I already took the kick.
“Th
e gun was with Bunna, Joe,” I whisper.
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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
“What?” Joe says.
I can tell by the way his voice cracks that he heard me, but I say it again, anyhow. “It was in the plane. With Bunna.”
And then there’s another silence, like his voice got cut off . It’s a silence empty as fog that reaches down across the God-forsaken tundra, over the mountains that claimed my brother and straight through this valley prickly with blue black spruce.
“Well, hey,” says Joe, like he’s warming his voice up. “Never mind that old gun. Just a piece of tin, right? Wait’ll you see this new one I got.”
I don’t say anything.
“Luke?”
“Yeah?” It’s all I can manage.
“Hey, this new gun?” Uncle Joe’s voice sounds shaky. I nod as if he could see me. “You know what? It’s got a site that’s never more than a hair from right. No jokes. Wait’ll you try it.”
It’s totally dark now, but when I step out into the bitter-cold November night, it feels good, like coming home, somehow.
Th
e stars are pricking through the dark sky same as always, like nothing diff erent has ever happened or ever will, and all of a sudden, I like that.
I have that letter, the one I saved. It’s been there in the bottom of my drawer all this time—the letter from my little brother Isaac. In Texas. In Dallas, Texas. I never burned it like I said we should. I saved it. It wasn’t much, but it’s enough 184
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E S K I M O R O D E O / L u k e
right now, enough to know that Isaac’s alive somewhere, writing letters and swimming and climbing trees. Maybe even looking up at the same winter sky I’m looking at right now.
Maybe even watching the same stars I’m watching—the ones in the hunter’s constellation, bright as blazes. Th e one them
taniks call Orion’s Belt.
When they fi rst told us how they named those three stars Orion’s Belt, we used to wonder, me and Bunna. We knew those three were really hunters, and we wondered how those three hunters got trapped like that in a giant’s belt.
I look up, and all of a sudden I’m laughing. Laughing and laughing all by myself, under the bright black sky. Th em hunters are right there, and that giant Orion don’t even know it.
Th
em hunters aren’t trapped at all. Th
ey’re just waiting for the
chance to take a shot. And when they do, that big old dumb Orion won’t even stand a chance. Not one single chance.
I don’t know how I know this, I just know.
I don’t know how Isaac’s gonna fi nd his way home, all right, but he will. All of a sudden, I’m as sure about this as I am about anything. Isaac will fi nd his way home. One way or another, we will all fi nd our way home. Even Bunna.
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Unchained Melody
MARCH 7, 1964
DONNA
—
Th
e girl in the mirror is watching her hair fall to the fl oor in thick black ropes, falling to the scratchy snip-snip rhythm of Evelyn’s scissors. Th
e girl in the mirror concentrates hard on
something off in the distance, as if she doesn’t even hear the coiling and uncoiling sound of scissors cutting hair. She holds her chin up, aloof and certain.
Sixteen.
Th
e girl in the mirror is and isn’t Donna. She isn’t the shy Donna, the timid Donna, the afraid-of-everything Donna.
Th
e girl in the mirror is a brave new Donna, a Donna people will have to pay attention to, a Donna who expects attention.
Th
e words she whispers inside have the force of volcanoes.
River. Rushing. Kiss. I’m re-creating myself with words, she thinks. Words inside.
Rose holds up a copy of Life magazine, that old one with the picture of Jackie Kennedy on the cover. She holds it up alongside the mirror, squinting at it hard, like she’s trying to 186
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U N C H A I N E D M E L O D Y / D o n n a make a positive identifi cation, trying to identify that brand-new girl.
“You look just like her, Donna,” Rose says, slapping the magazine down with decision.
Donna looks at Jackie Kennedy and tosses her hair. She feels as sassy as a gull, so free she could spread her arms out and drift upward without any eff ort at all. She imagines herself looking down at that old magazine, which lies fl at on the fl oor, buried beneath a heap of long black hair. Her hair.
“What are you going to wear to the dance, Donna?”
Chickie asks.
Donna imagines herself naked, not needing clothes, warming herself like a mink in the spring sun.
“I don’t really have anything,” she says.
In fact, it doesn’t matter one bit what the new Donna wears, not one bit.
“You can borrow my pink sweater,” Rose says.
“Perfect,” Evelyn says, stepping back to eye the image in the mirror like an artist trying to get perspective. Donna smiles.
Th
e new girl, the one in the mirror, smiles back. She is ready.
In the cafeteria, Donna sits a little bit aside from the others, listening to the clackety-clack of dinner trays and the tinkling of
