Starfish by James Crowley Read Free Book Online Page A

danced around the cast-iron cauldron that hung in the stone fireplace.
    â€œThere’s more stew in there, boy,” Grandpa reminded Lionel as he threw a small piece of birch wood onto the fire.
    A strong north wind whipped at the tiny cabin, a last-ditch effort to extend winter just one storm longer. Lionel was tired, and his stomach had never been this full.
    Corn Poe slept next to Lionel, and from the sound of his snoring, slept soundly. The small boy hadn’t moved since he had finished his third helping of stew and collapsed in front of the fire, rubbing his thin, pale legs. Now Lionel lay wrapped in a thick buffalo robe, listening to Corn Poe’s heavy, labored breathing and Beatrice’s retelling of their escape from the boarding school and the soldiers’ outpost. It had all happened so fast.
    As Beatrice told of the Frozen Man and how the soldiers had laughed and stolen from him, Grandpa’s face looked first sad and then angry. But he didn’t say anything. Not a word.
    Beatrice went on about the priest, and that all she wanted to do was to pray like her mother used to. Beatrice told Grandpa that she wanted to learn these prayers, not the prayers that the government made for them. Then Beatrice told Grandpa about Sergeant Haskell Jenkins and Private Samuel Lumpkin and how they held her under the freezing water and tried to cut her hair with the sheep shears.
    Lionel stared at the fire, but all he could see was Jenkins’s snarling smirk and the darker-than-midnight black leather of his coarse eye patch.
    Beatrice told Grandpa how she drove the sheep shears through Jenkins’s hand and that she was worried because she did not feel bad about it…not in the least. She told him that Jenkins deserved it and she would do it again, or worse, if given the opportunity. Then Beatrice told Grandpa about Lionel, and Ulysses the great horse.
    Grandpa leaned over and smoothed Lionel’s hair with his big hand. Lionel felt happy wrapped in the buffalo robe, lying before the fire with a belly full of food, listening to his sister. But Lionel also had a feeling that everything had suddenly changed.
    Grandpa sat back in his rocking chair by the fire to pack and light his pipe.
    â€œWell, the government can’t be too happy. I wonder how long it will take them to figure out that you’d come and try to find me,” Grandpa said after a while. “The snow helps, but they’re coming.”
    Grandpa took a long draw on his pipe. He released a swirl of smoke that hung in the rafters. “They are definitely coming.”
    â€œI’m sorry, but let ’em come,” Beatrice said almost without emotion. “They can’t catch me. I’m never going back.”
    Grandpa took another draw; Lionel and Beatrice listened to the low crackling burn of its embers. Rings of smoke followed and drifted about the room amid the fire’s dancing light.
    Lionel shifted and felt the bear claws dig into his side. He was ashamed to show them to anyone, but wondered if his grandfather could tell him if the Frozen Man might need the claws wherever it was he had gone.
    Lionel broke the silence. “Grandpa?”
    â€œYes, Lionel?”
    â€œWhere did the Frozen Man go?”
    â€œWhere did he go?” their grandfather asked, leaning farther back in his rocker.
    â€œYes, I don’t understand. At the school they said that—”
    â€œAh well, at school,” Grandpa interrupted, “people say a lot of things; and me, I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
    â€œAt the beginning,” Lionel answered.
    â€œListen to him, will you?” Their grandfather laughed, exhaling a large cloud from his pipe. “It’s a long story, but maybe you’re right. To get to the end, it just might be better to start at the beginning.”
    Lionel lost his grandfather’s face for a moment in the smoke.
    â€œBut this was a long time ago. Back in the days