Heartsong (5 page)

Charging Elk stood and looked down toward the room with the yellow light. He had made his decision. He wouldn't stay in this deathhouse one more sleep. As he walked silently between the rows of beds in the other direction, he felt alert and expectant.

He crept down the dim hall to the room with the clothes, flattening himself into doorways, looking, listening, but he saw and heard nothing. He began to feel lucky, just as he had that night he and Strikes Plenty had sneaked into the gold miners' tent while they slept and stolen their rifles, a box of bullets, and their work boots. Charging Elk smiled in the dim light, and it was his first smile in many sleeps. He smiled to remember that several miles away they had thrown the boots into a ravine. They had laughed to think of the miners waking up and trying to find those boots. Then discovering that their rifles were also missing.

Charging Elk wished that Strikes Plenty were with him now.
Together, they would know how to get back to their country. Strikes Plenty was good at finding his way home to the Stronghold.

The door to the clothes room was closed, and Charging Elk's heart fell down for a moment. He knew that the white people liked to keep things locked up, that they stole from each other whether they were enemies or not. He was almost resigned to returning to his bed but he grasped the knob and turned it and his luck held. The door swung open with a soft creak. Charging Elk quickly slipped inside the room and fastened the door behind him. The click sounded very loud to him.

The room was pitch-black and Charging Elk stood for a moment, not breathing but listening. The shoes these
wasichus
wore made loud noises and you could hear them from a long way off. But he heard nothing and as he stared into the darkness, he wondered how the white men made the yellow wires glow. He felt to one side of him and grabbed a heavy cloth object. It was hanging from one of the sloped wires that they used for coats. It was a coat. Charging Elk shrugged out of his robe and put the coat on. But the shoulders were too small and his arms stuck out of the sleeves.

Charging Elk was a big man, one or two inches over six feet. He and the other Oglalas had towered over the small people of this city. The people here were shorter than the ones in Paris—and darker. Rocky Bear, who had toured much with Buffalo Bill and considered himself plenty savvy, said these people came from a jungle in another land. The people in Paris and New York and another city he had been to, London, were the true
wasicuns
.

Charging Elk finally found a coat that would almost fit him—roomy enough in the shoulders and the sleeves only a little short. It was a heavy coat, and he was grateful as he remembered how cold it had been that night in the arena when he had gotten sick.

He moved deeper into the room but now he couldn't see a thing. He walked back to the door and, after listening for a moment,
opened it a crack and let the dull glow from the hall in. Then he moved back, brushing his fingers along the coats, until he found a series of shelves. And here he found the other things he was looking for. He tried on four of the white men's trousers until he found a pair that again almost fit him. They were a little loose, so he took the cord from the robe and tied it around his middle. He searched for the other things that the
wasicuns
wore—the shirts and shoes—but all he found was a round brimless hat. He was grateful for it, because he had been thinking that his long hair, which was now loose, would attract attention when he got outside. Now he tucked his hair as best as he could under the soft hat until it bloomed like a black bladder on his head.

He was ready. He had no shirt, but the striped gown, tucked into the pants, looked almost presentable. He would have to make do with the fuzzy slippers on his bare feet.

C
harging Elk's escape was surprisingly easy. At that hour, the big room was empty, save for one couple and a woman. The couple were staring out the window at the dark street and the woman had her head down, asleep. A basket lay on the soft seat beside her, and she held two needles. Charging Elk had seen women in Paris making thick cloth with the two needles as they sat in cafés or parks.

There was only one head behind the tall platform and it was bent over. A light came from somewhere behind the platform. Charging Elk crouched and sneaked close beneath the lip of the platform. He could tell that the head was that of a woman by the smell. Once past the platform, he turned a corner, stood tall, and walked quickly out of the deathhouse into the cold night.

As he gulped in the sharp air, he looked up and down the street and, for the first time in a long time, he wanted a smoke.

 

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER TWO

C
harging Elk spent his first night of freedom in a narrow alley behind
a bread bakery that fronted on the street two blocks from the sickhouse. The smell of the baking bread made him hungry, and he remembered those times in Paris when he and some of his friends would go to such a house to buy the puffy things filled with fruit or chocolate.
Boulangerie
. It was one of the words he recognized. And
charcuterie
, where they would buy sticks of greasy meat.
Brasserie
and
café
. The interpreters always named things.

He had found a place near the building where the warm air came out to the alley through a wooden grate. He had to be careful because there was a small door that was open, in spite of the December cold. Once he saw a cigarette arc out of the doorway and land, a small orange glow, on the rough cobblestones. By the time he thought it was safe to retrieve it, the fire was gone. It was still night, but Charging Elk could sense, more than see, a slight lightening in the sky above the alley.

He wasn't as strong as he'd thought he was. Only two blocks from the sickhouse, his ribs hurt so bad he thought he would collapse if he didn't lean against a building. It was while he was recovering his breath, breathing so shallowly he thought he might pass out from lack of air, that he had spied the alley beside the
boulangerie
. As he crossed the street, he could see a man in a white cap carrying a tray of small breads to the glass case and he wondered how he could get one of the breads.

He had no white man coins. Centimes. During the good days in Paris, he almost always had centimes. Although Buffalo Bill sent most of his money to his parents, he got a handful of centimes every other week. Also, some paper money. Frogskins they were called in America. Here the paper money was of many different colors and sizes and was called francs. Charging Elk got five francs when he and some of the others on their days off were taken to look at the sights of Paris. Once they looked at statues or pictures in a long house of wood floors and stone stairs; once they went to a showhouse and listened to a lady with large breasts sing high and big; another time, on a hot day, they went into a house of many prayers and sat in the cool gloom while the interpreter, who spoke French and a funny kind of American, told Broncho Billy, who spoke American and Oglala, what it was they were seeing. Charging Elk and the others listened patiently but he didn't remember much in particular—just that the church belonged to a virgin mother. Sees Twice, a reservation Indian who had become a believer in the white man's god, tried to make them believe that a virgin could become a mother, and in fact was the mother of their savior, whose father was much bigger than Wakan Tanka. Nobody believed him, but when he dipped his fingers in the holy water and crossed his chest in four directions, they did it too. Featherman tasted his fingers to see if the holy water was really
mni wakan
. The others laughed at his joke.

Charging Elk opened his eyes and it was lighter. He didn't know if he had fallen asleep or had just quit thinking. He was sitting on a piece of heavy paper he had found, but now his whole body was stiff with cold. The wall behind his back was cold and the warm air of the bakery didn't seem to be enough. He could smell the bread, the heavy sweet smell, as intense as dewy sagebrush in the morning when the sun first strikes it. Charging Elk liked to go out behind the lodges then and take a piss and listen to the yellowbreasts tune up for the day. He became good at imitating their clear trilling song. On these mornings he would whistle and one of them would answer, then another. The sun burning the dew off the sagebrush made him light-headed with the sharp sweet odor and he thanked Wakan Tanka for giving him another gift.

He had been a child then, nine or ten winters, and his people were on the run but free. Now he was twenty-three and lost in a big white man's town. For a moment or two he pitied himself, but the smell of the bread was making his guts rumble and he knew he would have to do something about it.

Just a few days ago, he had been part of Buffalo Bill's Wild West show and he had had plenty of centimes in his new purse, enough to buy coffee and chocolate bread and ice cream, and on the sly,
mni dha
, the forbidden wine. When he and the others walked down a street in their blue wool leggings and fancy shirts and blankets, with their earrings and feathers and brass armbands, the French would stop and stare. Sometimes they would clap their hands and cheer, just like the audiences in the arenas. But the Oglalas would walk by as though they were alone in their own world. Only Featherman would smile and wave. He was never sick for home. More than once he said that if he found the right woman who would take care of him, he would stay. There was nothing left at home. The American bosses were making the
ikce wicasa
plant potatoes and corn. What kind of life was that for the people who ran the buffaloes?

Now Featherman was dead. He had no woman but he got to stay here. And his
nagi
would never go home to be with the long-ago people. Charging Elk felt a sharp shiver go up his back and he knew he would have to stand up. As he contemplated his move, he wondered if he could find Featherman. In Paris, he and the others had toured a big stone field where the white men buried each other in the ground. If he could find Featherman's stone, maybe he could perform a ceremony, just as he had seen the
wicasa wakan
do many times at the Stronghold, to release his friend's spirit. The thought brightened him for an instant, until he remembered how many stones there were in such fields.

Charging Elk steadied himself against the wall, rolling his shoulders and flexing his knees. He was too cold to feel the pain in his ribs. He had thought earlier, after his escape from the sickhouse, that he should undo the tight cloth around his abdomen, but he hadn't, and now he was grateful for the skimpy layer. But the coat was good and heavy and he soon felt a little warmer. He pulled the lapels closer under his chin and looked at the yellow light coming from the open side door. The smell of the bread made him weak and he knew he would have to try for some or he might go hungry all day.

Just as he took a step toward the door, he heard the clop-clop-clop of a horse's hooves against the cobblestones of the street. He flattened himself against the wall and listened to the clop-clop-clop come closer. Then he saw the horse. It was pulling a wagon filled with something under a bulky covering. A man sat bundled up in the seat, holding the reins, a pipe between his teeth. As Charging Elk watched the wagon disappear beyond the alleyway, he smelled something sharp and unpleasant. It was a smell he recognized. The smell of the sea.

But now he knew it was light enough for anyone coming by to see him, so he eased himself toward the door. He held his breath, alert and unafraid. He glanced quickly around the corner and he
saw a woman bent over a table. She was rubbing some raw bread into a long shape. As he stood against the wall, he thought of what else he had seen. Two heavy black ovens in the wall, a sink, another table, three or four long baskets. Then he heard a voice, a man's voice. The woman said something and the voice answered, then it was quiet. Charging Elk peeked around the corner again. And he focused on the baskets. There were three of them and they were filled with the longbread. He knew this bread. Sometimes he and his friends would eat at the big grub tent at the Buffalo Bill compound in the Bois de Boulogne and they would have this longbread. It was crackly and soft at the same time and it was good to dunk into their
pejuta sapa
in the morning.