Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [46]
Lionel paused to let his eyes adjust to the darkness before stepping from the grass into the turned earth of the garden. He looked up at the countless stars and listened to the crashing movement of the stream in the distance.
“How come this fellow over here, Junebug as you call him, never says nothin’?” Lionel heard Corn Poe ask. “I seem to notice that you’re the one doin’ all the talkin’.”
“Oh, Junebug will say plenty if you listen,” Hawkins said without turning from the flames, “but he don’t have the words that you or I have. He’s a mute.”
“Mute. well, I suppose that would explain it,” Corn Poe said, looking to Junebug and then suddenly raising his voice. “I just thought you was rude or somethin’!”
Mr. Hawkins let out a long, bellowing laugh that was soon accompanied by a strange but similar version of the same laugh from Junebug. It was the first sound that any of them had heard from the boy since they had met him at gunpoint late that afternoon.
“Why, he’s mute. He can’t talk. That don’t mean he’s deaf,” Mr. Hawkins said through his laughter. “I don’t mean to chuckle, but we’ve seen it done before. The few people we see, always raisin’ their voices when they hear that he don’t speak like we do, when there’s no need. He hears better than any of us do, but people always want to raise their voices when they talk to him. Ain’t that right, Junebug?”
Junebug nodded his head in agreement, his strange laugh bubbling into a slight giggle. As Lionel returned from the darkness with a large melon, he noticed that Beatrice’s face had slipped into a smile, and that even Corn Poe couldn’t help but laugh, despite the laughter being somewhat at his own expense. Lionel figured that Corn Poe may have become accustomed to this position.
“And Mr. Lionel with the melon. That sure looks like a good one. Here, boy, let’s set it over there.” Hawkins took the melon and laid it next to his saddle by the fire and then, raising his voice to thunderous proportions: “or should I say over there!”
They all settled around the fire to eat, but continued to giggle and take turns speaking in the loud manner in which Corn Poe had addressed Junebug. The tension that had occupied the afternoon and early evening seemed to erode, and even Beatrice took a turn, asking, rather loudly at one point, for Lionel to pass her another piece of freshly cut melon. This brought relieved laughter from Mr. Hawkins most of all, and after they had all finished, they settled back in the grass around the fire and looked up at the endless sea of stars.
“Oh, man, that was some good eatin’ there, Mr. Hawkins,” Corn Poe announced. “I was as hungry as a horse, but now I feel like a swolled-up tick a-fixin’ to pop.”
“Yes, it was, and I’d like to thank all of y’all for havin’ me and the boy,” Mr. Hawkins added. “I didn’t know what to think when I saw old Beatrice there sneaking up to my horse dressed the way y’all’s dressed. I ain’t seen no Indians in clothes like that in some time. You must be from the Blackfeet rez down below, huh?”
“Yes, sir, we are. But we’re renegades, on account of them trying to force the Blackfeet outta us,” Corn Poe declared.
“I do know that feelin’,” Mr. Hawkins answered, reaching for a small leather bag and pulling from it a pipe that he packed with tobacco.
“Hey, our grandpa smokes a pipe like that,” Lionel observed, then looked to Beatrice for approval.
“Is that right?” Mr. Hawkins asked, lighting the pipe. The big man sat smoking, his knees fixed to the insides of his elbows, staring off, lost in the fire.
It was quiet for some time, and Lionel thought that he might have dozed off for a minute. It had been a long day, and one that was not to be forgotten. Lionel was startled by a soft whinny that he recognized to be Ulysses, who was resting somewhere in the darkness of the meadow surrounding them. The Hawkinses’ horses answered, and then they all seemed to settle back down around the fire.
“That’s a helluva horse,” Mr. Hawkins said, breaking what passed for silence in the meadow with the distant sound