Читать книгу Heartsong - James Welch - Страница 10
ОглавлениеCHAPTER TWO
Charging Elk spent his first night of freedom in a narrow alley behind a bread bakery that fronted on the street two blocks from the sickhouse. The smell of the baking bread made him hungry, and he remembered those times in Paris when he and some of his friends would go to such a house to buy the puffy things filled with fruit or chocolate. Boulangerie. It was one of the words he recognized. And charcuterie, where they would buy sticks of greasy meat. Brasserie and café. The interpreters always named things.
He had found a place near the building where the warm air came out to the alley through a wooden grate. He had to be careful because there was a small door that was open, in spite of the December cold. Once he saw a cigarette arc out of the doorway and land, a small orange glow, on the rough cobblestones. By the time he thought it was safe to retrieve it, the fire was gone. It was still night, but Charging Elk could sense, more than see, a slight lightening in the sky above the alley.
He wasn’t as strong as he’d thought he was. Only two blocks from the sickhouse, his ribs hurt so bad he thought he would collapse if he didn’t lean against a building. It was while he was recovering his breath, breathing so shallowly he thought he might pass out from lack of air, that he had spied the alley beside the boulangerie. As he crossed the street, he could see a man in a white cap carrying a tray of small breads to the glass case and he wondered how he could get one of the breads.
He had no white man coins. Centimes. During the good days in Paris, he almost always had centimes. Although Buffalo Bill sent most of his money to his parents, he got a handful of centimes every other week. Also, some paper money. Frogskins they were called in America. Here the paper money was of many different colors and sizes and was called francs. Charging Elk got five francs when he and some of the others on their days off were taken to look at the sights of Paris. Once they looked at statues or pictures in a long house of wood floors and stone stairs; once they went to a showhouse and listened to a lady with large breasts sing high and big; another time, on a hot day, they went into a house of many prayers and sat in the cool gloom while the interpreter, who spoke French and a funny kind of American, told Broncho Billy, who spoke American and Oglala, what it was they were seeing. Charging Elk and the others listened patiently but he didn’t remember much in particular—just that the church belonged to a virgin mother. Sees Twice, a reservation Indian who had become a believer in the white man’s god, tried to make them believe that a virgin could become a mother, and in fact was the mother of their savior, whose father was much bigger than Wakan Tanka. Nobody believed him, but when he dipped his fingers in the holy water and crossed his chest in four directions, they did it too. Featherman tasted his fingers to see if the holy water was really mni wakan. The others laughed at his joke.
Charging Elk opened his eyes and it was lighter. He didn’t know if he had fallen asleep or had just quit thinking. He was sitting on a piece of heavy paper he had found, but now his whole body was stiff with cold. The wall behind his back was cold and the warm air of the bakery didn’t seem to be enough. He could smell the bread, the heavy sweet smell, as intense as dewy sagebrush in the morning when the sun first strikes it. Charging Elk liked to go out behind the lodges then and take a piss and listen to the yellowbreasts tune up for the day. He became good at imitating their clear trilling song. On these mornings he would whistle and one of them would answer, then another. The sun burning the dew off the sagebrush made him light-headed with the sharp sweet odor and he thanked Wakan Tanka for giving him another gift.
He had been a child then, nine or ten winters, and his people were on the run but free. Now he was twenty-three and lost in a big white man’s town. For a moment or two he pitied himself, but the smell of the bread was making his guts rumble and he knew he would have to do something about it.
Just a few days ago, he had been part of Buffalo Bill’s Wild West show and he had had plenty of centimes in his new purse, enough to buy coffee and chocolate bread and ice cream, and on the sly, mni dha, the forbidden wine. When he and the others walked down a street in their blue wool leggings and fancy shirts and blankets, with their earrings and feathers and brass armbands, the French would stop and stare. Sometimes they would clap their hands and cheer, just like the audiences in the arenas. But the Oglalas would walk by as though they were alone in their own world. Only Featherman would smile and wave. He was never sick for home. More than once he said that if he found the right woman who would take care of him, he would stay. There was nothing left at home. The American bosses were making the ikce wicasa plant potatoes and corn. What kind of life was that for the people who ran the buffaloes?
Now Featherman was dead. He had no woman but he got to stay here. And his nagi would never go home to be with the long-ago people. Charging Elk felt a sharp shiver go up his back and he knew he would have to stand up. As he contemplated his move, he wondered if he could find Featherman. In Paris, he and the others had toured a big stone field where the white men buried each other in the ground. If he could find Featherman’s stone, maybe he could perform a ceremony, just as he had seen the wicasa wakan do many times at the Stronghold, to release his friend’s spirit. The thought brightened him for an instant, until he remembered how many stones there were in such fields.
Charging Elk steadied himself against the wall, rolling his shoulders and flexing his knees. He was too cold to feel the pain in his ribs. He had thought earlier, after his escape from the sickhouse, that he should undo the tight cloth around his abdomen, but he hadn’t, and now he was grateful for the skimpy layer. But the coat was good and heavy and he soon felt a little warmer. He pulled the lapels closer under his chin and looked at the yellow light coming from the open side door. The smell of the bread made him weak and he knew he would have to try for some or he might go hungry all day.
Just as he took a step toward the door, he heard the clop-clop-clop of a horse’s hooves against the cobblestones of the street. He flattened himself against the wall and listened to the clop-clop-clop come closer. Then he saw the horse. It was pulling a wagon filled with something under a bulky covering. A man sat bundled up in the seat, holding the reins, a pipe between his teeth. As Charging Elk watched the wagon disappear beyond the alleyway, he smelled something sharp and unpleasant. It was a smell he recognized. The smell of the sea.
But now he knew it was light enough for anyone coming by to see him, so he eased himself toward the door. He held his breath, alert and unafraid. He glanced quickly around the corner and he saw a woman bent over a table. She was rubbing some raw bread into a long shape. As he stood against the wall, he thought of what else he had seen. Two heavy black ovens in the wall, a sink, another table, three or four long baskets. Then he heard a voice, a man’s voice. The woman said something and the voice answered, then it was quiet. Charging Elk peeked around the corner again. And he focused on the baskets. There were three of them and they were filled with the longbread. He knew this bread. Sometimes he and his friends would eat at the big grub tent at the Buffalo Bill compound in the Bois de Boulogne and they would have this longbread. It was crackly and soft at the same time and it was good to dunk into their pejuta sapa in the morning.
The woman was of middle age and small. Her sleeves were rolled up and her arms were strong and wiry. Her hair was tucked up under a white cap and she wore a white apron. She was standing sideways to the door and Charging Elk knew that she would see him right away if he tried to sneak behind her. He thought of just running in, and if necessary, throwing her aside and grabbing a longbread. But he knew he couldn’t run in, much less run away, and they would catch him and take him back to the sickhouse, or worse, the iron house, where they kept the bad ones.
Just as Charging Elk thought of getting away from there, he heard the mans voice calling from another place. He heard the woman answer and she sounded annoyed. He peeked again and he saw the woman wiping her hands on her apron. Then she walked slump-shouldered and grumbling to the front of the store with its glass cases. Charging Elk wasted no time. He stepped up into the room and sneaked as quickly as he could to the baskets. He took two longbreads, tucked them into his coat, and left as quietly as he had come.
The cobblestones of the narrow alley were damp and grimy as he hurried away in the direction opposite that which he had entered. It was dark in the lee of the tall buildings and he had to watch his step, but the bread felt warm against his chest. Any moment he thought he might hear some shouting and steps running after him. He couldn’t run and even now his ribs were aching with a sharpness that caused him to catch his breath in shallow gulps.
Finally he reached the opposite end of the alley and he slipped into an alcove that had been a doorway but was now bricked up. He glanced back. There was no one there. He stood for a moment until he could breathe almost normally, then he slid down until he was squatting on his haunches. He didn’t want to sit because it took so long to get up.
He reached into the coat and broke off a piece of longbread and chewed it greedily. It was warm and good and it reminded him of his mother’s bread. Doubles Back Woman had learned to bake bread in the iron stove in her little shack. When he and his good kola, Strikes Plenty, went to visit his parents, she would bake bread for them. They would eat bread with butter and honey and drink pejuta sapa. She always had a pot of black medicine on top of the stove and they would drink it out of tin cups with handles. Then she would fix some boiled meat, if they had meat, and turnips and potatoes. Even as his mouth was full of good bread, he longed for the boiled meat. He and Strikes Plenty could eat as much food as his mother put in front of them.
Charging Elk now chewed less greedily and more thoughtfully as he remembered the day Buffalo Bill’s scouts came to Pine Ridge to select the young Oglalas who would go away and tour with the Wild West show. Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty had been visiting his parents when his father, Scrub, casually mentioned that the young men of the village were to gather in three sleeps to show themselves off for the scouts. They were very excited because the show would take them to a land beyond a big water. It was the favored land to the east where the white men came from. They had never seen Indians and they would treat the Indians like important chiefs. A handful of the men had gone to another land across the water two years before and they saw Grandmother England and her man. This Grandmother had many children in many lands. She was called a queen and her man was a prince. The prince had ridden in the show’s stagecoach while the Indians chased it around the arena. Then all the white chiefs wanted to be chased by the Indians. They may have been important bosses in their land but they were like children who wanted the Indians to chase them. One of the Indians, Red Shirt, even got to shake hands with these royal chiefs. It was he who told the Oglalas that the queen was Grandmother to all the Indians across the medicine line to the north. He said it was a small world to the white men.
Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty went back into the hills after learning this news, but they did not return to the Stronghold. Instead, they camped along a small creek and talked for two days. The second day it rained, a light cold spring rain, and they built a small shelter of willows, draping their canvas groundcloths over it. They sat before a fire and chewed on drymeat and frybread that Charging Elk’s mother had given them. They were young and had never been out of their country. The thought of crossing a big water frightened them. Scrub had told them that, according to Red Shirt, it took several sleeps to cross this water in a big fire boat. Sometimes the water was angry and tossed the boat like a twig on a river during runoff time. That’s when everybody got sick and wanted to die. This is what Red Shirt said.
Such a frightening prospect was tempered by many good things: The Indians were treated well, they got enough to eat, they saw curious things, they got to show off before thousands of people, and they made more of the white man’s money than they could spend. The bosses sent much of their money home to their parents.
Still, Charging Elk had hesitated. The thought of dying on the big water terrified him. What good would such a journey be if you didn’t come back from it?
Strikes Plenty, though, was tired of life at the Stronghold. Sometimes the meat was scarce. The winters were always harsh in the badlands. He was beginning to feel isolated from his family at the Whirlwind Compound. When he went there, he felt more and more like a stranger, as though he were of a different band, the Stronghold band. “What good is this life we now lead?” he had said to Charging Elk. “What good will come of it? One day we will be old men and we will have nothing but memories of bad winters and no meat and no woman. I do not want this.”
Charging Elk had been surprised to hear his kola talk like this. They had never spoken of leaving the Stronghold. It was true that Charging Elk himself had had these very thoughts, but when he visited his parents and saw the way the people lived on the reservation, he quickly put them away. “And if we go, and if we come back, how will we live? What will be here for us?”
Strikes Plenty had looked down at his moccasins that were drying beside the small fire. In the silence, Charging Elk thought himself wise to bring up such a far-seeing concern. He pitied his friend for dashing his excitement. But then, Strikes Plenty had looked up and said, “What if we don’t come back?” He had a grin on his face.
It was a great shock when the Buffalo Bill bosses did not choose Strikes Plenty to accompany the show to the land across the water. Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty had looked at each other in disbelief when Strikes Plenty’s name wasn’t called. They had participated in the horsemanship contests and they were both good, the best. They had been riding hard for ten years, while the reservation Indians only rode for work and pleasure. They had the fastest horses, they rode bareback while the others used saddles made of sheepskin and leather. They were both lean and hard from the years of living on meat and turnips and sometimes with nothing.
The people who had come to watch the contests at the powwow grounds cheered them, the women trilling, the men shouting. There was a recklessness about the way the two friends rode, as though they had not been tamed by the white bosses. Even their soiled, ragged deerskin leggings and shirts seemed to suggest a life lived the old way. The other riders wore their best clothes, beaded and fringed buckskins, blue felt leggings, calico blouses, some even full headdresses. They painted their faces and their horses and they rode their woolly saddles with a practiced recklessness. Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty grinned at each other.
But when the twenty-five names were called, Strikes Plenty’s wasn’t among them, and so Charging Elk decided not to go. He would persuade his friend to return with him to the Stronghold. Whatever that life lacked, it was better than living among these reservation people.
The two friends rode out of Pine Ridge and rode for another couple of hours in silence. Strikes Plenty had fallen several paces behind and Charging Elk glanced back once in a while to make sure he was still there. It saddened him to see his kola slumped on his horse, with his head down, thinking how miserable he was. But after a time, Charging Elk heard Strikes Plenty’s horse break into a trot, and soon his friend rode up even.
“I’ve been thinking, brother,” said Strikes Plenty, with his familiar grin. “You must go back and say goodbye to your mother and father. They won’t be seeing you for a long time and they need to remember you clearly.”
Charging Elk looked at his friend’s grin and he felt his own jaw drop in disbelief.
“When you go across the big water to the land where the sun comes from, they will miss you.”
“I’m not going. Right now I’m going to the Stronghold.”
Strikes Plenty looked at his friend for a moment, his grin gone now, replaced by a look of resigned determination. “No. You must go with Buffalo Bill. You have been chosen and if you do not go, you will become doubtful and melancholy. In one sleep’s time, or seven sleeps, or two moons, you will wish with all your heart that you had gone. You will be at the Stronghold but your thoughts will be in the faraway land. I will not like to be around you.”
“My thoughts will be here,” Charging Elk said. He was angry that his friend presumed to know so much about him. His red horse gasped and lunged forward with the force of the kick in its ribs. Then it began to trot with an easy gait that it could maintain for hours at a time. Many times High Runner had carried Charging Elk through the badlands to the Stronghold at just such a pace.
But Strikes Plenty rode up and grabbed the twisted rawhide rein just behind the horse’s neck, turning its head. Both riders stopped then and looked at each other. For the first time ever, something crackled in the air between them. Charging Elk started to say something he would regret, but Strikes Plenty held up his hand to stop him.
The two friends were alone on the plain. There was nothing around them but the rolling hills and swales. There were no trees, no shacks, no animals. Only a lone hawk, circling to the north of them, a speck of a bird that caught Charging Elk’s eye for an instant, then was gone into the space of blue sky.
“I am not going back to the Stronghold,” said Strikes Plenty, looking away, his voice soft but determined. “I have been thinking this for a long time. It is no use for me out there anymore. At first, it was fun, for a long time it was good to be free, to have good times, but last winter, during the Moon of Snowblind, I went out hunting and I saw one of the older ones—he was hunting beneath another ridge far off—and he was dressed in coyote skins with a wolf cap on his head and his dunka wakan was gaunt beneath him, and I thought, That will be me. My brother, Charging Elk, will be married, he will have a warm lodge and children, and I will be out here alone with others like me, starving and cold in the winter, wandering in the summer.” Strikes Plenty was now looking off toward the long-setting sun. His eyes were narrowed against the yellow glare and his lips were tight, as though he had said what he wanted to say and was waiting for a response.
But Charging Elk didn’t know how to respond. He suddenly felt unsure of himself. Strikes Plenty was right—not about Charging Elk being married and his friend wasting his life at the Stronghold, but about the past couple of years not being fun. The two kolas had become increasingly concerned with filling their bellies with meat and surviving the winters. If they went back out now, they would lose touch with their relatives for another winter. Charging Elk didn’t want that either.
“If I go with Buffalo Bill, what will you do?”
Strikes Plenty brightened, his grin returning. “Find a woman, settle down. There are plenty of women out at Whirlwind.”
“But what will you do? After you find your woman? Plant potatoes?”
Strikes Plenty laughed. “Maybe. Maybe I’ll have my woman plant potatoes. They say the wasichu makes his woman do the planting. He plants something else when he goes to town.”
Charging Elk’s horse grew restless beneath him, alternately trying to graze and hopping around, making great shuddering snorts. High Runner wanted to return to the Stronghold. There were mares out there.
“It is for the best,” said Strikes Plenty. “You will see the land where these white men come from. You will see many great things, make money, enjoy yourself. Me, I will become fat with potatoes, and maybe I will have a winy an and many children when you return.”
“I will miss you too much. I will miss our good times, brother-friend.”
“Those times are gone, Charging Elk. We must follow our eyes and see what lies ahead. Today we go our separate paths and we are not happy about this. When you come back, things will be changed. But we will not be changed. We have been brothers together for many years, we have raised ourselves from children, and we are still young. Much lies ahead for us, but we will be strong brothers always.” Strikes Plenty rode closer and leaned over and hugged his friend. “When we are old tunkadhlicu together, we will laugh at this moment.”
Charging Elk stood in the alcove and remembered how he had felt when he watched his dear friend ride away that early spring day in the direction of the Whirlwind Compound. It was the end of nine winters of brotherness and he felt a great emptiness, as though Strikes Plenty had taken away half of him.
Two days later, he had ridden High Runner in the procession of riders and wagons down to the iron road in the town of Gordon, Nebraska. His parents had ridden in a wagon, and while the young men were unloading their bundles of clothing and equipment, Charging Elk had handed the reins to his father. “He is yours.”
In return Scrub lifted a bundle out of the wagon. He unrolled the blanket and lifted up the hairpipe breastplate. Charging Elk recognized it. His father wore it when the Oglalas were free on the plains. He wore it when he took the horses of the Snakes and Crows. He wore it during ceremonies. He wore it when he fought the soldiers at the Greasy Grass. And he wore it when the Oglalas surrendered at Fort Robinson.
Charging Elk ate a last bite of bread as he remembered holding the bundle on his lap during his first train trip in America. He had had his badger medicine and his father’s protection and he had felt ready for what lay ahead. But he had been a little unnerved by the look in his mother’s eyes as she watched the iron horse and the big wooden wagons pull away from the station. He had seen that look when he was a child, twelve winters earlier, when the Oglalas came in to Fort Robinson. But the music of the peace song had made Doubles Back Woman strong then, and even as the train made the lonesome sound and picked up speed, she had been singing a strongheart song with the other mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and old ones on the platform. Still, he could not get her frightened eyes out of his mind. He was her only remaining child. He prayed to Wakan Tanka to bring him home safely, so he could honor his mother for all the days of her life.
Later, on the train ride from Omaha to the big New York, Rocky Bear, the Indian leader who had crossed the big water once before, had come to where Charging Elk was sitting, looking out the window at the new country. He still held his father’s breastplate in his lap.
“Your kola—Strikes Plenty,” said Rocky Bear. “He should be with us, Charging Elk. He was tough—and he could ride. You and he made these reservation boys look puny. You raised yourselves in the old ways out at the Stronghold.” The leader glanced around the wagon at the young Oglalas sitting on the wooden benches. “These boys will do. But we are not taking our best.”
“Why did the white bosses leave Strikes Plenty behind?” Charging Elk leaned forward in his seat. “He was the one who wanted to go see the other side of the big water.”
Rocky Bear leaned down. “He was not Indian enough for these bosses.”
Charging Elk looked up with rounded eyes.
“These bosses think they know what an Indian should look like. He should be tall and lean. He should have nice clothes. He should look only into the distance and act as though his head is in the clouds. Your friend did not fit these white men’s vision.”
Charging Elk looked out the window and saw a big white house surrounded by trees. A herd of black-and-white cows grazed in a field beside it. He had not seen this kind of cow before.
Strikes Plenty was not tall and lean; he was short and broad and his face was as round as banhepi wi when she is full in the night sky. Charging Elk liked his brotherfriend because he didn’t act as though his head was in the clouds. He always had a grin on his face, even if they were caught out in a blizzard or had to ride two sleeps with nothing to eat. He wanted to tell Rocky Bear to tell his white bosses that Strikes Plenty was more Indian than all of them together on this iron road, that he had lived the old Lakota way until two sleeps ago, when he rode off to the Whirlwind Compound. But he didn’t. At that moment he almost envied Strikes Plenty and the new life he had envisioned. Out at the Stronghold, the idea of having a wife and a life of peace and comfort had seemed far out of reach. Charging Elk felt the bundle in his lap and looked out at the black-and-white cows. One of them was trying to mount another, even though both had bags full of milk.
Now it was full light and Charging Elk was beginning to feel vulnerable. The bread had filled him up and his thoughts of home had comforted him to some degree. He had not thought much about his plan, except to get as far away from the sickhouse as possible. Still, he was hesitant to leave the alcove. He did not know this town, this country. He was now sure there was no one who could speak Lakota here. But if he could find the right people, the brown suit and the black suit, they would send him to Buffalo Bill. Except for his ribs he was well. They would see that.
Charging Elk broke the remaining longbread into four pieces and tucked them into his coat pockets. Then he stepped out into the street.
Marseille was a large city and it smelled of the sea, of salt and winter, of smoke and food, from the chestnuts roasting on braziers on street corners to the golden pommes frites in the brasseries to the thick honey sweets in the tea shops. The big street Charging Elk walked along was noisy with carts and wagons and carriages and omnibuses, all pulled by horses or oxen, or in the case of the carts, pushed or pulled by men in blue coats and pants. Men and women walked on the sides of the street, the men carrying big baskets on their shoulders, the women smaller baskets on their heads. The broad walkways on either side of the street were filled with people who seemed to come from everywhere there was an opening. They appeared, moved, and disappeared. Others appeared. Some walked purposefully, others idled along, while still others stopped to look into the windows of the stores. Some of them were well-off, the men with their dark suits and topcoats and top hats, the women wearing the big-butt black dresses, mantles, and hats with feathers and black spiderwebs that partially hid their faces. They carried umbrellas to shield themselves from rain and sun. Others of the pedestrians were poor, dressed in rough coats and flat caps, in long simple dresses with shawls and plain bonnets. Children were dragged along by mothers or rode in their fathers’ arms.
Charging Elk saw a group of people standing before a big window. They were talking and gesturing and pointing at various groups of small figures. Some of them were animals—cattle, sheep, and pigs. Charging Elk remembered the family that raised pigs along the road to Wounded Knee. He remembered it because he had never smelled such a sharp, sour odor. It seemed to ride with him for many miles afterward.
Other figures in the window were of men and women and children, dressed in costumes Charging Elk had never seen before. Some of the figures were light-skinned, others dark-skinned. One of the dark ones had a cloth tied around his head, a blackness over one eye and a knife between his teeth. He had a fierce scowl. The others were either sad or happy or without passion.
In the middle of the window, he saw a group of figures that seemed to be apart from the others and quite a bit larger. Three bearded men in different dress stood or kneeled. One had a tall cloth wrapped around his head. Charging Elk recognized this figure. At the show in Paris, at the foot of the naked iron tree they called the Eiffel Tower, he had seen real men wear these big hats. They came from even farther to the east where they rode the long-necked, bighumped beasts that he had first seen in a pen at the exhibition. They had looked hot and ugly, but when he touched the chewing muzzle of one, he was surprised how soft and pleasant it felt.
Sees Twice had told him that the Eiffel Tower had been built so the French could honor their five generations of freedom from cruel kings. All the surrounding buildings and fountains and gardens were part of this honoring ceremony. He said the white men of America had a similar honoring. They had defeated a cruel king many years before. Featherman had wondered aloud if all kings were cruel, but Sees Twice couldn’t answer that. He only knew that the Grandmother England was kind. Maybe only woman kings were good to their people.
Charging Elk almost smiled at this recollection—he had begun to enjoy his memories more than his life. He looked into the window again and he recognized black men with naked chests and big red lips. He had seen black men in Paris and New York but he didn’t think they had red lips. And the sheep. And the small horse with big ears. He had seen these big ears first in the gold camps of Paha Sapa, and later in the Wild West show. They were part of an act that made people laugh.
But his eyes were again drawn to the big figures in the middle of the window. All of the animals and men were looking at a man and woman and baby. The man wore a brown cape and was sitting on a rock. He held his hands out, as though he wanted something from the others. The woman was dressed in a long blue dress and a white cloth that covered her head. She was looking down at the baby with just a hint of a smile. The baby lay on some straw that filled a wooden box. Its hair was yellow like the straw and its naked body was bright pink. Its arms and legs were sticking up and it had no expression on its face.
Charging Elk ate one of the four pieces of bread as he walked along the street. His stomach was constantly growling now as he smelled food everywhere he turned. The longbread filled his stomach but he wanted more than bread. He wanted one of the sticks of meat from the charcuterie. He wanted pejuta sapa and a flaky chocolate bread.
He passed through a narrow street that was lined with outdoor tables. Many people crowded the alley and he found he could move only by slipping through a narrow passage in the center. He was almost glad for the crush of healthy humans after the many days in the sickhouse. He noticed that all the tables were filled with the little figures of animals and various people. He was surprised at how lifelike some of them looked. He was especially struck by a figure of a policeman with its blue high-collared tunic and round flat cap. He stopped to look it over, although he had been avoiding real ones all day. A child next to him was holding one of the yellow-haired, pink babies. This one too had its legs in the air as though it were kicking. The girl, of perhaps four winters, was looking up at her mother with a hopeful smile, but the mother shook her finger and said some words, and the girl put the figure back on the table. Then she looked at Charging Elk, and he saw her mouth go wide open. She looked up into his face, then turned and buried her own face into her mother’s coat.
Charging Elk suddenly remembered how different he was from any of these people and he grew tense. He had earlier let his hair fall free from under the cap, although he kept the cap on his head. He was at least four hands taller than the tallest of them and his wrists stuck out beyond the coat sleeves. He looked down and he saw that his ankles were exposed, his bare feet covered only by the woolly slippers. He noticed how much darker his skin was than the little girls. She had black hair and dark eyes but her face was the color of snow-berries. But Charging Elk was dark even for an Oglala. Many of his friends had teased him about his color when he was a child. He was embarrassed and even ashamed of his darkness, until his mother, Doubles Back Woman, told him it meant that he was the purest of the ikce wiccua, that Wakan Tanka favored him by making him so dark.
He now began to notice the people glancing at him as he squeezed through the crowd. They looked him up and down, starting with his hair, then following his length down to his feet. One old woman, her bent body leaning on a cane, looked up at him with a sideways glare and said something that made the others around her turn from the tables to look at him. He thought how different it was when he and his friends walked the streets of Paris in their fancy clothes and the people looked at them with awe. Although he wanted to get away from these suspicious, even hostile stares as quickly as possible, he walked deliberately with his head high, his eyes level above the heads of the small humans.
Charging Elk finally made it to the street at the end of the alley. It was a small street but not as narrow as the alley. He leaned against a building and breathed sharply. He had been jostled in the ribs and now they ached. His stomach had tightened into a hard knot from lack of real meat. He felt as miserable as he ever had in his life and he saw no end to his misery. He wished with all his being that he could step out of his body, leave the useless husk behind, and fly to the country of his people. He would become his nagi and join the other Oglalas in the real world beyond this one. At that moment, leaning against the building with his eyes closed to shut out the world around him, he would have gladly died, no matter what happened to his spirit.
But when he opened his eyes he was still there. And he was looking at a pine tree in a large shop window across the street. There were things on the tree, ribbons of red that wound around the branches, white sticks that stood straight up from the needles, and little figures and shiny round balls that hung from the prickly twigs.
Charging Elk almost grunted in his sudden recognition that it was still the Moon of the Popping Trees, the same hanhepi wi, night-sun, that had shone on them the night the Buffalo Bill show had come to this town from Paris on the iron road. He remembered that this town was called Marseille and it was on the same big water that they had crossed from America. The fire boat had landed somewhere in a town north of Paris. Marseille was south of Paris, a different piece of country but on the same water. Rocky Bear had told them so. They could take a fire boat from here to America if they chose. Charging Elk’s spirit rose a little as he thought this. He wondered if Wakan Tanka had been testing him with such adversity. Sometimes the Great Mystery worked that way. The medicine people at the Stronghold had told him that while they prepared him for his four-day fast. Bird Tail, the oldest and most powerful, had told him, when they were purifying themselves in the steamy inipi, that he would see many things in his suffering, many frightening things, but to keep his eyes open for the real vision. He would know it. And Charging Elk did. When the badger came to him one night, he held out his hand and the badger placed its power there. They talked all that night, the badger sang to him and smoked with him, and when he woke up, the badger was gone. But Charging Elk had the badger power in his hand.
Charging Elk suddenly felt both apprehensive and hopeful. If this was all part of Wakan Tanka’s plan, he would have to see it through. He would have to listen carefully and make good decisions. Above all, he would have to pray for guidance. He no longer had his badger-claw necklace but he still had his death song. If he sang it well at the right time, his nagi would find its way home. But would he still have the power on this side of the big water? One way or another, time would tell.
He stepped away from the building and crossed the street. He felt warmth on his head and shoulders and he looked up to see the sun shining down on the street. He took that as a sign that the Great Mystery was watching him and he looked up and stared at wi for a moment. He felt its warmth bathe his face and he felt both powerful and small. And for the first time in many days, fully alive. He would not wish to die again, lest Wankan Tanka take him at his word.
On the other side of the street, in the shadows again, he studied the dressed-up tree. He knew about this tree. He had seen it in the gathering house in Pine Ridge on a visit to his parents’ shack, and another time in a miners’ town in Paha Sapa. He and Strikes Plenty had sneaked up to a big eating house there and had seen it through the window. In Pine Ridge, it had stood in a corner of the gathering house, and the Oglala children sang soft songs to it.
It was the season of the white man’s holiest of days and they worshiped this tree as though it were the sun. The white sticks were lit at night and the tree came alive and sparkled. Charging Elk decided that the little figures in the alley had something to do with the holy days. He had a vague recollection of seeing the woman in the blue cloth and the yellow-haired kicking baby, the men with the big hats; he knew they possessed much power but he didn’t know quite what they had to do with this season of the holy pine trees. He didn’t know what the policeman and the dark man with the eye patch had to do with it.
Charging Elk remained free for five more sleeps. Although he had no centimes, he managed to fill his belly a little with things he stole or picked out of trashbins behind restaurants. A couple of times he came upon a neighborhood open-air market and he walked among the stalls, smelling good things—rough dark bread, red glistening meat, stacks of oranges and nuts, trays of olives, and cheeses of every color and size and shape. He had seen such markets in Paris and he and the others often bought cones of the hard white nuts with the green meats. Charging Elk didn’t like the cheeses—some were dry, others smelly or sticky on his teeth, all gave him diarrhea. But the reservation Indians, who were used to the white man’s commodities, ate the cheeses whole and farted all night, much to their enjoyment.
That first day, in spite of attracting so much attention, Charging Elk did steal a small bag containing four apples from beside one of the stalls. And that night he found some bird bones behind an eating house that still had some of the pale meat on them. But after that the pickings were slim—orange peelings, cabbage leaves, pieces of hard bread, a few soggy pommes frites in a paper wrapper that had small white man’s words written on it. He decided not to try to steal anymore at the outdoor markets, because he was afraid of the many stares. He stayed off the large boulevards for the same reason.
He was growing weak again—he had to stop more frequently to rest. The days had been sunny and warm, but the nights were cold. Even the heavy coat was not enough to keep him from shivering when he stopped walking and tried to sleep. So he slept very little, but when he did he dreamed of the feasts when he was a boy on the plains. The Oglalas ate real meat then. There were still buffaloes around the Tongue and Powder rivers, along the Missouri and the Milk rivers, and the men would come back to camp with their pack-horses covered with meat and hides. Charging Elk dreamed of buffalo hump, of belly fat and boss ribs, of brains and marrow bones. But just as he was about to dig in, just as his mother passed him a bowl of sarvisberry soup, he would awaken to find himself on a stoop in an alley, or under some bushes in a park full of stark trees. Then he would walk again and look up at the darkness and recognize many star people, but they would be in the wrong place in the sky.
On the fourth day, he came upon a boulevard that he recognized and his heart jumped up. He couldn’t believe his good fortune. He forgot his weakness and homesickness for a moment. He and some of the others had ridden in an omnibus on this very boulevard in their only sightseeing ride. And he knew that the show arena was a couple of miles up the boulevard.
He looked the other way, and he knew that the omnibus turned onto another boulevard that he could even see in the distance. He recognized the spires of a holy building on the corner. That boulevard would take him down to the big water, where the fire boats rested.
But he began to walk out toward the arena. His ribs felt good now, and although he was aware of the tight knot in his belly, he seemed to have plenty of strength. And he dared to hope—foolishly, he knew—that there would be someone left at the arena site. Perhaps that was where the American in the brown suit lived. Perhaps some of the workers were still there, taking down the tents and the corrals. Charging Elk walked with purpose but he was light-headed from the hunger and weakness. He began to imagine that the show would be there, that he would soon hear the loud voice and the cheers of the audience. He imagined himself breaking free of the barrier and riding hard after the buffaloes. The audience was always thrilled at the excitement and danger of the event. But it wasn’t really very dangerous—the herd was small and young, most of them yearlings or two-year-olds. It would have been dangerous if all the animals were full-grown—given their bulk and speed, they could have made short work of a weaponless rider and his horse in such a confined space. It would have been just as dangerous to be in the audience. In Paris, one of the young bulls had climbed the barricade and hooked two people before it was shot by one of the handlers.
By now it was midafternoon and Charging Elk, while bemoaning his misfortune that night in the arena, began to notice something curious: There were hardly any people on the boulevard, and the stores, even the cafés and brasseries and tobacco shops, were closed. There were very few carriages on the street. Just the day before, Charging Elk had to stay on the small streets to avoid the crush of people. Just that morning, the shops had been open and people had sat outside in the cafés, soaking up the warm sun. He thought he must be on a dead street, that the people for some reason had decided this street was bad medicine, but when he came to a big cross street, it too was empty.
Charging Elk walked on, part of him happy that there were no people to stare at him, another part becoming fearful that he was alone. Maybe it was against the law for humans to be out just now. Maybe something had happened to the big town. But he did see the occasional humans—a shopkeeper locking up, a woman pushing a pram, a couple of young men turning a corner to disappear.
After a couple of rest stops, Charging Elk found himself at the big round square where the wagons and carriages went around and around to go to many streets—Rond Point du Prado. He knew the name because the interpreter had made him and the others say it before they left on their sight-seeing trip. If they got lost, they were to say it to a gendarme or an omnibus driver.
Now Rond Point du Prado was quiet, only one taxi entering a street angling off to his right. Charging Elk listened carefully for a loud voice, a cheering crowd, but all he heard was the clopping hooves of the horse pulling the taxi through the narrow, echoing street.
Charging Elk crossed the roundabout, circling around the big stone statue that spit water. On the other side, he hurried up a wide street on the edge of a large park until he reached the field across from the greensward where the show had set up.
There was nothing there. Not one tent, not one hawker’s stand, not even a fire pit where the Indian village had stood. He walked over to the large trampled circle of earth where the portable arena had been set up. The ground had been raked smooth. There was not a hoofprint on it, not one sign that the Indians, the cowboys, the soldiers, the vaqueros, the Deadwood stage, the buffaloes and horses had acted out their various dramas on this circle of earth.
Charging Elk stood on the edge of the circle, not wishing to disturb its raked perfection, and looked across the wide street into the vast park. There was not a soul among the trees and rolling grass hillocks. The walkways and green meadows were empty.
He looked back across Rond Point du Prado and he saw yellow lights coming from some of the windows in the buildings above the storefronts. The light was failing now and he dreaded another night in the big town. Especially this night when the people had disappeared. Just as he felt a wave of despair grip his heart, as it had so often in the past several sleeps, he remembered the train station. It was a foolish hope, but the foolish hopes seemed to come as often as the despair, and he realized that he had become weary with the suddenness and frequency of both emotions. Up and down, up and down went his heart until he walked numbly through the streets without a thought or feeling.
But he felt obliged to follow up on this slim chance. As he crossed the field to the street that led to the station, he noticed that his fuzzy slippers had become wet with dew. He almost chuckled at this latest problem. Wakan Tanka was not content with just the hunger and weakness of his pitiful child—now he was giving him cold feet. Charging Elk looked up at the sky to beseech the Great Mystery and he saw rain clouds where once had been sun. Nevertheless, he stood at the edge of the field and sang a song of pity and prayed with all his heart that Wakan Tanka would guide him home to his people, to his own land. He asked for a little food too. Then he began to walk again.
And he could not believe what had become of him in such a few short sleeps. Just a little while ago, he had been on this very street, dressed in his finest clothes—dark wool pants with painted white stripes, black sateen shirt with his father’s hairpipe breastplate over it, brass earring and armbands, and two eagle feathers hanging from a beaded medallion in his hair. His badger-claw necklace hung around his neck, he had the holy card the French woman had given him in his breast pocket, and he had painted his face with his own medicine signs and had tied three feathers in his horse’s mane, just behind the ears. He knew he was quite a sight.
He was one of over seventy Indians in the parade from the iron road to the field at Rond Point, most of them Lakotas, principally Oglalas. And they were just part of the larger procession of cowboys, soldiers, vaqueros, and wagons filled with elk, deer, and buffaloes. There was even a brass band on horseback, the Cowboy Band, filling the street with such noise that Charging Elk had to keep his horse’s head high and back to keep him from skittering all over the cobblestones. Still he couldn’t help feeling a great pride that he was part of such a spectacle. People were lined up in throngs on the broad walkways on either side of the street.
Of course, Buffalo Bill rode at the head of the procession on his great white horse, waving his big hat and bowing to one side of the street, then the other. Annie Oakley, the one Sitting Bull had named Little Sureshot, and her husband and the big bosses rode behind him. Then came the cowboys, some with the woolly chaps, and the soldiers with their neat blue uniforms and the vaqueros with their big upturned hats. And finally, the Indians, led by Rocky Bear, who had been designated chief by the bosses. From the Paris shows, Charging Elk knew that next to Buffalo Bill, the audiences wanted to see the Indians most. They called the Indians Peaux-Rouges—redskins. When the Indians rode by, the people whooped and pointed at the dark painted faces. Some of the women threw flowers, but the Indians rode by without recognition of such enthusiasm.
Charging Elk remembered that day as one of the longest of his life. They had ridden the iron road all night after a performance in a big town somewhere south of Paris. It was late night when the workers finally struck the tents and grandstands and awnings, packed up the food and furniture from the large eating tent, shut off the generators, and took down the lighting and the immense rolls of canvas backdrop painted with endless scenes of mountains and plains and rivers and villages and forts. They disassembled the booths and seemingly hundreds of other small structures and took it all by wagons to the train station. There they loaded up the thirty-eight big wagons of the special train with equipment and animals and human beings for the all-night trip.
Some of the Indians complained because they had been to this side of the big water before and they knew that, unlike the white performers and crew, they were riding in third class, where the benches were harder and the wagons noisier and rougher. Charging Elk noticed that Rocky Bear was not among them. On this side of the water, the big bosses treated the chief well because the French people liked him better than the Americans had and considered him a noble leader. But the bosses didn’t hesitate to lodge the other Indians in the last wagon before the animals and equipment. Even Featherman, the iktome who joked, grumbled as he tried to stretch out on a bench.
The show had reached Marseille an hour before first light and all the wagons were unloaded and the equipment was taken to the field to be set up. Charging Elk had been surprised to see the crowd of people watching the predawn activities.
By then Charging Elk was a seasoned performer. The show had not only played in the American town of New York, but had played for close to seven moons in Paris. He was used to the curiosity of the big town people—in both New York and Paris, they had wandered among the lodges of the Indian village, watching the women cook or sew or repair beadwork. They stood over the squatting performers and watched them play dominoes or card games. Some even entered family lodges, as though the mother fixing dinner or the sleeping child in its cradleboard were part of the entertainment. Rocky Bear said that Buffalo Bill and the other bosses approved of this rudeness because it made the people hungry to see the Indians in the arena.
At midmorning, the performers lined up to begin the parade. It was a cold, gray day, and Charging Elk, like the other Indians, wore his blanket over his shoulders. He was tired and sleepy and he wasn’t looking forward to performing that day.
But when the Cowboy Band on their matching white horses broke into the song they called “The Girl I Left Behind Me,” a song he had heard hundreds of times, and the procession began to move slowly forward, Charging Elk folded his blanket and draped it over his horse’s shoulders. And by the time the Indians entered the street, and the crowd gasped and applauded, he felt a familiar shiver of excitement that made it difficult to sit his horse as calmly as he wanted. Nevertheless, he managed because he knew the French people wanted the Indians to be dignified. And too, the young Indians wished to be thought of as wichasa yatapika, men whom all praise, men who quietly demonstrate courage, wisdom, and generosity—like the old-time leaders.
As Charging Elk rode his painted horse in the procession, he couldn’t help but think how fortunate he was. Instead of passing another cold, lonely winter at the Stronghold, or becoming a passive reservation Indian who planted potatoes and held out his hand for the government commodities, he was dressed in his finest clothes, riding a strong horse, preparing himself to thrill the crowds with a display of the old ways. Of course, he knew that it was all fake and that some of the elders back home disapproved of the young men going off to participate in the white man’s sham, but he no longer felt guilty about singing scalping songs or participating in scalp dances or sneak-up dances. He was proud to display some of the old ways to these French because they appreciated the Indians and seemed genuinely sympathetic. Rocky Bear had once told him, while they were sitting around a fire after the evening show, that these people on this side of the big water called the Indians “the Americans who would vanish,” that they thought the defeated Indians would soon disappear and they were very sad about it and wanted to see the Indians before they went up in thin air—unlike the real Americans, who would be only too happy to help the Indians disappear.
So Charging Elk had entered this city in triumph and the people had welcomed him. Now they looked at him with suspicion, even with hostility, just as the Americans did.
But Charging Elk had quit these thoughts, and now, as he hurried through the dark street toward the Gare du Prado, he entertained no other thoughts and very little hope.
And as he crossed the empty staging field, where the parade had formed itself, he felt the flicker of hope go out entirely. The station was dark, except for a small yellow light in a window.
The Gare du Prado was a freight station, with a series of long brick buildings, each with a wide loading platform. There were many switching tracks, and even now, several lines of freight wagons sat idly in the darkness.
Charging Elk stepped up on a loading platform and walked without sound to the lighted window. He saw a man dressed in a dark uniform sitting at a table. The room was small and lit by a single yellow wire which hung from the ceiling. The man was breaking off a piece of longbread. Then he sliced a piece of cheese from a wedge. Two small dark apples sat on one corner of the table next to a tiny pine tree. The tree had some glittery red rope wound around it. The tips of its branches were white, as though it had just snowed in the small room.
Charging Elk watched the man eat the bread and cheese and he thought about knocking on the window. But what could be said or done? Besides, judging by his uniform, the man was some kind of soldier. He might think Charging Elk was a thief, or an enemy, and try to kill him. On the other hand, he might know what had happened to Buffalo Bills train.
Charging Elk almost raised his hand to the window but the uselessness of the action and the potential danger stopped him. Instead, he walked quietly to the end of the platform and looked off to where the iron road disappeared into darkness. He felt more resigned than disappointed because he didn’t really believe that the Buffalo Bill train would be there. He almost felt better for having not believed it.
He was about to jump off the platform when he heard a noise behind him. He glanced back and saw the large yellow light of an open door. The man in the uniform was standing just outside the door, lantern in hand, looking up at the sky. Charging Elk dropped to his hands and knees and slithered down off the platform. The hard cinder earth was four feet lower than the dock. He hunkered down and after a few seconds peeked up at the yellow light. But the door was closed again and all he could see was the small window. Then he saw a circle of light bobbing along the platform away from him. In the dark, he could just make out the man’s legs.
Charging Elk waited until the light disappeared off the other end of the dock; then he wasted no time, shinnying up onto the platform, walking quickly toward the room. He tried the doorknob and it turned. He slipped inside, closing the door behind him. The first thing he spotted was the food—half the longbread, the cheese wrapped in heavy paper, and one of the apples. He stuffed these things into his coat pockets, then opened the drawer beneath the table. He looked over the small things, things he didn’t recognize except for a writing pen and a ticket punch, just like the ticket sellers at the Wild West show used. He was about to close the drawer when he noticed a small metal box near the back. He pried the lid off and his heart leaped up. Three silver coins and a handful of centimes gleamed in the light of the yellow wire. Charging Elk quickly dumped them into his pocket, then closed the box, then the drawer. As he turned to leave he spotted an umbrella and a wool scarf hanging from a hook. He wound the scarf around his neck and gripped the umbrella like a weapon. But when he opened the door and looked up and down the platform, there was no sign of the bobbing lantern.
As Charging Elk hurried away from the railroad yard, he too looked up at the sky and made a silent prayer thanking Wakan Tanka for guiding him to such good things. Then he ate the apple and thought of the chocolate bread and tobacco he would buy the next morning.