Heartsong (4 page)

Charging Elk had to take a leak and he did not want the iron pissholder. It shamed him to have one of the healing helpers roll
him onto his side so he could hit the slop pan. And it was hard to piss with the helper standing there, looking away but listening. He didn't like their face coverings. Although he had become adept at looking at their eyes without them seeing, he couldn't tell the hidden expressions and this troubled him. Furthermore, he hadn't taken a crap since coming to the sickhouse but he still didn't need to and this worried him.

He pulled himself higher in his bed until he was sitting up without the aid of the pillow. His ribs ached and the bandage seemed even tighter against his chest, but the pain was bearable and he could breathe a little deeper. He watched another man get out of bed, put his robe on, and walk down the corridor between beds. He too disappeared through the swinging door at the end of the room.

Charging Elk threw back the covers and tried to swing his legs over the side of the bed. It was the first real bed he had slept in in his life. Even in France, the Indians slept in blankets and robes in their lodges. Charging Elk and his friends used to make fun of the soft white men who needed to sleep in feathers on a platform of wood or iron. Now, Charging Elk couldn't make his legs obey him. He pursed his lips into a straight seam, put his arm under one knee, and pulled it sideways. A sharp pain in his side made him inhale sharply, deeply, almost a cry, but he kept his lips tight. He lay back on his elbows and worked his legs one way, his upper body the other, until he could feel the cold floor with one foot. He stopped, panting, and looked around, but nobody seemed to pay attention. He worked his other leg over the side and, with a sharp intake of breath, he slung himself up, until he was sitting on the edge of the bed. The pain in his ribs was intense, his whole side seemed on fire, but he held himself rigid, eyes and lips closed tightly, trying to concentrate on staying conscious. Then he opened his eyes and looked down to the other end of the room, where at night he saw the yellow
light. He expected someone, maybe the woman with the white wings and gold cross, to come running. But again, he was undiscovered.

He stood slowly, awkwardly, using his hands to push himself up from the bed. He leaned against the bedframe for a moment, then drew himself up to his full height, aware of the stiffness in his back. His legs were heavy and his head felt light, but he could breathe easier and his ribs didn't hurt so much. He knew he would have to move soon, before one of the healing helpers spotted him.

He took the robe from its hook and wrapped it over his shoulders. He was wearing a thin gown and the heavy robe felt good on him. He glanced down and saw the shoes tucked under the bed. He slid into them and they felt stiff and fuzzy, but warm. He slowly turned and began to make his way down to the foot of the bed, where he grasped the footboard and looked up and down the long room.

He was surprised to see so many beds, maybe a hundred of them, virtually all of them occupied. As he surveyed the room, he suddenly remembered Featherman. The night he had come to the sickhouse, Featherman had been in the next bed. Now there was a
wasichu
with a waxy face and thick sandy hair in the bed. But where was Featherman? Had he really been there? Or had he been a dream? Charging Elk's heart fell down as he remembered the dull, flat eyes. Yes, he had been there. And now he was dead. But perhaps there were other Buffalo Bill Indians in the other beds. His heart lifted again and he thought he might shout “All my relatives!” in Lakota, but he knew the healing helpers would come running if he did. So he began the slow journey down the aisle between beds, moving from one iron footboard to the next. Each time he stopped to rest he would glance at the faces in the beds. Most of them had beards or mustaches, all of them were pale. Some of the faces watched him with great curiosity, perhaps even apprehension. By
the time he reached the end of the beds, his heart was as heavy as his legs.

The thin hope that someone from the Wild West show, perhaps the interpreter, Broncho Billy, along with a couple of white chiefs, or even one or two of his Oglala friends, would come and take him away with them was a flickering, surely impossible dream. He knew that the show was only scheduled to be here in this town for eight or nine sleeps before moving on to another land. He felt certain that those sleeps were gone and he had been abandoned. He almost collapsed from the weight of such a thought and he thought how foolish he was to want to travel with Buffalo Bill. He should have stayed at the Stronghold, in the badlands, where he knew his way around. He thought of those sunny hot days with Strikes Plenty, riding to who knows where, but free to go. Not like the reservation Indians. They had laughed and mocked those Indians who had given up and lived in the wooden houses at the agency, collecting their meager commodities, their spoiled meat, learning to worship the white man's god, learning to talk the strange tongue. Now he would have given all his good times, all his freedom, to be one of them, home in the little shack with his mother and father in the village of his people.

T
wo nights later, Charging Elk sat up in his bed, alert and considerably stronger. He looked down at the yellow light and could just make out the shape of a human being. He had explored that part of the long room that afternoon and knew that there was a smaller room with a cage for a window and a door that they kept closed. Here the healing helpers sat, smoking, talking, making marks on their paper. They were very comfortable in this room, but he noticed that they became quiet and attentive when one of the women with the white wings came among them. These women seemed to
be
yuwipis
, but even they became obedient when the man with the steel in his ears was around. He was the real
wicasa wakan
.

But he was never around at night, only one or two helpers. And they never left the caged room unless one of the sick ones cried out in pain or panic, which happened often. Charging Elk had kept awake most of the night before, watching their routine, but there didn't seem to be a routine, just the response to a sudden commotion.

Charging Elk had also scouted the big hall outside the sickroom that afternoon. The toilet room was on the other side. After he took a long painful shit, his first in many days, he wandered down the hall toward a large window at the end. If the helpers caught him, he would pretend that he was lost. But his eyes were as sharp as a horsetaker's in an enemy camp. He noticed the doors that led off the hall, some of them closed, others open. One room in particular interested him. It was a long narrow room, darkly lit by a single yellow wire, and it was filled with hanging clothes.

At the window, the hall turned in opposite directions. One way was long and looked exactly like the hall he had come down. The other way was short and led to a pair of swinging doors that went from the floor to the ceiling. Each door had a small window. Charging Elk walked quickly toward the doors. He stopped and touched one of them. It moved slightly. Then he looked through the window.

It was a large room. Unlike the sickroom, it was as wide as it was long and it was filled with soft chairs and soft longseats. A few people sat on this furniture, some reading, some talking, some just looking off into the distance. To the right, Charging Elk could see a long wooden platform, about waist-high. He could see two heads behind the platform, but they were bent over, looking at something behind the platform. Neither of the women had white wings on her head but they seemed to be of higher station than the helpers.

No one had indicated to Charging Elk that he was a prisoner in the sickhouse, but he knew if the women saw him they would call for the helpers. And if he protested, they would strap him down again. No, he had to be cunning and wait for his opportunity. These people who didn't know him, who gave him the orange juice, the food, and lately the coffee, would become his enemies if they knew he wanted to escape.

Charging Elk looked again across the room and he saw large windows and beyond them trees, a road, and a building across the way. He saw horse-drawn carriages and men pulling high-wheeled carts. He saw women in their strange dresses with the big butts. Then he saw an omnibus go by, with its two levels of passengers, and he remembered that he and some of the other Indians had ridden in such a wagon before, when the interpreters took them on the rare tour, first in Paris, then once in this city. He remembered that they had been afraid to ride on top, out in the open, exposed to danger. But after they became used to these high wagons, they never rode inside. Featherman had liked to ride in front, just behind the driver. He liked the smell of the big horses. He would make jokes about the driver in his high hat and wave at the women with big butts and feathers on their heads. He made the others lighthearted, and sometimes they would all wave, or whoop, at a pretty woman or a cart full of meat. There was never enough meat. But the young Indians enjoyed the spectacle of themselves reflected in the astonished eyes of the French people.

Charging Elk returned his gaze to the room and he saw instantly what he had been looking for. Past the wooden platform, at the far end of the room, were two large glass doors which let out onto the cobblestone walking path. Even as he watched, an old one was being helped inside by two women. He had a white beard and a small black cap on his head. One of the women held a cloth to his mouth.

L
ate that night, two of the men helpers came into the dark room, pushing one of the wheeled beds. They were very quiet as they passed Charging Elk's bed. They stopped three or four beds away and turned the platform so that it came to rest between two beds. Then they made small whispering noises, a bed squeaked, and something made a heavy thump. Then the platform rolled down the aisle in the opposite direction, toward the yellow-lit room.

Charging Elk could just make out the body beneath the white cloth. One of the helpers, a fat one, was breathing hard and grumbling in the French tongue. The other one was tall and thin and bent over the platform, pushing it slowly and quietly, indifferent to the fat one's complaints.

As Charging Elk watched the strange procession make its way to the yellow-lit room, he felt his whole body shiver, as though he had once again pulled himself out of the icy river in his country. For the past two sleeps, he had again harbored a desperate hope that someone from the show would come and get him; or that the two men, the American and the Frenchman, would take him home across the big water. But now, seeing the dead body spooked him and he thought that he would get sick again, that this healing house was really a deathhouse, and the only way he would leave it would be on a rolling platform covered with a white cloth.

He thought of poor wretched Featherman. To die here alone! What would happen to his
nagi
, his spirit? How would it find its way to the other side, to the real world beyond this one? And what about himself? His own
nagi
would run restless over the land here, far from his people, far from the real world. He could not stay here, waiting to die. He would not wait. With the help of Wakan Tanka, he would find his own way home.

As Charging Elk threw on his robe and slipped his feet into the
fuzzy shoes, the thought struck him that the Wild West show was still on this side of the big water. They were going to tour all winter and summer, even until next winter—that's what the white bosses told him when he drew his name on the paper back at Pine Ridge. Maybe they weren't so far away. Maybe they would come back for him. If he left this sickhouse, how would they find him?

He sat down on the edge of the bed. His ribs didn't hurt so much now. He took a deep breath, then sighed, caught somewhere between hope and despair. He thought of his mother and father and their little shack; he thought of his dear friend Strikes Plenty, and their wanderings in Paha Sapa; and he thought of the old
wiccua wakan
at the Stronghold, who had prepared him so well for his
han-blechia
. He trembled to think that he had lost possession of his badger-claw necklace, his war medicine. He had no power. But that wasn't true—he had his death song. If he sang it well at the proper time, there was a chance that his spirit would make it to the other side, even if he didn't.