by John Okas
For fifteen minutes every night she lingers with him thus, waffling between fire and ice. Then finally, when she absolutely must leave or cause her father concern, she tears herself away in a sweat which freezes into a thin, skin deep layer of ice as she drives home.
When she returns to Corn Dog the following afternoon, she is warm again. Whenever she visits him she brings him things besides her body—food, fruit, cheese and crackers—and any time she can, packing it in ice to keep it hard, ice cream, a food she has lately developed quite a physical craving for. When they have satisfied their taste for each other’s meat they sit and lick the sweet, soft, frozen custard from big wooden spoons she brought from her kitchen. Sometimes, for fun, they spread the treat on one another where it melts more quickly. The game is to tongue the trickle before it makes a mess on the bed.
Sarah’s womanly intuition proves unequivocally right about one thing: the seed of Corn is germinated. Indeed she is going to have a baby. By April when the primroses pop their heads through the melting snows there is no doubt about it.
Now she knows her days are numbered. As the spring progresses to summer, the physical changes she goes through become harder and harder to hide.
In the meanwhile her frequent intercourse with the brave has a salutary effect on her. Her love grows with the baby, and that love is not just for Corn Dog and his seed but for the whole world. Midway through her pregnancy she, for once in her life, finds herself more filled by bliss than emptied by fear. Wherever she is, whatever she is doing, she feels every part of her as soft and warm and womanly. She finds the grim pious smile on her face melting like a lump of apple-strawberry ice cream on Corn Dog’s rippled solar plexus.
The family tree is a cross of persons from this world with ones who are out of it. Before Art in Heaven we had no way of knowing about Corn Dog’s ancestors. But after months of having Corn Dog by the ear in her library, our grandmother has heard more than a whisper of the country blues in the family’s roots. She can see in his bones the shade who called himself Liberty Star, and his father before him, the slave by the river, where it started. As a result Sarah has a foresight, a feel for the kernel of her posterity, a sense of the future which makes her flesh melt as nutrition for the future of the spirit’s message.
On the third night of July, at the start of the sixth month of her term, she realizes she cannot keep the secret forever. She goes to bed tormented by conflicting emotions. In an uncomfortable sleep she dreams the improbable dream that she can follow Collier, get off her pedestal, show her love freely and let it overflow the brave and spill out everywhere so convincingly that her father will welcome the baby as his grandchild and the underdog as his son-in-common-law marriage. Although she can still hide her burgeoning spread for a few more weeks, when she wakes on the morrow, the Freeway’s birthday, she can no longer hold back the weight she feels on her chest. Sarah, the apparent saint, comes marching down to the breakfast table and for the first time says something that comes from her heart.
“Father, I have something to tell you.” A thrill runs through her.
“What is it, child?”
“I have met a boy who has the power to make me feel more beautiful than a choir of angels.”
Her father corrects her, “It is written that nothing on earth is beautiful when compared to its counterpart in heaven. Be careful with your figures of speech, Child, they might give offense to the Lord. But who is this boy? Is it young Brigham from the choir?”
Sarah shoots it straight out from the hip: “His name is Corn Dog and he’s a brave I met at the mission, not a full blooded brave, but a golden brown boy. He’s living in the old shack at the foot of the blue cliffs yonder. He’s why I’ve been coming home late every night lately. I’ve been with him.”
“A brave you met at the mission? What do you mean by ‘with him’? Child, you can’t be serious.”
Oh, she’s serious. She fires the other barrel. “Father, I have to tell you, I’m five months pregnant.”
The saint has never done anything to prepare her father for this sudden admission of unseemliness. “Child, that’s not funny. Now you get on your knees and ask the Lord’s forgiveness for making fun like this.” Jokes about frying in hell are no laughing matter.
But the demonstration that follows is no joke, what the Father in Heaven has seen, she will show to His counterpart on earth. Blame it on her hormones, her love, her defiance, the influence of jazz and poetry or all of the above, she forgets the reason why she was driven to fear and lying in the first place. “Seeing is believing” she says, and before Jeremiah can stop her she pulls her loose cotton shift up and stands sideways in the light. There’s no mistaking it now. The baby swell shows inside her slender frame. “Forgive me my trespasses, father, and I’ll forgive you yours,” she says, making a clean breast of it. “Corn Dog and I are more than halfway to making you a grandfather. May we have your blessing?”
“Blessing?!” The Reverend Jeremiah shouts. “I promise you a rain of hell fire, Child, and that no good half-breed rapist in the cabin a lynch mob.”
“No, I swear by the Prophet,” says Sarah trying to intercede on Corn Dog’s behalf, “you don’t understand, I did it willingly.”
“Willingly? I won’t believe it, you’re such a sweet girl.”
Sarah shows him the five hundred dollars. “He’s a sweet boy, and he would never take advantage of me.”
She thinks that proves it, but seeing the money only adds fuel to the fire. “Harlot!” The Reverend’s furnace of righteousness is stoked. He shouts so loudly the neighbors can hear him. He cracks her across the face, and snatches the wages of sin from her hands. “You shameless whore, now go to your room.”
God damn it, she thinks, I should have listened to my first hunch after all.
‘I Swear I’m Coming’
Before Jeremiah goes out to round up a group representing the moral majority of the citizenry he takes a hammer to the wheels on Sarah’s buckboard. The spoke breaking gives her time to climb out her bedroom window and run all the way down the primrose path to the library to tell the brave about the life-threatening consequences of the beans she’s spilled.
“I don’t know what got into me. I’m such a fool that I even told them where you were, and I lost the five hundred dollars, all we have between us is this.” She hands him her life savings, six dollars, a five and a one, both stolen, to add to his lucky single. In return he gives her the plenty of horn symbol blanket for the baby. “The mob will be here soon, you have to get out.” She pushes him to the door with one arm and holds on to him with the other.
“Why don’t you come with me?” The big brave boy bumps back up against her. She feels the lumpy thing in his buckskin.
She is torn apart by the dilemma. Should she go with him or not? Clement Collier would picture them running down the road together, free birds of a feather. The alternative of staying in Zion is a dismal one. Things will be worse than ever in the Blanche house. Where else will she find help than with this man she loves? How can she not go with him?
But Sarah is pragmatic. She honestly knows that if she does go with him she will be a hindrance to his safe escape. Mothered by a coyote, the underdog’s survival skills are beyond testing, surely no posse of Shibbolite tenderfeet run by Prophet’s bookkeeper would be able to track him down. And she knows nothing about being out in the wild. She’s never spent a night outside her father’s house. Sheltered, soft, and now in a delicate condition, not only will she slow him down but she will cause the pack on his back to go to greater lengths in their chase. They might even call it kidnapping and bring in the federal marshals.
And then there is the reality that lovers in this type of affair overlook until it is time to put their lives on the line for their love: it is more than possible, it is probable that they are on unique routes that have crossed and might cross again, but will never run straight and smooth. Because of the natural divergence in their characters they will never be in the same ru
t together. They both know this, although they do not like to think about it this way.
“Oh dear God, how I wish I had never told the truth and still had some time left to think of another way out” she says.
“Pop,” Corn Dog runs to the Hot Springs within. “isn’t there anything we can do about it?”
“You can’t have everything, Kid.”
She shakes him and says, “It’s up to me to stay and offer myself up to the Lord’s mercy. But after the baby is born I promise I’ll meet you in the City by the Bay, somewhere we talked about, either at the Freethinker Press or the Post Gallery or the wharf. Keep an eye out for me, leave word, love, I swear I’m coming.” She crosses her heart.
They barely have time to seal their vow with a kiss when they hear the posse rattling around the bend and see the cloud of dry dust the horses are kicking up coming their way. Corn Dog must duck out. He shakes his rattles and rolls down the road leaving Sarah crying like a baby into the soft sand-colored blanket.
A man and a woman put the future they never planned together behind them. Sarah cannot face the unromantic music of the day. She keeps her head buried in the plenty of horn blanket while her bookkeeper father invades her home away from home and rips the place apart looking for the half breed who violated his daughter. He finds her taboo reading material, mail order lingerie, and some small works of Corn Dog instead. “Is this his filth or yours?” Reverend Blanche does the honors at an unscheduled fourth of July fireworks. He soaks her library in kerosene, lights a match and burns it to the ground.
Without Her
The beautiful buck leaves Zion town in the same anguish as the girl he leaves behind. As expected, he has no trouble eluding the posse. When he senses that they have given up, he doubles back to some cliffs where he can look down on Zion; he sees the temple and tries to imagine from Sarah’s descriptions which house she lives in.
He wants Sarah every bit as much as she wants him, so badly he can taste her. He can feel her calling out to him. It all happened so fast, their separation. Now that the shock wears off he feels utterly empty, filled with a deep loneliness in his mind and in his loins. The prospect now that it will be some time, perhaps a year, until he can see her again, makes his guts twist. He can’t live without her. He must go back and save her, yet he mustn’t, he can’t.
The Pop in his mind is there to guide him, “Kid, the great warrior doesn’t need to be a hero. The girl is right. A mixed breed buck with no money and his pregnant teenage white girlfriend are not going to get very far on this Freeway.”
Corn Dog’s inner voice tells him he will have to wait to live again, and this hurts. He thought waiting on Uncle Virgil’s customers for a nine-hour day was tough. That seems like a picnic in comparison with having to go without his beloved peach Sarah for such a long time. Where can he find solace? He turns to the company of his soul and what animals are still left out in the wild. At least one star is lucky: it is midsummer, warm, and the blue hills outside of Zion are green, pleasant places to be around. During the days he takes refuge with herds of elk. He sits in the meadow grass and watches them graze, nibbling on clover, dandelion and sorrel himself, thinking about Sarah, about why she can’t be here with him in the grass, living side by side with the elks and bears, eagles and coyotes. At night he takes shelter in caves and, curled up by his fire, he thinks even harder about her, remembering every detail of the luxury, the warm fire, the soft bed in the little cabin. He thinks about her luscious lips, her beautiful white breasts, and neck and legs, of being intertwined with her, lying head to head or upside down, on or under her, loving the taste of frills, indulgence, and waste in her.
Yes, he decides, Sarah would not be Sarah if she had to live like an animal. The wisest thing for me to do is to go to Bay City and wait, maybe the art market has changed, but if worse has come to worst, I can try my hand at some plain old-fashioned native craft. It is July now, it will be the following May at the earliest that I can expect her to arrive there. Perhaps that is enough time for me to make something of myself.
“Now you’re talking,” says the Hot Springs in his mind.
But he is in no rush about it. He dallies in the hills and in the gullies, by the rivers, lakes and streams. He speaks to foxes, turtles, cougars, chipmunks, mice, bees, owls, squirrels, goats, snakes, bears, hares, deer, antelope, raccoons, frogs, coyotes, porcupines, brook trouts and untold number of birds and insects. The world would be a lonely place without the animals. When there are no animals he talks to trees, bushes, and small plants, or lets his soul yell out to the big picture, the sky, the mountains, the desert, the forests, rivers and streams, the sun and moon and stars. The existence of it all, the greenery, the scenery, the many forms of life, the infinity above, in and of itself, makes him wonder. The mystery of it is its own answer. The beauty of nature is the beast. Its majesty and magnitude, its cold cruel indifference, fills him with awe and an odd sort of confidence, a faith that is rooted in an acceptance of his helplessness, at the same time a realization that he is not alone. It all seems like a marvelous gift to him, something that doesn’t belong to anyone, something for everyone to learn from, find strength in, and care for and share.
Still, with all the natural resources he has to draw power for his warrior’s convictions and his sorcerer’s ways from, Corn Dog frets about Sarah as he never fretted about anything. Even in his deepest, highest meditations she never escapes his mind.
Is she all right? How is the baby? Is her father dangerous? How will she make the long trip west having never left Zion in her life? These are the questions he asks of the animals he meets along the way.
They all tell him more or less the same thing. Old Edna the owl says it the best. “Corn Dog,” she says, “I do not know how she is, but I see how you are. You are not the same man you were before you tasted the peach of Zion Beehive. You are more and less of yourself: more, because you have spoken to the dearest animal of all, the female of your species, less, because you can never be simply happy single, as you were before, without her.”
The Mother of Art and Me
The baby inside her is quiet, so easy to carry Sarah sometimes thinks it may be a goner from all the excitement, but the summer passes and autumn comes, and Sarah in the last eight weeks does get big as a house with the life within.
When her father is home, she avoids him, remains locked in her room. Although she still has her craving for ice cream she overcomes it and eats cheese and crackers, tea, bread, and eggs she hardboils in her father’s absence. She uses a chamber pot, and licks her wounds, nursing hopes for the day when her path will cross her love’s again.
There is little else for her to do but cry into the blanket and remember the afternoons she spent with the buck posing and reciting the freethinking verses of Clement Collier. Alone and frightened, just eighteen, barely more than a child herself, she repeats the lines to the child within her.
The mother of mothers,
is the goddess of music.
Her light is as sweet as milk,
her honest company is the song of solitude.
Tall Jeremiah takes to pacing in the hall outside her room, praying loud enough so she can hear him for the release of his soul from the purgation of this world. She worries about him. Daily his wretchedness and shame seem to deepen, and for all she hates him for not being more reasonable about Corn Dog she feels sorry for him, that he has to create such agony out of what should be a blessed event. But mainly her mind is on the future. The split pea faces the child in her belly and repeats her promise to get out of Zion town first chance she gets. “Whoever you are, Mummy promises you that, even if you do happen to be born in this prison, you will grow up free of Shibbolism, free to be a woman of your own choosing.”
At the end of October the light changes. The gold of autumn becomes the grey of winter. Storms brew in the chilly air, and the whistling winds whip the last leaves from the aspens, oaks, and maples. The times change; the sunlight’s out at five in the a
fternoon. In the lore of many farm folk the last night of the harvest month is the spookiest night of the year, dedicated to the lord of the dead. Shortly before dusk on that hollow day Sarah goes into labor, under the care of Shibbolite midwives. No trouble to carry, easy to bear, without much travail, just at the stroke of nine, a healthy baby girl slides down the canal to birth in the Blanche house.
“Praise the Muse,” cries the relieved mother, and names the baby Gloria Beatrice, a splice of poetry and doxology.
Glory be to Glory Bee, she is the mother of Art and me. She is now and ever shall be as she was in the beginning, a unique chain of repetitive behavior patterns who alternates sugar and spice in complex sequences. Born to raise hell, the chains that link her to life in this world are twisted so as to bond innocence to scandal, sweetness to pungency.
For example, the easy delivery is complicated by the fact that once delivered the babe doesn’t waste one minute creating a stir. The Reverend Blanche takes one look at his granddaughter and turns white as a ghost. Something darker than the brazen buck has grown inside his Sarah. He adds horror to his shame when he sees that the infant, unwelcome to begin with, bears a good part of the shade of Liberty Star. Not exactly black, but not exactly white either, Gloria Beatrice has an earthy honey tone that looks dark if you are light and light if you are dark. She resembles Corn Dog but she hardly looks Indigen at all. Her cheekbones and forehead are delicate, neither high nor broad enough to give obvious hint to the Running Rabbit in her blood. To the Reverend the newborn looks black as the devil’s behind.
“Good Lord have mercy on this sinner,” he tries to pray but breaks off his prayer and curses his own flesh and blood. “Why, you filthy little fornicator, the last thing we needed was a colored girl in the family.”
Filled with love for the brave, Sarah is not afraid to call a spade a spade. “Father, I haven’t been the only whited sepulcher around here. All along it was you who were dead and dark inside. You don’t love what is, who I really am. You only love the image of a good girl and how it reflects on you.”