Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [0]
Illustrations copyright © 2010 by Jim Madsen
All rights reserved. Published by Disney • Hyperion Books, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Disney • Hyperion Books, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.
First Edition
Printed in the United States of America
Designed by Elizabeth H. Clark
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
ISBN 978-1-4231-4639-1
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Table of Contents
Prologue
Part One
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Part Two
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Part Three
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Glossary
References
Acknowledgments
Questions
About the Author
For Doc and Jude
Prologue
THE SNOW that fell through the night let up near morning but continued to swirl and whip around the government barracks and outbuildings of the Chalk Bluff Indian reservation. Against a night sky, the structures’ silhouettes looked like ghostly ships crossing the desolate, rolling hills of the high Montana plain.
An old man felt his way along the buildings, his gnarled hand brushing against the neglected, paint-peeled walls. In his other hand, he clutched a bottle and the corner of a tattered gray army blanket, which he fought to keep wrapped around his shoulders.
The old man steadied himself, drew a long pull of corn liquor from the heavy green glass bottle, then stumbled toward the small corral that ran adjacent to the barracks. He remembered the days before there were buildings like this, or of any kind, on the land—the days when he had been known as a great warrior, a great hunter. But that was a long time ago. Now he was known as a drunk.
The old man reached the corral and fell to his knees in a deep bank of snow. He mumbled a song, and the singing seemed to summon a shadowy presence from the darkness. The man looked up at the shadow, the snow landing in tiny wet kisses on his face.
As the shadow moved closer, the old man let the army blanket drop from his shoulders. A string of heavy bear claws hung from his withered neck. He pulled the strand over his head, reached out to the night, and collapsed.
Part One
Chapter One
BEATRICE & THE POTBELLIED STOVE • THE BOARDING SCHOOL • THEIR HISTORY
LIONEL WOKE to a familiar drip. An icicle had appeared in the corner of the window next to his bed one night and had proceeded, over the course of the winter, to find a way through the seam of the frame and into the barrack. In the fading moonlight, he watched as a single droplet of water wound slowly down the icicle’s smooth contours. From there, Lionel knew, it would pass over the frozen and rotting wood of the windowsill, then hold for a moment before dropping with annoying regularity into the small puddle beside his bed.
The steady plinking sound reminded Lionel of the piano that the Brothers who ran the Chalk Bluff boarding school played from time to time. As Lionel lay listening to the monotonous drops, he heard another sound—the faint hint of movement coming from the girls’ end of the barrack.
The girls and boys had once lived in separate barracks, but ever since the girls’ bunkhouse had burned to the ground, they had been housed in opposite ends of the same building. Lionel stared