Heartsong (59 page)

T
he next day Charging Elk and Nathalie were in the garden, she picking the last of the tomatoes and beans and he pulling up the spent plants and vines and turning over the earth. The garden had existed for many years, and the soil, beneath the crusty surface, was as soft as powder under his spade. They worked separately and quietly for an hour or so, until they suddenly found themselves within two meters of each other.

Although Nathalie was open, even loquacious, around her parents, she and Charging Elk had never spoken directly to each other, except for the usual greetings or small exchanges that were necessary to the days activities. He always felt uncomfortable around her because he had been in prison and she was still as innocent as a young deer. She felt uncomfortable around him for the same reason.

But today she said, “What is it like in America, Charging Elk?” She said this without looking up at him, but she had stopped picking the beans.

Charging Elk noticed this and he was surprised. Usually she addressed
him while she was doing something else, in an offhand sort of way. And he could not remember her ever saying his name. “It is very big, very beautiful,” he said, although after fifteen years he could not really remember all the country he had seen on the way to New York. Somewhere after Omaha the land had turned green and the cities were plentiful. “Like France,” he said.

“And where do you come from—in America?”

Charging Elk remembered the big ball of the earth that Mathias had shown him in the stationery shop. “Dakota,” he said. “It is dry and not so many trees. The sun takes many hours to cross the sky. One can see it all day.”

Nathalie now looked up at him, squinting a little against the sun. “Are there cities in Dakota?”

“Not so much. Little towns along the iron road. Not like Marseille or Agen.”

“But Agen is small. I took the train once to Bordeaux with my parents. Now, that's a big city.” She smiled. “I have an aunt and uncle there. He owns a
cave
and sells only the best of wines—or so my aunt says. But I prefer to live here where there are not so many people. Don't you?”

Charging Elk was surprised by the question. He hadn't really considered this farm, this town, as a place to live. He was only here for the growing season. Madame Loiseau had said so. She said he could go back to Marseille after that, after the news of his release had died down.

Now he looked around—down into the valley, toward Agen and the slow-moving Garonne; up at the orchards behind the house; at the spire across the valley. Then he looked down at Nathalie. She was wearing a large straw hat, which covered her face when she worked. But now she was looking up at him, an expectant smile on her face, as though she knew the answer to her question.

Charging Elk had not looked at her like this before. Her face
was still that of a girl of sixteen winters—clean, unlined, with just a hint of summer tan because of the hat she always wore. But in the five moons he had been there she had changed. Now when he saw her walking across the yard, he saw a different person. If her face was hidden, he would take the figure to be that of a slender young woman. She had lost the gawkiness of childhood, almost without his noticing it. It was only in the face that he recognized the girl who had greeted him so shyly at the railway station.

He squatted down, ran his fingers through the soft loam, and said, “I like it here because you are here. You make me feel good.”

A
s she went about her chores for the next few weeks, Nathalie thought about what Charging Elk had said. Did he mean just her? Or her and her family? What did he mean by “feel good”? And the way he said it was just as confusing. He had looked at her, and the penetrating look in his eyes had made her fearful that he would try to touch her. But he hadn't. He had carried her basket of tomatoes to the stone cellar beside the toolroom. She had followed with her beans, and in the cool darkness of the cellar, she had shivered in a way that had nothing to do with coolness. She had dumped her basket of beans into a wooden box on the earthen floor, then left, almost running out into the hot sun.

She had been confused then, less by Charging Elk's words than by her own feelings. She had actually felt faint. Later that night, as she lay in bed, listening to her mother's ragged breathing in the next room, she thought of Catherine and her soldier and she tried to believe that the faintness she had felt had something to do with a man and a woman together. She tried to believe that she was falling in love against her will.

V
incent had been spending more of his time in the house with his wife than in the orchards or the farmyard. Since there was not much work at that particular time of the year, Charging Elk and Nathalie were able to handle all that needed to be done. Vincent took dinner with them, eating very little, but much of the time he could be found standing outside the house, or limping slowly down the road toward Agen, only to turn around and walk back to the house. In the evenings, when Charging Elk sat outside his room, he could see a glow from Vincent's cigar, then an orange arc, and the door would open, letting out a soft warmth into the night, and then close with a click of the latch.

On September 22, Lucienne went to sleep and didn't wake up again. Charging Elk went to breakfast the next morning, but neither Vincent nor Nathalie was around. His place had been set and there was bread and confiture and melon on the table, along with lukewarm pots of coffee and milk. Across the table, he noticed a half-drunk
café au lait
. He took his coffee and a piece of bread back to his room and sat inside, looking out the open doorway. He knew that Lucienne was dead.

Charging Elk drank his
caféau Lait
and thought of death. Back at the Stronghold, death was a frequent visitor. He had been a child during the summer of the big fight on the Greasy Grass and had seen much death. That winter, he had seen many of his people starve to death or die of disease. His own brother and sister had died from the coughing sickness after the Oglalas surrendered. He himself had been near death in the hospital in Marseille.

Other than his own experience, he had not been much involved with death in his fifteen years in France. He had seen it in La Tombe, but he had not been close to the dead ones, except for Causeret. Death was expected in La Tombe and was not a
cause for mourning. There were no loved ones there to mourn.

Lucienne s death was different. Although he had never become close to her as he had to Madeleine—probably because she was already preoccupied with dying when he had first looked at her—he had come to like Vincent and Nathalie and he worried about what would become of them now. Surely they would stay here and continue on, but there would be a big hole in their lives.

Charging Elk walked outside into the sunshine and offered up a prayer to Wakan Tanka. He closed his eyes and faced the sun. And he prayed not only for Lucienne s
nagi
, but for Nathalie's and Vincent's as well. And he prayed for himself, for he knew that his time here was almost over. Soon he would be back in Marseille, and the thought both frightened and excited him. He tried not to think of the Soulas family, because he was certain they would not welcome him back, not after his disgrace. And Marie—he had thought of her often during the cold winter months in La Tombe and at night he had dreamed of a life with her. But he knew that she would not care for him now. Still, Marseille was the only place in this country he knew.

V
incent Gazier sat on the bed and caressed his daughter's shoulders, which shook uncontrollably beneath his hand. He himself had no tears in him. He had mourned his wife long before she was gone and now he felt that his body was as dry as the dust on the road to Agen. If anything, he felt relieved that his dear wife's suffering was now over. But he was also saddened that his daughter's was just beginning. True, Nathalie had suffered much in the past few months with the knowledge that there was no hope for her mother, but she was strong and had worked hard during the illness. Now she would wake up in the mornings to come and realize that her mother would not be there—ever. And she would mourn all over again.

Vincent himself could scarcely believe that now there would just be the two of them. And Charging Elk. But soon he would be gone.

Surprisingly Nathalie came out of her room later that morning and heated some water on the stove, even though she knew the act was unnecessary. She poured the water into a ceramic pitcher and took it into her parents' room. There she washed her mother's body, just as she had for the past few weeks, and with her father's help, dressed her in the white summer dress she had worn to town and to mass when she was healthy. Nathalie almost broke down again when she saw how loosely the dress fit her mother's wasted body, but she took a deep, shuddering breath to steady herself, then applied rouge to the sunken cheeks and the pale lips. She took a little comfort in seeing how peaceful and beautiful her mother looked, even younger, as though she had fallen asleep on her wedding night.

The funeral took place two days later in a little church near the central
place
of Agen. At dinner the night before, Vincent had asked Charging Elk to come with them, and when he looked a little reluctant, Nathalie said, “Please come. My mother liked you and would wish you to be there.” So he sat in the back of the church and listened to the strange words and songs of the holy man and looked around at the statues and smelled the holy smoke. It was the first time he had ever been in a
wasichu
church, and it didn't seem to be a bad place. He thought of the times he had gotten angry with his parents and the other Lakotas for going to the white man's church and he shook his head in a kind of stupefied wonderment. Those days were a long time past and in another life altogether.

C
harging Elk spent the next four months with Vincent and Nathalie, and during that time several things happened that would change all their lives considerably. When he later looked back on
this part of his life, Charging Elk would stop whatever he was doing and try to understand the succession of events that led to his happiness.