by Andy Conway
“She professes modesty, but she’s the most interesting person in this whole show, I’ll tell you that for nothing.”
“I would love to hear your story,” said Peter Wethers.
“My story isn’t the least bit interesting.”
“You’re kidding?” said Wethers. “A white woman raised by Indians?”
She was surprised. “How did you know I’m white?”
Peter Wethers looked from her to Bill and back again. “That’s a strange thing to say, Miss,” he said. “It’s clear to anyone with eyes: your face is pale, your hair is red, your eyes are green.”
It was true, she knew, but it was what white people had not seen about her for years. Her skin was darker than it had been when she first awoke on the plain. Then she had been the palest of the paleskins. But five years of life on the plains had tanned her skin, made it hard and cracked and weather beaten.
Peter Wethers looked confused. “Have I said something wrong?”
Buffalo Bill smiled sadly and shrugged. “No, Mr Wethers, you are entirely right. But you perhaps see things differently here in England to how people see things in America.”
“I don’t understand,” he said.
“When you put a woman, any woman, in a squaw’s robes, and braid her hair, she becomes no longer a white woman in the eyes of white people. They see just another redskin. It is a curious form of myopia.”
It was what had been so easy about leaving the Indians, Katherine thought. All she’d had to do was put on a white woman’s dress and she was instantly transformed. They saw what they wanted to see.
Buffalo Bill clapped his hands as if announcing a new act in his show. “But for tonight we have the adventure of the local dignitaries. You’ll be accompanying us to the grand Council House, Bright Star Falling. We’re to be feted by the city fathers.”
“Me?” she said.
“I’m taking a few of the key performers from the show, including Chief Red Shirt, I might say, and some of the other chiefs, so you’ll be on hand to translate.”
“Yes, of course.”
“And with Lillian,” he added. “I say we’ll make a pretty impressive team.”
“What of Annie Oakley?”
“I’ve told her she’s to stay here. I think she was rather put out by it. Mr Wethers will be with us also.”
Katherine lowered her face, her cheeks scarlet hot. She didn’t know whether it was because of Annie or Peter Wethers.
Buffalo Bill put a hand on his shoulder and one on hers, as if he were bringing them together in marriage.
“From now on I would like you two to be inseparable.”
6
TWO CARRIAGES CAME to collect the party that were to attend the Council House reception. They were just like stagecoaches. Buffalo Bill, of course, would ride at the head, in his own open carriage, so that everyone might see him.
Agent Calder stepped up and sat quietly behind him.
Katherine went to the horses harnessed to the other two coaches and cupped their mouths, stroking their foreheads, whispering a greeting. They nodded and nudged her in recognition, nickering their sorrow.
Annie Oakley sidled up and said, “This is all fine. If he’d taken me and not Lil Two Face, I’d have had to ask one of the boys to keep an eye on your tipi for the night in case she took a notion to burn it down.”
Annie laughed and set off across camp to where her husband Frank Butler waited. Katherine couldn’t help but sense the sadness, from her hunched shoulders.
Lillian sashayed into the head carriage. Bronco Bill Irving followed, and Gabriel Dumont, who was dressed all in fur and looked like a giant bear trying to board a stagecoach.
The reporter, Peter Wethers seemed uncertain of which carriage to enter, hovering near her, until Buffalo Bill pointed him to Lillian’s carriage.
Katherine felt a pang of loss and immediately chided herself. She had thought this place might be her home and was attaching herself to the first person she knew from the place. Like a motherless child.
Katherine stepped into the second coach with Chief Red Shirt, Rocky Bear, Black Elk and Swift Hawk.
The contrast between Red Shirt and his lieutenant was striking. Red Shirt was a small man with handsome features and piercing eyes. Rocky Bear was a giant, almost filling the carriage with his monstrous frame. He seemed to sit like a mountain, age-old and wise, while unthinking life flurried around him.
Black Elk and Swift Hawk were a couple of boys, gangly and fidgeting.
As they pulled away from the camp, she looked out of the window at the crowds of gawping locals craning their necks for a sight of the new circus and its animals. She saw too that they were next to some sort of palace and wondered at the riches of a country that could have such grand buildings even in quiet, little backwaters like Aston.
The men no longer marvelled at the streets of Grandmother England. They had long ago lost all curiosity about it, and the damp, dingy weather was a heavy cloak on their shoulders. She alone felt curiosity for the place, eager to see if anything else would call out the word home to her.
She retraced the ride in her mind, trying to equate it with the now gaslit streets. Half way to the town centre, she became aware of a shuffling among the men. Swift Hawk nudged Black Elk, and the two young men whispered among themselves, their argument unheard above the clatter of the horses’ hooves and coach wheels on the gravel road.
Red Shirt sat with eyes closed, lost in meditation, but Rocky Bear became aware of the whispered argument and asked them what the matter was.
Swift Hawk nudged Black Elk again and urged, “Tell him.”
Red Shirt opened his eyes.
“He saw a vision,” Swift Hawk mumbled. “About Little Chief.”
Red Shirt and Rocky Bear looked to each other and Katherine saw the worry flit across their faces like the shadow of a passing vulture.
Little Chief had lost his son two months ago in London and the pain was still in him, even though his wife was heavy with a new child; a child that would be born in England.
“There was a crocodile,” said Black Elk. “It came from the water and ate Little Chief. I wanted to save him but I could see he was already dead, and more crocodiles came until I was surrounded. I was afraid the crocodiles might eat me also. I stayed up high in the tree and watched them eat him. And I felt like a coward.”
Rocky Bear nodded wisely and reached across to pat Black Elk on the thigh with his giant hand. “Do not feel like a coward. A man cannot be a brave or a coward in a dream. It is only a message from the spirits. A brave man receives the messages.”
Chief Red Shirt spoke up. “Little Chief is still in the grip of a terrible grief. I fear for his wellbeing.”
“To lose a son,” Swift Hawk said. “It is the greatest of all losses.”
To lose a child, Katherine thought.
“Your dream,” said Rocky Bear. “It is good news for Little Chief.”
“It is?” said Black Elk.
“The earth is our mind, the water our emotions. The crocodile lives between earth and water. He teaches us how to balance our thoughts and our feelings. He is also fearless. He will teach Little Chief how to heal himself.”
Red Shirt smiled with satisfaction and, Katherine noticed, with relief. This was another delicate balancing act. Every dream and vision threatened disaster for him and his people.
As the coach rattled on, returning her to the city where she’d suffered her own vision, she wondered if Black Elk’s dream might not have been more about the Arapaho brave who was back at camp. He had the same name as the Hunkpapa brave she’d last seen in New York—Surrounded by the Enemy – who’d returned to the Standing Rock reservation with Sitting Bull. This man called Surrounded was younger and taller, and had developed a hacking cough of late. Perhaps Black Elk’s vision was about him?
She kept it to herself.
After a while, she recognized the big cathedral church they had rode past that afternoon, and she knew the
Council House was just ahead. Tiyata! Tiyata! Home! Home! it called to her, deep inside her, and she knew more than ever that this was where she was from.
The coaches trundled to a stop outside the grand building and they stepped out. A tribe of dignitaries stood on the steps, as if they had not moved since the afternoon. Her eyes fell on the man wearing the robes, with the baubles around his neck, and a giant grey beard. The Mayor.
“He is the chief of this tribe of Birmingham,” she explained.
Katherine turned and looked up at the white church steeple that towered over them, shuddering. It had disappeared in her vision and she felt it did not belong there.
She rushed to Red Shirt’s side as Buffalo Bill, having greeted the Mayor and introduced all of his party, now turned and welcomed the Indians.
The white men smiled with delight. They were not like the grey-haired men in suits over the ocean, who viewed the Indians with concern, never to be trusted. These white men truly seemed thrilled to welcome Red Shirt and the Lakota nation to their big house.
Red Shirt smiled serenely, shook their hands and introduced each of his party in turn, while Katherine hurriedly chattered translation. The councillors cooed and laughed and their eyes bugged out like children seeing a rare animal. Their wives also shook the hands of the Indians. One of them curtseyed.
Red Shirt held his head high and looked them in the eye. He had the bearing of a prince and the whites recognized this. To them he was the Chief of the Sioux Nation, and that meant he was royalty. Everyone had read the stories of how Grandmother England had become enamoured of this great Indian chief.
The dignitaries turned and made their way inside the building and everyone followed, gazing at the grand interior with its marble columns, polished oak and plush, red carpet.
The Wild West party all cooed in wonder at something new.
But to Katherine it wasn’t new at all. She had seen it before.
7
SHE REMEMBERED A PHRASE in English. To be cock-a-hoop. The dignitaries of the city were exactly this. It was the only phrase to describe them. They had the air of men sitting on a pile of money, just like the much less well-dressed white men who had flooded into the Black Hills, their eyes bright with promise. They had been cock-a-hoop also, as they trampled over Lakota holy land in their rush for gold.
These men talked about the rumour that their queen would grant them city status, and Katherine was surprised that this place was only officially a ‘town’. It had always been a city in her mind, the moment she had seen its name on Buffalo Bill’s itinerary. Birmingham. Great things were happening here, the dignitaries told her — told Red Shirt through her — it was an ancient town but a grand new city.
This Saturday night, they said, there would be bonfires and firework displays in every public park, celebrating Guy Fawkes Night, and the queen, and Buffalo Bill. Celebrating Birmingham and all its money.
As Red Shirt moved among them, Katherine saw what the wasichus saw: an Indian who looked almost like a white man in his features. He was the perfect chief to promote peace between the whites and the Indians. He was the perfect chief to convince the whites that the Indians were noble, not savage. Without his skin colour, and his braids and feathers, he could pass for white. This was what the whites loved about him. The Americans were eager to find a chief who represented the nobility of the Indians — the peaceful Indians. The English already accepted that nobility, and were ready to love Red Shirt because their queen loved him. He was Grandmother England’s favourite. Therefore, he was England’s favourite.
She thought of how Sitting Bull had been marginalised, his craggy, unsmiling face offering no compromise to the white man. His stare that said: You are thieves and liars. You have taken away our land and made us outcasts.
Every well-dressed white man in this palace wanted to meet Red Shirt, and she stood at his side, translating their words and relaying his good wishes to them. None of them suspected she was a white woman dressed as a squaw.
She looked across and saw the reporter’s eyes on her. He alone had seen through the illusion.
Waiters patrolled the crowd of dignitaries and their wives, holding aloft silver trays piled with sweetmeats and savouries, and glasses full of golden champagne.
Black Elk and Swift Hawk stared in wonder at the glasses that released a stream of bubbles from their base, as if from a water creature hiding. They tasted the champagne and coughed, and Rocky Bear warned them to drink only a little and not to fall drunk.
While the Indians were treated like minor royalty, the whites were playing up to their Wild West image. Lillian took out a pistol and twirled it, silver dancing in her hands, to the delight of the dignitaries, though she balked at actually demonstrating her shooting skills. Buffalo Bill regaled the wives of the dignitaries with tales of taming the wild frontier, and Bronco Bill Irving, dressed half-cowboy, half-Indian spoke gently about native civilisation.
Gabriel Dumont stood silent, like a stuffed bear. His eyes did not shine like the rest. She remembered how Colonel Cody had warned her that he was not rude, just sad — a Canadian exiled from his homeland and longing to go back. It struck her he was a native too. A Métis. When he’d been defeated, he’d crossed the border to be greeted warmly by the United States. Sitting Bull had fled the opposite way, and been greeted warmly by the Canadians.
They drove out their own natives, but welcomed their neighbour’s. Strange.
“None of the Show Indians of my Wild West were, of course, present at the Little Bighorn on that fateful day,” Buffalo Bill’s voice boomed. “General Custer’s battalion marched eastwards across the bluffs, accompanied by Crow scouts loyal to the Seventh Cavalry. They, with their sharp eyes, could see the size of the Sioux camp ahead, but Custer, even with a telescope, could not see it. If only I had been there as his scout. I might have averted the disaster.”
He was launching into his favourite story: the tragic death of George Armstrong Custer and how Buffalo Bill might have saved him.
Katherine edged away, unnoticed, finding a balcony and the welcome taste of cold night air.
She didn’t want to hear his tale, nor translate it for the Indians. Only she and Black Elk knew a thing about the battle. None of the others had been there. And Black Elk had only been a boy and not taken part in the fighting, the slaughter.
Half the soldier’s face flying off. Smashing the rifle butt into the explosion of blood, bone and brain. Scalping him in a flash, hands all red, screaming to the sky.
She shuddered, glancing at her hands, no longer red with the soldier’s blood.
Tomorrow she would act out Buffalo Bill’s absurd story of white settlers bravely repelling an Indian attack. She would tamely retreat as the white audience applauded. What if we kill them all this time? she thought. What if we tell the truth?
She found herself looking down onto a square with a fountain. There was a stone tower in the fountain, as tall as a tipi. The pillars of the Town Hall were to one side, a giant rounded building ahead, and two tall, ornate buildings standing to the other side. A road passed underneath, horses passing this way and that, coaches rolling.
It was the square she had glimpsed this afternoon, recognizing it somehow. She gazed on it, trying to unlock its mystery. The call of Tiyata was strong. But something else was stronger. An insistent siren shriek calling her from far away.
A vision came to her. A short tower made of red brick, octagonal, with a wooden staircase to its side. Bricked up arches where windows should be. She saw it as clearly as she saw the square below.
“Impressive, isn’t it?”
She turned, jumping with fear for a moment. The reporter. Peter Wethers. She nodded and held onto the stone balustrade. He came to her side.
“What are they?” she asked.
He seemed puzzled at first and followed her gaze. “Those two? That building closest to us is the Liberal Club. That one is Mason College.”
“They’re beautiful.”
T
he names meant nothing to her. But she had seen those buildings before.
A flash of a corridor in her mind’s eye. A room up there. She had walked in one of those buildings.
“You don’t want to listen to Buffalo Bill’s story?” he asked.
She shook her head. “I should ask you that.” She turned to him. “You’re a reporter, but you don’t care to hear what the famous Buffalo Bill has to say about Custer’s Last Stand?”
“I know his story,” he said. “I’d rather hear yours.”
She felt herself blushing. How did he know? Was that what he meant?
“I know nothing of that,” she said.
“Something tells me that’s not true.”
“No one wants to hear my stories.”
He shook his head. “I do.”
“I remember nothing. Haven’t they told you that?”
He frowned and shook his head, as if he didn’t know what she was talking about.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said.
He nodded, satisfied. “What’s going on with Annie Oakley? She’s much more famous than that Lillian girl in there. Why isn’t she here?”
Katherine smiled. “Don’t you know? Colonel Cody is no longer the star of his own show. Annie is better than him and he doesn’t like it.”
“And what happened in Wimbledon? I keep hearing everyone whisper about it.”
“You haven’t heard?”
He frowned and shook his head. “No. What?”
“The annual rifle tournament at Wimbledon. Lillian showed up and couldn’t shoot for toffee. She was laughed out of there. Annie came the next day and showed them all how to shoot a rifle. The whole of England is talking about it.”
“Oh. I’ve been abroad,” he said. “In Germany. Till yesterday, in fact.”
Katherine looked him right in the eye and swallowed what she wanted to say. Why are you lying to me? Instead, she said, “And you know what the funniest thing was?”
“What?”
“Buffalo Bill didn’t even show his face.”