Heartsong (7 page)

C
harging Elk stood in the alcove and remembered how he had felt when he watched his dear friend ride away that early spring day in the direction of the Whirlwind Compound. It was the end of nine winters of brotherness and he felt a great emptiness, as though Strikes Plenty had taken away half of him.

Two days later, he had ridden High Runner in the procession of riders and wagons down to the iron road in the town of Gordon, Nebraska. His parents had ridden in a wagon, and while the young men were unloading their bundles of clothing and equipment, Charging Elk had handed the reins to his father. “He is yours.”

In return Scrub lifted a bundle out of the wagon. He unrolled the blanket and lifted up the hairpipe breastplate. Charging Elk recognized it. His father wore it when the Oglalas were free on the plains. He wore it when he took the horses of the Snakes and Crows. He wore it during ceremonies. He wore it when he fought the soldiers at the Greasy Grass. And he wore it when the Oglalas surrendered at Fort Robinson.

Charging Elk ate a last bite of bread as he remembered holding the bundle on his lap during his first train trip in America. He had had his badger medicine and his father's protection and he had felt ready for what lay ahead. But he had been a little unnerved by the
look in his mother's eyes as she watched the iron horse and the big wooden wagons pull away from the station. He had seen that look when he was a child, twelve winters earlier, when the Oglalas came in to Fort Robinson. But the music of the peace song had made Doubles Back Woman strong then, and even as the train made the lonesome sound and picked up speed, she had been singing a strongheart song with the other mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters and old ones on the platform. Still, he could not get her frightened eyes out of his mind. He was her only remaining child. He prayed to Wakan Tanka to bring him home safely, so he could honor his mother for all the days of her life.

Later, on the train ride from Omaha to the big New York, Rocky Bear, the Indian leader who had crossed the big water once before, had come to where Charging Elk was sitting, looking out the window at the new country. He still held his father's breastplate in his lap.

“Your
kola
—Strikes Plenty,” said Rocky Bear. “He should be with us, Charging Elk. He was tough—and he could ride. You and he made these reservation boys look puny. You raised yourselves in the old ways out at the Stronghold.” The leader glanced around the wagon at the young Oglalas sitting on the wooden benches. “These boys will do. But we are not taking our best.”

“Why did the white bosses leave Strikes Plenty behind?” Charging Elk leaned forward in his seat. “He was the one who wanted to go see the other side of the big water.”

Rocky Bear leaned down. “He was not Indian enough for these bosses.”

Charging Elk looked up with rounded eyes.

“These bosses think they know what an Indian should look like. He should be tall and lean. He should have nice clothes. He should look only into the distance and act as though his head is in the clouds. Your friend did not fit these white men's vision.”

Charging Elk looked out the window and saw a big white house
surrounded by trees. A herd of black-and-white cows grazed in a field beside it. He had not seen this kind of cow before.

Strikes Plenty was not tall and lean; he was short and broad and his face was as round as
banhepi wi
when she is full in the night sky. Charging Elk liked his brotherfriend because he didn't act as though his head was in the clouds. He always had a grin on his face, even if they were caught out in a blizzard or had to ride two sleeps with nothing to eat. He wanted to tell Rocky Bear to tell his white bosses that Strikes Plenty was more Indian than all of them together on this iron road, that he had lived the old Lakota way until two sleeps ago, when he rode off to the Whirlwind Compound. But he didn't. At that moment he almost envied Strikes Plenty and the new life he had envisioned. Out at the Stronghold, the idea of having a wife and a life of peace and comfort had seemed far out of reach. Charging Elk felt the bundle in his lap and looked out at the black-and-white cows. One of them was trying to mount another, even though both had bags full of milk.

N
ow it was full light and Charging Elk was beginning to feel vulnerable. The bread had filled him up and his thoughts of home had comforted him to some degree. He had not thought much about his plan, except to get as far away from the sickhouse as possible. Still, he was hesitant to leave the alcove. He did not know this town, this country. He was now sure there was no one who could speak Lakota here. But if he could find the right people, the brown suit and the black suit, they would send him to Buffalo Bill. Except for his ribs he was well. They would see that.

Charging Elk broke the remaining longbread into four pieces and tucked them into his coat pockets. Then he stepped out into the street.

M
arseille was a large city and it smelled of the sea, of salt and winter, of smoke and food, from the chestnuts roasting on braziers on street corners to the golden
pommes frites
in the brasseries to the thick honey sweets in the tea shops. The big street Charging Elk walked along was noisy with carts and wagons and carriages and omnibuses, all pulled by horses or oxen, or in the case of the carts, pushed or pulled by men in blue coats and pants. Men and women walked on the sides of the street, the men carrying big baskets on their shoulders, the women smaller baskets on their heads. The broad walkways on either side of the street were filled with people who seemed to come from everywhere there was an opening. They appeared, moved, and disappeared. Others appeared. Some walked purposefully, others idled along, while still others stopped to look into the windows of the stores. Some of them were well-off, the men with their dark suits and topcoats and top hats, the women wearing the big-butt black dresses, mantles, and hats with feathers and black spiderwebs that partially hid their faces. They carried umbrellas to shield themselves from rain and sun. Others of the pedestrians were poor, dressed in rough coats and flat caps, in long simple dresses with shawls and plain bonnets. Children were dragged along by mothers or rode in their fathers' arms.

Charging Elk saw a group of people standing before a big window. They were talking and gesturing and pointing at various groups of small figures. Some of them were animals—cattle, sheep, and pigs. Charging Elk remembered the family that raised pigs along the road to Wounded Knee. He remembered it because he had never smelled such a sharp, sour odor. It seemed to ride with him for many miles afterward.

Other figures in the window were of men and women and children, dressed in costumes Charging Elk had never seen before.
Some of the figures were light-skinned, others dark-skinned. One of the dark ones had a cloth tied around his head, a blackness over one eye and a knife between his teeth. He had a fierce scowl. The others were either sad or happy or without passion.

In the middle of the window, he saw a group of figures that seemed to be apart from the others and quite a bit larger. Three bearded men in different dress stood or kneeled. One had a tall cloth wrapped around his head. Charging Elk recognized this figure. At the show in Paris, at the foot of the naked iron tree they called the Eiffel Tower, he had seen real men wear these big hats. They came from even farther to the east where they rode the long-necked, bighumped beasts that he had first seen in a pen at the exhibition. They had looked hot and ugly, but when he touched the chewing muzzle of one, he was surprised how soft and pleasant it felt.

Sees Twice had told him that the Eiffel Tower had been built so the French could honor their five generations of freedom from cruel kings. All the surrounding buildings and fountains and gardens were part of this honoring ceremony. He said the white men of America had a similar honoring. They had defeated a cruel king many years before. Featherman had wondered aloud if all kings were cruel, but Sees Twice couldn't answer that. He only knew that the Grandmother England was kind. Maybe only woman kings were good to their people.

Charging Elk almost smiled at this recollection—he had begun to enjoy his memories more than his life. He looked into the window again and he recognized black men with naked chests and big red lips. He had seen black men in Paris and New York but he didn't think they had red lips. And the sheep. And the small horse with big ears. He had seen these big ears first in the gold camps of Paha Sapa, and later in the Wild West show. They were part of an act that made people laugh.

But his eyes were again drawn to the big figures in the middle of
the window. All of the animals and men were looking at a man and woman and baby. The man wore a brown cape and was sitting on a rock. He held his hands out, as though he wanted something from the others. The woman was dressed in a long blue dress and a white cloth that covered her head. She was looking down at the baby with just a hint of a smile. The baby lay on some straw that filled a wooden box. Its hair was yellow like the straw and its naked body was bright pink. Its arms and legs were sticking up and it had no expression on its face.

Charging Elk ate one of the four pieces of bread as he walked along the street. His stomach was constantly growling now as he smelled food everywhere he turned. The longbread filled his stomach but he wanted more than bread. He wanted one of the sticks of meat from the
charcuterie
. He wanted
pejuta sapa
and a flaky chocolate bread.

He passed through a narrow street that was lined with outdoor tables. Many people crowded the alley and he found he could move only by slipping through a narrow passage in the center. He was almost glad for the crush of healthy humans after the many days in the sickhouse. He noticed that all the tables were filled with the little figures of animals and various people. He was surprised at how lifelike some of them looked. He was especially struck by a figure of a policeman with its blue high-collared tunic and round flat cap. He stopped to look it over, although he had been avoiding real ones all day. A child next to him was holding one of the yellow-haired, pink babies. This one too had its legs in the air as though it were kicking. The girl, of perhaps four winters, was looking up at her mother with a hopeful smile, but the mother shook her finger and said some words, and the girl put the figure back on the table. Then she looked at Charging Elk, and he saw her mouth go wide open. She looked up into his face, then turned and buried her own face into her mother's coat.

Charging Elk suddenly remembered how different he was from
any of these people and he grew tense. He had earlier let his hair fall free from under the cap, although he kept the cap on his head. He was at least four hands taller than the tallest of them and his wrists stuck out beyond the coat sleeves. He looked down and he saw that his ankles were exposed, his bare feet covered only by the woolly slippers. He noticed how much darker his skin was than the little girls. She had black hair and dark eyes but her face was the color of snow-berries. But Charging Elk was dark even for an Oglala. Many of his friends had teased him about his color when he was a child. He was embarrassed and even ashamed of his darkness, until his mother, Doubles Back Woman, told him it meant that he was the purest of the
ikce wiccua
, that Wakan Tanka favored him by making him so dark.

He now began to notice the people glancing at him as he squeezed through the crowd. They looked him up and down, starting with his hair, then following his length down to his feet. One old woman, her bent body leaning on a cane, looked up at him with a sideways glare and said something that made the others around her turn from the tables to look at him. He thought how different it was when he and his friends walked the streets of Paris in their fancy clothes and the people looked at them with awe. Although he wanted to get away from these suspicious, even hostile stares as quickly as possible, he walked deliberately with his head high, his eyes level above the heads of the small humans.