My Name Is Not Easy - By Debby Dahl Edwardson Page 0,19
Th
e muscles in Sonny’s jaw tightened. He could level that guy, one shot, if he wanted to. Level them all. He glared at the one closest to him—nervous little Junior with the big glasses.
Junior backed away, shoving those glasses up onto the bridge of his nose.
“What’s he eat then, he don’t catch nothing?” Bunna was saying.
“Rotten fi sh,” Amiq said, watching Sonny sideways.
Bunna held his nose like someone’d farted. “Aqhaaa! ” Th
at was it. Sonny reached out and grabbed Bunna by the collar, held on tight, twisting his hand a little. Bunna scowled like he was trying to look tough. Or at least trying to look a little bit brave.
Now they were in the middle of a big pack of kids. Kids pressed in on either side of them like two walls: the Indian wall and the Eskimo wall. Th
e Eskimo wall had one blond
head, that little white girl they’d nicknamed Snowbird. Th e
Indian wall looked hard as rock with no breaks in it, not even a crack. Sonny smiled.
“Better than raw meat,” he said. He knew about how Eskimos ate their meat frozen. Frozen and raw.
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Th
e older brother, Luke, pushed his way forward through the crush of kids. Amiq was right behind him.
“Leave him alone,” Luke growled.
Sonny shook Bunna, just for good measure, and let go of him. He wasn’t about to fi ght some little kid.
Amiq shoved himself forward. “Back off ,” he snapped, muttering “half-a-gas-can” under his breath. And he aimed those words right at Sonny, too. “Pack off . ” Sonny laughed. “Make me,” he said.
“Why’d he say half-a-gas-can?” Snowbird whispered.
Nobody said anything. Everyone was staring at Sonny and Amiq, who stood in the middle of the crowd, glaring at each other. Th
en Sonny turned toward Snowbird.
“’Cause he don’t know how to say ‘Athabascan,’” Sonny said. “He has trouble dalking.” Amiq clenched his fi sts. “Go ahead,” he sneered, looking up at Sonny. “Go ahead.”
Th
e whole pack pressed in closer, both sides taunting.
“Punch him! Punch him!”
“Do it!”
Sonny reared up and smashed down on Amiq with a force hard enough to make him fall back into the crowd. But before Sonny could even step closer, Amiq had sprung up, tearing into Sonny like a wolverine. Th
e kid was smaller, all right, but
he was tough, Sonny thought. Plenty tough.
“Go for the throat!” someone hollered. “Th e throat!”
Now everybody was yelling, everyone except that one Yupik girl with the long black hair and little Junior, who 59
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stood off to one side, nervously fi dgeting with his glasses.
Suddenly a door fl ew open and Father Flanagan came rac-ing down the hall, his robes billowing out like black sails.
“Break it up, boys! Break it up!”
“Shaving cream,” Junior whispered, cursing like his grandma taught him.
Father shoved himself between Amiq and Sonny, forcing them apart. Th
e two of them strained against his hold like dogs at the ends of their lines. But Father’s arms were strong and sinewy.
“All right, boys, that’s enough. Th
at’s quite enough,” he
said.
He let go of them, fi nally, and they pulled away, wiping their faces and glaring at each other sideways. Th e crowd
pressed itself fl at against the sides of the hall, tried to melt into the wall—one thick body with dozens of eyes, watching.
No one said a word.
“All right everybody, break it up,” Father said. “It’s lunchtime now. Get going.”
But before they could even fan out, he laid his hands on Amiq’s and Sonny’s shoulders.
“Not you two,” he said, reeling them in with his voice.
“You two have earned yourselves a little conversation with Father Mullen.”
“Aw, Father, c’mon,” Amiq said. “We were just playing.”
He put a barb in the word for Sonny’s benefi t. Sonny glared at him, then looked away.
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“Yes, and Father Mullen is not very fond of games, I’m afraid. Let’s go,” the priest said.
As they walked off , behind Father Flanagan Sonny could hear the others, whispering among themselves.
“Oh man, that Father Mullen, he’s mean,” Bunna said.
“He might kill Amiq.”
“It wasn’t his fault, was it?” Chickie said. “He was just protecting himself. Th