Starfish (11 page)

T
HE
S
WEAT
• A V
ISION
• B
LACK
M
ASK
• B
ONFIRES
& C
ORN
L
IQUOR
• E
LUDING
B
ARNEY
L
ITTLE
P
LUME

LIONEL DUCKED
his head and crawled into the sweat lodge. It was smaller than he expected, and he immediately tripped over Corn Poe's feet and fell forward onto Beatrice and Barney. Barney roughly shoved him to his left, where Lionel had to immediately move to make room for another kid about Barney's age but as skinny as Barney was fat.

“I'm Tom,” the skinny kid said. “Tom Gunn.”

Tom sat in between Lionel and Corn Poe. “You're a helluva a ballplayer there, Beatrice. The Headmaster's gonna go red when he finds out you're a girl.”

Tom had two sad-looking turkey quills, one of them bent, hanging from his hair. They'd lost most of their down and feather somewhere long ago. “Good to meet you,” he said, extending his hand. Beatrice shook it and then moved to the side for a kid who had entered with a bucket of cold water.

Toward the center of the lodge was a ring of stones, and in the middle of that there was already a pile of river rocks. The kid poured the water onto the rocks, and they immediately erupted in a cacophony of pops and sizzles, spitting hot, frothy bubbles onto Lionel's and the other children's feet.

Barney held a bundle of sweet grass before him, then lit it with a blue-tipped match. Smoke from the grass rose in translucent wisps toward the center of the lodge. Lionel watched as it climbed upward and then hung a few feet above their heads. He was already light-headed, hot and sitting so close to the other children, sweating. Barney was the worst, he thought. Rivers fell from the folds of his flesh, splashing onto Lionel with his every turn, nod, or jiggle—and one time he sneezed, showering all in an explosion of perspiration and mucus.

Barney sang a low song similar to the song that Beatrice had sung back at the chapel. He then held the grass under his face and passed the bundle to his left to Lionel. Lionel held the grass in front of him and took in the sweet, smoky smell. It reminded him of the rolling open prairie where the boarding school sat, and the summers they had spent working with the Brothers in the fields behind the school.

Lionel looked at Beatrice, who motioned gently with her eyes to his left. He passed the sweet grass on to Tom, who inhaled the smoke and then passed it to a small boy who now sat next to Corn Poe.

When it came to Corn Poe he took the grass and held it above his head. He started to sing a low song that didn't stay low for long. It grew quickly, and in Lionel's opinion was more reminiscent of the music that was played when the captain's wife had taught them the Virginia Reel and Lionel had danced with Delores Ground. He wondered if Delores remembered him or if she would even recognize him. He wondered what Corn Poe was praying for.

Lionel wasn't sure how long they sat there. He leaned his head back against the bent-bough skin of the structure and listened to Barney tell them of his exploits back at the Heart Butte school. Lionel figured he must have fallen asleep for a minute, because somehow Barney's explanation turned into Beatrice's story of the old Man creating their world and showing them how to make the bow and arrow.

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.

A
SLEEP IN THE
W
OODS
• C
ORN
P
OE'S
D
ECLARATION
• A V
ISITOR

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.