Heartsong (58 page)

A
fter that first frantic night of hauling wood, setting fires and keeping them stoked and burning until daybreak, Charging Elk's life at the farm settled into a predictable, almost easy routine of work, eat, smoke, and sleep. He had his own room, which opened up into the courtyard. Although it was part of the main house, it was one of many additions the generations of Gaziers had built onto the house for various reasons. It had been a storage room, filled with old furniture and small pieces of broken equipment, tack that had become stiff and brittle with age—things that somehow never got thrown away or fixed. Gazier and his daughter had spent two days clearing the room, moving the objects to other rooms in other buildings around the courtyard. They had managed to salvage an iron bed, a bureau, a small table, and a chair from the debris. And although it had an earthen floor and only one small window beside the oak door, it was quite comfortable until the heat of summer days stayed in the room until well after dark. Charging Elk didn't mind. He took his chair outside and smoked in the twilight, content to be alone and free. After his years in the cell blocks of La Tombe, he luxuriated in his evening thoughts as he watched the shadows lengthen, then disappear. He listened to the buzz of insects in the dark, the snuffling of a hog in its sleep or the shudder of one of the two draft horses, the gabbling of a goose that might have heard a distant bark, and he felt a part of the world around him. He imagined
the Gaziers, already asleep in the dark house, and he imagined he would come to feel a part of their world, with time. Just as with the Soulas family.

The summer came and stayed for a long time. The farm was on the side of a sloping hill to the north and east of Agen, just out of the river valley. Below the compound of buildings, the Gaziers had a large vegetable garden, which Nathalie, and sometimes her mother, when she felt well enough, kept weeded and watered. Sometimes Charging Elk would help them out, turning water into the rows from a ditch that originated at the base of a spring in the hillside above the farm, or breaking ground for melons or squash. His job also consisted, in part, of taking care of the hogs, turning them out into the orchards to root for things that he couldn't even see, keeping an eye on the geese, or rather an eye out for weasels and foxes, which occasionally prowled the farm at night. But mostly he worked in the orchards, helping Vincent Gazier spray the trees for bugs or prune out blight-stricken or dead limbs. He painstakingly thinned the small, green prunes, moving from tree to tree with his ladder, pinching off the hard fruit that even the hogs found distasteful. Every couple of weeks he hitched the horses to a cultivator and weeded and aerated the earth between the rows of trees. After his summers in the prison gardens and orchards, the work came easily for him. The trees offered shade and he was left alone to work at his own pace. Some days he had to make work for himself, but he always managed to find something to do, from oiling the tack to sharpening pruning shears and saws to whitewashing the stucco horse shed.

At least once a week he rode into Agen with Gazier. Sometimes Nathalie came with them, sitting on a sack of onions or new potatoes or an overturned bucket in the back of the wagon. In town, she would disappear for a half hour or so and come back with some cloth for her mother or a bottle of olive oil and a bag of coffee
beans. Meanwhile, her father and Charging Elk would unload whatever produce they had in the wagon at a local market, perhaps buy a sack of feed or poison for whatever insect happened to be harassing the trees; then Charging Elk would buy some tobacco and papers while Vincent talked with one merchant or another, or another orchardist or farmer who also was running errands. His wife, Lucienne, never came with them.

Charging Elk felt sorry for Vincent's wife, for although she was always gracious, even cheerful at times, there was something wrong with her. She was given to long coughing fits that would leave her slumped in a chair or leaning against a wall, gasping for breath. She could work in the garden for only about an hour in the morning before she would have to walk slowly back up to the house. Once she collapsed while she was picking peas and both Charging Elk and Nathalie ran to her. Nathalie reached her first and held her in her arms, cradling her as one cradles a sleepy but unhappy child. Her face had turned as white as the flesh of the onions Charging Elk was harvesting, and he became frightened for her. But slowly, as Nathalie fanned her mother with her bonnet, her color returned and she blinked her eyes and noticed him looking down at her.

“It's all right, you two. I am a foolish woman to work so hard today. It's the sun, you see.”

Charging Elk took his morning and evening meals with the family, and usually it was a happy occasion. Nathalie would talk about a dress she had seen in town, or something about her friend who was engaged to a soldier, and her mother and father would listen and tease or scold her, always with affection. But sometimes Lucienne would be absent, even though she had cooked the meal, and both Vincent and Nathalie would eat quietly, without the usual repartee. On these occasions, Charging Elk would excuse himself after coffee and sit and smoke in the cool evening air outside his room.

One day, as they were preparing a poison for borers, Vincent Gazier straightened up and walked to the shed doorway. He stood for a long moment, surveying the wild hill above the orange tile roofs of the old buildings, while Charging Elk stirred the liquid, dissolving the poison crystals.

“She has the consumption, you know. Her lungs are rotten with it.”

Charging Elk stopped stirring and glanced at the thin back, the long, sunburned neck, and the narrow head beneath the beret. There was a natural list to Gazier s shoulders, because of the bad leg that made him limp. But it seemed more pronounced just then.

“I don't know how long she will be with us—not long, I'm sure. Maybe a month, maybe six. Who knows?”

Charging Elk stirred the liquid slowly, quietly. He didn't know what to say. He had heard of consumption. He had heard that there was a unit in La Tombe where they kept the consumptive prisoners away from the population.

“I don't know. Sometimes I think she wants to die, to make things easier for Nathalie and me. Do you understand that?”

Charging Elk laid the stirring stick on a small board. The poison was strong and filled the room with an unnatural smell. He thought of all the times he had wanted to die since he came to this country. But the woman, Lucienne, had much to live for. She had a fine husband and a handsome daughter. “I will pray for your wife,” he said. He wanted to comfort the man but he could think of nothing else to say. He suddenly felt the immense poverty of his experience. He didn't know how to comfort another human being anymore.

But Gazier turned and looked at him. The eyes were large and moist in the gaunt face. “Will you?”

Charging Elk had to look away. He had not seen such desperation for a small ray of sunshine. “I will pray to Wakan Tanka. He is the Great Spirit who can accomplish all things. Sometimes he hears
the words of his poor grandson.” Charging Elk wanted to add, But sometimes he doesn't think his grandson's selfish prayers are worthy of attention. He glanced back at Vincent Gazier and saw a small, weary, hopeful smile.

“Thank you, Charging Elk. That is all I ask. Perhaps your Great Spirit ...” The gaunt man suddenly stopped. He had almost committed a sacrilege. He crossed himself and asked his God for forgiveness. Still, he felt a little lighter. Perhaps it was just the talk he needed. “Well, let's get after those trees, shall we?”

I
n late August the prunes were ripe. In a small ritual that the Gazier family had practiced for generations, Vincent, Lucienne, and Nathalie, along with Charging Elk, walked out to the orchards and stood under a large old tree that had been a bellwether for at least five generations of Gaziers. They each picked a prune, smelled it, squeezed it until the juice ran out the stem end, then bit into it, tasting the sweet flesh. Vincent pronounced the fruit to be at the firm edge of perfection. He said a prayer to God for once again giving them a good crop and he prayed for a successful harvest. Even Charging Elk said “Amen,” although he didn't cross himself. Nor did he look at Lucienne, who by now was matchstick-thin and dark around the eyes.

V
incent hired three boys from Agen to help with the harvest. They had to work quickly while the fruit was still firm, and so the workdays began at daybreak and ended with nightfall. Still, it took ten days to pick the four hectares of orchards.

Nathalie spent part of her time in the orchards and part taking care of her mother. She carried water out to the men in canvas bags, managed to cook a midday meal every day with the direction of
her mother, and joined in the picking later in the afternoon. At the end of five days, she was near the point of physical and emotional exhaustion. It pained her to watch her mother become so helpless so quickly. For most of the days, all she could think about was the fact that soon her mother would be gone. What would happen then?

Lucienne s doctor from Agen had come out one evening halfway through the harvest, examined her, then held a conference with Vincent. He gave him a tonic to give to her and told him to make sure she got an hour of sun every morning before the heat of the day. Otherwise, she must stay in bed. Vincent had listened to the doctor somewhat impatiently, then asked bluntly, “How much longer does she have?”

The doctor, who had first diagnosed the disease some twelve years before and had come to believe that the consumption was in a latent state and would remain so for many years to come if not forever, shook his head as he snapped his bag closed. “It is in her upper and lower lungs. The infection has spread rapidly in the last month.” He shook his head again as he picked up his bag. “Its remarkable.”

“How much longer?”

“If I said less than a week, it would be a lie. If I said six months, nine months—that too would be a lie. The only true thing I know is that she will not recover, barring a miracle from God. You would do well to pray for her soul now, Vincent.”

By four o'clock in the afternoon of the tenth day, Charging Elk and one of the boys from Agen hoisted the last box full of prunes up onto the wagon. Then the three boys climbed into the wagon and Vincent snapped the reins and the horses started for Agen. Although the processing plant was only three kilometers away, the horses had made the trip twice and sometimes three times a day during the harvest and they were just a little reluctant. Vincent
snapped the reins again and whistled, and the wagon slowly creaked down the hill toward Agen.

Charging Elk stood among the trees and watched the heavy wagon lumber along the main road that led past the farm and into the valley. He looked beyond the valley to the wooded hills and the patches of farmland. A tall thin spire stood above the trees, shining white and distinct amid the jumble of greenery. He had often thought about this spire. In fact, he could see it when he sat out in the evening. It was always the last thing the sunlight found as the valley began to darken. He always thought of it as a beacon—like Notre Dame de la Garde in Marseille—a shining beacon that one could see from a long way off that might offer guidance to lost souls like himself.