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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
“Next year we gonna have a new bus,” Bunna said as
he slid into the seat beside me. He was talking to Michael O’Shay, like it was some kind of challenge, but Michael didn’t respond—he just stared out the window into the darkness.
“And that bus is gonna have real soft seats, too,” he whispered to me.
But I didn’t care anything at all about our new bus anymore. And I didn’t care about the old one, either, bouncing along in its rickety old way. All I cared about was Bunna’s hand holding mine, our fi ngers lacing together, back and forth, learning a new language all the way to Fairbanks. It was a language about love—holding on and letting go, holding on and letting go.
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Forever
JUNE 15, 1963
LUKE
—
We used to watch movies in the community center in the summer, sometimes. Th
e ones with Roy Rogers and John
Wayne and all those cowboys. Bunna liked Roy Rogers best, but me, I liked the rodeo. I liked the way those cowboys came shooting out on their bucking broncos, hanging on for dear life and never letting go, no matter what, waving and smiling at the crowd. Th
ose broncos tossed them up and down and
waved them back and forth like fl ags, but they never let go.
Tough, them guys.
In the summers back home, me and Bunna and Isaac used to play along the beach late at night. We always got to go boating, sometimes, with Uncle Joe or one of the others, staying out there all night long, watching the midnight sun circle the sky, slung low on the horizon late and rising up toward the middle near dawn.
Now Isaac’s gone for good, which nobody talks about, and 161
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
Bunna’s gone for the summer, which I don’t want to think about. So it’s just me and Sonny and Donna, eating dinner all alone in the big, echoing Sacred Heart cafeteria, with the sun making long, dark shadows and me knowing, all of a sudden.
Just knowing.
Some people could know things before they happen without even thinking about them, and I wish to heck I wasn’t one of those people, because what I know right now has to do with the way Sister Mary Kate and Father Flanagan are standing there at the door to the cafeteria, their heads bowed, watching me while they talk. Talking about me and about the news they don’t want to tell me, the news I don’t want to hear. I can feel it. Heck, anybody could feel it, because right now the whole room is heavy as cement with it.
I remember the dream I had, all of a sudden, in one bright fl ash. Was it last night? Last week? Last year? My mind feels like it’s stepped out of time into a place where everything is foggy. Everything except the dream: it’s old Uiñiq, clear as day, making arrows like he always used to when we were kids. Little kid arrows for me and Bunna, and we’re running along the beach, chasing birds late into the summer night. And every time we break an arrow, there’s a new one already made.
In my dream, Uiñiq is giving Bunna one last arrow, but when he sees me, he shakes his head slowly, and there’s a look on his face that chills me right through to the bone. Bunna has his back to me, too, and he won’t turn around. He knows I’m right there, all right, but he won’t turn. It’s like a door 162
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F O R E V E R / L u k e
shutting—Uiñiq with his last arrow and Bunna with his back turned. A door closed forever.
Suddenly I’m aware of Sister, still standing in the doorway to the cafeteria, still watching.
“Th
ere’s been an accident,” Sister’s going to say. Or maybe she doesn’t say it at all. Maybe she doesn’t even have to say it because I already know.
I know already.
Old Uiñiq is long dead, and now Bunna is with him.
I already know this. I know it now like I knew it a second ago, like I knew it last week. All of time—past and present and even future, all of it running together in my head like the gravy on my plate.
Th
at’s what I will remember, I’m thinking, realizing it’s a crazy thought even as I think it: I will remember the gravy on my plate, running into the potatoes and peas with Father Flanagan and Sister Mary Kate standing by that door over there, watching me, and me refusing to even look at them, just like Bunna refused to look at me. And Uiñiq shaking his head and scowling and me staring down at the gravy on my plate like there’s gotta be some meaning there. Knowing there isn’t.
Th
at’s what I’ll remember.
“Th
e plane didn’t make it through the mountains,” Father is saying. Or maybe he isn’t really saying it. Maybe I just know that’s what he’s gonna say as I stand there in the door to the cafeteria not wanting to be there—not wanting to be anywhere.
Th
ere were a lot of other
