Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (31 page)

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I read book eleven of
The Odyssey
that night.
He looked black as night with his bare bow in his hands and his arrow on the string, glaring around as though ever on the point of taking aim. About his breast there was a wondrous golden belt adorned in the most marvellous fashion with bears, wild boars, and lions with gleaming eyes; there was also war, battle, and death. The man who made that belt, do what he might, would never be able to make another like it.

Bad Boy Lake was covered with a thin shiny layer of ice the next morning. The sun and waves melted the ice near the shoreline and the center of the lake by afternoon. Seventeen Canada Geese circled and then landed with incredible grace on the last shimmer of cold water. The geese stretched their great black necks, cackled over the state of rest and the weather, and then continued the migration. That show of neck, wing, and travel cackle must have been created for me to describe in a story.

I cut several downed birch trees and split the logs for use in the fireplace. The scent of ancient trees was in the air that morning. The cabin was built
only for the summer, always drafty, damp, and cold, so we covered sections of the floor with newspapers and slept near the stone fireplace. Mona Lisa and Nosey came by every morning at dawn and nosed me awake.

Aloysius hunted for game, but when he aimed the shotgun at the geese or mallard ducks he could not shoot. He tried again, and again, but the thought of dead birds and animals only reminded him of the wars against animals. He decided instead to paint blue ravens in flight with the geese rather than shoot the birds for our dinner. The choice was easy, and we were always hungry.

Several weeks later the lake was frozen thick and cracked at night, and the first heavy snow had covered the ice and bright leaves. We cut holes in the ice and caught enough fish to survive. My brother had hunted and trapped animals with me many times in the past, and we honored the animals but never hesitated to shoot game for food. That winter, however, was not the same. We set out one cold morning to hunt for deer, squirrel, and rabbits.

Aloysius banked the snow into a natural blind, and we waited in silence for the animals. Several rabbits pranced at a great distance. The squirrels sensed our presence and were very cautious on the back of trees, out of sight. Finally a whitetail deer moved slowly across a nearby creek bed. The morning air was cold and crisp, and my breath frosted the breech of the rifle. I aimed at the heart of the deer, an easy shot with no windage, but raised the barrel at the last second and fired high over the head of the animal. The sound of the gunshot shattered the winter scene and the natural peace of the forest. The sound of the gunshot never seemed to end that morning, and the sound of war had never ended in my memory.

The animals had vanished, and the birds had ducked into secure places. The trees cracked and shivered, and the war against animals had almost started once more on the reservation. The sound echoed in the cold shadows, bounced on the boughs of snow, and the deviant sound of the explosion tormented my brother that night in the cabin. That single sound of a gunshot reminded us of the war, and we decided we could never again live as hunters. We could never declare war on animals. The fur trade wars had decimated animals and weakened native totems. We could never overcome by stories the miserable memories of war, and endure the tormented visions of bloody animals.

Aloysius started to paint and carve blue ravens. I wrote stories about the fur trade war against totems and animals, but we could not survive on native art and stories. The obvious choice that winter was to either hunt or perish, but we decided to resist the actual traditions of the hunter.

Misaabe invited us to supper many times, and he was worried about our torment, but not our resistance. We learned that even the most original and ironic stories alone could not overcome the bloody scenes of hunters. Naturally, we could not continue to depend on his generosity. So, one early morning we ran with the mongrels near the lake, packed our bundles in the afternoon, and returned to live with our parents for a few weeks.

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O
RPHEUM
T
HEATRE

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1920
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Patch Zhimaaganish had been invited to audition as a singer and trumpet player for the vaudeville orchestra at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis. Baron Davidson, a friend and fellow bugle player from the First Pioneer Infantry, had arranged the audition. Baron worked on the stage crew at the theater.

Aloysius was ready to paint again, but he was determined to live in a city. He wanted to meet with other artists, and encounter a new world of chance. I continued to write about our tricky memories of the war, and mostly about our experiences as veterans. Wary of native traditions, the vengeance of nature, and politics of federal dominion, we decided that first cold week of January to leave the reservation and search for work in Minneapolis.

Patch had waited five months for the Soo Line Railroad to consider his application for a position as an assistant conductor. So, our decision to leave the reservation encouraged our friend to accept the invitation to try out as a singer and trumpet player. Patch was admired as a soldier and good citizen, and the station agent was bothered that the company had not yet hired our friend.

Aloysius wondered how difficult it would be to play a musical instrument. He was moved by the sound of the saxophone, but we quickly dismissed his speculation, and with the reminder that he was recognized as a brilliant painter not a musician. The generous station agent gave us, three veterans of the war, free tickets on the train to Minneapolis. Naturally, he was worried that we would never return to the reservation.

The train pulled into the Ogema Station on time that morning. We quickly boarded, turned, and saluted the station agent. Twelve years earlier we had hawked the
Tomahawk
to the passengers on the very same train.

I had written ahead to reserve a large room with three beds at the Waverly Hotel near the Minneapolis Public Library. Augustus had been a close
friend of the manager, and we stayed at the same residence hotel ten years earlier when we visited the city for the first time.

No one was surprised, not even our parents, when we decided to leave because veterans could not find work on the reservation or in nearby small towns. Many native families bought war bonds, but the money was never used for native veterans. The Liberty Bonds were issued in several series that earned three to four percent, but bonds were not redeemable for at least ten years.

The reservation had changed since the war, of course, and the arguments were more about machines than any sense of native presence. Native veterans and others were moving almost every day to find work in cities. Since the war the reservation had been taken over by motor cars. The new politicians had no sense of tradition, and no sense of chance, memorable stories, or irony. Yes, we had returned to the mere echo of native traditions, and, for my brother and me, the reservation would never be enough to cope with the world or to envision the new and wild cosmopolitan world of exotic art, literature, music, and vaudeville at the Orpheum Theatre.

Augustus had been sharply critical of the pretenders, native and otherwise, and exposed the scoundrels in the
Tomahawk
, but since the death of our uncle the federal bunko boys have dominated the politics of the reservation. We honored the traditional elders, the healers, and the natives who celebrated totems, and told stories of presence, but the reservation was overrun with invaders, pretenders, patchwork shamans, and timber grifters.

Patch had never visited Minneapolis. His only experience was between trains to and from the war. We arrived early on a cold and sunny afternoon, and walked directly to the Waverly Hotel. Pickel, the manager, that was his last name, remembered us from ten years earlier. He commented on our brave service in the infantry, and then he talked about the war, the struggle of veterans, especially native veterans, and after two years continued to mourn the sudden death of our uncle and his good friend, Augustus. Pickel, my uncle told me, had been abandoned as a child, and then adopted, but he had no connections or memory of his blood relatives on the White Earth Reservation.

Aloysius steered us directly to the nearby Minneapolis Public Library. Gratia Alta Countryman, the head librarian, invited us to her office with
the curved windows, and we teased her about the first time we visited and she served cookies to the children. Gratia was delighted to meet us again, and praised our courage as soldiers.

Patch carried his trumpet and naturally that became a cue to discuss our combat service in France and the occupation of Koblenz, Germany. Gratia was deeply moved by the number of soldiers who had been killed in the war, and those who had returned wounded and disabled. She had organized special programs for veterans at several libraries in the city. Patch, she insisted, must play military taps in the main reading room of the library. Many veterans who could not find work gathered for the day in the library.

Patch stood at attention and played taps that afternoon, and each new note on his trumpet was more poignant than the last. I was moved by the emotive sound, and the music delivered me back to the pride and courage of my military service. When taps ended, the librarian was in tears, and many veterans stood at attention near the reading tables and saluted our good friend. That was a memorable moment, and the best way to start our search for work in the city.

Aloysius was told that the Minneapolis School of Arts had moved five years earlier from the Minneapolis Public Library to the new Julia Morrison Memorial Building on Stevens Avenue South. My brother was determined to meet once more the artist Yamada Baske, or Fukawa Jin Basuke, who had praised his blue ravens and suggested a trace of rouge in each portrayal.

Patch had an audition scheduled late that afternoon with the manager of the Orpheum Theatre. The holiday decorations, strings of colored lights, giant imitation bells, and bright stars over the streetcar tracks had not been removed on Hennepin Avenue. We walked three blocks, turned right and there, across the street from the Hotel Majestic, was the Orpheum Theatre. The enormous marquee covered the entire sidewalk at the entrance on Seventh Street.

Baron Davidson met us at the door, and we followed him into the theater. The huge auditorium was marvelous, and my brother once again heard murmurs and the hushed voices of actors on stage. We sat in the balcony and imagined the whispers, sighs, titters, and cackles of the audience.

Baron introduced us to G. E. Raymond, the resident manager of the Orpheum Theatre, a stern, stout man with a vest and watch chain, in his office above the marquee. Patch was not prepared for a sudden audition, but he
was directed to play both classical and popular music then and there. He did so, and after the third trumpet recital the manager declared that he was hired to play in the orchestra, and would be paid for twenty hours a week. The manager explained that the orchestra provided the music for circuit vaudeville shows, two performances a day and every day of the week. That would have been about thirty hours a week, but the manager contended that musicians never play every hour of the performances.

We learned later that the unions had protested the policy but were not able to change the pay or hours for temporary musicians and stagehands. We were introduced that afternoon to the rough politics of the theater. A new Orpheum Theatre was under construction at the time on Hennepin Avenue near the Minneapolis Public Library.

Baron was a veteran and lucky to have a good but temporary job with the stage crew. Naturally, we inquired about work at the theater, and he promised to let us know if there were any vacant positions there. Aloysius had started to paint again, but he was eager to become a stagehand with me. We could not wait, of course, and had to find work immediately.

Patch was curious about the initials
AOUW
on the three-story stone building next to the Orpheum Theatre. The Ancient Order of United Workman, we learned later, was the name of an organization that supported the interests of labor, employers, and owners. That seemed to be the perfect place to find work.

The Taylor and Watson wallpaper store on the ground floor displayed original patterns in the window, but the sales clerk was not familiar with either the owner of the building or the Ancient Order.

The F. J. Willimann Art Store next door to the theater exhibited formal styles of landscape scenes, but the manager was not interested in our questions about employment. He sold art but would never consider an amateur artist or veterans as employees.

Hennepin Avenue was lively late that afternoon. The sun had almost set and the decorative street lamps, five globes on a single post, were lighted along the street. Dryers Bowling and Billiards was smoky, busy, and noisy. The players shouted over the crash of pins in the alleys, and teased each other over the steady crack of billiard balls. The Winter Garden ballroom next door was ready for an evening of dancers.

Patch marveled at the Masonic Temple, and then he reached out with
both hands and touched the massive sandstone blocks of the eight-story building. Aloysius studied the windows, and the curved reflections of the streetcars in motion. Black motor cars were parked on both sides of the street, a radical change of transportation from our first visit to the city. I remembered the familiar sound of horse-drawn wagons on the cobblestones, and the police used horses and wagons at the time. Ten years later the same city streets were crowded with new Liberty Taxi Cabs.

The West Hotel on Hennepin and Fifth Street was grand, classy, and luxurious. My brother pointed out the gabled roof and bay windows. The lobby had not changed since our first visit ten years earlier. We sat in the same blue cushy settees. I talked about famous visitors at the hotel, and the blue ravens my brother had painted that summer. The doorman was impressed at the time that our uncle was the editor and publisher of a newspaper. Patch had read stories by Mark Twain, but he had never heard of Winston Churchill, who stayed at the hotel and lectured on “The Boer War” almost twenty years earlier at the Lyceum Theater. The
Tomahawk
had published a story about Winston Churchill when he was First Lord of the Admiralty.