Blue Ravens: Historical Novel (8 page)

The Beard Art Galleries became an abstract scene.

Aloysius pushed open the door with confidence, and we were surprised by the art inside the gallery. There were no bright fruit bowls or setters with feathered tails. The strain of art in the window was deceptive, and we decided that the display was only selected to entice passengers on the streetcars.

The cloudy walls were covered with original art, gouache, oil on canvas, and watercolors on paper, mostly natural water scenes, evocative barns and country houses, railroad stations, sailboats, glorious summer sunsets, autumn maples, and winter landscapes. The trees and outlines were precise images, and the colors were intense and clean. The emigrants who moved to the cities must have been heartened by the romantic and picturesque landscapes.

Three framed distinct watercolors were displayed on sturdy oak easels near the entrance of the gallery. Aloysius moved closer and reached out to touch the magnificent images of misty scenes, and then held back with his hands raised above the easels. The three watercolors,
Snowy Winter Road
,
Summer Afternoon
, and
Woman in the Garden
, seemed to reach out to touch and enchant my brother and me.

Snowy Winter Road
was a watercolor of giant trees on a curved country road. The trees were covered with heavy wet snow, a natural bow to the season. The entire scene was muted but the snowy trees, and the morning light, shimmer in the gallery and in my memory.

The
Summer Afternoon
watercolor was a subtle diffusion of light and the waft and scatter of colors on a sleepy afternoon, a misty secret scene of lacy trees in praise of nature and memory. We could hear the sound of birds and insects in the scene, and the slight glint of dragonflies over the lily pond.

The Japanese
Woman in the Garden
wore a traditional kimono, and she was crouched near a garden of lilies. We were touched by the subtle motion
and magic of the visionary watercolor scenes. The elegant curves were natural, erotic, and magical.

Aloysius was captivated by the
Woman in the Garden
.

Harmonia, the gallery manager, a lanky, intense woman with short blonde hair pointed directly at my brother, but not at me. She wore a dark gray pinstripe suit, bluish necktie, and black-and-white oxford shoes. Naturally, we were distracted by her manly costume and hardly noticed her severe gestures.

Keep those dirty hands in your pockets, she shouted, and then shooed me toward the door. Aloysius lowered his hands and stared at the manager. She, in turn, folded her arms, raised one long pale blue finger, and stood directly in front of the three easels.

The Irish setter in the window, how much?

The setters are not for sale.

The
Woman in the Garden
, how much for that watercolor? Aloysius moved behind the easels and read out loud the name of the artist. Yamada Baske, how much for the Japanese
Woman in the Garden
?

Very expensive, what do you want?

Aloysius told the gallery manager that we wanted to meet the watercolor artist named Yamada Baske. She turned in silence, rocked on her oxfords, and waited for us to leave the gallery.

Aloysius announced that our uncle owned a newspaper, and he would surely buy the
Woman in the Garden
. Suddenly her manner changed. She cocked her head to the side, smiled, and pretended to be friendly, unaware, of course, that the newspaper was published on the White Earth Reservation. Yamada Baske was Japanese, she said, and he taught art in Minneapolis.

Aloysius revealed that he was a watercolor artist. She smiled and again folded her arms with one finger raised as a gesture of doubt. One of our teachers at the government school raised her finger, but the gesture was more about derision than doubt. My brother opened his art book and presented several of his most recent abstract blue ravens, but not the ones he had painted earlier that day at the library.

Harmonia slowly turned the leaves of his watercolor book, examined each blue raven, and then announced that Yamada Baske, or Fukawa Jin Basuke, was an instructor at the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. Naturally
we were surprised to learn that the art school and the Society of Fine Arts were located on the same floor of the Minneapolis Public Library.

The same conductor was on the return streetcar and asked us about the art gallery. Aloysius told him about the window display, the bright fruit and red setters, and then described the watercolor scene of a beautiful Japanese woman in a garden of lilies.

What does she look like?

Her face was turned to the lilies.

So, why was she beautiful?

The elegance of her hands and feet crouched by the lilies, my brother explained to the conductor, but he was not convinced. We were touched by the mood and subtle hues of the watercolor. The
Woman in the Garden
was the only picture that was enticing and we wanted to be in the garden scene with that sensuous woman.

Yamada Baske was standing at an easel with a student when we entered the studio. He smiled, bowed his head, and then turned to continue his discussion on the techniques of painting subtle hues of color, traces of reds and blues in watercolors. Baske told the student that the wash of blues was a natural trace of creation, a primal touch of ancient memories. The blues are a procession, he explained, and the turn of blues must be essential, the epitome and trace of natural hues of color.

Aloysius was inspired by the chance discussion of colors, the hues of blue, and once again he flinched and turned shy. My brother was a visionary artist, and that was a native sense of presence not a practice. He had never studied any techniques of watercolor as a painter. So, when he heard an art teacher describe his own natural passion as a painter he became reserved and secretive.

The contrast between visionary, mercenary, and gallery art was not easy to discuss with a learned painter. My brother created blue ravens as new totems, a natural visionary art, and for that reason the scenes he painted were never the same, and are not easily defined as a practice by teachers of art. There were no histories about blue ravens, no learned courses on new native totems. My brother was an original artist, and the images he created would change the notions of native art and the world. His native visions cannot be easily named, described, or compared by curators in art galleries.

Aloysius mounted several of his blue ravens on the empty easels in the
studio. Yamada Baske studied the raven pictures from a distance, at first, and then he slowly moved closer to each image on the easels. He described the totemic images as native impressionism, an original style of abstract blue ravens.

Baske was reviewed as an impressionist painter, and exhibition curators observed that he had been trained in the great traditional painting style of the Japanese. Later, in the library, we read that his watercolors conveyed a traditional composition, “but rendered with the airy, misty technique of the impressionists. In some ways this reflects completion of a circle of influence given that the impressionist movement was deeply influenced by Japanese art, particularly watercolors and Ukiyo-e woodblock prints.”

Aloysius created blue ravens, an inspiration of natural scenes and original native totems, and one day his watercolors would be included in the stories told about abstract and impressionist painters. My brother would create the new totems of the natural world in visionary, fierce, and severe scenes.

Baske was truly impressed by the pictures of the blue ravens. He moved from easel to easel, and then mounted more pictures to consider. He commented on the mastery of the blue hues, the subtle traces of motion, the natural stray of watercolor shadows, and the sense of presence in every scene of the ravens.

The blue ravens are glorious, visionary, a natural watercolor creation, said Baske. He raised one hand and waved, a gesture of praise over the blue ravens on the easels, and then he turned to my brother, smiled, and bowed slightly.

Aloysius opened his art book and painted a raven with wings widely spread over the studio easels, misty feathers tousled and astray, beak turned to the side, a blue raven bow of honor and courtesy. My brother presented the watercolor to the artist of the
Women in the Garden
.

Baske mounted the blue raven on a separate easel. Young man, he said, you perceive the natural motion of ravens, and only by that heart, by that gift of intuition, and distinctive sensibility create the glorious abstracts of impressionistic ravens.

Aloysius was moved by the curious praise, of course, but he was hesitant to show his instant appreciation and sense of wonder. The blue ravens were in natural flight, and the studio was silent. We heard only our heartbeats and the muted screech of streetcars in the distance. The mighty scenes of
new totems were gathered on the easels. No one had ever raised the discussion of blue ravens to such a serious level of interpretation or considered the abstract totems with such critical sensitivity.

Aloysius invited the artist to visit our relatives on the White Earth Reservation. Baske smiled, bowed, and accepted the invitation. He walked with us down the stairs to the entrance of the library. Outside he paused, turned to my brother, handed him a tin of rouge watercolor paint, and suggested that he brush only a tiny and faint hue of rouge in the scenes of the blue ravens. Baske told my brother that a slight touch of rouge, a magical hue would enrich the subtle hues of blues and the ravens.

Baske was a master teacher.

My brother painted blue ravens over the train depots on our slow return to the Ogema Station. He practiced the faint touch of rouge, the hue on a wing or in one eye of a blue raven, and a mere trace of rouge in the shadows.

› 5 ‹

P
EACE
M
EDALS

— — — — — — —
1910
— — — — — — —

Odysseus arrived as usual on horseback that early summer but his familiar songs were faint and unsteady. In the past summers we could hear the sonorous voice of the trader at a great distance. His hearty songs were gestures of amity on the reservation.

Mine eyes have seen the glory

Aloysius listened for the trader and created blue ravens as a present, an original totem of native respect. The scenes were finished by the time the trader arrived and raised his cowboy hat, as he had for more than ten years, to the banker, federal agent, newspaper editor, priest and nuns, and then dismounted at one of three hotels, the Leecy, Hiawatha, or the Headquarters. Most of his lively summer songs were familiar and reminiscent of the American Civil War.

Glory, Glory Hallelujah
,

His truth is marching on
.

That summer my brother painted a raven perched on a blue-spotted saddle. The raven and the saddle were in magical flight over the train station. Aloysius always created an original painting to celebrate the coming of our great friend the singing trader, and later my brother carved the fantastic image of a blue raven on a wooden pendant.

Old John Brown's body lies moldering in the grave,
While weep the sons of bondage whom he ventured all to save;
But tho he lost his life while struggling for the slave,

His soul is marching on.

Odysseus traveled and traded with natives in many parts of the country, from Santa Fe, Navajo Mountain, Oklahoma, and Omaha, to Pine Ridge, and, of course, the White Earth Reservation. He raised his white
cowboy hat, smiled, and waved to everyone on the wooden walkway as his two horses walked slowly past the government school, the mission, the post office, the new house of our uncle, Theodore Beaulieu, and past the Chippewa State Bank.

Odysseus arrived that summer at the livery stable with a dislocated shoulder and a broken ankle. One shoulder was hunched forward, and his right ankle was badly swollen. He winced with pain as he tried to unsaddle the horses. Finally he moved on one foot to rest on a hay bale. One boot was fastened to the saddle horn.

Aloysius loosened the cinch, and together we heaved the heavy saddle over a wooden horse. The brown leather skirt of the saddle was decorated with precious silver peace medals. Odysseus wore a similar peace medal on a thick leather band around his neck.

Calypso, the blue roan mare, had carried the wounded trader more than forty miles from the headwaters of the
gichiziibi
at Lake Itasca to the Hotel Leecy. She ambled past two other hotels directly to the very best livery stable on the reservation, a natural choice of horses and traders.

Calypso was the spirited companion of the trader and she remembered the way after so many summers on the same trail from Onigum on the Leech Lake Reservation, to Cass Lake, Bemidji, Lake Itasca, and the headwaters of the
gichiziibi
, the Great River in the language of the Anishinaabe. Calypso ambled that memorable summer on the old trails near Bad Medicine Lake, the village of Beaulieu, Bad Boy Lake, and at last to the popular Hotel Leecy on the White Earth Reservation.

Bayard, the bay mare packhorse, was loaded with marvelous and exotic trade goods, precious stones, turquoise, silver jewelry, magic mercury, flamboyant cloth, spirit bones, peyote, absinthe, cigars, and white, red, and bright blue bird feathers from Florida, Mexico, and South America. We untied the two bundles cinched on the sides of the packhorse, and then provided feed and water for both horses in separate stalls. We were lucky to be working at the livery stable that summer when the trader arrived. The past summer we hawked newspapers at the train station and the trader commonly stayed at the Headquarters Hotel.

Augustus understood our reasons to leave the newspaper and work in the livery stable. Month by month we hawked fewer copies of the
Tomahawk
, and the newspaper had lost subscribers. Radios were more common on the
reservation and could be purchased, along with guns, sewing machines, bicycles, entire houses, and even motor cars, by mail order from Sears, Roebuck and Company. The sound of radio news was more communal, the necessary gossip and native stories of the reservation, and many readers missed that ordinary hearsay as a community service of a newspaper. Our uncle was worried about the decline of subscribers to the
Tomahawk
but he was involved in many other enterprises on the reservation.