Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (12 page)

Father Aloysius nudged the poet awake that early morning and started the confession. Wilde created more stories and confessions than the priest could ever remember to absolve, the sins and sorrows of extravagance. Only a mighty act of comedy and ironic contrition could balance his universe of chance, original sins, and roguery.

The Matchless Mine was the site of his last confession, and the silver barbarians absolved his aesthetic sins forever. Wilde is the only silky poet who has ever found sacramental absolution in a silver mine.

Wilde was the utmost promise of the weird, showy, elusive, tricky, and decadent bother in a simple surname word that summer on the reservation, the perfect time and name and natural stories of deliverance on a federal and churchy colony.

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B
LUE
H
ORSES

— — — — — — —
1915
— — — — — — —

The First World War was underway, but the news reports of faraway military encounters hardly mattered on the reservation that summer. We were curious, and the names, empires, and places of the war were strange. We practiced the accent of names in the news to hawk the
Tomahawk
at the Ogema Station.

The Hotel Leecy livery stable was not a source of international stories, but we continued to pronounce the new names in the news, Hapsburg, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, Gavrilo Princip, Ypres, Passchendaele, Marne, and many others that summer, and the names were mere captions of war in a distant colonial civilization.

The Great War became more immediate and identifiable only when we read that a German submarine torpedoed an American ship near England. The “Digest of World's Important News: Epitome of the Big Happening of the Week” in the
Tomahawk
had been our primary source of news and names to hawk the newspaper, but then, as older stable boys, we read more closely and tried to understand a world war that would forever change our lives and the culture of the White Earth Reservation.

“The American oil tank steamer
Gulflight
” was “torpedoed” near the Isles of Scilly in the Celtic Sea by the Germans, reported the
Tomahawk
on May 13, 1915. The
Gulflight
displayed the flag of the United States, and German submarines had torpedoed “seven more vessels,” steamers and trawlers, from Norway and England.

President Wilson, Secretary of State William Jennings Bryan, and experts on international law “decided to suspend judgment in the case of the American tank ship
Gulflight
.” Captain Alfred Gunter and two sailors died in the attack by the Germans.

A month later we read in the
Tomahawk
that a German Rumpler
Taube
, the very first monoplane, and military Zeppelins dropped several bombs on London and on the suburbs of Paris. The United States entered the war
three years later, after a presidential dither in the name of international peace, and we were drafted for service in the American Expeditionary Forces.

The
Lusitania
was torpedoed and sank on May 7, 1915.

“President Wilson declared that a proud distinction might fall upon the nations of the three Americas,” reported the
Tomahawk.
“In an address at the Pan-American Financial conference at Washington he predicted that great results would arise from it and that it might be influential in restoring peace to war-ridden Europe.”

Augustus shouted and raved about the political milksops and maniacs of war. President Wilson was a milksop, more oratory than action, because he refused to denounce the submarine attacks, and Kaiser Wilhelm was the maniac war emperor of Germany. Our uncle published international stories about the war every week, and he ranted everyday about imperious federal agents and the obvious consequences of hesitant politicians.

The president negotiated peace by isolation, not by backbone, spirit, and power. He should have declared his outrage over the destruction of cities and libraries, and the murder of civilians. He should have considered the great visions and bravery of native warriors. The president instead announced that he was our Great White Father. He would rather capitulate in the name of peace than honor native visions and natural reason. Natives resisted colonial and federal occupation for centuries, and then natives served with the same government in several wars, and were always ready to fight again even though most reservation natives were not yet considered citizens of the United States. Naturally the federal agent saluted the president, but the agent has always been on the wrong side of native traditions and stories.

Foamy had no vision or backbone.

Robert Beaulieu, our uncle, was the first native photographer on the White Earth Reservation. That summer he collected some of his pictures for his older brother Augustus Beaulieu. He used a large camera on a tripod and took pictures of stores, the bank, the movie theater, hotels on the reservation, newspaper building, and natives at the annual celebration, but he never took pictures of traditional native spiritual or religious ceremonies. He was once the postmaster, a progressive native on the side of entrepreneurs, and he never talked about anything visionary, totemic, or traditional.

Robert photographed the Big Bear family at a maple sugar camp, and portraits of Maingans the Younger, Waweyaycumig and Nawajibigokwe, Odenegun, the native who told trickster stories to Frances Densmore, and Mary Warren English who was the native interpreter for the musicologist. William Warren, her brother, wrote the first history of the Anishinaabe. The federal agent and teachers never mentioned the native historian, but my mother owned a signed copy. The Minnesota Historical Society published
The History of the Ojibway People
in 1885.

Aloysius never painted or even mentioned his blue ravens in the presence of our uncle Robert Beaulieu. He was younger than our favorite uncle, smart, and rather distant. Actually he was vain and wore a ridiculous round straw hat on the reservation, and never told a memorable story. He cocked the straw hat to the side but it was not the right size.

We had hawked newspapers for our uncle, and later worked in the livery stable at the Hotel Leecy. Robert had no interest in our adventures, stories, or our talents. He probably considered the stable a lowly occupation. He never listened to my brother, or our mother, and he never commented on my first short local news notices and stories published in the
Tomahawk
.

Misaabe and the healers were our best friends.

Robert photographed the hotel and the bank but not his own relatives. He even posed with his bright cornet in one of his own pictures, stretched out on the ground with nineteen native brass musicians of the White Earth Band. He never took pictures of my brother or me, or our mother, not even when we were drafted with many of our cousins to serve in the First World War in France.

Aloysius carved three medallions last summer from paper birch trunks, round pendants with the raised image of ravens. The native birch was easier to carve than oak, and the bright blue paint was absorbed in the grain of the wood. The blue ravens were in natural motion, a native medal of peace.

Misaabe told my brother that the raven pendants must be carved from birch that had died by nature, not by storm, disease, or timber cutters. The spirit of the visionary ravens carved in the birch was entrusted with the memory of natural death, not with the cruel sacrifice of an ax or saw. He never mentioned lightning.

Aloysius presented the first raven peace medal to our uncle, Augustus, who was troubled that summer by his health. The second peace medal was
a present to the trader Odysseus. The third medal was for the old healer. Misaabe touched the blue raven carved on the birch pendant, and then he turned the medal over and told stories about his son and the great mongrel healers. He scored the single name of his son on the back of the medal.

Animosh had been abandoned ten years ago near Bad Boy Lake. He was about three years old at the time and no one could name or remember the boy. He was stranded in a native mystery, and must have lived alone on the shoreline for several days, but he was not scared by the night. The boy told stories about the party of leaves, stones, birds, and slight waves on the shoreline. He created nicknames for the stones, the cattails, blackbirds, maple and birch leaves, and the clouds. The boy said his name was
animosh
, or dog, in Anishinaabe.

Animosh created a natural sense of presence and he was never alone. Soon he was more at home with the healer, the mongrels, and nature. The old healer taught the boy how to read and write, but he never attended a mission or government school.

Animosh told stories with a sense of presence.

Mona Lisa and the other mongrels had been abused, wounded, and wary when the old healer rescued them on the reservation. The mongrels gathered at the cabin, and many stayed for only a few days to heal their wounds. Misaabe saved many mongrels from the hands of abusers, and trained them to detect diseases, but some of the testy mongrels would rather mosey and meander than nose and heal with the old man and his boy.

Misaabe never actually described how he had trained the mongrels to become natural healers, but we learned from the doctor that the old healer collected urine and other body fluids from natives with diseases. The mongrels learned to nose and detect the scent of human maladies. The old healer described the trace and reek of disease as a brutal civil war in the body, not the scent and memory of natural death, but rather some cold treachery, a pious surrender, the sacrifice of humor. Diseases were held at bay with creative stories of trickster stones, thunder, and natural motions of the cranes.

Odysseus once invited us to participate in a peyote ceremony near Bad Boy Lake. That was our first experience with the shiver and mirage of peyote visions and stories, and it would be our last. We learned to trust our own creative sight and stories in the wild thrust of peyote visions that night, to
trust the natural tease of bright colors, dreams, totems, and the touch of native mysteries.

Maybe we would return to peyote visions when we were older and not so curious about the secrets of the natural world. Yes, we understood that peyote was another sense of native presence, but we were not mature enough at the time to compare the mighty flight of peyote and natural teases of visions and stories.

Misaabe was our native teacher and the mongrels were our healers. We wondered, of course, why the old healer had not taken part in the peyote ceremonies near his cabin. Peyote customs and songs in the woods were natural attractions, but the old healer was evasive. He told us stories about a giant native who once had such intense peyote visions about moths and praying mantis he could never escape a miniature sense of his presence. He forever waved his arms as a moth to the light and walked slowly with the mantis. The giant hunted insects and soon vanished without a shadow.

Misaabe told the story of the giant native and the mantis in the faint lantern light of the cabin. The moths rebounded on the globe. The mongrels moaned over the stories, and we wondered if the tiny old healer, our teacher and best friend, was once the very native giant in his story. Misaabe might have been the giant who lost his shadow and returned to the reservation with his mongrel healers. The old healer, the mongrels, and the namesake boy rescued each other.

Odysseus arrived on the reservation that summer with a new song entitled “Unreconstructed Rebel” to tease the federal agent who had taunted him about the music of the American Civil War. When we heard the unmistakable voice of the trader we rushed out of the stable and tried to sing along but the words were not familiar.

Oh, I'm a good old Rebel
Now that's just what I am
For this “fair land of Freedom”
I do not care a damn.
I'm glad I fit against it
I only wish we'd won.
And I don't want no pardon

For anything I've done.

Odysseus told us later that the tricky lyrics of “Unreconstructed Rebel” were by Major Innes Randolph and published in
Collier's: The National Weekly
, a newsy magazine with humor, sensation, and fiction.

I hates the Constitution
This great Republic too
I hates the Freedmen's Buro
In uniforms of blue.
I hates the nasty eagle
With all his brag and fuss
But the lyin,' thievin' Yankees

I hates 'em wuss and wuss.

Foamy was the worst, the real
wuss
, a twitchy federal agent, and he never
fit
against anyone but natives and irony. He waited on the wooden walkway in front of the bank with the postmaster and our uncle Augustus. The federal agent hooked his skinny thumb over the watch chain on his vest and frowned in silence. Augustus shouted out the words with the trader,
I don't want no pardon for anything I've done
, and then applauded as the trader and his two horses ambled toward the livery stable.

Augustus bought a box of La Carolina Cuban cigars from the trader that Sunday at the Hotel Leecy. Odysseus had permission to show and trade his wares once a year in the lobby. The La Carolina cigars were special, hand rolled and expensive, and the engraved blue stamp guaranteed that the cigars were made in Cuba.

Augustus lighted a cigar.

Odysseus carried other brands that were made in the United States, but we learned later that the pricey La Carolina cigars were the very best. One cigar cost more than a dollar. We each earned thirty dollars a month at the livery stable, and with some meals, a very good salary on the reservation. One cigar would cost more than the pay for one day of work.

Father Aloysius bought a cheap box of Juan de Fuca cigars that were made by the Morgan Cigar Company in Tampa, Florida. The cigars were a present for another priest who visited the reservation in the summer. We thought the priests would smoke Idela or Belle of St. Cloud, cigars made in Saint Cloud, Minnesota. The Benedictine priests were from Saint John's Abbey, the nearby monastery.

Foamy dickered over a box of cheap cigars.