Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (32 page)

We crossed the busy streetcar tracks and walked back on the other side of the street. The wind was cold, and we could see the breath of every person on the busy street. Aloysius walked into the Busy Bee, a tailor shop, to have a button sewn on his winter coat. We decided to eat an early supper at the nearby New Grand Lunch. John Leecy had given me twenty dollars to buy our meals for a few days in Minneapolis.

Patch could hardly sleep that night, and he was out early the next morning to meet with Albert Rudd the music director of the Orpheum Theatre Orchestra. Patch told us later at supper that he was hired to play dramatic movie music and concert programs scheduled twice a day, early in the afternoon, and in the evening.

Patch was seated at the back of the orchestra pit at the ready to play his trumpet but the music that night was only background with strings and the piano. We bought cheap twenty-five cent tickets in the balcony and attended the program that evening. The Kinogram newsreels were very interesting, travel and politics, scenes of the United States Capitol in Washington, but the short stage plays were mannered, and the vaudeville impersonators were rather tedious, and not memorable.

Aloysius told the employment director at Dayton's Dry Goods Company, the giant department store on Nicollet Avenue near the Orpheum Theatre, that he had worked on a farm as a laborer, and as a painter. He did not specify artistic painter, and would have named houses, or at least the
Tomahawk
newspaper building, but there were no jobs open for veterans or anyone. We were natives from a reservation, needless to say, and much too old to be considered as stock boys.

We visited dozens of companies and inquired about work, any kind of work, but by late that afternoon we were convinced there were no jobs open in the entire city. Actually, there were jobs but we did not understand at the time that no one was hired without some personal connection, association, and recommendation. We learned later that most companies were wary of new employees because of union sympathizers. We had no direct experiences with any unions, but the more we tried to find work the more convinced we became of the need for union representation.

The Allen Motor Car Company on Hennepin Avenue had no job openings. The production and sale of motor cars had declined since the end of the war. Wyman and Partridge, a wholesale dry goods company on Fourth Street and First Avenue North, would consider occasional laborers, but only with local references.

The owner of Pioneer Printers on South Sixth Street supported veterans and was impressed that we had worked for the
Tomahawk
, but he needed experienced typesetters.

The Wonderland Theatre was a serious and ironic introduction to the struggles of unions and the political power of employers in the city. The theater was a narrow building at 27 South Washington Avenue, near the train stations and Gateway Park. The employment director at Dayton's Dry Goods Company suggested that we might find work at the theater. The director was being deceptive because the only work there was on the union picket line, an ironic reversal, but we were ready to consider anything.

The Wonderland Theatre had been picketed by the Motion Picture Machine Operators Union for more than three years. We could not understand at the time why anyone would protest for so many years against a small theater. The banners carried by the picketers declared in giant words, “This Theatre Unfair to Organized Labor.” We decided not to enter the theater, of course, and instead walked with the picketers and listened to the
union stories. The wind was cold so we warmed our hands over a fire in a barrel and talked about the war. Some of the picketers were veterans. They were paid by the union and had never been employed at the theater.

John Campbell, the owner of the Wonderland Theatre, decided to run the movies himself and laid off two motion picture operators to save money. The theater actually lost money because of the daily picketers. I learned later that the owner of the theater had been paid to stay in business by the Minneapolis Citizen's Alliance, a group of business owners and employers who strongly opposed the unions.

Aloysius carried a union banner for an hour in front of the theater that cold afternoon. No doubt there were private spies there to report on the picketers. We ate lunch at a local cafeteria with several picketers, and then returned to the hotel to search the classified sections of the
Minneapolis Journal
and the
Minneapolis Times
. That was a total waste of time because the only jobs listed were for technicians and union trades.

Jews, natives, newcomers, veterans, and socialists were hardly ever hired without connections in the city. We needed the union to find a job, but the economy had weakened, and there was a recession at the end of the war. Production, wages, and work hours were down, too many veterans were looking for work, and labor unions had lost their power. The end of the war was not a good time to look for work.

I read three books of
The Odyssey
that night at the hotel, and a selection from book fourteen was a particularly relevant metaphor.
These men hatched a plot against me that would have reduced me to the very extreme of misery, for when the ship had got some way out from land they resolved on selling me as a slave.

The next day we tried to find work as temporary laborers in produce, dry goods, and other companies near Washington Avenue and Hennepin. Jews owned most of the business in the area, and the merchandise was customary. We talked to the managers and owners of warehouses, and businesses that sold clothing, leather goods, and supplies for lumberjacks. We were immediately hired for two hours to unload bundles of leather, and later the owner of a scrap metal company near the river paid us a flat rate to move and stack used pipes. That was hard work, and very cold. My hands were frozen. The owner invited us to the company shack, and we warmed our hands over the kerosene stove.

Jacob Schwartz was curious about our family and how natives lived on the reservation. We told him about our father who was a lumberjack, about the federal agent, and the newspaper published by our uncle. He was interested in our experiences, and compared our family to his own before the war in the German Empire. The Jews under the emperor encountered a double burden of discrimination during the First World War. Germany was an enemy name only six months earlier, but hardly relevant because the Schwartz family had escaped the empire wars and emigrated first to New York City, and then to Minneapolis.

The Schwartz family had lived in the city for more than twenty years. Jacob could not find a job after high school, so he continued his studies and graduated from the university but still could not find a job. He continued in the scrap metal business that his father had established as an immigrant. He paid us for our time and told us to return in a few days for two or three more hours of work.

Later that week we were hired as temporary stagehands at the Orpheum Theatre. Patch had impressed the music director and the resident manager with his great baritone voice, and we were hired for the season. Patch sang
La Marseillaise
at every performance and the audience cheered and applauded wildly. Aloysius was so excited that he painted an enormous blue raven at the entrance to the theater. I was reassured to see my brother paint again, and we were both delighted to work in the sentimental murmurs and traditions of the theater.

Patch played and sang only during vaudeville performances. Our work schedule was the same except we worked a few more hours when a new show arrived at the theater. We carried huge trunks for actors, unloaded stage property, assisted in the construction of stage sets, and two or three times a week we raised and lowered the curtain. We never complained, but the pay as stagehands was only a dollar and sixty cents for each performance, and a small bonus for moving the trunks.

Only a few of the stagehands were members of a union, but we were never asked to attend or join anything. The union had decided to picket the Wonderland Theatre but for some obscure reason not the Orpheum Theatre. I was told the union was more active in the new movie theaters, and that most movie projectionists were members of the Motion Picture Machine Operators Union. The movies had become more popular than
some stage productions, and this was worrisome to the producers of expensive vaudeville circuit shows. The Orpheum Theatre reacted to the new interests and started each stage performance with short movies to satisfy the new audiences. The Kinograms were newsreels and very popular.

Aloysius opened the curtain for several productions that winter. We worked the same hours, but as stagehands we were not always together. A recent program included visual news of the world, a freakish minstrel comedy show, dancers, impersonators, blue or sexy women, and short theatrical scenes such as Jennings and Mack in “The Camouflage Taxi.” The circuit stage production of “Who Is She” was about a lawyer and his wife in New York City. Buster Santos and Jacque Hays acted in “The Girl with the Funny Figure.” Buster was an unusual name for a woman. Bert Ford and Pauline Price presented “Birds of a Feather,” a pantomimic fantasy of the forest. Kennedy and Rooney, Bailey and Cowan, and Harry Jolson, an operatic blackface comedian, were very popular vaudeville circuit performers.

Jacob Schwartz continued to hire us two or three hours a week to move, sort, and stack scrap metal that had been delivered to the yard. We moved scrap metal in the morning, and were stagehands at the theater in the afternoon and evening. Jacob became a loyal friend, and sometimes his wife arrived with a prepared lunch. Sara treated us like members of the family.

Jacob was always scrupulous, ethical, and he paid for our time to the penny. We told him many stories about our uncle, the trader, our experiences as scouts in the war, and about the federal agent on the reservation. He told us stories about his family in Berlin before the First World War, and about the cruelty and folly of the German Empire. Aloysius gave him one of his recent blue ravens painted at the library.

The Minneapolis School of Arts had moved about a mile south of the city. We headed out one cold morning and walked to the new school. Aloysius wondered why the word “fine” in the original name of the school had been deleted in the move. We decided that the arts were not necessarily fine.

Yamada Baske was in his studio talking with two art students about watercolor landscapes, the visual sense of artistic touch and experience, and the impressions of color, light, and style. Aloysius was captivated by the discussion that morning at the Minneapolis School of Arts. Yamada turned, smiled, and then he recognized my brother.

The spacious studio was a marvelous sanctuary in gentle light, and the sweet scent of watercolor paint was soothing. I might have become a painter encircled in that lovely aesthetic space, inspired by natural motion, and devoted to the impressions of landscapes.

I might have become a painter instead of a creative writer, the conversion of an image or a visual scene, an original impression conveyed with color and brush, rather than the tease and trace of memories in the chance of words. My words and tease of presence were created with a sense of color, tone, touch, style, and a choice of literary brushes. Yet, words and stories must be imagined without colonies of studios, curators, or museums.

Yamada Baske had invited my brother to visit the studio once a week in the early morning to talk about his blue raven watercolors. Aloysius was encouraged by the invitation, and after each discussion with the artist he returned to the hotel with a new energy to paint, and in a few weeks time the blue ravens were more impressionistic, and with hues and traces of other colors.

Aloysius painted the contours of blue ravens in the scrap yard, and the heavy metal objects became abstract impressions in various muted hues. The wings of the blue ravens were spread widely over the outline of material artifacts, and with a faint speck and shimmer of color. The soft curves of abstract scrap metal would not consent to a name or representation. My brother was inspired once again to portray blue ravens in a new style. The abstract outlines were comparable to the hints and hues of natural motion, and the brush cruises of
sumi-e
and artistic calligraphy by the
Japanese.

Aloysius painted blue ravens at the theater, on the streets, and at the hotel. His new and original style was spirited, as usual, and his portrayals were feisty and impressionistic. Every day he painted magnificent blue ravens with a natural aesthetic sway. Three months later my brother had painted scenes in more than a dozen new books of art paper. The arrival of spring, the slight turn of colors, and early blooms, inspired a new sense of presence and solace.

Patch was summoned by the resident theater director and told that his mother had died at home. He received the terrible news at the end of the afternoon programs. That night at the conclusion of the evening performance he sang
La Marseillaise
to the spirit of his mother with incredible
emotive power. The audience was moved to tears by the tone and temper of his voice. The natural grace of spring had turned cold and desolate with the death of his mother.

Aloysius notified the director and the stagehands that we would attend a funeral and be absent for a few days. We bought tickets and prepared to leave by train the next morning. Patch was distant that night, and he softly sang, almost in whispers, the old dream songs we remembered from our time together that summer at the Ogema Station.

The light snow was wispy that morning as the train moved slowly out of the city and stopped at the same familiar small towns. The gray and white houses were shrouded in a late spring storm, and stories of the heart were renounced with a cold shudder. The snow was wet and heavy to the north, and every platform on the route became a white lonesome memory. The bright sturdy tulips and daffodils stood above the snow. Patch sat at the front of the passenger car and stared out the window. The slant of heavy snow moved with the train.

Harriet had slowly died in an accident at the family cabin near the hospital. We learned later that she was splitting wood for the fire that cold morning, and the double-bit ax glanced on a log and struck her ankle. The sharp blade cut a critical artery. She bound the injured leg to stop the bleeding, and then started to walk toward the White Earth Hospital.