Dan Simmons - Black Hills

Your old-woman’s throat was a mass of cords and cables—the Brooklyn Bridge again!—that your high, black, lacy collar did not succeed in concealing. The bone structure of your cheeks and jawline were lost to folds and dewlaps, jowls and wrinkles. I remember us—you and I—once remarking that the men on your father’s side of the family, the Judge especially, resisted wrinkles far into old age. But it looked now as if you had finally taken after your mother. The few laugh lines that we—you and I—had joked about, almost celebrated, in those last months of our lives together, now possessed all parts of your face. Time had worked like a fat spider weaving its webs everywhere.

I remember, however ungallantly, that you had weighed 118 pounds that June before I left Fort Abraham Lincoln forever. Whatever you weighed now in our last real encounter, your body appeared to have collapsed inward on itself as if your bones had long since liquified, save for the bent spine so common to very old ladies and the obvious boniness of your sticklike forearms.

I would love to tell you, my darling Libbie who cannot hear me, that your eyes were still your own—blue, bright, intelligent, mischievous, alluring—but they had also undergone what Shakespeare called a “sea change,” and not for the better. They had somehow darkened and seemed lost in the shadows of your deep-sunk orbital bones—the way you and I had commented on Abraham Lincoln’s eye sockets near the end—and the eyes themselves seemed rheumy and unfocused.

I shall describe—and remember—no more. But these observations were made in the shadows of an April afternoon in the most indirect and already-fading light. The large, heavy, dark furniture in the room seemed to be soaking up the light. (I admit that I looked for the small signing table from Appomatox Courthouse that Phil Sheridan had given us, but it was not in this parlor and I hadn’t noticed it on the way in.)

I was introduced by my “favorite cousin” May as “Mr. William Slow Horse, the gentleman with whom I have been corresponding and of whom I’ve recently spoken.”

Mrs. Elmer waved Paha Sapa to a seat and when she herself had plopped into a chair, Paha Sapa sat us down across from you, Libbie. In the crowded room, his knees were only about four feet from yours (if one could discern where knees or any other anatomical components were in that wrinkled mass of black crepe, silk, muslin, and whatever else went into that mourning pyre of a dress).

And I confess again that in all my images of meeting you again through Paha Sapa’s visit, I had never—not once—imagined another person in the room with us. Even after Mrs. Flood—“Margaret” to Mrs. Elmer—had excused herself to go about some domestic chore (or perhaps just to sit smoking in the kitchen or back stairway), the room seemed far too crowded with the three living persons and my own hovering, nonliving presence there.

I also realized at that second that I was the second ghost of General George Armstrong Custer (even though I was no ghost) to enter this room. The first ghost had been carried everywhere by Mrs. Elizabeth Custer for almost fifty-seven years and was certainly in the room with us.

When you spoke, my darling, your voice was simultaneously phlegm husky and as wispy as the spiderweb wrinkles concealing your features. Paha Sapa and Mrs. Elmer both bent forward to hear you.

“Did you have a pleasant trip to New York, Mr. Slow Horse?”

“Yes, Mrs. Custer. It was fine.”

“All the way from… where? Nebraska? Wyoming?”

“South Dakota, ma’am. The Black Hills.”

You were not leaning toward us, but I could see you straining to hear, Libbie. I could see no hearing trumpet in the room, but you were obviously having difficulties. I wondered how much of Paha Sapa’s conversation you could actually hear. But there seemed to be a glint of recognition in those unfocused eyes at the sound of “Black Hills.” I remembered Paha Sapa reading something you wrote in 1927: “There was a time after the battle of the Little Big Horn that I could not have said this, but as the years have passed I have become convinced that the Indians were deeply wronged.”

If I’d lived, my darling Sunshine, I would have convinced you of this long before 1927. I remember Paha Sapa reading—I believe it was in your Boots and Saddles— something to the effect that “General Custer was a friend to every reservation Indian,” meaning, obviously, that I would help those who submitted to the orders of the U.S. Government, carried out by such agencies as my Seventh Cavalry, and who stayed at the agencies, ceased hunting, waited patiently for our allocations of beef for them to arrive by rail, and who tried a little farming while waiting.

Nothing could be further from my feelings, then and later. I confess that I had and still have contempt for the reservation Indians, those who submitted under our threats and attacks and who became docile agency redskins. It was the warriors I admired—them and the women and children and old men who risked everything by going back out onto the Plains with them in a sad and doomed attempt to regain their old way of life… an attempt that was already all but impossible due to our extinction of their buffalo herds. All of us in the Seventh, from the officers down to the newest immigrant enlisted man, used to complain about the fact that the Agencies gave the Sioux and Cheyenne new repeating rifles with which to hunt the occasional game and the young men took these rifles, often superior to our own, and rode out onto the prairie to do battle with us.

We complained, but we in the Seventh Cavalry admired such behavior—we would not have wanted anything other than a fair fight—and during negotiations we soldiers tried to hide our contempt for the lesser, “tamed” Indians both on their reservations and lounging in their ill-kept tipis near the forts. They were little better than the tramps and panhandlers that Paha Sapa had passed on the streets of New York that morning.

You had been saying something.

“Have you had time to sightsee in New York yet, Mr. Slow Horse?”

Paha Sapa smiled slightly—I saw his reflection in the tall glass-covered piece of furniture holding china near you. I had not seen or felt Paha Sapa smile many times in the years I had been aware of him and of my place in him.

“I walked down to the Brooklyn Bridge this morning, Mrs. Custer.”

“Oh, Auntie,” interrupted May Custer Elmer, “you remember how, years ago, you used to take the taxi to the New York side of the bridge and walk partway over on the promenade and I would come from Brooklyn and meet you on the promenade deck?”

Paha Sapa had been sending his letters to Mrs. Elmer at 14 Park Street in Brooklyn.

You did not turn your face in May’s direction, Libbie. You did cock your head and smile slightly, as if you were listening to pleasant music from the radio. But the radio was not on.

Mrs. May Custer Elmer cleared her throat and tried again.

“Auntie, I think you remember that I told you that Mr. William Slow Horse was in Mr. Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West Show that you enjoyed so much. It’s why we decided that you should meet with Mr. Slow Horse. Do you remember, Auntie?”

Between the very loud voice and the slow exaggeration of almost every syllable, your grand-niece was speaking to you as if you were not only old and a little deaf but also a foreigner, Libbie. But you finally quit listening to the inaudible music and looked first at her and then at Paha Sapa.