Joko (27 page)

JOKO – ritE name

By the end of December the Olympic Peninsula was experiencing unusually cold weather. Ice clung to the shores of Puget Sound and covered the streams. In the mountains the cold was even more severe, forcing the three exiles to spend most o f their time in the cabin.

Johnny, his leg almost healed, was walking without a cane.

As the weather worsened Johnny needed warmer clothes.

He cursed himself when he thought of the bags he’d left on the ship, but because they were somewhat the same size Swan was easily able to provide clothes for Johnny. Johnny thanked Swan profusely, of course. He felt more indebted to Swan with each passing day. He reiterated how ‘done for’ he would have been without Swan’s help. Finally Swan had to put a stop to Johnny’s constant thanks, saying it was beginning to embarrass him. “Call the clothes payment for your help around here. Call it what you will, but please stop this infernal gratefulness.”

“But Mr Swan,” pleaded Johnny. “I am grateful. You saved my life, and you are doing the same for Jocko. I was raised not to impose on folks. That’s what my mom always told me.”

“Well, you don’t have to keep saying it, but since it is moving on toward Christmas and none of us have family to share it with, at least not here, you can call it my present to you and Jocko. Merry Christmas, Johnny.”

Johnny thought for a moment. “But what have I got to give you?”

The cabin door burst open with a shower of ice crystals that danced in a riot of sparkling colors. Jocko stood among them like a mythic beast materializing from a magical cloud.

“Here’s
my
Christmas present,” said Swan, putting an arm around Jocko’s snowy shoulders. Smiling, he gave the startled sasquatch a squeeze and then went over to Johnny and did the same. “And here, too, you have both saved me from a cruel winter alone with my melancholy.”

“Close the door, Jocko,” said Johnny. “We’re not all covered with fur, you know.”

Jocko pushed the door closed and latched it. Johnny began dusting the snow off him with a handkerchief.

Suddenly he noticed that Jocko was carrying two large white rabbits. “What have you got there, Jocko?”

Swan laughed. “Santa, here, has brought our Christmas feast.”

When Christmas came, so did the full use of Johnny’s leg. He sat near the fire with his pant leg rolled up. “I wonder if this bark stain will ever go away?” he said.

Swan was too busy making Christmas biscuits with dried huckleberries to answer Johnny. The smell was driving Jocko crazy. He kept hovering over the mixing bowl and sticking his fingers in the mix like a mischievous child.

“Get out of this bowl, you big furry fly!” yelled Swan.

Christmas made Swan think of Boston. Off and on he’d been digging through notes. Finding a piece of memorabilia.

He would launch into reminiscences about New England or his estranged family. He showed Johnny some silver prints of his family: Matilda, his wife, and his two children. Ellen and Charles. The woman appeared to be attractive enough, albeit in a stately way, and the two children were just as handsom e.

Johnny gave way to curiosity and asked Swan why he was willing to isolate himself in a place so far from his family.

He expected Swan to say: “A man’s work comes first,” but he didn’t.

“I could give a number of acceptable reasons,” said Swan with a sad smile, “but the truth of the matter is I don’t fit in Boston society and it doesn’t fit me. I tried to live up to it but always found myself in a fishing shanty with Old Rye listening to salty tales. I listened too much, dreamed too much and, I dare say, drank too much.”

“You can always go back. You must want to.”

“With all my heart, John, but I missed them when I lived in Boston, too. I was a disappointment to them.” He sighed. “No, it’s better this way, for them. With me here, they can brag about their argonaut father, off doing his nation’s bidding.”

“I understand,” said Johnny.

“They can paint any picture of me they want, as long as I’m at a distance. They needn’t fear the midnight call of a constable dropping me on their front porch.” Swan shook his head. “Well, you get the point, John, yes?”

Swan decided to set up the tintype photo images on a wall shelf.

“To warm up the place,” he said. Beside the pictures of his family was a drawing of his good friend Chief Swell. He stood for a moment and inspected each image. “Scarcely what I would call Christmas decoration,” admitted Swan. His shoulders fell, as sadness seemed to overwhelm him.

Johnny patted Swan’s shoulder sympathetically. “Don’t look at it like that, Mr Swan. You’re like … like the soldier in the field or the sailor at sea. You feel like lots of men have when their duty takes them just away from home. And what you’ve done for the Indians is a good thing. Something only a man like you can do. You should be proud.”

Sensing that his words weren’t really helping, Johnny changed the subject.

“You know, it’s not too cold out,” he said cheerfully. “How about us taking a walk to find some decorations. Maybe a Christmas tree?”

Swan gave Johnny a broad grin. “Why, Johnny, I think that’s a fine idea.”

An hour later the three stalwart souls followed each other’s tracks through knee-deep drifts. The snow had a thick wet crust that made walking even more difficult, but Johnny, Swan and Jocko continued through drift and thicket undaunted, as though they were on a mission of great urgency. At last they reached the ‘birding field’, as Swan called it; a large expanse that edged the forest usually frequented by partridge.

“Ahhh,” said Swan. “Over there at the far side of the field.”

Johnny looked to where Swan pointed and saw two bushes that bore bright clusters of orange berries.

“And look there, John,” Swan said. “Right there next to our decorations is a small tree – our Christmas tree, do you think?” Swan winked at Johnny and started across the field.

Judging from the spring in his step, Swan was filled with the spirit of the season. His mood was contagious.

Johnny thought about his aunt Gert as he trudged behind Swan. Was she feeling alone? Was she thinking of him? Was she grieving over him? He prayed that she would know somehow that he was well and in the company of a good man.

It occurred to Johnny that no one was better at linking with Jocko than himself. Most people; Swan, Gert, and Doc Hannington, were able to communicate with Jocko, but not as successfully as Johnny. He wondered if he could extend his link out to Gert. Could he reach out to her and tell her he was all right?

Beguiling animals was a trick he’d learned early, but he just wrote it off as, “keepin’ quiet so the critters don’t know yer not a tree or a rock.” Or so he described it. Now Johnny saw a correlation between his ability and Jocko’s ‘not bein’ seen’.

If there was a chance he could put Gert’s mind at ease, Johnny resolved it was worth it to try. He set himself that task and thought of Gert, trying to picture her round face, her straight hair always tied in a bun at the back; her seated form knitting by a roaring fire in their cabin back in Yale. He remembered her voice calling to him to dinner, her open hearted laugh, her shriek of delight and outrage when something struck her as terribly funny. He tried to reach Gert for several minutes, concentrating as he trudged through the heavy wet snow, but hard as he tried, he didn’t think he’d been successful.

Johnny looked around. Nothing had changed. The clouds still rolled overhead. Swan still trudged happily beside him.

Jocko still walked ahead of them, forging a path through the weighty snow with ease. Johnny shook his head, deciding he had no powers that could overcome his homesickness. Even if he had reached Gert, how would he know it?

“It’s rare that we have snow deep as this east of the Olympics,” said Swan, resting a moment to catch his breath.

“It’s tough going for you and me, but the sasquatch is having no trouble.”

“Jocko is always surprising me,” said Johnny. “He can spring like a cat and punch like Kid Corbett. I’ve never seen anyone move like him.”

“You know, I was wondering why you call him Jocko. How did you come by the name?

“Costerson called him that,” answered Johnny, and he scowled, annoyed by the memory of the railroad agent. “It’s a monkey name. You know, like an organ grinder’s monkey?

Something like that. I never asked. I hate the name.”

Swan chuckled. “Then why not give him a new name?”

“I guess the name just stuck,” Johnny said. “Everybody was calling him that. Doc Hannington, Ned, Costerson, even my aunt. Everybody just accepted the name. Then I guess it got to be too late to change it. Besides, I don’t mind it much any more and Jocko doesn’t seem to care.”

Swan nodded. “Not now it doesn’t. But what about when he learns about people like Costerson? What about when somebody calls him Jocko and laughs?”

Johnny shrugged. “I don’t know. Any ideas, Mr Swan?”

They had arrived at the berry patch. Swan stood with one hand on his hip and another clutching a small hatchet he’d removed from his pack. He surveyed the berries a moment and looked at Johnny. “Gather round, my boys.”

Jocko was standing about fifteen feet away watching placidly. When Johnny beckoned him with a wave of his arm, he took a few steps to Johnny’s side, then turned to face Swan. The cold north wind that had been tugging at them seemed to still, as if in response to Swan’s raised hands. In the distance a raven called.

“Maybe it’s time we found out if our friend wants a new name,” said Swan in a ceremonious tone. “Johnny. Will you ask him?”

“I’m not sure how, but I’ll try.” Johnny took off a glove and put his bare hand on the Jocko’s shoulder. “What’s your name?”

Jocko looked back and forth at Johnny and Swan, obviously confused.

“Say your name to Swan,” said Johnny.

Jocko still looked confused.

“See?” said Johnny. “I don’t think it makes any difference what we call him. I’m not sure he even knows what a name is.”

But to Johnny’s surprise the sasquatch patted his chest, saying: “Jo-ck-o … Jo-ck-o. Name … Jocko.”

“Maybe it does matter to him,” Swan said. “Maybe we should indeed think about giving him a name. A name for Christmas. A fine Christian name. Yes? We’ve certainly little else to give a sasquatch. What do you think, Jocko? What’ll it be, this new name of yours? Well, we’ll think about that.

Yes?”

Swan turned and began snapping off branches that bore thick clusters of orange berries.

Johnny considered Swan’s question for a moment.

“Maybe Jack.”

Swan looked at Johnny and smiled. “I like that. It’s close to what we call him now. He might easily accept it.” Swan looked at the sasquatch, who was urinating a few feet away.

“Then again,” said Swan, “maybe it’s a little soon to be worrying about that.”

After gathering a few armloads of bush berries, Swan bundled them with twine and set them to one side. Then he walked over to a young sapling pine. He shook the snow off its branches and admired it. “Is this our tree?”

Johnny was cold and his leg ached from the long walk. “I think so, Mr Swan.”

“So do I,” agreed Swan, and he began to chop it down.

They had left the cabin and walked a few miles to gather poisonous berry bushes and to kill a tree, a baby tree.

Carrying the bushes, Jocko pondered the purpose of their excursion all the way back to the cabin while the two humans, dragging the tree behind them, chattered to one another.

The actions of the two humans became no less confusing when they returned home. Jocko suspected that food might be the reason for their having gathered the poisonous berries, but he was relieved when they trimmed the clusters from the bushes and distributed them around the cabin, seemingly at random. Jocko had watched his friends carefully so he could stop them if they tried to eat one.

Feeling unsure of how he fitted into this strange behavior, Jocko went over to his nest and sat down on the soft dried ferns. From there he watched the humans perform the curious act of placing berry branches all around the interior of the cabin.

He watched, but he learned nothing about the mysterious actions of the humans. Soon, the warmth of the cabin made Jocko sleepy. He watched the humans as long as he could for fear that they might poison themselves if their ultimate plan was indeed to eat the berries. But after a while, unable to continue his vigil, Jocko fell asleep. Soon he was dozing in his ‘on-alert position’, as Johnny described it: seated on one leg with his chin resting on the other knee, with his arms folded around the leg to keep himself upright.

When Jocko awoke the room had been transformed.

Berry branches covered the walls, and the tree Swan had cut now stood in the middle of the room, its trunk sticking into a hole in the dirt floor. Johnny was busy tying colored pieces of paper to its branches while Swan sat at a table creating simple ornaments with paper and paints. As each one was completed he would hand it to Johnny. Then the boy cut a hole in it with his pocketknife, attached a loop of twine, and tied it to the tree with great care.

When he awoke, Johnny tried to explain what they were doing. Despite the link, Jocko didn’t understand, but he could feel Johnny’s contentment and cheer, and it was contagious.

Something was happening, a thing new and wonderful.

When they finished decorating the cabin, Swan dressed and cooked the rabbits that Jocko had brought them for their Christmas dinner, while Johnny used some heavy shears to fashion a star from an empty tin can.

By the time Swan was ready to serve their dinner a lovely gold star adorned the tree. Swan had them all gather before.

He put an arm around Johnny and Jocko and they all stood quietly for a moment and admired the tree.

“I’m not a religious man, Johnny,” said Swan, “but I feel a prayer is in order. And since Jocko doesn’t understand our words yet, perhaps we could just bow our heads for a moment, as a gesture of thanks and appreciation for all that we have, the gifts from the Almighty.”

Johnny nodded and bowed his head. In his mind he was standing not only with Swan but also with Gert, and then his mother and all of his family and friends. He smiled as gratitude filled his heart. Jocko smiled too, and so did Swan.