Black Hills

by Dan Simmons

  —That the All, the Mystery, Wakan Tanka himself, shows his facets and has his avatars share their power with the Fat Takers as well as with the Sisuni and Shahiyela and the Kangi Wicasha as well as with the Ikče Wičaśa. This…

  The old man gestures toward the bridge tower beneath, toward the roadway far below with its moving trains and automobiles, toward the skyline of New York and the gleaming Empire State Building.

  —… this is all wakan. It is all a demonstration of how the Wasicun has listened to the gods and borrowed their energies.

  Paha Sapa feels something like anger filling him. Beneath that there is only sorrow.

  —So you are saying, Grandfather, that the Fat Takers—the Great Stone Heads who rose out of our Black Hills—deserve to rule the world and that we must fade away and die and disappear as the buffalo did?

  Another Grandfather, this one with his gray hair parted in the middle and a single red feather matching the intricately woven red blanket draped over his left arm, speaks.

  —You should know by now, Paha Sapa, the life you have lived should have told you, that we are not saying that. But the tide of men and their peoples and even of their gods ebbs and flows like the Great Seas on each coast of this continent we gave you. A people no longer proud of itself or confident in their gods or in their own energies recedes, like the waning tide, and leaves only reeking emptiness behind. These Fat Takers also shall know that one day. But the Mystery and your Grandfathers—even the Thunder Beings, fickle as they seem—do not abandon those they love.

  Paha Sapa looks at the face of each of the six old men. He is tempted to touch them. Each man is as solid and physical as Paha Sapa’s own body. He can smell the scent from them despite the breeze—a mixture of tobacco, clean sweat, tanned leather, and something sweet but not cloying, like sage after the rain.

  He shakes his head, still furious with himself and with the Grandfathers’ complicated, unclear statements.

  —I don’t understand, Grandfathers. I’m sorry…. I’ve planned to… you know my plans… but I’m one man, almost an old man, by myself, and I can’t… I don’t… I want to understand; I would give my life to understand, but…

  The shortest Grandfather, one with all-black hair and equally all-black eyes and features as weathered and eroded as the Badlands, speaks softly.

  —Paha Sapa, why did your sculptor choose to carve the wasichu heads on the Six Grandfathers?

  Paha Sapa blinks.

  —The granite was good for carving there, Grandfather. The south-facing cliff meant that the men could work there most of the year and that the finished heads would receive sunlight. Also the…

  —No.

  The syllable stops Paha Sapa in mid-sentence.

  —Your sculptor knows a sacred place when he finds it. He senses the energy there. That, not gold, is what really brought the Wasicun to your sacred Black Hills. They wish to put their imprint on the place just as the Natural Free Human Beings have sought their destinies there. But the future of our people is like the future of a single man… it is not set. It can be changed, Paha Sapa. You can change it.

  Paha Sapa thinks of the dynamite he has begun to store in his shed in Keystone and says nothing.

  The fourth Grandfather, the one who looks most like an old woman, speaks, and his voice is the deepest of all.

  —Paha Sapa, think of the braids in your hair. Then think of the thousands upon thousands of braids of steel wire in the cables on this bridge and how each large cable in turn is made up totally of joined and intertwined smaller strands of braided steel—the whole stronger than any strand of steel by itself, however thick, however resilient. The twining is the secret. The twining is the wakan.

  Paha Sapa looks at the fourth Grandfather but has absolutely no idea what he is talking about. Is it possible, he wonders, for ancient spirits to go senile?

  When the first Grandfather speaks again, his voice is soft but as solid and strong as the tower beneath them.

  —Wait, Paha Sapa. Believe. Trust.

  The other five’s voices are like a whisper only slightly louder than the wind.

  —Wait.

  Paha Sapa puts his hands over his eyes for a second. For only the second time in his sixty-eight years, he is overcome by emotion.

  —Hey… you! Old man! What the hell do you think you’re doing?

  When Paha Sapa removes his hand from his eyes, the six Grandfathers are gone. The shouting is coming from a white man’s disembodied head rising from the solid stone.

  —I said, what do you think you’re doing up here?

  The man’s head is round with no cap, short-cropped hair, red-flushed face, jug ears. He grunts and pulls himself up out of the north cable hole. He’s wearing a stained white coverall and some sort of web harness with a single safety strap and metal clasp wrapped around his thick waist. The man is as short as Paha Sapa but seems to be all thick muscle, including his broad chest, which he appears to be thrusting at Paha Sapa as he comes closer.

  —You heard me. How’d you get up here?

  Paha Sapa looks around as if the Six Grandfathers might still be hiding somewhere on the pediment or on one of the cables. Far below and to the northeast, a large ship blows a steam horn that sounds like a woman’s scream.

  —I walked up. Are you Mr. Farrington?

  —Walked up the cable? With no safety equipment? Are you nuts?

  Paha Sapa touches the short rope still curled over his shoulder. The red-faced man blinks three times.

  —What? You came up to hang yourself? Just jump off; it’s easier.

  —I used a Prusik hitch. I would have preferred better rope, but this is all the clowns had.

  —Clowns?

  —Mutt and Jeff. Two of the four men working on not painting the ironwork below the promenade. I asked if Mr. Farrington was working on the bridge, and they told me he was working here and that I should walk up the cable.

  —Mutt and Jeff. Connors and Reinhardt. Jesus Christ. Prusik hitch? That’s a fairly new friction knot. The Austrians just put that in their climbing manual a couple of years ago, and we use it ourselves from time to time. Are you a mountain climber?

  —No. I work for Gutzon Borglum in South Dakota.

  —Borglum? That crazy son-of-a-bitch? On Mount Rushmore?

  —Yes.

  The red-faced man shakes his head. Paha Sapa can feel the anger flowing out of the other man and guesses that he is usually fairly relaxed. His eyes are bright blue and Paha Sapa sees now that the red flush and blunt red nose are normal for him, a matter of capillaries and too many hours spent in the sun rather than a sign of rage.

  —Are you Mr. Farrington, or were Connors and Reinhardt lying to me about that as well?

  —I’m Farrington.

  —Not Mr. E. F. Farrington, obviously, but perhaps a relative? Son? Grandson?

  —No, I don’t know any… wait. I’ve heard that name. There was an E. F. Farrington working with Mr. Roebling when the bridge was built…. Master Mechanic, I think…

  —That’s right. I had a friend, dead now, who worked for Mr. Farrington and asked me to look him up if I ever came to New York. He’d be in his nineties now.

  —Yeah, well, I’m Mike Farrington and no relation. But I do remember about that now. That master mechanic Farrington had an argument with some of the bosses forty years ago, not with Colonel Roebling, and left the job shortly before the bridge was opened. Listen, you can’t just walk up here, you know. Prusik hitch or not.

  Paha Sapa does not want to argue with this wrong Farrington. He feels suddenly weary and confused and absolutely stupid. He came to New York to fulfill a foolish promise to Long Hair and now he’s come to the bridge on this even more foolish errand. And, he realizes with a sick jolt to his empty stomach, he’ll miss the four o’clock appointment on Park Avenue because he’ll probably be in jail. He doubts that he’s brought enough money to meet bail. Mr. Borglum will fire him over the phone without even hearing his side of the story… and he
has no side.

  There are shouts from below the east side of the tower top and Mike Farrington walks to the edge. Paha Sapa follows listlessly.

  A work scaffold is hanging beneath the north cable, about fifty feet down, and hidden from view by the nearer cable. Three men on it, all in matching coveralls with their thin harness straps clipped to a cable wire above, are waving their arms and shouting.

  —Mike! Everything okay? You got a jumper there?

  Farrington shouts back.

  —No, it’s okay. Just an old gentleman who’s lost his way. Not a jumper.

  Farrington turns to Paha Sapa and asks softly—

  —You’re nuts, but you’re not a jumper, are you?

  —No. And I didn’t have to come all the way to the top if I wanted to jump. The jump from the roadbed level to the river would’ve killed me. I may be nuts, but I’m not stupid.

  Farrington can’t hold back the sudden flash of white teeth. He waves to the workers to continue their inspection or rust scraping or whatever they’re doing there, reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a cigar and a match.

  —You want one… what’s your name?

  Paha Sapa starts to say Billy Slovak and then does not. He starts to say Billy Slow Horse, but then does not. He likes this Mike Farrington even if he isn’t related to Big Bill’s old boss and friend.

  —Paha Sapa is my name. It means Black Hills, which is also where I live.

  —You some kind of Indian then?

  —Lakota. Sioux.

  Farrington flicks the match with one movement of his massive thumb, puffs the cigar alight, exhales, clamps the stogie in his teeth while he crosses his massive arms over his massive chest, grins again, and says—

  —Sioux. You’re the guys who killed Custer, right?

  —Yes. The Cheyenne helped, but we did it.

  Again the white grin and the twinkling blue eyes. Paha Sapa has never smoked, other than from the Ptehinčala Huhu Canunpa before he lost it on his hanblečeya, but the aromatic smoke from Farrington’s cigar smells wonderful. He is reminded of the Six Grandfathers.

  Farrington says—

  —You did, huh? With just a little help from the Cheyenne? Were you there at the Little Big Horn when it happened, Mr…. ah… Paha Sapa?

  Paha Sapa looks the younger man in the eye. He does not smile or laugh.

  —Yes, Mike. I was the last person or thing that General George Armstrong Custer saw in this life. I counted coup on him just as the second bullet hit him.

  Farrington laughs—three loud, uninhibited barks that get his maintenance crew to shouting again—and then looks more closely at Paha Sapa and quits laughing. He pats Paha Sapa on the back, not gently.

  —I believe you, sir. By God, I truly do. All right, now how do we get you down?

  —I presume by the same cable I came up.

  —You presume correctly, Mr. Paha Sapa. You with your little bit of clothesline and your Prusik knot friction hitch. I could get a harness from one of the boys back there, but I’m not sure you’d take it or need it. I’ll walk you down. I can see a crowd’s already gathered there, thirty or forty folks with nothing better to do than rubberneck on a Saturday morning, and I’m sure a couple of New York’s Finest will be there.

  —New York’s Finest?

  —Cops, Mr. Counting Coup Paha Sapa, sir. Cops. With their clubs and handcuffs at the ready. That crowd watched you climb up here and someone’s bound to have called it in or run to fetch a cop on the beat. But I’ll explain to them that you’re my father—or a new member of the bridge maintenance crew. Or something. Do you promise not to fall and get yourself killed on the way down? There’s a goddamned Depression on, you know, and I need this job.

  —I’ll do my best, Mike.

  Farrington looks hard at him again, the blue eyes squinting in the cloud of aromatic smoke. The crew chief clamps down harder on the cigar and the grin widens.

  —I have a hunch that your best is pretty damned good, Mr. Paha Sapa. Pretty damned good.

  TWENTY-FIVE MINUTES LATER, Mike Farrington’s explanation having satisfied two bemused-looking police officers in uniform but not the jostling crowd that had gathered—more like seventy-five people than thirty or forty—Paha Sapa has shaken hands with Farrington, extricated himself from a boy in oversized tweeds and carrying a notebook who said he was a reporter, and is walking toward Broadway, into the shadow of the tall buildings again, stopping and turning frequently to look back at the towers and the bridge.

  “Paha Sapa, now that you’ve got that out of your system, can we go get ready to keep the appointment now?”

  Usually the buzz of words in his head is an annoyance to Paha Sapa, but now it makes him feel less alone in a city and world too large for him.

  —Yes, General. I’ll head back to the hotel, take a bath, get into a clean shirt, and we’ll head down Park Avenue.

  “That’s the first time you’ve ever called me General. Or thought of me that way, as far as I know. Did something happen up there on that bridge when I wasn’t looking or listening?”

  Paha Sapa doesn’t answer. He turns right on lower Broadway and starts walking north toward the Empire State Building and the gleaming Chrysler Building and the heart of the heart of the wasichu city. The day is growing warmer. Each time he looks over his shoulder, Paha Sapa sees that the Brooklyn Bridge is dwindling in the distance and partially hidden by intervening buildings, but it is never fully out of sight for long. Just as it will never again be fully out of his thoughts.

  By the time he reaches Union Square, his hands are in his pockets and he is whistling “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf”—a song from a cartoon about three little pigs that won’t be released until May, but which Mr. Borglum somehow got a print of (he said direct from Mr. Walt Disney himself) and projected as part of the winter Saturday-night movies that he and Mrs. Borglum host twice a month at the sculptor’s studio.

  Behind Paha Sapa, the bridge recedes and is obscured from time to time, but never completely disappears.

  20

  George Armstrong Custer

  Libbie.

  I know now that you will never hear this. This or anything else I have ever said to you from here or will ever say to you. But I will talk to you anyway, this final time. This final time for both of us.

  There was that second when you leaned forward and looked Paha Sapa in the eye—looked into him and at me was my thought at the time—when your lips silently formed two syllables I was sure, then, were “Autie.”

  But I am probably wrong about both the meaning of your look and of the syllables whispered below the range of Paha Sapa’s (and thus my own) hearing. I know you were having difficulty seeing your guest, so it is more probable that you were simply leaning closer to have at least one clear image of the Indian who had invaded your parlor. And perhaps the syllables whispered were “oh, my” or even “good-bye.”

  It was Paha Sapa’s idea for us to come to New York to see you in person. He had suggested it once years before, in the mid-1920s, I believe, and I said no then and he never brought it up again. It wasn’t until this past winter, when I realized that since you were approaching your 91st birthday you could die soon—a concept that had never been real to me before—that I raised it with Paha Sapa in one of our few conversations, and he agreed.

  I wanted it to be on your birthday, April 8. That seemed important to me for some reason. But Mr. Borglum was starting some very serious blasting on the possible new site for the Thomas Jefferson head that very date and he let Paha Sapa—whom Borglum knows as Billy Slovak—know that if the powderman took time off from the job that week, there would be no job for him to return to.

  So Paha Sapa did the best he could, losing pay he could not afford to lose, and we took the long train ride to spend the weekend of April 1 and 2 in the city.

  My reluctance to see you rather than merely remember you as you were when we were young and in love and then married was threefold: first, I was acutely aware tha
t our marriage lasted a little longer than twelve years but, by the time I made up my mind to ask Paha Sapa to bring me to New York, your widowhood had gone on for fifty-seven years. Being a full-time professional widow would change anyone. Second, I did not want the arrival of this sixty-eight-year-old Indian to alarm you. I knew already through the occasional newspaper accounts that Paha Sapa encountered and shared with me that you, the most famous widow in America, were constantly being harassed by letter and in person by various publicity seekers claiming to be “the unknown” or “last” survivor of the massacre at the Little Big Horn. Charlatans all. Third and final, I confess to you now—since you will never hear this—that I dreaded seeing you as an old woman.

  You were always so youthful and so beautiful in the time I knew you, Libbie, my darling. Those dark curls. That soft and mischievous smile was unlike that of any woman I had ever met. The full, firm, and—as I discovered so soon in our married lovemaking—infinitely responsive body.

  How could I trade those memories for the reality of an old woman in her nineties: wrinkled, sagging, rheumy eyed, lacking hearing, sight, mobility, humor, and any glimmer of her youthful self?

  That was my fear. That turned out to be too close to the fact.

  The only thing that allows me to pardon myself a little from charges of cruelty here, Libbie, is the fact that I knew so well that you used to be put off and appalled by old people as well, but especially old women. There was something about a truly old woman that terrified you almost as much as the thunder that used to send you hiding under the bed in the early years of our marriage. (All of the years of our marriage seem like early years to me.)

  In recent years, Paha Sapa borrowed and read all three of your published books—Boots and Saddles, published in 1885; Following the Guidon, from 1890; and Tenting on the Plains, published in 1893—and in one of those books, I believe it was the last one, I clearly recall this passage (a rare use of elaborate description from you, my dear) in which that fear of aging and of old women becomes all too obvious. We had ridden to this Sioux village not too long after my victory on the Washita and a group of old women, most of their husbands killed in my attack, had formed a sort of welcoming committee for us. You wrote: