Chapter Four
SHEEP SHEARS • LIONEL’S RUN • ESCAPE • ROLLING SEAS OF SNOW
LIONEL COULD hear Ulysses over the soldiers’ raised voices and Beatrice’s struggle. He could see the great horse running from one side of the corral to the other, kicking out his back legs and snorting at the wind. He craned his neck further and through the dirty colored glass could see the soldiers surround his sister.
“Aye, the Monsignor’s patience has run out, has it?” Jenkins shouted. He took hold of the back of Beatrice’s shirt and dragged her across the snow toward the water trough and the Frozen Man. “Private Lumpkin, I think we’ll save the barber some trouble. Bring them sheep shears from the shed.”
Private Lumpkin looked up from the hidden bottle to Sergeant Jenkins.
“Come on.” Jenkins’s voice grew more impatient. “I ain’t have all day to be dedicatin’ to the beautification of Injuns.”
A small trickle of blood dripped from Beatrice’s ear and onto the fresh fallen snow. Lionel saw Beatrice look up at Jenkins and then toward the chapel, but the doors to the chapel were closed.
Lionel watched Lumpkin disappear into the tack room and return with a long pair of rusted iron sheep shears.
“We best be making sure she’s clean, first.” Jenkins laughed as he yanked Beatrice up and over the side of the trough.
“Eyes in front, now!” Brother Thomas warned, and Lionel turned to the altar and the crucifix. He stared at the silent statue’s thorny crown and the blood that ran down the sides of its face. He looked back to Beatrice and watched in horror as Jenkins cracked the ice on top of the trough’s cold water with his sister’s head.
Lionel looked again to Ulysses and then, without thinking, broke free from Brother Thomas’s grip and ran. Brother Thomas tried to follow but tripped, this time over the kneeler. The rest of the children spun around, their eyes following Lionel as he burst out the doors and down the steps.
“Settle down there, let me get ahold of ya,” Jenkins continued, forcing Beatrice’s head below the water’s surface. Beatrice struggled, then seemed to relax, her body still moving but with less fight. “Ah, there we go. Perhaps a bit of a breather.”
Jenkins pulled Beatrice’s head from the water and stared at her as one might watch a landed fish gasping for its last breath.
“Gimme them shears!” Jenkins barked, his breath smelling of the corn liquor from the Frozen Man’s bottle. He shoved Beatrice’s head under a second time. Beatrice struggled but again could not break free.
“God damn it, hold still!” Jenkins cried as he tried to get a good grip on Beatrice with one hand, holding the shears with the other. Beatrice briefly broke the surface.
Lionel reached the men and hurled himself at them as best he could by pouncing on Private Lumpkin’s back. Lumpkin quickly threw him off, and he landed with a thud against Ulysses’s corral.
“What’s with you, boy? Have you lost yer mind?”
Lumpkin glanced at Lionel in disbelief before turning back to Beatrice.
Brother Finn and some of the other children appeared on the steps of the chapel. Anger flashed across Brother Finn’s face, followed quickly by confusion. Lionel turned to Ulysses, who now stood over him pawing at the muddy dirt, then slipped quietly into the corral.
“Put her back under, that’ll get her to stop all that kickin’!” Lumpkin yelled, grabbing ahold of Beatrice and shoving her beneath the surface once again.
“Sergeant!” Brother Finn barked as he ran down the steps toward the trough.
Jenkins set the shears down to readjust his grip on the back of Beatrice’s neck. “Alright, let her up.”
They pulled Beatrice, gasping, to the surface, and from there everything seemed to happen at once. Beatrice filled her lungs with the cold morning air. She saw the shears on the top of the trough, swept them up, and brought them down hard, pinning Jenkins’s hand to the frozen wood. Then, everything stopped.
Jenkins looked at Beatrice, then down. The shears were now perpendicular to the trough, and to Jenkins’s hand. A steady stream of blood poured from the wound as if the dark liquid were actually spouting from the shears.
Lumpkin and the other men pulled Beatrice from the top of the trough and dropped her into the bloody snow at its base. Jenkins fell back and tried to free his hand. The pain caught up with him. He turned to Beatrice and growled through clenched teeth, “I’ll kill you for this! I swear to God I will kill you!”
The commotion emptied the chapel, adding to the confusion. Children ran screaming. Some stood in shock.
“What is this?” Brother Thomas yelled, as bewildered as the children. “What is this?”
Jenkins pulled the shears from his hand and tried to kick at Beatrice, who scrambled backward out of his reach. Lumpkin and the other soldiers struggled to grab her, but then, in the midst of the uncertainty, there was suddenly a horse. The men fell back as the horse barreled through them toward Beatrice.
Lionel’s hands were wound through Ulysses’s mane. He rode without regret at the men, and they scattered. Lionel moved toward Beatrice, who lay in the snow trying to catch her breath. As he approached, Beatrice jumped, and in a single fluid motion, threw her arm around Ulysses’s neck and swung up behind her brother onto the horse’s back.
The addition of Beatrice seemed to propel Ulysses forward, and soon the three of them were nearing the edge of the tiny outpost. Lionel looked back at the chaos that churned around the trough. He saw the priest, Brother Finn, Brother Thomas, and the soldiers. He saw Delores and the other children. He saw the Frozen Man.
Lionel turned back to the never-ending sea of snow that stretched before them. He buried his head in Ulysses’s mane and held on as best he could.