Another Roadside Attraction (33 page)

This next chapter begins with the image of a Greyhound bus streaking through a rural valley in the American West. The bus is rolling toward Canada. It is the Seattle-Vancouver express. Not many passengers on this bus are noticing the huge flocks of ducks that are flying over the bus, flying from the mountains visible miles to the right of the bus and flying toward the salt marshes and inlets miles to the left (and just out of sight) of the bus. Yet the passengers on this bus are interesting if for no other reason than they, like all who travel by Greyhound, believe—for the duration of the trip, at least—in their own immortality.

Among the passengers on this bus—and, for the moment, believing strongly in his immortality—is a mild-mannered though slightly disreputable-looking young man who is trying to con the driver into making an unscheduled stop. The driver had agreed earlier to let him off in Mount Vernon, which was not a scheduled stop, either, but there is a Greyhound depot there and they could get away with stopping for a second, but now the young man is saying, “That roadside attraction about a mile up the road, the one with the giant enormous weenie, that would be perfect.”

The driver at last consents. With an irritated stomp of the air brakes, he whooooozzzzeeeees to an unsteady halt in the parking lot of the zoo and, of course, it is I, alias Marx Marvelous, who jumps out.

According to my calculations, the day was Thursday. Sure enough, the zoo was closed. I walked around back, barely squeezing my suitcase between the trees and the grotesque ends of the ever-changing horizontal totems that protrude from the corners of the building. “Oooff,” I said, squeezing through. For a second, I was face to face with a horrible gargoyle bulldog. A string of sausages dangled from the fierce trap of his jaws. In his eyes were purple-red stones that Ziller had brought back from Africa. Or was it India? Carved drool dropped from the bulldog's lips and glistened on the flanks of the sausages. “This is where you live and work?” I asked myself incredulously.

I went directly to my quarters above the garage. The door was unlocked, but I had turned the knob only halfway when from my bedroom I detected the unmistakable grunts of love. I withdrew my hand. The grunts turned into giggles and the giggles into groans. “Hmmmmmm,” I said. I started down the stairs. Then I thought, “That's
my
bedroom.” I whirled back to the door and again I grasped the knob. The groans had turned into slobbers. My grip collapsed and fell from the handle. I resumed my descent. On the way downstairs, my brain chug-a-lugged a quart of Tabasco and wiped its lips with a saw.

In the kitchen, John Paul sat with Thor and Mon Cul, sharing an early lunch. Ziller had made cream of banana soup and they, the three of them, were dunking their doughnuts in it and lapping it from clay bowls. Ziller and his stepson were dressed in loincloths. Mon Cul, in between laps and dunks, would climb on the table and twirl from the light fixture, much as the broads in Ringling Bros. circus twirl from ropes while the band plays “I'm in Love with the Girl in the Moon.” “This is the place where I work and live?” I inquired of myself once more.

The boy and the baboon waved wildly when I entered, slamming the door behind me. John Paul arched his mustache in welcome. Well, I
assumed
it was welcome. He offered me soup but was not surprised when I declined. He was aware of how red was my brain. “Relax,” he said. “The Mad Pluck has returned from his Catholic odyssey and is even now enjoying the deserts of the prodigal.”

Purcell was here! That made me feel better. But not much. Finding no other spirits, I poured myself a tumbler of wine vinegar, cursing the Italian who brought the grape to such ignoble end. I joined the rowdy trio at table and told Ziller a bit about my trip. In California, I had encountered an organization known as Frontiers of Science. Its members were scientists and interested laymen who had become concerned with the ultimate meaning of their lives and their work. For them, the line between the subject and the object was vanishing. Their creed was this statement by Heisenberg: “The scientist can no longer contemplate and investigate nature objectively but submits it to human questioning and ever links it to the destiny of man.” Heeding the advice of Einstein and Oppenheimer, they were beginning to put their vast knowledge to a more inspired use than weapon-making and extraterrestrial one-up-manship. Their research in pure science had taken them beyond science into the realm of the personal, the poetic, the mystical . . . the occult. One of them explained in my presence why physicist Murray Gell-Mann calls his theory of mathematical symmetry among particles in space “the eight-fold path.” Another took me to a lecture on
Western Biology and the Tibetan Book of the Dead
in which the speaker accounted how advanced biologists have found karma and its corollary of reincarnation genetically reasonable.

John Paul could understand why I was attracted to Frontiers of Science. For the first time, I had found colleagues with interests somewhat similar to mine. I write “somewhat” because I still regarded 95 per cent of mysticism as a crock of crap. At the same time, however, I was convinced that science had a critical role to play in the religion of the future. For the winter, Frontiers of Science had leased a rundown resort hotel in the hills above Stockton. Its members were sponsoring three months of seminars and research. I told John Paul that I was considering joining them there. I didn't tell him that I was also considering
not
joining them. It was difficult to admit even to myself how much I had missed Amanda on my holiday. And I was still stubbornly, injustifiably of the opinion that something of consequence might transpire at the roadside zoo.

Something of consequence, indeed.

“You are back just in time,” said Ziller. He gave me the oddest look I have ever seen on a man's face. Perhaps it was the look of a wry warlock who, immediately prior to being burned at the stake, has requested wool socks to keep his feet warm. Then he took me to the pantry where he unfastened a brand new padlock and introduced me to Jesus.

By the time I Jeeped back from Mount Vernon, where I had mailed (via air, special delivery) a Corpse scraping to the radiocarbon dating lab, Amanda and Plucky Purcell were on their feet. Hoorah for them. Hoorah and hooray. I trusted that Mr. Purcell was adequately rested. I trusted that he had gotten his eight hours, as they say. He looked fit enough.

It was my first glimpse of Mr. Purcell. I thought, begrudgingly, that he resembled the actor Paul Newman, except that Purcell's cheekbones were higher than Newman's and his nose more aristocratic. Then he smiled. His smile was not like Paul Newman's. His smile was not aristocratic. His smile was like a splash of ham gravy on a Statue of Liberty necktie.

Amanda hugged me and kissed my cheek. Big deal. I said nothing. Outside, the mallards owned the sky. They traveled in high, vibrating lines. In frame houses all over Skagit County, men in tee shirts and house jeans sat calmly cleaning their shotguns. The continuum between the men and the ducks was eloquent.

After a while, I shoved my jealousy aside. If Ziller was unperturbed, and he seemed to be, why should it torment me? There were more important things at hand. Oh, such important things! I suggested that we gather around the oak table and pool our thoughts about this mummy we had on our hands. The moment I ceased trying to conceal my excitement, it gushed forth in geysers. Wow! Hell yes! Let's get at that mummy!

“No,” said Amanda firmly. “Not today.”

I couldn't believe my ears. Not today?

We were to have a cooling-off period, she explained. A time for adjustment. A ceremony. Things of moment must begin with ritual. It was the cadence of the ages. The following day the zoo would remain closed. We would meet all day, if necessary, and discuss the Corpse. For the present, however, we would prepare ourselves. At sundown, the ritual would begin.

“Look,” I said, trying to speak evenly, “if that mummified body is who you contend it is, we have locked in our pantry a bigger firecracker than the hydrogen bomb. Do you have any idea how serious the repercussions might be? If that body is who you say it is, then every hyena in Christendom will be breathing down our collars by this time tomorrow. We could be murdered in our sleep.”

“I don't think so,” objected Plucky. “Oh, the high hyenas will be stirred up, all right. They've probably got every monk in the Felicitate Society assigned to the case right now. And they can use whatever resources they want of the CIA and the FBI. The CIA and the FBI have been sucking the Pope's shoes for decades, and that's a fact. But, you see, Marx, they will be working within some strict limitations. It's my guess that less than a dozen men in the whole world know of the existence of the . . . of the Corpse. And those dudes are all behind-the-scenes honchos at the Vatican. They can't tell the agents
what
it is they are looking for, or
why
they are after me. You dig? They can only order them to locate me. Okay. As shrewd as they may be, and as many resources as they can make use of, they still are going to have a tough time tracing me to this zoo. It'll take them a few days, maybe even a few weeks. Meanwhile, I've got some capers I want to pull with that Corpse. I didn't go to the risk of ripping it off just to have the Romans snatch it back. You're right, Marvelous, we've got us a megaton of celestial blasting powder lying in there in that pantry, and what use we put it to could change a lot of things for a lot of people for a lot of time. And we've got to reach an agreement on it pretty quick. But even so, I think we have time to prepare ourselves, as Amanda says.”

Plucky lit a cigar and settled down on a pile of cushions, as if to give notice that he was ready for whatever ritual the setting sun might bring.

Amanda was pleased. “Tonight we shall feast,” she said, “and tomorrow we shall fast.”

“Fuck a duck,” I grumbled, meaning no offense to the mallards overhead.

Amanda had said that we were to feast and as sure as Big Paint's rooster legs fit around a volleyball, feast we did. Amanda picked the Skagit Valley up by its damp green heels and shook its whole stash of goodies out onto our table. She shook out a silver salmon, big as a baby, baked with a sour cream glaze. There were fresh oysters, both steamed and raw. Late broccoli in a hot sauce with overt sadistic tendencies. Corn on the cob. Burdock tubers. Cattail roots. Biscuits baked from cattail pollen. Four varieties of wild fungus: chanterelles, meadow mushrooms, lepiota and king boletus. Cow parsnip (the stems were peeled and eaten raw like celery). Roasted lady-fern stalks. Creamed onions. Lichen soup. Pine nuts. Wild honey. Starfish eggs. Pumpkin pudding. Apples. Pears. And so forth and so on, all of the food having been gathered by the Zillers free of charge, as is still possible in Skagit country despite the toxic cement encroachment of industrial horrors.

“You people sure eat some queer things,” I said.

“We have great knowledge of such things,” said Amanda.

We washed dinner down with gulps of wine, as Jesus and his buddies would have done, and afterward the hash pipe circled the table, pausing to poke its stem into each set of lips as a thirsty hummingbird might insert its bill into every bloom in a lei of orchids. Having many of the common prejudices, I had never been entirely at ease with “drugs,” but on that occasion the rich smoke worked its teases in my blood, its tiny wings fluttering to the rhythm of vegetable voodoo. “Must look into the botanical background of substance known as hashish,” I jotted in my journal, writing by the light of candles that grew incessantly jewel-like even as protean wafts of incense approached my snout like platters of ripe fruits borne on the backs of Nubian pages. My spine curled around a caravan cushion like the methodical lash of a slave whip, and after that trick, I really milked the Arabian imagery for all it was worth. “Take a letter to Kublai Khan,” I said to Mon Cul, pretending that the baboon was my secretary. Instead, the creature showed me the deepest scarlet of his posterior as he rose to dance with Plucky Purcell.

Everyone enjoyed the ballet, though it was more obscene than graceful, and Baby Thor (decorated with berry juice for the occasion) followed it with a kiddie dance of his own. We laughed until we feared we'd wake the ducks snoozing out in the sloughs. Yet, through the ha-ha and the horseplay, the vibrations from the pantry continued to make themselves felt—don't think we, one of us, really forgot our Man in there. We were aware of his presence every minute, but, in his favor, he didn't put a damper on the evening: in fact, the mammoth secret of him contributed an odd topping of elation to the feast. And more than that, it just felt
good
having him about.

If the hash pipe played a part in the benevolence, well, let it be. After all, the hashish and the Christ were from the same neck of the woods. Wonder what other surprises that Middle East has got up its ancient crescent sleeve?

For comfort's sake, the party might have adjourned to the living room upstairs, but I guess nobody wanted to get too far away from the pantry. Rather, we pushed back from the table dreamily, as lazy boaters might push away from dock, and drifted on the choppy black eddies of saxophone flash flood that the Roland Kirk recordings sent gurgling and breaking and spraying down the steps, turning the staircase into a furious ebony waterfall. In Timbuktu, there is a university run by magicians indifferent to education. If Kirk was not playing excerpts from that school's curriculum, then why was the baboon mooning at his braided codpiece with such obvious nostalgia, and why was John Paul Ziller slowly gathering about him his family of painted drums?

The night was taking a turn toward the primitive, as if to prepare ourselves for the Christ we must shift our attention to the Devil and see what insights
he
might offer. The red-assed ape scratched his hide, Ziller scratched his drums, the distant Kirk saxophone had a sudden bowel movement of the most primordial chords, and the scorching, popping, spitting charisma of the bogey man seemed all about us. In white Western civilized fear, I looked to the pantry, but the vibrations that flowed through its walls were serene and seemed to say, “Relax. It's all in the family.”