Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [39]
“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