Starfish_ A Novel - James Crowley [49]
Mr. Hawkins found this to be rather amusing and it took him some time to control his laughter. “Ya know, Lionel, I suppose I should take it as a good sign that ya ain’t never seen none of our blood.”
Mr. Hawkins went back to sharpening the pencil between small bursts of steady laughter. “In all my travels, that’s the first on that one. Red blood.”
“Where are ya from, Mr. Hawkins?” Lionel asked as Mr. Hawkins’s laughter subsided.
“Why, that’s a good question, Lionel. I’m from a bit of the all-over, really,” Mr. Hawkins answered, slowly exposing the remaining lead. “I know that things have changed down where you’re from, but the fact remains that you’re still from there. Your people been here for a long time. My people, whoever they are, been scattered all over the world.”
“So, you don’t know where you’re from?” Lionel persisted.
“Well, kinda. I ended up here outta Texas. Like I was sayin’, I was with the army and now, on this particular mountain, well that’s a whole other story. Before Texas, I was on the coast in the Carolinas, back east. Before that, I know that my mother was born down in the islands, somewhere’s south of Cuba. You can hear a bit of that in my voice, I reckon, but not too much anymore. Ya know a long, long time ago I hear that my folks is from some part of Africa, but I ain’t never been there.”
Mr. Hawkins leaned over and pulled his saddlebag closer. “I suppose I don’t know which is worse, being taken from the place you’re from or having where you’re from taken from you. Either way, it’s a sorry state of affairs that we both better learn to make the best of ’cause it ain’t gonna change. It’s done, and that ol’ clock ain’t gonna turn itself back.”
Mr. Hawkins threw open the flap of his saddlebag and fished around until he found a small, well-worn wooden box. “Let me show you something.”
Mr. Hawkins opened the box and removed an object that was wrapped in red silk. Lionel thought at first that it was some sort of strangely shaped rock.
“Here ya go,” Mr. Hawkins said, “but be careful with it. My mother gave me that. It’s from the island where she was born.”
Lionel took it from Hawkins and held it gingerly in his hand. It was as hard as a rock but as light as a pinecone. It had five stubby appendages surrounding its center, and when Lionel turned it over, he noticed a hole in the middle that could have very well been a mouth. Surrounding the mouth and trailing out of each limb, there were hundreds if not thousands of what looked like hairs, orange hairs: little orange hairs, with a mouth that had turned to stone.
“You know what it is?” Mr. Hawkins asked.
“No, I never seen nothin’ like it.”
“It’s the knobby star, Piaster giganteus.”
“Piaster giganteus?”
“Yeah, it’s a starfish.”
Lionel turned it over in his hand again. “This is a fish?”
“Kind of.”
“This was alive?”
“Yep, just like you and me. They live in the saltwater down in the oceans. You ever seen an ocean?”
“No, but I seen pictures back at the school. The captain told me that they’re so big you can’t see the other side. I saw a picture of the army men on the boats. They was fixin’ to cross ’em.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet they were,” Mr. Hawkins said.
“How did it die?” Lionel asked.
“How did what die?”
“The starfish.”
“I don’t know ’cause I wasn’t there, but I reckon it was like these fish here that we pull outta the stream. Sometimes when you take something out of where or how it’s supposed to be, it’ll just…well…it just dies.”
“Everything?”
“Naw, not everything, some things change, they adapt,” Hawkins said, taking the starfish back and wrapping it in the red silk handkerchief.
“Can I look at the starfish again some time?”
“Why, of course you can. whenever you like, as long as you’re careful. It means a lot to me as it’s the only thing I got left that my mother ever give me, well exceptin’ the purple and green blood that flows through these veins.” Mr. Hawkins laughed.
Lionel looked upstream to his sister. Beatrice reached down, submerging herself in the pool,