ey were just trying to
feed their family.”
He started to correct himself—he’d meant to say families—but then he started thinking about the word family.
Family started out in one village and spread to another and then another. Spread throughout the whole state of Alaska and even down into the Lower 48, some families. And they were all related, too. Just like Luke’s uncle having a cousin in Barrow that time they did the Duck-In.
Th
e human family—he’d heard that phrase before, too.
Suddenly the idea of people just trying to feed their family took on new meaning. He thought about Project Chariot—
the force of the blasts shooting out into the ocean, where people catch whales to feed all the families. And he thought about the ice cellars where they stored whale meat and maktak for the whole community family, and about the bomb shelters where people were going to hide from the bomb that threatened everybody—the whole human family.
He saw the mushroom cloud of a bomb, like he’d seen it in Life magazine, and the feathery spray of the whale . . .
207
my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:207
18/07/2011 8:25 PM
M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
Amiq was still talking, all right, but Junior barely even heard him. Junior was recording sentences in his mind. Th ey
were the kind of sentences no one could ever ignore. He picked up the neatly typed story Father Flanagan had dismissed and tossed it into the trash. Amiq watched him with a look—a look of what? Surprise? Shock? No, Junior decided; the word was astonish. Amiq looked astonished.
“You can’t just throw it away!” Amiq’s voice rose. “Just because Father said so?”
“Yes, I can.” Junior said.
“Stand up for yourself for once,” Amiq said.
But Junior wasn’t listening. Junior had started to tell another story in his mind. It was like talking into the tape recorder, but this time, a tape recorder with the sound on.
Th
e reel went round and round, and people were listening.
He couldn’t see them, but he could feel them. Th
ey were out
there, somehow, listening to his words. At fi rst it was just the people in his village—his aaka and all his aunties and uncles—people who knew him and understood the story.
But then there were others—strangers from Fairbanks and Anchorage, maybe even Seattle—a whole audience of people who thought the way Father thought. He could feel them leaning forward, as if they were trying to understand. And it was up to him to tell this story in a way they could understand, because he was the storyteller. He was the writer.
“You could send it to the Tundra Times, ” Amiq said.
“Wrong audience,” Junior said. Everyone looked at Junior, and their faces all said the same thing: Audience?
208
my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:208
18/07/2011 8:25 PM
O U R S T O R Y
Junior took a deep breath and looked down. But the tape kept rolling.
Th
e headline for Junior’s story read “From the Ice Cellar to the Bomb Shelter.”
When Father Flanagan read it, he smiled nervously.
It started with the image of Junior’s aaka eating fresh duck soup, meat the young hunters brought her because that’s what hunters do, they feed the people, especially the old ones. And it ended with a nuclear blast bright enough to blind them all. And there was a lot of stuff in between, too, both sad and happy.
When Chickie read it, it made her think of Bunna. She wasn’t sure why, it just did. When Luke read it, he was glad Junior had said something about iodine-131 and the way those guys had put wires on them. He just hoped people would hear what Junior was saying and do something. He wasn’t sure what he wanted them to do. But when he read it a second time, he realized that in fact Junior had never said a single word about iodine-131.
How had Junior done that, he wondered—said something without actually saying it?
“Excellent writing, Junior,” Father said. “Very good, actually.” He looked up and frowned off into the distance. “But you know when you write for a newspaper, you are supposed to convey facts, not express opinions.”
Junior looked up. Father’s face was smiling, and his blue eyes were kindly, but Junior felt like he’d just been exposed 209
my name is n ot easy final text_.indd Sec1:209
18/07/2011 8:25 PM
M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y
in front of everyone. He looked down at his story, suddenly embarrassed. He had expressed his opinion, and newspaper stories aren’t supposed to have opinions. It was like getting caught with your fl y down. He looked away.
“Th
is business about the whales and everything,” Father said, waving his hands. “Th
at Chariot project was not about
bomb shelters and whales, it was about economic develop-ment for the State of Alaska—making a new harbor with atomic energy—and look, you haven’t mentioned that anywhere in this story.”
Junior blinked in surprise. For a minute he wasn’t even sure that Father was talking about the story he, Junior, had written. It felt like Father was talking about something else altogether. Father had his own opinion, all right, and it was very diff erent than Junior’s. Th
e more Junior thought about it,
the more hopeless it seemed. Nothing but opinions, people’s opinions—some right and some wrong, depending on how you looked at it.
“Are we going to put Junior’s story in the Guardian?
Chickie asked.
“Well . . . ,” Father said. His voice turned up at the end in a way that made the answer clear even though he hadn’t
