Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

  "The baboon launch, was it today?” Amanda asked. She struck a match and held it to the clipping.

  “No, I don't think so,” I said. “I overheard something about it on the agents' radio and I think the announcer said it would be tomorrow. Yes, I'm sure of it; it's tomorrow morning.”

  The clipping burned quickly, as newsprint does. Amanda said nothing. Her lower lip quivered simply and nobly as if it were an insect wing held in the strands of a web.

  “Do you want to try to do anything about it?” I asked. I should have known better.

  Convinced that nothing need be done, she took her tears to bed, leaving me to drum upon my machine just as outdoors in the Skagit darkness the rain is drumming upon the great sausage, the whopper hot dog that is shaped, I note suddenly, like a zeppelin, a balloon.

  The fear of death is the beginning of slavery, Amanda has said. If she is right, then I was enslaved at an early age. It started with a little prayer my mother helped me memorize when I was four or five.

  Now I lay me down to sleep,

  I pray thee, Lord, my soul to keep.

  If I should die before I wake,

  I pray thee, Lord, my soul to take.

  If I should die before I wake. Until I learned that macabre line it had never occurred to me that one morning I might not get up to play. The thought of death creeping into the covers with me shaded my young soul and marked me with an existential dread that has lingered, embellished through the years, into manhood. How many other Christian children have lost their purchase on life and liberty while on their bunny-suit knees repeating the chilling words of that nursery-room plea for immortality? I wonder.

  This morning I awoke as I have awakened each morning since learning that terrible prayer twenty-five years ago: relieved, and a little surprised, to be alive. If the feeling was particularly keen today, surely the reader understands why.

  For the first time in days, I had no typing to do, so I spent the morning with Amanda. She was sorrowful but entertaining. She showed me seven ways to peel an orange, each method more elaborate and aesthetic than the last. Amanda has amazing information about the orange, but she does not know an English word to rhyme with it. Only Mon Cul knows that. And he's not telling.

  Often the things that pop out of my typewriter regale me, especially when I am trying to say something else and in a different way only to have a kind of metamorphosis take place during the act of typing and—whammo!—a concept I hadn't counted on is strutting its vaudeville on the page. But like love and art, you can't force it to happen. For example, out of that business about fear and oranges I had hoped would gel a profound preamble to the news I am about to relate. It didn't work, obviously, so let me get down to it and tell it straight and without fanfare, just the way it happened.

  About an hour ago, about 2 P.M., an agent came upstairs. It was the moon-headed, cleft-chinned agent with whom Amanda had argued. There was a quality very close to civility in his manner. Perhaps he felt sorry for us or perhaps he was simply overwhelmed by the turn of events. Maybe it was a combination of the two. At any rate, he handed Amanda a long sheet of thin white paper, stamped “Top Secret,” and motioned that he did not object to me reading over her shoulder. This is what we read:

  Informal statement by Commander Newport W. Pleet, USN, Director of the joint civilian-military solar research program at Palm Castle Naval Air Station near Tampa, Fla.

  At approximately 0345 hours (3:45 A.M.) Wednesday, Oct. 21, a party of persons unknown released from its moorage an Icarus XC high-altitude research balloon and ascended with it. A man believed to be connected with the theft was shot on the ground by guards as he attempted to escape.

  The balloon was filled with helium in preparation for an 0700 lift-off which would have taken five baboons to what we call the outer “edge” of the earth's atmosphere (while the actual atmosphere extends many times higher, 99 per cent of the matter making up the atmosphere is confined to within 20 miles of the earth's surface) in an experiment to measure effects of solar radiation on living tissue. The experiment, which was also to have photographed the oxygen spectrum and the sun's corona, was to have been one in a continuing series originating at the Palm Castle site to probe the upper atmosphere for information needed for space flights and manned space stations.

  The Icarus XC, when fully inflated, is 1,020 feet in height. More than 15 acres of polyethylene film reinforced with dacron fibers were used in its construction. It supported a transparent gondola of heat-resistant plastic resins, 22 feet in length and elliptically shaped. The gondola contained measuring devices and life-supporting equipment of various types. The entire apparatus was valued at approximately $980,000.

  The Icarus XC series is not classified and most of the information obtained is to be shared with other nations including, presumably, the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, stringent security was in effect. Visitors are not allowed beyond the gates of Palm Castle Naval Air Station without a pass. Additional permission is required to enter the test site vicinity. Ten naval enlisted men armed with carbines stood watch at strategic posts near the balloon pad this morning.

  We now believe the thieves entered the main gate with stolen passes. At least one naval officer, Ensign Goober Clooney, was robbed of his wallet in the men's room of a Tampa cocktail lounge late Tuesday night. Ensign Clooney's identification papers were found on the person of the man shot by guards. In addition, an automobile belonging to a Navy enlisted man and bearing a sticker which permitted it to enter the test area was stolen during the night. It was abandoned on base a quarter of a mile from the balloon pad.

  Three guards were knocked unconscious by the thieves as they made their way to the balloon. The Palm Castle sick bay reports that the men were struck on their necks, presumably by some sort of karate blows. Even with three guards indisposed, the thieves must have worked with incredible stealth to unmoor the balloon and enter its gondola.

  The balloon was 100 feet in the air before the remaining guards noticed it had been launched. Initially, they thought it had been released accidentally, but hasty investigation proved the moorage lines to have been cut. At least four guards testified that they saw a man or men moving about in the gondola as it ascended.

  I was telephoned at the BOQ and reached the test site at 0410 hours. By then the balloon had entered the overcast and was not visible to the eye, although it was easily fixed by radar. We attempted to contact the Icarus XC by radio but received no response except for what seemed like laughter and the sound of a flute.

  In the Icarus system we are able to control altitude of flights by a feeding device that can increase or decrease the balloon's helium supply. That device was not operative this morning. Other equipment was functioning properly.

  By 0435 hours, the balloon had obtained an altitude of 12,000 feet. Air-to-air rescue of the abductors seemed unlikely. The gondola was fogged with condensation, and the observation plane that I had ordered aloft had little to report. I considered, at that time, requesting fighter interceptors to shoot down the Icarus XC, if for no other reason than that appeared to be the only way we might learn who was aboard and why.

  While I awaited permission for an air attack, the slain man was brought to the control building. He had been shot three times in the back by guards at the outer perimeter of the test area at approximately 0350 hours. Security personnel reported that he was running and ignored commands to halt. He proved a difficult target and eluded 20 to 25 rounds before being hit. In addition to Ensign Clooney's wallet, the man carried papers identifying him as L. Westminster Purcell III.

  Purcell is a former football star at Duke University who created some scandal about eleven years ago when he absconded with his coach's wife. He is said to have later engaged in criminal activities. As a naval officer prior to dishonorable discharge, he underwent jet pilot's training at Palm Castle. If the man is indeed Purcell, he would have had firsthand knowledge of the base. That might partly explain the success of the theft.

 
Among the dead man's effects was a note scrawled on the inner side of a cigar pack. It was blood-soaked and much of it was obscured. However, I recorded the following paragraph:

  “. . . I have reached the conclusion that the Second Coming would have no real impact on our society. It would simply be absorbed and exploited by our economic system (even I was tempted to use the C. as a springboard to wealth and power). Our society gives its economy priority over health, love, truth, beauty, sex and salvation; over life itself. Whatsoever is given precedence over life will take precedence over life, and will end in eliminating life. Since economics, at its most abstract level, is the religion of our people, no noneconomic happening, not even one as potentially spectacular as the Second Coming, can radically alter the souls of our people. Therefore, I have temporarily abandoned my dream in order to help fulfill the dream of Z. Meanwhile, Marx, I can only hope with all my baggy heart, that the white magic of A.—and of others like her—will in time ace out the black magic of . . .” (rest illegible).

  These are the words of an atheistic Communist or of a madman. In my opinion, he was both.

  At any rate, permission to shoot down the Icarus XC was granted at 0500 hours by Admiral Stacy Horowitz, Commander, Third Naval District. Shortly after our interceptors were airborne, however, the order was rescinded by the White House. No explanation was offered. Our aircraft were called back and I was ordered to let the balloon proceed without interference. I was ordered further to desist from radio or television contact with the balloon. Later, personnel of the Central Intelligence Agency dismantled our transmitters.

  At this time, the Icarus XC is at approximately 70,000 feet. It will travel to well over twice that altitude. The gondola, fully pressurized, is equipped with a self-contained oxygen supply; enough oxygen is aboard to keep three persons alive for a week. However, the illicit passengers will not live for a week. They will perish after less than 24 hours from the effects of solar radiation. Acute dehydration will reduce their bodies to almost nothingness and they will decompose at an accelerated rate. By the time next month when the balloon begins to lose altitude and subsequently to disintegrate, only their bones will remain, and should the balloon stay aloft long enough, even the bones will turn to dust. The gondola will be nearly as empty as if it never contained life at all.

  Investigation of the theft is not in my province. I have been informed by the White House that I am to consider the case closed. In closing, however, I must confess to being particularly puzzled by one aspect of the event. In our control building we have quartered five baboons. They were not to be placed in the solar gondola until 0630 hours today. Indeed, they are in sight of me at this moment. All five of them. Yet, before our transmitters were disconnected this morning someone aboard the Icarus XC briefly switched on the TV monitor—and for about 60 seconds my colleagues and I gazed into the grinning face of a baboon. Gentlemen, make of it what you will, but there is an unauthorized baboon aboard that fated balloon.

  In some superstitious mouse-gnawed wine-stained gold-braided inner sanctum of the Vatican, a half-dozen elegant and elderly cardinals are being addressed by a black-robed churchman of undetermined rank.

  “Yes, your Eminences, the results are irreversible. No one could alter the balloon's flight now, even if he so desired.”

  “Save for God himself,” a cardinal interjects.

  “Really, Luigi,” says another, “we can rule out divine intervention, don't you think?”

  A third prelate, the oldest and most elegant of the lot, has been kneading his puffy right fist in his puffy left palm. “Why?” he asks no one in particular. “Why, why, why, why, why, why, why? Why did such a peculiar thing happen?”

  “God goes about his business in mysterious ways,” says one cardinal. The elder gives him a puffy glare that seems to say, “Don't hand me that old rubbish.”

  “Maybe we have ourselves to blame,” ventures the youngest prelate present. “We have harbored a skeleton in our closet—so to speak—for far too long. Maybe we should inquire of ourselves if there are not other skeletons here—I speak figuratively, now—that might disturb the moods and philosophies of the world were they disclosed.”

  “I am unsure of the implication of your remarks, Vasco,” says the elder, “but I trust you had no intention of leaving the range of allowable discussion. We cannot oblige ourselves to the secular world without harm.”

  “Oh, I agree, Father. I only meant that for the Church's protection . . .”

  “Yes, yes. Quite, quite. But my mind is absorbed now with the balloon ascent and not with the follies that preceded or the precautions that must follow.”

  The figure in the black robe clears his throat. “Ahem. These people who were involved in this episode are beyond the power of human understanding, Father. They represent a fringe of modern liberalism that is wholly demented. But if you would like, I will file with you a complete report on the persona and their actions so that you might search for your own conclusions therein.”

  By various methods, the cardinals indicate that they would indeed like a detailed report. The air in the chamber is like the sculptured exhaust of a marble Cadillac parked overtime in an invalid's bedroom.

  “Meanwhile,” says the elder, “there is no chance that . . .”

  “No chance at all, your Eminence,” the black-robed man assures. “By this time tomorrow there will be nothing left of the, er, body. Or of that magician and his monkey. They will literally have vanished into thin air.”

  Kneading his puffy right fist in his puffy left palm, the elder cardinal goes to the window to look at the heavens, only there is no window in the chamber and he is faced with a tedious wall of ancient age. The marble Cadillac spins its wheels, grinding the invalid's bifocals into the rug.

  Shortly thereafter, blue-and-white jersey No. 69 was retired by the Duke University football squad, and never again on a brassy autumn afternoon in Durham will you see that number flashing in the soft-cider bee-fuzz Carolina sunshine.

  The Mexican Federation of Marijuana Growers would have sent a nice wreath had they known. Had they known that Plucky Purcell had fallen, three hoarse slugs in his champion physique, his vulgar grin outlined in blood; dead at age thirty without ever having decided whether life was sour or sweet.

  This case could be made for Plucky Purcell: that he was another victim of Christ/Authority. The same could not be said of John Paul Ziller. Ziller's moves were calculated in full consciousness. He was nobody's victim, maybe not even his own.

  Ziller had always operated at that junction where the archaic path of nature and necromancy crosses the superhighway of technology and culture. As he lived, so he died, as they say. A man in between Heaven and Earth.

  In mastering the science of origins (excuse me, the science of Godward solutions), Ziller carried the quest to its most personal extreme. Clear-eyed and confident, he returned——literally—to energy, dissolving in the pure essence that spawned all life.

  Even as I type these words, John Paul Ziller, the baboon with the firebug buttocks and Jesus the Christ of Nazareth are melting together into sunlight.

  Part V

  RAIN FELL ON Skagit Valley.

  It fell in sweeps and it fell in drones. It fell in unending cascades of cheap Zen jewelry. It fell on the dikes. It fell on the firs. It fell on the downcast necks of the mallards.

  And it rained a fever. And it rained a silence. And it rained a sacrifice. And it rained a miracle. And it rained sorceries and saturnine eyes of the totem.

  Rain drenched the chilly green tidelands. The river swelled. The sloughs fermented. Vapors rose from black stumps on the hillsides. Spirit canoes paddled in the mists of the islands. Legends were washed from desecrated burial grounds. (The Skagit Indians, too, have a tradition of a Great Flood. The flood, they say, caused a big change in the world. Another big change is yet to occur. The world will change again. The Skagit don't know when. “When we can converse with the animals, we will know the change is halfway here.
When we can converse with the forest, we will know the change has come.") Water spilled off the roofs and the rain hats. It took on the colors of neon and head lamps. It glistened on the claws of nightime animals.

  And it rained a screaming. And it rained a rawness. And it rained a plasma. And it rained a disorder.

  The rain erased the prints of the sasquatch. It beat the last withered fruit from the orchard trees. It soaked the knotted fans who gathered to watch high-school boys play football in the mud. It hammered the steamed-up windshields of lover's lane Chevvies, hammered the larger windshields of hunter's pickups, hammered, upriver, the still larger windshields of logging trucks. And it hammered the windowpane through which I gazed at the Freeway reflection of Ziller's huge innocent weenie, finding in its gentle repose precious few parallels with my own condition.

  “You know,” I said to Amanda, “this whole awful business might be easier to endure if we were on a sunny Mexican beach instead of drowning under a Northwest waterfall.” I gestured in the direction of the weather.

  “The last time I was on a Mexican beach, some guy stole my transistor radio,” sighed Amanda.

  “Why, that's a dirty shame,” I sympathized.

  “Oh, it was all right,” she said. “He took the radio but he left the music.”

  The postman always rings twice, I think the expression goes. An FBI agent visited us yesterday in midafternoon; the dreadful circumstances of that visit I have dutifully reported. Just after dusk last night he appeared again at the head of the stairs.

  “Hey, buddy,” he yelled at me, causing me to drop the orange I was peeling (via method no. 5). “You're gonna be leaving here tomorrow. Just thought I'd clue you in. We'll be staying downstairs tonight, so don't you try any funny stuff.”