Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (7 page)

The books waited in silence, waited for readers, and waited for a chance to be carried out of the library.
The Last of the Mohicans
by James Fenimore Cooper was tilted to the side. The novel was illustrated by Frank T. Merrill, and in one picture a couple with fair skin watched a native wrestle with a bear. The couple was dressed for a dance, and the native wore leather, fringed at the seams, and three feathers on his head. The book waited to be recovered by a reader, but not by me or by my brother. That novel was introduced by our teachers at the government school, along with that nasty poem
The Song of Hiawatha
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but we were never obliged to remember the loopy cultural fantasies of literary explorers. The elaborate frontier of
The Last of the Mohicans
was a snake oil story.

Augustus teased the reservation native police with the name Chingachgook, and he sometimes used the name Natty Bumppo, both characters in
The Last of the Mohicans
, in stories about the missionaries and federal agents. So, we had a tricky sense of the characters in the novel by the time our teachers wrote the names on the chalkboard.

Aloysius touched
The Call of the Wild
by Jack London.

Augustus celebrated our thirteenth birthday with two new books. Our uncle always celebrated our birthdays with books, first picture stories and then literature. The new books were wrapped in the current edition of the
Tomahawk
. He gave me a copy of
The Call of the Wild
, and Aloysius received a copy of
White Fang
. Augustus knew we were inspired by native totems and animal stories, and he knew we would talk about these scenes in the novels. My uncle was a teaser, and he teased and coaxed me to become a creative writer, to create stories of native liberty, and a few years later gave me a copy of
Moby-Dick
by Herman Melville.

Jack London was a great writer but he was mistaken about dogs and natives. Buck was a natural healer and would never return to the wolves, never in a native story. London was not aware that wolves were native totems, and not the wild enemy.

London made
White Fang
more human and never understood the native stories of animal healers. The real world of nature that we experienced was
always chancy, and sometimes even dangerous, of course, the weather can be dangerous, but not evil and not as violent as the human world. London worried about the animals he had created in an unnatural way, and he might have sent them to some church. The notion of redemption was monotheistic, and that was not natural or native. London was a political adventurist in fiction and never understood native stories, animal totems, or the dream songs of native liberty.

Jack London would not survive on the reservation.

The card catalogue listed every book in the library. Aloysius looked through the cards in the drawer for his name and found a book about Aloysius Bertrand, a French symbolist poet, and Saint Aloysius Gonzaga. Beaulieu was listed many times, a winery in California, and as a reference to a place in France, Beaulieu-sur-Mer, a commune near Nice and Monaco.

The
Manabozho Curiosa
, that ancient Benedictine manuscript about monks, sex, and animals was not listed in the card catalogue. Naturally, we avoided the word “sex” when we asked the librarian about the
Manabozho Curiosa
. She had never heard of the manuscript but thought a copy might be found in the Rare Book collection at the University of Minnesota Library.

Aloysius opened several art books on a huge oak reference table and together we brushed the images with our fingers, touched the painted bodies of soldiers, women poised near windows in soft natural light, darker scenes of animals and hunters, and distorted images of humans and houses. Most of the old images portrayed a civilization of pathetic poses and contrition, and the great shadows and slants of divine light by master painters.

The ancient blues were muted.

Yes, the bright flowers, pristine fruit on a table, and exotic birds, seemed at the time to be more authentic than our actual memories and experience of the natural world. The reds, yellows, and greens were bright, the blues faint. The images of exotic birds were realistic studies, an obsession of godly perfection in bright plumage. The painted birds were steady pictures, similar to the portraits of warriors and politicians.

The best of nature, and our sense of nature, was forever in motion by the favor of the seasons. The overnight bruises, creases, crucial flaws caused by the weather, and every wave, ruffle, gesture, and flight were wholesome. The ordinary teases, blush, and blemish of character, were a natural presence,
and yet the birds, painted flowers, and fruit that we touched in the giant art books were bright, perfect, ironic, and unsavory.

Ravens would never peck at a pastel peach.

Aloysius slowly backed away from the reference table, looked around the library, and then he painted three blue ravens with massive claws over the modern art images in the books. The wings of the ravens were painted wide and shrouded the table and chairs with feathers.

A young librarian waved a finger and cautioned us not to touch the books. She praised the blue ravens that my brother had painted, and then explained that painting was not permitted in the library. Yes, we pretended to understand the unstated caution, that only the bookable and bankable arts were favored and secured, not the original blue ravens and native totems.

Aloysius painted with two soft brushes and a thick, blunt cedar stick that was roughened on the end. One brush was round, soft, and pointed. The other was a wide watercolor shadow brush. His saliva, and sometimes mine, was used to moisten the blue paste.

Aloysius had made his own paintbrushes. He carved the wooden handles from birch, molded the ferrule sleeve from copper, and the tufts were bundles of squirrel hair for several of his brushes. He used sable hair for the brushes with a fine point.

The new images were much richer and the hues of blue more evocative on the professional art paper. The blue ravens on the newsprint were strong, abstract, and the lines and shadows were in natural motion, never distinct as portraiture, but the ravens were enlivened on the new paper. My brother had created a book of paintings on our first visit to the city.

My first creative impressions were short descriptive scenes, only a few words, more precise than abstract. Every spontaneous scene was more obvious in my memory than in my written words. My original scenes were composed in short distinct sentences, only single images or glimpses of the many scenes in my memory. My words seemed to contain a natural vision of motion, but the actual practices of a writer were not the same as a painter.

My heart is a red raven and rises on the wind.
The eyes of nature are in my stories.
Cars move with great explosions.
Curved windows bend our smiles.
Winter is an abstract scene in the autumn.
The ice woman is natural reason.
City men strut in black coats and tight shoes.
Horses wait for motor cars to pass.
Books are silent stories.
White pine lives in memory.

History is overgrown and chokes the trees.

The sound of a pencil on paper is similar to the sound of a watercolor brush but the words create scenes in the head not the native eye. My written words came together with painted blue ravens in the heart, the intuitive eye, and memory.

Aloysius continued to paint blue ravens in the library reference room. My brother spit in the blue paste and painted grotesque beaks that carried away the pastel fruit, the shadows of librarians at the window, blue soldiers, and the art books.

Gratia Alta Countryman, Head of the Minneapolis Public Library, was summoned to the reference room because my brother would not stop painting. She watched him move the thick brush over the paper, and then she leaned closer as he brushed the blue raven beaks with the softened cedar stick.

Gratia, we learned later, was the very first woman to direct a major city library. She was raised on a farm, graduated from the University of Minnesota, and initiated book stations for laborers and immigrants, and she seemed to appreciate that we were native newcomers in search of adventure and liberty. My brother was the painter, and the stories were mine.

Carnegie was surely impressed with her philosophy of free libraries and enlightened dedication to the public access of books on the shelves. We were impressed that so many books were at hand, and touchable without permission. The books were not concealed, and instantly summoned for review. Books were federal prisoners at the government school.

Gratia rested her heavy hands on the reference table. Her wrists were thick like a native or peasant, her hair was parted on the left, and her narrow nostrils moved with slight traces of breath. She leaned closer to my brother, and with a comic smile asked him to paint a blue raven with a copy in claw of
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
by Lyman Frank Baum.

Aloysius turned to a new page in his art book, spit in the tin of blue paste, and briskly painted the abstract portrayals of Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman protected by the enormous wings of a blue raven on the reference table. He continued to paint an outline picture of the orphan Dorothy Gale and Toto depicted as a reservation mongrel on the back of a fierce raven with a huge dappled blue beak.

Gratia raised her peasant hands in praise and laughed out loud in the hushed reference room. Several readers turned and stared at the head librarian. The younger librarian was anxious, of course, but she did not raise her finger or comment on the laughter or the saliva and blue paint in the library.

Aloysius had never read
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
, but the story of the fantastic adventures were told by several teachers at the government school on the reservation. We resisted the peculiar scenes of wicked cackles and godly virtues because they were not recounted in any native experiences. Stories of the ice woman were much more urgent and memorable. Yet, our slight resistance to the Scarecrow and Tin Woodman must have encouraged the actual memory of the story. So, in a sense the cockeyed wicked scenes became a creative rescue years later at the Minneapolis Public Library. My brother remembered a crude summary of the wizardly story and portrayed the characters in a speedy abstract painting. The head librarian was very impressed by his talent and invited us to her office in the turret with the curved bay windows.

Gratia served milk and cookies, and explained that she was always prepared to serve children treats and books because they are the future readers and patrons of the library. She had established the first reading room for children. Luckily we had entered the main section of the library.

You boys are not children, of course, but we must share the cookies, she said, and turned toward the windows. The reflection of her face was curved and her nose and ears were elongated.

Gratia was apologetic that she had never visited a reservation, but she mentioned Frances Densmore who had studied native songs of the White Earth Reservation. She was surprised to learn that our uncle published a weekly newspaper.

The Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts was located in the library, but the collection of paintings was not open to the public. Aloysius was downhearted
that the art collection was not available because that was the primary purpose of our visit to the city. My brother wondered where he could see art, meet artists, and present his blue raven paintings.

Gratia suggested that we visit art galleries to see the work of other painters. She named the Golden Rule Gallery in Saint Paul, and the Beard Art Galleries in Minneapolis. She was certain that we would be inspired by many of the artists who exhibited their work at these galleries. She warned us to be aware that the trendy and new abstract painters were not current or popular in the galleries.

Blue ravens were totemic not mercenary.

Saint Paul was another strange and distant city. The saintly names of missions made sense, but sainted cities were not sensible. Cities were enterprises, sprawling, noisy, and scary places, and not the centers of saints.

The Beard Art Galleries were located on Hennepin Avenue near Lake Street. We boarded the streetcar, sat at the back, and counted the city blocks to the gallery. The conductor pointed to a building on the other side of the street. There, displayed in the bay window of an ordinary storefront were three paintings, a woodland landscape, a bowl of unsavory fruit, and a bright portrait of three Irish setters with feathery tails.

Irish setters were not bound for museums.

Aloysius was worried for the first time about his vision of blue abstract ravens. He had created raven scenes on the train, in parks, on the streets, department stores, hotels, and at the library. The Irish setters and fruit bowl were obstacles to visionary art and he refused to enter the gallery. Suddenly he was distracted and vulnerable in the commercial world of gallery art.

The Irish setters were aristocratic posers, haughty pedigree portrayals, plainly favored over natives and the poorly. So, we walked slowly around the block, and then continued several more blocks west to Lake Calhoun, or the Lake of Loons, which was a native descriptive name. The lake was renamed to honor John Caldwell Calhoun, the senator and vice president. We rested on the grassy lakeshore and created stories about mongrel portraits and landscapes of white pine stumps in the gallery window.

The actual paintings in the gallery window were good copies of a concocted nature, but not abstract native totems or chancy scenes of liberty. We watched the sailboats swerve with the wind and then walked back to the gallery.

Our faces were reflected in the gallery window, and at that very moment a yellow streetcar passed through the scene of our reflection, a throwback to abstraction and native stories. The muted aristocratic setters mingled with passengers on the streetcar. That scene became the most distinctive story of our two days in the city. We told many versions of that story to our relatives. The Irish setters, native faces, and the slow motion of the streetcar that afternoon became a chance union of abstract creation.