Blue Ravens: Historical Novel

6 Peyote Opera

› 6 ‹ Peyote Opera — — — — — — — 19 1 2 — — — — — — — Odysseus was sentimental at times about the old traders and chantey music. His trail stories and songs about soldiers and war were picturesque, slightly romantic, original by every recount, but never mawkish. Even so the winsome trader was teased for the first time last summer about the many songs he chanted from the American Civil War. Foamy, the federal agent, mocked the popular war lyrics and reminded the trader that the War Between the States was ancient history. We were astonished by the taunt because no one had ever observed the agent at play. Augustus, our uncle, was convinced the agent had taken to government whiskey. Glory, Glory Hallelujah. Odysseus raised his white hat, gestured to the testy agent, and then turned to several students near the government school and sang a few lines from “Alexander’s Rag Time Band” by Irving Berlin. The students were silent , but the agent shouted the same lines right back at the trader. Come on and hear! Alexander’s ragtime band! It’s the best band in the land! So natural that you want to go to war. Foamy never seemed to grasp the tricky tease of native stories, or the creative run of irony. Honoré, our father, said the agent had no sense of natural reason or presence, and no totemic associations in the world. Foamy was separated by name and disconnected by war and culture. He abided with the wrong sides, against emancipation and natives, and against the Union in the American Civil War. His new teases and greyback taunts were no more trouble than slow water over the smooth stone at the headwaters. Calypso raised her ears, neighed, and ambled past the vested agent, the mission, post office, the bank, the gray wooden walkways, and straight into B l U e r a v e N s 61 the livery stables at the Hotel Leecy. Bayard the packhorse waited in the shadows to be unloaded. The trader stacked the huge bundles of goods in a locked cage at the back of the stables, and then whispered to his horses. We listened every summer, year after year, but we never heard or understood what the trader told his loyal mares. Odysseus walked with a limp. John Leecy had invited the trader to display his curious merchandise in the hotel lobby that Sunday. Naturally, we were there early to assist the trader and to watch natives and others negotiate the unstated prices of exotic goods. Expensive cigars in sealed boxes, decorative feathers, cloth, jewelry , and many other curious wares were stacked on large tables in the hotel lobby. Odysseus traded secret reserves of peyote and absinthe by discreet names. Night Visions and Morning Star were the names for peyote. The French absinthe was mentioned only as la fée verte, or The Green Lady. Only the doctor and our uncle were aware that the trader carried absinthe and peyote. The Green Lady became very expensive that summer because the heady spirit had been banned as a poison by the Department of Agriculture. Augustus bartered for cigars, absinthe, and mercury. The bank manager bought snowy egret feathers. The wispy crown feathers and other exotic bird plumage were very expensive, more than the price of gold. The trader presented oriole, common tern, snow bunting, northern flicker, cedar waxwing, and, of course, snowy egret feathers. Rumors spread that the banker, a distant relative, used reservation deposits to buy feathers for a white woman. He fancied one of the government teachers, but she had never been seen in an aigrette or any other fashion feathers. The banker actually bought the feathers for his fancy grandmother. My mother said women were the enemy of sacred birds, and likewise men had been the enemy of the beaver centuries earlier. The decorative plume trade decimated the showy birds, and our ancestors in the fur trade brought the beaver close to extinction. Natives and most of our relatives once hunted beaver for no other reason than the fashion of expensive felt hats in Europe. Odysseus insisted that he only sold dead egret feathers that were gathered by the Seminoles in the Florida Everglades. Augustus doubted that 62 G e r a l d v i Z e N o r the egret feathers were dead, or shed in a natural way, and then rescued by natives, and he was not convinced that natives...