
Johnny thought Jocko looked more human with each passing moment. He assessed Jocko’s features, wondering what it would take to make him look more human. The ape-boy’s nose flared slightly but presented a gentle profile. His forehead was broad, hairless with thick eyebrows that hid brown deep-set eyes. Johnny quickly decided that the eyes were Jocko’s most human feature. Jocko’s jaw line didn’t jut like an ape’s. His lips were thin and his teeth showed easily when Jocko smiled.
On the trail, walking together for the first time, Johnny watched with amusement as Jocko picked plants and ate them while never breaking his stride. Sometimes he would spit one out, only to grab another and gobble it down.
The same was true of bugs, but Johnny tried to ignore that. It wasn’t that Jocko ate bugs, it was the offhanded way he did it that bothered Johnny. Popping a beetle in one’s mouth was something Johnny had never contemplated. Jocko did it routinely and with relish. He chewed them loudly, apparently enjoying the way they crunched. Every time Jocko did it Johnny felt a little sick.
As they followed the trail along the tracks, Johnny watched the ape-boy. Despite the hair, Jocko looked more human than ape.
“You know if you cut that shoulder length hair and shaved a bit, you might look human.” Jocko looked at Johnny but made no attempt to reply. He was moving in long, slow, casual strides, but even walking fast, Johnny was having trouble keeping up with him. As the ape-boy pulled ahead, Johnny could imagine a hairless Jocko with small ears and a short neck, made to look even shorter by his thickly muscled shoulders.
A stick cracking underfoot near the shed caught Johnny and Jocko’s attention. They both crouched behind a bush and studied the scene. Johnny couldn’t see anyone or anything except Tilly and the wagon.
Jocko touched his shoulder and pointed to the right of the shed. Sure enough, Johnny saw a boot and range coat move behind the side of the shed.
Johnny studied the figure in the distance. “It’s the doc, all right,” he whispered. “He’s just standing there waiting for me, I guess, but let’s wait and watch a while.”
Jocko shrugged, then moved into the shadows of some pines and vanished. Had Johnny not seen it for himself he wouldn’t have believed it. Though Johnny saw where Jocko went, the sasquatch actually seemed to disappear when it stopped moving. Johnny dismissed it as a trick of the light.
His eyes returned to Doc Hannington. He wanted to just walk over to him but something held him back.
Minutes passed and the shadows deepened as night approached, but the doctor stayed near the shed. Finally Johnny decided that he had to act. He looked back at Jocko, then went back up the track about fifty feet to a place where the doctor couldn’t see. There he crossed the tracks and walked back to the shed.
When the doc saw Johnny coming toward him he called to him. “There you are, Johnny. Where’n Sam Hill did you get to? I’ve been looking for you all over.”
Casually, Johnny looked around. He saw the place where Jocko was waiting but didn’t see him. “Dr Hannington,” said Johnny. “Where’s Jocko? There’s no sign of him or his cage, and somebody even changed the lock.” He pointed to the shed.
The doctor looked sullen. “Where’ve you been, Johnny?
And what on earth did you do to your leg?”
Johnny looked at his torn and bloodied trouser leg. “Fell down, I guess. It ain’t nothin’. I been looking all over for Jocko, or anyone. I left Tilly here.” Johnny was getting sick of lying, but he didn’t know who to trust. Moreover, he had made a pact with Jocko.
The doctor got down on one knee to examine Johnny’s leg. His action forced a wave of guilt in Johnny. “Gee, Doc …
I …” he began, but bit his tongue.
His aunt had always trusted Hannington. Gert was among Yale’s long-term citizenry, and she had helped the doctor to start his practice. To Johnny the doctor was one of Yale’s permanent fixtures. But he had lots of patients, and chief among them was the mayor. So for the moment Johnny kept quiet about Jocko.
“They took Jocko to Seattle,” answered Dr Hannington. “I got here about eight this mornin’ and found Costerson and Craig, and a guy I didn’t know, loading Jocko’s cage on a train. They put a tarp over the cage so’s no one could see it wasn’t freight.”
Johnny was stunned by the doctor’s apparent honesty.
“I’m sorry, John.” He noted Johnny’s expression of shock.
“I don’t know. There seemed no way – no reason to stop them. I knew you’d be sad about this, though. I wish …”
Across the tracks Johnny could see a dark shadow among the trees. Jocko was standing, watching them.
“Well,” the doctor continued, apparently oblivious to the figure standing across the tracks, “I don’t think they’ll hurt Jocko. I mean, Barnum’s Circus isn’t so bad a place. It’s so strange a critter. My god, I’m almost sure it was one of those mountain apes the Indians whisper about. If so … well, it’s too important for Yale. Anyway, you couldn’t have cared for it.
The circus will be …”
“But the circus?” Johnny glared at the doctor. “Barnum’s circus in the States?”
“Yes. Craig said they received a cable from Barnum’s agent saying he wanted the ape-boy for his sideshow or whatever.”
“Sideshow? But he was hurt,” bleated Johnny. “You wouldn’t move him if he was hurt, would you? We don’t even know what the heck he was or if he maybe belonged to some Indian tribe.” Johnny was playing his role so well he began to fool himself.
“Well, Johnny,” said the doc, reaching into his jacket for a cigar. “He did seem okay to me when we saw him sitting there on his cage big as you please. Damnedest thing. This whole business. Tell ya true, Johnny. I’m glad to be rid of it, and I’d think you would be, too.”
“Was Ned with ’em?” asked Johnny.
“Not that I could see,” replied the doctor, lighting his cigar.
“Costerson and Craig. By the way, I heard you convinced Mayor Hayes that we had a bear. That right? Impressive!”
“Guess so.” Johnny still looked forlorn.
“Well, it’s over now. Sorry, Johnny. I really am. I know you got attached to that … well, I’m just sorry’s all.”
“Doc,” said Johnny. He considered telling Hannington about the dark figure that was at that moment standing clearly in the open, watching their every move. Johnny could have pointed and the doctor would have seen him, plain as day.
But the doctor was looking the other way. He sniffed the air, looked puzzled for a moment, then continued talking. “I’ve been hanging around the shed for the last half hour, Johnny. I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“It’s okay, Doc.”
Hannington nodded and turned to walk away. “Funny I’m noticing that smell now and not before. That sasquatch smell.
I’d say it was lingering in the shed, but …”
Johnny grinned. “Like a skunk, I guess.”
The doctor smiled. “Well, you best tend to Gert’s horse and wagon. You shouldn’t have left it unattended, John. No tellin’ the kind of riffraff come through a train station.”
Johnny said he’d try to be more mindful, as the doc headed toward his office.
Johnny walked to over to the buckboard. He was gratified to see that there was a horse blanket stuffed under the wagon seat. As he recalled, it was just large enough to cover one medium sized sasquatch.
Jocko couldn’t understand what Johnny wanted. Why was he waving?
The other man left. But it wasn’t safe. Jocko’s nose told him so. The humans in this village were inside.
He sniffed the air again, this time catching the smell of burnt flesh. The humans were eating. Safe to move. Only Johnny and an old horse were there. Why was the horse tied to a box? Why was Johnny inside the box waving a blanket?
Jocko knew he had no choice but to join with a human, his enemy, and now his only friend, Johnny.
Johnny surveyed the scene as he waited for Jocko to cross the tracks. There was no one around. Fortunate, because it was taking a while for Jocko to get up the nerve. At last he bolted with astonishing speed and was, in seconds, at Johnny’s side.
“Wazzooo,” said Johnny. “You’re a quick one.”
For the moment Johnny felt they were safe from prying eyes. But he knew that would end with the arrival of the next train. He held up the blanket and motioned for Jocko to get under it.
Jocko crouched totally confused, until finally Johnny took his arm and pulled him further onto the wagon. Jocko seemed to get the idea as soon as Johnny touched his arm and climbed in behind the seat. Johnny covered the sasquatch with a blanket.
Jocko cooperated fully, crouching low under the covering.
“That’s great, Jocko.” Johnny unhitched the horse and climbed into the front seat of the wagon. He took the reins and started rolling slowly out of town. “Got to stay calm,” he told himself.
Tilly ambled down the length of Main Street. To his relief Johnny saw no one. He was beginning to feel confident that they would soon be on their way to his aunt’s farm.
They passed the saloon. Johnny could see the amber-lit dining room was nearly empty. Then he saw Doc Hannington near the window talking to Mitzie. He waved to them as he passed but they didn’t notice him.
Soon Johnny was on Log Pike road, relieved to be out of town and marveling at how smoothly everything had gone.
Just past Talmadge’s Livery
, thought Johnny,
and we’ll be out of town
.
As they turned the bend a commotion rose in the corral.
Several horses penned there began to snort and move around restlessly. Johnny remembered Jocko’s ‘stink’, as Cos terson put it.
Johnny sniffed the air. He could smell the sasquatch but had gotten used to it. He wondered if it was fear that made Jocko smell. Maybe he just hasn’t been swimming for a while?
He was wondering about this when a voice behind him called out loudly: “Is that you, John Tilbury?”