Starfish

by James Crowley

  They crawled on their bellies through the scrub, following a series of broken and decaying timber to where the tree line came closest to the lodge. That’s when they saw Beatrice.

  She appeared from the far side of the meadow and in a crouched run was soon standing at Ulysses’s side. The big warhorse nuzzled her with his long head and let out a loud whinny. when the other horse responded, the shadow of a man appeared, ducking under the crooked doorframe of the lodge. Beatrice slipped behind Ulysses and the man’s horse, but there was nowhere good for her to hide.

  The man scanned the perimeter of the Great wood and then stepped back into the darkness of the lodge. Beatrice took the opportunity to swing up onto Ulysses’s back, but before she could turn the horse, the man sprang from the shadows of the lodge and in two running steps had Ulysses by the harness. The man’s horse spun violently from the commotion.

  Beatrice pulled back on the reins, trying in vain to free Ulysses, who instead sidestepped, mimicking the other horse, dragging the man and throwing Beatrice from his back: a sight that Lionel had never before seen. Beatrice and the man tumbled into each other as Ulysses and the other horse bolted from the lodge toward the edge of the woods. The man rolled over and in a flurry of movement was on top of Beatrice.

  Lionel froze at the edge of the wood until Corn Poe broke him from his stupor.

  “That sonuvabitch is fixin’ to kill your sister!” Corn Poe proclaimed, and then burst forward from their cover and ran screaming toward the man and Beatrice, who struggled in the high grass.

  Without thinking, Lionel followed; and before he knew it, had joined Corn Poe on the man’s back. The man tried to shake the two boys with a series of bucking motions, but did not find success until he reached around and grabbed hold of first Corn Poe and then Lionel. He yanked the two screaming boys from his back and threw them to the side, where they rolled toward the sag of the crooked doorframe.

  Corn Poe scrambled to his feet, brandishing the small wooden stool that Grandpa had sat on while making the straw man. He raised it high over his head as though he aimed to bring it down, if possible, through the man’s skull.

  “Now, hold on!” the man shouted, still pinning Beatrice to the ground but craning his neck sideways to keep an eye on Corn Poe and Lionel.

  Corn Poe lifted the stool higher but was interrupted by a shot that rang like thunder across the small valley. The four of them froze and looked toward the woods and the cloud of black, burning gunpowder that rose from the barrel of a large rifle held by a small boy on horseback.

  “Let’s all just hold on,” the man repeated, trying to catch his breath and loosening his grip on Beatrice.

  The small boy rode across the meadow, his gun pointed directly at Corn Poe.

  “Now why don’t you put that there stool down and we can talk, okay?” said the man.

  The boy reached the front of the lodge and pulled his horse to a stop, the rifle still trained on Corn Poe.

  “Everyone agree? Then, if you still want to put that stool through my head, you’re more than welcome to try it. what’a say? we can talk, huh?” the man repeated.

  Beatrice motioned to Corn Poe, who answered by lowering the stool.

  “Now, for starters, some names. My name is Hawkins, Avery John Hawkins, and that there is my boy Joshua, but he goes by the name of Junebug.”

  “Junebug Hawkins? what the hell kinda name is that?” Corn Poe eyed the boy on the horse. “Sounds made up if you ask me.”

  “Made up? well, all names are made up at some point and be that as it may, that’s his name.” Avery John Hawkins stood and extended his hand.

  Lionel looked up at him for the first time and realized that he was different from the men at the outpost. To start, his skin was dark like his and Beatrice’s, darker, actually, and his hair at its peak sat about six inches from the top of his head. It wasn’t straight like his or Beatrice’s, either, but clung wildly in dry, tight curls, reminding Lionel of the tuft of hair on the mounted buffalo head that hung in the captain’s office.

  Lionel took Mr. Hawkins’s big hand. “I’m Lionel. That’s my sister, Beatrice, and that there is Corn Poe, Corn Poe Boss Ribs.”

  “And Junebug Hawkins sounds made up?” Hawkins said, smiling. “Nice to meet you, Corn Poe.”

  “My name ain’t made up. It’s what my paps calls me,” Corn Poe said, still eyeing Junebug and the rifle with suspicion.

  “Why, come on down, son, and put the rifle away,” Mr. Hawkins said to the boy he called Junebug. Then, turning to Beatrice, he extended his hand once again, which Beatrice reluctantly took hold of, and Hawkins pulled her to her feet.

  “Sorry about that, Beatrice, right? I thought you were fixin’ to take old Mr. Hawkins’s horse or worse.”

  Beatrice stood, collecting herself. Lionel watched her, amazed at how small she looked next to Mr.

  Hawkins. He was a big man, almost the same size as Corn Poe’s father, but not as wide.

  “Now, it’s gettin’ late. If we can agree to be friends, maybe we could get some supper goin’.” Mr. Hawkins rested a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Then we’ll figure out what we’re all doin’ in each other’s lodge.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  HAWKINS’S BISCUITS • ELK DOG • TRUST

  AVERY JOHN HAWKINS crouched beside a small fire pounding dough in his large hands. He dropped the dough as biscuits into the bacon grease that popped and hissed in the blackened skillet.

  “I tell ya. During these summer months I do prefer to stay out of doors as long as the weather permits,” Mr. Hawkins said, dropping another biscuit into the pan. “It helps during them long winter months, when that cold got you froze clear to the bone.”

  Mr. Hawkins looked at the sprawl of stars that spread across the inky black night.

  “You stop and think to yourself, It sure is cold now, but I do remember a warm summer evening not too long ago, and that does what it can to stove off the night,” Hawkins continued. “Even just for the moment, it surely does.”

  There was something to Mr. Hawkins’s voice that Lionel had never heard before. Something foreign that didn’t sound like any of the Blackfeet or government people that occupied the outpost.

  “Say, there, Corn Poe. You mind keepin’ an eye on them biscuits for a minute? I want to check on the corn.” Hawkins smiled. “I wanna check on the corn, Corn Poe.”

  Mr. Hawkins reached barehanded into the fire and rotated the five ears of corn that lay in their blackened husks at the edge of the glowing ash. “I usually like to soak the corn for a day or so before roasting. Helps lock in some of that flavor.” Then Mr. Hawkins turned his attention to the brook trout that he’d instructed Junebug to pull from the stream earlier. There were five good-sized fish, stuffed with wild onions from the banks of the stream, skewered and hanging over the dancing flames. “That should be enough, well, with maybe some melon for dessert—that is, if you don’t mind gettin’ one from the garden there, Lionel.”

  Lionel looked to Beatrice before leaving the circle of firelight. He wasn’t sure what to make of their new guests. Beatrice nodded, but did not take her eyes from the man and his son.

  Lionel walked toward the garden. The cool grass was wet with the night and felt good on his bare feet. The smells from the Hawkinses’ cook fire urged him to move quickly.

  “Joint guests is what we are.” Mr. Hawkins’s voice carried across the meadow. “We’re enjoying the fruits of your labor and what you done to the place, and y’all gettin’ ready to sample the culinary wiles of the Hawkinses, firsthand.”

  Lionel paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping from the grass into the turned earth of the garden. He looked up at the countless stars and listened to the crashing movement of the stream in the distance.

  “How come this fellow over here, Junebug as you call him, never says nothin’?” Lionel heard Corn Poe ask. “I seem to notice that you’re the one doin’ all the talkin’.”

  “Oh, Junebug
will say plenty if you listen,” Hawkins said without turning from the flames, “but he don’t have the words that you or I have. He’s a mute.”

  “Mute. well, I suppose that would explain it,” Corn Poe said, looking to Junebug and then suddenly raising his voice. “I just thought you was rude or somethin’!”

  Mr. Hawkins let out a long, bellowing laugh that was soon accompanied by a strange but similar version of the same laugh from Junebug. It was the first sound that any of them had heard from the boy since they had met him at gunpoint late that afternoon.

  “Why, he’s mute. He can’t talk. That don’t mean he’s deaf,” Mr. Hawkins said through his laughter. “I don’t mean to chuckle, but we’ve seen it done before. The few people we see, always raisin’ their voices when they hear that he don’t speak like we do, when there’s no need. He hears better than any of us do, but people always want to raise their voices when they talk to him. Ain’t that right, Junebug?”

  Junebug nodded his head in agreement, his strange laugh bubbling into a slight giggle. As Lionel returned from the darkness with a large melon, he noticed that Beatrice’s face had slipped into a smile, and that even Corn Poe couldn’t help but laugh, despite the laughter being somewhat at his own expense. Lionel figured that Corn Poe may have become accustomed to this position.

  “And Mr. Lionel with the melon. That sure looks like a good one. Here, boy, let’s set it over there.” Hawkins took the melon and laid it next to his saddle by the fire and then, raising his voice to thunderous proportions: “or should I say over there!”

  They all settled around the fire to eat, but continued to giggle and take turns speaking in the loud manner in which Corn Poe had addressed Junebug. The tension that had occupied the afternoon and early evening seemed to erode, and even Beatrice took a turn, asking, rather loudly at one point, for Lionel to pass her another piece of freshly cut melon. This brought relieved laughter from Mr. Hawkins most of all, and after they had all finished, they settled back in the grass around the fire and looked up at the endless sea of stars.

  “Oh, man, that was some good eatin’ there, Mr. Hawkins,” Corn Poe announced. “I was as hungry as a horse, but now I feel like a swolled-up tick a-fixin’ to pop.”

  “Yes, it was, and I’d like to thank all of y’all for havin’ me and the boy,” Mr. Hawkins added. “I didn’t know what to think when I saw old Beatrice there sneaking up to my horse dressed the way y’all’s dressed. I ain’t seen no Indians in clothes like that in some time. You must be from the Blackfeet rez down below, huh?”

  “Yes, sir, we are. But we’re renegades, on account of them trying to force the Blackfeet outta us,” Corn Poe declared.

  “I do know that feelin’,” Mr. Hawkins answered, reaching for a small leather bag and pulling from it a pipe that he packed with tobacco.

  “Hey, our grandpa smokes a pipe like that,” Lionel observed, then looked to Beatrice for approval.

  “Is that right?” Mr. Hawkins asked, lighting the pipe. The big man sat smoking, his knees fixed to the insides of his elbows, staring off, lost in the fire.

  It was quiet for some time, and Lionel thought that he might have dozed off for a minute. It had been a long day, and one that was not to be forgotten. Lionel was startled by a soft whinny that he recognized to be Ulysses, who was resting somewhere in the darkness of the meadow surrounding them. The Hawkinses’ horses answered, and then they all seemed to settle back down around the fire.

  “That’s a helluva horse,” Mr. Hawkins said, breaking what passed for silence in the meadow with the distant sound of the stream, the wind in the Great wood, and the crickets that sang softly in the high grass.

  “That there is Ulysses, the fastest horse in all of Montana,” Corn Poe said, drawing a heavy glare from Beatrice. “What? He is!”

  “You don’t say,” Mr. Hawkins continued, noticing Beatrice’s scowl. “I suppose it ain’t none of my business how y’all came by a horse like that, but it sure is good lookin’.”

  Mr. Hawkins leaned forward and took a drink of cool stream water from a tin cup and spat in the fire. “You said y’all was Blackfeet? Piegan, eh? Niitsítapi—the original people. The real people.”

  “That’s right,” Corn Poe said, with perhaps more to prove on the subject than Beatrice or Lionel.

  “You know I was down there for a while. Back when I was with the army, Tenth Cavalry.” Mr. Hawkins threw another piece of wood on the fire. “Why, I’ve been told that it was you Blackfeet that first domesticated the horse. Called ’em ‘po-no-kahmita.’ You know what that means?”

  “No, can’t say that I do,” Corn Poe answered for the group, careful to avert his eyes from Beatrice’s close and cautious glare.

  “Y’all don’t speak it, eh? well, po-no-kah-mita is Blackfeet for ‘elk-dog.’ Big as an elk, but you’re able to work ’em, carrying loads, like dogs.”

  Mr. Hawkins leaned back against his saddle and took a long draw on his pipe, his dark face streaked with dancing firelight.

  “Yep, the Blackfeet are known as some of the greatest horsemen the plains have ever seen—that much is true.”

  “Some?” Corn Poe spat, once again looking to Beatrice for support.

  Ulysses and the Hawkinses’ horses appeared out of the darkness as though they had been listening all along.

  “Nioomítaa …A great horse,” Mr. Hawkins concluded, looking up at the horses.

  Lionel rolled over onto his side and studied Beatrice. She was the best horseman he had ever seen, and today he had seen that even she could get thrown off by the “elk-dog.” A jumpy elk-dog named Ulysses.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  COLD MORNING DEW • FISHING THE STREAM • RED BLOOD • STARFISH

  LIONEL STARED up into an early-morning sky. Purple, yellow, orange, and gold all combined and stretched across the faint light from tree line to tree line. Lionel felt the weight of his grandfather’s buffalo robe over him and wondered how it had gotten there, as it hadn’t been around him when Mr. Hawkins was talking about the horses.

  Lionel threw off the robe, even heavier now that it was wet with the morning dew. He sat up and looked over at Corn Poe and Junebug. They were still sleeping, wrapped now in the saddle blankets and some bedrolls that Lionel figured must have belonged to the Hawkinses. Beatrice and Mr. Hawkins were nowhere to be found.

  He wandered over toward their crude outhouse, took care of his business, and then cut back across the meadow, past the garden and toward the stream. The meadow was also wet with the morning, and in a few short steps his bare feet and the bottom cuffs of his leggings were soaked. Lionel looked with pride at their little garden and saw that the black raven he had seen when they first arrived at the little lodge had returned and was sitting on the straw man’s shoulder, busily working on one of the pearl buttons of the ivory dress.

  “Hello, again,” Lionel called, but the black bird ignored him, concentrating on his task at hand.

  The raven pecked and pulled relentlessly until he had the shiny button in his beak; then looked at Lionel with a cold black eye and flew away, disappearing somewhere over the Great wood. Lionel continued on to the stream to see if the grizzly bear that he and his grandfather had seen fishing had been through during the last couple of days.

  Lionel walked up the rise to the stream and found Beatrice standing waist deep in one of the pools, peering, with her arm half-cocked, into the swirling water. Mr. Hawkins was standing above her on the bank, tying off what looked like the back of a wicker chair, made from the rough whittled branches of slippery elm and pine boughs.

  “Ya see, I’ll simply slip this on the downward side of the stream, and what do ya know? They’re trapped,” Lionel heard Mr. Hawkins say over the rush of water. He set his weaving into the water, blocking its downward flow. “They ain’t got nowheres to go but back upstream, and that is something I’d like to see, with you standing there just waitin’ on ’em.”

  Mr. Hawkins looked up, instinctively reaching for the lar
ge pistol that he wore in his belt, but immediately dropping his hand when he saw that it was Lionel standing on the shore.

  “Beatrice, look who’s come to join us,” Mr. Hawkins shouted over the water as he danced from rock to rock, crossing the stream to Lionel. “How did you sleep last night, Lionel? I slept like the rock of Gibraltar, myself. No joke, like the rock of Gibraltar.”

  Mr. Hawkins pulled the pistol from his belt and sat down on the soft, moss-covered bank. He threw down his heavy saddlebag and pulled a small black notebook from inside.

  “Now, give me a minute here, Lionel, I just need to make a note. This crick here seems to change course a bit every time I see it,” Mr. Hawkins said, setting the narrow nub of a crude pencil to the page. “That’s water for ya, though, ain’t it? It’ll find a way to go where it wants to go. Not much you can do about that, not much at all.”

  Lionel looked over Hawkins’s shoulder at the scribbled notes and various rough penciled sketches of trees, rocks, and animals that covered the open pages.

  “I’m not sure why, but I do like to make notes of me and the Junebug’s travels. I’m hoping we won’t always be on the move like this, and if we do settle back down, I keep thinking that he may want to recall some of what we’ve seen.”

  Lionel saw that Mr. Hawkins’s latest chronicle was a drawing of the brook trout that they had had for dinner and a sketch of the stream and its various pools that were laid out directly before them. Lionel sat down next to Mr. Hawkins, and Hawkins handed him a canteen. “Have a drink of that. Just filled from the stream. That’s good cold water.”

  Lionel took hold of the canteen and drank. Mr.

  Hawkins was right. The cold water felt good going down his throat, and he drank it in greedy gulps.

  “Well, now, there’s a way to catch a fish that I ain’t thought of; maybe you could just drink up all the stream’s water and then we could just walk on out there and pick them fish up,” Mr. Hawkins said, breaking the lead on his pencil before finishing his sketch. “Good Lord, I’ve got to find a way to get some more pencils. This one is about done.”