Heartsong

by James Welch

  And for the first few weeks, as the weather turned wintery, he would sit in his cell, wrapped in his blanket against the draft, and try not to think that he was there for the rest of his life. In the gardens, it was easy to forget. All the hard work beneath a blazing sun or a chilling rain blocked out any despair that he would remain in La Tombe until they carried him out for burial in the plot not far to the north of the garden. And when he rested, looking out over the valley or at the orange roofs of the small town, he knew that the work was necessary to his survival. He had heard too often of inmates who hung themselves in the laundry or the latrine when no one was around, or late at night in their cells while the others slept. He had heard of, and twice seen, inmates stabbing other inmates with a sharpened piece of metal from the blacksmith s shop or a knife stolen from the kitchen. He had seen guards take troublesome inmates away in chains—never to be seen again. But out in the fields, Charging Elk could forget about all that went on within the walls of La Tombe.

  Although they were never close, the big man who ran the gardens, Gustave Boucq, was pleased not only with Charging Elk’s work but with his constancy. The others came and went, but Charging Elk was always there. Sometimes Boucq would come and watch the Indian hoe weeds or pick corn. He would wait until Charging Elk stopped to wipe his brow or pull up his trousers (he lost five to ten kilos every summer), then ask, “How goes it? Not too hot?” When Charging Elk would assure him that he was fine, Boucq would kick the crumbly earth or look away toward the far side of the valley and say, “Well, you’d better drink some water,” or “Those tomatoes need pinching off when you’re done here—but take a break. Don’t want to be responsible for killing you off.” Then he would mutter some words that passed for appreciation and walk off to his own job. These moments under the hot sun were as close as the two men ever got.

  Charging Elk never received a letter in all those years he spent in prison and certainly not a visitor. La Tombe was a long way from Marseille, and while René had remained loyal and supportive during the trial, he had to sell fish every day to support his family. And there was no one else on the outside.

  Causeret remained a good friend. Although they were in different units now, they did see each other in the yard and the mess hall. If he was serving the line of inmates, he would put an extra potato or sausage link on Charging Elk’s plate. But after a few years, the juggler smiled and laughed less often. When they walked the yard during those cold months Charging Elk didn’t work, he no longer talked of scaling the wall and going to America to look for gold. Instead he spoke of a wasted life of going from town to town, to fairs and markets, performing his meager art for people who considered him, rightly, a mere sideshow. And when Charging Elk reminded him that he had made people happy, he laughed. But it was not the laugh of old, the laugh that had raised Charging Elk’s own heart; it was a weak laugh of regret that trailed off into a cold wind. Eventually, Causeret quit walking. Charging Elk would walk the perimeter of the yard by himself, and when he came back, he would find the once-vigorous, aerobatic little man shivering in the lee of the wall, holding his thin jacket closed, waiting to return to his cell.

  One day Causeret did not show up in the yard. Charging Elk was puzzled, but he went through his routine of walking to ward off the chill. But the next day, when his friend didn’t show again, he asked the Englishman whose cell was just across the corridor from the juggler’s what was going on. And the Englishman said he thought Causeret was sick. He hadn’t gone to work the past two days—he just lay on his cot and stared at the ceiling. The next day, the Englishman said that two orderlies from the dispensary had wheeled the juggler away in the dead of night. Two days later, he said a guard had come to Causeret’s cell and removed his bedding and small effects. Charging Elk had stared at the Englishman for a moment, then turned and began to walk the perimeter as always.

  It rained most of that winter, and sometimes Charging Elk would find himself virtually alone in the yard. But he walked because he had to. If he didn’t walk every day, he knew he would think about his friend’s death and the fact that he too would die someday in La Tombe, perhaps soon, unexpectedly, like Causeret. But quite often, at the very moment Charging Elk’s despair was at its apex, the snow would fall. And he would lift his head and feel the downy flakes settle on his face and melt and he would be transported, as if by magic, as if Wakan Tanka had sent the snow to remind him, back to the Stronghold and the winters he had spent with Kills Plenty. The memories that rushed through his mind—High Runner snorting out a greeting just outside the lodge in the morning, Kills Plenty pretending to be asleep so that Charging Elk would have to build the fire, hunting all day only to return with a long-legged rabbit—took him a long way from La Tombe and sustained him for a few days. But then the thought of dying would return and he would lie on his cot wrapped in his blanket and wonder when. Many times in his life in this country he had wanted to die. He should have wanted to die now more than ever—but he didn’t. Not even when it rained every day.

  In the early spring of his tenth year, on the 12th of March of 1904, a guard unlocked Charging Elk’s cell and told him to come along. Charging Elk had been waiting for this moment, and he felt his heart beat high in his chest. He put on his jacket and watch cap and followed the guard out into the yard and toward the gate. It was a raw, windy day, but he was anxious to get out into the terraces, to work hard, to put another bleak winter behind him.

  But the guard instead led him into the administration building. Charging Elk became alarmed at this detour and tried to think of what he might have done wrong. Just three days before he had gone to the library for the first time but had only picked up a book about horses and thumbed through it to look at the pictures. Had the man at the desk reported him for some violation? He tried to think of what he might have done that was wrong. He was panicked at the thought that he wouldn’t be able to work in the gardens anymore.

  A different woman, much older and heavier than the first one, let him into the warden’s office. She smiled at him but he was too frightened to notice.

  “Ah, here is our man.” The warden actually stood and stepped from behind his desk. Charging Elk glanced into his round, red face, at the long nose, and remembered thinking that he looked like a strange bird. But that had been many years ago and now he no longer looked like that bird. With his stumpy legs and his shiny head growing out of his collar, he looked like the sightless creature that burrows into the earth. “Good day, Charging Elk.”

  “Good day, monsieur.” Charging Elk shook the warden’s hand, but he was already glancing toward the other two people in the room, who were rising to their feet.

  The warden kept Charging Elk’s hand in his own as he turned to the two people. “Allow me to introduce you to Monsieur Murat of the Department of Corrections in Paris, and Madame Loiseau of the Catholic Relief Society of Marseille. They have both come a long way to see you.” The warden laughed, and Charging Elk could detect a nervous deference in the laughter. “You must be an important man.”

  As he shook hands with the two visitors, he couldn’t help but notice a difference in their demeanor toward him. The man was stiff and perfunctory, while the woman smiled in a kindly way and gripped his hand with both of hers. Charging Elk noticed that her pearl-colored gloves were smooth and soft, like velvet. He hadn’t touched such fine fabric for many years.

  “To be brief, Monsieur Charging Elk”—the man picked up a thin leather portfolio and pulled a piece of heavy paper from it—“you have been reclassified as a political prisoner and herewith have been granted a pardon by the Republic of France.” The man handed the piece of paper to Charging Elk.

  Charging Elk had heard his name pronounced as the Americans did, as Brown Suit did. He thought the man must be an American, but he spoke French like a Frenchman.

  Charging Elk studied the piece of paper, and he saw his name in heavy black ink in the center and the date in the upper right-hand corner. In the lower left-hand corner he saw
a gold seal with two short red ribbons. The rest was written in perfect script that he didn’t understand. He said, “Thank you very much, monsieur.” Then he looked at the madame, not knowing what else to do. She was smiling, an expectant look in her eyes. “Thank you, madame.”

  There was a brief silence. Then Madame Loiseau said, “Of course!” She laughed and tapped the paper in his hand. “This means you are free. A pardon means that the government excuses you for your transgression—or, as in this case, admits that it made a mistake. It seems you were tried as a citizen of the United States of America. As it turns out, by treaty, your tribe is its own separate nation and therefore not subject to the legal agreements between the United States and France. Thus the reclassification from common criminal to political prisoner. You have been held illegally all these years.” Madame Loiseau glanced toward Monsieur Murat and smiled triumphantly. “You are at liberty to come with us, Charging Elk.”

  He looked at her. She was not tall but imposing nonetheless. She wore a black dress with a high collar and long narrow cuffs with a row of buttons running up each cuff. Her waist was pinched but her bosom stood out like the naked figures on some of the ships in the Old Port. Her gray hair was tucked up under a black felt hat with a narrow turned-up brim. Although her dress was stark, almost stern, she continued to smile with a warmth that Charging Elk had not felt since Causeret was alive and in good spirits. He decided he liked her and trusted her.

  “Its true, my friend. I have some papers here.” The warden dipped a pen into an inkwell, handed it to Charging Elk, and showed him where to sign. He drew the letters of his name slowly, carefully, but he couldn’t keep his hand from shaking. He had not drawn his name since the trial, and it was not as clear as he would have wished. But the shaking came from suddenly realizing that he was going to leave La Tombe. Then he panicked again. Unless this all was a trick. René had told him not to sign anything until he knew what it said. He almost asked madame to read the papers to him.

  But the warden said, “That’s it. You’re a free man, Charging Elk. You may get your belongings. And may God go with you.”

  As Charging Elk crossed the yard behind the guard, he glanced toward the gate. He wondered if Gustave Boucq was waiting for him. He wanted to say goodbye to someone, but with Causeret dead and the big bearded man probably in his toolshed, examining the hoes and spades, he didn’t know of anybody else who might like to wish him well. He glanced around at the looming walls, the empty yard, and the gray sky above, and he thought that it would be best to slip out quietly.

  And he suddenly wondered where he would go. He had been so stunned by the news he had forgotten to ask. But he knew madame would take care of him. He felt his whole face open up into a wide grin, and when the guard held the door for him into his unit, Charging Elk saw a look of astonishment on the guard s face.

  The guard had been at La Tombe for all of Charging Elk s years and he had never seen such a look on the Indian. The grin on the usually passive face was almost frightening. It was as though the savage had been sleepwalking for the past ten years.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nathalie Gazier stood on the stone platform of the railway station and looked across the tracks in the direction of the Garonne. She could see the orderly row of plane trees beside the wide cinder path with just a glint of the river on the far side of a taller row of oaks. A kiosk that sold flowers in the summer was shuttered and covered with posters and flyers advertising musical events, soccer games, lectures, political speeches, and a theater schedule. Just yesterday, Sunday, an unusually warm day for March, she had been walking along the path arm in arm with her girlfriend Catherine, who was a year older and already going with a young fusilier from the military post on the road to Bordeaux. As they watched a group of men playing boules, Catherine had informed her that Thierry, her lover (as she referred to him), had stuck his tongue in her mouth last week. Nathalie had squealed in horror, but a moment later, as they were watching two sculls race along the Garonne, the oarsmen gliding smoothly back and forth as the big oars creased the water, curiosity got the best of her.

  “What did it feel like?” she had said.

  “How would you imagine it felt like?”

  “Like a slimy raw sausage.”

  “That’s how much you know, little girl. You don’t have a lover.”

  “Well, what did it feel like then?”

  Catherine had laughed, but then she said, “I don’t know. He said that’s how the girls in Bordeaux kiss, but it made me dizzy. I almost fainted in his arms.”

  Now Nathalie wondered what would happen to her if a man kissed her that way. The idea still disgusted her, but men put something else into a woman and it was fine as long as you were married. Although she was only sixteen, she knew several girls her age who were already engaged, some even married.

  Nathalie looked up the tracks, which curved to the right and disappeared behind the wall of the lycee. When she was younger, she had wanted to go to the lycee in a most desperate way because one of the boys in her school had bragged that he would go there someday and then become a scientist. She had had a crush on him even in the third grade, her last year of school. She hadn’t seen him since. But now she wondered if he had become the type of young man who put his tongue in girls’ mouths. The idea still revolted her. How could it make one dizzy? She would probably just get sick.

  Maybe that was what was the matter with her. She wasn’t compliant like Catherine. She didn’t have Catherine’s easy manner around men. Whatever was the matter, the fact was she didn’t have a boyfriend or even the prospect of a boyfriend, if you didn’t count Alain, the boy from the next farm. They had kissed four or five times in the orchards, but she had felt exactly nothing. He was not a handsome young fusilier—not even a strong farmhand, like the one who worked for Alain’s father. Nathalie often watched him prune trees or pitch hay. In the heat of the day he would strip down to his undershirt and she would secretly spy on him, transfixed by his strong, glistening shoulders and taut arms and his narrow waist. She had never spoken to him but she just knew he would prefer a girl like Catherine or one of the faster girls who sat in the cafes and smoked and flirted shamelessly. What chance did a gawky farm girl have?

  A gust of wind blew up and Nathalie pressed her bonnet to her head, squinting against the dust cloud. Then she heard a whistle and she became excited again. She wondered what the stranger would look like. She had never seen an American savage before. And he was a convict! Just like the other two who had lived with them for a while. But they were just farm boys who had found themselves on the wrong side of the law, as her father liked to say. Nothing that a little hard work wouldn’t cure. Nathalie hadn’t fallen in love with either one, though she tried a little with the boy from Souillac. But they were homely, dull-witted boys whose only real crime had been thinking that they were smart enough to get away with something. Her father liked to say that to his friends, who would disapprove but laugh knowingly, then get on with their complaints about the drought or the endless rain and the poor price for prunes or artichokes.

  Nathalie suddenly felt a little faint. She had been up all night and had had only two hours of sleep this morning. Her stomach felt hollow and bitter, even though she had eaten a piece of bread on the way to the train station. She tried not to think about Catherine’s lover’s fat tongue which almost made her friend faint; instead she concentrated on the moment at hand and the stranger who would come to live with them for the next few months. She was nervous about having a savage around, not because she was afraid of him—her father had been assured that he was not dangerous—but because she was afraid of what the neighbors might think. She did have her reputation to think of. In spite of her lack of success with boys, she was becoming a woman. There were certain parts of her that were filling out while other parts were diminishing. When she looked into the mirror these days she saw actual cheekbones and a nose that didn’t quite look like a pudgy button. Such knowledge made her feel secretly
superior, as though she were becoming the swan she always knew she would be.

  Vincent Gazier stood beside his daughter with his arms crossed, a thin cigar in one hand, a scowl on his gaunt face. The stiff March wind blew from the west, picking up the chill from the Atlantic, and this troubled him. Usually it was this very wind that kept his trees safe from freezing, but last night the breeze had blown away the clouds and he and his wife and daughter had had to build fires among the trees and tend them until early morning. This night promised to be just as clear and cold. Even now he should be gathering more wood from the forest to the east of Agen. And the train was late.

  Gazier’s family had raised plums just outside Agen for countless generations. Most of the time it was a pleasant occupation, but hardly one that would make a man rich. Still, in a normal year, if God granted him just an average harvest, he could keep his family clothed and fed until the next year. And that was all he had come to ask for. That was all any of the generations of Gaziers had ever asked for. But too often a late frost would kill off the buds or the setting fruit, or a year without rain would make the plums small and hard, or a couple of days of rain late in the season would split the ripening plums and all the year’s work would wither on the trees or go to the hogs. Fortunately, last year had been a good one; his family had harvested a heavy crop and delivered it to the processing plant for a decent sum of money.

  But it only takes one bad year, thought Gazier, and then you have to humiliate yourself in front of the bankers to borrow enough to see you through the winter. This could be one of those seasons. He pulled out his watch. One-thirty. Twenty minutes late. He was already having second and third thoughts about what he had let himself and his family in for.

  He had received the letter from Madame Loiseau of the Catholic Relief Society two weeks before. He had read it to himself, then to his wife and daughter, leaving out the portion that described the crime. After the obligatory familiarities, it had gotten down to the meat of the matter.