by James Welch
“Here is your Peau-Rouge, monsieur,” the jailer said, his voice rough-edged but almost hushed.
The first thing St-Cyr noticed was the long, dark hair. It was parted in the middle and fell past the man’s shoulders, almost to the small of his back. Even St-Cyr’s whore, Fortune, did not have hair so long.
“Charging Elk?” said St-Cyr.
The Indian turned to the sound of his name, but he did not look directly at St-Cyr. He seemed to be looking at the door behind the reporter. His eyes were dark and there were shadows beneath his cheekbones. His mouth was closed tightly, like a seam in a burnished leather glove.
At first, St-Cyr was glad that the Indian did not look threatening—in fact, he did not look capable of violence at all. In his black coat, buttoned to the neck, and short pants and slippers, he looked almost pitifully thin. His bare ankles seemed especially vulnerable. The more St-Cyr studied him, the more concerned he became.
“Does he eat?” he said.
“Like a bird,” the jailer said. “He eats his soup and drinks his tea—that’s about it. He leaves all the vegetables in his soup bowl. He has no taste for bread. I think the Peau-Rouge does not eat like real men.”
“I think he’s starving, monsieur. Look at him. Perhaps you are not feeding him the right food.”
The jailer, who had been almost civil since entering the cell, now rattled his keys against his leg and blew an abrupt puff of air, obviously angry. “We do not operate a restaurant here, monsieur. We are poor jailers. We do not sit behind fancy desks upstairs and decide whether we will have bouillabaisse or couscous for lunch. Perhaps gigue de chevreuil for dinner. No, we do not operate like that. This one will eat what the others eat—or he will go hungry.”
St-Cyr now looked at Charging Elk. “Do you understand English?” he said in English.
Charging Elk almost responded to the word “English.” But he remembered Brown Suit, the American, and his inability to communicate with him, and he remained silent.
“How can I help you, Charging Elk? Would you like something different to eat? Eat?” St-Cyr tried to will the Indian to understand with loud, correct pronunciation, but the Indian just stared at the door behind the reporter.
St-Cyr could feel the jailer’s impatience, and he knew that his time was just about up. But he didn’t want to leave. He wanted to make the Indian understand that somehow he would help him. And this was surprising to St-Cyr. He was not a cold man—he helped beggars with a sou every now and then; he gave his landlady a tin of very expensive foie gras for Christmas; he brought the old man who lived across the hall from him and was dying of consumption packets of pastilles and reports of new remedies that he read about in his newspaper. Still, he let little in the way of universal human suffering affect him.
But Martin St-Cyr was almost desperate to help Charging Elk. It was plain that the man was dying. He could be dead in hours or days and nothing would be known of him. The brutish jailer and his comrades would dump the body in a cart and wheel it out to Cimetière St-Pierre, where it would be buried in the indigents’ section without a cross or a name.
St-Cyr tried to identify what it was about the Indian that affected him so. Surely some of the other cells were filled with men in equally desperate circumstances. His own countrymen who were being held in such squalid conditions, possibly starving too. Even now, he could smell a damp, ashy odor that spoke of illness, even death.
Perhaps it was that the Indian could not speak any language but his own, and his countrymen were thousands of miles away on the other side of the earth, that made St-Cyr desperate to do something that would help the Indian survive, until at least his court date. But, as Borely had said, the courts were backed up, and the Indian didn’t look like he would last another day.
“Perhaps, monsieur, if I left a little money, you could see that the Peau-Rouge gets something substantial to eat? Perhaps some sausage and cheese and peasant bread?” St-Cyr dug in his pocket and found several francs.
“We do not dispense special privileges here, monsieur. He eats what everyone else eats.”
But St-Cyr was prepared for this response. He opened his wallet and pulled out a twenty-franc bill. “A little something for your time, monsieur,” he said, offering the bill.
The jailer glanced quickly, instinctively, toward the door; then he stuffed the bill and the coins into his tunic pocket. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“Soon?”
“Oui, oui, monsieur. Soon.”
St-Cyr didn’t trust him, but there was nothing he could do about that. But there was something he could try to do about the Indian. About Charging Elk. He made himself think the man’s name. He made himself look into Charging Elk’s face. He was a man, a human being, and he would likely die if St-Cyr didn’t do something.
But for the moment, he could only drop his packet of Gauloises and a box of matches on the bed beside Charging Elk’s brown hand. “For you,” he said in English. “Don’t worry. I will help you out of this wretched place. Don’t worry, Monsieur Charging Elk.”
Charging Elk listened to the key turn in the lock and heard the bolt thrust home with a thin echo. Then it was quiet. He drew his feet up onto the bed and watched the newly disturbed dust motes circle and float in the shaft of light.
He had no idea how long he had been in the stone room of the iron house. In spite of the cold he had slept much of the time, and he had dreamed of home. In his dreams he saw the golden eagles soaring over the Stronghold; he heard the bark and howl of coyotes in the night; he smelled the sage in the spring wind, and the crisp chunks of venison cooked over an autumn fire; he cupped his hands in the clear stream of Paha Sapa and felt the cold water take his breath away as he splashed his sweaty face. He dreamed of home, and so he slept much. He saw his mother picking berries in the Bighorns and his father cleaning his many-shots gun in the lodge on the Greasy Grass. His brother and sister played games with rag balls and slim bones in the evening quiet of the big camp. And he and Strikes Plenty caught the winged hoppers they threw into the water for the slippery swimmers.
Sometimes the dreams ended in the blackness of night; sometimes in the light of the high window. Sometimes they ended happily; other times with images of soldiers attacking the big camp on the Greasy Grass, or with the people descending into the valley of the Fort Robinson, with its many soldiers and the big flag of America.
Once he dreamed of Crazy Horse, and the great warrior chief told him that one day he would go to that land where the sun rises, across a big water, where the favored wasichus came from. Crazy Horse had told him that he could not accompany Charging Elk because he would be killed soon by his own people. Charging Elk had reached out for the wichasa yatapika’s arm, but it was not there. Crazy Horse had become a cloud in the sky above the badlands.
Some of the dreams disturbed Charging Elk; others comforted him. But all were welcome, for Charging Elk knew he was very close to joining his ancestors. And that is why he sang his death song all day and dreamed of home all night. And each night he prayed to Wakan Tanka that this would be the night that he would finally make the journey across the big water. He even prayed to badger to give him strength for the journey, but he was sure that his power was gone, that his animal helper would not hear him in a faraway iron house.
His hand brushed the packet of cigarettes as he smoothed his coat tighter against his knees. He picked it up and looked at it. The pale blue of the packet reminded him of clear skies over Paha Sapa and he thought of the sacred beings that roamed there and he remembered the ceremonies of the old pejuta wicasa out at the Stronghold, which always began with a smoke.
Charging Elk held one of the smoke-sticks and pointed it to the sky and to the earth and to the four directions, offering prayers for each. He prayed to the sacred beings and the ancestors, just as the holy man had done. He offered prayers to the four-leggeds and the wings of the air; then he prayed long and fervently to Wakan Tanka, vowing to serve him always in the real world behind th
is one. He lit the cigarette and smoked it halfway down, then smudged it out in his palm. He rolled the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger until the remaining tobacco shreds fell into his hand. Then he put them in the pocket of his coat so that he would have something to offer badger when he returned home.
Charging Elk lay down on the iron bed. He wasn’t cold anymore and he felt at peace with all his being and with the world around him. He stared up at the high ceiling and he heard himself singing. It was a powerful song, and he thanked badger for giving it to him. He closed his eyes, singing.
CHAPTER FIVE
Two days after Martin St-Cyr’s account of the “lost soul” in the “entrails” of the Préfecture appeared in Le Petit Marseillais, not much had happened, which was disappointing to the young reporter. In his wilder daydreams, he had imagined a monstrous public outcry—rallies on the steps of the Préfecture and in the place of the Palais de Justice; marches by trade unionists and socialists; candlelight vigils by religious and social justice groups; perhaps even a visit from Paris by the Minister of Justice. In his more sober moments, he thought there would be a small but vigorous protest by ordinary citizens, who often gathered to demonstrate against one thing or another. Usually these citizens chose small issues, such as the price of baguettes going up another centime. Or a new ordinance that restricted the amount of garbage that could be left at the curb.
While St-Cyr’s article didn’t create the massive reaction that he would have liked, it did bring several people down to the Préfecture. An old priest led them, and he did talk of the outrageous and inhuman treatment of the Peau-Rouge, one of God’s simplest creatures. He spoke of compassion and mercy, of prayer and forgiveness. Soon he was rambling, preaching a sermon that had less to do with the plight of this particular Peau-Rouge than with the fate of uncivilized savages the world over, all of whom were God’s simplest creatures.
St-Cyr stood at the back of the small group, counting the disappointingly obedient, well-behaved heads. There were no more than twenty-five of them, also disappointing, so he decided to double it in his follow-up story. There were five gardiens stationed like pickets before the great doors. Perhaps he could mention something about suppression, the potential for violence, but even as he took notes he began to have doubts about his career as a writer.
His editor had at first seemed unmoved by his account of Charging Elk’s imprisonment. But one might chalk that up to a deficiency in the man’s personality. He didn’t seem to have one. And when St-Cyr had asked to be allowed to write the story himself, even though he was merely a police reporter, he had expected a terse rejection, perhaps a sharp bark of mirthless laughter. But the editor sat for a long moment, perhaps two, with his fingers steepled before his grim face. In his black suit and with his bald head gleaming under the overhead light, he looked like an undertaker lost in thought while the mourners wept.
Just as St-Cyr was thinking of trying to walk out the door of the small office backward, retracing his footsteps as if to erase this awful moment, the editor stood and slapped his palm on the desk. St-Cyr almost jumped straight up at the gesture.
“Can you do it?” the editor said in his even undertaker’s voice.
“Yes, of course, Monsieur Grignan. I will do my best.”
“Very well.” The editor looked at the small crystal clock on his desk. “You have two hours. Take it to Fauconnier when you are finished. Tell him to make the necessary adjustments.”
St-Cyr had been pleased that Fauconnier, the veteran journalist, had not found it necessary to make too many changes. He crossed out “brutish” in St-Cyr’s description of the jailer (“He might eat you next time”) and “cold-blooded” in reference to the whole police department (“We have to work with them even if they are coldblooded bastards”).
In the end, Fauconnier had clapped St-Cyr on the shoulder and said, “I think you are in love with this Indien,” a comment that the young journalist took as a compliment.
That night he celebrated with champagne and fruits de mer, followed by a visit to Fortune, who swore she had seen the Peau-Rouge the other day, poking in the refuse piles near the Quai de Rive Neuve. As she slipped into her kimono, she said, “He was a small wiry sort with stiff hair, like a Levantine—except he wore a suit of feathers.”
The next morning, St-Cyr read his story and was quite impressed with his first effort at real journalism. It appeared as he and Fauconnier had left it, except that the typesetters had left out a letter in Borely’s Christian name—Ambose. Ah well, Ambrose would see the humor in this; he was a decent cop. But when St-Cyr went on his rounds of the police stations, he was met with a kind of stiff hostility. Borely was not on duty at the Préfecture, a fact which disappointed the reporter. But as the day wore on, he became increasingly glad that he did not have to face the desk sergeant. After all, it was Borely who had let him venture down to the cells to see the Indian.
St-Cyr had miscalculated the police reaction to his article. What he thought was merely a plea to save the Indian from the inhuman conditions of the jail was taken as a slap in the face by the police departaient. St-Cyr got his police reports that day but with little enthusiasm.
Now, as he folded up his notebook, he became unsure of himself and wondered if he could write a follow-up article on such a pitiful reaction to his first one. Even if he doubled the crowd size and made it more enthusiastic, he had little to write about. And too, he had not been able to find out anything about Charging Elk. The desk sergeant at the Prefecture had said he knew nothing about the Peau-Rouge; inmates in the jail were none of his concern.
What if he was dead? St-Cyr felt a sudden rush of panic that made his upper lip tingle with sweat, in spite of the chill of the building’s shadows. Perhaps the sergeant was covering up the fact that Charging Elk was already dead—that already a hole had been dug in the indigents’ cemetery! Of course, that was it. That was why he had not been given any information about Charging Elk. The jailer, brute that he was, had not used the money to buy food—he had pocketed it to buy wine and salacious magazines. But what did St-Cyr expect? That the police cared about the savage?
But even in his panic, which was now becoming a churning in the pit of his stomach, St-Cyr was formulating the follow-up story in his head: “Where is the Peau-Rouge? Why have the police denied a humble reporter access to the savage called Charging Elk? Do they have something to hide? Could it be that the indien has died of starvation, or perhaps even more likely, a broken heart, in the gloomy dungeon of the Prefecture? The citizens of Marseille demand to know the answers to these and other questions. The church is up in arms, as witnessed by the large demonstration on the steps of the Préfecture, led by the holy fathers of the city and its outlying reaches. Unionists and socialists were seen in the audience—an unholy alliance that has united the distressed citizenry in its demand that the Peau-Rouge be freed, or, at the very least, released to the care of a more humanitarian institution. It is clear, even to a disinterested observer, that the hearts of the Marseillais have gone out to this pitiful savage, who apparently remains in his cold, damp cell in the bowels of the Prefecture. However, it is the duty of your humble servant to report that several of the protesters were advocating violence, if violence be the only means to attain justice. Let the police consider themselves forewarned.”
St-Cyr stood in the shadows of the buildings across from the Prefecture, scribbling as fast as he could, as the story came to him. It was as if the first story were merely a warm-up for this one. In his haste to get it all down, he had forgotten entirely the small gathering listening to the rambling priest, who was now telling the story of Christ and the money changers in Jerusalem.
If St-Cyr had really thought about it, he would have realized that there was a small war going on inside of him. He had suffered for three years a rather humble, boring life in a town he didn’t like, waiting to marry a girl he now didn’t think of more than once or twice a week, doing the most beggarly kind of reporting, and now he had a
chance to write the story of his life. It was all there—he couldn’t write fast enough to keep up with all that he had to say, and he had plenty to say. This was not merely the bare bones story of a wife-beating, or a drunken Levantine cutting off the nose of a Muslim. This was the story that would make St-Cyr a legitimate journalist—perhaps even a notorious one.
On the other hand, he had been genuinely moved by the sight of Charging Elk in his cell. He could not forget the dark, sunken eyes behind the cheekbones, the flatness of them and the way they avoided looking directly at St-Cyr. They were the eyes of a dying animal, of an animal that had resigned itself to death. St-Cyr had always thought that eyes, when they were alive, reflected hope, no matter how mean the circumstances.
St-Cyr, in his fevered state, did not realize that he had come to think of the creature in the cell as an animal that had been cornered. And in a way, he cared more for the animal than the man. If the man had been French, he would have thought of him as an unfortunate creature who had suffered an injustice at the hands of the law. But Charging Elk, like an animal, had no inkling of what had happened to him, why he was there, and he couldn’t voice a protest, could not explain his circumstances or mount a defense.
St-Cyr was not aware, at the moment, of this war going on inside him between the cynical young reporter and the human being who feared for the welfare of a fellow creature. That he had come to think of Charging Elk as a somewhat lesser animal did not enter his consciousness. He was inventing a story—based on the small demonstration—that would eventually release the Peau-Rouge from his hellish isolation. And wasn’t that a noble thing?
Once in a while Charging Elk could see trousered legs walk by the high window of his small stone room. At first, they appeared as thin shadows on the opposite wall, an almost imperceptible blurring of the light. But when he gradually realized that the brief shadows belonged to something outside the cell, he began to stare up at the window. For long periods of time, he stared at the window, and his heart jumped each time he saw the legs. He looked forward to seeing legs. They gave some definition to the world outside his stone room—a world of light and fresh air, of trees and sky, of people. He could imagine the legs walking up a flight of stairs to a warm room full of padded chairs and good things to eat, or down to the port to climb aboard one of the fire boats that would steam off to America, to take their owners to the wide-open country of the Lakotas.