Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

  Smokestack had noticed the intruder first, but said nothing. Finally, Nearly Normal turned to see him, too. The man was Caucasian but the color of a good cigar. He was quite tall, maybe six four or five, and slender. Two pounds of Fiji hair sat upon his head like the barbed-wire nest of a mechanical bird. His face was long and gaunt and wild; his eyes piercing, his mouth fierce, his mustache mockingly extravagant. He wore a sorcerer's cape—yellowed celestial secrets on a field of sidereal blue—over a vest shirt of some reddish leather which Amanda could not identify; trousers, he wore none but rather a parrot-green loincloth; his feet were sandaled; about his forehead was tied a narrow band of giraffe skin; in one bejeweled hand he held a primitive clay flute. Towering above the trio on the river log, he was an imposing figure—a bit like an ancient Egyptian ruler, especially Egyptian because of his strange tomb-wall eyes: his pupils seemed to remain in the center even when his face was in profile.

  Nearly Normal was so startled by the presence of the man that it was a moment before he recognized him. Of course, it wasn't the man's attire that surprised the ringmaster: among Nearly Normal's troupers eccentricity was the uniform of the day. No, it was his stealth, the manner in which he suddenly had materialized on the log without a warning sound. (Like a magician, eh?) But shock speedily gave way to pleasure.

  “Amanda. Smokestack Lightning. Let me present the legendary John Paul Ziller. I've been telling you about him. Self-exiled from the international art scene. Leader and drummer of the Hoodoo Meat Bucket. Until he split for Africa. Or was it India?”

  The lean man stared only at Amanda. He was pensive. When finally he spoke, the voice that fell from his ferocious lips was both jarring and vulnerable: like a bloodshot eye. There was something of the Negro bluesman in it and something of the Shakespearian stage. No one recalls his exact language but they remember that it was spicy with portent. He awakened in Amanda's consciousness the image of the monarch, the far-ranging, high-flying black-and-orange butterfly that is one of our most familiar insects. He reminded her that the monarch's nickname is “storm king.” That it is always most active before a storm. She had seen them, hadn't she? Sailing in the electrified air, beating head-on into the gusty thunderclouds, reveling in the boisterous winds. And did she not know that monarchs usually emerge from their cocoons just prior to thundershowers? The first sound they hear is likely the rumble of thunder. They are literally born of the storm. No other creature is so susceptible to the tense vibrations of a summer squall. A butterfly. Somewhere in its minute mechanism is a device that responds to and perhaps assimilates the gestalt of storm. If there were some psychological or physiological link between Amanda and this butterfly, some unusual rapport . . .

  Amanda's mouth eased into a long slow smile. Her eyes grew as bright as violet silk. “Yes, Yes,” she muttered. “The monarch.” She stared at Ziller. He at her. They modified each other by their looking. Something almost angelic danced on the abrasive surfaces of his face. She carried her excitement lightly, the way a hunter carries a loaded shotgun over a fence. Warm chemical yokes burst in their throats. Ziller had the stink of Pan about him. Amanda heard the phone ring in her womb. In the magnetized space between them they flew their thoughts like kites. At last he reached out for her. She took his hand. As they disappeared far down the riverbank, the ringmaster and the Apache sat, stunned, in the kind of vacuum that forms in the immediate wake of an historic turn.

  For all his courtly title, the monarch (Danaus plexippus, thank you, Madame Goody) is the most down-home of butterflies. That is, before they were virtually extirpated by air pollution and pesticides, monarchs were familiar figures in most American neighborhoods. They fluttered their zigzag course (as if under the orders of some secret navigator whose logic was as fanciful as true) across backyards and vacant lots and swimming holes and fairgrounds and streets of towns and cities: they have been spotted from the observation deck of the Empire State Building by surprised tourists from Indiana who thought they had left such creatures down by the barn. Indeed, wherever there is access to milkweed (Asclepias syriaca: let's not carry this too far, Madame G.) there you will find monarchs, for the larvae of this species is as addicted to milkweed juice as the most strung-out junky to smack. His appetite is awesome in its singularity for he would rather starve than switch.

  But if the monarch is (or was) a common domestic, as old shoe as the folks next door, he is by no means a stay-at-home. Monarchs, in fact, constitute the jet set of the insect world. These butterflies, stronger fliers than many birds, are spectacularly migratory. In the first autumn chills they gather—having cruised about individually all summer—in enormous flocks. Millions of them in good years, literally millions, mass for the journey south. On four-inch wings they may trek for more than a thousand miles. Monarchs have migrated, in all kinds of weather, from Canada to Florida, from California to Hawaii, from the Pacific Northwest to the Gulf of Mexico. At twenty miles an hour it has taken some monarch movements five hours to pass a given point. Tides of them; miles-wide galaxies; vast flowing rivers of insects staining the wind with their moody hues; force fields of haphazardly modulated entities; notes in a numerical narrative; syllables of equal inflection, rhythmically pulsating, decreasing in optic tempo only on their peripheries where instensity and density finally slacken—as at the edge of a Jackson Pollock painting or the frayed ends of a patchwork quilt.

  To science, the migratory flights of the monarch remain a mystery. An enigma of tactics if not of strategy. There are certain channels of communication that operate outside the frequencies of the most prying investigators. A hundred blackbirds will evacuate a tree at precisely the same second—without a discernible signal of any kind. A variety of orchid, lacking nectar as an enticement but needing to be pollinated, attracts male bees by emitting odors like that of the female bee. A wasp will bore for an hour into the hard wood of a tree at the exact spot where hides the tiny grub in whose body she lays her eggs: there is no outward sign that the grub is there, yet the wasp never misses. At the disposal of the “lower” animals are invisible clocks and computers about which science can only speculate. Similarly, scientists have discovered and recorded “laws” to which electricity, gravity and magnetism adhere—but they have practically no understanding of what these forces are or why. It would seem that there exists in the time-space grid a system of natural order, a mathematics of energy whose “numbers” are even more a riddle to us than their progressions. It is this arithmetic of consciousness that more simple men call the “supernatural.” The mystery of migrating butterflies, the mystery of gravity and dreams are but operating arms of the Great Mystery, the perpetuation of which sustains us all. If that declaration has a taste of corn about it, so be it. Language grows a bit sticky in areas such as these. However, concerns of this nature can be quite practical and concrete, as we shall see. It is in the realm of High Mystery that certain men and women are destined to act out their lives.

  For several hours, the couple walked in the landscape. They held hands but did not speak. They dared not speak. Vast energies flowed between them. With the sun, they formed the points of a radiant triangle. Bloodpools sang in their temples, their hot breath was dispersed in the fields.

  Toward midafternoon, one of the pangs in Amanda's belly became gradually familiar. For her, it was the recognition of a single instrument in a symphonic crescendo. Assuming Ziller was hungry, too, she broke his hold at last and began to forage. She gathered acorns and puffballs in the skirt of her dress, she dug dandelion roots with her nails. These items, with cloves of wild garlic, she skewered on silvers and toasted over a fire that Ziller made without matches. A farmwife approached cautiously and offered them peaches and almonds. Amanda presented her her Madame Blavatsky wristwatch in return. The country woman declined but accepted a peacock plume. It was the first time Amanda saw Ziller smile. She detected filed teeth and a reserve of joy.

  “I am told you are somewhat of a wanderer,” she said. Her tongue was thick with peach ju
ice. It turned in his ear like a key.

  “That is not correct,” he answered. “I travel a great deal but I never wander.”

  “Then I assume that you move about with direction. What is your usual destination?”

  “The source. I am always voyaging back to the source.”

  “You must initiate me in the science of origins. I suspect your travels are soaked with adventure.”

  Ziller drew from a hidden pocket in his cape a journal (Yes! The journal.) and began to read random passages aloud:

  “At a cruel souvenir stand beside a dry water hole, we check our maps against the extended umbilicus of a shaman. He reveals to us the hidden meanings of our moles and the deeper significances of our snoring.”

  “From the vines upon which he travels first class in the free space between heaven and earth, the Lord of the Jungle dives into the translucent river. Disappears with her beneath the giant lily pads. Quiet. A few bright birds throw themselves against the cheek of the humidity. Silence. A hippopotamus slumps like a lobotomy in the vegetating stream. Not a sound. The hippo yawns, disclosing his marshmallow gums. Peace. The bubbling of Jane's orgasm.”

  “We breakfast at the All-Night Sanskrit Clinic and Sunshine Post. Phosphorescent toadstools illuminate the musicians. Ghost cookies sparkle with opium. We learn the language of the Dream Wheel.”

  “Forward the march. The burden and the glow. We are approaching our destination. The sky is filled with messages the color of spires. Butterflies as big as tennis rackets flap around the base of the volcano. We stop long enough to synchronize our religions. A white hunter shows up and fills our pockets with omens. And terrible trophies of Felix the Cat.”

  Fragments. They had Amanda bubbling like her baby. First she wanted to inquire about those big butterflies. Larger than Brooke's birdwing? Surely she would have read of them. But before she could blurt out one thrilled question, Ziller said to her, “I am told that you are a gypsy, and a clairvoyant in the bargain. Does that mean that you, too, are a traveler?”

  “I'm a gypsy in spirit only,” she confessed. “I travel in gardens and bedrooms, basements and attics, around corners, through doorways and windows, along sidewalks, up stairs, over carpets, down drainpipes, in the sky, with friends, lovers, children and heroes; perceived, remembered, imagined, distorted and clarified.”

  Ziller was pleased. He played his flute for her, gave her a ring whose ruby setting had been chipped from the Great Eye of Deli, whispered his secret name to her, stood guard each time she went behind a bush (the day's excitement added to the pressures on her bladder) and asked her to become his wife.

  Amanda sang for him the seven peyote hymns of the Arapaho, gave him the scarab out of her navel, told him her secret name and said, “Of course.”

  Flushed with sun and passion, they floated back to camp and into the flailing arms of a celebration.

  When she was a small girl, Amanda hid a ticking clock in an old rotten tree trunk. It drove woodpeckers crazy. Ignoring tasty bugs all around them, they just about beat their brains out trying to get at the clock. Years later, Amanda used the woodpecker experiment as a model for understanding capitalism, Communism, Christianity and all other systems that traffic in future rewards rather than in present realities.

  Obviously, Nearly Normal Jimmy had sensed the union for he had driven into Sacramento and procured gallons of Eleven Cellars sauterne. The new roustabout contributed a quarter kilo of locally grown grass ("Rio Linda green"), a portion of which Takamichi, the tiny Zen tea master, had boiled, whisked and steeped into a most expressive brew. Under the direction of Nuclear Phyllis, motor-scooter dare-devil (and granddaughter of a U.S. senator), the women had concocted an immense stew of potatoes, onions, burdock tubers and frsehly netted trout. Having served its culinary functions, the cookfire had subsequently been built into a roaring, spitting, leaping blaze that rouged the evening sky with foxy hues and made the river canyon seem a caldron not unwitchlike in character. Near the fire, the band—with Smokestack Lightning sitting in on Palumbo's abandoned drums—was into something ornamental and ceremonious: an adaptation of a rare hours-long Tantric raga which the ancients had reserved exclusively for lunar eclipses and the nuptials of important personages.

  Amanda and John Paul were seated on a painted log and garlanded with chrysanthemums that had been recently liberated from a suburban lawn. The lovers refused stew and wine but accepted bowls of tea. After toasts, Amanda's son—dressed in a tunic of rabbit fur and yellow brocade—was fetched from the nursery van to meet his new father and to kiss his mother good night. (Ziller could scarcely believe the child's eyes: they seemed almost electric.) Ten or fifteen minutes of silence followed the climax of the band's special selection—the players were exhausted and the listeners transfixed. Then Nearly Normal, sweet with wine and giggly with grass, delivered a short address in which he attributed the events of the day to Tibetan intervention, although exactly how that far-off nation interposed itself he did not say. “Up is up, down is down, and Tibet is Tibet,” said Jimmy, reasonably. “You may scoff but I know what I know.” He introduced Ziller to the musicians and troupers, for most of them had encountered him only in myth and innuendo. And he announced officially this time—the union. In word and smile and kiss, the performers paid their respects: it was apparent that Amanda was sharply loved by all.

  When the band began again to play, it worked into an impromptu arrangement of “Barbie Doll's Hysterectomy,” a little number from the repertoire of the Hoodoo Meat Bucket. This, of course, in honor of Ziller, who, toward the end of the piece, was persuaded to relieve the old Apache on drums. Oh my. Yes, yes. Everything they'd heard was true. In and out of the melody, crossing the beat like a jaywalker dodging taxicabs, accentuating the offbeats, creating counterbeats, he drummed like a thousand-handed deity: Kwan Yin, all arms and bliss.

  Next, a raga-rock rendition (sans Ziller) of “Back Door Man,” the rhythms of which pulled dancers, singularly or in pairs, into the reeling wheel of firelight. Most of the troupers were rolling their own ectasy now. Dancing. Singing. Climbing trees. Moonwatching (it was mango orange and as thin as a tortilla). Eating. Drinking. Necking. Dreaming. Goofing. Groping. Trephinating: frescoing their pineal glands with the cardinal brush. Takamichi swaying in an American flag hammock intoning his great wooden beads. Nuclear Phyllis and the new roustabout skinny-dipping in the stream. Only Amanda and Ziller, arm in arm on the log-of-honor, seemed restless. Noticing this, although his spectacles were sticky with wine, Nearly Normal led them away.

  Now Amanda, who traveled in the nursery truck, owned a lovely little goat-wool tipi, and on the rear of his motorcycle John Paul carried an Arabian tent. But believing that honeymooners should engage on neutral territory, Nearly Normal and some other troupers had taken the liberty of constructing a hasty hut of sticks and boughs. It sat the length of a spaghetti dinner outside the laager (as Ziller, with his knowledge of South African wagon trains, called the circular camp), protected by an outcropping of rock. Inside, the ground was covered with Amanda's own Persian carpet. In a corner sat a small wedding-gift table of carved quartz, on the top of which were carefully arranged Ziller's compass, sextant, charts, telescope, French ticklers and other navigational instruments. From the ceiling hung a brass saucer in which Nearly Normal had thought to burn incense until he remembered Amanda having once told him that smell was 80 per cent of love.

  Here, the couple was left—the sounds of the festivities seeping through the walls like some disjointed Musak of Mars. Moonlight pressed in on them like a hungry ghost, feeding on the wholeness of their hearts and brains. But as they sat undressing on the edge of the bedroll, each trying to please the other with gesture and look, a spike of tension suddenly drove between them, prying them apart.

  “It appears that the gypsy traveler has taken on a passenger,” Ziller said dryly, observing her through his antique spyglass.

  “Yes. I'm afraid I have been outfitted as a vessel.”

  Amanda
lowered her lashes and crossed her arms in front of her slightly bulging belly.

  “Was it someone in the circus or band?”

  “No. No, it was a lonely writer I met one stormy day in Laguna Beach. He had a poem about Theolonius Monk that he sealed in a tin can and labeled Campbell's Cream of Piano Soup. Later, I heard he killed himself to avoid the draft.”

  A moment of fidgety silence. A tentative embrace. Then, Amanda's turn.

  “I've heard that you were married before, John Paul. What happened? Where is she now? And so forth.”

  “She was the daughter of a Kansas City meat-packer. A frail debutante sopping up culture while working as a secretary for my gallery in New York. On our wedding trip we went to Ceylon to hunt flying foxes, a species of bat. One became entangled in my bride's hair and I awoke to find her squeaking like a dying bat while hanging naked upside down from a rafter. Soon afterward, she entered an asylum. Her daddy had everything efficiently annulled. Now I understand she's one of the leading socialites in Kansas City. Though subject to embarrassing attacks. One night at the opera . . .”