Clown
In the months since Wounded Knee, Frank Hopkins has got used to the make up. Those first numb weeks, when his mind was full of the awful images of his fallen people, and his heart was full of self-loathing for his own unwitting part in their massacre, he didn't really notice the garish colours they put on his face -"For the crowds, Frank – to make you look the part". By then he was drinking, and half the time he wasn't even aware of the horse beneath him, let alone the crowds around him, and certainly not the greasy design on his skin.
But then there's this day, just one more show in one more town, one more obscenely cheerful re-enactment of the day his heart shattered, when he pauses in front of the chipped mirror and sees his face – sees himself. Smudged shadows for eyes, sickly pallor of his cheeks, and a mouth bleeding red. A wreck of a face for a wreck of a man. For a moment he stares at the sad clown and realises that this is who he has become. Somewhere under the careless greasepaint is the man he was, the man of two races he has hidden from for so long. And he wonders whether he will ever see that man again.