My Name Is Not Easy by Edwardson, Dahl (the red fox clan .TXT) 📕

Never mind. We’ll fi nd a way. We will always fi nd a way.

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Military Trash

MARCH 1962

CHICKIE

—

It’s snowing outside, making everything in the whole world seem bright and quiet, and I have a new diary. Swede sent it to me, and I’m trying to write in it, trying to record things, which is just about impossible, bouncing down this frozen road in our beat-up old bus. We are returning from a trip to Fairbanks, where our basketball team beat the team at the Catholic school there. We won because Sonny is tough and Amiq is fast and Michael O’Shay, that new boy, is just plain tall.

“Dear Diary,” I write, but the “a” and “i” get turned around and it says, “Dear Dairy.” Which makes me mad because I’ve written it in ink, and there is no turning back. I’m writing to a dairy instead of a diary. Dumb!

I look out at the falling snow, glittering in the late afternoon, and I feel warm and protected somehow. It’s getting close to dinner, and the boys are talking about food, and even though the snow outside muffl

es us, they are managing to

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M I L I T A R Y T R A S H / C h i c k i e make more noise than a herd of elephants, which is typical of boys.

“Man, I sure wish Sister knew how to make caribou soup like Mom,” Bunna says.

“Or dry fi sh like my grandpa,” Leo Pete says. Leo Pete lives right by the school, and his grandpa catches salmon in the river. Leo’s grandpa is the one Luke and Bunna are afraid of, even though they don’t ever say it.

Amiq snorts.

“Why don’t you pups worry ’bout something more

likely, like maybe Sister Sarah’s gonna turn into an astro-naut?”

Luke and Sonny start to laugh at this one until they suddenly realize they are both laughing at the same thing, which makes them start to frown instead. I swear, those two. Always bristling like dogs over the same bone. And Amiq’s holding the bone. As usual.

“Who you calling a pup?” Leo asks, narrowing his eyes.

Amiq nudges Junior, sitting in the seat right next to him, his nose stuck in a book. As usual.

“Hey, Junior, you hear some yapping?”

Junior looks up, pushing his glasses up on his nose all dreamy-eyed.

“Mapping?” he says, and everybody laughs, even Sonny and Luke together.

Th

at’s the thing about Junior. He’s kind of on everybody’s team. I mean he’s so spacey, it’s like he’s in a totally diff erent universe. He never takes one side or the other. Like a referee 101

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M Y N A M E I S N O T E A S Y

without a whistle, he just kind of drifts around on the edge of the game.

“I am traveling in an old bus with a bunch of wild

boys who are making a bunch of noise about nothing,” I write.

All of a sudden there’s a sound like a gun going off , and Sister Mary Kate jumps up like she’s been shot. Th

e bus

sputters to a stop, and there’s total silence. Father Flanagan leans out from the driver’s seat.

“Not to worry, boys and girls, not to worry,” Father calls out. “Just a spot of engine trouble, nothing to fret over.”

He looks out over the top of his glasses at Sister Mary Kate, who, of course, blushes. Th

en he jumps down out of

the bus, and the boys all crane their necks, trying to see what he’s doing. I’m guessing pretty much every boy on this bus knows more about engines than Father.

“Our bus broke down, and Father is going to fi x it,” I write.

“Man,” Bunna mutters. “Why can’t we have a real bus, like the kind they have at real schools?”

“Now, Bunna,” Sister Mary Kate says, “we must not covet what others have. We must be grateful for the Providence the Lord has provided.”

“Oh, Lord,” Amiq says, folding his hands and looking up toward the roof of the bus with what he thinks is a pious look.

“Th

ank you for providing us with military trash. We are not worthy.”

Sister acts like she doesn’t hear him, but you can tell she 102

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M I L I T A R Y T R A S H / C h i c k i e does by the way she looks out the window and frowns. Amiq is lucky Father Mullen’s not here.

“Stay put, girls and boys, stay put,” Sister says, wringing her hands and glancing nervously out the window of the bus.

“I need to assist Father.”

Evelyn makes a funny noise, and Rose covers her mouth with her hand. I fi gure pretty much any Indian girl in the world knows more about engines than Sister.

Of course as soon as Sister steps off the bus, the boys start going crazy as loons. Sam Pete grabs my diary with his grubby little paws, and just as I’m getting ready to pound him to pieces, he tosses it back to his brother, Leo, but Leo misses it and it hits Junior, hits him right square on the head. Junior looks up, annoyed and owlish, but before he can fi gure out what’s happened, Leo slides into Junior’s seat like it’s home plate and grabs the diary. Th

en he and Sam start playing catch

with it, lobbing it back and forth the length of the bus, and the harder I holler, the faster they throw.

All of