Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (33 page)

The mongrels ran ahead and barked to alert the nurses. Harriet fainted in sight of the hospital, and died from a loss of blood. She left bloody footprints in the snow. Several hours later a hunter heard the hoarse barks of the loyal mongrels and discovered the frozen body.

Patch had played military taps on the platform at each station only eight months earlier. Harriet was on the platform when we returned at
the end of the war and she rushed toward the train to touch her only son. She squeezed his cheeks, both arms, and pulled his ears to be sure he was the whole boy that she had sent away to war in France. She learned only that afternoon that her son had become a celebrated military bugler and singer. Motherly pride that afternoon was an understatement, and the ordinary words of praise, care, and affection could never describe her mighty love.

Patch was teased by students at the government school for the love and devotion of his mother. She made his clothes, cut his thick black hair, and
had fashioned a smart uniform with bright buttons for his volunteer service as an assistant station agent. So much love and absolute affection could never be held back at a train station.

The Ogema Station was a miserable place that afternoon as the train arrived in the heavy snow. John Leecy drove down to meet us and provided transportation. He had scheduled a native wake in a private room at the hotel because the small family cabin was buried in heavy snow. Messy had prepared food for a reception in the dining room after the funeral.

Father Aloysius, Margaret, our mother, the mission sisters, and the station agent and his wife arranged for a special funeral service at Saint Benedict's Mission. Patch was silent at the wake, and at the burial he sang native dreams songs, and later he played mournful taps for his mother. The heavy snow covered the coffin, the priest, the sisters, and others at the burial site. Only the trumpet shined that day at the cemetery.

Patch avoided the reception and retreated to grieve for his mother at the cabin. He was the family woodcutter, and blamed himself for the accident because he had not split enough wood for the winter, but his mother had encouraged him to audition at the Orpheum Theatre. Coincidence seldom rode in the shadow of misery, but that was exactly the situation three days later as we prepared to return to work in Minneapolis.

The Soo Line Railroad instructed the Ogema Station agent to announce that Patch Zhimaaganish was hired as an assistant conductor on the passenger train route between Minneapolis and Winnipeg, Canada. Patch was grateful, of course, but he broke down in tears because his mother was not alive at the moment he became an actual conductor in uniform. Our friend started work on the very train that we boarded to return to Minneapolis.

Aloysius painted three blue ravens at a gravesite in heavy snow. The portrayals were intricate impressionistic crystals of snow and blue wings, and the trumpet was a trace of rouge. He painted the abstract outline of blue wings around the snowflakes.

The train arrived late but we had time to report to the afternoon performance at the theater. We were summoned to the office of the resident manager and told that we must pay the salaries of the substitute stagehands that had worked in our absence. We protested, of course, but the rules had been established for many years. Not only were we required to pay our salaries for substitutes, but we also paid the three days of cover salary for Patch.

The management was cruel to dock our money over the sudden departure to attend a funeral. The theater, in a sense, docked salaries for the dead and buried. We were instantly converted to support union representation that would protect the ordinary rights of workers. Naturally, we were prepared to strike or to quit, but we could not have found another job as interesting as the theater. So, we worked more than three days each to cover the actual salaries of the substitute stagehands.

Patch learned about the cover salaries and paid us the same amount. He could not have been happier as an assistant conductor, but we only saw him once or twice a month when he stayed over in Minneapolis.

Several months later our mother wrote and included a letter from Nathan Crémieux. Aloysius read the letter once, turned and smiled, and then read the letter a second time out loud. Most of the original blue ravens that he had painted during the war were sold at the Galerie Crémieux in Paris. The raven money, a total equivalent of more than three hundred dollars, had been deposited for my brother in a separate account at the gallery.

Aloysius was inspired by the sale of his watercolors, and that spring he painted magical blue ravens with traces of other colors, impressionistic hues with the usual faint touch and curve of rouge, and the outline of scenes in nature and the city. The reverse images of snowflakes, leaves, and wild daffodils were original and created a sense of natural motion.

May was warm, the willow and maple leaves were almost mature, and the blue lilacs were radiant in the parks and churchyards of the city. The theater productions changed with the weather and by the week. The dancers were similar, the impersonators were mundane, but the vaudeville comedians were great performers.

June was warmer and rainy, and my brother painted blue ravens reflected in black pools of rainwater, and perched on the wet sidewalks with the trace shimmers of plum and apple blossoms. His blue raven portrayals were impressionistic points, curves, contours, and soft traces of color.

My brother was awakened late that summer with a vision and hurried at dawn to the Stone Arch Bridge. He was silent that early morning, carried a large book of new art paper, and with an incredible passion painted brilliant scenes of the river, the granite arches of the bridge, and lightened with blue the murky warehouses. He created a storm of water, hues of mighty waves, and the solemn spectacle of sturdy blue ravens in the mist near Saint Anthony
Falls. The Great Northern Railroad had built the Stone Arch Bridge over the Mississippi River.

The blue ravens were in the arch of stones, windows, haze, and shapes of buildings, and the wings of warehouses on the river. The abstract blue ravens were present in the granite of the bridge, and in the natural motion of curves, contours, blue roman beaks, claws, and mighty eyes, an artistic grace of totemic stature. My brother had awakened with a great vision that would forever change the world of native art.

Aloysius had created a new series of blue ravens that were transformations of the material world. The abstract images of the blue ravens emerged from the stone, the rush of water, and were possessed in the currents and waves on the Mississippi River.

The blue ravens were enormous in his earlier portrayals, the blue wings contained the entire scene, but the new abstract and impressionistic blue ravens emerged, were revealed, and came out of material and nature. The blue ravens were the transformations of stone, water, and machines, an incredible totemic animism.

I wrote, my brother painted, and it rained that warm summer morning. We took cover under a canopy at Gateway Park, and my brother continued painting, painting, painting. He was moved by a vision and completed more than twenty original and magnificent blue raven scenes in the next few days.

Every slant of rain that morning, and the tick and turn of leaves ran down the canopy and gathered in the river. I convened there and wrote to the river, to the mighty river, and recounted native scenes and stories of the river from the source at Lake Itasca to the storm and earthy rush over Saint Anthony Falls. The
gichiziibi
, the Great River, had run forever in native memories and stories, a natural sense of presence.

I reminded my brother that we had to leave for the afternoon performance at the Orpheum Theatre. The stage crew was expected to arrive in the early afternoon to move trunks, and once or twice a week to construct new stage sets.

Aloysius declared that he was at a funeral forever and would not return to work as a stagehand. Naturally, he would rather paint than talk or carry trunks for arrogant actors. My brother convinced me that we no longer needed to work at the theater. So, he suggested that we telephone the resident manager and explain that we would be away for several years because
of a substitute family funeral on the reservation. We would attend a funeral forever to avoid another day as stagehands.

We actually returned to the theater that late summer afternoon, but three months later in the autumn we delivered our rehearsed and ironic declaration that we were leaving to attend the funeral of a native mongrel healer. Ghost Moth had died and we decided to return and honor one of the great healers and detectors of disease at the hospital on the White Earth Reservation.

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M
ONA
L
ISA

— — — — — — —
1921
— — — — — — —

John Leecy was concerned, of course, but not surprised that we had quit our jobs as theater stagehands, and then decided to become expatriate native artists, a painter and a writer, in Paris. He respected our ambitions, and he actually assumed that we would have returned much earlier to France. My published stories about our experiences were persuasive, and even more inviting was the exhibition and sale of blue ravens at the Galerie
Crémieux.

Most natives were not recognized as citizens, not even veterans, so we decided to apply for passports. We avoided the federal agent, of course, and traveled by train to the Federal Office Building and Custom House in Minneapolis. Father Aloysius prepared copies of our birth and baptismal records. We used as our home address the Waverly Hotel. The postal service was not reliable, and we worried that the federal agent might open our package from the Division of Passport Control. Pickel delivered the passports to Patch at the train station in Minneapolis.

Aloysius bought several books of fine art paper in preparation for our departure. The cost of an ocean liner ticket was about three weeks of our salary at the Orpheum Theatre. We had expected the cost to be much more expensive. The meals and wine were included in the price of the tickets.

The
France
departed from New York that late December and docked about seven days later in the port of Le Havre, France. The majestic, spacious, and luxurious four-funnel ocean liner had been commissioned nine years earlier, and during the war transported soldiers to France, and then at the end of the war returned the wounded to New York.

John Clement Beaulieu, our cousin, served with an army engineer company and was transported to war on the
France
. The refurbished liner accommodated some two thousand passengers, more than the entire population of the White Earth Reservation.

Aloysius painted in the Salon Ravel in the morning and on the enclosed
and warmer starboard deck in the afternoon, and at night we dined with hundreds of other tourist-class passengers. Stories of actual and imagined adventures were practiced and interrelated, and many tourist recitations were restyled overnight.

I sauntered on the decks in the morning, watched the mighty surge of waves creased by the bow, and in the afternoon marked the seethe of the ocean at the stern of the ship. The steady hum of the steam engines moved through my body night and day. The pages of my notebook were heavy from the ocean spray. My visual notes, scenes, descriptions of characters, and outlines of stories were mostly about the crew and passengers. I imagined and merged the unique characteristics of more than thirty tourists, and created conversations between the characters.

I met several passengers who intended to visit war memorial cemeteries, and to honor the remains of immediate relatives, but most of the passengers seemed to be on holiday, and boasted about their rich associations and accomplishments in business and various professions, but not the arts. The tourists were consummate by steady boasts and admissions, but most of the stories seemed to be uncertain poses of some fantastic proficiency. I never heard even one tourist mention melancholy, doubt, fear, or a natural totem in their stories. Such exclusions were sensible, no doubt, because no ordinary worries, moods, or totems would survive the great voyage of revision and conceit. We were afloat with many cocky braggers, a tourist liner of wags, grousers, and jesters.

I listened to the steady boasters and then decided to counter with my own elaborate stories. My actual recounts of experiences were not ornate enough to hold the attention of the tourist posers and gloaters. So, we participated in the liner dinner game to conceive the uncommon and then overstate the obvious. My start that night was to imagine the presence of the trader Odysseus, and to create a tricky story in his memory.

Guillaume Apollinaire became my brother in one elaborate story. The French poet was famous, of course, and died in the First World War. I did not mention influenza as the tragic cause of his death. My brother stole the
Mona Lisa
was the first overstatement that captured the attention of the audience at dinner. Aloysius, my actual brother, burst into laughter, and contributed an ironic gesture, a finger wag caution not to reveal too much about the theft of the
Mona Lisa
from the Musée du Louvre. The gesture
enhanced the intrigue of the story. I remembered the vaudeville comedians and actors and practiced some of the stage gestures that we had observed at the Orpheum Theatre.

Apollinaire was a poet and a fur trader, and a surreal suspect because he was born in Russia, became a citizen of Italy, enlisted as a soldier in the French Army, and lived in Paris. Pablo Picasso was also a suspect because he was a cubist painter and born in Spain. The precious
Mona Lisa
was rescued by the police and returned unhurt, unsullied, and with a steady, sly smile to the Musée du Louvre.

Apollinaire was a poet and soldier of fortune, and he was actually arrested and jailed for the possession of stolen art and statues from the museum. He wrote poems in the war and in prison, and was wounded as he read
Mercure de France
, a new literary magazine. Surely the first wound in military history associated with an erudite journal. His presence and wounds were literary events.