Foamy asked me about my duties in the war, and moved closer to nose my breath for alcohol. I overstated my experiences, breathed heavily, and embellished my combat stories because the agent was not really interested in natives, and was so easily distracted that he never appreciated my stories or the irony.
At first my father and uncles were amused by the mockery of my elaborate agent stories, and everyone at the dinner table waited for some response from the federal agent. I invited the agent to speak about his service in the military, but he changed the subject and tried to dominate the dessert conversation with tedious comments about native moonshine and stolen sacramental wine from the reservation missions. Foamy smiled smugly over the blueberry pie and refused to name the vintage of stolen sacramental wine.
Aloysius shunned the agent more that night than at any other time in the past. My brother could not bear to listen to the southern yammer of the agent. Yes, as soldiers we were obliged to respond to military morons in positions of authority, but not at home on the reservation. We were strained but mannered that night only because of the invitation by our generous mother, but we loathed the agent for ordinary political reasons, and because he reminded us of the dopey dangerous officers in the military.
Honoré shouted that the agent was a cadger and bloodsucker with no soul or spirit. My father was angry about the sale of war bonds on the reservation. Poor and patriotic natives sent their sons to war and then the families were shamed to buy bonds to support the war. My father was right that a greater percentage of natives died in the war than other soldiers, and natives were frequently given more dangerous missions.
I had never heard my father speak with such intensity. He had always tried to avoid the agent and the government when he was a lumberjack near Bad Medicine Lake. The logging accident changed his manner and native dodge, and he declared a verbal war on the deceit and treachery of the agent.
John Leecy regretted that he could not reinstate our jobs in the livery stable. He was worried that so many veterans returned from the war and could not find work. The government provided most of the jobs on the reservation, but the agent made the final decision on every person hired, and he would never hire two veterans who were related to the founder of the Tomahawk. For that reason we had actually hoped to return to the stable for at least a few months, and yet we understood the obvious decrease in travelers on horseback, and the increase in motor cars. So, we suggested that John Leecy establish the first gas station on the reservation and hire us to service cars not horses. He was impressed with our proposal, but not for another few years. Meanwhile the only jobs he could offer were as waiters in the dining room. We declined the offer so he invited us to live at no cost in one of his tourist cabins near Bad Boy Lake.
Aloysius needed solitude to resume his painting, and the cabin was remote, a perfect location on the shore of the lake, and very close to Misaabe, the mongrels, and Animosh. We decided to return to a basic native sense of survival, to hunt, fish, and in the autumn gather maple syrup and wild rice. The plan was simple, secluded, and a peaceful transition from the military, and we could save most of our money. We had saved almost our entire pay for one year in military service. The government paid us forty-four dollars a month and we each saved about five hundred dollars.
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Messy Fairbanks, the famous native chef de cuisine, chopped, stirred, stewed, seasoned, baked, and prepared with incredible concentration the Banquet Français at the Hotel Leecy. The actual menu for the special dinner was selected from a country cookbook published in Paris. Messy converted the weights and measures and Catherine Heady, the government schoolteacher, translated the recipes into English.
The Banquet Français reminded me of Nathan Crémieux and the marvelous stories about the atelier banquet in the alley at Le Chemin du Montparnasse. John Leecy told me that he had conceived of the banquet when he read my recent stories about the Café du Dôme and the cubist painter Marie Vassilieff in Paris. So, he decided to arrange a memorable banquet at the Hotel Leecy to celebrate our return, to respect the native casualties of the war, to praise our ancestors of the fur trade, and to honor the courage of Corporal Lawrence Vizenor who had received the Distinguished Service Cross.
John Leecy was inspired by ceremonies, and he suggested that the honored veterans wear uniforms to dinner, one last time to celebrate the end of the war. Aloysius decided at the last minute to paint two blue vertical bands on his cheeks. The blue decorations of a warrior were sensational at the banquet, and the curiosity about the face paint cued the stories about our missions as scouts, but the face paint that night was not a menace. I wore my campaign hat, web belt, and carried a canteen of water.
We entered the hotel as usual through the side door to the kitchen. Messy was beating egg whites in preparation of a wispy dessert. She turned, slapped her thighs, burst into laughter, and then wanted to know why my brother had painted his cheeks blue, and pretended he was a warrior. Aloysius smiled, the blue bands curved, and he provided no explanation.
Messy swayed toward my brother, a wild, erotic motion, and reached out with her strong arms for an embrace. Messy wore a smock and apron that disguised her huge belly. My brother tried to dodge the belly but he was caught in the corner. Messy was a heavy breather and determined to press against his blue cheeks and body. She always wanted to press on our bodies.
Messy seldom read the Tomahawk, or any newspaper, and she had not read my published stories, so, as a distraction, we recounted the night that we painted our faces as scouts to scare and capture the enemy. She was captivated by our war stories, but not sidetracked from the preparation of the banquet that night. Suddenly she waved her arms and pushed us out of the kitchen.
The Banquet Français menu was printed on deckle-edge paper in fancy calligraphy. The title, Soldiers of the Fur Trade, and four names, Lawrence Vizenor, Basile Hudon Beaulieu, Aloysius Hudon Beaulieu, Patch Zhimagaanish were printed on the cover, and inside with the actual menu were the names of the invited guests and banquet storiers. That invitation became a historical document of the reservation and the end of the war.
I could pronounce most of the descriptive names of the four courses printed on the menu. The French banquet was our first country dinner, the sublime irony of a fur trade legacy and a federal reservation. Mostly we had ordered omelets and sausage at the Café du Départ, Café de Flore, and Café du Dôme. Nothing we ate was ever fancy or even the daily fare of peasantry. Marie Vassilieff had served roast turkey and potatoes at her atelier in Paris.
Leecy organized the elaborate banquet celebration because he honored veterans, of course, and because he was very close to our uncle Augustus Beaulieu. The Hotel Leecy was always advertised on the front page of the Tomahawk. Augustus and John had shared some business interests, commercial trade, and land development on the reservation, but that remained a mystery.
Messy prepared and two native waiters served four courses at the Banquet Français. She had served a similar dinner four years earlier in the hotel when we were mere stable boys. We were twenty years old at the time and drank the Green Fairy, the banned absinthe, for the first time that night. I remembered the stories about traders and the federal agent that were told by Augustus and Odysseus.
Odysseus was rather mystical as he told the stories of tricky commerce to secure four bottles of wine from France. Messy stored the bottles on crushed ice, and on cue with the first course she rounded the table and poured Château La Tourelle, a white wine from Bordeaux. John Leecy raised his glass to honor the three veterans at the table, and then he read out loud my story about the death of Ignatius Vizenor.
Private Ignatius Vizenor and the Hundred Eighteenth Infantry Regiment advanced with artillery and heavy tank support early that rainy morning, Tuesday, October 8, 1918, sixty-two days into the Hundred Days Offensive. Ignatius was shot in the chest by an enemy machine gun. He collapsed and died slowly on a cold and muddy verge near a series of trenches east of Montbréhain, France.
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Silence, and then the trader teased me about the words “muddy verge.” The tease was perfectly timed to relieve that solemn moment, and the memories of our dapper cousin. The wine was delicate, exceptional, and the taste reminded me of Paris. Aloysius saluted the trader, and as a gesture of gratitude he promised to carve more blue raven pendants. My brother had not painted or mentioned the blue ravens since we boarded the ship at Brest, France.
John Leecy, the vin blanc, and later the moonshine were praised many times that summer night, and the quirky scenes of ironic stories transformed the mundane cast of the reservation. Aloysius declared that Sergeant Sorek, the man who had ordered us on risky missions as scouts, was more humane than the federal agent. Doctor Mendor was more inspired in his tribute to the soldiers and recited a few lines of poetry from Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman.
The moon gives you light,
And the bugles and the drums give you music,
And my heart, O my soldiers, my veterans,
My heart gives you love.
Messy changed the solemn mood as she sounded a chime and marched into the dining room with the first course of the Banquet Français. She wore a thin black gown, black apron, a blue cape, and bound her black hair with a thick white turban, a very exotic pose in any great restaurant.
The first course was Soupe de Poissons, or puréed fish soup with sunfish, perch, and crappies, and stewed with fennel, tomatoes, garlic, orange peel, and black pepper. The soup was served with fresh butter and warm baguettes. Animosh caught the fish that very day at Bad Boy Lake.
Messy told the first story that night about the federal agent as she poured more wine, and as the waiters removed the soup bowls. Foamy had tracked the scent of prohibited alcohol that morning to the kitchen of the Hotel Leecy. The agent had an acute nose for the wine in the Coq au Beaulieu, the main course of the banquet. The red wine, sliced onions, celery, carrots, garlic, smoked thick bacon, and peppercorns were simmered with two chickens. Later the chickens were garnished with baby onions, mushrooms, and parsley.
Messy raised a cleaver and shouted at the agent that she would chop his skinny niinag right down to the short hairs and throw it to the dogs if he ever came sniffing around the kitchen again. Foamy protected his crotch with both hands, turned and hurried back to the government house. Misaabe announced with a tricky sense of native stories that only a rabid dog would eat a federal pecker.
Messy and the waiters served Coq au Beaulieu, the main course, or plat principal, and with salads and fresh vegetables on the side. The Truffade, a potato cake with cheese and bacon, Poireaux Vinaigrette, leeks with shallots, chopped boiled eggs, cider vinegar, mustard, and parsley, Petits Pois à la Française, sweet, fresh green peas with butter and sugar, and Fèves à la Tourangelle, baby lima beans, bacon, butter, baby onions, chives, and parsley, were so distinctive and delicious that each vegetable on the menu could have been the third, fourth, fifth, and other courses at the Banquet Français. Lima beans were a substitute for the fèves, fava or broad beans, because no one on the reservation had ever heard of fava beans or the country recipe. Messy smiled as she circled the table and related that fava beans were colonial not fur trade stories.
John Leecy poured out Wiser’s rye whiskey, his favorite from Ontario, Canada, in thick glasses with the third course of cheese, a special selection as usual from the Marin French Cheese Company in California.
Odysseus, Catherine Heady, and Doctor Mendor were heavy whiskey drinkers. John Leecy was a connoisseur of singular white lightning, and later the moonshine drinkers were extremely pleased to savor Cape Breton Silver, a special raw moonshine distilled from potato skins in Nova Scotia, Canada. The moonshine was served from a mason jar and with no label. My tongue hurt, and my eyes smarted over a torture taste with no name that could have been distilled in a rain bucket on the reservation.
Wine was my choice, a palatable drink with a culture and a savored memory. Whiskey and moonshine were too strong for me, and the outcome was risky in the best of company. My choice of wine was a serious deviation on the reservation. The big boasters of white lightning were scored as more manly, an ancient pretense, and wine drinkers were teased as pompous outsiders. I was only an outsider among the hard drinkers. Yes, the fur trade created a new culture of outsiders with traces of a wine culture. France and the war only increased my deviation from the reservation of white lightning drinkers.
Augustus was an outsider, and yet he was a heavy drinker. The distinction of his influence and cultural acceptance was based more on his ambition, courage, and generosity. He drank with a sense of the future, a new native culture of art, literature, education and commerce, and those who named him an outsider were drunk and twitchy with nostalgia and lazy traditions.
I drank wine with a sense of chance and the future, and especially since my risky missions as a scout in the war. I was a writer, my brother was an artist, and with the memory of our uncle we were the best of the outsiders on the reservation.
Odysseus cut thick wedges of Camembert and slowly savored the Cape Breton Silver. French cheese, white lightning, and ironic stories were worthy courses of the trader, or the marvelous dance moves of respected outsiders. Odysseus, as usual, told a perfect story about a moonshiner with crazy hair that night between the banquet courses of cheese and dessert.
Carolina moonshiners were the first revolutionaries to resist every tax and government edict by the sovereign right of white lightning production and commerce. The age of the moonshine was measured in hours and days, not in years. The distillation of alcohol was backwater and more dicey than the culture and fermentation of grapes for wine.
Handsome Bird was a famous moonshiner and resolute drinker of his own concoctions. Handsome distilled white lightning on a wagon in the Blue Ridge Mountains of South Carolina. Government agents, tax inspectors, and the moon detectives might have noticed the scent of the sweet moonshine but they never tracked down the actual mobile distillery. The wagon was always on the move, and the scent was only a teaser. Only the dedicated drinkers could locate his wagon at night. He sold distinctive white lightning in clay jugs, tin cans, and mason jars. The jars were never marked but drinkers could easily recognize by the smack of mountain air the potent Handsome Bird Sweet Midnight Moon.
Odysseus paused to swig more of the Cape Breton Silver, and then he roamed around the dining room table and continued with the story and a song about moonshine, “Carolina on My Mind.”
In my mind I’m gone to Carolina.
Can’t you see the sunshine,
And can’t you just feel the moonshine,
And ain’t it just like a friend of mine
To hit me from behind,
And I’m gone to Carolina in my mind.
Handsome Bird was a serious drinker of his own moonshine, and sometimes drank the alcohol by tasty drops directly from the still in the early morning. He was lanky and rawboned, more secure in moonlight than as a planter in the sun. After a decade of nightly white lightning coarse hair sprouted out on unusual parts of his body. The steady moon customers noticed dark, curly, crazy hairs on his ear lobes, elbows, forehead, and fingers. The crazy hair grew several inches out of his nostrils. Some drinkers wondered why hair grew on certain parts of the body and not others, but crazy hair grew even on the palms of his hands wild and wolfishly. Crazy hair heightened the demand for the white lightning, and some drinkers were convinced that the chance to become a wolf with hairy palms was much better than blindness or the risk of a ginger jake walk.
Handsome Bird sweetened the backcountry weather with white lightning and at the same time he became a shaggy legend in the Blue Ridge Mountains. The crazy black nostril hair, and the hair on his elbows, ears, forehead, and nose grew at least an inch a month with moonshine. Doctor Mendor touched his thick beard and toasted the white lightning wolves of the mountains.
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Catherine Heady was roused by the crazy hair stories and then she wobbled around the table to toast ea
ch soldier at the banquet. There were more toasts with white lightning than with wine, and the stories seemed to be more obscure and disconnected. Catherine commented that most of the soldiers from the reservation were her students, and she taught them literature. She had promised that literature would be the salvation and liberation of native students on the reservation. Yes, the stories and literature of war, as it turned out, were more memorable than the politics of peace.
Toast the peace and fall asleep, toast the war and strut the colors, and she strutted the colors with several toasts and tributes to the soldiers that night at the banquet table.
Catherine turned to an empty chair and with school stories created the presence of Ignatius Vizenor. She proclaimed that he was one of the worst students of literature, but she raised her arms and swooned with the recollection that he was natty, naughty, witty, and never worried about grammar or the agreement of verbs and subjects. She turned teary and announced her true love for our cousin, and at that crucial moment we launched a tease of bad grammar to rescue the woozy revelations of the romantic teacher and storier.
Misaabe mentioned the nativity cigar box.
Aloysius shouted out that his grammar was much worse than any other student, and grammar don’t make no difference in war, and maybe don’t not make no difference in peace.
Catherine rushed to the other side of the table and kissed my brother on the forehead, smudged the blue warrior bands on his cheeks, and ruffled his hair. She was grateful for the gentle tease. Doctor Mendor toasted the necessary play and parody. Odysseus and John Leecy celebrated the absolute worst of grammar, the structure of poetry. I shouted out that my grammar don’t make no difference either, and in the spirit of the native tease and gentle rescue our tender teacher kissed the forehead of every man at the banquet table.
Blue Ravens: Historical Novel Page 22