Heartsong (60 page)

And it would always come out something like this: First, Vincent asked him to stay on to help with the pruning when the sap went out of the limbs. Although he was getting restless and was anxious to go back to Marseille, he knew he could not refuse to help the family that had taken him in. And so he had stayed on, doing little chores until pruning time. He even took up horsehair braiding, a craft he had learned from a Hunkpapa out at the Stronghold. It had helped him pass the winter moons until the grass greened and High Runner became impatient for adventure. He spent his evenings in his room at the Gaziers' farm braiding a belt with Lakota designs. It was a clumsy attempt, but it was a belt, one that Nathalie marveled at one day when she came to fetch him to lift something for her.

As the clouds thickened into a monotonous gray and a bitter wind off the ocean to the west came more frequently, Charging Elk spent more time in the main house. He did his chores and came in for coffee in the afternoon. He arrived an hour earlier for dinner and stayed an hour later. He and Vincent always drank an
eau-devie
after dinner and talked of plans for the next spring, almost as though Charging Elk would be there. Nathalie, after washing the dishes, would often sit with them and sew or look through an old magazine that showed what the fashionable women wore in Paris. She enjoyed the talking and the closeness of the kitchen. Often she would look at Charging Elk, and she would see a man not much younger than her father, but she would remember the Indian s words in the garden and her own reaction that night in bed. Now she felt a warmth toward him, almost a dependence on his presence in the chair opposite her father. She could not imagine what life at the farm would be like if he were not there. Both she and her father needed him.

O
ne night in late November, Charging Elk sat at the table in his room, working on the belt. The small oil lamp gave off a warm glow in the cold room and just enough light for him to attempt his intricate designs. He used red and white and gray horsetail for the designs and black for the border. He was getting better but he knew it would not pass muster at the Stronghold. The Hunkpapa had been a patient teacher but he would have had a good joke over this one.

Charging Elk's eyes were beginning to sting with the strain of braiding the fine horsehair and he was just about ready to quit when he heard a light rapping on his door. Because nobody had ever come to his room after dark, he was startled and filled with a sense of foreboding. He stood and crossed the room in two quick paces and flung open the door, expecting the worst.

But it was Nathalie and she smiled at him. She wore a gray cloak with a hood, and he could see that the hood and shoulders were dark. He looked up and saw water dripping off the eave. “It's raining,” he said. “Come in.” When she crossed the threshold and threw back the hood, he felt his heart jump up, but a knot of apprehension tightened in his stomach at the same time. He hadn't been alone with a woman—or a girl—since Marie.

Nathalie shook her head and patted her long dark curls into place. She smiled again, not really looking at him, and he saw the calm, beautiful smile of a woman. It was the kind of smile he had seen on the faces of women in the streets and the cafés of Marseille. It was the smile of young women who looked into the eyes of their men. Charging Elk couldn't believe this moment. He had walked the streets of Marseille in his fine clothes; he had sat in cafés drinking wine; he had watched the women, looking for just such smiles. And he had gone home alone, only to dream of a young
woman who might give him such a smile. A young woman like Marie.

But Nathalie now spotted the half-finished belt and the smile became a youthful grin. “Can I watch you work?”

Charging Elk looked at the belt, and all he could see was the poor designs at the beginning. “It is not so good. I was just quitting for the night.”

“Please, Charging Elk. Do just a little more for me.”

When he heard her say his name, so carefully, his heart rose even higher. But he knew he shouldn't feel this way about her, so he walked back to the table and sat down. He began to braid, trying to ignore the fact that her face was just above his head. His eyes felt better from the break and his fingers did not tremble as he wove the twisted strands of horsehair into the design.

He began to concentrate even harder on his work and soon got into his usual painstaking rhythm. Then he suddenly felt a slight pressure on his shoulder. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her pale fingers against the rough fabric of his wool coat. It was a friendly gesture, but too close, and he knew he should somehow ask her to leave, but he couldn't think of a polite way. So he tried to ignore the hand.

“It's so lovely,” she said, and he felt her hand stroking his long hair. He kept it cut to just down to his shoulder blades now. He usually wore it in a ponytail but tonight, in his room, it was loose. As she stroked his hair, he became light-headed, almost sleepy, and he watched his fingers twist and braid the horsehair. Then his fingers became clumsy and then they stopped. He sat for a moment, in a kind of blissful torpor, feeling the fingers weave their way through his hair.

He didn't know how long he sat there with his eyes closed, but he suddenly smelled a sweetness close to him and he felt her lips brush his cheek very near his mouth. He heard three or four light
steps, then the door open and close, and he was alone in his room, suddenly, helplessly, in love.

N
athalie came often after that first night. At first, Charging Elk was worried that Vincent would find out and disapprove, but he knew that Vincent always retired after their
eau-de-vie
after dinner. Since his wife died, he seemed to have lost much of the energy that allowed him to work hard day after day, then make plans and tease Nathalie in the evening. Although he sometimes became animated when he talked with Charging Elk, for the most part he was quiet and thoughtful, and sometimes he just gave out and sighed and slumped in his chair, like an old man. Then he went to bed.

Charging Elk was puzzled by Nathalie s personality—sometimes she was the young girl who teased him, tickled him, and giggled at odd moments; at others, she was a demure young woman who blushed at his compliments or spoke of a life away from the farm now that her mother was gone. Whoever she was at any given time, she liked to run her fingers through his hair, place his arms around her, and kiss him, an act Charging Elk found pleasurable but was not experienced at. Once she told him to put his tongue in her mouth, and when he did, she giggled and fell back on his bed and said,
“Oh là là!”

But soon that became her favorite way of kissing, and Charging Elk could feel a change in her body as she went from the young girl to the young woman. Her breath came in gasps and she allowed him to touch her breasts and her hips, but never her center. “That is for later,” she would say as she moved his hand.

Charging Elk endured the girls teasing, which was not disagreeable, for she made him feel young again and more alive than he had ever been since he left the Stronghold fifteen years before, while he waited for her to become the young woman that he could
excite into such passion. At first, Charging Elk had tried not to become aroused for fear that it might frighten Nathalie. But it was hopeless. And she was fascinated. Sometimes she would run her fingers along his pants, feeling the rigidity of his cock. The first time, she had asked if it hurt to stretch himself like this, and he had burst out in a laugh so loud she had clamped her hand on his mouth in alarm. “Do you want to wake up my father, you fool?” But the laugh had felt good to him and he hugged her in gratitude.

Nathalie, in their quieter moments, wanted to know all about his life before he came to France. And so he told her about his childhood out on the plains, about living in a tipi, and galloping his horse, about the battle with the soldiers and coming in to Fort Robinson. His French was good enough now to even tell some of the details, although he left out the violent parts, like the time he and his friends had cut off the dead soldier's finger to get his ring. He enjoyed talking about his life, for he really hadn't had the opportunity since coming to France. He had told Causeret a little about his life at the Stronghold, but the juggler had become obsessed with the gold in Paha Sapa and only wanted to hear about that.

Nathalie listened to the stories, and often she would look at him in disbelief. Part of that disbelief came from the fact that she had an Indian for a lover. Never in her wildest dreams could she have imagined this. And the more he told of his life, the more she realized that she knew nothing about this kind of a man and the kind of life he came from. She had seen illustrations of Indians in magazines, but they had feather headdresses and painted faces and carried hatchets or guns. More often than not, the faces were cruel, even inhuman. But Charging Elk was not cruel or inhuman. He didn't carry a weapon or paint his face. He was gentle, even pliable. He never did anything until she let him. Sometimes when she was apart from him, Nathalie wondered what would happen if they
walked along the promenade beside the Garonne in Agen. What would people think? What would Catherine think?

Of course, the very idea was impossible. People would point at them, men and women would disapprove, young people would laugh behind their backs—even Catherine would tease her about not being able to do better than a savage. In her darker moments, Nathalie herself wondered if she couldn't do better—find a young man of her own kind, perhaps a farmer or, what, a druggist, a carpenter?

Nathalie had never seen a dark person until Charging Elk. She had never seen a black African, or a Musulman, or a Levantine. There were only French people in Agen and the countryside, and they were suspicious of, even hostile toward, anyone who was of a different color.

Charging Elk
was
different. But he was good, strong and gentle at the same time. Shouldn't that be enough for her? When she was with him in his little room, it was enough. But when they rode into town in the wagon with her father, she saw how the people looked at him and she became embarrassed, even ashamed of sitting next to him. She made it a point not to sit too close to him or talk with him while people were watching. Back at the farm she became ashamed of herself for her hateful actions and showered him with even more affection. She resolved that next time it would be different—she would laugh with him, look into his eyes, touch him, perhaps even walk along the promenade with him. Who cared what other people thought?

O
ne morning in mid-December, just after breakfast, Vincent asked Charging Elk to harness the horses and hook them up to the wagon. He and Nathalie were going to visit his younger brother, who lived on the other side of the Garonne, a few kilometers to the south of Agen.

It had rained lightly but steadily for several days, and this morning, while not rainy, was damp, with large pockets of fog hiding the Garonne. The farmyard was muddy and quiet, with only the flock of geese waddling among the puddles, making their strange conversation. The pigs were already up in the orchards. Charging Elk held the horses as Vincent and Nathalie climbed up into the wagon. Nathalie wore her next-to-best dress under her cloak, and a real hat had replaced the usual white bonnet. She looked somber and sat stiffly on the seat beside her father.