Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [2]
Lionel’s eyes followed Brother Finn’s long black robes as they swept down the narrow rows of the barrack. The other children got up from their bunks, pulling off their nightclothes and dressing for the day—everyone but Beatrice. Brother Finn stopped at the foot of her bunk and stared into the jumbled mess of bedding.
“Let’s go, Beatrice. Let’s not start the Lord’s day this way,” Brother Finn announced in English.
Beatrice appeared from beneath her blankets and pushed the hair from her face.
“And today is the day that your hair will be cut. You’ve been warned. You will report to the barber after Mass. Now, let’s go!”
Brother Finn continued down the row and out the other end of the room, but his cries still echoed through the barrack. Beatrice crawled out of bed and pulled on her patchwork school uniform.
Beatrice’s uniform was different from those of the other thirty-three children who attended the school. To start, it wasn’t as new; the rich navy blue color had faded, and it seemed to be more patch than original material. The Brothers told Beatrice repeatedly that she should report to the quartermaster for a new issue, but she preferred what she now wore.
Lionel looked at his sister. Her hair was dramatically longer than the rest of the children’s. It was thick—he supposed like their mother’s—and so dark that it shone almost blue in the morning light. Lionel’s hair was cropped close to his scalp, as short as the outpost’s barber’s shears could cut.
“You’ll be whipped if they hear you’re out of bed,”
Beatrice called down the row, imitating her brother’s voice. She smiled at Lionel and turned to make her bunk.
Lionel pulled his blanket tight at the corners. He couldn’t believe his sister’s stupidity.
“You will,” Lionel warned again, “and you know it.”
Lionel stepped from the relative warmth of the bunkhouse into the weak light of a late winter’s sun. He walked in silence except for the crunch of old snow that lay a few inches under the fresh. Around him, the neighboring outpost came to life. He heard, but no longer listened to, the different calls of the army men’s bugle, the rustling and rousing of livestock, and the drone and drill of military life to which he had become accustomed. Lionel watched Beatrice and some of her classmates as they poured from the girls’ side of the barracks on their way to Mass.
Beatrice’s hair was tied into two thick braids. She had been allowed to keep her long hair as she had been in the infirmary when the new regulations came from the East. The latest rules defined the manner in which the girls’ hair should be cut, and stated that they would now have a new and different uniform.
Lionel watched as Beatrice wandered in her tattered clothes behind the rest of the girls and in particular Delores Ground. Delores and the other girls proudly wore the new issue, oddly cut dresses that Lionel thought resembled the uniforms of the army men that worked on the water. The captain called them “sailors” and had shown Lionel a picture of the men standing on the bow of a great ship. The men wore white uniforms with wide collars, like Delores’s.
Lionel had a hard time trying to imagine Beatrice with the short bobbed hair and in a dress like the ones the rest of the girls now wore. But he knew that he would soon see it for himself, as the Brothers and the captain were not likely to let her slide on regulations now that she was no longer sick.
Beatrice joined Lionel, and together they walked toward the corrals, where Lionel slipped between the snow-covered pine poles. He glanced at Beatrice and thought of their grandfather, who did not want to live near the actual agency and had chosen instead his own “reservation,” a small plot on the banks of the Milk River near the northern end of the Blackfeet’s allotted lands. It was, Beatrice said, a good day’s ride from the school.
Lionel watched as his sister turned away from the corral and stood with her back to the rising sun. She angled herself slightly