Heartsong

by James Welch

  The voices all sounded familiar to him, almost as though he could recognize them, but more than twelve years had passed since he had worked in the Soulases’ fish stand and he knew that many of the voices would be silenced forever; others would have failed or moved on. Still, it was a small neighborhood, the people would have lived there for generations, so it was not impossible that he would know them.

  Charging Elk was nervous, almost frightened at being discovered. He was still an oddity, a big man with dark skin and long black hair who looked as if he belonged in an immigrant neighborhood. Strangely, he had not felt so out of place since he had left Marseille, not in the prison, where there were many varieties of men, not in Agen, where he was different enough to feel unique but not a freak. Now the people looked at him with that same suspicion he had felt when he first walked these streets. It had been a puzzling hostility then, but now he was afraid someone would recognize him as the notorious killer of the famous chef.

  He had enjoyed a quiet anonymity for four moons since arriving from Agen. He went to work on the quais every day but Sunday, loading and unloading the big ships; he stayed home at nights with Nathalie; they walked along the Corniche on Sundays. It was a quiet life and he treasured it. He had taken up drawing again and drew from memory his life on the plains of Dakota. Nathalie would watch him over her sewing or knitting until she couldn’t stand the suspense and would beg him to show her his current effort. But he made her wait until he had finished each sketch. Then he would point out every detail and explain it to her. She was always enthusiastic and urged him to start selling them. There were always artists around the Old Port who sold worse pictures than his. He would laugh at her enthusiasm, but when he was heaving around the heavy crates or casks or walking home from work, he wondered if that was possible. He had never considered himself an artist, but what if she was right? He began to envy the real artists who sold their pictures on the quais and along the Corniche. And Nathalie was right—his pictures were better than many of those who seemed to draw or paint the same scene over and over. But the idea of selling sketches was a fleeting one, and by the time he walked up the stairs to their flat it was gone.

  Charging Elk had not worked for six days, and he was restless and worried. He and Nathalie had only enough francs for food for another week. He went to the quais every morning, but he would be turned back by some of the men he worked with. His union had struck the shipping companies and several of the workers paced the quais, carrying placards and clubs. They wanted shorter hours—from ten hours a day to eight—and Saturday afternoons off to be with their families more. They were tired of being treated like West African slaves. Charging Elk agreed with his fellow workers, but what good would it do if they could not put food on the table or pay the rent in the meantime? What if the companies took their jobs from them and gave them away to others? There were always men hanging around the quais looking for work.

  Charging Elk took a deep breath and put these thoughts out of mind. Today he needed to be clear of head, and he had stood there long enough. He would have to walk up the street or walk away. He wouldn’t have very far to go to see René’s stall. It was on the near edge of the place, under a familiar green awning that he could almost make out from here. It would say POISSONS COQUILLAGES FRUITS DE MER. He could almost envision the wooden trays filled with shaved ice, the separate displays of sardines, anchovies, and tuna, the langoustines, the poulpe and the rascasse, the hogfish, its big jaws propped open in a frightening display. Even now he thought he could smell the dull, clean odor of fresh fish, the metallic tinge of the oysters.

  He rolled a cigarette, lit it, and took a few tentative steps toward the market. He had used part of the money Vincent had given him to buy a new suit. This one was made of a cheaper material, coarser, scratchier, but it was still fresh and draped smoothly over his long frame. He was happy with the suit and the wool cap, but he was especially proud of the way Nathalie looked on Sundays in her new silky gray dress with the lace sleeves and collar. Sometimes he sat in church and just watched her as she went through the gestures of her worship.

  Charging Elk had worried all the way down from Agen about how Nathalie would take to Marseille. For him the city by the sea would be familiar, even welcome, after the cloistered valley of the Garonne. He had a few moments of doubt on his own account, but Madame Loiseau had assured him, in a letter to Vincent, that his previous notoriety had been all but forgotten. But Nathalie would not be accustomed to the variousness and energy of the big seaport. The French that people here spoke was different from that of Agen. Often it was not French at all but the strange language that René and Madeleine spoke to each other. He had tried to prepare her on the long trip by pointing out the differences in tongue and custom, but he only succeeded in spoiling the trip for her. She went from excitement over all the things they were seeing from the train window to a set-jaw apprehension when they reached the coast and turned east. And when they were met at the Gare St-Charles by a man from Madame Loiseau s office, Nathalie was visibly timid and frightened of all the trains and people in the large, glass-covered station.

  Even as he remembered their dismal arrival, Charging Elk felt his heart jump up. When they walked into their flat, which had three rooms, a real bathroom, and a large three-sided window overlooking the dark street, her eyes had lit up again. And when the man left, she had pulled him down on the bed and said many wonderful things to him, punctuated with giggles and sighs. In spite of his dire warnings, she had managed to cheer up both herself and him. He had never been so grateful for her youth as that first night in their new flat.

  Now Charging Elk could see the green awning with the big white letters. Just below the letters, in smaller print that he couldn’t read but knew was there, were the words “M. Soulas, Poissonnier.”

  Charging Elk approached slowly, stopping to look into shop windows, then at tables filled with nuts, olives, radishes, lettuce, and all the other early-season riches of the market, until he was at the meat stall, looking at the large cuts of red meat. As he looked at them, he remembered how he had stood in the fish stall looking longingly at the meat. Later when he learned that it was horse meat, that the golden horse head was the insignia of all markets that sold horse meat, he had almost gotten sick. He had eaten the flesh of sunka wakan before, during the bad winter after the fight on the Greasy Grass, when the people were hungry all the time, but he hadn’t eaten it since. Now he looked at the meat and he thought of all the horses the Oglalas had owned before they came in to Fort Robinson. None of the people were happy to eat their horses that winter but they had saved many from starvation.

  He glanced over at the fish stall, his stomach turning a little from the smell of the meat and the apprehension he suddenly felt. At first he couldn’t see the mongers through the crowd of women, who all seemed to be pointing at the fish at once, talking, shouting, arguing in those familiar voices. Then he heard a man’s voice scolding one of the women and he recognized it at once. And when the woman walked off with her fish wrapped in newsprint, Charging Elk saw his old friend.

  The few thin strands of hair that used to be plastered over the top of the shiny head were gone now. But from the distance of the width of the narrow street, everything else about René looked the same. The same open smile which showed the gap of missing lower teeth, the same small, bright eyes, the stocky little frame. Charging Elk felt his throat tighten and he looked between the heads of the women for Madeleine. In some way that he did not fully understand, he had come to see her. He had never forgotten the shame he had felt when she said that he must bring his girlfriend to dinner one Sunday. And his further shame when she had learned during the trial that his girlfriend was a whore. And when she had quit coming to the trial, when she chose not to see him anymore, he felt his shame was complete. But now why did he want to see her so much? To tell her that he was now a different man? That he had a wife who was young and virtuous, who went to church every Sunday? That he went to church too? What wa
s it he wanted from Madeleine?

  Another customer left the stall, and he saw a tall, thin young man in a soiled oilskin apron. It wasn’t François. So René had a new helper. The young man was heaping more shrimps onto the ice from a box at his feet. Although it was a warm spring morning with the sun just now entering the narrow street, the young man wore a high-necked sweater beneath the apron. His long pale fingers scooped up mounds of shrimps and laid them on the ice. Even from across the street Charging Elk could see the red knuckles that seemed to be the lot of the fishmonger from day after day of the slimy moisture. But it was the hair of the new helper that held his gaze. It was brown and bushy, seeming to stand up from every angle. And when the young man looked up, right at him, Charging Elk turned quickly back to the red meat. He held his breath, waiting for the young man to call out, but he heard nothing except the haggling around him. He eased his way back toward the way he came, and when he was clear of the market, he walked quickly down Rue d’Aubagne in the direction of La Canebiere.

  Charging Elk never went back to the market after that. Although he hadn’t seen Madeleine, for many days afterward he imagined her there and that she had looked at him with forgiveness in her eyes. He imagined that she beckoned to him and spoke his name. But he couldn’t imagine anything beyond that. When he thought of that day he only saw the large brown eyes of Mathias looking at him without a hint of expression.

  The strike lasted for three weeks, and when it was settled, the dockworkers got their Saturday afternoons off and extra pay if they worked them. They did not get shorter hours for the other days of the week, but Charging Elk was happy to be back at work. The last of the 250 francs that Vincent had given him managed to get him and Nathalie through the three weeks, but they had ended up eating out of the same pot of soup for several days.

  One afternoon, Charging Elk returned to the flat to find Nathalie slumped over the kitchen table in tears. She was barefoot and wore only a white cotton chemise. He immediately thought of Vincent. Something had happened to him. But when he hurried over to comfort her, she looked up at him with a small, scared smile that stopped him in his tracks.

  “But what is it, Nathalie? Why are you crying? Is it your father?”

  Nathalie dabbed at her eyes with a small cloth. Her face had grown leaner, shaplier, in the past several months—she had become a very attractive woman at eighteen—but now her eyes sparkled with tears. Her cheeks were red and her lips trembled almost imperceptibly.

  Charging Elk knelt before her, suddenly frightened. “What is is? Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “It is nothing. I’m just foolish to worry—” A single sob, like a hiccup, racked her body and the tears flowed again.

  “You must tell me—what troubles you? Please.”

  “I can’t tell you.” She looked down at the table, but the small smile had returned. “You won’t like it.” Then she made a small sound which seemed to come from her bosom. It seemed to be a suppressed sob, but when it came again it sounded more like a giggle.

  Charging Elk sat back on his heels, puzzled. “Please,” he said in a low voice. “You can tell me. I’m your husband.”

  “I think you are part of the problem, my husband.”

  “What have I done?” Again he became frightened.

  “It’s what we have both done.” She wound the damp cloth around her finger and stared intently at it. “We have created a baby perhaps.”

  “A baby!”

  Nathalie looked at him. “Are you not happy? All day I was afraid you wouldn’t be. Now I see it in your eyes. You are not happy.”

  “Yes. No. Of course I am happy, Nathalie. But how . . . ?”

  Nathalie smiled and her cheeks reddened. “What do you mean, ‘how’? Like anybody else—when they lie together as often as we do.”

  This time Charging Elk blushed. “But how do you know?”

  Nathalie looked out the window, her young face suddenly serene. “A woman knows these things. It is not difficult to tell.”

  Charging Elk put his hand on her thigh, feeling the firmness of it through her thin chemise. He studied his dark hand against the cotton. As he did so often, he marveled at his good fortune that he had a woman of his own—and that his woman was Nathalie. And when he felt her small hand, so white and delicate, on his own, he couldn’t imagine that he had ever been unhappy. “A baby,” he whispered. “Our own baby.”

  Nathalie ran her fingers through his long hair, then pulled his head into her bosom. She stroked his hair, all the time staring out the window at the sooty stone building across the narrow street. But in her mind she was seeing the old farmhouse, its sunny courtyard and the lovely plum orchards of her childhood. The novelty of Marseille—its size, its shops, its different colors of people, the Old Port, the sea—was beginning to wear off, and at this moment she wished with all her heart that she and Charging Elk could return to Agen and her home. But that was impossible now. It was no longer her home. This strange, sweaty city was home.

  The fall was nearly perfect that year and lasted well into October. Although the leaves around town had turned a dull yellow or soft pink, they hung on the trees like crisp paper ornaments. The mornings were fresh, and when Charging Elk walked down to the quais at dawn, he could see his breath in the glow of the streetlamps and feel the chill work its way through his wool jacket, but by midday the sun warmed the quais and he worked in his undershirt. He worked hard so the time would pass quickly; then he would hurry home to Nathalie, who was always there waiting for him.

  One evening, after he had washed himself and put on a clean shirt, she held his hand against her swollen belly. “This is your son, I think,” she said, her eyes wide, as though she were listening for something.

  He felt a small movement and jerked his hand back.

  Nathalie laughed. “You should see your face,” she said. Then she placed his hand on her stomach again. “Now just hold it there, sissy.”

  And he felt what seemed to be a little thump, followed by another. As he felt the sporadic kicks he thought that he had never been this intimate with a woman, not even when he and Marie—and later, Nathalie—made love. There was a part of him within Nathalie’s flesh, a part that he could feel through her gingham dress. Of course, he knew all about birth; he had watched horses, dogs, even an ape in the Paris zoo during the months of the Exposition; he had seen women out at the Stronghold big with child, and later, holding babies in the sun outside their lodges. But he had never felt anything like this before. This was his wife and his child. And soon that child would come out and look around and the first thing it would see would be its mother and father.

  “You do want a boy, don’t you?”

  “Yes,” he said without hesitation, for he had been thinking of walking with his own son along the quais of the Old Port, showing him the sea from the parapet of Fort St-Jean, buying him a glace from one of the vendors on Cours Belsunce—just as he had seen other fathers do. He hadn’t known until just this moment that he had envied them.

  “What if it’s a girl?” Nathalie’s voice was almost hesitant. “It could just as easily be a girl. Would you like her as much?”

  He thought for just a couple of seconds. “If she looks like you and not me,” he said.

  Nathalie laughed.

  Toward the middle of October, the first real mistral blew down the valley of the Rhône, shaking the papery leaves off the trees, blowing the smoke sideways from the chimney pots on buildings, rocking even the steamships moored in the port. Instead of walking leisurely along La Canebière, people hurried from building to building, shop to shop, bundled up in their winter clothes. Horses trotted along the streets, as though the icy wind had given them new energy, or at least a desire to quickly reach whatever destination the driver chose, preferably in the lee of a building. The outdoor cafés moved indoors, leaving the chairs and tables stacked under awnings. Almost overnight, far too early, Marseille had been transformed into a winter city.

  But the dockwor
kers continued to load the ships, as though the cold weather were a small inconvenience, a minor discomfort to be endured. These were tough men, men who had carried clubs as well as placards during the strike. Some had been anxious to get the police involved, to “crack a few heads” just to show them they were serious. But when it came to work, they did their jobs efficiently, if not enthusiastically. And they accepted Charging Elk as one of them, a member of the union, in a way that he hadn’t been used to—not in the market when he had worked for René; not in the soap factory; not even in prison. And he felt, for the first time since he had left the Stronghold, that he was a part of a group of men who looked out for each other. And he liked it.

  As far as he could tell, in spite of his singular appearance, none of his fellow workers knew who he was—except for the union boss, Picard, a big-chested man with curly black hair and a drooping mustache, who wore loud plaid suits and a chocolate-colored bowler. As unlikely as it seemed, he was an acquaintance of Madame Loiseau’s and had taken on the Indian as a favor to her and her organization. The boss sometimes winked at Charging Elk, but that was all the contact between them.

  On the 17th of October, a day that he would never forget, Charging Elk took a few minutes of his midday break to walk down toward the Quai des Belges to buy some tobacco. Although the mistral had blown itself out, the day was cold and the sky was a flat pewter over the port. The hills to the north of the town were completely invisible; to the south, the sea and the sky blended in a gray seam that defied distinction and distance.