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.
The woman was of middle age and small. Her sleeves were rolled up and her arms were strong and wiry. Her hair was tucked up under a white cap and she wore a white apron. She was standing sideways to the door and Charging Elk knew that she would see him right away if he tried to sneak behind her. He thought of just running in, and if necessary, throwing her aside and grabbing a longbread. But he knew he couldn’t run in, much less run away, and they would catch him and take him back to the sickhouse, or worse, the iron house, where they kept the bad ones.
Just as Charging Elk thought of getting away from there, he heard the mans voice calling from another place. He heard the woman answer and she sounded annoyed. He peeked again and he saw the woman wiping her hands on her apron. Then she walked slump-shouldered and grumbling to the front of the store with its glass cases. Charging Elk wasted no time. He stepped up into the room and sneaked as quickly as he could to the baskets. He took two longbreads, tucked them into his coat, and left as quietly as he had come.
The cobblestones of the narrow alley were damp and grimy as he hurried away in the direction opposite that which he had entered. It was dark in the lee of the tall buildings and he had to watch his step, but the bread felt warm against his chest. Any moment he thought he might hear some shouting and steps running after him. He couldn’t run and even now his ribs were aching with a sharpness that caused him to catch his breath in shallow gulps.
Finally he reached the opposite end of the alley and he slipped into an alcove that had been a doorway but was now bricked up. He glanced back. There was no one there. He stood for a moment until he could breathe almost normally, then he slid down until he was squatting on his haunches. He didn’t want to sit because it took so long to get up.
He reached into the coat and broke off a piece of longbread and chewed it greedily. It was warm and good and it reminded him of his mother’s bread. Doubles Back Woman had learned
