Joko (23 page)

Swan yawned and stretched his arms and back. There was an audible creak from his bones. “Tomorrow I’m hunting some game. The only meat we have stocked is salt pork, some dry salmon, and a couple of tins of ham. I’ll get some grouse, with any luck. I’ve seen them skulking around. It also occurred to me that if I leave you alone, your friend might put in an appearance.” He raised an eyebrow. “If he’s afraid of humans, I may well be the force keeping him at bay.”

Swan finished tidying up the area around the fireplace and threw several fat logs on the fire. He made so much noise that he failed to hear the cabin door creak open.

“You won’t have to, Mr Swan,” said Johnny. “Here he is.”

Jocko stepped slowly into the cabin. He looked at Johnny, then at Swan. His eyes darted around the room, absorbing all the details. He looked to Johnny both fascinated and frightened.

“Jocko,” said Johnny, holding out his hand. “Come in!

Meet Mr James Swan.”

Swan stood frozen, his eyes full of uncertainty. “Yes. Yes, do. Please come in, Jocko.” He chuckled nervously.

When he heard his name, Jocko’s eyes fell fully upon Swan. Then he looked at Johnny.

“Joo-neee,” said Jocko, pointing to Johnny’s leg. Swan nodded and forced a smile but remained rigid as a statue.

Johnny swung his feet to the floor to greet his friend, but Jocko touched Johnny’s shoulder and they looked at each other for a moment.

Johnny said: “It looks worse than it is.” He leaned back on the cot.

“Well, if that don’t rip my breeches,” said Swan, sitting down on a barrel. “And not a drop of rye for miles.”

Jocko looked closely at Johnny’s bandage, then lifted it to see the wound beneath. Next he shifted his attention to the cast on Johnny’s leg. Finally, seemingly satisfied that his friend was being well cared for, Jocko sat down on the floor next to Johnny and leaned his back against the wall next to Johnny’s bed.

“Gooood,” said Jocko, pulling up one knee beneath his chin and looking directly at Swan. “Jooooneeeee. Goooood.”

Jocko grinned and nodded as he looked at Swan.

“Well, thank you, Jocko. I certainly tried to do the best I could for him. Mind you, I’m no doctor. Although I have nursed sick Indians upon occasion.” Swan got up and moved slowly and stiffly to a seat closer Johnny and the sasquatch.

He pointed to the chair and sat down.

“My goodness,” said Johnny. “Relax, Mr Swan. Jocko hasn’t hurt anybody yet, except if you count the bear.”

Swan grinned and leaned back in the chair. A creak of aged wood broke the silence in the room. Jocko squinted at the chair and cocked his head.

“I must say, Johnny,” said Swan, “that I did doubt your story. Dismissed it as delusion, is a better way to say it. I mean, well my goodness, it was such a fantastic tale. You must understand that I’ve been all over this area and only knew one Indian who had an encounter with a sasquatch.”

“Saaassss-quaaatch!” said Jocko, looking appreciatively at Swan.

“I understand,” said Johnny, looking at Jocko. “If I hadn’t been there when we found him by the tracks, I never would have believed it myself.”

Swan looked Jocko over carefully. “You know, I have a feeling that Jocko isn’t your ordinary sasquatch.”

“What do you mean?” asked Johnny.

“Well, just look at him. Mountain men, sasquatch are supposed to be giant monkey-men. Jocko doesn’t look like an ape except for the hair. Look at his face.”

Johnny smiled. “Jocko could be part Indian, or African … anything. But he’s no beast,” affirmed Johnny.

“No,” Swan agreed. “Furry, perhaps, but not a beast.”

“I’m all the family he’s got, Mr Swan. I’m the only one who can get him back to his real family. He’s a real lonely guy, I think.”

Swan considered Johnny’s words carefully and looked at the sasquatch for a while. “The Makah Indian legends say they are descended from beasts. I’ve heard their tales around all night campfires. They describe themselves as progeny of a white dog and the daughter of a great chief, or Necromancer, who lived on Vancouver Island opposite the northernmost point of land on the Olympic Peninsula; a place called Neah Bay. The chief got angry at the union and banished his daughter to the opposite shore where she had seven children who were transformed by a magician into human beings.”

“That’s a strange story, Mr Swan,” said Johnny. “But what’s the point?”

The man blinked. “Well, I don’t know. It occurred to me that much local lore ties beasts to men, and so do many people’s ancient lore. Fairy tales and such. A man named Charles Darwin is currently saying some interesting things about apes and men. How we are related to each other.

Evolution, he calls it.”

“But you said dog,” Johnny argued.

“Yes, I know,” said Swan. “Dog, beast. Much the same.

An ape is a beast. Legends often get changed by the teller.

My point is that legends of beasts interacting with men are common, historically. The ancient Egyptians and Hindus, for example, worshiped beasts and had legends linking animals and men. If Darwin is right, we were beasts ourselves long ago. Jocko, here, may just be living proof of that.”

“So where are they now?” asked Johnny. “Where are all the beast men today?”

“Killed off long ago, I would suppose,” said Swan.

“Probably by us. Just like we’ve done to the Indians.”

“Not me,” said Johnny. “I ain’t killed anybody!”

Swan looked at Johnny incredulously. “I’m referring to people like your Costerson fellow. But you raised a good question. If Jocko is one of those beast-men. And if the Indian lore is based on fact …” Swan scratched his head. “Well, that raises many questions. Is Jocko ancestral man? And as you asked, Johnny; where are they today? Are they living in the mountains? Are they related to Indians? How many are there? And are there other types, just as there are many kinds of apes and humans?”

Jocko had fallen asleep. His head leaned against the soft goose feather mattress Swan had carted with him from Port Townsend.

Swan looked at Jocko and smiled. “I’d say our Jocko friend here has the right idea. It’s time for us all to bed down.

But I don’t know if I’ll be able to sleep.”

Johnny smiled and patted Jocko on the shoulder. “You don’t have to worry about Jocko. He stayed in my aunt’s house and didn’t m ake any mess. He’s a good guest … for a sasquatch.”

The next day Johnny awoke to Swan’s face looming over him.

“Your friend’s gone.”

“That’s okay.” Johnny yawned. “He’ll come back. He likes to hunt for food just before dawn. He did that at my aunt’s place. He didn’t go far.”

“Why’s that?” asked Swan.

“She has a garden.”

“Well there’s no garden here,” said Swan doubtfully. “Wish there was. It’d be good to have some fresh carrots or potatoes.”

Johnny said he’d eaten lots of different roots and greens that Jocko had provided during their travels. “Most of them I couldn’t name,” said Johnny. “But there’s plenty of stuff around. Jocko won’t go hungry.”

“You know,” said Swan, “a few roots and tubers would be a fine addition to a savory stew.”

“Maybe I can get him to find us some,” said Johnny. “But he always did that on his own.”

Since Jocko hadn’t returned by mid morning, Swan decided to go bird hunting. He reasoned that if left alone with Johnny, the sasquatch might find it easier to be around the cabin.

Swan donned his buckskin breeches and coat, and a tight fitting coonskin cap. Johnny sat in a chair with his leg supported by a crudely fashioned wood stool. “That’s your hunting outfit, eh?” he said. “Not bad.”

“Thank you kindly, son,” said Swan. The twinkle in his eye made Swan look like Santa in buckskins. “Now I suppose you have everything you need, John Tilbury?” Swan stood by the door holding his pack and rifle. “I shouldn’t be gone long.”

“I’m fine thanks, sir,” said Johnny. “Maybe tomorrow I can use this leg of mine.” Then he added, “Do you mind if I read your notebooks?”

Swan smiled. “I was hoping you would.”

Swan closed the cabin door behind him but didn’t secure the latch. He surveyed the misty forest and squinted up into the grey clouds that rolled above the trees. Sensing rain, he checked his pack to make sure everything was secure, then he headed down a path that led to an area he called Beaver Valley, a broad meadow generally populated by quail or grouse.

Swan had said to Johnny that if some other game should present itself along the way he might shoot it for dinner instead. “That’s the way the Indians do it,” he said laughingly.

“If it moves, shoot it was their motto.”

Swan told him that once, while he was traveling in a canoe with a group of Makah bound for Port Townsend, a whale surfaced close by. This, he said, “threw the Indians into a frenzy of blood lust. It was fortunate they had neglected to bring their whaling spears along or I surely would have found myself on a mission that would take us to the death of the whale or the ends of the earth, whichever came first.”

Swan shouldered his rifle as he negotiated a short rock fall where a stream cut through the trail. He looked back at the cottage and thought about Jocko. Had it been a dream?

Could he have actually sat and looked into the eyes of a real sasquatch?

The cabin was already hard to make out through the mists and shadows of the trees. A light rain began to fall. Swan hunched his shoulders against the chill and continued down the path.

Jocko watched from the shadows as the bearded man left the cabin. He waited and watched the man for any suspicious actions, but the man whistled a tune and strode happily down the path, his weapon secured over his left shoulder.

Jocko had finished foraging long ago and was ready to return to Johnny’s side, but he didn’t like the cabin and dreaded going there. It was human territory. Despite the strong scent of the cedar boards from which the cabin was made, Jocko could still detect the odor of many humans and scores of animals that had been killed and brought there as food. Then there was the worst odor of all – the scent of acrid smoke from the cooking fire.

The smell, not his hunger, had driven him away. Now he had to return.

Jocko looked down. At the foot of the cedar grew a plant whose berries had a pungent odor. He remembered an old sasquatch trick. Before he went into the cabin he resolved to crush the waxy berries and smear them on his upper lip. It might sting, but at least he could tolerate the smell.

Alone for the first time in the cabin, Johnny studied his surroundings. He was very curious about his benefactor. If there had been reasons to distrust Swan, they had all but vanished in the light of the man’s kindness.

Johnny looked at Swan’s notebooks. A stack of six sat on an end table within easy reach. Johnny picked one up and opened it. Inside the front cover Swan had written, in a delicate hand, the words:

“1854 – Dedicated To Swell – Wha-lalil-Asabay – trusted friend.”

At the bottom of the page it was signed: “Swan – Cha-tic”.

“Cha-tic.” Johnny recognized the word to mean ‘artist’, coined by an Indian tribe that lived in the north side of Vancouver Island. The Indians who lived there were known for their artistic accomplishments. Johnny thought the inscription must have meant that Swell called Swan by that name.

He began to read. Swan’s script was regular and quite pleasing to the eye. His words were well chosen and vivid.

Here and there were sketches and designs Swan had drawn.

Each entry was dated so it quickly became clear the notebooks were diaries of Swan’s travels.

Johnny thumbed through the pages, skimming the text. In the end of the book was a drawing of an Indian, broad faced and smiling. Beneath the portrait was a single word: “Swell”.

Swan’s notations told of the death of a Makah chief at the hands of a Nootkah war party from Vancouver Island opposite Neah Bay.

Johnny knew Neah Bay was near Cape Flattery, the northernmost part of the Olympic Peninsula. In school he had learned that the famous Captain Cook had given it that name because it promised to be a good port but proved otherwise.

Cook was so disappointed that he sailed north and, because of the foggy weather, missed the entrance to the San Juan Strait and all the wonderful port opportunities afforded by the vast shoreline in and around Puget Sound.

Swan wrote he was very upset by the death of Swell who had been more than just a good friend. He had saved Swan’s life and supported him in his dealings with the Indians. They had spent several years exploring the region together and become as brothers. Then Swell was murdered; his body pierced by arrows and left to rot in the waves on Cape Flattery’s shore.

Swan’s lamentations moved Johnny deeply and gave him hope that he had found in Swan a person who could understand and help Jocko.

Johnny read for a couple of hours, absorbing Swan’s remembrances in total fascination. Occasionally a personal notation would give Johnny a feeling that he was probing too deeply into Swan’s personal life. In one passage in the third book, for example, Johnny found a brief but loving mention of Ellen and Charles, Swan’s children, who were still living in Boston with his wife Matilda.

But such glimpses into Swan’s own feelings were rare.

While in the text he regretted openly the death of Swell, his comments were designed to be shared; the kind you would hear at a eulogy or memorial. In spite of such intimacies, Swan endeavored to keep his own soul out of the text.

Johnny finished skimming the last of the six books Swan had left on the table. It was obvious to him Swan had wanted him to read those particular notebooks. They suggested to Johnny Swan could understand his unique friendship with the sasquatch.

A noise caught Johnny’s ear.
Feet on the cabin steps
, he thought.
Jocko?

The door opened slowly and Swan peered into the room.

He looked at Johnny and squinted as his eyes adjusted to the light. “No Jocko?” Swan entered the room and took off his hat and coat. He unloaded his gun, sighed, and placed it next to the door.

Johnny shook his head. “I guess he’s still foraging.”

“I hope so,” answered Swan. “Maybe I should plant a garden nearby. Might keep him closer to home.”