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me as light as snow—but to me it was as sure as the morning sunshine, brand new and old, both at the same time.
“My brother Isaac,” Luke said suddenly, like he’d heard me thinking about brothers. “I have to fi nd him.”
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Eskimo Rodeo
NOVEMBER 22, 1963
LUKE
—
I walk into the cafeteria feeling pretty good that day even though I’m late. It’s Friday, so it’s fi sh day. I like Fridays, and I like fi sh, too. Th
e fi sh isn’t frozen and juicy with seal oil,
like the way we eat it back home—it’s baked and gooey, but I still like it. And I especially like the cornbread they serve for breakfast on Fridays. It tastes great, smothered in butter and syrup.
Today, though, something’s diff erent. I feel it the minute I walk in. Something bad has happened. Again. Even if I can’t feel it in my gut, the way I felt Bunna, I can tell right away, because nobody’s smiling. Sister Mary Kate is serving slabs of cornbread like she doesn’t even know it’s food, her eyes red-rimmed and puff y.
Th
en I hear it—the sound of everybody talking about the news, most of them whispering like they’re in church: President John F. Kennedy has just been shot. I suck in a big breath of sticky sweet air and sit down to eat. Th
e cornbread turns
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into hard globs on our plates while we listen to the crackly sound of the radio. Reporters are talking about how President Kennedy got shot in the head and collapsed into his wife’s arms in a car in Dallas, Texas. It’s like being right there, the way they talk on the radio. We listen as they rush him to the hospital and talk about what’s happening as it happens. At fi rst they don’t seem to know much. It’s just the same voices saying the same things, over and over, like that’s all there is.
Th
en we hear a man’s voice, lone and fi nal. “Ladies and gentlemen, the president is dead. Th
e president, ladies and
gentlemen, is dead at Parkland Hospital in Dallas.”
It hits me in the chest with a dull thud, and I am feeling Bunna’s dying again.
“How can this be?” Sister keeps saying again and again.
“Oh Lord, how can this be?”
She says it over and over like a broken record until I want to tell her to stop. Just stop. But my throat is frozen.
“Our own president, our own Catholic president,” Chickie blubbers. “Our very fi rst one.”
She’s thinking of Bunna, too, I think.
Everybody else is hardly moving, just sitting there on narrow benches listening to the radio tell us how at this very moment, right now, Vice President Lyndon Johnson is on board Air force One being sworn in to serve as the thirty-sixth president of the United States.
Suddenly there’s a rush of sound in my ears, like the roar of Bunna’s plane crashing somewhere far off in the mountains, hard and fi nal, echoing over and over.
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Th
ey never found his body. Th
ey never did.
I have to get out of here, I think. Right now.
I have to get away from this fi sh that isn’t our fi sh and these strangers’ voices talking about a person we never knew, dying thousands of miles away, their voices as brittle as tin. I shove my chair from the table and leave, all alone.
And now I’m sitting on the edge of my bed, clutching my pillow, glad I’m alone because it feels like somebody just punched me in the gut. I really hate it when people try to talk to me when I’m hurting, especially white people, even the nice ones.
Why do they always think it helps to talk to people when they’re hurting?
I’ve got my feather pillow wadded up so tight, it’ll probably shoot off like a bullet if I let go, and now I’m punching it, just for the heck of it, my hard fi st punching that ball of broken feathers. It feels good. Th
at’s when I realize I’m not alone.
Father Flanagan is standing in the door, watching me.
“Are you all right, Luke?”
“Yeah.”
“You’re not alone, you know. Th
e whole country is feeling
the same way you’re feeling.”
I nod, even though it’s not true. Th
e whole country has
nothing to do with how I’m feeling. My feelings are not about President Kennedy, but I can’t say this to Father, who’s stooped forward like he’s carrying the weight of Kennedy’s death on his back.
“I’m okay,” I say.
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Father doesn’t believe me. I can see it in his eyes. “It’s a hard thing, Luke, but it’s better not to isolate yourself. We all need to be together at a time like this.” He straightens slowly, like it hurts.
I nod again, but I don’t move. I just sit there holding that dumb pillow while Father stands halfway out the door, like he’s not quite sure what to
