Starfish

by James Crowley

  THE CAPTAIN ordered the soldiers to give them water and food and to attend to the crack in Beatrice’s ribs from Lumpkin’s rifle. They sat, soldiers and Blackfeet alike, mulling over the events that led them all to be huddled at this far edge of the Great wood.

  Jenkins and Lumpkin were untied but under guard, and sat in the shadow of the rock as they ate, staring at Beatrice and occasionally at Lionel. The captain told Jenkins to avert his gaze, but he continued to stare at them throughout the day and on the ride that took them into the night.

  They mounted up after eating and rode slowly back through the woods to which Lionel and Beatrice had become so accustomed. The captain let Lionel and Beatrice ride on Ulysses, but this ride was different from the previous ones.

  Their grandfather rode most of the way back to the lodge with the captain. Riding side by side, they spoke, occasionally pointing out to each other various aspects of the nature of the landscape that surrounded them.

  Lionel half expected that at any moment Beatrice would turn the horse and try to make another escape. But this never happened. Beatrice looked tired and rode for the rest of the day slumped forward, asleep against Lionel’s back.

  It started to rain sometime in the afternoon, and fell in cold, wet drops until they were all thoroughly soaked. Lionel shivered uncontrollably, but Beatrice woke up and pulled him closer, letting the rain pour over her head and back as she covered his.

  They arrived in the meadow after dark, and Lionel thought that the little lodge looked sad as they rode past the smokehouse. The captain ordered his men to bivouac in the yard that led past the lodge to the garden, and within the half hour, their tents were set and their cook fires dotted the small valley’s lawn.

  The soldiers brought the children and their grandfather to the lodge that had once been their home, and although they weren’t tied, it was obvious that they were, once again, prisoners. Beatrice was half asleep, slumped against Lionel, and their grandfather had to carry her, ducking his head to get under the crooked door. Lionel watched as he cradled Beatrice in his arms and laid her on the buffalo robe in front of the crumbling fireplace.

  Jenkins had wrecked the lodge. Their stores were overturned and what little furniture there was was broken. Lionel saw his reflection in a sliver of broken glass on the floor and thought that they couldn’t have looked more different from their captors. Their hair had grown, and now even Lionel’s could hold the feathers and strips of felt and leather wound tightly within. Lionel looked at the soldiers in their uniforms and then at his and Beatrice’s buckskins. The buckskins blended into this world; the uniforms did not. Their grandfather stood at Lionel’s side as the soldiers left, his attire somewhere in between.

  Corn Poe was oddly quiet, as were Tom Gunn and eventually Barney Little Plume, who joined them but ended up standing quietly in the shadows of the lodge, avoiding where Beatrice lay. Beatrice was silent and expressionless, almost as if she wasn’t there.

  Brother Finn saw that the children were fed, and then at Grandpa’s urging, they all bedded down in front of the crumbled fireplace for the night. No one argued, and soon they fell into a deep sleep accompanied by the crack and pop of the fire.

  Beatrice’s coughing woke Lionel in the middle of the night. It was heavier now, and sounded wet. Beatrice, wrapped in an army blanket and the buffalo robe, lay shivering at the edge of the fire’s glow, covered with sweat. Lionel woke his grandfather, who told him that he would look after her and that he should go back to sleep. Lionel tried to stay awake, watching his grandfather wet Beatrice’s head with cold water from the stream, but must have fallen asleep sometime during the night.

  Lionel dreamed that night, and once again found himself on the shores of the great grass sea. He stood alone this time, holding the bear claws in his hand, looking out on the watery green. Great waves and whitecaps rose, and he could see Beatrice out in their turbulent midst. She was alone on her raft, the winds pushing her farther and farther from shore, farther and farther away from Lionel.

  When Lionel awoke again it was still dark. His grandfather sat with Beatrice’s head cradled in his lap. He sang a low song to her, but no longer pressed the cold compress against her forehead. Lionel looked at his grandfather and knew that Beatrice was gone.

  He sat with his grandfather and Beatrice until morning. He felt numb and thought that it wasn’t possible that Beatrice would leave. That Beatrice would leave him. But she had. Beatrice had told them that she wasn’t going back to the reservation, and she was right.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  THE CAPTAIN’S WORDS • NINAIMSSKAAHKOYINNIMAAN, OR BEATRICE’S MEDICINE BUNDLE • A NEW PLACE IN THE WOOD

  BY MORNING the freezing rain had turned to snow. Lionel’s grandfather informed the captain of the events that had transpired overnight, and the captain appeared at the crooked door of the lodge looking genuinely distressed. He asked Corn Poe, Tom Gunn, and Barney to leave, and then stood in front of the crumbled chimney with his hat in hand and his head hung low.

  “I’m not sure what to say,” he offered to Lionel, but Lionel didn’t hear him. He was lost. Lost without Beatrice. He stood at his grandfather’s side with his sister wrapped in an army blanket at their feet.

  At his grandfather’s urging, Lionel had gathered Beatrice’s few articles and laid them out on the floor next to her. There wasn’t much—a few odd buttons of silver, gold, and mother-of-pearl, a couple of coins, some smooth rocks and pebbles from the stream, Corn Poe’s pinecone, and the soft leather tobacco pouch that their grandfather had given her on her ninth birthday.

  Lionel’s grandfather asked the captain if they could borrow the great horse Ulysses and informed him that they would like to bury Beatrice in the traditional way of the Blackfeet, rather than leave her in the plot with the wooden markers at the edge of the outpost next to the boarding school. The captain agreed, and their grandfather went to attend to the horse, leaving Lionel standing in the cavernous room with his sister and the captain.

  The captain shifted uncomfortably before breaking the morning’s eerie silence. “Lionel, I’m sorry. Sorry for everything. I don’t understand these times, and I’m sure it’s worse for you.”

  Lionel looked up at the captain. He felt the numbness leave his face. A burning sensation filled his cheeks, soon to be replaced by uncontrollable tears. The captain knelt down and took him into his arms, letting Lionel’s tears roll down the front of his uniform and the ribboned medals.

  “I don’t understand. After all that, how she could just die?” Lionel sobbed.

  The captain pulled him closer. “She was sick, Lionel, and she has been for some time. I don’t know that she ever fully recovered. I’m not sure how to explain it, but your sister—well, Beatrice’s—her lungs—they were susceptible—” But the captain’s tears stopped him.

  It didn’t make sense to Lionel either way. Despite the coughing, she had seemed fine to him. More than fine. She was his hero.

  “Is that Beatrice’s medicine bundle?” the captain asked, collecting himself by looking over the articles spread out on the floor.

  Lionel glanced at Beatrice’s meager belongings, choking back his tears. “Medicine bundle?”

  “Ninaimsskaahkoyinnimaan.” The captain stared, lost, into the fireplace. “It’s a collection of particular items that have a special meaning or power to you. Things you might want to keep with you in life…or to pass along in death.”

  The captain rummaged through the various skins and furs that lay scattered on the floor where the children slept.

  “Here,” the captain said, clearing his throat. “If you don’t mind.” He located a soft piece of doeskin and returned to where Lionel stood next to Beatrice.

  “We’ll check with your grandfather, but if you gathered her things, they could be placed in this skin and sewed shut. That would be Beatrice’s medicine bundle. For someone to hold on to.”

  Lionel thought about it. These items were important to Beatrice. They meant something
and somehow held some kind of power that she knew while she was still alive. Lionel thought about the bundle and then thought about what Brother Finn had told him about his soul. His soul was like a medicine bundle. It carried the experiences and adventures, good or bad, that he had throughout his life, the adventures and experiences that he had shared with Beatrice. Now, there was this remaining bundle, Beatrice’s bundle. was this an extension of Beatrice’s life and experiences? were these inanimate objects symbolic of the moments that made up some of the tiny pieces of Beatrice’s soul?

  Lionel gathered her items and placed them on the doeskin. He added the bow and some of the arrows that they had made with their grandfather. His grandfather returned, and after speaking briefly with the captain, the captain left.

  Lionel explained to his grandfather about the medicine bundle, and his grandfather told him that the captain was right. He said that the captain was a smart man.

  Lionel’s grandfather took the hawk’s feather from Beatrice’s hair and the Frozen Man’s knife that she had liberated from Jenkins from her belt and laid them next to the rest of the items. Lionel took a blue jay feather and the eagle feather from his hair, but then paused, thinking about the bear claws. Beatrice might need them where she was going. She might see the Frozen Man and want to offer them back to him. He took the Frozen Man’s bear claws from his neck and laid them with the feathers on top of Beatrice’s buttons, coins, and stones. Lionel tucked the tobacco pouch and the Frozen Man’s knife next to Corn Poe’s pinecone, and sat back on his haunches. His grandfather nodded, and after repositioning the bow and arrows, folded the doeskin over, and with a long piece of rawhide string, stitched the opposing ends shut.

  “You’ll keep this, Lionel, you understand me?” his grandfather asked, handing him the bundle. “No matter where you go or what you do, you hold it for Beatrice. It’s important for all of us.”

  Lionel took the bundle, and it was never too far from his side for the rest of his life.

  Grandpa picked Beatrice up in his arms and carried her to the crooked doorframe. She looked small in his arms. Lionel followed, and as they stepped out of the lodge and into the meadow, he saw that Ulysses was standing in front of them with the travois from Grandpa’s mule hitched to his harness, its poles leaning on Ulysses’s strong haunches.

  His grandfather placed Beatrice on the travois. He picked Lionel up and set him on the big horse’s back. Grandpa swung up behind Lionel, and Ulysses stepped forward into the fresh and falling snow as if he knew exactly where he was going.

  Lionel saw the government men in their uniforms all stop what they were doing and watch as their somber procession left the meadow and slowly made its way into the dark forest of the Great wood. They rode for the better part of an hour to a place that, despite all of his rambling, Lionel did not recognize.

  The trees were knotted and their branches bent into strange, almost fantastic configurations, often doubling back on themselves in swirling, living tangles.

  As they traveled farther into this forest within a forest Lionel saw feathers and small pieces of colored material hanging from various branches and secured around the bending trees’ trunks. He also saw that there were bones dangling from strips of rawhide, and skulls resting in the cruxes of the trees’ upper branches. They continued, and Lionel saw horses ahead of them tied off in a small stand of trees that stood dwarfed by their giant counterparts.

  As they approached the horses, Lionel saw Corn Poe up in one of the trees, securing what looked like a small raft or a bed. Brother Finn, Tom Gunn, and Barney stood on the ground below him, handing him strips of rawhide and rope to keep the tiny bed in place. Corn Poe jumped down from the tree when they approached.

  “Hey, Lionel” was all he said, and then he stepped aside, next to Brother Finn, Barney, and Tom Gunn, who stood with their chins to their chests.

  Lionel’s grandfather sang softly as he dismounted, lifted Beatrice from the travois, and carried her toward the bed in the tree. Lionel followed and watched as he raised her up into the branches and set Beatrice in her resting place. Tears welled in his eyes, but he thought about Beatrice’s strength and fought the tears back as best he could. He wasn’t successful.

  They stood in the woods listening to Grandpa’s singing and the wind that rushed through the treetops. Birds sang, and there were long shafts of light illuminating slivered sections of the forest floor. After some time, Grandpa put his hand on Lionel’s shoulder and turned back toward the horses. Corn Poe, Tom Gunn, Barney, and Brother Finn followed, leaving Lionel standing in the bent shadows of the small stand of trees.

  Lionel knew it was time to go and that he would never see his sister in this form again, so he climbed the tree to be next to her one last time. The bending tree that held her wasn’t high, and as if he had just climbed a ladder, he soon sat on the branch at her side.

  Beatrice looked beautiful and in the buckskins that their grandfather had made her, every bit the black-masked warrior that Lionel would always remember. He could still see her high up on Ulysses’s back, riding across the plains and into the mountains.

  Lionel took her cold hand in his and studied her face. Beatrice looked at ease, almost peaceful where she lay, looking up through the canopy of the Great wood toward the endless skies that waited overhead. Lionel held her hand in his for a moment longer, and then dropped from the tree and joined his grandfather, Corn Poe, Tom Gunn, Barney, and Brother Finn, who stood by the horses, waiting with a steady trail of tears falling from their eyes.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  LEAVING THE MEADOW • JENKINS AND LUMPKIN • GOOD-BYE TO TOM GUNN AND BARNEY LITTLE PLUME • BACK TO BOARDING SCHOOL • INACCURATE WHISPERS • BEATRICE MOVES ON

  LIONEL COULD never remember much of the days that followed. They returned to the meadow and gathered their belongings for the journey back to the boarding school. Unlike before, Lionel was anxious to leave the lodge. without Beatrice, the fallen cabin wasn’t the same. Corn Poe was quiet but stayed close to Lionel’s side, offering to help him in any way he could.

  Lionel looked around and remembered that when they had arrived, the meadow had been covered with snow. Now, in early autumn, the snows came but melted away with the morning sun. Lionel wondered if someday his people, like the snow, like Beatrice, would also melt away, but then thought that no matter how many times he had seen the snows come and go, they always returned.

  Lionel and Corn Poe rode out of the meadow bareback on Ulysses, the great horse sandwiched between the captain and the rest of the soldiers who had made up the search party. Lionel’s grandfather rode on his mule next to the captain and Brother Finn, but very little was said during the three days that it took them to ride back to the boarding school.

  They rode east, parallel to the stream on what Lionel realized must have been the southern border of the Great wood. Lionel noticed that with every step of the horses, the terrain that surrounded them changed. The vastness of the woods soon gave way to rounded foothills with clumps of trees, mostly pine, aspen, and birch; and these foothills soon opened into the endless sea of grass that Lionel and Beatrice had crossed at the start of their journey in the early spring of this year.

  When they cleared the last of the wooded hills, they stopped to water the horses, and Lionel stood with the forest to his back, looking out across the plain, half expecting to see Beatrice in her tiny raft navigating the great swell of grass that rose and fell before him.

  Sometime during their first night in the vast openness of the plains, Jenkins and Lumpkin escaped, choosing lives on the run rather than face what awaited them when they returned to the outpost. Lionel hoped that he never had to see them again.

  The day before they reached the school, Tom Gunn and Barney were taken by a detachment of soldiers back down to their school at Heart Butte. Tom Gunn apologized to Lionel, and gave him his pocketknife before they left. Barney tried to apologize but broke down sobbing instead.

  They rode on, and soon the rolling g
rass hills began to look familiar and Lionel felt as though he was revisiting a distant dream. word arrived at the boarding school before their return, and as they rode into the dusty streets of the outpost, people came out of their shops and businesses to stand and stare as the renegade horsemen slowly passed.

  The children of the school were gathered around the cluster of military buildings when the small party arrived. They pushed and pulled at each other trying to get a glimpse of the new boy, Corn Poe, and they reached out to touch Lionel in his buckskins and braided hair as the two boys rode, still on the captain’s horse, past the barracks and the officers’ quarters up to Ulysses’s corral.

  The school children spoke in hushed whispers about Beatrice and the men who had killed her, but as the horses passed over the last of the fading green grass of summer, it began to snow, and Lionel knew that no matter what the people said, no matter how the story was told, a simple bullet from a government gun could never kill Beatrice. Beatrice was somewhere and she would live forever.

  Epilogue

  IN THE END it was decided that Lionel, along now with Corn Poe, should return to school. They were turned over to the boarding school’s administrators who immediately stripped them of their buckskins, issued them uniforms, and took them to the outpost’s barber.

  Lionel and Corn Poe sat on rough pine benches in a cold concrete room while their hair was cut away in chunks and scattered on the floor around them. Lionel looked over at Corn Poe and the relatively pale skin of his exposed scalp and couldn’t help, for the first time in days, but smile.

  In no time, he and Corn Poe were laughing. They laughed, despite reprimand, both thinking about the lodge in the meadow and their long summer days spent running through the Great Wood. They thought about Mr. Hawkins and Junebug and the sweat lodge with Barney and Tom Gunn from Heart Butte. They thought about the wolverine and the bear and the stories of Napi the Old Man, and they laughed about the infuriated look that Beatrice had been able to instill on Jenkins’s and Lumpkin’s scowling faces. This was a laughter that was, as is the case with young boys, beyond control. For this was a laughter that could not, no matter what the governments, teachers, or Jenkinses of the world said or did, be silenced.