The torrent of words made Lemuel’s head swim. Ipso facto. He wondered how the man on trial could possibly follow gibberish spoken in two languages, neither of them his.
Standing Bear offered no clues. Bolt upright and nearly immobile, the chief revealed nothing—not anger or confusion or indignation. As the hours wore on, he hardly acknowledged the presence of Webster or Mr. Andrew Poppleton, attorney for the Union Pacific, who was providing his services pro bono—two more words Lemuel didn’t understand. The only time the chief even moved was to lean toward his interpreter, Miss Susette LaFlesche: a dark, tiny woman, plain of face and dressed in the humble manner of a minister’s wife. Lemuel had read in the Herald that she was the daughter of the Omaha chief Joseph, known among the nations as Iron Eyes. Throughout the proceedings, she whispered to her client, translating testimony into the dialect that had been her mother’s tongue. Lemuel was amazed this was even possible. For the love of God, he thought, what is habeas corpus—and how do you say it in Ponca?
Julius Meyer sat directly behind the defense table. Lemuel had read that during yesterday’s pretrial motions, Webster had protested vigorously that the young man should be appointed interpreter for the chief, as he had long been what the Ponca called their “Speaker” and had represented Standing Bear in all treaties and negotiations over the past several years.
Lambertson strongly objected.
“Unlike Mr. Meyer,” Lambertson said, “Miss LaFlesche is not a self-made savage known to live amongst primitives in wild lands, but a thoroughly civilized lady and a credit to her race. She was educated at a Presbyterian day school on her reservation and even attended the esteemed Institute for Young Ladies at Elizabeth, New Jersey. Unlike Mr. Meyer, a practitioner of the Hebrew faith and a known devotee of Indian animism, she worships the one true God and Savior. We also believe it an advantage to Mr. Standing Bear that a real Indian interpret for him, rather than have a white man—and a European in the bargain—attempt to convey the subtleties of American jurisprudence.” After a short recess, the Honorable Elmer Scipio Dundy came down on the side of the government.
When Julius walked into court that morning, all the sketch artists reached for their pencils. The day before, he had worn a bespoke suit, tailored in New York, and fine English shoes. Now, such pretense was no longer necessary.
He was dressed in the full ceremonial regalia of the Boxkareshahashtaka, the esteemed Speaker of the Ponca. Beneath his beaver cap, his black hair corkscrewed in all directions. His shirt was of brown deerskin, its shoulders and arm seams draped in white fringe. The outside hems of his trousers were decorated with long red and yellow beads in patterns of wolves and eagles, as was the dagger on his belt. As he watched him take his seat, Lemuel thought that, but for the mustache and curls, Julius could have easily been a renegade on trial himself—and for worse crimes.
The Big Cheese had never seen such business. The onslaught of reporters, politicians, and various brands of zealots required that tables meant for two now hold four and those meant for four, eight. By noon, men were three deep at the bar. By half-past, the clamor for service had become so great that the prostitutes upstairs were rousted from sleep and pressed into service as waitresses. Doris had even recruited two widow women and an old Pawnee beggar to handle the crowds. As much as it pained him, the chef had needed to pre-cook some of his beefsteaks, so high was the demand. He hadn’t been able to determine if the chaos had been caused by the sheer number of new mouths to be fed, or the new gravy he had created for his trademark slabs of beef: meat drippings, dashes of Worcestershire, and pound after pound of butter.
“Mr. Julius?”
Julius Meyer looked up from his steak to see Lemuel Norcross, hat in hand. He barely recognized the boy. The lad who once bedeviled his brother had grown into a sturdy eighteen-year-old. Though nearly as short as Julius himself, he was wide at the shoulder and as slim-hipped as a girl. His face was round and full-cheeked with deep-set eyes and brown-blond hair as long as General Custer’s.
“Hello, young Master Norcross,” Julius said. “Have you eaten?”
“No, sir.”
“Well, I hope you will do me and Mr. Thomas Tibbles here the great honor of joining us for lunch.”
“Oh, I’m afraid I couldn’t pay my way, sir.”
“You misunderstand. I ask you to join our meal as my guest.”
“Oh, I couldn’t do that, sir.”
Julius feigned annoyance. “As you may have heard, Master Norcross, I am a member of an old and revered race. My people have very specific ideas about what constitutes proper hospitality and even more specific ideas about insults to it. Among the greatest of these is the refusal to eat when offered food in good fellowship. And so, I ask you again: will you honor me by sharing meat with us?”
Lemuel looked around, embarrassed, and sat down.
Julius motioned to Lucy, normally a whore known for her oral skills. “Another, please,” he said.
“Well, Master Norcross, now that you’re quite the young man, what have you been doing with yourself? Still immersed in your stories?”
Lemuel tucked his napkin into his collar. “Yes, sir. I still very much like to read, although now I come into your brother’s store, take a quick browse, and then buy what I want—a dollar’s worth at a time sometimes. I’ve been cowboying out on Mr. William Beck’s ranch; and pretty soon now I’ll be able to strike out on my own and maybe have some of the fine times and adventures I’ve read about.
“You sure was lucky, Mr. Julius. When you was young and got captured, them Indians was still Indians. They wasn’t all caught and dragged off and civilized. You was able to be their friend and be one a’ them and talk for Standing Bear. People say you was even gonna marry his daughter …”
The flash in the Speaker’s eyes stopped the boy dead.
“I wouldn’t be so sure about the past,” Julius said. “Especially one that’s not your own. I can imagine my life sounds romantic to a devourer of fictions like yourself. But to be coldly honest, Master Norcross, if it weren’t for the honor, I’d just as soon not have frozen and starved and lost the woman I loved.”
The steaks arrived, huge and steaming and slathered with Doris’s butter sauce. The potatoes accompanying them had been peeled of their skins, cut into slabs, baked, and then fried. Carrots in butter and salt and brown sugar gleamed by their side.
“All right, let’s get to business,” Julius said. “I believe you have something you wanted to ask me?”
“Yes, sir, if you don’t mind. There’s a lot about the trial I don’t understand. All them foreign words—like pro bone.”
Tibbles laughed quietly. “It’s pro bono, son. And it’s Latin for ‘without payment.’”
“You mean that Mr. Poppleton is helping Standing Bear for free? That’s a fine thing.”
“A lot of people hereabouts seem to think so,” Tibbles said. “The past three days, the Union Pacific and the do-gooders on the chief’s side have been feting him from hotel to saloon to testimonial dinner. But to me, it seems only fair. The railroad and its goons and politicians have been stealing and destroying Indian villages and hunting grounds around here for the past ten years. Whole burial grounds and sacred altars are now nothing but track and tunnels. All accounts settled up, a free lawyer seems damn paltry compensation.”
“I reckon,” Lemuel said. “But they say its Standing Bear versus Crook. Someone said that means ‘against.’ The chief against the general.”
“That’s correct,” Julius said.
“But if he’s against him, why did General Crook jump up in court today to say that he thought Standing Bear is right? That he thinks Standing Bear should go home and bury his son where his people are buried? The judge yelled at him and told him to sit down. I didn’t even know that a judge was allowed to yell at a general! It don’t seem like General Crook is against Standing Bear to me. It seems more like he’s his friend and believes that he’s a man—most like if he was white.”
&nb
sp; “There’s the law and then there’s decency, son,” Tibbles said. “Too often, they don’t have much truck with each other. Maybe after all these years of killing them—man, woman, and child, old Three Stars is fed to the teeth and come to Jesus. As far as being a man, Standing Bear look like a man to you?”
Lemuel lay his knife and fork beside his plate. “Except for the feathers and the gobbly-gook he talks, I’d say hell, yes.”
“Well,” Julius said, “we’ll see if Judge Dundy agrees with you or the entire United States government.”
Julius paid for the meal and the three men rose from the table. The waiter gave its surface a quick wipe and four journalists immediately occupied it. The largest of them, a hulking blond man with a red, bumpy face, remained standing. He tapped Julius on the shoulder.
“You’re Meyer, right?”
“I’m Julius Meyer, yes.”
“I’m Gondorf from the Hartford Courant.”
Julius nodded. “Oldest paper in the country, I hear.”
“That’s right. They tell me you’re a friend of that Indian.”
“If by that you mean Standing Bear, you’re right.”
Gondorf reached into his pocket for a tablet and the stub of a pencil. “How about an interview? Maybe it’ll help your friend.”
“What do you want to know?”
“I hear you’re a Jew.”
“I’ve heard the same thing,” Julius said.
“I also hear that you kept company with the chief’s daughter. That right?”
Julius’s eyes narrowed. He didn’t answer.
Gondorf smiled. Julius saw that his two front teeth were missing and imagined this was probably the result of one too many coarse questions asked of the wrong subject.
“Aw, c’mon, Mr. Meyer. I want to tell the story about how a Jew boy from Europe comes to America, goes native, dresses up like a Ponker, opens up a store to peddle their gimcracks, and takes up with a squaw. Doesn’t happen every day.”
“No, I suppose it doesn’t.”
“So tell me. The squaw. What was her name? How’d she die?”
One of the other reporters rose and tried to lead Gondorf to his seat. “C’mon, Charlie,” he said. “Sit down. You’re drunk. Leave the guy alone before this ends up like New Orleans.”
“The public has a right to know,” Gondorf said, shrugging off his friend. “Don’t you think they want to know how these Jews get in everywhere? The railroads, the banks. Shit, this one got himself in a squaw.”
Julius sighed. “First of all, my friend, the term squaw is Algonquin. You’d have a lot more luck finding one of those back in Connecticut. Second, how the lady died isn’t your business or the business of your readers. In fact, I don’t think we have any business together. Good day.”
The reporter put a giant hand on Julius’ arm and squeezed.
“C’mon now, friend,” Gondorf said, gripping Julius as if to break him. “No sense getting upset. I just want to know how a sawed-off hebe plays up to pappy so’s he can pet the papoose, if you know what I mean.”
Julius didn’t reply. With his free hand he reached for the reporter’s crotch and found his testicles. As he squeezed, Gondorf’s breath deserted his lungs and he stopped speaking. Before he could retaliate, Julius pulled him down sharply until the big man’s chin crashed into his curly head. As the reporter reeled, Julius leaped to the top of the table, scattering the dishes and glassware. He kicked high, smashing his moccasin into Gondorf’s nose. Gushing from both nostrils, the reporter fell toward the floor, hit a chair on the way down, and finally came to rest in a pool of spilled beer.
Gondorf’s fellow reporters sat frozen and amazed in their chairs. Julius leaped down from the table, his breath coming short, and turned toward them.
“Old Indian trick.”
Lemuel Norcross stepped out of the way to let Julius pass. It was only then that he realized that the entire saloon had been watching the confrontation. As the Speaker walked through the double doors, the Big Cheese burst into cheers and applause. No one clapped louder than Gondorf’s three companions.
The boy followed Julius out onto Farnam Street. He ran in front of him and put out his hand.
“You got ’im.” Lemuel said, laughing. “You dropped that sombitch! It was over before he could raise his hand. My dad says Jews don’t fight. He says they’re too smart to. Maybe he should talk to that guy in there. Damn, Mr. Julius!”
Still panting, Julius stopped, whirled and grabbed Lemuel by the collar. His face was twisted in anger.
“I don’t give a shit what your father thinks. And I don’t want any of your compliments. All that happened in there is what’s happened a million times: the white man picked on the wrong man and got what he had coming.”
Terrified, Lemuel put his hand up in surrender. “But Mr. Julius, ain’t you a white man?”
Julius brought the boy’s face within an eyelash of his, then pushed him away. His eyes were ablaze.
“If I were a white man would I have spent three thousand years running for my life? If I were white, Master Norcross, would I have been banished from Palestine to Spain and Spain to Turkey and Minnesota to the Dakotas and the Niobrara to Oklahoma? If I were white, would my love be dead?”
Lemuel Norcross watched, fearful and thrilled, as Julius jumped to the saddle of a young pinto. As he took the reins, his beaded fringes flew and clicked.
“Give my apologies to Mr. Tibbles and tell him I will see him bright and early. And give some to yourself for the manhandling. I think this pony wants to run.”
The horse’s thick neck bent and he hissed and snorted as if infected by his rider’s fury. Before the boy’s eyes, Julius Meyer vanished. What remained seemed like Old Testament vengeance slipped into warrior buckskin: righteous enough to slay the wicked, wild enough to kill Blue Coat or Pharaoh.
27
BENEATH THE SHADOW OF A GREAT SHIP, PRINCESS Noor-Al-Haya sat atop a large steamer trunk. As she smiled at the assembled press and public, she smoothed the multiple skirts of her purple silk dress.
Just below her, the Great Herrmann was busy entertaining the crowd. He pulled shiny sixpences from the ears and noses of children. He set a newspaper on fire and restored it to wholeness; and when the ship’s captain emerged from the gangway, Alexander shook hands with him, exchanging their hats before the good master even had the chance to utter a greeting.
Finally satisfied that the crowd of reporters and sketch artists was sufficient, the magician bowed to the throng and motioned for silence.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we are overwhelmed at your reception. We did not at all expect that you would honor our humble visit with such a welcome. I need not tell you of my emotions upon being back on the Southampton piers to begin our tour of England. It is through the generosity of the British public that I have attained whatever little reputation I possess, and for this I remain grateful. This time, however, I am especially gratified to be returning with the woman you have doubtless come here to meet: a personage some of your colleagues in America have referred to as the most exciting woman of the age—Princess Noor-Al-Haya, the lovely Pearl of the East.”
Alexander turned toward the princess, doffed his purple hat, and bowed deeply. Passengers, passersby, and some of the reporters applauded. A few fellows near the rear of the crowd catcalled and whistled. Two women and a man stood off to the left. They bore identical signs that read:
BRITAIN HAS SIN ENOUGH!
GO HOME, PRINCESS NOOR!
Alexander bowed again, acknowledging the ovation.
“Thank you. Although she has never been to this lovely island before, I know that ere long, Princess Noor will come to love your people as I do, and I pray the public will return that love. At this time, we will be only too glad to answer all respectful questions. However, I must remind you that her highness, coming only recently from the Orient, speaks no English—so any questions for her should be addressed to me and I will translate through an ancient and time-
honored system of signs used by the caliphate of her homeland for a thousand years! While you are scribbling in your notebooks, Mr. Seamus Dowie, that handsome redheaded fellow over there, will pass amongst you with a fine and dignified portrait of her highness, suitable for reproduction in any family publication. Now, who’s first?”
A middle-aged woman raised her hand.
“The scent you wear is quite lovely,” she said. “May I inform my lady readers of what it might be?”
Her male counterparts groaned. Here they had the opportunity to interview the most scandalous woman in America, a vixen who had appeared practically naked in the City of New York and had her shows shut down in Boston and Detroit, and all old Katie Farquhar wanted to talk about was how she covered the stench of her shame.
“Now, now, gentlemen,” Alexander said. “We all have our jobs to do. Allow me to relay the question to her highness.”
Alexander drew himself up to his full height, gave a sharp intake of breath, and exhaled slowly. Then he wiggled his nose, rotated both index fingers a half dozen times, pantomimed the spraying of an atomizer, and clapped his hands together twice. The princess smiled, nodded vigorously, jabbed two fingers in the air, and produced a small cut-glass bottle from her silver purse. Alexander pretended to read its label. “Guerlain Eau de Cologne Impériale!” he exclaimed, “not only a luscious fragrance, but the fine sponsor of our nightly program.”
Several of the reporters burst out laughing. “How much to ask that one, Katie?” a burly man said. “Did they wire you a quid from the ship?” Miss Farquhar turned bright red.
Queried as to her opinion of the British men she met on the boat, Alex went through exactly the same manual ballet; only this time, he eliminated the atomizer, substituted a feigned hand through his hair and clapped only once. The princess smiled again, modestly looked toward her lap and made a snaky wave up and down with her fingers. “Handsome and elegant,” came the translation, “a pity for me they are not proper Mohammedans.”
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