by Bill Albert
“When the white men came to ask me, I knew that I must come to work for Pahaska here in order to rejoin my people. Perhaps you will say it was not as honorable as what Plenty Horses did. Perhaps you would be right to say this.”
Even if I could have spoken, there was nothing I could say to him. I was just a dumb kid from New York and I couldn’t even tell him that.
Like I said, Charlie Pinto Face was one pretty damned sad person.
It was only after many more stories that I was strong enough to get up from my buffalo-robe bed and see more of the Wild West Show. It was improved health that got me on my feet but it was betrayal that got me out of that railway carriage.
3
I figure it was old Bent Nose who gave me away, although I couldn’t be one hundred percent sure. When no one was about he would stick his big bent-nosed face real close to mine and mutter, confidential-like but fierce. I didn’t know what he was saying, but I knew it wasn’t friendly. He was always turning his head and spitting, like talking to me put a bad taste in his mouth. It didn’t matter that Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had adopted me, given me a name, claimed I was part of his great vision. All that probably made it worse for me with Bent Nose. He reckoned as how I was pure poison for the Indians. And he might have been right about that. I mean to say, I didn’t do a whole heap of good for my first two sets of parents, my mother lying dead there in Castle Garden after carrying me inside her all over Europe and then across the whole Atlantic Ocean, my father dead too or wandering God-knows-where, my other mother and father robbed and childless. Why should things have worked out any different for Sunset Buffalo Dreamer?
We had been stopped a couple of days, I think it was in Trenton, New Jersey, and I was in the carriage with Jennie Spotted Horse. She was trying to cram food down me, but my throat was screaming painful and I kept pushing it away. Standing Wolf came rushing in jabbering at her and waving his arms about. She said something back at him, dropped the tin plate, pushed me on the floor, and threw the buffalo robe over me. I hated that, the damn thing smelled so bad and I was having enough trouble breathing as it was.
About a minute or so later I heard the door at the end of the carriage slam open and an excited, high-pitched voice shout, “’E’s in ‘ere! Look, under that there robe over by the squaw!”
I was about to be rescued from the Indians.
It was J. J. Ryan, the watchman for the Indian camp, and Henry Barnum, one of the road managers and probably some kind of relation of the famous P. T. Barnum. Ryan was a little runty guy who was supposed to make sure the Indians didn’t get up to anything, like sneaking liquor back into the showgrounds. But Charlie reckoned as to how Ryan was scared out of his boots by the Indians, who, it must be admitted in Ryan’s defense, were a mighty damn fearsome-looking bunch.
“He makes much noise from a great distance,” Charlie had explained, grinning.
Now he was making a great noise from right close. Someone pulled the robe off and I looked up to see the two white men staring down at me.
“Damn it, Ryan,” Barnum said angrily pointing at me, “what kind of watching do you call this?”
Barnum was a big florid man, with bushy sideburns and popped-out eyes. He wore a double-breasted Prince Albert coat and striped pants. Next to him the bowlegged Ryan in his suspenders and collarless shirt looked like an organ grinder’s monkey.
“Tain’t right, sure tain’t,” Ryan shouted at Jennie Spotted Horse. “A white boy in this ‘ere carriage, tain’t right at all. You’ll ‘ave me to losin me job wit all this carry-on ‘ere! Damn squaw! Jesus and Mary! Bloody ‘eathens!”
Jennie Spotted Horse squatted down in the far corner and ignored the two men. Standing Wolf had disappeared.
“What’re you doing here, boy?” asked Barnum. “They hurt you any?”
I shook my head.
Barnum sat down on a carriage seat next to me and put a fat hand on my arm.
“What happened to you, boy? No call to be frightened. We ain’t going to let them hurt you no more. You’re safe now.”
At first I couldn’t understand what he was telling me. I hadn’t really felt unsafe with the Indians, just damnably confused. I knew for certain that no kind of Jewish kid—rich Jewish kid, poor Jewish kid—could become a genuine, forever Oglala Lakota, visions or no visions. I also realized that I wasn’t likely to be an Upper West Side Liebermann again either. By the look of him, Barnum was only going to add to my confusion.
Ryan was hopping about from one foot to the other, dancing on hot coals.
“Look at the boy’s troat!” he shouted. “Look at it! Bloody savages!”
“Where the hell is that interpreter?” asked Barnum, “What’s his damn name, Spotted Face or something like that?”
“Pinto Face,” returned Ryan, “Charlie Pinto Face. No better dan the rest wit ‘is two-bit education and all stuck up wit it to beat the band.”
“Can’t you talk, boy?” Barnum asked, looking at me more closely.
I shook my head, gestured towards by throat and gave a grunt. The grunt hurt and Barnum’s face blurred through my tears.
As I was trying to get a better focus on things, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer came into the carriage followed by Charlie, Red Deer, Bent Nose, and a whole crowd of Indians. Down the central aisle they padded, moving across to squat on the seats and the bunks, their backs to the windows. It got dim and close with all those silent Indians blocking out the light and sucking up the air. Ryan went all pinched-face scared, but Barnum didn’t seem bothered. He stood up and brushed off his frock coat.
“Now see here,” he said, sternly. “Now see here you men, I want you to listen to me. I want . . . Where’s that damned interpreter?”
There was a moment’s pause and then Charlie came forward and stood about three feet from Barnum. He was dressed, as they all were, in full war paint ready for that afternoon’s show. There were lots of tomahawks and knives, a few carried Winchesters. He looked real fine did Charlie Pinto Face, and he knew it. He didn’t say anything, just stood there waiting for Barnum.
“You know the rules, don’t you, Charlie? No free riders, no overnight guests, and especially no whites in here with you Indians. And a boy at that. A young white boy! We can’t allow that and you damn well know we can’t. What the hell’s a white boy doing in here anyway?”
Still Charlie didn’t say anything. He just stared past Barnum’s left shoulder, giving nothing away.
“You having trouble understanding me, Buck?”
I reckoned either Barnum was the bravest man I’d ever seen or the dumbest. Surrounded in a darkened railway car by all those painted-up Indians and him with such a full head of hair growing all the way down to his chin.
“Sure, they knows that,” said Ryan in a begging voice, dancing on coals once again. “Sure, Mr. Barnum, they knows all about that. I’m right sure as how they do. Maybe as how we should like talk to ‘em later about it all. Ya know what I mean to tell ya, Mr. Barnum, later like when we’s all ‘ad time to tink about tings and all such like?”
Poor J. J. Ryan was getting ready for his last stand and no mistake.
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, wearing a full feathered headdress and carrying a long painted stick with feathers on it, stepped forward next to Charlie and began to talk, not to Barnum, but to the whole world. He went on for five or ten minutes, every once in a while a grumble coming from the others in the carriage, and all that time Charlie not making a move to interpret.
“Now what the hell kinda nonsense is the old Chief here going on about?” Barnum said when Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had finished his speech.
Charlie hesitated a moment, then told Barnum that I was Sunset Buffalo Dreamer’s vision son, Newborn Buffalo Calf, and that the Great Spirit, Wanka Tanka, had sent me to him. I had come into his world naked and many steps down the road to the land of my ancestors. With the help of sage, which wa
s hated and feared by the evil ones, and the spirit of Wakan which he breathed into the eagle’s claw, he had driven out the evil spirits and I was now whole again. But I was not as before. With his medicine I had been reborn as his son and when I had more years, then maybe he would know the meaning of his great vision. The Great Spirit had taken my tongue, but the way of that too would be revealed in time.
Barnum stood there, his thumbs stuck in his vest pockets, rocking slowly back and forth on his boot heels. Every once in a while he would run his hands down his sideburns, as if making sure they were still attached to his face. I could tell he wasn’t real impressed by what Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had to say.
“Sure, sure,” he said impatiently, “whatever the old man says, but I’m taking the boy out of here with me. All this damn crazy mumbo jumbo! Indians!
“Come on, boy. Let’s get you back wherever it is you rightly belong.”
He reached down and took hold of my arm. No one tried to stop him, no one moved except me. I got up, my legs like jelly and my head about three sizes too heavy for my neck. Funny, but when it came right down to it, I didn’t want to go with him. Barnum reminded me of my father, the no-nonsense and just-do-what-you’re-told kinda person. The Indians weren’t like that at all. Sunset Buffalo Dreamer had never made me do or not do anything. He just sang songs and told me stories.
Barnum waved his hand at the Indians blocking the aisle.
“Come on now, out of my way here.”
No one moved, except Ryan who was edging towards the far door.
“Charlie, you tell them if they don’t move they’re going be in heap big trouble. You tell them that.”
Charlie didn’t answer.
“This is a white boy!” he shouted at the Indians, his face going red and puffing up sideways, the sideburns like two cats arching their backs at each other. “It ain’t natural him being here. You all know that. Now move your damn selves right quick or I’ll have you all back on the reservation faster than you can spit.”
No one moved.
Still holding on to me he tried to push his way through the crowd of Indians. He didn’t get farther than Charlie and Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. I reckoned something bad was about to happen. You didn’t even have to feel for it with all those painted faces rock solid between Barnum and the door.
It must have got through to Barnum too, because he finally let go of my arm.
“Right! Don’t you worry, boy, I’ll just round me up some help and be taking you away from here double quick. Get you back safe with your folks. As for you,” he said to Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, “you, you stupid old man, are on a one-way ticket back to South Dakota! And you too,” he added, poking a finger at Charlie.
They stood aside to let him pass.
The door closed behind his black-coated back and then it started. Bent Nose told Sunset Buffalo Dreamer that he was leading them nowhere. There were many Lakotas who would be happy to come and take their place in the show and they would be back on the reservation with skinny government cattle and no money, sitting outside their government cabins without a real life.
“The agent there, he will tell you that you must become a farmer.” Bent Nose spat. “All of this for a white boy with a cut penis and no voice. It is foolish. You are wrong. I will not stand with you.”
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer ignored him.
“I will return to Pine Ridge,” the old man announced. “With no respect there is not a place for me here.”
They talked it around for a time and it seemed that about half of them were with Bent Nose and the others, including Charlie, with Sunset Buffalo Dreamer.
“Take off your paint,” ordered Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. “We will not go into the arena today. I will talk to Pahaska.”
“You see,” said Bent Nose, taking my arm and shaking me like a dog. “Did I not tell you this white boy was bad medicine? He makes trouble between us, brother against brother, and makes trouble for us with Pahaska. Your vision is for another time, Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. This is a different world, the white man’s world. He doesn’t live by visions. We can only live in his world. You know the white man, Charlie Pinto Face, you tell Sunset Buffalo Dreamer how the world is.”
He said some more stuff that Charlie didn’t translate. Instead, he picked up a rag and began to wipe the paint off his face. I wondered if Charlie was thinking about the squeaky boots and Plenty Horses.
It was me who caused all the ruction and I felt real bad about that, especially for Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. I guess it just wasn’t lucky to have me as any kinda son, real, adopted, or vision.
4
Dead, I wrote on the scrap of paper the doctor gave me. That was the actual truth about my parents. Besides, if I’d told him anything else they would have sent me straight back to New York where I couldn’t pretend I was a Liebermann any more. No, I had made myself a Division Street gangster who wasn’t wanted, except maybe for robbery. Even if my parents took me back, my life would only have been more intolerable than before, played out between my mother’s long-suffering charity, my father’s scowls, my grandfather’s disdain, and the hard, buttoning-up hands of nannies. There was also something more important to keep me there—Buffalo Bill himself.
After I had been flushed out by Barnum and Ryan, there was no point keeping me cooped up in the railway carriage and it was decided that I should go over to the tipis. Sunset Buffalo Dreamer was walking with me, holding my hand, talking to me low and intimate, although without Charlie nearby there was no way of knowing what the old man was saying. We came around the side of a big wagon loaded with tent poles and ran straight into a group of men led by Buffalo Bill himself.
Tall and straight, all in fringed buckskin, his jacket lapels covered in yellow and red stitched flowers. He wore his pants inside the tops of his high black boots. The boots came up over his knees. Goatee beard and mustache as well as his long hair were powder gray, his Stetson white. He looked like he stepped down out of one of those big posters.
He held a hand up as if to stop us, although we were already stopped, the Indians drawn up silently behind Sunset Buffalo Dreamer. Barnum and Ryan were there and some other men too, expectant and tight-lipped. Buffalo Bill was the only one who was relaxed. He looked down and gave me a big smile.
I stood there rooted like a tree, my mouth fallen wide open—”catching flies,” as my grandfather used to say. So what if the Liebermanns had burned Buffalo Bill and the Massacre at Miller’s Creek and all those other Dimes as well. It didn’t matter now, not a jot, for there stood Buffalo Bill in the flesh and he was smiling straight at me!
“Well, Chief,” he said in a booming voice, like he was announcing in the arena. “So this is the little one I’ve been hearing so much about? Seems a darn small buffalo calf for making all this bother, don’t he?”
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer planted himself and launched into one of his speeches. He told about his vision again, every once in a while touching me on the head. Then he told Buffalo Bill about Barnum. He said as how he and some of the others didn’t want to be in the show anymore. They were grateful for all Pahaska had done for them, but they wanted to return to Pine Ridge. He had spoken his final word and that was that.
“Of course,” said Buffalo Bill, with a wide sweep of his arm, “if you want to go I’ll fix it up right away. But the season’s just started, Chief. We’ve got many more shows before the winter, a lot more people to get into the arena, a lot more money to come for everybody. Be a shame to quit now because of a little misunderstanding.”
Charlie translated. Sunset Buffalo Dreamer was impassive.
“You see, Mr. Barnum is new to the Show, he’s used to working with the circus people and don’t cotton on to our special ways here just as yet. He didn’t mean nothing by what he said. Did you, Mr. Barnum? Got the wrong end of the rope, he did. That’s all it was. Barnum, you want to tell the Chief how it is?”
>
Barnum, eyes down and shoulders slumped, came across and stood next to Buffalo Bill. His sideburns were resting, lifeless quiet against his cheeks. He stared at the ground as he spoke.
“Ah, that’s right, Chief. Colonel Cody here explained things to me and, I . . . I . . . Well, I gotta say as how I’m sorry for what I said and as how I didn’t mean nothing by it.”
He got the last sentence out real quick, almost so it wouldn’t get stuck along the way. Barnum didn’t sound like he actually meant that he had meant nothing by what he said in the railway carriage and I was there so I know damn well he meant it the first time, every word. So did Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, and so did everyone else, but that wasn’t the point. It was all about something Charlie called shame. He tried to explain it later on.
“Sunset Buffalo Dreamer, he could not keep his place if he allowed Barnum to shame him in front of his people. Pahaska understood that and made Barnum say the words that were needed.”
“You come along with me, Chief,” Buffalo Bill proclaimed. “Come to my tent and we can chew this over some. Charlie, you come too and bring whoever else you want. Have us a proper powwow. Whadda you say, Chief? I’d be mighty beholding to you.”
Sunset Buffalo Dreamer thought for a minute or so and then nodded.
“Good,” said Buffalo Bill loudly. “And in the meantime, what say we take this little buffalo over to the medical tent and have the Doc look at that throat? Can’t have him not being able to talk, can we?”
My vision father put his hand on my shoulder and gently pushed me towards Buffalo Bill. I didn’t need much pushing.
The doctor was short and thin with big white hands. They looked out of place stuck at the end of his short arms. He chewed tobacco and the edges of his blond mustache were stained brown.
