Shots Fired: Stories From Joe Pickett Country

Le Sauvage Noble (The Noble Savage)

Jimmy Two Bulls was driving Sophie’s Citroën C6 fast but not well — he kept missing third gear — and each time he did it, Sophie would make a little intake of breath that, in other circumstances, he once thought cute. The dark highway was slick with greasy rain that filmed the windows and beaded on the hood. Oncoming headlights appeared with less and less frequency. The car was new and belonged to her husband.

“Do you know where we are?” Sophie asked. The car smelled of damp flowers and her scent. The drying blood on his shirt smelled ripe and metallic, reminding him of a deer hunting trip he once took with his uncle in the rain.

“No.”

“I can see Paris,” she said, gesturing toward the massive orange smudge that defined the horizon and was always out there in the dark, looming, the band of light closed tightly on top as if by a kettle lid of storm clouds.

“So can I. But every turn I make seems to take us farther away.”

“Maybe we can stop and ask someone how to get there. We took a wrong turn somewhere.” Lovely accented English, filled with those swooping little girl squeaks sophisticated French women used, which sounded like erotic baby talk.

“Have you seen anyone to ask? I haven’t.”

They’d left the Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show forty-five minutes before. He was still wearing his quill breastplate.

He ran over something in the road that rattled the windows and made the steering wheel jerk. Whatever it was, he’d glimpsed it at the last second in the headlights, but not in time to steer around it. The object had been dark, long, tube-like, sodden.

“What was that?” she asked, alarmed.

“Don’t know,” he said. “A tree branch maybe.” Or a cat.

“A tree branch?”

“Maybe,” he said, grinning despite himself, “a human arm. It kind of looked like a human arm. My bud Fred Sitting Up ran over an arm once on the road back from a Valentine, Nebraska, beer run to the res. He didn’t remember it until two days later, and by the time he said something about the arm, we found out a dozen other cars ran over it, too. It looked like a flattened dead snake by the time the cops found it. Never did hear who it belonged to.”

“What are those lights ahead? They don’t look like streetlights.”

“They’re not.”

“What, then?”

“Fires. Burning cars.”

“Shit!” she said, her eyes wide as she stretched back in the car seat, pressing her feet against the floor as if applying the brakes, the fine ropy muscles of her calves and thighs defining themselves on her long bare legs.

“It always cracks me up,” Jimmy said, flipping his braided hair over his shoulder, “how when things go to hell you people say ‘shit’ in English. ‘Shit’ was Marcel’s last word.”

“You’re scaring me, Jimmy.” She pronounced it Jee-mee.

He looked over at her and laughed bitterly. “I’m scaring you?”

She screamed, “You must turn around, Jimmy! Jimmy!” Jee-mee! JEE-MEE!

It was lyle bear killer, Jimmy’s cousin from Pine Ridge, who’d been the one who convinced him to come over with promises of good wine, good wages (the Wild West Show needed authentic natives for the nightly 6:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. performances at Disneyland Paris), good food, and beautiful French women who wanted to have American Indian babies. Sure, Jimmy’d heard the stories but he had trouble believing them. French society women? Married French society women? Just for showing up in traditional dress, acting inscrutable and a little mystical, they’d take you home or to a hotel and fuck you all night long? How could this be possible?

So Jimmy applied for a Warrior-Wrangler job online even though he’d never been to war or ridden a horse except for a gray-white swayback on his grandfather’s South Dakota ranch. He used the money he’d saved as a teaching assistant at Black Hills State to buy the handsome porcupine quill breastplate, outlandish fringed and beaded buckskin leather jacket, moccasins, and butter-soft deerskin pants at the Prairie Edge store in Rapid City, all the time feeling a little embarrassed, keeping his head down, the same kind of feeling he’d once had buying a package of condoms at the 7-Eleven along with a copy of Indian Country News he’d never read and a package of gum he’d never chew. He read and reread the emails from Lyle describing his sexual exploits in sophomoric, pornographic prose. Lyle claimed he had three illegitimate children he knew about and four “in the oven.”

It took a month for Disney to send a lady out to interview Jimmy and others, to assess their authenticity, show him where to sign on the employment contract and strict Disney behavior agreement. She was enthusiastic, said, “They’ll love the name ‘James Two Bulls’! It’s a wonderful name!” Even though by “they” she meant “Disney,” he replaced it with the words “French women” in his mind. That night, he broke up with half-white, half-Lakota Jasmine, master’s degree in women’s studies, who seemed to coil up while he told her and then strike suddenly, calling him a contemptible gigolo, among other things that didn’t sting as badly as he imagined they would.

“But,” he said slyly, “I’ll be doing some women studies of my own.”

“They don’t want you, you bastard,” Jasmine spat. “They want a brainless dark-skinned buck! They want some child of nature!”

“It’s just nice to be wanted,” he said.

With his authentic American Indian garb in its own suitcase (along with some medicine wheels, feathers, beads, and other totems Lyle said they liked over there, and two rolls of Copenhagen chewing tobacco for Lyle and the Wild West crew), Jimmy flew Northwest Airlines from Rapid City to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Paris in February. Lyle was at the airport to greet him.

Lyle introduced him around to the other Indians at the show, some fellow Lakotas from Pine Ridge, a few Montana Crows, a gaggle of Wyoming Shoshones, a few too many damned haughty Nez Perce from Idaho, as well as the white cowboys from the same states plus Texas and Colorado. Most of the cast were ridiculously thankful for the Copenhagen, which was unavailable in the EU. Jimmy was assigned to feeding and cleaning up for the horses and buffalo in the stock area outside the auditorium during the day, and he did bit parts in the moodily lit religious ceremony as well as manning the chute gate for the indoor buffalo stampede. He learned to paint his face. Everyone admired his beaded buckskin jacket, even the actor who played Buffalo Bill. Since everybody wore costumes, Jimmy felt comfortable in his.

He met Sophie in March.

They worked five nights on, two nights off at the Wild West Show. Every performance, every night, was sold out with French families who wore cheap straw cowboy hats, ate chili, drank beer and wine, and whooped and hollered on cue. Jimmy shared Lyle’s flat and paid half the rent. During the long gray days of winter they slept late, shopped, cooked, read, and showed up at the Wild West Show mid-afternoon, in the back, where the stock was kept and the dressing rooms were located. They usually came even on their days off, because it was the only place they knew where everyone spoke English, although a few of the Montana and Wyoming cowboys were on their second or third two-year contracts and had married French women and were learning the language. The dressing rooms for the American Indians were kept dark by choice, and either traditional flute or gangster rap played on individual CD players. The Crows smoked marijuana, having somehow convinced Disney personnel that it was part of their religion, which infuriated a couple of the cowboys who insisted, in vain, that Jim Beam was part of theirs.

Lyle schooled Jimmy. Lyle had taken several years of French in school, had a natural affinity for the language, and could understand most conversations. He chose not to speak it, though, and advised Jimmy to follow his lead. “In mixed company,” Lyle said, “speak Lakota, not English. It goes over better. If you speak American English, it ruins the illusion,” he said. “The French like to despise Americans. That’s one reason they like us—they think we have a common enemy. We’re pure and natural and the Americans whipped our ancestors and keep us in poverty, you know the drill. So if you open your mouth and that Black Hills State assistant English professor crap starts rolling out, you can kiss the rest of the evening good-bye.”

Lyle was six years older, with a dark, fierce face that was starting to fill into an oval. He wore his hair long, past his shoulder blades, with a bone comb in it. He’d bought the comb from a West African near the Louvre, but it looked authentic, he said. Lyle had once owned a landscaping business and been on the tribal council representing the Porcupine District, but he’d been accused of embezzlement and angrily resigned and drove to Rapid City to meet with the Disney recruiters. Later, Jimmy learned that Lyle probably did steal the money to pay off a new landscaping pickup.

“I don’t know much Lakota,” Jimmy said.

“Then fake it,” Lyle said, “that’s what I do. Remember how Aunt Alice talked? Stiff-like? Just do that. String words together. Who is gonna know?”

Jimmy smiled at the common reference. Aunt Alice used to bake him pies.

“You’ll start picking up the French language soon enough,” Lyle said. “It’s total immersion, so it comes quicker. Until you do, I’ll listen and tell you what they’re saying. It’s my secret weapon — I know what they’re talking about, but they don’t know it.”

Jimmy nodded with appreciation.

“And don’t smile,” Lyle said. “If you smile, they’ll think you’re on to them and they won’t want to screw you. Be inscrutable. Think Fort Apache. Think Dances with Wolves.”

A general invitation arrived for a reception at the American embassy. Luckily, it was on their night off. The Nez Perce complained that the invitations always came on Lyle’s nights off, and accused him of manipulating the schedule. Lyle shrugged. Sometimes the cowboys were invited, but not nearly as often as the Indians. This was a sore point among the cowboys.

Lyle decided on a ponytail held with a leather string and the bone comb. Jimmy braided and, with the help of a questionable Crow who seemed just a little too happy to help, added beaded extensions to his hair. Jimmy had never, in his life, taken so long to get dressed.

It was an hour by train from Disneyland to Paris. Jimmy was nervous and sweated inside his buckskin jacket. He’d never been on a train before, although he’d flown many times. It was one thing to be admired by the tourists at the show, those families wearing the straw cowboy hats with colored bands reading Colorado, Texas, Wyoming, or Montana, but it was another thing to be stared at by people on the train. When one well-dressed man came up to Lyle and handed him a five-euro note and said something in French about “exploitation by the Americans” and “cultural imperialism” and something nasty about the past president, Lyle nodded solemnly and took the money. After the man left, Lyle winked at Jimmy and grinned.

“George Booosh,” Lyle mocked. “He’s still money.”

They emerged from the train at the station on Rue de Rivoli, the Tuileries Garden on their left and beyond them the Seine, behind them the Louvre. Ornate canyon walls of magnificent buildings on their right, the Eiffel Tower in soft focus, the top vanishing into the moist twilight mist. The sidewalks were crowded with tourists, mainly Japanese being shepherded by their tour leaders with little flags held aloft, the street choked with traffic. In the distance, sirens were braying in singsong. Jimmy was astounded, felt pummeled by the impact of the scene.

“Holy shit!” he cried.

Lyle shook his head, admonished, “Remember who you are.”

They walked along the Rue de Rivoli, shouldering past gawkers and tourists, Jimmy feeling the heat of staring eyes on his jacket, both thrilled and embarrassed by the attention. Lyle was easy to follow, with the eagle feather in his hair. The braying of the sirens got louder, and both men stopped to watch a convoy of police vans, blue wigwag lights flashing, weave through the stopped traffic en route to somewhere up ahead of them. It was then that Jimmy saw the black-clad riot police hanging back barely out of view in the alley, more in dark knots within the gardens. The riot police wore helmets, Kevlar vests, shoulder pads, and carried Plexiglas shields.

“They look serious,” Jimmy said.

“They aren’t,” Lyle said.

“What are they doing? What’s going on here?”

Lyle stopped, turned, looked Jimmy in the eye with disdain. “This fucking place is about to blow up, is all I know.”

“Who is rioting?”

Lyle shrugged. “Everybody. I can’t keep track.”

Jimmy looked up to see dozens of police surge from a side street, most back-stepping with their shields up, forming a gauntlet for hundreds of shouting demonstrators who poured through the passage, stopping traffic. The demonstrators were young, exuberant, dressed in grunge-like college clothes — hooded sweatshirts, denim, track shoes. They looked American, Jimmy thought, like students in his classes at Black Hills State. Many waved hand-painted signs.

“Students this time,” Lyle said, “just students. The big stuff won’t happen till later this summer, when all the North Africans in the suburbs get going.”

A small phalanx of boys bull-rushed several policemen, stopping just short of confronting them.

“Why don’t the cops bust their heads?”

“They don’t do that here,” Lyle said, shrugging with his palms up. “They’re tolerant. At least that’s what they call it.”

Two males broke from the demonstration and got past the police, headed straight toward Lyle and Jimmy. The Lakotas stood their ground, although Jimmy felt himself start to pucker up as the boys approached.

“Solidarité! Solidarité!” the scruffier of the two boys said, grasping Jimmy’s hands in his, thrusting his face into Jimmy’s face, shaking his hands as if they were long-lost friends. “Unité!”

“Solidarité,” Lyle said, mangling the word, stepping forward and raising his clenched fist high. “We are rebels!”

“Rebels!” the scruffy boy shouted back, letting go of Jimmy, raising his own fist. Then turning to the demonstrators to show off his two new friends, shouting “Solidarité!” which pleased them all, eliciting cheers so loud even a few of the policemen looked over their shoulders to see what had caused it.

“Ni glasses toki ye he?” (Where are my glasses?) Jimmy said stoically in Lakota, words he recalled clearly from Aunt Alice. “Ni TV Guide toki ya he?” (Where is my TV Guide?)

Both boys turned to Jimmy with reverence, as if they’d heard wisdom from an oracle.

Jimmy said in Lakota, “Tunkasina nite oyuzune ciya!” (Grandfather hurt his hip!)

The boys nodded solemnly and raised their fists.

Jimmy and Lyle stood on the corner with their fists raised also, shouting “Rebels!” until the boys rejoined the demonstrators, who flowed into the gardens surrounded by accommodating policemen. When they were gone, Lyle looked over, said, “That was fucking brilliant, Jimmy. Did you see how they looked at you?”

“Like they would follow me anywhere,” Jimmy said.

“You’re gonna be all right,” Lyle said, clapping Jimmy on the shoulder and checking his wristwatch. “We’re late,” he said.

As they crossed the street, Jimmy asked, “What was that all about?”

“The one thing I’ve learned over here,” Lyle said, “is it doesn’t matter what it’s about as long as we cheer them on and say we’re rebels just like them. It’s all about being a rebel. Every-fucking-body here is a rebel. And it doesn’t hurt to be Indian — that gives us street cred.”

Jimmy laughed, mainly out of relief, still proud of his Lakota phrases.

Three of the female demonstrators had not crossed the street into the Tuileries, but stood on the opposite corner, giggling, shooting long looks at them. Jimmy thought they were attractive, and nudged Lyle.

“I see ’em,” Lyle said. “We can do better.”

They left the disappointed girls on the corner. Jimmy tried hard not to look back.

“This place…” he said.

“Yeah,” Lyle said.

The American embassy on Rue Boissy d’Anglas was a fortress, Jimmy thought, with concrete barriers keeping both pedestrians and motorists away as well as a tall wrought iron fence topped with gold-painted spear tips. Inside the fence, in the foliage, U.S. Marines in desert camo stood under wall-mounted cameras and held M16s and didn’t smile.

“That’s not it,” Lyle said, leading Jimmy on. “We’re going to the Talleyrand around the corner.” Which was also behind concrete barriers and rimmed with marines and cameras.

“We got this place after the war,” Lyle whispered to Jimmy as they stood in a line where a marine checked invitations and IDs. “The Germans used it. There’s still Nazi shit in the basement, like those guys just walked out.”

“How do you know that?”

Lyle smiled. “A nice lady took me down there once. We did it on a desk. It was weird, though, because I remember looking up and seeing this calendar in German that was turned to June 1944.”

“You’re kidding.”

“I am not. It takes a while for history to grow here.”

“That makes no sense, Lyle.”

“Stick around and you’ll see what kind of sense it makes,” Lyle assured Jimmy.

They went individually through a massive cage-like turnstile, then a metal detector, then a hand search and document check. The older marine handed Lyle’s passport back to him, said, “Good seeing you again, Lyle. I see you brought along fresh meat this time.”

“My cousin Jimmy,” Lyle said, nodding.

The marine looked Jimmy over, assessing him, made Jimmy feel naked.

“What would you do if the ambassador stopped inviting you to these things for local color?”

“Go home, probably.”

“I wish those dollies liked marines the way they like Indians.”

“Ha!” Lyle said. “No chance of that.”

The reception was in a high-ceilinged room dominated by hanging crystal chandeliers that glowed with gold, syrupy light. Massive windows framed the Eiffel Tower, its girders flashing with lights signaling the top of the hour. The Place de la Concorde was across the street, the Avenue des Champs-Elysées to the northwest, headlights streaming through and around the Arc de Triomphe. Jimmy had never in his life been in a space so intricate, ornate, or intimidating. The crowd was well dressed, speaking French, plucking glasses of champagne from trays carried by men and women wearing black and white. Jimmy stood with Lyle in the very back of the room, watching, acting serious and regal the way Lyle had instructed.

Jimmy began to reach for a glass from a passing waiter but Lyle stopped him. “Indians look stupid drinking champagne,” Lyle hissed. “It ruins the effect. Ask for a beer or something.”

Jimmy shot a look at Lyle, but withdrew his hand.

The American ambassador, who introduced himself in English and French as Bob Westgate, former congressman from San Diego, welcomed everyone and introduced tourism representatives from the states of Idaho, Wyoming, South Dakota, and Montana, the reason the reception was held.

“Tourism people,” Lyle said softly, not looking over at Jimmy. “There’s a parade of ’em that come over here, one after the other. Ambassador Bob hosts them and invites French travel industry people and government types. It makes for real good picking.”

Jimmy didn’t need to be told because he couldn’t take his eyes off a tall dark-haired woman with pale skin, flashing green eyes, and dark red lipstick. She was sipping a glass of champagne and talking with a curvy redhead in a shimmering black cocktail dress, the white orbs of her breasts straining against the tight fabric. The redhead gestured toward Lyle, said something in French, and both women nodded and smiled knowingly.

“Gabrielle le Peletier,” Lyle said. “She’s mine.”

“Which one is she?”

“Redhead.”

“Who is the other?”

“I’ve never seen her before. You want her?”

Jesus yes, he thought. “It can’t be as easy as that.”

“You’ll see,” Lyle said.

“Do we go over and introduce ourselves? Grunt at them?”

“Naw, we just wait. They’ll come to us.”

“You’re kidding.”

“If they don’t, some other babes will. Just remember who you are.”

Jimmy snorted. “Who am I?”

“Don’t start that,” Lyle said, an edge in his voice.

While speeches were given to bored applause — the white Americans seemed so eager to please and out of place among these sophisticates, who knew how to dress, knew how to cut their hair, knew how to stand, knew they were the best-looking fish in the aquarium, Jimmy thought — his eyes left the tall woman only to check out what was going on outside. The student demonstrators they’d encountered earlier were still in the Tuileries Garden, and the crowd had tripled in size. So had the number of riot police. Police on horseback now circled the perimeter of demonstrators but kept their distance. Every few minutes, there was a surge in the crowd toward a cordon of police, and Jimmy could see the police retreat for a moment in their lines, shields glinting in the streetlights, then slowly push the demonstrators back.

He realized he seemed to be the only person in the room focusing on what was going on outside.

“I would think,” Jimmy said, “they would be at the windows watching. I mean, there’s a riot right out there in front of us. Don’t they care?”

Lyle shook his head, but didn’t look at Jimmy, said, “They pretend they can’t see it.”

“Why?”

“You’d have to ask them. It’s like if they don’t see what’s going on, it isn’t really happening.”

Then Lyle turned, his face dark with anger. “Are you gonna keep asking questions and wasting our time, or are you gonna give some French woman a ride? Make up your fucking mind, because you’re cramping my style, Jimmy.”

“Sorry, Lyle.”

“Get ready,” Lyle said, “the reception is winding down. Meaning it’s showtime.”

“Don’t talk,” she said in English, placing her elegant fingers to his lips.

They were in a third-floor apartment four blocks from the Talleyrand. She’d led him there by the hand. The doorman nodded to her with respectful recognition and stepped aside to let them in. She inserted a key into the lock on the door and opened it but didn’t turn on a light. He hesitated on the threshold for a moment until she had said, “Entrez vous.”

He wore nothing but the quill breastplate she insisted he keep on. In the muted blue light from the bedroom window, her skin was so white it was translucent. She was lithe and long-limbed, her legs toned by walking, he supposed. He could see the blue veins beneath her skin on her small pert breasts and abdomen. Before they went to bed, she inspected him, running her hands over his shoulders, belly, buttocks, thighs, giving his biceps a little squeeze as if checking out the freshness of a baguette.

The contrast between his light brown skin and her paleness struck him when they were pressed together, reminded him of mayonnaise on rye bread. Her skin looked like it had never seen the sun. She was the whitest woman he’d ever been with. She didn’t want to play, kiss, or caress. She wanted to be taken, and responded with encouraging mewls the more aggressively and selfishly he performed. He pretended he was in control.

Her name was Sophie Duxín, and when he exploded inside her the first time she took a sharp, sweet intake of breath.

At four in the morning she stood at the window, a naked silhouette against the sheer curtains, said, “You must go now,” without turning to look at him in the bed.

He was ready, but confused. “Is everything okay?”

She turned, smiled; he could see the whiteness of her teeth. “Everything is okay. Three times, that is very good.” She patted her belly as she said it.

He was sore. “This apartment…”

“My husband owns it. He owns lots of flats.”

“And he doesn’t mind?”

“He doesn’t know.”

Jimmy felt hungover, although he hadn’t drunk anything. He wished he had something now, though.

“But—”

“Don’t talk,” she said again, crossing the floor to him, again pressing her fingertips to his lips.

“We have an understanding,” she said, looking away. “Actually, we do not.” It took him a moment to understand she was referring to her husband.

She watched him dress with cool, appraising eyes. As he pulled on his beaded jacket, he said, “What does he do, your husband?”

“He’s a businessman and politician,” she said, sighing. “He is very well known. He works in the government. But we won’t talk about him again.”

“Okay,” he said, wanting to know more but not wanting to risk her anger.

“I will see you in three weeks,” she said, rubbing her flat belly. “By then I will know. I’ll contact you.”

He didn’t ask, Know what?

She was done with him and he was exhausted and felt oddly hollow. He wanted to leave, but he also wanted to ask:

Where is he, your husband?

What would he think of what we just did?

What would he think of me?

Do you have other children?

Where do you live?

When will I see you again?

Why an Indian? Why an Indian child? Why me?

But she said, “Don’t talk.”

In mid-April there were hints of spring, and several days of cloudless but pure sunshine that seemed to fill Jimmy up like red meat. He’d not realized how the endless gray days had beaten him down until the sun came out. He was sitting on a bench in a small park near their apartment building, reading a note from Sophie in the sun, when Lyle joined him wearing sunglasses.

“That from her?” Lyle asked.

“She wants to see me again,” Jimmy said, charmed by the way she’d written the note in English, not her language, the way she’d drawn out the block letters. He wondered who had helped her.

Lyle shook his head, lit a cigarette, blew out the smoke in a long stream. “You’re doing this wrong, Jim. The point isn’t to get all monogamous. The point is to spread your love around, baby.” He said it with a flourish. “You understand what I’m saying?” Lyle asked.

Jimmy grunted.

“This town’s filled with French women who want to have little Jimmys, little children of nature. Why deny them?”

He wasn’t sure how to answer, and knew Lyle wasn’t the type who wanted to hear what he was thinking, which was a combination of his carnal desire to see her again and a leaden realization that she could do him harm if he got too close.

“Might as well go,” Lyle said. “Just don’t be shooting blanks. That’ll really piss her off.”

“You think that’s why she wants to see me, then?” Jimmy said.

“Why else?” Lyle said.

Sophie met him at the Champs-Elysées Clemenceau station, wearing a scarf and large sunglasses and she seemed very happy to see him. The moment he touched her hand, to give it a little hello squeeze, he felt her cool electricity shoot through him and it made his toes curl in his boots.

She told him they couldn’t go back to the apartment again, they were going to another place that was “not in such a nice neighborhood.”

“It is Gabrielle’s,” Sophie said. “She gave me a key.”

He asked why they didn’t go back to her husband’s apartment, and she answered by dismissing the question with a wave of her hand.

They walked a long way and were soon virtually alone on the sidewalk. Jimmy noticed the decline in the appearance of the buildings from the area around the station, and the lack of people. He saw several hand-painted signs in French and Arabic.

“Not so nice,” she said.

They turned a corner and he saw four Middle Eastern men in their twenties on the sidewalk coming at them smoking cigarettes, chattering. One barked a laugh at something another said.

Jimmy felt her clamp down on his hand, practically pull him across the street to the other sidewalk. He didn’t like being steered like that, as if he were running away.

The men certainly noticed, and one of them said something that made the others laugh. Jimmy didn’t know the words, but could read the tone and body language. They thought he was a coward for avoiding them like that. So he stopped, fixed his stare on them as they cruised down the sidewalk across the street.

“Jimmy, no,” Sophie whispered urgently.

He shot a glance at her. She was scared, the skin pulled back on her face in a way that seemed to flatten it against her skull.

The men were now adjacent to them, talking among themselves, staring back at him with fixed grins on their faces. All were unshaven, with shocks of dark hair, dark eyes. Jimmy heard the words “cowboys and Indians” clearly amid the Arabic. He felt a little tremble in the inside of his legs.

In a moment, they were past. Sophie tugged hard on his arm, and he gave in when the men were far enough away to not make it look like a retreat. He wondered what he would have done if they had come at him. He was confident he would have lost. He was no fighter, and vowed to buy a knife or a gun, some kind of weapon.

In Gabrielle’s apartment, Sophie said he was “brave and foolish,” which he took as a compliment.

Then she stepped up to him and kissed him lightly for the first time, and took his hand and pressed it against her breasts. He liked that.

Then, deliberately, she moved his hand down until it covered her belly.

“I hope our baby is brave and foolish, too,” she said.

“You mean…?”

“Oui. Merci beaucoup.”

Which sounded to Jimmy like “good-bye,” although they had sex again but it was different. She was clearly going through the motions, waiting for him to finish, her hands no longer grasping at him, pulling him in, but placed on his back because she had no place else to put them. He pretended not to notice. Afterward, while she sprawled back and he caught his breath, he shifted in the bed and lay his head on her belly. When he did, he felt her stomach muscles tighten.

She said, “No,” and wriggled away.

“I wanted to try and hear the baby,” he said.

She shook her head with distaste. He wondered if he had offended her in some way.

“I don’t like that,” she said, in explanation.

He sat up, the moment over. “I have to ask you something,” he said. “Why me?”

“It’s not about you. It’s about my husband.”

“I don’t understand.”

She shook her head as if to say, Of course you don’t understand.

“Tell me,” he said.

“Non. It’s time for you to go.”

As he dressed he said, “When do I get to see you again?”

She clucked at him and shooed him out the door.

That night, Jimmy had a dream that he and his son were fishing on Rapid Creek on a bright sunny day in early fall, catching firm, colorful rainbow trout on grasshopper flies. His son was dark like him but had Sophie’s long limbs, delicate features, and full mouth. Jimmy had to put his rod down and untangle his son’s line from bushes and branches while his son chattered at him in French and Lakota but not English, and Jimmy could understand every word.

“You’re a good boy,” Jimmy said, rubbing his son’s head.

The boy said, “He tuwa Ina he?” (Who is my mother?)

“Don’t be such a dumb fuck,” the cowboy said to Jimmy before taking a long pull of red wine from a bottle and handing it to Lyle. “You don’t want to see her again. Believe me, it’s for the best.”

“Yeah,” Lyle said, accepting the bottle, “don’t be such a dumb fuck.”

It was after midnight and the stock was fed and watered and all of the customers had cleared the area although a few stragglers still wandered through the rides and exhibits. Lyle, Jimmy, and a cowboy from Montana also named Lyle sat on hay bales in the dark as a mist began to fall. They were on their third bottle.

“Believe me,” Lyle from Montana said, “I been over here going on seven years. I married into them, for Pete’s sake. I even speak pretty passable French. But I’ll never be inside. They don’t let you in. You’re either French or you ain’t. That’s what folks don’t understand.”

Lyle said, “Listen to what the cowboy says, Jimmy.”

“I mean, I sort of amuse ’em,” Lyle from Montana said, “Monique’s relatives, and all. But it ain’t like America, where you can choose to be an American and, by God, you’re an American. It don’t matter what you do here, you can never be French.”

“I don’t want to be French,” Lyle said. “I just want to fuck their women.”

Lyle was on a roll, said, “I don’t even think they like each other very much, is the goofy thing. They turn on each other like goddamned coyotes all the time. But I think the thing is they hate everybody else even more.”

Jimmy said, “I really felt something with her. I think she did, too. Especially that first time.”

Lyle moaned and rolled his eyes. Lyle from Montana looked away.

Lyle said, “She was fucking herself through you. Take it for what it’s worth.”

Lyle from Montana said, “Hell, yes.”

Jimmy didn’t want to discuss it further with either Lyle. And he certainly didn’t want to tell them about the dream he kept having.

“Maybe you should go home,” Lyle said.

“Maybe I should,” Jimmy said angrily.

“I thought you were the smart one,” Lyle said. “Guess not.”

“Boys,” the cowboy said, slapping the thighs of his Wranglers and standing up, “I think it’s time for me to hit the trail.”

Sophie and Gabrielle were at the next reception at the American embassy, this one for the states of Oklahoma and Texas, whose guests frustrated Jimmy and Lyle by bringing a few of their own Indians, Cherokees.

“We ought to take those Cherokees downstairs and kick their asses,” Lyle said, glowering. “Look. Gabrielle is flirting with one of them, the way she keeps sashaying past him, fluttering her eyes. What a cow.”

Jimmy was wearing his beaded jacket, drinking a beer (he and Lyle had decided beer was an okay drink image-wise, as long as they didn’t pour it in a glass), trying not to stare at Sophie. She refused to acknowledge him, and he was hurt and angry.

“Leave it be,” Lyle said. “You had your fun. Move on.”

“I can’t just move on.”

“The hell you can’t.”

“I can’t,” Jimmy said, putting the beer aside and striding toward her.

As he approached her, she turned her head to him, her eyes warning him off behind a frozen smile.

“Sophie…”

“Hello,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand, her eyes telling him to leave. “Nice to meet you,” she said in English. Her casual dismissal enraged him, and he squeezed sharply on her hand, but she didn’t react.

“Please meet my husband,” she said through gritted teeth, but still with the smile. “Marcel. Marcel?”

A compact, stocky, dark man turned from another guest. Jimmy let go of her hand, but not fast enough that Marcel didn’t see the hard exchange. The next second told Jimmy everything.

Marcel’s eyes flashed from Jimmy’s hand to Jimmy’s face and clothes, then to Sophie, to her stomach, then back to Jimmy — where they hardened into cold black stones.

He knew everything except who it had been, Jimmy thought. And now he knew that.

Although conversations continued, champagne was drunk, and Ambassador Bob Westgate tapped the microphone to introduce his new guests, for Jimmy the world had suddenly shrunk and become superfluous and the only people in it were Sophie, Marcel, and his son, imprisoned inside her.

Sophie looked scared, as she had when they engaged the Middle Eastern men. She put her hand on Marcel’s arm. He shook it off violently, and she recoiled.

So this was about him, Jimmy realized. A way to spite him or get his attention. It was never about Jimmy, or Jimmy and Sophie. And maybe not about the baby, either.

Marcel took a step toward Jimmy, closing the space between them. He was four inches shorter than Jimmy, but his aura of malevolence more than made up for the difference. In a guttural voice, he ripped off a stream of words in French that reminded Jimmy of canvas tearing. Jimmy didn’t know the words, but he knew he’d been threatened.

Jimmy growled back, in Lakota, “Micinksi, tapi tonikja je?” (Son, how is your liver?)

Which made Marcel flinch, step back, and glare at Jimmy with unmistakable surprise.

And Sophie turned her attention from Marcel to Jimmy to Marcel to Jimmy. She didn’t step between them, but stayed at Marcel’s side. Making her choice.

Marcel eventually worked up a kind of superior, heavy-lidded smirk, grasped Sophie’s arm, and led her out of the room. Jimmy watched, his heart thumping so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if his breastplate rattled, hoping Sophie would look back over her shoulder at him. When she did he saw in her eyes not reassurance but a look that shocked and scared him: pity, disgust.

“Wow,” Lyle said, suddenly next to him, “I think I know who he is now. He’s some kind of famous politician or gangster. I’ve seen him on TV. And I think he said you’re a dead man. Man, she played you, didn’t she?”

“I don’t understand,” Jimmy said.

“You never will. They live in their own little world, these people. I’ve tried to tell you that, dude.”

For the next two weeks, Jimmy didn’t leave their apartment except to go to the Wild West Show with Lyle and two cowboys who picked them up. Through the window, he watched leaves pop from buds on branches like green popcorn, felt the city turn from skeletal to lush, full, and shadowed. The bite vanished from the air and was replaced by sultry warmth and Parisian light that seemed more like set design than nature.

He used Lyle’s computer to find out more about Marcel Duxín, and although he couldn’t read the language, what he found justified his self-imposed exile. Marcel had been involved in some kind of sex and public works kickback scandal in 1999. Newspaper photos showed him in a coat, tie, and handcuffs, being led from a building with the same smirk he’d turned on Jimmy. A trial, another scandal involving the judge and some high-administration officials (she’d said he “worked with the government”), his release. Another investigation in 2003, another arrest, same result. Something about Marcel Duxín, either what he did or who he knew, made him untouchable, like Al Capone. Jimmy couldn’t understand, but he really didn’t need to. As Lyle said, it was something very French.

Also very French, Jimmy thought, was how much more prominence Marcel’s scandals got in the newspaper than the disturbances, riots, and rising crime in the suburbs of Paris. Those things were relegated to back pages.

He found himself thinking about Sophie.

Lyle said, “Are you gonna go home?”

“No. Not yet.”

“What’s keeping you? That Sophie?”

“Yes.”

“Anything else?”

“The baby.”

Lyle struck his forehead with the heel of his hand.

Jimmy said, “It’s different, Lyle. I thought we were making Indian babies for French women who loved and wanted them, showed them off. I don’t trust this guy Marcel not to do something bad to that baby. Or to Sophie.”

Lyle was exasperated, said, “This isn’t your business. This isn’t even your country.”

“It’s my responsibility.”

“Idiot. It’s her baby. It’s their baby, I hate to tell you. You boned her, is all.”

“I keep having these dreams, Lyle.”

Lyle’s face was dark with anger, his eyes bulged. He wanted to say more, but turned, grabbed a jacket from the back of the couch, said, “I’m going out. I gotta get me some air.” Slammed the door before Jimmy could point out Lyle had taken Jimmy’s jacket by mistake.

Lyle wasn’t back in time to catch a ride to the Wild West Show with the cowboys. Jimmy expected to see him there, and looked for him all the way to showtime.

After the 9:30 performance, Jimmy was brushing down the horses in the corrals with a currycomb when three police officers came backstage. He saw them talking to Buffalo Bill, then one of the haughty Nez Perce. He saw the Nez Perce point at him, and lead the police his way.

“They’re looking for James Two Bulls,” the Nez Perce said, shaking his head. “They say they found your bloody jacket by the river with your Disney ID badge in the pocket. They think you got into something with some Arab guys. You want to set them straight?”

Jimmy thought, Marcel.

Lyle’s bloated body kissed the milk chocolate surface of the Seine River two days later. The police who escorted Jimmy to the morgue to identify his cousin didn’t speak English. The only thing Jimmy could understand was they thought Lyle had wandered into the wrong neighborhood.

Which is what he told Lyle’s mother when he called her.

Afterward, he called the airline to make a reservation home. Due to a general strike, there was no availability for a week, and even that was subject to last-minute change.

He told no one he was leaving. Or that he’d booked reservations for two.

Then he stole letterhead stationery and sent two tickets to Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show with backstage passes to Monsieur and Madame Duxín courtesy of the Walt Disney Company.

He tried not to look at them, tried not to stare. They sat in the front row in the dark, wearing straw cowboy hats with green bands that read Wyoming. Marcel seemed to be enjoying himself immensely, cheering when he was supposed to, calling for more and more wine from the waitresses. Sophie looked wary, and despite his face paint, Jimmy was sure she recognized him during the mystical ceremony act. The test would be if she turned to her husband and pointed him out. She didn’t.

Jimmy watched from the shadows of the stock entrance as Annie Oakley did her trick-shooting. The audience loved her. When it came time to select an audience member to fire at targets, she selected Marcel. Jimmy had arranged it with her. Spotlights found Marcel, and the rest of the crowd cheered him on. Buffalo Bill helped him into the sandy arena, joked in French about “not shooting any of the performers in his Wild West Show,” and Marcel hammed it up in the limelight, clowning with exaggerated gestures and pretending to reach into his jacket for his own gun instead of taking the rifle filled with blanks. He blew a kiss to Sophie, who responded with a frozen, cadaverous grin.

“Have you ever fired a gun before?” Annie asked over the speakers.

“Oui,” Marcel said, winking at her, “many times!”

“Ooooh,” Annie said, pretending to be impressed.

Marcel gave her a kiss on the cheek, and acted as if he were going to squeeze her buttocks. The crowd howled. Sophie looked mortified.

Marcel fired the blanks and the targets exploded by remote control. Annie pretended to be impressed, and escorted Marcel from the arena. He waved to the crowd like a soccer player who’d scored the winning goal.

Jimmy stepped back into the shadows as Annie led Marcel past him, thanking him in French for being such a good sport and saying he would receive a special marksmanship certificate with his name on it. She had him write out his name on a slip of paper, and told him to wait a moment while she delivered it to the calligrapher.

Jimmy took no chances, thinking Marcel could very well have a gun beneath his jacket, and hit the man as hard as he could in the back of the head with a Sioux war club. The sound it made was a hollow pock, and Marcel staggered forward, crashing against the wooden chute panels. Jimmy threw the club aside, opened the gate, and shoved Marcel inside and closed it. Just in time for Buffalo Bill’s announcement, in the arena, that “the scariest thing that can happen out on the plains is when the buffalo stampede!”

On cue, the arena lights went off. Fake lightning crackled. Children screamed. And forty-eight buffalo came thundering down the chute, their hooves shaking the earth beneath Jimmy’s feet. And as he did twice a night, he slammed back the steel chute gate to the arena to let them out. He thought he heard Marcel moan, “Merde” (shit), seconds before the herd stomped him into the sand. Blood flecked Jimmy’s shirt and hands.

Sophie came backstage before the buffalo stampede act was over, showing her pass to the man guarding the door, telling him, Jimmy assumed, that she was looking for her husband.

The first thing he noticed about her when she came into the area was the diamond necklace and diamond ring, a huge one, the biggest he’d ever seen up close.

“Jimmy,” she said, gesturing through the room. “Marcel?”

“He’s gone.”

She looked at him, puzzled.

Jimmy raised his hands so she could see the blood. “Gone,” he said bitterly. “Did you forget who I was?”

She gasped, fist to her mouth, her eyes wide. She staggered back.

“Come with me,” Jimmy said, leading her down the length of the chute, through the corrals, into the sultry night. She stumbled in her fine shoes in the muck of the corrals, so he kept a tight grip on her elbow so she wouldn’t fall.

“Which one is yours?” Jimmy asked as they entered the VIP parking area. She stopped at the gleaming white Citroën C6.

“He’s been spending some money on you, I see,” Jimmy said, opening the door for her and firmly helping her onto the passenger seat.

They roared out of the parking lot into the night, raindrops on the windshield, puddles on the road that he shot through.

“Are you going to kill me, too?” she asked in that baby-talk French.

“Non.”

“What will you do?”

“As long as you’re carrying my baby,” Jimmy said, “I’ll take care of you. After that, you’re on your own, lady.”

She shook her head violently, either not understanding or not wanting to understand.

“We’re going to America,” he said. “South Dakota. You can live with me and my mom until the baby comes. Then to hell with you. You can come back here, or get a job in a whorehouse in Deadwood… I don’t care. I don’t want my baby born here or to be with you in this place I don’t understand.”

“Jimmy, no…” she whined.

“I’ve got two tickets for a flight tomorrow from Charles de Gaulle. We can go to your house and you can pack tonight.”

“I’m not leaving,” she said defiantly.

“Sure you are.”

“No!”

He would have backhanded her pretty mouth if she wasn’t with child. His child.

“So old Marcel decided to start paying attention to you, huh? Is that what this was about?”

She clammed up and stared out the window.

“You don’t understand my English?”

She refused to answer him.

“You got pregnant so you could show him, huh? And not just any kind of baby, either. A child of nature, to show what a rebel, what a free spirit you are. Was that it?”

He realized that in his rage he had taken several turns and exits and was now on a secondary highway. He saw a sign for Champs-sur-Marne, another for Lagny-sur-Marne.

“I don’t know where we are,” he said.

“The baby,” she said, “we got rid of it.”

He didn’t react. Kept driving, increasing his speed, trying to pretend he didn’t hear what she’d said. Hoping he had heard her wrong.

“Jimmy,” she said, “the baby is gone.”

“So that’s why he bought you this,” Jimmy said calmly, dead calm, caressing the dashboard of the new car, “and the jewelry. You made a deal with him, then?”

“A deal?” she said, curling her lip.

“Boy or girl?”

“Oh, Jimmy, no…”

“Boy or girl?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Then: “It was for the best.”

“My son might not agree,” Jimmy said.

Sophie seemed to be burrowing into the passenger door, keeping as far away from him as she could. Her eyes were on him, cautious, scared, waiting to see what he did.

“Jimmy, don’t be angry,” she said.

“I’m not angry,” he said, a cold tumor growing exponentially in his chest. “I understand. I come from a broken nation, too, the Lakota nation. That’s what we have in common, Sophie, the only thing. We’re both on the wrong side of history. The only difference is you can’t see it.”

“You’re scaring me, Jimmy.” She pronounced it Jee-mee.

He looked over at her and laughed bitterly. “I’m scaring you?”

She screamed, “You must turn around, Jimmy! Jimmy!” Jee-mee! JEE-MEE!

He read the sign as he they passed it: Clichy-sous-Bois. No Man’s Land. She had seen it, too, screamed again for him to turn around.

But too late. Stunted trees gave way to low-slung buildings on both sides, broken windows, Arabic graffiti on the plaster walls illuminated by the flames of burning cars.

Jimmy hit the brakes and swung around the charred skeleton of a tiny car, clipping it with a fender, slowed down before he plowed into a large group of people in the middle of the street who had appeared from nowhere.

“Don’t stop,” she screamed. “Go!”

He stopped as the group closed in around the car, the white Citroën with the now-damaged fender. He saw dark faces in the undulating firelight, second-generation Arab faces, men and boys of the night in a suburb the police wouldn’t even enter, the men dressed in the same kind of grunge clothes the college demonstrators had worn, probably their hand-me-downs.

The car began to rock. Sophie screamed. A back window smashed in, spraying glass across the seat and floor. Someone kicked the passenger door. Gobs of spittle hit the windshield.

“JIMMEE! JIMMEE!” she screamed. “Go! Drive!”

Instead, he hit the button that unlocked the doors.

“They don’t want me,” he said to her as they opened the door, dragged her out, brown hands gripping her white arms. She kicked out, threw a spike-heeled shoe that landed on the dashboard.

He said, “It’s for the best,” and eased away, the crowd parting to let him go, and was soon clear of them. He couldn’t see her clearly in his rearview mirror, but thought she was on the street on her back, surrounded, kicking up at them.

Kept his head down as he drove through Clichy-sous-Bois, wipers smearing the spit into rainbow arcs across the glass, driving fast enough that most of the thrown bricks missed him. He thought he heard a gunshot as he turned a corner, but couldn’t tell if the bullet had been aimed at him.

And somehow made it through to Livry-Gargan and the N3, which would take him to Paris. He parked well short of the exit, at a bus stop, wiped his prints off the steering wheel and gearshift, and left the car with the keys in it, doubting it would make it through the night.

Jimmy Two Bulls drank coffee with a trembling hand at a twenty-four-hour roadside restaurant and gas station near the exit to the N3. It took over an hour for his breath to come normally and not in shallow gasps. He tried to eat but couldn’t. The black tumor inside him had stopped growing but was still there. He doubted it would ever leave.

He’d never know his son, but he now knew why the boy asked who his mother was. Jimmy couldn’t answer the question in the dream, and couldn’t answer it now. He had no fucking idea who she was.

They didn’t bury aborted babies, did they? He doubted it. Probably burned them with the other medical waste in a clinical incinerator, the flames no different than the fire of a burning car.

There was a tap on his shoulder.

“Parlez-vous français?”

He turned. She was in her thirties, attractive, blond. It was obvious she’d been drinking, the way her eyes sparkled. Her girlfriend sat in a booth watching the exchange, a wolfish expression on her face. A pair of straw cowboy hats sat on the table between them — they’d been to the Wild West Show. Gotten all heated up, he guessed.

“Ni glasses toki ye he?” Jimmy said in Lakota. “Ni TV Guide toki ya he?”

She was obviously thrilled. He knew he could go home with them. Instead, he tossed one of the plane tickets in a trash can outside the door.

No, he explained with hand signals, he didn’t want to go home with them. He wanted to go to the airport. He held out his arms so they looked like airplane wings. They agreed, reluctantly, to take him there, obviously disappointed.

Although they were talking over each other to him in French and he found himself recognizing a few of the words, his eyes were to the east, toward the dark maw of Clichy-sous-Bois, lit only by isolated fires, wondering how long it would take the flames to reach those who remained.