Read Online Blue Ravens: Historical Novel by Gerald Vizenor - Free Book Online Page B

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 downheartedthat 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.
    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