“Yes, that would be good, Junior. A story about your uncle’s newspaper,” Father said.
Junior opened his mouth, then shut it again. A story about 199
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the newspaper—that’s not what he meant. But Father already had his back turned. Amiq leaned over and tapped the headline in Junior’s uncle’s paper: “Project Chariot Still On.”
“You ought to do a story on that, ” Amiq said.
Luke sat in the library with Sonny, Michael O’Shay, and Amiq, staring at Amiq’s collection of Anchorage Times news clippings, each one cut out neatly to the exact shape of its story. Amiq had laid them out like puzzle pieces.
“Eskimos in Game Law Revolt,” cried one headline. “Offi
-
cials Say Eskimos Warned on Duck Killing,” another scolded.
Luke’s Uncle Joe was right up front in one of the pictures, smiling the same way he smiled when he told Luke that Catholics ate horse meat.
Duck killing. Luke remembered the three dozen ducks he and Uncle Joe had caught one spring. Th
ey had not called it
duck killing.
Giving away all those ducks had been just like Christmas; they gave ducks to everyone. Some of the people they gave ducks to hadn’t had any fresh meat all winter. When Luke thought about rich people, he always remembered handing out all those ducks, the smell of duck soup everywhere.
Th
e Anchorage Times story said 138 Eskimo hunters had turned themselves in to the game warden in Barrow, waiting to be arrested for catching ducks out of season. Th ey did it
because they were protesting a law that made it illegal to hunt ducks in the spring and fall, the only times the ducks were in Alaska. One of the newspaper stories called it the Duck-In.
200
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Luke studied the picture. Th
e hunters were waiting in line
in front of the game warden. Th
e one at the head of the line
was signing a piece of paper. Every single hunter held a dead duck. Uncle Joe was standing in the front of that picture, off to one side, holding his duck up high, like it was some kind of victory symbol. Grinning straight into the camera with a look that made Luke smile.
It made Amiq smile, too. “I like this guy,” he said. “Fearless.”
His dad would’ve liked the look on that guy’s face, too, Amiq thought . Like he’s not afraid of anything. Like he could ask to get arrested and grin about it.
Luke nodded. Th
at’s how he is, all right.
Th
ere was something about that picture that just forced you to notice it. Th
ose hunters were all Luke’s family, too—
uncles and great uncles, his mom’s cousins and Uncle Joe’s buddies—and Uncle Joe seemed so alive, bigger than life. Like he could just step right out of the newspaper and march into the room with all those hunters behind him.
Fearless.
Luke looked up and blinked with a sudden realization.
When they were all together like that, what was there to be afraid of ?
“Th
ey got a jail in Barrow big enough for that many hunters?” Michael O’Shay asked, leaning over Luke’s shoulder.
“Not a chance,” Amiq said. Th
ey would of had to take ’em
to Fairbanks.”
“Th
ey’d have to pay for one heck of a big plane to send 201
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all those guys to Fairbanks,” O’Shay said, and suddenly Amiq started laughing. Laughing and laughing the way Luke’s uncle must have laughed. Laughing for both him and his dad.
“All them hunters and their ducks!” he cried. “Don’t forget the ducks!”
“You don’t need permission,” Amiq was saying.
Th
ey were sitting in the Sacred Heart Guardian editorial offi
ce, which was actually Father Flanagan’s classroom. Chickie and Sonny were Sacred Heart Guardian reporters, and Junior was the editor. Amiq wasn’t anything.
Junior looked at Amiq but didn’t say a word. Who’d said anything about permission?
“Father said I should write about my uncle’s newspaper,”
Junior said.
“Yeah, but that’s not the real story,” Amiq said.
Junior bristled. Th
e real story? Junior could feel the real
story. He could almost hear it, in fact. It whispered in the back of his mind, like a tape machine rolling with the sound turned down low. He could hear the clacking sound of tape on the reel, but he couldn’t hear the words, because Amiq was talking too much.
Junior turned away, tuning Amiq out, thinking about the Duck-In. One of the papers had called it “a civil disobedience action,” which was a curious phrase. How could people be civil and disobedient at the same time?
Junior thought about the hunters. First one hunter had been arrested for catching a duck out of season, and then the 202
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rest got upset, and they all showed up, holding ducks. Th ey
weren’t trying to break the law, like the Anchorage papers said.
Th
ey were just sticking together, following their own law .
Th
at was the real story, Junior thought. Or was it?
And what was the real story behind Project Chariot—the story he wanted to tell? Junior wasn’t exactly sure. But he was sure about one thing: he could fi nd the real story just fi ne without any help from Amiq.
“Th
e story Father told me to write is the story about the new newspaper,”
