Another Roadside Attraction (34 page)

On that hairy note, Amanda, in a skimpy dress of woven cornstalks and wearing more than the usual inventory of beads, bracelets, rings, bells, amulets and ribbons—and golden flakes embedded in her makeup—stood up before us and changed the game. Hamstrung by hashish and hoodoo, I was in no condition to record her words, but, in effect, she told us that it was story time. Like the Indians who had lived on this spot at the time of Christ, like the gypsy chieftains around their private fires, we were to take turns entertaining and edifying one another with tales appropriate to the occasion.

Ah, that's more like it, I thought, for that other business was giving me goose bumps where no bumps ought to be. My connection to the material world was like the bond of the dancer with his partner, and I didn't cotton to no dark formless shapes from the stag line of the Irrational cutting in. So to speak. Do you?

“I'll go first,” volunteered Amanda, and that delighted me further for although she was forever singing to things and at things, I could not recall her ever having told a formal yarn. On cue, the phonograph shut off, Ziller rolled his drums, and we sat back and waited for Amanda's lisp, pretty as a pink snail, to crawl into our hearing.

AMANDA'S STORY

In the garden known as Eden, our mythological sweethearts went too far. Tempted into unnatural positions by the Trickster, they aroused the censors who promptly shut them down. Management threw in a curse to boot, and that primal curse declared that the earth, because of man's funky nature, would thereafter bring forth thorns and thistles.

As it came to pass, thistles grew almost everywhere. Wherever thistles grow, however, there is found the thistle butterfly—the “painted lady” or
Pyrameis cardui
, as our academic friends are in the habit of calling it. All over Europe, all over North America, in Africa—save for the dense jungles of the Congo—throughout South America, in far-off Australia, and on many islands of the sea this beautiful butterfly is found. At some seasons it is scarce, but then again there are times when it fairly swarms, every thistle-top having one of the gaily colored creatures squatting on its head, and among the thorny slums of the leaves being found the webs which the caterpillar weaves.

Once, on Bow Wow Mountain, having followed some butterflies into a thistle patch much as young scholars follow Great Truths into a university, I held a thistle crown to my ear, expecting, as a result of having read that awful Tennyson in Eighth Grade Lit., to hear the inner workings of the cosmos. It pricked.

You might say that after that, I was anti-thistle curse. But the butterflies continued to come and go, back and forth, like phone calls between Adam's and Eve's lawyers and the censorship board. Hoping to settle out of court.

“Amanda, how'd you like another cup of wine?”

“Oh, no thanks, Marx. No more for me.”

“How about you, Plucky?”

“Sure, man. Fill 'er up.”

John Paul had taken Amanda's place at the front of the kitchen. Evidently, he was offering to tell his story next. That was okay with me. That was sure okay. I hadn't a word in mind. Accompanying himself on a small barrel drum suspended in archaic fashion from his neck, Ziller began, in a voice negroid but glossy, to recite from his African diary.

JOHN PAUL ZILLER'S STORY

The road to Boboville runs through the backyard of a fetish. Here they chain clouds to bamboo poles and keep the winds shut up in pots of terra-cotta.

We stop in order to cool our blisters and to make discreet inquiries concerning the elements. The sun is of particular interest.

Maidens pass among us selling bubbles that they have trapped in their pubic hair while bathing in the river. Imitating Dr. Schweitzer, they take my temperature. And bring me another.

The art of tying the rain in three knots is explained to us by a shaman. Perhaps intentionally, he leaves out two essential steps in the process.

As the sun sinks lower and lower in the greasy green Congo, the maidens play the game of cat's cradle in order to catch it in the meshes of string and so prevent its disappearance. Darkness is a long time coming. We offer a carton of Chesterfields for the secret, but the high priest smokes filter tips only.

Soon, campfires are lighting up the equator like rubies in the belt of a heavyweight champion. Rattles hiss in black fists. Pig fat stews in the cookpot. Magic sticks are removed from the clay holes where they have spent the day. The chanting grows so loud it causes our hammocks to pitch and toss, as if we were aboard a ship. In order to dilute the noise and to disperse the smoke from the barbecue, a gentle breeze is released from a jar. It plays on the bare breasts of the dancing maidens and ripples the potent beverage our hosts have served in cups made from inverted toadstools. It ruffles the fur of the sacrifice.

The curtain of jungle parts to let in a party of missionaries anxious for a weather report. They are on their way to an organ concert in Schweitzer's amphitheater and are concerned that it doesn't monsoon. The missionaries are shocked by the degree to which paganism has permeated meteorology. They pass out picture postcards showing how Jesus calmed the storm on Galilee, and read papers on such subjects as the Great Flood and the parting of the Red Sea.

By morning, the whole tribe is converted to Christianity. The maidens, in one-piece Catalina swimsuits, are being sprinkled on the riverbank, and shamans are sheepishly singing “Rock of Ages” as the collection plate fills to overflowing with jewels and nuggets formerly used in their profession.

Thus, we continue on to Boboville with no further knowledge about the sun other than that it is classified among the yellow dwarf stars: a vast sphere of hot gas orbiting the Milky Way while converting four million tons of matter into energy every second in accordance with Einstein's basic formula,
e;egmc
squared.

Ziller closed with a cavalry charge of polyrhythms. As loud as it was, the drum did not awaken Baby Thor or Mon Cul, who, arm in arm, had fallen asleep in a corner. Amanda covered the sleeping pals with a quilt. As she did so, she signaled to me that I should be the next to tell a tale.

Well, all right. Ziller's reference to Professor Einstein had given me an idea. I would tell a story about science. After all, science was what I knew best. But I wouldn't discuss the Apollo space program or my own experiments concerning the properties of the crushed state of ions. No, I would talk about “strangeness numbers” and the “absolute elsewhere,” recent concepts of sufficient poetic sparkle to hold the interest of this group. A splendid solution. When I went to the front of the room, however, the hashish and the wine (I guess it was) took over and my mind dumped another load entirely.

MARX MARVELOUS' STORY

My Baltimore childhood was made out of bricks. Bricks. And more bricks. Here in the Pacific Northwest, they build everything out of timber. Back in Baltimore, it was brick. Boyhood vistas of brick row houses lined up along brick streets. Brick sunsets, brick picnics, brick newspapers delivered on frosty brick mornings. Everything the color of bacon and dried blood: brick. I lived in brick homes, went to brick schools, bought Snicker bars in brick candy stores, watched Gene Autry rout the bad guys in brick movie theaters, and played lacrosse on brick playfields behind brick walls. Only the churches were wooden. The Protestant churches, that is. The first church I attended, the one out in Chesapeake Hills, was white frame and so was the one the family attended when we moved closer into town. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing a brick Protestant church in Maryland, although I'm sure there must be some. Everything else was brick, but the churches were usually wooden. As if brick was okay for secular things but when he got down to salvation, a Baltimore Protestant needed wood around him. The Catholics didn't make those distinctions; praying or profiteering, they took brick.

There was a brick tavern on the Baltimore waterfront called the Big B. B for Baltimore. Maybe B for brick. It should of been D for Dizzy Dean. They worshiped Dizzy Dean in that tavern, even though he pitched for the St. Louis Cardinals and never played in Baltimore. The Big B tavern was a shrine to Dizzy Dean. The bartender had purchased Dean's old strikeouts and melted them down and made candles. The day Dizzy pitched and won both games of a doubleheader was encased in a corner of that tavern with fresh cornflowers at its head and feet and applause draped around it like bunting.

When he was a young man, my father spent a lot of time in the Big B. He drank Red Top ale and cracked the great delicious Chesapeake crabs or slurped the great delicious Chesapeake oysters—depending on the season—and talked with the Big B regulars about Dizzy Dean. It was a happy thing, although sometimes it got drunk and mournful and throbbed like Dizzy Dean's foot when he got it broken by a line drive to the mound.

Marriage to my mother ended my dad's Big B career just as that line drive to the mound ended Dizzy Dean's pitching career. My mother thought alcohol in any form was the sperm of Satan, and although I doubt if Dad ever truly shared her sentiments, he went along with them. Just hitched his water wagon to the shooting star of her faith.

You see, my mother was a stampede of fundamentalist religion. The Baptist faith was her shield and her sword. She outfitted herself in it and stormed into life, defying anyone or anything to oppose her. In her righteousness, she was invincible, and we never for a moment forgot it. When her nose wasn't in the Bible or her Sunday-school-lesson magazine, it was in the air in pious defiance. God was on
her
side, you bet. She spoke of her Master, Jesus, as if she and he were as cozy as bugs. And the way she talked about the Reverend Billy Graham, well it made me as ashamed for my father as if he were an actual cuckold.

For Mother, it was simple. You either believed the King James Version of the Bible, word for word, cover to cover, or you didn't. If you did, you were one of God's chosen ones and owned your fair share of stock in eternity. If you didn't, you were “lost.” My dad didn't want to be lost, any more than anybody else, so he went along with Mother's bag, often defending it in his own quiet way, but I had the sneaky notion that he would rather have spent an hour in the Big B with Dizzy Dean than an eternity in Paradise with Norman Vincent Peale.

As for me, I was spooked by the whole scene. Its omnipotence overwhelmed me and made me feel inadequate, guilty and uncomfortable. I didn't reject my Baptist training or, for that matter, even question it. But I longed for relief, wishing that just once I could open my box of Self out of range of God's blue eyes. The constant invasion of my privacy brought me down.

In the summer of my thirteenth year, shortly after I (with vague misgivings) had been baptized in the Potomac River, I learned that Einstein was an atheist. My mother herself had told me that Einstein was the smartest man in the world, and now, sitting in my tiny alcove room overlooking the evening streets of Baltimore, I read in a magazine that Einstein not only had not been “saved,” but he didn't even believe in God. My dad, home late from the hardware store, called me to supper. And called me again. But I sat looking out the window thinking bewildering new thoughts—while Baltimore frowned from brick to brick.

From that day on, each little intellectual step I took was a giant stride away from Christian dogma. Yet, stretch and pull as I might, I couldn't snap the emotional bonds. Intellectually, I soared high and free, but my emotions remained anchored in Baptist bedrock. Even today, I cannot claim that I have snipped the ties. In college, after a night of drinking and discussion, I would lie on my cot—head humid from the booze and voice box raw from the rough winds of debate—and wish that I had the simple faith of my parents to bolster me. Tonight, here at the zoo, I wish it still. Is that man's fate: to spend his closest hours to truth longing for a lie?

I caught myself staring first at the pantry, as if my confession had been a kind of prayer that the Man inside might act upon, and then at my three companions to see if my confession had spattered pitch on their bright mood. From my friends I received only the polite nods and smiles that had acknowledged the first two stories. From the pantry there was neither sign nor sound. I sat down.

Purcell ambled up and took my place. He chomped his stogy and began to drawl.

PLUCKY PURCELL'S STORY

I used to be enamored of a chick so mean that if she had been a kangaroo she would've sewn up her pouch. She had two husbands, one a Protestant chaplain with the boys in Vietnam and the other a cop who had accidentally sprayed himself with his own can of Mace and was in a V.A. hospital trying to get his 20/20 vision back. She collected checks from both of 'em and she had her door nailed shut from the inside and wouldn't open it for nobody. I had to crawl in through a small hole in the laundry room floor. Just behind the drier.

You may be wondering why someone of my background was attracted to a woman of such low character? And what she taught me about the power of positive thinking? Well, it was—

Knock! Knock! Knock!

There came a heavy and authoritative rapping at the front of the zoo.

Knock! Knock! Knock!

Again, a most violent and official knuckling. Plucky staggered back a few steps and nearly swallowed his cigar. I spilled wine all over my knees and froze in place. Even unflappable Amanda turned pale as a petal.

Only John Paul had his senses about him. Within seconds, he had moved from the rear of the kitchen into the dining-room-and-zoo-proper, sailing in long silent strides like a cat of the veldt, yanking his dagger from his loincloth as he moved. He sprang so quietly and quickly I honestly was unaware of his movement until I suddenly saw him crouched by the front door, blade in hand, ready to strike.

Plucky was the next to thaw. As three ominous knocks echoed once more through the roadhouse, he regained composure and ran to the pantry, where he checked the lock. When he was satisfied that the small room was secure, he stationed himself by its single entrance, poised like a guru of Oriental brawling, his muscular hands and feet prepared to hold off a platoon of commandos should one foolishly undertake to assault his position.