Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

20 Orpheum Theatre

› 20 ‹ Orpheum Theatre — — — — — — — 19 2 0 — — — — — — — 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 B l U e r a v e N s 197 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...