Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [34]
Chapter Twenty
BUCKSKINS • WORDS OF ADVICE • FAREWELL
THE NEXT morning, their grandfather woke them and told them to dress. Lionel crawled from beneath the buffalo robe and stumbled to his clothes, which were stacked in a neat pile next to the fireplace. Folded on top, Lionel found the buckskin leggings. He looked over excitedly and saw Beatrice pulling on her new shirt.
Along with her long braids and hawk feathers, Beatrice looked like a page from the painted picture book of “savages” that the Brothers had showed Lionel once in the library at the boarding school. well, except for the fact the painted “savage” in the book wore a fierce scowl, not the ear-to-ear grin that was plastered across Beatrice’s beaming face.
Once dressed, they had berries and coffee for breakfast—Lionel showing better judgment this time as to the amount of berries he ate. Then their grandfather walked them through all that he had showed them, starting at the stream with the berries, then turning to the garden, the Great wood, and the smokehouse.
They returned to the lodge, and Grandpa brought his mule around and loaded up his gear. while he packed, Beatrice and Lionel sat with him; Beatrice doing her best to tie small cardinal and blue jay feathers into Lionel’s growing hair.
Then Grandpa cinched the last of his belongings. “Well, I best be goin’. The soldiers will be back by my place the day after next. I counted.”
He kneeled down and pulled Lionel and Beatrice close.
“They make their rounds about every ten days or so, and I’m sure they’ll be eager to come by my place and check for you. Soldiers are prone to stick to their habits, I’ve noticed.”
Grandpa looked sad as he hugged them. He stood and threw his leg over his old mule.
“You two take care of each other, you hear? I’ll be back as soon as I can, and we’ll figure out our next move.” Then he spun his mule around and vanished into the Great wood.
A dark sense of melancholy hung over Lionel and Beatrice that afternoon. They stayed busy, continuing their grandfather’s prescribed daily regimen of tending the garden and practicing with their bows and arrows, but it wasn’t the same.
As the days passed, their moods improved, and they soon found themselves laughing and taking turns telling each other of the travels of Napi the old Man and counting down the days until their grandfather’s return.
Chapter Twenty-One
LONG DAYS, COOL NIGHTS • DRUMS IN THE DEEP WOODS • BUSHWHACKED
SPRING SOON turned to summer, and the children did as their grandfather had taught them. They swam in the cool pools of the stream and raided the hillsides for blackberries and raspberries, much like the grizzly. They dug for grubs and beetles under the rotted logs of the forest as they had observed the wolverine and the badger do. Like the hawk and eagle, they waited patiently for the precise moment before releasing the taut string of the bow while hunting the squirrels and rabbits; and they silently stalked the elk and deer just like the mountain lion.
Their feet grew tough; Lionel’s hair grew long; and Beatrice’s grew longer. In their buckskin leggings and shirts that Grandpa had made, it would have been hard for anyone from the boarding school to even recognize them.
They started each day by swimming in the stream. Then they saw to the garden or hunted or fished, depending on what the stores in the smokehouse dictated. At night they sat around the fire making arrows or lay in the cool grass of the meadow, staring up at the endless sea of stars.
The children cut the hides and skins of the elk and deer from their hunts and fashioned them into clothes to repair or replace the worn-out wool and heavy canvas garments that had been issued back on the reservation. They missed their grandfather but soon came to enjoy the solace of their new home and made friends with their neighbors the grizzly, raven, wolverine, and the other creatures that occupied the Great wood.
After a while,