Heartsong

by James Welch

  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, a
nd 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.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Charging Elk sat on a fruit box in a small funnel-shaped arcade that led to two shop doors and ate the bread and cheese. He was too hungry to remember that he didn’t like cheese, and in fact, the creamy cheese tasted strong and smoothed the tight ball in his guts. The windows on either side of him were shuttered, but he could see through the iron mesh and he looked into the one that seemed to have nothing but hats in it. There were the tall hats and the round hats that rich men wore, and some others that looked like cowboy hats with the brims turned down or level as a tabletop. Most of the men at Pine Ridge Agency wore hats like this now. The older men wore black hats with beaded or horsehair hatbands. They wore old wasichu clothes given to them by white holy men and their helpers, and black shiny scarves bought from the trader. Charging Elk had been surprised, when the Oglalas came in to Fort Robinson, to see some of the very men who had fought at Little Bighorn only a year before dressed this way. They seemed to have picked up the style from the reservation Indians, most of whom had quit fighting eight years before.

  It almost shocked Charging Elk to remember that he had gone to the school at the agency for nearly a year. He had sat in one of the rows of long tables watching the freckle-faced white woman write her words in white chalk on the black board: Boy. Girl. Cat. Dog. Fish. She showed them colored pictures of these creatures. The humans were pink, the cat yellow, and the dog black-and-white. The fish were orange and fat, unlike any he had ever seen. But he was most interested in the cat. He had seen the long-cat and the tufted-ear-cat, but they were wild and only once in a while seen. The cat in the picture was small and had a happy look. He had just seen his first small-cat right there at the agency but it had been rangy with frostbitten ears and it ran away from people and dogs. Still, it lived among humans.

  He remembered the word “Indian.” She had pointed directly at him, then at the board, and said “Indian.” She made all the children say “Indian.” Then she showed them a picture of a man they could not recognize. He had sharp toes, big thighs, and narrow shoulders; he wore a crown of blue and green and yellow feathers and an animal skin with dark spots. His eyes were large and round; his li
ps tiny and pursed. The white woman said “Indian.”

  Charging Elk and Strikes Plenty were three years older than the other students, a fact that made them ashamed. All the things they had learned out in the buffalo country were of no use here, and their smaller classmates had to help them spell, and add and subtract the red apples. About the only thing the two older boys—they were thirteen winters then—were good at was art. The woman gave them colored sticks and they drew pictures of the life they had just left—villages of lodges, men on horseback, buffaloes, mountains, and trees. Charging Elk once drew a picture of himself, Strikes Plenty, and Liver cutting off the finger of the dead soldier at Little Bighorn to get his agate ring. The woman had scolded him and torn the picture into little pieces, which she made him pick up and put in the wood stove. He didn’t bother to explain, even if she could understand, that the soldier’s knuckle was too big to slip the ring off. Instead, he remained silent, and when the Moon of the Red Grass Appearing came, he and Strikes Plenty took off for the Stronghold. And that was the end of his white man’s learning.

  Charging Elk looked out and watched the rain bounce and puddle on the rough cobblestones of the street. The arcade was dry and the night was warmer than it had been the last four sleeps. He looked up at the shuttered windows in the buildings above the shops. Most of them leaked slivers of yellow light, and he imagined the rooms filled with people, eating roasted meat, talking their strange tongue, laughing, smoking tobacco, playing dominoes. Charging Elk liked the game of dominoes. He liked the feel and design of the tiles and he liked to pu t them together in the proper way. But the poker games were more exciting. He and some of the other performers played poker and dominoes every night in Paris after the evening performance. They weren’t supposed to play for money, so they played for matchsticks. Ten matchsticks equaled one centime. Late at night when they cashed out, some of the Indians went to bed with no centimes in their purses. When this happened to Charging Elk, he was grateful that the white bosses were sending most of his money home to his mother and father.