Heartsong

by James Welch

  He stood slowly, awkwardly, using his hands to push himself up from the bed. He leaned against the bedframe for a moment, then drew himself up to his full height, aware of the stiffness in his back. His legs were heavy and his head felt light, but he could breathe easier and his ribs didn’t hurt so much. He knew he would have to move soon, before one of the healing helpers spotted him.

  He took the robe from its hook and wrapped it over his shoulders. He was wearing a thin gown and the heavy robe felt good on him. He glanced down and saw the shoes tucked under the bed. He slid into them and they felt stiff and fuzzy, but warm. He slowly turned and began to make his way down to the foot of the bed, where he grasped the footboard and looked up and down the long room.

  He was surprised to see so many beds, maybe a hundred of them, virtually all of them occupied. As he surveyed the room, he suddenly remembered Featherman. The night he had come to the sickhouse, Featherman had been in the next bed. Now there was a wasichu with a waxy face and thick sandy hair in the bed. But where was Featherman? Had he really been there? Or had he been a dream? Charging Elk’s heart fell down as he remembered the dull, flat eyes. Yes, he had been there. And now he was dead. But perhaps there were other Buffalo Bill Indians in the other beds. His heart lifted again and he thought he might shout “All my relatives!” in Lakota, but he knew the healing helpers would come running if he did. So he began the slow journey down the aisle between beds, moving from one iron footboard to the next. Each time he stopped to rest he would glance at the faces in the beds. Most of them had beards or mustaches, all of them were pale. Some of the faces watched him with great curiosity, perhaps even apprehension. By the time he reached the end of the beds, his heart was as heavy as his legs.

  The thin hope that someone from the Wild West show, perhaps the interpreter, Broncho Billy, along with a couple of white chiefs, or even one or two of his Oglala friends, would come and take him away with them was a flickering, surely impossible dream. He knew that the show was only scheduled to be here in this town for eight or nine sleeps before moving on to another land. He felt certain that those sleeps were gone and he had been abandoned. He almost collapsed from the weight of such a thought and he thought how foolish he was to want to travel with Buffalo Bill. He should have stayed at the Stronghold, in the badlands, where he knew his way around. He thought of those sunny hot days with Strikes Plenty, riding to who knows where, but free to go. Not like the reservation Indians. They had laughed and mocked those Indians who had given up and lived in the wooden houses at the agency, collecting their meager commodities, their spoiled meat, learning to worship the white man’s god, learning to talk the strange tongue. Now he would have given all his good times, all his freedom, to be one of them, home in the little shack with his mother and father in the village of his people.

  Two nights later, Charging Elk sat up in his bed, alert and considerably stronger. He looked down at the yellow light and could just make out the shape of a human being. He had explored that part of the long room that afternoon and knew that there was a smaller room with a cage for a window and a door that they kept closed. Here the healing helpers sat, smoking, talking, making marks on their paper. They were very comfortable in this room, but he noticed that they became quiet and attentive when one of the women with the white wings came among them. These women seemed to be yuwipis, but even they became obedient when the man with the steel in his ears was around. He was the real wicasa wakan.

  But he was never around at night, only one or two helpers. And they never left the caged room unless one of the sick ones cried out in pain or panic, which happened often. Charging Elk had kept awake most of the night before, watching their routine, but there didn’t seem to be a routine, just the response to a sudden commotion.

  Charging Elk had also scouted the big hall outside the sickroom that afternoon. The toilet room was on the other side. After he took a long painful shit, his first in many days, he wandered down the hall toward a large window at the end. If the helpers caught him, he would pretend that he was lost. But his eyes were as sharp as a horsetaker’s in an enemy camp. He noticed the doors that led off the hall, some of them closed, others open. One room in particular interested him. It was a long narrow room, darkly lit by a single yellow wire, and it was filled with hanging clothes.

  At the window, the hall turned in opposite directions. One way was long and looked exactly like the hall he had come down. The other way was short and led to a pair of swinging doors that went from the floor to the ceiling. Each door had a small window. Charging Elk walked quickly toward the doors. He stopped and touched one of them. It moved slightly. Then he looked through the window.

  It was a large room. Unlike the sickroom, it was as wide as it was long and it was filled with soft chairs and soft longseats. A few people sat on this furniture, some reading, some talking, some just looking off into the distance. To the right, Charging Elk could see a long wooden platform, about waist-high. He could see two heads behind the platform, but they were bent over, looking at something behind the platform. Neither of the women had white wings on her head but they seemed to be of higher station than the helpers.

  No one had indicated to Charging Elk that he was a prisoner in the sickhouse, but he knew if the women saw him they would call for the helpers. And if he protested, they would strap him down again. No, he had to be cunning and wait for his opportunity. These people who didn’t know him, who gave him the orange juice, the food, and lately the coffee, would become his enemies if they knew he wanted to escape.

  Charging Elk looked again across the room and he saw large windows and beyond them trees, a road, and a building across the way. He saw horse-drawn carriages and men pulling high-wheeled carts. He saw women in their strange dresses with the big butts. Then he saw an omnibus go by, with its two levels of passengers, and he remembered that he and some of the other Indians had ridden in such a wagon before, when the interpreters took them on the rare tour, first in Paris, then once in this city. He remembered that they had been afraid to ride on top, out in the open, exposed to danger. But after they became used to these high wagons, they never rode inside. Featherman had liked to ride in front, just behind the driver. He liked the smell of the big horses. He would make jokes about the driver in his high hat and wave at the women with big butts and feathers on their heads. He made the others lighthearted, and sometimes they would all wave, or whoop, at a pretty woman or a cart full of meat. There was never enough meat. But the young Indians enjoyed the spectacle of themselves reflected in the astonished eyes of the French people.

  Charging Elk returned his gaze to the room and he saw instantly what he had been looking for. Past the wooden platform, at the far end of the room, were two large glass doors which let out onto the cobblestone walking path. Even as he watched, an old one was being helped inside by two women. He had a white beard and a small black cap on his head. One of the women held a cloth to his mouth.

  Late that night, two of the men helpers came into the dark room, pushing one of the wheeled beds. They were very quiet as they passed Charging Elk’s bed. They stopped three or four beds away and turned the platform so that it came to rest between two beds. Then they made small whispering noises, a bed squeaked, and something made a heavy thump. Then the platform rolled down the aisle in the opposite direction, toward the yellow-lit room.

  Charging Elk could just make out the body beneath the white cloth. One of the helpers, a fat one, was breathing hard and grumbling in the French tongue. The other one was tall and thin and bent over the platform, pushing it slowly and quietly, indifferent to the fat one’s complaints.

  As Charging Elk watched the strange procession make its way to the yellow-lit room, he felt his whole body shiver, as though he had once again pulled himself out of the icy river in his country. For the past two sleeps, he had again harbored a desperate hope that someone from the show would come and get him; or that the two men, the American and the Frenchman, would take him home across the big water. But n
ow, seeing the dead body spooked him and he thought that he would get sick again, that this healing house was really a deathhouse, and the only way he would leave it would be on a rolling platform covered with a white cloth.

  He thought of poor wretched Featherman. To die here alone! What would happen to his nagi, his spirit? How would it find its way to the other side, to the real world beyond this one? And what about himself? His own nagi would run restless over the land here, far from his people, far from the real world. He could not stay here, waiting to die. He would not wait. With the help of Wakan Tanka, he would find his own way home.

  As Charging Elk threw on his robe and slipped his feet into the fuzzy shoes, the thought struck him that the Wild West show was still on this side of the big water. They were going to tour all winter and summer, even until next winter—that’s what the white bosses told him when he drew his name on the paper back at Pine Ridge. Maybe they weren’t so far away. Maybe they would come back for him. If he left this sickhouse, how would they find him?

  He sat down on the edge of the bed. His ribs didn’t hurt so much now. He took a deep breath, then sighed, caught somewhere between hope and despair. He thought of his mother and father and their little shack; he thought of his dear friend Strikes Plenty, and their wanderings in Paha Sapa; and he thought of the old wiccua wakan at the Stronghold, who had prepared him so well for his han-blechia. He trembled to think that he had lost possession of his badger-claw necklace, his war medicine. He had no power. But that wasn’t true—he had his death song. If he sang it well at the proper time, there was a chance that his spirit would make it to the other side, even if he didn’t.

  Charging Elk stood and looked down toward the room with the yellow light. He had made his decision. He wouldn’t stay in this deathhouse one more sleep. As he walked silently between the rows of beds in the other direction, he felt alert and expectant.

  He crept down the dim hall to the room with the clothes, flattening himself into doorways, looking, listening, but he saw and heard nothing. He began to feel lucky, just as he had that night he and Strikes Plenty had sneaked into the gold miners’ tent while they slept and stolen their rifles, a box of bullets, and their work boots. Charging Elk smiled in the dim light, and it was his first smile in many sleeps. He smiled to remember that several miles away they had thrown the boots into a ravine. They had laughed to think of the miners waking up and trying to find those boots. Then discovering that their rifles were also missing.

  Charging Elk wished that Strikes Plenty were with him now. Together, they would know how to get back to their country. Strikes Plenty was good at finding his way home to the Stronghold.

  The door to the clothes room was closed, and Charging Elk’s heart fell down for a moment. He knew that the white people liked to keep things locked up, that they stole from each other whether they were enemies or not. He was almost resigned to returning to his bed but he grasped the knob and turned it and his luck held. The door swung open with a soft creak. Charging Elk quickly slipped inside the room and fastened the door behind him. The click sounded very loud to him.

  The room was pitch-black and Charging Elk stood for a moment, not breathing but listening. The shoes these wasichus wore made loud noises and you could hear them from a long way off. But he heard nothing and as he stared into the darkness, he wondered how the white men made the yellow wires glow. He felt to one side of him and grabbed a heavy cloth object. It was hanging from one of the sloped wires that they used for coats. It was a coat. Charging Elk shrugged out of his robe and put the coat on. But the shoulders were too small and his arms stuck out of the sleeves.

  Charging Elk was a big man, one or two inches over six feet. He and the other Oglalas had towered over the small people of this city. The people here were shorter than the ones in Paris—and darker. Rocky Bear, who had toured much with Buffalo Bill and considered himself plenty savvy, said these people came from a jungle in another land. The people in Paris and New York and another city he had been to, London, were the true wasicuns.

  Charging Elk finally found a coat that would almost fit him—roomy enough in the shoulders and the sleeves only a little short. It was a heavy coat, and he was grateful as he remembered how cold it had been that night in the arena when he had gotten sick.

  He moved deeper into the room but now he couldn’t see a thing. He walked back to the door and, after listening for a moment, opened it a crack and let the dull glow from the hall in. Then he moved back, brushing his fingers along the coats, until he found a series of shelves. And here he found the other things he was looking for. He tried on four of the white men’s trousers until he found a pair that again almost fit him. They were a little loose, so he took the cord from the robe and tied it around his middle. He searched for the other things that the wasicuns wore—the shirts and shoes—but all he found was a round brimless hat. He was grateful for it, because he had been thinking that his long hair, which was now loose, would attract attention when he got outside. Now he tucked his hair as best as he could under the soft hat until it bloomed like a black bladder on his head.

  He was ready. He had no shirt, but the striped gown, tucked into the pants, looked almost presentable. He would have to make do with the fuzzy slippers on his bare feet.

  Charging Elk’s escape was surprisingly easy. At that hour, the big room was empty, save for one couple and a woman. The couple were staring out the window at the dark street and the woman had her head down, asleep. A basket lay on the soft seat beside her, and she held two needles. Charging Elk had seen women in Paris making thick cloth with the two needles as they sat in cafés or parks.

  There was only one head behind the tall platform and it was bent over. A light came from somewhere behind the platform. Charging Elk crouched and sneaked close beneath the lip of the platform. He could tell that the head was that of a woman by the smell. Once past the platform, he turned a corner, stood tall, and walked quickly out of the deathhouse into the cold night.

  As he gulped in the sharp air, he looked up and down the street and, for the first time in a long time, he wanted a smoke.

  CHAPTER 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.