Routes

by John Okas

  “Some of the women saw things differently and I joined them. I said to my father. “You can’t eat art, father. Maybe we should trust this Post and trade with him.”

  “My father was outraged. He said I had lost my mind as well as my manhood by talking with the women. He threatened to cut off my tongue and you know what else. He was serious. I ran and he stalked me with his bear knife as if I were an animal. For three days across the charred landscape, I went on, him behind me. I finally lost him, but only after I did a lot of growing up. That’s when I saw the light, coming from this lodge we’re in right now. I knocked and was received by big Dan and his son Whitman, my white brother.” He points upstairs to the sleeping Post.

  “Dan and Whitman were native craft traders. They travelled throughout the Home of the Brave trying to cultivate wholesale sources. Dan, not one to bite the hand that made his bread, was a big believer in protecting the red man’s right to life but was not much concerned with artistic purity. ‘We buy whatever sells,’ was his motto. But his son Whitman, a self-made motherless child, who leaned strongly to the craft side of himself and made plausibly naive jewelry and leather goods, openly stood for a belief that inner experience is the foundation of all worthwhile art.

  “I told them I wasn’t sure about worthwhile art but I knew something about weaving. I put together a basic blanket I had seen my mother and aunts do, made out of dark and light squares, crosses, stars, stripes, all and all a stylized representation of the Great Spirit’s checkerboard plan for a blatant and latent universe, one with alternating periods of wax and wane. I asked Big Dan if he would really give me money for it.

  “Dan was square white. They didn’t try to pull the wool over my eyes but gave me a fair shake of the bucks for what simple patterns I wove, more than I thought they were worth. I earned enough so that I could buy more meat than I could eat all by myself. Meanwhile, my people were proud and starving. I brought them a whole hog, not to show off, but to show them that the Post deal was fair and square. Even wild animals will accept a handout. But not my father. He got his knife and chased me a second time.

  “Now I got the message. I wanted to completely disown my roots. I humbled myself and blended right into the white man’s melting pot. I gave my buckskins to Whitman and began to dress, eat, speak and smoke the way they did. I learned the Freewayfarer language, hid my brave essence in cologne, and with the extra money in my pocket I bought more and better clothing. When I rode the rails with the Posts over the herds of buffalo I dressed to kill, wore an expression of disdain as if I were the son of a rich gentleman. I learned to say, ‘I beg your pardon’, ‘please’, and ‘thank you so very much’. I even complained to white people that the average Indigen could not organize himself because he was inferior, too stupid to understand the concept of working regular hours for money. I was a cunning two face. When it came to cultivating a new tribe, I took off my silk stockings, rubbed myself in bear grease and used my native son side to make the pitch for the Posts. Since I wasn’t especially proud of being chased by my father I told them I had lone wolves running in my family and spirits talking in my head. I didn’t stop them from thinking I was a man with powerful medicine, who had ways of getting money from the white man.

  “My adopted father Big Dan thought my travelling medicine man act was perfect. ‘In fact you really could be shaman,’ he said, laughing behind his red beard, ‘only difference is you’re not out for buffalo but for bucks.’ Whitman made no secret of the fact that he disapproved of what had become of me. As my father accused me, Whitman accused his father of encouraging the native population to trivialize the connection between the human being and cosmos that great art represents. Big Dan argued that I had shifted my point of reference from the tribe to the world as a whole, and was still a fearless hunter and warrior in a larger more abstract arena. Tender minded Whitman thought that his father was stretching it a bit. True, he said, I was not just another honest hunter, that I had taken a lesson from the fox when it came to bringing home the bacon, that I had the intelligence, the stamina and animal vitality of a wild and wooly priest, but in the end my ends were too useful, that when business was the way of art, it was also its end.

  “It was true. We had seen the quality go down. High caliber work does not come out on schedule and so genuine naivety was going the way of the herds on the plains, down the drain. The presence of a cash customer changed the picture of the product and did nothing to foster in the art the old vision that the whole of heaven and earth were made every day in each and every one of us, a free miracle no artifact could rival. The merchandise made for export from the Home of the Brave was becoming increasingly as the customer expected it, slick and shoddy, as if it came out of a machine, with no connection whatever to the mind out of time.

  “Dan and I said it was a living. But Whitman was wiser, physically frailer but more of a witchman where it counted. He went along with our dishonesty, but he kept it in mind that he wanted to get off the circuit, get back to the land, live more like an animal than a pushy Freewayfarer, and create objects that had an indwelling spirit.

  “My white brother and I would have all-night discussions about the staff of life. I claimed I was no philosopher, only an Indigen without a tribe. That pure existence was beautiful in theory, that poetry is fine when we are sitting in comfortable chairs after dinner, smoking, and having drinks and talking like this, but take any starving person, except, ironically, my fanatic father and his Elk People, try to feed him ideas, and see how far you get. I maintained that even the most theoretical philosopher, even if just mildly deprived, would go for a crumb of stale bread before he would show appreciation for an original argument.

  “Whitman claimed indeed I was a philosopher, only one with extremely poorly thought-out positions, a ‘pragmatist’. He taught me the white man’s word for it, sneering when he said it. He analyzed me according to the science of psychology. He didn’t think it was ironic at all that my father had starved to death. He pointed out that an idea Sitting Duck had was more important to him to preserve than his body, and it was my guilt over having taken the sell-out path which led me to these vigorous assertions of practicality over imagination. ‘Tell me,’ he would throw up his arms in wonder at how I could be so stupid to say the things I did, ‘what on earth is the practical application of having so many stars in the sky?’

  “When we were eighteen big Dan died and left us without a head for business. Whitman wanted to cash it all in, take the money and run back to the spruce wood hills. If it were solely up to me I would have spent my whole life on the road running around with the white rat race, dealing formula blankets whipped out in little sweatshops by old women. It was in these arguments of philosophy and conversations about the meaning of art that Whitman and I became lifelong companions. Each of us modified the position of the other. I kept him alive, away from succumbing to the fate of the over-proud Sitting Duck, and he kept me in touch with the source, the great mystery that sets this whole dream boat life drifting downstream. We both agreed to learn the meaning of the word compromise and each gave in a little. We kept the craft business but work it only when we have to, not get more than we need.

  “As for the sorcery business, I keep that open on the side. I don’t much care whether I’m real or a fake. Partly I agree with Whitman’s wholesome vision, partly I dress and act crazy to protect myself, everyone is less likely to bother someone who appears homeless and talks to himself, and partly I do it to see what odd deals it might draw my way. A paleface once paid me a hundred bucks to write down what I had to say about native customs of ritual magic and take my picture done up in holy regalia, and then there was the Running Rabbit medicine man who brought me a special baby, a boy who really could talk to the animals.”

  Many of the words and situations in Hot Springs’s story were over young Corn Dog’s head but he is touched by the sorcerer’s honesty and affection. “That’s me, right, Pop?”

  “Right, Kid. All in all, I’ve got a
world to be thankful for. I’ve got you and I’ve got Whitman. He’s a rare one, a priceless friend. I’m all for making money but it’s ironic my partner, a Freewayfarer, is the one who keeps reminding me that there’s more to life than just bucks.”

  “Pop, if what you say is true, I’d rather never see this Land of the Free, but stay here happy in these woods, climbing and swimming, and talking to my friends the animals.”

  “You don’t understand how loudly money talks, Kid. There’s no place that’s going to be quiet. Native plants, wild animals, and Indigens don’t have anything whatever to say about what goes on in this country. The only animals that the Freewayfarers consider intelligent are dogs. They’ll kill moose by the millions, but if their dog gets a sniffle they take him to a doctor.”

  Corn Dog thought they kept Yahoo underfoot as a kindness, because he was too dumb and cute to survive more than two days without a hand-out. “Dogs?!” says Corn Dog, “I can’t believe that, Pop. Why, Yahoo doesn’t even have half a brain, George or Roxie, or even Smoky the Salmon, seems a lot smarter.”

  “You got it exactly backwards, Kid. You won’t see what I mean until the time comes for you to face the front of the world whose behind you have been studying up here in the woods.”

  The Modern Day Initiation

  The days pass, the seasons change and the brazen boy grows older and wiser gracefully, handsomely, tough in body, tender in mind. By day he walks in the spruce woods, listens to the birds singing, smelling the clean scent of the trees. At night he lies in his bed in the room of the Sprucewood Lodge, or in the warm weather on the hammock on the back porch and dreams.

  In the old days, when men, running on foot with sharpened sticks, hunted buffalo, a shaman could keep track of the world solely and simply through his own visions, a sorcerer’s apprentice needed no teacher. However, the Hot Springs school of sorcery is ahead of its time, progressive, for it tackles the new frontier, the shackles on life manufactured by the white man’s industrial development complex.

  In the wake of the George Moose tragedy Hot Springs continues his cynical social and political diatribe, going over how the majority of white men can’t be trusted, including and especially the women. He insists the boy learn what every good Freewayfaring boy needs to know, how to read and write and count the paleface way, so he won’t be swindled in business. Hot Springs also deems it quite important for his apprentice to learn all facets of the wool business, from shearing some sheep they keep out back to wrapping the raw hair around his little spindle to working out offhand wooly translations of happy hunting ground tales, to collecting cash for finished blankets.

  Hot Springs and Whitman exchange words over the boy’s upbringing. “I don’t think you should be working him so hard, Partner. The boy needs some time to play, and dream. And if you’re going to teach him to read it shouldn’t be just ledgers. Knowing Corn Dog, he’d probably be interested in story books.”

  The master weaver does not believe he should take time out from business for pretty thoughts and happy endings. “His boyhood is past him already, Partner. Now it’s no time to dream, it’s time for him to become a man.”

  Corn Dog would rather be outside climbing trees than in the lodge reading or tangling with the wool. But his own wishes and Hot Springs’ steam notwithstanding, he spends part of every day reading with Whitman. He does find a story he likes, The Many Escapes of Apple Jack McCool. Because of his inexperience, the fact that he has never been out of the woods, and has yet to meet people besides the few traders who occasionally drop by the lodge, there are many things Corn Dog can not understand, but he can still identify with the fictional Apple Jack, who like himself is one for the bushes rather than the drawing room, would rather be swimming in the river than reading story books. He appreciates Jack’s knack of self-preservation, that spirit of survival that doesn’t compromise his squareness with others.

  Although Hot Springs makes some farting noises about it, Whitman recounts to the boy from the treasure trove of native folklore such legends as the hunt for the white buffalo and the story of the fox with the wish-fulfilling tail.

  Hot Springs is a tough taskmaster and makes noise when anything comes up that is not directly related to trade. He insists he does what he does, wears his shaman hat, tailors his weaving, for the sake of the Almighty Buck and nothing else. Whitman is patient and gentle when he reminds him that he is only fooling himself. “It’s obvious from anyone who looks at your work,” he says to Hot Springs, “that you are a great artist.”

  It is true. Hot Springs is as good as the best Elk woman when it comes to rendering into wool pictographic stories of old world cycles when gods and people moved in the same circles and the meetings of people and beasts were as much in the mind as of the body.

  Corn Dog too can see through Hot Springs’ bluster. There is a light in him which he denies is there. Inwardly, behind the mask of cynicism, Hot Springs’ spirit is consecrated to his art, his wool-craft and his life are one; inwardly his mind is bent on the renewal of life and health in the world around him. If that involves giving the business to white consumers, so much the better.

  As it turns out, forced to sit down and learn, Corn Dog, like his adoptive father, is a wizard at both spindle and loom, shades of the way his blood father picked up a guitar and found he already had it in his fingers. By the time Corn Dog is sixteen the student can pick up any stitch where Hot Springs leaves off and continue the work like a master, as if he were born to be a weaver.

  “Kid, you’re not a kid anymore.”

  The modern day initiation rite is to send him forward on a business trip built for one, the spring silver run, to deliver Whitman’s jewelry, wrapped in some of his own blankets and those of Hot Springs, to Whitman’s uncle Virgil Villon, a partner of the two who manages the Post Trading Post and Native Craft Gallery, the company store in the City by the Bay. Corn Dog is to spend the summer, helping out in the store, waiting for the crafts to be sold, and return with the proceeds. The road from the Gem State to the City by the Bay is another long one. Corn Dog will have to walk several hundred miles to the nearest train station. That is the easy part. The hard part is that he will have to dress like a paleface boy, keep his clothes clean and his “buck” from sticking out, and board the iron horse that gives palefaces a screechy ride on rails from coast to coast.

  His guardians go with him for the easy part. They walk him to the train, helping him with the large bundle. Yahoo goes with them, too. He straggles, and eventually, perishing from the thought of going further, collapses. Corn Dog leaves Whitman and Hot Springs who pitch camp without him, and doubles back on the trail to find his shadow nearly dead. On the mutt’s last pant the boy sees a shaft of light, clear as a bell, ring out of him. How neatly the little woof goes through the warp in the weave! The lamp doesn’t go out but joins the source, that all-encompassing illumination behind the sea of stars. Ah, it all seems to become brighter! The boy’s heart lightens when he buries the dead dog. The vision of the brightness of the life that’s in all things stays with him. When he gets back to camp he wants to talk to Pop and Whitman about it but he realizes there’s no sense in trying to explain the unexplainable. In the beginning and end nobody knows. For the time being his own road leads to the City by the Bay.

  The train stop is in a town called Zion, a city founded by a religious sect called Shibbolites. Corn Dog is amazed by the men passing in the street. They walk tall, or ride in creaky buckboards, wear big black hats and overcoats, and have faces bearded like goats.

  “These are paleface fundamentalists,” says Hot Springs, “better than most, the Shibbolites are warriors dedicated to the fight for peace. Even though they believe that they are God’s chosen people, they don’t necessarily believe that the only good non-white is a dead one, but don’t press your luck too far here. This is their town, and their Lord’s, and they don’t want to see you loitering around in it, or making eyes at their daughters.”

  The sensitive boy has neve
r seen a white girl. Then a pair of bonny Shibbolettes go by. He hears the sound of whistling in the psychic wind, magnetic bells tinkling in his heart. He feels giddy, high, complete.

  “Where’s that music coming from, Pop? It makes me feel all tingly inside.”

  “I don’t hear anything, do you, brother?” Hot Springs looks over at Whitman and gives his white brother a wink.

  “Heavens no. Funny music in Zion? Why, they’ll have you put in jail for even thinking such a thing.” The white brother gives his tail a little shake and smiles at Hot Springs over the boy’s head. “The Shibbolites are no great believers in fun, son. When they’re not on temple business, most of them are at home paying for their sins.”

  The guardians take ten dollars and buy the Kid a paleface outfit, white shirt, shoes, jacket and tie. Hot Springs makes sure he really rubs the boy the wrong way when he buttons the starched collar. Nor does Corn Dog take easily to the tie.

  “Ouch! Pop, you’re hurting my neck!”

  “Brother, please don’t be so rough on the boy.”

  “Whitman, do you know what the initiation rite was when I was a boy getting into the hunting party of the Elk men? Those buggers made me sit on an elkhorn for three days. And I wasn’t allowed to go to the bathroom. Now do you want this boy to be a whole holy man or a half-cocked idiot?”