Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [37]
“What about you? I heard y’all ran away and stole the captain’s horse. where you been keeping yerselves?”
“Just travelin’ the woods,” Beatrice said. “Headin’ north.”
“Yeah, that’s what I heard. To Canada.”
“Yep, Canada.”
“Ya know the government put a bounty on yer heads? Five bucks a piece for your return, fifty for the horse.”
Beatrice looked up at Barney with an icy stare. “Is that right?”
“Yep, and they’re offerin’ up to ten whole cents for a gopher tail,” Corn Poe spat. “Tryin’ to rid the reservation of ’em for the farmers.”
Lionel looked over at Corn Poe, who stood over the fire. He couldn’t believe how different he looked. He thought that he must have grown a couple of inches to boot.
Corn Poe threw some more wood on the fire. “We’re gonna do a sweat, then dance. Last night I had a vision.”
“You ever had the vision?” Barney said, standing.
Beatrice shook her head.
“You should stay and join us,” Barney replied, placing a couple of smooth river stones directly into the hot coals. “We’ll heat these up and then bring ’em into the lodge. Pour on some water and they steam ’er right up.
“Saaám,” Barney concluded, more to Beatrice than anyone else.
Beatrice nodded as if she understood.
“We ain’t ate nothing in two days. Barely had any water. Right, Barney?” Corn Poe added. “Helps you get your vision.”
They sat by the fire, heating the rocks as the day crept across the woods into early evening. Lionel was hungry. He thought about the food that he and Beatrice had packed and was troubled that he would not be able to touch it until after the ceremony had taken place. Lionel considered that he and his sister had already done this ceremony “of not eating” the two days after they left the school, and he wasn’t all that excited about doing it again, especially when, this time around, they had more of a choice in the matter.
Barney stepped around the fire and toward Ulysses. Ulysses pawed at the earth and lowered his ears.
“Didn’t this horse win the pull last year?” Barney asked, trying to smooth Ulysses’s mane.
“Might have,” Beatrice answered suspiciously.
“Yeah, I can see why they put up the fifty. That there is a helluva horse you stole.” Barney left Ulysses and sat back down by the fire. “Did you ever hear about Napi the old Man?”
Lionel looked up, full of excitement. “Yeah, our grandpa told us about him.”
“He used to steal things too,” Barney said, poking a stick into the fire and looking at Beatrice.
Lionel noticed that Beatrice didn’t like the way that Barney emphasized the word “steal.”
“No, we never heard about that,” Lionel said.
“You ever hear that old Man and the Sun were friends?”
“The sun?” Lionel responded, now more confused than ever.
“You betcha, and they loved to hunt. See, the old Man liked venison, so he says, ‘I like venison. Let’s go hunt some deers.’ That’s all it took. So, the twose of ’em got their kit together for the hunt, with the Sun bringing out the most beautiful pair of leggings that Napi the old Man had ever seen. Porcupine quills were embroidered down the sides, along with feathers and pieces of strange shells the likes of which he’d never before laid eyes on.”
Lionel noticed that Corn Poe was reaching across a small kid sitting next to him, trying to touch the leggings that Lionel’s grandfather had made him. Beatrice saw too and promptly reached out and slapped Corn Poe’s hand.
“‘These here leggings carry big medicine,’ the Sun told the old Man. ‘when I’m wearing them, all I have to do is walk around a bush and it will light on fire. The fire drives all of the deers out of hiding so that we can hunt them.’
“With that, the two went out to hunt, and just as the Sun had said, the first bush they passed burst into flames. Two large white-tailed bucks ran from the brush, and the Sun and the old Man shot them. That night they went back to the Sun’s lodge, ate well, and with bellies full of