Heartsong

by James Welch

  Bell watched the consul amble down the quiet hallway. The steel-gray stucco of the walls looked especially cold under the dim glow of a high chandelier. He turned to say good night to Agnes. She was straightening out the old man’s desk, her thin face with the almost hawkish nose handsome but impassive. In her long skirt and high-collared blouse, she looked almost schoolmarmish. Bell could imagine her washing the blackboard and dusting the erasers after the last student had left.

  “Have a nice evening, Agnes.”

  “Good night, Mr. Bell.” She didn’t look up from her task.

  Bell stood there for a few seconds more, wondering what he wanted. He looked beyond the desk and saw the long streaks of rain on the tall windows. He wondered what Agnes thought about when she took the notes for meetings like this. Did she admire the way the men conducted consular business? Did she think it was all silly and the men were fools? More important, what did she think of him? Had he really been so conspicuously devious? Suddenly, her opinion of him seemed important.

  She picked up the death certificate and began to walk toward the large safe set in an alcove behind the open door, then noticed him. “You’re still here,” she said, without surprise.

  “Yes, I was just thinking ...” Bell racked his mind. “Yes . . . it’s raining. Might I have Robert call you a cab?” The plane tree had vanished in the darkness outside the blurred windows, but Bell could almost smell its damp wood, the wet earth at its base. He felt humiliated and he didn’t know exactly why. It was just business, this whole thing. So why did he feel this way? He stood for a moment waiting for Agnes’s answer. Then he left, almost running.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  On a rare warm day in the middle of March, Charging Elk stood in front of the tobacco shop on Cours St-Louis and rolled a cigarette. The sky over the tops of the plane trees that lined the boulevard was a brilliant blue, washed clean of the usual smoky haze by three days of wind out of the north. He had learned the name of this wind less than a moon ago—mistral. The boy Mathias had told him. First the boy had puffed up his cheeks, then blown the air out, waving his fingers, finally pointing to some clothes that were flapping from a line between buildings. “Mistral,” he said. “Le vent du nord. La bise.” Then he went through the strange pantomime again, repeating the single word mistral again and again, as though it were a living thing. Finally, Charging Elk had said the word, and Mathias had smiled up at him, his large dark eyes shining in triumph.

  Charging Elk had not been around children much since the day he and Strikes Plenty had left the school in Pine Ridge for the freedom of the Stronghold. Of course, they had been children themselves, just fourteen winters, but they had no choice—or at least, they thought so at the time—but to live like grown-ups. They didn’t want to turn into wasicuns like the other children and even their own parents. So they grew up quickly out at the Stronghold, with the help of some of the older people, who provided them with a lodge and who fed them until Strikes Plenty was able to “borrow” a gun from a relative at the Whirlwind Compound. Later, they stole amunition and another gun from miners, but they prided themselves on their ability with bows, shooting birds and rabbits with the steel-tipped arrows. Most of the others, even those at the Stronghold, had long since given up this traditional weapon. And when they ran out of bullets, they had to tighten their belts.

  Charging Elk still could not believe how self-sufficient he and Strikes Plenty became at such an early age. But they had lived a strange life together for eleven winters—no family, no other friends. Occasionally they were invited into another lodge for a feast or a council, but for the most part, they had lived away from others; consequently, Charging Elk had felt uncomfortable around families, especially children. Now, this boy, Mathias, was not tough the way they were—in fact, he was a thin, pale boy with eyes like a deer and a shock of thick brown hair that stood high on his small head—but he was smart and helped Charging Elk learn new things. Just two sleeps before, he had taken Charging Elk to a shop that sold reading books and had shown Charging Elk a round ball with many strange shapes and writings. He had pointed to the town they were in, Marseille, to the big town, Paris, and across the big water—“Atlantique, Atlantique, Atlantique”—the town of New York, where Charging Elk had boarded the fire boat some time ago. Then he pointed to a long buckskin shape flanked by blue on two sides—“Amérique”—then pointed to Charging Elk. He repeated the gestures, until Charging Elk understood. Then he tapped his finger on the ball, in the middle of “Amérique.” “Dakota,” the boy said. “Dakota,” Charging Elk said eagerly The Dakotas were relatives of the Lakotas. In his excitement, Charging Elk had asked the boy how he could go home—in Lakota—but the boy simply smiled in shy amazement at the unfamiliar words.

  Charging Elk lit his cigarette with a stick match and crossed La Canebière to Cours Belsunce. He liked this wide street with the rows of knobby trees on the street-side edge of the broad walkway. There were many places where he could look in windows at clothes and sweets and knives and everything a man might want. There were cafés, but he hadn’t the courage yet to enter one for a small cup of the bitter pejuta sapa. But he always stopped at a particular kiosk with a bright green-and-white-striped awning that sold the flimsy papers with wasichu writing on them. Often they had pictures on them, drawings, mostly of men he thought all looked alike, with their beards and stiff collars. But once in a while there would be a drawing that would catch his eye—a horse and carriage, a ship plunging across the water with its sails up. He hadn’t drawn anything since the time he went to the wasichus’ school in Pine Ridge, but one night he had sat at the big table with the tall chairs and watched the girl, Chloé, trying to draw a horse. The head was too big and the legs weren’t shapely. He watched her puff air and mutter to herself, running her fingers roughly through her short dark hair, finally throwing the colored stick down. Charging Elk had picked up the stick and drawn a horse that looked more like a horse than hers had. It wasn’t very good—he was embarrassed that he wasn’t a better maker of horses—but he was surprised at her attention. And when he handed the stick back to her, she smiled and said something. Then she took another colored stick and wrote a word below the horse: CHEVAL. “Cheval,” she said, pointing her delicate finger first at the drawing, then at the word. Charging Elk had watched the small, pale finger, but something else entered his mind. A young woman in a simple dress and a white bonnet, sitting on the grass beside a calm lake, naming things for him: Sandrine. His heart rose in his chest, just as it had then, and he looked at the girl, pointed to the horse and said, “Sunka wakan.” Then, in English, he said, “Horse.” Then he smiled and said, “Cheval.”

  Since he had started working for the fishmonger, he was paid a few francs every Saturday afternoon, which he spent on tobacco, and nougat and licorice for himself and the children of René and Madeleine. Although she hadn’t tried to address Charging Elk directly, Madeleine seemed to have become more at ease in his presence. Now, instead of ignoring him except to place food on his plate or to collect his washing, she actually looked at him from time to time, usually when she was discussing something with René. Charging Elk didn’t know what they talked about but he took her casual glances to mean that she thought of him as a human being—someone to be considered—not as some strange object or wild animal to be stared at, perhaps to be feared. He knew that some of the Americans and French people thought this way. He had seen it in the wide eyes of the audiences when he deliberately rode at a full gallop directly up to the barricades, only to swerve at the last second, kicking up dust and sometimes mud.

  The children were another matter. Since that first time he had seen them—that disastrous meal of fish soup when he had had to go up to his room to throw up in the slop bucket and was sick all the next day—they had grown more and more close to him with each passing day. Mathias, especially, sat with him for an hour or two at a time, pronouncing words, teaching phrases. Sometimes the whole family would sit silently after dinner, listeni
ng to Chloé play some simple tunes on the piano. Madeleine frowned as she kept time with her long sticks that made woven clothes.

  At nine o’clock the whole family would go to bed. Charging Elk had learned to tell wasichu time from the reservation Indians in Paris, and so when the clock over the fireplace struck nine, he knew that the evening was over and he felt vaguely disappointed that he wouldn’t see the children until the next late afternoon. And so he would awaken early—remembering some gesture that Chloé had made or a new word that Mathias had taught him—and wait for René’s knock on his door before dawn had broken over the town. Every day was like that except for Sunday. Although they worked on Saturday, that evening was longer and the family seemed gayer. Mathias would play his stringed box with the long stem and he would sing. Sometimes René and Chloé sang with him and René would even dance. Once he pulled Charging Elk to his feet and held his hands and twirled the tall man around and around, all the time singing. And often he wanted Charging Elk to sing, but Charging Elk was too shy. The songs they sang were not his songs. He and Strikes Plenty often sang in their lodge, even on the trail, and they drummed and sang with others at the Stronghold. He understood those songs, he understood the talking drum. But to his surprise, seeing the happy family, he felt almost happy too, although his happiness came, in part, from remembering how his people celebrated that last summer before and after the fight at the Greasy Grass, forgetting for a time their precarious future. He remembered how the traveling camp got bigger by the day that summer as more and more reservation Indians joined them out in the buffalo country. He remembered the singing and dancing every night as the people celebrated their coming together. And he remembered thinking that this happy life would last forever, that the chiefs, Crazy Horse and the great Hunkpapa Sitting Bull, would lead them to a place where there were no wasichus, where they could live in peace in the old way. Then he remembered the hunger and sickness, the fights and flights, as winter and the soldiers came. When he thought about it, the only time Charging Elk had been at ease among the wasichus was when he was performing with Buffalo Bill s show. For the only time in his whole life he had been safe from the wasichus. Until now.

  Charging Elk stopped before a small store that sold many interesting things, even small likenesses of the big iron tree in Paris, not far from where the Buffalo Bill show had performed. Charging Elk and some of the other Indians, along with Broncho Billy, had taken a small cage up to a steel lookout with bars to keep people from falling off. Charging Elk had never been so high, not even in Paha Sapa, and he was not even halfway to the top of the iron tree. He remembered how quiet he and his companions had become—later, all of them confessed that they had been frightened that a big wind would come up and blow the tree down with them in it. Even Broncho Billy, who knew everything, seemed whiter than usual.

  But Charging Elk knew what he was looking for in the little store with the many things. Just beside the door, there was a wire rack, and it held the picturecards that one could send across the big water. Several sleeps ago, he had passed this wire rack and the first thing he had seen was a picturecard of Buffalo Bill with Rocky Bear and another Lakota named He-knows-his-gun. Rocky Bear was wearing his blue blanket pants and a blanket tied around his waist, and a calico shirt that Charging Elk had seen him wear many times. They were posing in the picture-taker’s house, Buffalo Bill with his hand over his heart and the two Indians carrying pipes in their folded arms. Behind them was a screen painted with palm trees and a big moon. Charging Elk himself had been to the same picture-taker s house in Paris.

  Now he walked into the store and found a young man with garters on the sleeves of his collarless shirt. “Pardon, monsieur.” He pointed back to the rack. “Combien?” Mathias had taught him how to ask for the price of things, but he still didn’t know many numbers, so most of the time it was useless to ask. To his surprise, he heard the young man say, “Trente centimes,” a figure he knew. The clerk put the postcard in a thin glassine envelope and Charging Elk walked out of the store, feeling good about his purchase. He would give the picturecard to René and Madeleine.

  Charging Elk continued up Cours Belsunce, stopping to watch a man who hid cards and took money from a large knot of watchers. He had seen this kind of gambling in Paris, and Broncho Billy had told him and the others that the man who hid the cards was a cheat and they must never play the game. But some of the Indians did play and lost their money. They thought because they were good at hiding the bones during stick games, they could figure out the cheater s way.

  Charging Elk became aware of the furtive glances in his direction and so he moved on. Even in his work clothes, he attracted as much attention as he had when he was on the run from the sick-house. But he was becoming used to it; in fact, he had almost recovered the pride he felt when he and the other show Indians walked down the streets in Paris. He had put on weight, so he felt powerful again. And his hair had grown long, although not as long as before the terrifying cutting. That would take some time, but he felt almost comfortable being himself among these people.

  He had been in Marseille for the better part of three moons. It was now the Moon of Snowblind, when the sun shone on the wind-slick snowfields just before thaw in his own country, but here there was nothing but streets and buildings and people—and rain. He knew that soon the first thunderstorm would rumble over the Stronghold and Bird Tail would perform his ceremony to welcome the new growing things. It was an old ceremony and it used to be performed to thank Wakan Tanka for bringing the buffalo back once again. Now, it was only to thank Wakan Tanka for allowing them to live through another winter. Charging Elk suddenly stopped. Would this be the spring that the White Buffalo Cow Woman and the buffalo with the stone eyes led the herds out of the bowels of Paha Sapa? But what about the wadicbud? What about their holes in maka ina? Perhaps they would find all the buffalo before they were ready to return. Perhaps they would kill them or make them run deeper into her heart.

  Charging Elk felt weak as he made his way to the stone wall of a building. The wall was warm against his back but not warm enough to stop the chill that ran through his own heart. Bird Tail’s vision had seemed so true that every time Charging Elk thought of that day he and Strikes Plenty heard the old pejuta wicasa tell of it, he felt certain that the Great Spirit would make sure that he got home in time to see it. Now he was not so certain, either about the buffalo or about himself. The thought of his nagi hovering aimlessly over this place once again filled him with dread. He closed his eyes and waited for the familiar weakness to pass, which it did more easily these days. Many sleeps he did not think or dream of his home at all, and it surprised him. In the sickhouse and later, on the run, he could think of nothing else. At night he had dreamed of his mother and father, of his life at the Stronghold with Strikes Plenty, of the country that he knew so well and moved so easily in, as though he would be there forever. He had lived then with the terrible constant dread he had just experienced—the dread of not going home, of staying here among these people, of dying here.

  But now Charging Elk felt the sun warm his face and he thanked Wakan Tanka for planting the seeds of the plan that had been growing in him every day for the past several sleeps and now seemed so simple: He would work hard for the fishmonger and earn enough money to pay for his trip home. He would wait until he had many francs; then he would find Brown Suit or Yellow Breast or the pale man with the spectacles who bought fish down at the water s edge. One of them would help him find a fire boat that would take him across to America. They were heyokad, but Wakan Tanka had sent them to help him.

  Charging Elk had closed his eyes to think these comforting thoughts, but now he opened them in a kind of contented excitement. Three small girls stared up at him.

  “Bonjour, Charging Elk. ça va?”

  It was Chloe and two of her friends. He was surprised to see them out of their neighborhood, even though it was only five or six streets away. Charging Elk himself had come this far only three or four times, on S
aturday or Sunday afternoons.

  “Bonjour—Chloe. Tred bien. Et vous?” He wanted to ask her how she had found him but he didn’t have the words.

  Chloé introduced him to her friends, making him say each name. The girls giggled at his pronunciation, but Chloe spoke sharply and the girls stopped and stared shyly at the sidewalk.

  Not knowing what else to do, Charging Elk pulled the picture-card from the little sack. He held it before the girls: “Buffalo Bill,” he said. He pointed to Rocky Bear. “Rocky Bear.”

  Chloé leaned closer for a better look. “Rocky Bear,” she said. Then she said something to her companions. They looked up at Charging Elk and saw that he was smiling. One of them, a tall girl with long black hair who seemed to be fascinated by his long brown finger, said, “Rocky Bear.”

  Charging Elk laughed, then held the picturecard before the third girl. She was shyer than the other two, and he noticed that her upper lip had a red welt that ran up to her nostrils. Finally when she said the name in American, the words came out in a breathy slur. Charging Elk knew from the sound of her voice that she had some sort of affliction. One of his childhood friends, Liver, had no ears and his attempts at words were poor. This girl was not much better.

  “Très bien,” he said, and he touched the small girl on the head. He thought it odd that he could tell that she could not speak the French words very well even though he hardly knew them at all.

  He took the girls into a sweets shop and bought them a bag of nougat to share. He felt a certain amount of pride in making his third transaction of the day. He now knew the price of tobacco and picturecards and two hundred grams of nougat. He turned the girls toward Rue d’Aubagne and their own neighborhood and said, “A bientôt, med amies.”