Routes

by John Okas

  In and of itself because it is written that the love of possessions is vanity the horse-drawn carriage is a thrill. However her gratitude to her father’s show of affection is tainted when he reminds her that traditionally among Shibbolites the reins of ownership on any big-ticket item are thought best kept out of the hands of women. He insists she kneel alongside him in the dust next to the wheels to thank Heaven for the carriage and thus register the vehicle in the name of the Lord. Of course, the split pea’s service is only lip deep. In her heart she thinks latitudinarianly: there are more than a few choir boys in Zion who can’t keep their eyes off her. She imagines picking them up one by one in the wagon and taking them down the garden path to the cabin, giving them an eyeful of her, the same as she’s given to the Lord God. It is tempting, but none she knows are deserving of her whole mystery, none, the Lord included, mature enough to appreciate her mind, her love for books and jazz. She stays white as cream, white as marble, white as mist, white as moonlight, white as Collier says in his song, White Nights,

  There are dark swirls in the marble,

  mysteries in the mist,

  a maiden in the moonlight

  waiting to be kissed.

  Amen.

  Melting Points

  The sorcerer, his apprenticeship served, has an idea of what he is searching for: the experience that is between front and back, the creamy feeling that is in the center of right and left.

  He understands that on the Freeway the dollar does more than represent life on the go, it is the wherewithal to fill your tank; he knows that poverty means more than hunger, homelessness, ignorance and disease, it is immobility, and sets off in the other direction, spiritually, to counter this injustice, through what is left of the Home of the Brave. He forgoes the train and takes to the trail.

  As the crow flies, it is almost seven hundred miles from Zion town to the City by the Bay, but no route on earth is that straight. Corn Dog, when he is out walking, can easily be side-tracked, especially when he sees signs of men intruding into the wilderness. He takes the Old Post Road out of town and in two days walks into the rural free delivery zone. In the Golden State, the solitary hiker, wanting to avoid civilization, must ever go more out of his way. The big green valley, just east of the city is filled with farmers. Trucks go by loaded with tomatoes, lettuce and beans. He gets off the road, goes north where the population thins out, following rivers and streams, trails where he finds them, and skirts around the settlements. Once he finds the sierra there is very little to annoy him. Occasionally there are prospectors. They are noisy and smelly and make their presence known well in advance of his having to see them. In the wide open spaces there is plenty of room to step around them.

  When one is out chasing rainbows distances can be deceiving, but his trained pedestrian feet don’t fail him. He goes where his native sense of direction bids and spends the rest of the summer hiking the heights, the deserted mountains in the Silver State. After more than two years in the city he is glad to be back where he belongs. He’s missed his friends the deer and the antelope, and loses his way following them as they nibble their way through life. When autumn comes, he goes into the mountain valleys and tries to make his way straight for the Beehive State, but not before making friends of the foxes and woodpeckers and an old owl named Edna. He stays, camping by a lake, contemplating, until the willows turn and drop their leaves. In winter he takes shelter from the snow storms in caves and what leeward nooks and crannies he can find, walking when the sun is warm and shining on the whitened slopes.

  Consciously he knows nothing of his mother’s mission, the charge she received from the old wives to search for wild oats in order to strengthen the flagging ears of corn of their men, the attempt which got her planted with him by the blues-singing Buffalo Man in the chaparral, but he is true to it. He lives off the earth, eats the seeds, acorns, bulbous roots and wild oats, those true grits of winter survival from the pure starch and protein land that underlies the paunchy paleface grid. Occasionally, he traps and eats a rabbit, doomed by winter anyway, and as he roasts it over a fire, he prays to the bunny spirit, hopping to heaven, to bring him home to Zion, sirens and bells.

  On the first day of February, nineteen twenty-nine, just before midday, the underdog, gold and bronze, arrives on the snowy streets of Zion town in a trail-worn fleece, fringy buckskin boots, and pants patched with rabbit pelts. Shibbola’s promised land, dedicated to a sober major-key marching Lord, dreary by all other accounts, is for him a carnival of flutey trills and spills of a fruity aura, the peachy glow of choicest white girl nectar. It is the one element of civilization he likes enough to come back for more. Using the inner force that binds him to his destiny as his guide he hounds the signs to their source, and comes to face the Shibbolite mission, a rectangular building of whitewashed brick with the cross of Emanual like a beacon on its roof and a sign that reads Indigens Welcome on the front lawn that beckons to those who can read it.

  As a graduate student in the Hot Springs school of sorcery, Corn Dog has some understanding of the forks in the Freewayfarer tongue. By having taken a few lessons in semantics, enough to know how good the whites are at using the subtle application of language as a weapon, he is able to defend himself against the wings and arrows of the white man’s magic. For example the Indigens Welcome sign there in front of the mission, what does it say if not how arrogant the paleface? The nerve of thinking one can discover a place that’s already lived in, and welcome or not the natives who were there to begin with! Yet it succeeds in tripping up braves, making them feel like poor outsiders in their own country.

  At the same time while the lights in his eyes have never been brighter, the whistling and bells in his ears never louder, the super-conscious buck, mindful of symbolism and irony, and taught as a warrior always to be an observer first, abides an hour across the street from the whitewashed building and lunches on a pocketful of trail food, wild nuts and woodland berries. Other braves enter naturally and come out coughing, carrying excrement colored blankets, popping sugar-coated candy in their mouths, and wearing crosses pinned to their lapels.

  He remembers all that Hot Springs taught him. This religion of the cross which promises the poor and downtrodden a mansion in the sky will not redeem their stolen real estate in this world. Quite the contrary, this brand X religious emblem signifies that those of low self-esteem and poor spirit on earth will be leaders in the hereafter, first in line for some heavenly glory and exaltation because they have meekly accepted oppression in the here and now. Thinking this way, about the murdering, thieving, hypocritical palefaces can get Corn Dog riled up. He is seized with an impulse to terrorize the terror, to rush into the white man’s mission whooping and hollering, turning over tables and chairs in protest of the sacrilege that has been committed on the sacred Home of the Brave. He looks to heaven and says, “Yahoo, give me strength! My heart is torn by anger over this injustice.”

  The pup’s yap is shut for good, but the Hot Springs in his mind is always talkative. “Don’t get mad, Kid, get even. Most of these Freewayfarers don’t have the faith to practice what they preach, but you do. Be a warrior. A warrior doesn’t go to pieces at the moment of truth. Don’t let them get you down. Stay calm. Don’t be afraid. Remember what you came to this town for. Take what you want in this world, take what you think is yours. You’ve got the power. And always remember the Freewayfarers aren’t all bad, just the majority. And the natives aren’t always angels either. The power is in the golden rule, love your neighbors, whoever they are, treat then as you want to be treated yourself; if they try to give you the business, give it right back.”

  He goes on listening to the echoes of the Hot Springs within, recalling how the shaman was rejected and attacked by his own father for sharing opinions with women, and how he himself, as the Running Rabbit medicine man who sold him to Hot Springs had it, as an infant, was left out to die for reasons of not being exactly right in race and color. He remembers Whitman fondly. Yes, there is
good and bad in everybody, he thinks.

  Pop says that these Shibbolites are better than some. At least I’ll try to talk it over with them. Maybe I won’t be disappointed.

  Back on track, moved by the voices and memories in heart, as well as the whistles, lights and bells in his mind’s eyes and ears, the noble savage wants to see what he can do to crown the good life with brotherhood. A warrior for peace, he enters the whitewashed building, determined not to be an underdog but to be a friend in word and deed and offer what knowledge he has to teach the poor braves what he knows about blanket making and healthy snacks, and perhaps hint to the white brother that, as he understands it, Emanual X’s charity called for selling everything one had and giving the money to the poor, rather than a few pieces of candy.

  He goes up the walk and crosses the threshold, brushing past braves in the creaky wood-floored entrance hall. There is a big room with several tables, and braves waiting on line in front of them, to get charms, blankets and—all of a sudden, when he sees who is handing out the jelly beans, the light is blinding, the whistling trills like a deafening siren. He discovers his own mission inside the white man’s. He forgets all about saying his piece and saving his white brothers, because he is dazzled and stunned by the beauty of his white sister, the shining platinum peach, smart and serious and looking too fine to touch, handing out helping handfuls of candy.

  Sarah raises her deep dark eyes to see how many more braves are in line for the sugar coating and she sees him. Pow! Wow! Precious mettle, resplendence, what clean sharp smooth lines of face and figure! A beautiful boy to match the best in her art books. In her eyes he stands a breed apart, an autumn brown savage in a fleecy golden blanket and tight buckskins that show off his sinewy arms, legs, and torso. His bronze chest stands out like the sun amid all those plain brown wrappers, those defeated hearts sunk in trail-weary rib cages. She notices where hangs that snake-skin rattle, the baby toy he wears around his neck for good luck, and her eyes drift down to the forbidden fruit that hangs between his legs. She does not see him as an object for her pity or charity, nor is she frightened by what some would take for fierceness. She arches her brows, puts up her nose and gives him a knowing smile that is as much her holier-than-thou smirk as it is sly vixen grin. He smiles back, his teeth shine white and his light eyes sparkle. Brazen in the wild, a wolf of the wilderness, among people, especially women, Corn Dog is still the innocent and shy boy, the confused underdog. A smile, the universal sign of friendship, as complex as the pretty white girl’s is, is something he can understand how to return, but the bold cold stare she gives him in return for his smile makes him look down and blush and take his place in line.

  In this mating game the doe is on top. The silent dark eyes of Sarah click on the stranger as if she has known him all her life, like a camera, one, two, three times, until his place comes to first in line. Then she is the brazen one, forward enough to reach out and shake his rattlesnake-tail trinket and, as she hands him the beans, tickle his palm and grab hold of his thumb. She breaks the seal that posing for her father has put on her lips, too. “Meet me around back at four,” she says. “I know where we can go and sin and not be found out.”

  They meet, leave town by prearranged different directions, and rendezvous on the outskirts. Sarah picks him up on the buckboard, a transporting experience new to the great pedestrian. With her left hand holding the reins and her right on his she drives him, without speaking, down the frozen primrose path while the sun sets crimson beyond purple clouds and the wild blue cliffs yonder.

  In the twilight they reach the library. They waste no words. Corn Dog throws a few logs in the stove—winter in the west is penetrating—but the freethinker can’t hold her horses. Even before the room heats up she starts egging him on. While he bends to fix the fire, Sarah comes up behind him and puts her knees into his back in a way that lets him know she has the fetching heat of breeding time to offer. He turns and looks up. The warrior has found what he most wants in this world: this beautiful white-skinned girl who hands out jelly beans. Her beauty, the marvelous bold way she has, burn him like a bright white light, and bring out the shy underdog in him. The respectful way he sits before her, his eyes transfixed, makes her more brazen still. She tosses off her coat and lifts her plain pink cotton dress and homely petticoat and shows him what mail-order satin panties look like. They perk up his spirit more than all the wonders of nature he saw in the spruce wood hills. Then, as if he weren’t there at all, she sits on the edge of the little bed there by the fire and removes those frilly drawers. She spreads her legs and begins to rub herself in every soft private recess, her crescent moon, frilly beyond words, the star between her buttocks, those passages which thus far only she and the Lord in Heaven have had a good look at. He is speechless. He sits up and begs with his eyes, blind with desire. There are enough sirens and whistles for a windy city fire.

  “Here, boy,” she says.

  The sun-kissed Corn Dog is gentle when he noses into the peach’s fuzz, and breathes in the tart, briny pea of her pit. Her sticky nectars already flowing, his touch brings tears of pleasure to her eyes. Virgin Sarah spreads her limbs and whispers urgent urges to the ear of Corn to climb up on her and jump to the sky.

  “Oh, Good Lord! Oh, my sweet God!” she says as they reach and bubble over their melting points.

  Cloud Nine

  The birds and the bees carry the message of the family tree far and wide. Sarah’s virgin womb, like a blank page, accepts whatever in the seed of Corn Dog is most impressive with its intentions and nourishes it. Sure enough, for the third time, thrice illegitimate, one good turn by a stranger and the instructions for particular instances of eyes, ears, nose, mouth, heart, lungs, and so forth come to form.

  She knows right away that she’s not the same anymore and doesn’t hide her feeling from Corn Dog. “Sweet Cornie, I’m filled with dread in the pit of my stomach. If my hunch is right I’m going to have a baby.”

  “Are you frightened to give birth?”

  “Well yes, but it’s my father I’m more worried about. He used to be brainsick with worry about whether I was measuring up to the Lord’s standards, but ever since my mother died, he’s been so blue that he entirely depends on me to be good. No telling what he’ll do when he finds out I’ve committed a sin of love. I can hear him now! This thing between you and me, well, I’m afraid he’ll call it a strain on the purity of the white race, a stench in the nose of high heaven.”

  In the Sprucewood Lodge, while disagreement could at times get hot, in the end opposing points of view were tolerated and allowed expression. Whitman and Pop still loved one another even though they argued. “Can’t you talk it over with your father? Say who you are. Don’t hide. Maybe you can show him where he’s going wrong.”

  “You don’t know my father, he goes by the Book, ironclad, straightlaced, uncompromising, scared half to death of the wrath of the Almighty. If he gets wind of us, he’s liable to be violent, especially if I am pregnant. I’ll bet he will at least cut me off, blacklist me, never speak to me again.”

  Indeed Corn Dog is much more widely travelled than Sarah, on the Freeway and off it. But mostly he has seen the greedy side of human nature and understands little of the righteous. “Isn’t there a part in his book about shades of grey?”

  “No, Cornie dear, you don’t know. In the Shibbolite book either you’re born through the grace of God or dead through sin, things are either white or nothing, one part black is all black, the shades of grey are all in hell.”

  “I guess I don’t know, Sarah. Your father sounds a heap different than Pop.”

  “Tell me about your father.”

  “Pop wasn’t my father, but a nimble-fingered brave named Hot Springs, always on the go. He took care of me and tried to show me the art of high living both in bounds and out. I’m an orphan. Pop was always swearing on one thing or another, gave his opinions on everything. But he’d also change his mind one day to the next, and say what a fool he was to be
lieve what he’d just been saying. When I’d ask him ‘Pop, are you sure you can just change your mind like that?’ he’d say, ‘Sure, Kid, it’s a free country, isn’t it?’ I once asked him if he thought it was a sin for me to eat my friends the rabbits and he told me never to worry about right and wrong, that those who are good can do wrong, but those who only act good can do no right.”

  Not only is the buck a hunk of meat but he’s a sharp thinker, one who represents colorful intellectual life outside of the Prophet’s dull grey desert promised land. He talks about art, the power, glory and, yes, the meaninglessness of symbols, and about morality, he tells her the things his Pop told him. “To the people who were here the land was no different from the air, the sky. They couldn’t imagine stealing it because they couldn’t imagine owning it. But the average white brother sees things differently, he thinks since he has guns and god and guts he can make it his own. And he has a double standard. Pop used to say, ‘The white brother can take anything he wants, but let some poor buck take off with something of his and there’ll be hell to pay.’”

  While she listens to his story of being raised by a couple of men who were sweet on one another, an interracial homosexual couple of Sprucewood Lodgers, and what they taught him about sorcery, philosophy, the meaning of money and art, and what stories he has about the City by the Bay, the Post Trading Company, the art gallery and the jazz at Kane’s, his initiation into the Mytic Knights, the protected daughter of the bookkeeper swoons and rubs herself the right way against his strong bronze thighs. She dreams of that foreign wide world which surrounds bleak Zion, the world of freethinkers, excitement, and opportunities in sin. Love at first sight, love again on second thought. As much as it might stink to the Heavenly Father, she finds the smell they make between them mouthwatering, delicious and exciting. She loves this brave, and loves him again to show him how much.