Black Hills (39 page)

T
HEIR FIRST TWO TIMES AROUND
, they were almost alone and hardly spoke at all. Their second two times around, there are at least twenty-five people in the car, but Paha Sapa and Rain de Plachette speak the entire time—softly, privately, secure in their own world somewhere between the Jackson Park–Midway Plaisance earth and the blue-sky-and-scattered-clouds Illinois heavens.

—
You’ll pardon me for asking a personal question, Miss de Plachette, but isn’t Rain an unusual name for
wa…
for white people? Beautiful… very beautiful… but I haven’t heard it before.

Paha Sapa’s heart is pounding wildly. He is terrified of giving offense, of making her pull away from him—literally, as she rests her right shoulder against his left, but also in terms of offending her in any way. But he is aching from curiosity.

She smiles at him as they rise on the eastern part of their first slow revolution.

—
It is an unusual name, Mr…. Paha Sapa. But my mother also thought it was beautiful. The most beautiful word she’d learned in the English language, is
what she told my father. When I was born and she wanted to name me Rain, Father didn’t protest. He loved her very much. Did you know that my mother was Lakota?

Paha Sapa feels a constriction in his chest and throat.

—
Yes. I mean, no… that is, I heard a rumor….

She smiles again. The other passengers are making nervous noises as the large car sways and creaks on its trunnion when it stops, but they are veterans now.

—
Well, the rumor’s true. Her name was White Shawl and I’m told that she was very pale for a Sioux… a Lakota. She was Father’s choir director at the agency mission and they… Did I tell you that Father was doing mission work in Nebraska when they met?

—
No. Please go on. Tell me more.

Miss de Plachette looks out as the car stops and rocks again—there are afternoon cloud shadows moving over the trees and lagoon and walkways and giant buildings of the White City now—and he sees the slight blush beneath the freckles that cross the bridge of her nose and become fewer in number on her cheeks.

—
That’s how Father met Mr. Cody, of course. Mr. Cody’s new ranch was right next to the agency—reservation—where father spent five years as a missionary. There were several groups… tribes… there. Lakota and Shoshoni and a few Cheyenne and Creek and one family of Cherokee. It was a small agency, but the church had been there a long time, and the people came from miles around. Not just Indians…

She blushes again and Paha Sapa smiles, encouraging her to go on. They are at the last stop before the high point of the wheel’s circle. The crowded car is alive with oohs and ahhs and gasps and exclamations.

—
I mean, Mr. Cody and his ranch hands—some of them were Indians as well—of course you know that—would come over and the congregation was often more than a hundred people. Very large for that wild part of Nebraska. Mother was choir director, as I said, and she also taught all the children at the mission school there, and… well… Father and Mother fell in love and were married there…. Mr. Cody was Father’s best man at the wedding, and the Reverend Kyle came all the way from Omaha to perform the ceremony. And I was born a year later and, so my Father tells me, it was raining the week I was born that June… the first real rain in more than seven months of drought… and
Mother named me Rain, and then she died when I was four and we moved East a few months later and I’ve never been back.

Paha Sapa tries to imagine this—a
wasichu wičasa wakan
marrying a Lakota woman in 1870 or so. It is very hard to imagine. Perhaps, he thinks, the Natural Free Human Beings are—or were—very different in Nebraska. Then he thinks—
What are Natural Free Human Beings
doing
in Nebraska? Are they lost?

He says aloud—

—
And after you left, you lived in Boston and Washington and France?

—
Yes, and elsewhere… and, Paha Sapa, I’m ashamed to say that I know much more of the French language than I do my mother’s tongue. When Father and I have visited Mr. Cody’s Wild West Show, I’ve tried to use my few words and phrases to talk to the Lakota there, but the men just smile at me. I’m sure I have everything wrong.

—
I won’t just smile at you, Miss de Plachette. Try out one of your phrases.

—
Well, as I say, I only barely remember them, since Mother spoke English almost exclusively in the house when I was tiny, before she… before we moved… most probably at Father’s request. But I do remember some of the Lakota men talking to her at church and asking her how she was…. I’m pretty sure I remember “Hello” and “How are you?”

—
Say it. I will be your audience and noncritical coach. We still have ten minutes or more of this ride left. But let’s don’t forget to enjoy the scenery.

—
Oh, I assure you, Paha Sapa, I haven’t quit watching for a second. Even when I look your way, I am also looking beyond you to the south, or looking out at the prairie to the west. All right, “Hello, how are you?” in the Lakota I remember from the agency when I was four years old…
Hau, Tanyan yaun he?

Paha Sapa just smiles. He can’t help it.

Miss de Plachette curls her hand into a tiny fist and hits him hard on the shoulder. Paha Sapa’s eyes widen—he’s not been struck by a woman since he was a young boy—and then he laughs, showing his strong white teeth. Luckily—his world would end then if it were not so—she is also smiling and laughing.

—
What was wrong with that, Paha Sapa? I have even heard your Wild West Sioux say that to one another!

—
Nothing’s wrong with it, Miss de Plachette… if you’re a
man.

—
Oh, dear.

—
I’m
afraid so. Did your mother not tell you that the Natural Free Human Beings have separate vocabularies and language rules for men and women?

—
No, she didn’t. I mean, I don’t remember if she… I don’t remember
so much
about Mother. Too much. I don’t even know who the Natural Free Human Beings are… the Sioux?

—
Yes.

The young woman seems suddenly, strangely near tears, and Paha Sapa, without thinking, tenderly touches her shoulder.

—
The Lakota’s name for ourselves is
Ikče Wičaśa—
which more or less translates to Natural Free Human Beings, although it means more than that.

She smiles again. They have passed through the loading area and are rising in the east on the beginning of their second, faster, more exciting revolution. Other passengers squeal. Paha Sapa and Miss de Plachette grin at each other again, proud of their seasoned-Ferris-Wheel-traveler status.

—
I certainly understand about feminine, masculine, and neuter nouns and verbs and such from my French and little bit of German and Italian, although the idea of an entire separate
language
for men and women is almost shocking to me.

Paha Sapa smiles again.

—
Oh, we tend to understand each other, the
Ikče Wičaśa
men and women, when we talk to one another. As well as the two sexes do in any language or culture is my uneducated guess.

—
So how would I, a woman, say “Hello, Paha Sapa. How are you today?”

Paha Sapa actually clears his throat. He’s very nervous and almost sorry this particular discussion began. He knows almost nothing about courting, but
does
know that one does not impress or ingratiate oneself with a beautiful woman by laughing at her or giving her primitive language lessons. “
Courting? Is that what you think you’re doing here, you moron?”
asks a voice in his head that sounds strongly and suspiciously like that of George Armstrong Custer.

He says softly—

—
Well, first of all, the
Hau
greeting is used only by men. And the
he
at the end of the sentence…

He desperately thinks back to Father John Bertrand, the fattest and smartest and gentlest friar at the Deadwood tent school, and the Latin and Greek he tried to drive into 12-year-old Paha Sapa’s thick skull… but all he can call back is the heat inside the tent in the summer,
the strong smell of sun-warmed canvas and the straw that Father Pierre Marie used to lay down on the floor, as if the five boys there, two Mexican, one Negro, one white, and Paha Sapa, were barn animals rather than… no, wait…

—
the
interrogative form,
as it were, is also used by women and men informally, but if it were an official situation, talking in council, for instance, I’d… that is a male Lakota… would have to end the question with
hwo…
or
hunwo…
or
so
. Oh, yes
, Han
means “hello” for men but “yes” for women.

Miss de Plachette sighs, but not, it seems, out of impatience, only at the first glimpse of the complexity of her mother’s people’s language. She is still smiling.

—
So you’re saying that if a Lakota man says hello to me and I reply in kind, with the same word, I’m simply saying yes to anything the man has suggested?

—
Well… ah… um… that is…

She rescues him before his blush darkens his already dark skin too much further.

—
So how would I say “Hello, Paha Sapa”?

—Paha Sapa, Han.

—
And how would a woman say “Hello, it is really good to see you” to a man? To you?

—Paha Sapa, han! Lila tanyan wacin yanke.
Only you couldn’t… wouldn’t… come up and say that.

Her smile seems almost teasing.

—
Really? Why not?

Paha Sapa clears his throat again. His only salvation is that, true to her promise, she has not turned to look fully at him. She keeps watching the lake and the White City as the car rises quickly—too quickly—toward the top of its arc this second and final (forever for them together! he is sure) and too-fast-for-his-taste revolution of Mr. Ferris’s amazing Wheel.

—
Because, Miss de Plachette, in the
Ikče Wičaśa
culture, women do not initiate conversations with men. They are never the first to say hello.

—
Not even with their husbands?

She is definitely teasing him. He opens his mouth to answer, realizes that his mouth stays open during the entire time it takes them to pass over the top of the arc of the wheel, and then manages…

—
I’ve never been married.

Now she laughs out loud. The sound is so soft that it is almost lost in the loud exclamations and excited talk in the crowded car, but Paha Sapa will remember the pure tones of that easy, friendly laugh for the rest of his life.

She touches his forearm again.

—
All right, I surrender. I won’t learn the
Ikče Wičaśa’s
women’s language during two turns of Mr. Ferris’s Wheel. But is there a special term that Lakota women use to say hello to someone they really like… a special friend?

Now Paha Sapa’s throat feels so constricted he can barely get the syllables out.

She leans closer to him, her eyes finally turning from the scenery outside, and says very softly—

—
Maske, Paha Sapa, lila tanyan wacin yanke…

It is still wrong because… it does not matter. The power of her intimate greeting and the “It’s
really
good to see you”… she had stressed every syllable exactly as Paha Sapa spoke it earlier, except for that extra emphasis on the
really
… to hear her say this to him in
his
language… He will never forget it. He wonders then if it will be the last thing he chooses to think of before his death.

—
We’re almost down, Paha Sapa. I’m a greedy woman. I have three more requests for you before we go meet Father at the Grand Basin at six…

She consults the tiny watch on the ribbon pinned to her vest.

—
… still ninety minutes away! Three greedy requests, Paha Sapa.

—
I will do anything you ask, Miss de Plachette.

—
First then, at least until we meet Father and the other gentlemen, please call me Rain, as you promised and did for a short while.

—
Yes… Rain.

—
Second—and this is just a silly woman’s request, since you seem so… hot… with them on. Please remove those gloves after we get off the Ferris Wheel.

—
Yes, Miss… Yes. Yes, of course.

—
And finally, tell me what the Lakota word is for my name. For Rain.

—“
Rain” is…
magazu.

She tries it out. Says it twice softly as the view of the prairie is reduced, is eliminated, and the Midway Plaisance and loading platforms come up under them. Then she says very softly—

—
Mother was right. It is prettier in English.

—
Yes, Rain.

Paha Sapa has never more agreed with any statement. The car is slowing to a stop. The other passengers are growing louder in their laughter, exclamations, and praise of the ride.

—
This qualifies as an extra request, Paha Sapa, but how do you say in Lakota—“I will see you later”?

Without thinking of gender language or anything else, Paha Sapa looks into her hazel eyes and says—

—Tokša ake wancinyankin ktelo.

—
I asked for that phrase, Paha Sapa, because Father has decided that he must return to the missionary fields, and in September we will be moving to the Pine Ridge Agency in Dakota Territory…. I believe that is not too far from where Mr. Cody mentioned that you live.

All Paha Sapa has to say is
No, not too far
, but this time he can
not
get the syllables out.

The great wheel stops its turning. The car they’re in rocks, creaks, settles. The conductor—with a tin badge saying something other than Kovacs; Paha Sapa has temporarily forgotten how to read English letters or words—opens the door for them all to depart before the next sixty people squeeze aboard.