Heartsong

by James Welch

  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 th
e 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.