Starfish

by James Crowley

  Lionel was hot and hungry. He wanted to drink some of the cool water that Barney periodically threw onto the hot rocks, but he did not want to leave. A strange feeling came over him, and he fell easily back into the stories that Barney and Beatrice told. He thought that he must have fallen asleep a second time, because he once again saw his grandfather and Beatrice on the raft in the sea of rolling grass. He still stood on the shore, but again wasn’t alone. This time he was with a bear, the grizzly bear that he had seen with his grandfather the day that he had told him about the Frozen Man and the necklace. He felt the bear claws around his neck and wondered if the big bear was fishing. Lionel stood on the shore with the bear and knew that they were friends. Then he saw Corn Poe.

  “I heard about it at the school. I went through what these learned men, like Barney over there, call a metamorphosis,” Lionel woke up to hear Corn Poe saying. “The former me? why, he’s dead, dead, dead. Now I just gotta figure out this new one.”

  Barney handed Corn Poe a small wooden bowl. Corn Poe’s fingers disappeared into the bowl, then reappeared covered in a paste of what appeared to be black ashes. He spread the concoction onto to his face and then passed the bowl to Barney, who did the same. Lionel wasn’t sure what they were trying to do, and this was the first time that it occurred to him that neither Barney nor Corn Poe did, either. It seemed like they were making it up as they went along, but so far, he thought it was better than sitting back at school in the chapel.

  “Now it’s time to dance,” Corn Poe said, attempting to rise. He stood up for a minute, teetered back and forth, and then stumbled to the ground, landing on top of the little kid. “Whoa, I guess I got me a tad bit of the light-headed.”

  Corn Poe crawled, mumbling, toward the opening, then threw the flap upward, filling the sweat lodge with crisp evening air. The coolness hit Lionel, driving the dizziness from his head. The little kid and then Tom followed Corn Poe, and soon Lionel did the same.

  It was dark, and a thousand stars now littered the heavens. Lionel took a deep breath, then followed Corn Poe and the other children’s voices as they cascaded through the darkness from somewhere down toward the creek.

  Lionel reached the creek just as Corn Poe jumped from its muddy bank. He disappeared for a second under the swirling waters and then shot up and pulled himself to shore. Tom and the little kid followed, and then Lionel.

  Lionel hit the near-freezing water and felt a jolt run through his body. He broke the surface and in a few short strokes was at the muddy bank. He drank from the cold creek, and then Corn Poe and Tom pulled him to his feet.

  “I don’t know what time it is, but I sure as hell know I’m woke up after that,” Corn Poe said.

  Beatrice and Barney ran down and jumped in, and a drum began to pound back at the campfire. Lionel pulled on his clothes, put the bear claws back around his neck and under his shirt, and went up to join the others.

  The small fire had grown. The smaller children, led by Corn Poe, piled on a variety of brush, and it grew, lighting the surrounding trees with an eerie black-orange glow.

  Corn Poe and Tom began to shuffle around the fire to the drum, stopping occasionally to let out a yell of one sort or another. The rest of the children joined them, followed by Barney, who appeared out of the darkness, shivering and wet from the creek.

  Lionel saw Beatrice across the fire from him, adjusting her knife on the beaded belt that hung around the long deer-skin shirt that their grandfather had made for her. Her hair was wet, and she wore a single line of the charcoal paste across her eyes like the mask of a raccoon. Lionel felt glad that she was his sister. He watched as all of the children entered the circle moving around the fire in a slow shuffle. Beatrice fell in, and Lionel watched as she got lost dancing to the slow beat of the drum and the snap of the roaring fire.

  Lionel was dizzy again, but this time it was different. His mind was light, but his body was still coordinated. He joined the others, falling easily into the uncertain, irregular rhythm of the child drummer. Lionel thought about the bear in the stream and the three hawks and the eagle they had seen the first time he had gone to their grandfather’s, before he had ever even heard of the boarding school. He continued to dance, thinking about Beatrice and staring lost into the fire.

  Lionel was not sure how long they danced. He felt his body growing tired but continued to move. At some point he noticed Corn Poe leave the circle but watched as he returned, holding a green glass bottle. It looked like the bottle that the Frozen Man was holding when he offered the necklace.

  Corn Poe pulled a cork out of the nose of the bottle, tipped it high over his head, and drank. He lowered the bottle with a grimace and let out a shrieking yelp. He handed the bottle to Tom Gunn, who drank and passed it along to Barney Little Plume. Barney drank repeatedly and then passed it to Beatrice. “I took this outta my uncle’s supply. He’s a bootlegger. Don’t think he’ll mind.”

  Beatrice ignored Barney, glared at Corn Poe, and continued to dance. Barney took another swig and handed it back to Tom. This continued until the bottle was empty, and Barney threw it over into the trees.

  They continued to dance, and Corn Poe took to jumping over the fire, which Tom began to mimic successfully. Barney joined in, and on his fourth pass fell short, landing with a thud near the edge of the flames. He was lucky and rolled sideways, burning only some of his hair and the backside of his pants. Lionel thought about the burned leggings as Barney fell over laughing and swatting at the smoking holes in his clothes. As far as Lionel knew, Barney didn’t stand up again until morning. He just sat like a potbellied stove on the edge of the shadows, either watching the dancers or turning to stare at Ulysses.

  Corn Poe danced aimlessly and fell over often. He wrestled with Tom Gunn and two of the other children, and then tried to wrestle with Lionel and Beatrice. Beatrice simply threw Corn Poe away, saying, “You’re certainly acting the fool.” Lionel thought that Beatrice might be mad at Corn Poe.

  The rest of the children continued to dance, some of them until they fell over from exhaustion, sleeping where they dropped. Corn Poe was a part of this group, and Lionel watched as Beatrice made sure that he didn’t roll into the fire.

  When everyone stopped dancing and the drummer stopped drumming, Beatrice drank from the rusty pail, sat down, and stared into the dying fire. Lionel did the same, as did Tom Gunn. Barney took to staring across the fire at Beatrice or the horse, his eyelids, like Lionel’s, growing heavier and heavier.

  Lionel watched as Barney’s breathing got louder. His shoulders slumped forward, and he no longer looked like a potbellied stove but more resembled a bear that had somehow drifted off to sleep in a rocking chair. Lionel fell asleep staring at the fire, just after Tom Gunn nodded off, his chin on his chest.

  When Lionel woke up he thought that his tongue had grown three times its size and that it no longer fit in his mouth. He was thirsty, his body was stiff from the dancing, and he had leaves and pine needles in his hair. Beatrice kneeled next to him, gently shaking his shoulder, her hand clasped over his mouth.

  Lionel sat up and looked around to find everyone lying where he had been when the night ended. Barney had rolled over but continued to snore, and Beatrice rose to move Corn Poe’s foot, which was once again dangerously close to the fading embers of the previous night.

  Beatrice motioned Lionel to the creek. He crawled to his feet and stumbled through the trees to the bank, where he dropped to his knees and drank. The water was good and cold, and he drank until he could no longer take the blood rushing to his head.

  When Lionel looked up from the water, Beatrice was standing above him with Ulysses’s reins in her hands. She led the horse into the creek and slipped onto his back. Lionel did the same, and they walked the horse downstream. They hadn’t gone a hundred paces when Beatrice stopped the horse.

  “You’re not coming with us,” Beatrice said without turning her head.

  Lionel looked back, and there was Corn Poe. Like Lionel, with leaves
and pine needles in his hair, black soot face paint smeared from sleep.

  “I’ll bet I am,” Corn Poe said.

  Beatrice pulled up the horse and growled, “No, you’re not. we can’t have ya and you don’t need to get involved in horse thievin’. You said yerself, they’re liable to hang us.”

  “You best to let me come, or I’ll scream and wake up the whole damn lot of ’em.”

  Beatrice thought about this. “Go ahead, wake ’em. what concern of that is mine?”

  “I was just thinkin’ that if you could avoid a confrontation with Barney over that horse that you might. You sure don’t want him up and ready to follow ya wherever we’re going.”

  Beatrice didn’t answer, but turned the horse and reached out to pull the boy up behind her. “Ya gonna do what I say?”

  “Of course!” Corn Poe said, his face an ear-toear grin. Lionel supposed that if Beatrice was mad at Corn Poe for drinking the corn liquor, this marked the point where she got over it.

  They rode downstream, and at some point Beatrice, confident that they had thrown off Barney, turned Ulysses, and they rode back around the Great wood toward the mountains.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ASLEEP IN THE WOODS • CORN POE’S DECLARATION • A VISITOR

  SOMETIME NEAR morning they stopped and slept in the crux of a large fallen tree and the base of a living one. Lionel slept soundly but was woken midday by a cardinal that fluttered from branch to branch to branch in the trees overhead.

  It was dark when they stopped, so their surroundings seemed foreign to him, but he didn’t feel out of place. Lionel figured that they were somewhere in the heart of the Great wood, less than a half day’s ride or so from their lodge in the meadow.

  He got up from his pine-needle bed and carefully crossed to scratch Ulysses’s long face. Corn Poe slept nestled up against Beatrice, snoring soundly.

  Corn Poe looked dirty, the soot from the night before still smeared all over his face. Beatrice’s black ash mask, however, remained intact and looked as natural as if she had been born with it.

  Lionel got a flask of water, the smoked meat, and the berries from the bundle they had tied around Ulysses’s withers. He sat in the pine needles eating the berries, surrounded by the giant trees, watching Corn Poe and his sister sleep. Beatrice’s buckskin shirt blended into the base of the tree and the pine needles that were strewn all around them. Lionel thought that if the soldiers were looking for them, it wouldn’t be hard for them to disappear.

  The wind picked up, knocking a dead branch from high above, and the cracking sounds it made as it crashed onto the forest floor woke both Beatrice and Corn Poe. Beatrice’s eyes shot open; she coughed, then stared at Lionel, who sat cross-legged in the midst of the Great wood, watching her.

  Corn Poe sat up and immediately grabbed ahold of his head with both hands, proclaiming, “If I had me a hatchet, I think I’d just do myself a favor and cut this sucker right off at the neck.”

  “I know where we got one not too far from here,” Beatrice said, pushing Corn Poe off of her.

  “Ah, it’s not funny,” Corn Poe moaned, rolling over in the pine needles. “My head hurts something awful.”

  Lionel got up and brought him one of the water sacks. He handed Beatrice the bundle of berries and meat. She opened it and ate while they both watched Corn Poe flail on the ground and listened to his moaning proclamations denouncing liquor from this moment forward. Corn Poe swore that he would never touch the stuff again as long as he lived, a statement that Lionel and Beatrice doubted.

  Beatrice told Corn Poe to drink the water and that if he wanted to eat he should. They would be leaving soon. Corn Poe got up and wandered a ways into the woods. He returned with a large pinecone that he gave to Beatrice and thanked her for allowing him to travel with them.

  “It wasn’t my intention,” was Beatrice’s reply.

  The children finished their breakfast and continued their journey back toward the lodge. They walked, leading the horse for the majority of the day, enjoying the cool shade of the Great wood. Sometime that afternoon they arrived at the tree-lined perimeter of their meadow, but froze when they saw a strange horse grazing in front of the lodge’s crooked door.

  Part Three

  THE FIRST thing that Avery John Hawkins and the boy noticed when they returned to the lodge in the meadow was the garden. It was thick and looked as if it was about to burst from the original rectangular patch that the children and their grandfather plotted. Fat green tomatoes sagged on their vines. Watermelon, cucumbers, and squash crept forward, spilling into the tall grass of the meadow. The pole beans stood well over the straw man’s head, leaving the ghostly figure to stand in his silk dress, idly watching as the beanstalks slowly strangled the sunflowers.

  Hawkins stepped up to the straw man and ran a thick finger over the tight weave and the feathers that fluttered around its head in the late afternoon breeze. He looked around at the trampled grass between him and the unearthed smokehouse.

  “Maybe you should wait up in the woods while I have a look around,” he said to the boy. “I know that I ain’t seen no one here for two days, but it still don’t feel right.”

  Avery John Hawkins pulled a rifle wrapped in beaded buckskin from the side of his horse and turned the boy toward the woods.

  “Now, you keep your eyes open, and if it comes to it, don’t be afraid to flash your Winchester like I taught ya.”

  The boy turned his horse and the pack mule and headed toward the stream and the far side of the woods. Hawkins crossed the meadow and stood in front of the crooked lodge, staring at the sagging door.

  He looked around the meadow again, then pushed the door open and stepped inside. Hawkins had grown accustomed to returning to the lodge to find it in some state of disarray no matter what improvements he and the boy had made during their brief stays there. Animals of some sort seemed to always find their way in, leaving their mark as they saw fit. In particular, Hawkins thought of the wolverine that he often found inside and had yet to figure out its point of entry. Hawkins proceeded with caution, half expecting the creature to jump out at him with every step.

  The lodge was now neatly stocked with a variety of provisions. In a far corner, arrows and bows stood in various stages of completion, and there were hides adorned with beadwork and bundles of feathers. Vegetables, some fresher than others, hung from the rafters, leading Hawkins’s eye to the support beams which now stood under the lodge’s sagging roof.

  Avery John Hawkins shifted the heavy rifle in his hand and thought about how long it had been since he and the boy had been able to stay in one place longer than a couple of days. He knew that if they could, this is where he would like to settle, but he quickly dismissed the thought and checked to see how well the boy was hiding himself in the woods.

  He stood at the thick glass window near the fireplace, running his eyes across the tree line and the garden, thinking that he had taught the boy well. The boy was nowhere to be seen. He leaned closer to the window and his heavy breathing steamed the glass, revealing a handprint. A print that was no bigger than the boy’s.

  A flash of movement caught the corner of Avery John Hawkins’s eye. He stepped back from the window and peered deep into the woods.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  CORN POE DROPS THE REINS • A SCUFFLE • SHOTS FIRED • GREETINGS • JUNEBUG • THE LODGE

  LIONEL STRAINED his eyes as best he could, but no matter how hard he tried, he could no longer see Beatrice. He knew that she was somewhere toward the edge of the woods, not twenty paces or so ahead, but to the eye, she was gone.

  “You can’t spot her, huh?” Corn Poe whispered.

  “Shhh. Beatrice said not to say nothing,” Lionel insisted.

  “Oh, I can still see her,” Corn Poe went on. “I got what they call the eagle eye.”

  Corn Poe’s eyes darted from side to side, tree-to-tree. Lionel didn’t believe him. He was sure that Corn Poe had lost sight of her about the same tim
e as he had, if not sooner. If Beatrice didn’t want to be seen, she would not be seen.

  “We should just stay here with Ulysses like Beatrice said,” Lionel whispered, turning back to the horse—but Ulysses was gone.

  Lionel whipped around to see that Ulysses was wandering toward the meadow and the strange horse that stood grazing in front of their lodge.

  “The reins,” Lionel stammered to Corn Poe. “You were supposed to hold the reins.”

  Corn Poe spun around. “Where the hell does he think he’s off to?”

  “Beatrice told you to hold the reins. where are you going?” Lionel asked.

  “To get Ulysses.”

  “But she told us not to move.”

  “Well, which is it? were we supposed to watch the horse or not move? ’Cause the horse, he’s movin’!” Corn Poe took off, trailing Ulysses, who was getting closer and closer to the tree line at the edge of the meadow. Lionel followed.

  Ulysses made his way through the low brush and across the meadow. He stopped and nudged the strange horse with his long nose. The strange horse did the same, and then the two horses took to standing next to each other, calmly ripping up the grass.

  Lionel and Corn Poe crouched at the edge of the Great wood, watching the horses.

  “What in the hell are they doing?” Corn Poe whispered.

  “I suppose they’re bein’ social,” Lionel offered, “but Ulysses shouldn’t be out there in the first place. You were supposed to hold him.”

  “Well, what do you want me to do now?” Corn Poe pleaded through clenched teeth.

  “We’ll wait,” Lionel told the older boy with authority.