by James Welch
“How much longer?”
“If I said less than a week, it would be a lie. If I said six months, nine months—that too would be a lie. The only true thing I know is that she will not recover, barring a miracle from God. You would do well to pray for her soul now, Vincent.”
By four o’clock in the afternoon of the tenth day, Charging Elk and one of the boys from Agen hoisted the last box full of prunes up onto the wagon. Then the three boys climbed into the wagon and Vincent snapped the reins and the horses started for Agen. Although the processing plant was only three kilometers away, the horses had made the trip twice and sometimes three times a day during the harvest and they were just a little reluctant. Vincent snapped the reins again and whistled, and the wagon slowly creaked down the hill toward Agen.
Charging Elk stood among the trees and watched the heavy wagon lumber along the main road that led past the farm and into the valley. He looked beyond the valley to the wooded hills and the patches of farmland. A tall thin spire stood above the trees, shining white and distinct amid the jumble of greenery. He had often thought about this spire. In fact, he could see it when he sat out in the evening. It was always the last thing the sunlight found as the valley began to darken. He always thought of it as a beacon—like Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille—a shining beacon that one could see from a long way off that might offer guidance to lost souls like himself.
The next day Charging Elk and Nathalie were in the garden, she picking the last of the tomatoes and beans and he pulling up the spent plants and vines and turning over the earth. The garden had existed for many years, and the soil, beneath the crusty surface, was as soft as powder under his spade. They worked separately and quietly for an hour or so, until they suddenly found themselves within two meters of each other.
Although Nathalie was open, even loquacious, around her parents, she and Charging Elk had never spoken directly to each other, except for the usual greetings or small exchanges that were necessary to the days activities. He always felt uncomfortable around her because he had been in prison and she was still as innocent as a young deer. She felt uncomfortable around him for the same reason.
But today she said, “What is it like in America, Charging Elk?” She said this without looking up at him, but she had stopped picking the beans.
Charging Elk noticed this and he was surprised. Usually she addressed him while she was doing something else, in an offhand sort of way. And he could not remember her ever saying his name. “It is very big, very beautiful,” he said, although after fifteen years he could not really remember all the country he had seen on the way to New York. Somewhere after Omaha the land had turned green and the cities were plentiful. “Like France,” he said.
“And where do you come from—in America?”
Charging Elk remembered the big ball of the earth that Mathias had shown him in the stationery shop. “Dakota,” he said. “It is dry and not so many trees. The sun takes many hours to cross the sky. One can see it all day.”
Nathalie now looked up at him, squinting a little against the sun. “Are there cities in Dakota?”
“Not so much. Little towns along the iron road. Not like Marseille or Agen.”
“But Agen is small. I took the train once to Bordeaux with my parents. Now, that’s a big city.” She smiled. “I have an aunt and uncle there. He owns a cave and sells only the best of wines—or so my aunt says. But I prefer to live here where there are not so many people. Don’t you?”
Charging Elk was surprised by the question. He hadn’t really considered this farm, this town, as a place to live. He was only here for the growing season. Madame Loiseau had said so. She said he could go back to Marseille after that, after the news of his release had died down.
Now he looked around—down into the valley, toward Agen and the slow-moving Garonne; up at the orchards behind the house; at the spire across the valley. Then he looked down at Nathalie. She was wearing a large straw hat, which covered her face when she worked. But now she was looking up at him, an expectant smile on her face, as though she knew the answer to her question.
Charging Elk had not looked at her like this before. Her face was still that of a girl of sixteen winters—clean, unlined, with just a hint of summer tan because of the hat she always wore. But in the five moons he had been there she had changed. Now when he saw her walking across the yard, he saw a different person. If her face was hidden, he would take the figure to be that of a slender young woman. She had lost the gawkiness of childhood, almost without his noticing it. It was only in the face that he recognized the girl who had greeted him so shyly at the railway station.
He squatted down, ran his fingers through the soft loam, and said, “I like it here because you are here. You make me feel good.”
As she went about her chores for the next few weeks, Nathalie thought about what Charging Elk had said. Did he mean just her? Or her and her family? What did he mean by “feel good”? And the way he said it was just as confusing. He had looked at her, and the penetrating look in his eyes had made her fearful that he would try to touch her. But he hadn’t. He had carried her basket of tomatoes to the stone cellar beside the toolroom. She had followed with her beans, and in the cool darkness of the cellar, she had shivered in a way that had nothing to do with coolness. She had dumped her basket of beans into a wooden box on the earthen floor, then left, almost running out into the hot sun.
She had been confused then, less by Charging Elk’s words than by her own feelings. She had actually felt faint. Later that night, as she lay in bed, listening to her mother’s ragged breathing in the next room, she thought of Catherine and her soldier and she tried to believe that the faintness she had felt had something to do with a man and a woman together. She tried to believe that she was falling in love against her will.
Vincent had been spending more of his time in the house with his wife than in the orchards or the farmyard. Since there was not much work at that particular time of the year, Charging Elk and Nathalie were able to handle all that needed to be done. Vincent took dinner with them, eating very little, but much of the time he could be found standing outside the house, or limping slowly down the road toward Agen, only to turn around and walk back to the house. In the evenings, when Charging Elk sat outside his room, he could see a glow from Vincent’s cigar, then an orange arc, and the door would open, letting out a soft warmth into the night, and then close with a click of the latch.
On September 22, Lucienne went to sleep and didn’t wake up again. Charging Elk went to breakfast the next morning, but neither Vincent nor Nathalie was around. His place had been set and there was bread and confiture and melon on the table, along with lukewarm pots of coffee and milk. Across the table, he noticed a half-drunk café au lait. He took his coffee and a piece of bread back to his room and sat inside, looking out the open doorway. He knew that Lucienne was dead.
Charging Elk drank his caféau Lait and thought of death. Back at the Stronghold, death was a frequent visitor. He had been a child during the summer of the big fight on the Greasy Grass and had seen much death. That winter, he had seen many of his people starve to death or die of disease. His own brother and sister had died from the coughing sickness after the Oglalas surrendered. He himself had been near death in the hospital in Marseille.
Other than his own experience, he had not been much involved with death in his fifteen years in France. He had seen it in La Tombe, but he had not been close to the dead ones, except for Causeret. Death was expected in La Tombe and was not a cause for mourning. There were no loved ones there to mourn.
Lucienne s death was different. Although he had never become close to her as he had to Madeleine—probably because she was already preoccupied with dying when he had first looked at her—he had come to like Vincent and Nathalie and he worried about what would become of them now. Surely they would stay here and continue on, but there would be a big hole in their lives.
Charging Elk walked outside into the sunshine and offere
d up a prayer to Wakan Tanka. He closed his eyes and faced the sun. And he prayed not only for Lucienne s nagi, but for Nathalie’s and Vincent’s as well. And he prayed for himself, for he knew that his time here was almost over. Soon he would be back in Marseille, and the thought both frightened and excited him. He tried not to think of the Soulas family, because he was certain they would not welcome him back, not after his disgrace. And Marie—he had thought of her often during the cold winter months in La Tombe and at night he had dreamed of a life with her. But he knew that she would not care for him now. Still, Marseille was the only place in this country he knew.
Vincent Gazier sat on the bed and caressed his daughter’s shoulders, which shook uncontrollably beneath his hand. He himself had no tears in him. He had mourned his wife long before she was gone and now he felt that his body was as dry as the dust on the road to Agen. If anything, he felt relieved that his dear wife’s suffering was now over. But he was also saddened that his daughter’s was just beginning. True, Nathalie had suffered much in the past few months with the knowledge that there was no hope for her mother, but she was strong and had worked hard during the illness. Now she would wake up in the mornings to come and realize that her mother would not be there—ever. And she would mourn all over again.
Vincent himself could scarcely believe that now there would just be the two of them. And Charging Elk. But soon he would be gone.
Surprisingly Nathalie came out of her room later that morning and heated some water on the stove, even though she knew the act was unnecessary. She poured the water into a ceramic pitcher and took it into her parents’ room. There she washed her mother’s body, just as she had for the past few weeks, and with her father’s help, dressed her in the white summer dress she had worn to town and to mass when she was healthy. Nathalie almost broke down again when she saw how loosely the dress fit her mother’s wasted body, but she took a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself, then applied rouge to the sunken cheeks and the pale lips. She took a little comfort in seeing how peaceful and beautiful her mother looked, even younger, as though she had fallen asleep on her wedding night.
The funeral took place two days later in a little church near the central place of Agen. At dinner the night before, Vincent had asked Charging Elk to come with them, and when he looked a little reluctant, Nathalie said, “Please come. My mother liked you and would wish you to be there.” So he sat in the back of the church and listened to the strange words and songs of the holy man and looked around at the statues and smelled the holy smoke. It was the first time he had ever been in a wasichu church, and it didn’t seem to be a bad place. He thought of the times he had gotten angry with his parents and the other Lakotas for going to the white man’s church and he shook his head in a kind of stupefied wonderment. Those days were a long time past and in another life altogether.
Charging Elk spent the next four months with Vincent and Nathalie, and during that time several things happened that would change all their lives considerably. When he later looked back on this part of his life, Charging Elk would stop whatever he was doing and try to understand the succession of events that led to his happiness.
And it would always come out something like this: First, Vincent asked him to stay on to help with the pruning when the sap went out of the limbs. Although he was getting restless and was anxious to go back to Marseille, he knew he could not refuse to help the family that had taken him in. And so he had stayed on, doing little chores until pruning time. He even took up horsehair braiding, a craft he had learned from a Hunkpapa out at the Stronghold. It had helped him pass the winter moons until the grass greened and High Runner became impatient for adventure. He spent his evenings in his room at the Gaziers’ farm braiding a belt with Lakota designs. It was a clumsy attempt, but it was a belt, one that Nathalie marveled at one day when she came to fetch him to lift something for her.
As the clouds thickened into a monotonous gray and a bitter wind off the ocean to the west came more frequently, Charging Elk spent more time in the main house. He did his chores and came in for coffee in the afternoon. He arrived an hour earlier for dinner and stayed an hour later. He and Vincent always drank an eau-devie after dinner and talked of plans for the next spring, almost as though Charging Elk would be there. Nathalie, after washing the dishes, would often sit with them and sew or look through an old magazine that showed what the fashionable women wore in Paris. She enjoyed the talking and the closeness of the kitchen. Often she would look at Charging Elk, and she would see a man not much younger than her father, but she would remember the Indian s words in the garden and her own reaction that night in bed. Now she felt a warmth toward him, almost a dependence on his presence in the chair opposite her father. She could not imagine what life at the farm would be like if he were not there. Both she and her father needed him.
One night in late November, Charging Elk sat at the table in his room, working on the belt. The small oil lamp gave off a warm glow in the cold room and just enough light for him to attempt his intricate designs. He used red and white and gray horsetail for the designs and black for the border. He was getting better but he knew it would not pass muster at the Stronghold. The Hunkpapa had been a patient teacher but he would have had a good joke over this one.
Charging Elk’s eyes were beginning to sting with the strain of braiding the fine horsehair and he was just about ready to quit when he heard a light rapping on his door. Because nobody had ever come to his room after dark, he was startled and filled with a sense of foreboding. He stood and crossed the room in two quick paces and flung open the door, expecting the worst.
But it was Nathalie and she smiled at him. She wore a gray cloak with a hood, and he could see that the hood and shoulders were dark. He looked up and saw water dripping off the eave. “It’s raining,” he said. “Come in.” When she crossed the threshold and threw back the hood, he felt his heart jump up, but a knot of apprehension tightened in his stomach at the same time. He hadn’t been alone with a woman—or a girl—since Marie.
Nathalie shook her head and patted her long dark curls into place. She smiled again, not really looking at him, and he saw the calm, beautiful smile of a woman. It was the kind of smile he had seen on the faces of women in the streets and the cafés of Marseille. It was the smile of young women who looked into the eyes of their men. Charging Elk couldn’t believe this moment. He had walked the streets of Marseille in his fine clothes; he had sat in cafés drinking wine; he had watched the women, looking for just such smiles. And he had gone home alone, only to dream of a young woman who might give him such a smile. A young woman like Marie.
But Nathalie now spotted the half-finished belt and the smile became a youthful grin. “Can I watch you work?”
Charging Elk looked at the belt, and all he could see was the poor designs at the beginning. “It is not so good. I was just quitting for the night.”
“Please, Charging Elk. Do just a little more for me.”
When he heard her say his name, so carefully, his heart rose even higher. But he knew he shouldn’t feel this way about her, so he walked back to the table and sat down. He began to braid, trying to ignore the fact that her face was just above his head. His eyes felt better from the break and his fingers did not tremble as he wove the twisted strands of horsehair into the design.
He began to concentrate even harder on his work and soon got into his usual painstaking rhythm. Then he suddenly felt a slight pressure on his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her pale fingers against the rough fabric of his wool coat. It was a friendly gesture, but too close, and he knew he should somehow ask her to leave, but he couldn’t think of a polite way. So he tried to ignore the hand.
“It’s so lovely,” she said, and he felt her hand stroking his long hair. He kept it cut to just down to his shoulder blades now. He usually wore it in a ponytail but tonight, in his room, it was loose. As she stroked his hair, he became light-headed, almost sleepy, and he watched his fingers twist and braid
the horsehair. Then his fingers became clumsy and then they stopped. He sat for a moment, in a kind of blissful torpor, feeling the fingers weave their way through his hair.
He didn’t know how long he sat there with his eyes closed, but he suddenly smelled a sweetness close to him and he felt her lips brush his cheek very near his mouth. He heard three or four light steps, then the door open and close, and he was alone in his room, suddenly, helplessly, in love.
Nathalie came often after that first night. At first, Charging Elk was worried that Vincent would find out and disapprove, but he knew that Vincent always retired after their eau-de-vie after dinner. Since his wife died, he seemed to have lost much of the energy that allowed him to work hard day after day, then make plans and tease Nathalie in the evening. Although he sometimes became animated when he talked with Charging Elk, for the most part he was quiet and thoughtful, and sometimes he just gave out and sighed and slumped in his chair, like an old man. Then he went to bed.
Charging Elk was puzzled by Nathalie s personality—sometimes she was the young girl who teased him, tickled him, and giggled at odd moments; at others, she was a demure young woman who blushed at his compliments or spoke of a life away from the farm now that her mother was gone. Whoever she was at any given time, she liked to run her fingers through his hair, place his arms around her, and kiss him, an act Charging Elk found pleasurable but was not experienced at. Once she told him to put his tongue in her mouth, and when he did, she giggled and fell back on his bed and said, “Oh là là!”
But soon that became her favorite way of kissing, and Charging Elk could feel a change in her body as she went from the young girl to the young woman. Her breath came in gasps and she allowed him to touch her breasts and her hips, but never her center. “That is for later,” she would say as she moved his hand.