Routes

by John Okas

  Los Pecados is a sunny city in the desert, dry, and dusty. Sarah has never seen so many different types of cactus. The room Fleet has booked for her in the Grand Casino Hotel is not bad. There is a clean bathroom in the hall and no fleas in the bed.

  The pay is good, the hours are short. And whenever she dwells on the ill-gottenness of her gains, the split peach thinks how she can make up for it and resolves to save it all for her Cornie. When she has enough saved then he and she and baby Gloria makes three will live happily ever after. But Sarah is never one for straight paths, her detours have detours. With all the time on her hands she tries her luck at gambling. If she wins, she can chuck Fleet. She wins some, she loses a little more than she wins. Also, she likes the taste of champagne and runs up big tabs in the bar. Nor can she resist, when she sees something she likes, buying it. She fills up the closet in the hotel with shiny party dresses. The faster the money comes in the faster it slips through her fingers, as fast as the time goes.

  Gloria’s first birthday passes and on November first Sarah has to admit her plan to save is not working out, she is a whore without socially redeeming value; and the child’s lumpishness is ever weighing on her mind.

  Yes, now Sarah must get going, get to the City by the Bay and show the brave his daughter and ask him what to do.

  She tells Achilles, “That’s all, judge. I just wanted to see what it was like to be a bad girl for change. From now on no more bookings, I’m going to the coast on the morning train.”

  He tells her, “It doesn’t work that way, doll, you don’t leave until I say ‘go.’”

  Sarah sees about that: what good is being free in your mind and loose with your affections if a man thinks he can run you and ruin your life the same way as your father did. Odd to say, but her indenture to Fleet has turned the girl afraid to speak her mind to men into the woman who loves to break their dreams, as well as their balls. “You don’t own me, Achilles. I’m a free lance model.” She pats the back of her head, checking her hair in the mirror, takes out a suitcase and begins throwing her collection of party dresses in, totally uninterested in what he has to say about it.

  “Don’t try to leave this hotel, doll. My boys are all over it, and they might get nasty if they see you trying to run out on me.”

  What to do? There’s no reasoning with a man who breaks the law on both sides of the bench, who is so cowardly as to threaten a woman. Or is there?

  “So what are the boys going to do? Beat me up? Rape me? Kill me? Kill my retarded daughter too while they’re at it? Just because of your vanity, Achilles. I’m just a girl, young enough to be your daughter, a little lost in her life. You really ought to be ashamed of yourself, taking advantage of a runaway like me. If you were a tenth of the gentleman you act like, you would help me pack, drive me down to the train station, give me a kiss good-bye and thank me for the good times. But since you’re a monster, come on, let’s get it over with, you better kill me, because if you only beat me up I’m leaving anyway.”

  Fleet raises his fist, Sarah doesn’t flinch, but turns and throws her shoes in a bag. No, he is not one to beat up a young girl. Nor is he one for playing the sentimental scene at the station. He throws five hundred dollars, travelling money, on the bed. “Bitch!” he says, and steps out of her way.

  ‘All Aboard’

  When the train which Sarah takes out of Los Pecados gets up to full speed, long slow Glory, in her basket on the seat next to her mother, pokes her head up.

  “Want to get up, Baby?’ Sarah lifts the heavy load onto her lap.

  What’s this? For the first time the baby struggles to free herself from the mother. Sarah encourages any and all movement in Gloria. She spreads out the blanket on the rocking floor of the compartment and puts the child on it. Great day in November! The big baby inches along on her belly, serpentine, extends her arms and legs, picks up her head and croons “gaga” in the direction of the sound of her mother’s voice.

  Better late than never. Gloria is certainly no vegetable. Quiet and undemanding when she needed her to be, now as if on cue the basket case livens up, the little Bee starts buzzing.

  Art in Heaven shows us what the worried mother could never see: that when spirit presses clay it is perfectly normal for it to form a pattern contrary to itself. The valleys and peaks of character can oppose their own antecedents’ hollow or prominence. It is the types of women on her copyright page, the low-down Mary Eaton, the noisy Cactus Flower, that leave the impression of highness and serenity on Gloria. The imprint that formed her is concave to the pique of Cactus Flower and convex where the unsober Mary Eaton fell down in the dumps. To complete the picture she is in dialectical opposition to the split personality of her mother. Whereas Sarah needs two personalities, Gloria doesn’t even need one.

  Character and destiny are two words for the same possession. Even though only an infant, Gloria has all the rationality she can use. It is in the form of grace. She doesn’t have any real reasons in her mind yet, of course, but soundness and sense just come naturally to her. The reason she’s been so quiet is that she gets everything she wants. The reason she gets everything she wants is that she wants everything she gets. Whatever it is she will use it to suit herself. When the milk is watery or the closet is cold, when her Mummy is boring and faraway, when the ride is bumpy, when the men are loud and frightening, so be it. She has natural poise, presence, and style enough to know better to save herself than to lie awake fussing around. In inverse proportion to her contact with the world is her awareness of the possession of an inner self, a diamond being, soul, if you will, that no one can take away from her, that no lack of love or property can deny. In her guts she knows she’s a character with a line-up of lucky stars, and there’s a proper time and place to come out shining.

  “Now I can’t wait to show you to your father and see the look on his face when he sees what a beautiful baby we’ve got! Oh and you’re going to love him. He’s a real mover and shaker, a tower of power, but he knows how to keep still. I see you do take after him after all.”

  Sarah has something to be happy about. Her prayers are answered. She thinks, heaven does bless me, and smiles on my modelling career.

  It is a long day’s train ride into night before they arrive in the City of Angels where they are supposed to transfer to the Bay City Special, the red eye that arrives in the Bay area at dawn. The pea splits again. She can’t wait to see Corn Dog and yet she can.

  “Dollface, the way you model,” Achilles would tell her, “you ought to be in pictures. With me managing you, a real looker like you would go over big in Glossyhill.”

  As excited as she is by the prospect of seeing her buck at last, but she unable to pass up the opportunity of taking another detour.

  “As long as we’re here, we might as well see the place, right?”

  The awakened Bee smiles and says “ga.”

  In the classified ads in the newspaper she sees there are many rooms for rent in Glossyhill. She makes a few calls and finds a boarding house right on Manzanita owned and operated by a Mrs Hayes. Mrs Hayes has had her share of aspiring actors and actresses. Most last about two weeks. When they see what they’re up against, how many are called and how few are chosen, they go back to wherever they came from to go to college, or cosmetician’s school. Sarah has heard how movie stars live: in palaces like maharajas and maharanis, with everything primrosy and everyone bowing to them and treating them like gods. How wicked! It’s a long shot, thinks Sarah, but what the hell, it’s worth a try.

  While she makes the rounds at the studios and agencies to see if anyone will hire her for a part in a movie she leaves Gloria with Mrs Hayes who happens to be a six-time mother, twenty-four karat grandmother. In the two weeks that Gloria is under her supervision she does months of catching up. She goes from creeping to crawling, learns to sit up, hold things in her hands, chatter a blue streak of nonsense and finally after days of holding on to Mrs Hayes’ fingers and kicking her legs in walking movements, she l
ets go and takes a few steps.

  Sarah gets considerably less accomplished in the City of the Angels. Every talent scout and casting director she goes to says the same thing. “Pretty faces are a dime a dozen, doll, but can you act?”

  “I think so.”

  “Well, give me a kiss and act like you like it.”

  For free? With men who have a line like that? They must be kidding. Sarah’s been around enough to know that sometimes when men have something heavy in their pants they make promises they have no intention of keeping. Oh, no. If any man other than the one she loves wants her he’ll have to put up money first. It is two weeks to the day when she is back at the station reserving a compartment on the Bay City Special.

  “All aboard!”

  Cornie baby, here we come! Finally! At long last! And oh, she jumps again for joy. No sooner does the train pull out of the station then the newly bouncing baby hanging on to the hand rail pulls herself up, stands, and bangs and sings and chatters a pitter patter of little tongue on little teeth.

  “Does Honey Bee baby likes the rhythm of the choo choo choo?”

  “Yuh, yuh, yuh.”

  Sarah points to things and calls their names out to the child, and is delighted when Gloria answers her in cadence with the train.

  “Seat.”

  “Tst.”

  “Light.”

  “Wi.”

  “Milk.”

  “Muka.”

  “Win-dow.”

  “Lin-dop.”

  “Mummy.”

  “Mumum.”

  The mother points to the long honey colored kitten and says, “Allelujah, Glory Bee, you’re a completely normal baby, amen!”

  She hugs the seed of Corn Dog and feels a thrill. She feels her heart has wings and is flying up the coast ahead of her to meet him.

  An Ordinary Old Baby Sitter

  On the fourth Thursday in November the Blacks arrive in Bay City. They come as strangers to a town home for the holiday and yet it takes them in as its own.

  Sarah hires a driver to run them around from place to place where she must check for Corn Dog. The New Post Gallery, the Freethinker Press, and the wharf are one, two, three on her list of places Corn Dog might be, or have left word where he can be contacted. She’ll start with the least likely, work her way down to the most, so as not to build up disappointment in front of her.

  The gallery is closed for the holiday, of course. But Sarah gets out of the taxi and looks anyway to see if she can recognize a Corn Dog inside. You never know about art, she thinks. One day’s dog can be like gold on the wall tomorrow. But she sees only works of masters, old or dead, looking for new owners.

  The search however does not leave her totally in the cold. The gallery is in the smart, snob hill part of town. Already she is impressed by the city. Having thus far only seen the austere, righteous Zion, the vulgar, lurid Los Pecados, and the sprawling vaccum of the City of Angels, she did not think that a city could be fashionable as this one is. She sees that what was in style in Los Pecados, her low cut fringy tube of a dress, looks out of place here. A glance at several women who pass wearing smart waistcoats, matching long skirts, and high button boots shows her she has a considerable way to go to look smart in the Bay Area.

  Up the block is a big gold leafed hotel, a nineteen story palace, luxurious beyond anything she ever dreamed of.

  “There’s rooms to rent in there, Glory Bee.”

  The Golden Gate Hotel makes such a big impression on the girl raised in a city where all the large buildings were dedicated to the Lord that she picks up the heavy tot and strolls through the lobby. “Mummy bets she can find a more discerning class of art lover in here. In fact she’s willing to bet that by Saturday night she could be a book on somebody’s shelf.”

  But there is still plenty of light left in Thursday. On to the Freethinker Press. Here she gets a little warmer. There is someone in the office, a bespectacled egg-headed man whom Sarah guesses is Morton Pastor. He must be working overtime, she thinks, putting a special season’s greetings edition of the Freethinker Sampler to bed.

  She gets his attention by knocking on the window. “Excuse me, sir,” she says, when he opens the door to her, “but I’m looking for someone. Can you help me?”

  Pastor looks at the peach and says, “Please, let that someone be me.”

  Sarah smiles politely and goes on. “I’m looking for a bronze buck, tall, good looking. When I last saw him he was wearing a golden fleece.”

  Pastor says, “I know exactly whom you mean, an artist fellow, right? He used to sit in the park across the street, feed the pigeons, and do freehand charcoal sketches of them. He would give them out free to people in the park. I’m sorry to say that most people considered his studies as nothing more than smudges. He gave one to me, I kept it, I thought he might have been onto something.” The publisher thumbs through a file of assorted size papers, and pulls out a sheet of charcoal grey clouds that express the brave’s inner plumage. At first Sarah’s heart brightens when she sees it. It’s almost as if the buck is there.

  “Not bad at all,” Pastor continues. “You know the modern thing, that the artist’s impressions of the bird and his emotions in the situation are in the picture as well?”

  Sarah studies the drawing. Indeed it is an interior scape. She can see things in the blotches, the sign of the rose that marks the secret place where lovers meet, a pair of love doves billing and cooing on a park bench, finally a single bird, an eagle with arrows and branches, flying free in a cloudless sky.

  “Have you seen him lately?” she asks.

  “Now come to think of it, I don’t think I’ve seen him around for the past couple of months. He was a very quiet fellow, he never told me his name. Who is he? And are you a friend or foe?”

  Sarah’s heart is sunk by the bad news. “His name is Corn Dog, and, yes, I’m a very close friend of his. This is Gloria Beatrice” she says proudly, introducing the pretty tall, pretty taffy colored girl in her arms, contentedly resting her head on her mother’s shoulder, sucking on her thumb.

  “Hello, you sweet little girl, would do like some candy?” He passes her a chewy wad of molasses.

  “She’s another example of the artist’s work. I’m Sarah Black, her mother, but your freethinking philosophy also had a hand in her making. I’m happy to meet you at last.”

  She tells Pastor the story of how, under the influence of jazz, she corresponded with the mail order department of his company since she was only fifteen and how, thanks to him she got interested in Clement Collier and photographs of boys and men in artistic poses, and how she thought she was free to run with Corn Dog but wasn’t, and how she wound up on the blacklist, and then on the back road, robbed by whisky runners.

  “For the past several months I’ve been working my way west as a model.”

  Pastor points at the brownstone across the street. “That’s the Freethinker’s clubhouse. It’s a place where the liberated in mind can go to bathe and relax. There’s photographic studio in there as well. A picture layout is good exposure for a new young lady in town, and around the club you’re bound to meet people who can give your career a boost.”

  To Sarah there is something fishy about the two girls in net stockings and low-cut dresses standing on the stoop. Pastor seems a nice enough man, enlightened about modern art, anyway, but she remembers what happened with Judge Fleet. In this business a girl can’t be too careful. It’s bad to be anything but self-employed and thoroughly in control of all aspects of the trade.

  She thanks him but no thanks him for his offer. “I’ll keep an open mind on it, but first I have to see if I can put my family back together.” She shakes the freethinking publisher’s hand, takes Gloria, her thumb now replaced by the lump of candy melting in her mouth, and goes back to the waiting taxi.

  “To the wharf,” she says to the driver.

  She covers the waterfront on foot, walking up and down the piers with eyes peeled for the singular buck. Here i
s where she expects to find him. But he is nowhere to be found.

  The trail of Corn Dog is stone cold in the old Post Gallery, now also under new management, also closed for the day. She can see in the windows. The merchandise is new, and nothing more than trinkets, the bins of mass-produced souvenirs that would certainly repel the brave buck. She backs off herself, goes into coffee shops and restaurants and describes her love to people at random.

  “He wears a golden fleece, always open down the front so you can see his chest.”

  “You couldn’t miss him. He’s tall, bronze and handsome, looks wild, but speaks like a perfect gentleman.”

  “Shy, seems a little morose, sort of fierce and gentle at the same time.”

  She prompts and prompts and prompts, but draws blank after blank after blank.

  Then she comes upon Kane’s Top Hat Club. She remembers Corn Dog mentioned this place when she whistled rags for him. The artist described how a premonition of her came to him when he was a young boy. The club is not open, not because it is a holiday, but because it is mid-afternoon. The sign outside says that the Bay City Hot Numbers, seven jazzed up swingers, will be taking the stand that night at nine.

  Sarah is about to hang her head and go back to the taxi when Gloria, the rising star, shoots her way past normal and exhibits a supernormal power of sensory perception. All of a sudden the child’s face lights up and she holds out her long tawny arms and reaches, trying to lunge toward the alley, as if she were being called there.

  “Back there?”

  The back stage door! Now Sarah remembers. She follows the lead down another dark alley which serves as a delivery entrance for Kane’s and several adjacent waterfront bars and grills. It is strewn with garbage, garbage cans, and unsavory tomcats. When they are about halfway through this nowhere land Sarah can hear music. Kane’s back door at the alley’s end is slightly ajar, and she can recognize an uptempo rendition of The Chile Pepper Tango that the Hot Numbers are cooking up in rehearsal. The little Bee wants to get down and climb the three back steps on her own two feet. She lets the tot teeter, hold on to the metal rail and pull herself up over the risers all by herself. When she reaches the open door Gloria gets her balance straight and goes forward rushing wobbly toward the sound of hot swing.