Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

  Nearly Normal hoped he could convince John Paul to reconsider his refusal to go to New York to record: with Ziller on drums the success of the Giant Panda Gypsy Blues Band album would be assured. But that eye that crawled slowly from beneath the covers, it was not looking for fame and fortune. “Oh, go back to sleep,” said Nearly Normal. And the lid fell shut like the trapdoor of a spider.

  “Here's your pay,” said the manager. “It's a skinny check and I apologize. Unlike some people we know, I think making money can be as creative as anything else and it really brings me down because the circus didn't do better financially.”

  Amanda bounded from her pallet and took the check. She was naked as a light bulb and Nearly Normal got his first good look at her tattoos. Pregnancy had given them an added dimension. As the dome of the Sistine Chapel had done to Michelangelo's cartoons. For a moment Jimmy forgot his monetary woes.

  “A circus is not a department store,” said Amanda, sliding (uphill all the way) into a silver satin robe. “Would you like some fresh huckleberries and yogurt?”

  “Thanks, I would. Well, at least we didn't lose money. And what's more important, in our own dumb way we injected some Tibetan extract into the American vein.”

  “Dear Jimmy,” Amanda smiled. “You're nearly normal. All that stands between you and Wall Street is Tibet.”

  “All indeed. I can never forgive John Paul for having been there. Ziller has had his Africa and my Tibet. Next to making a million in show biz, my greatest desire is to see Tibet. What a catastrophe! For forty centuries Tibet was the seat of world enlightenment, guardian of the universal secrets, and now when we really need it—are capable of using it—invaded, sealed off, despoiled. No line of communication open. If only we could send them singing telegrams, exchange recipes, subscribe to their newspapers, receive some sign that their wisdom has not been snuffed, receive some signal, as to what the next play should be.”

  Amanda ceased sprinkling huckleberries into the yogurt bowl and turned her friend over and over like an old coin in the connoisseur fingers of her sight. “So you want a sign, do you?” she asked at last. “Jimmy, my ringmaster, do you think it an accident, a mere coincidence, that LSD became available to the public, was thrust into the consciousness of the West, at precisely the time of the invasion of Tibet?”

  Nearly Normal didn't say a word but his eyes throbbed and widened behind the lens of his spectacles and he ran out into the frosty damp and never came back for his breakfast.

  "What would you like to see first?” Amanda's father asked his budding twelve-year-old upon their arrival in Paris. “I'd like to visit the brothels,” answered Amanda, scarcely looking up from her onion soup. Amanda's papa refused to take his pubescent daughter into the Parisian fleshpots, but he did point them out to her from the window of a taxi. Whereupon the child asked, “Father, if you were in a whorehouse and you couldn't finish, would it be permissable to ask for a bowser bag to take the leftovers home?"

  The Japs are to blame. Off the Pacific shore of Washington State the Japanese Current—a mammoth river of tropical water—zooms close by the coast on a southernly turn. Its warmth is released in the form of billows of tepid vapor, which the prevailing winds drive inland. When, a few miles in, the warm vapor bangs head-on into the Olympic Mountain Range, it is abruptly pushed upward and outward, cooling as it rises and condensing into rain. In the emerald area that lies between the Olympics (the coastal range) and the Cascade Range some ninety miles to the east, temperatures are mild and even. But during the autumn and winter months it is not unusual for precipitation to fall on five of every seven days. And when it is not raining, still the gray is pervasive; the sun a little boiled potato in a stew of dirty dumplings; the fire and light and energy of the cosmos trapped somewhere far behind that impenetrable slugbelly sky.

  Puget Sound may be the most rained-on body of water on earth. Cold, deep, steep-shored, home to salmon and lipstick-orange starfish, the Sound lies between the Cascades and the Olympics. The Skagit Valley lies between the Cascades and the Sound—sixty miles north of Seattle, an equal distance south of Canada. The Skagit River, which formed the valley, begins up in British Columbia, leaps and splashes southwestward through the high Cascade wilderness, absorbing glaciers and sipping alpine lakes, running two hundred miles in total before all fish-green, driftwood-cluttered and silty, it spreads its double mouth like suckers against the upper body of Puget Sound. Toward the Sound end of the valley, the fields are rich with river silt, the soil ranging from black velvet to a blond sandy loam. Although the area receives little unfiltered sunlight, peas and strawberries grow lustily in Skagit fields, and more than half the world's supply of beet seed and cabbage seed is harvested here. Like Holland, which it in some ways resembles, it supports a thriving bulb industry: in spring its lowland acres vibrate with tulips, iris and daffodils; no bashful hues. At any season, it is a dry duck's dream. The forks of the river are connected by a network of sloughs, bedded with ancient mud and lined with cattail, tules, eelgrass and sedge. The fields, though diked, are often flooded; there are puddles by the hundreds and the roadside ditches could be successfully navigated by midget submarines.

  It is a landscape in a minor key. A sketchy panorama where objects, both organic and inorganic, lack well-defined edges and tend to melt together in a silver-green blur. Great islands of craggy rock arch abruptly up out of the flats, and at sunrise and moonrise these outcroppings are frequently tangled in mist. Eagles nest on the island crowns and blue herons flap through the veils from slough to slough. It is a poetic setting, one which suggests inner meanings and invisible connections. The effect is distinctly Chinese. A visitor experiences the feeling that he has been pulled into a Sung dynasty painting, perhaps before the intense wisps of mineral pigment have dried upon the silk. From almost any vantage point, there are expanses of monochrome worthy of the brushes of Mi Fei or Kuo Hsi.

  The Skagit Valley, in fact, inspired a school of neo-Chinese painters. In the Forties, Mark Tobey, Morris Graves and their gray-on-gray disciples turned their backs on cubist composition and European color and using the shapes and shades of this misty terrain as a springboard, began to paint the visions of the inner eye. A school of sodden, contemplative poets emerged here, too. Even the original inhabitants were an introspective breed. Unlike the Plains Indians, who enjoyed mobility and open spaces and sunny skies, the Northwest coastal tribes were caught between the dark waters to the west, the heavily forested foothills and towering Cascade peaks to the east; forced by the lavish rains to spend weeks on end confined to their longhouses. Consequently, they turned inward, evolving religious and mythological patterns that are startling in their complexity and intensity, developing an artistic idiom that for aesthetic weight and psychological depth was unequaled among all primitive races. Even today, after the intrusion of neon signs and supermarkets and aircraft industries and sports cars, a hushed but heavy force hangs in the Northwest air: it defies flamboyance, deflates extroversion and muffles the most exultant cry.

  Yet one inhabitant of this nebulous and mystic land had had the audacity to establish a Dixie Bar-B-Cue. There is a colony of expatriated North Carolinians up in the timber country around Darrington: perhaps Mom was one of them. Her enterprise had not succeeded, obviously, and a disappointed and homesick Mom may have packed her curing salts and hot sauces and trucked on back to the red clay country where a good barbecue is paid the respect it deserves. At any rate, that aspect of the history of the cafe meant little to Amanda and John Paul Ziller for they were immune to the mystique of Southern pork barbecue. Neither had ever tasted the genuine article. Plucky Purcell had, of course, and he once remarked that “the only meat in the world sweeter, hotter and pinker than Amanda's twat is Carolina barbecue."

  Prior to signing a lease for Mom's Little Dixie, Ziller had warned Amanda of the rigors of her new environment. He explained to his bride that there was seldom a thunderstorm in Skagit country—simply not enough heat—so no matter whether the influe
nce storms had on her was good or ultimately evil, she could expect to be free of it as long as she resided in the Northwest. He told her that there would be butterflies in summer, but not nearly in the numbers to which she was accustomed in California and Arizona. Amanda knew, naturally, that cacti could not endure in these latitudes. And even their motorcycle would be impractical during the rainy season that lingered from October to May. “However,” John Paul comforted her, “in those ferny forests"—he pointed to the alder-thatched Cascade foothills—"the mushrooms are rising like loaves. Like hearts they are pulsing and swelling; fungi of many hues, some shaped like trumpets and some like bells and some like parasols and others like pricks; with thick meat white as turkey or yellow as eggs; all reeking of primeval protein; and some contain bitter juices that make men go crazy and talk to God."

  "Very well,” said Amanda. “Mushrooms it will be.” And it was.

  "Can you help me, John Paul? If anyone is capable of solving this riddle it is you.” From the tub of scented bubbles in which she soaked, Amanda extended her hand, palm up. The inscription had faded somewhat in the two years since it had so impertinently appeared. Ziller was forced to squint in order to register its finer details. He stared at it for a curiously long time. Finally, he said:

  “Off the coast of Africa there is a secret radio station. On a ship. A condemned freighter. Blackened by fire. Listing to starboard. Flying quarantine flags. It begins transmitting at midnight and until dawn plays the music of pre-colonial Africa, extremely rare pan-tribal recordings—if recordings they are: perhaps the sounds are live. Interspersed with this ancient music is commentary of a sort. In a totally unknown language. I mean it isn't even related to any known human tongue, existing or extinct. Some of the words are short and grunty, but others are very stretched-out and angular and sensual—like Modigliani nudes. Linguistic experts are completely stymied. They claim the “language” does not follow logical phonetic patterns. Yet thousands of blacks listen devotedly to the broadcasts, and while they will not say that they comprehend the commentary, they do not seem baffled by it, either.”

  Of the five thousand varieties of mushrooms that grow in the United States, approximately twenty-five hundred are found in western Washington. “I find those odds charming,” said Amanda, salivating and lacing her boots.

  Actually, there was little time for fungi those first few days at Mom's Little Dixie, although the Zillers did gather some meadow mushrooms on the golf course at Mount Vernon and filled another basket in a pasture on the river road.

  The meadow mushroom (Agaricus campestris to Madame Goody) begins life looking like a slightly imperfect Ping-Pong ball and matures into a skullish white pancake. Its gills are pink when young, gradually turning chocolate. Shamefully, it admits to being a first cousin of the Agaricus bisporus, the mushroom found in the produce section of supermarkets, and of Agaricus hortensis, the kind one buys in tin cans. True fungus fanciers look upon those two traitors with withering disdain for only that pair among all the thousands have allowed themselves to be domesticated. The campestris has a much more interesting flavor than the supermarket sellouts, is less dull in color and less conservative in shape. But it suffers as a result of the weaklings in its family—its flavor could never inspire the odes or awed burps that the more noble varieties of wild mushrooms command. Still, when sautéed with minced onion in a sour cream sauce and served over rice, it is comfortably close to succulent, as the Zillers would readily attest. Anyway, the campestris would have to do for now: Amanda and John Paul hadn't the hours yet to devote to the deep-woods hunt. They were too busy cleaning house.

  On the ground floor of Mom's Little Dixie there was an enormous L-shaped dining room defined by an enormous L-shaped counter, a huge kitchen, two fundamental toilets (sexually segregated) and a fair-sized windowless room that may have been used as a pantry. Upstairs (the stairs ascended from the rear of the kitchen), there was an apartment consisting of five spacious rooms and a bath. Out back, in the trees (remember that the cafe sat in a grove on the edge of croplands), there was a garage above which were two rooms that could be used for either storage or quarters.

  With pails and mops and brooms and rags and an alchemicus of detergents, scouring powders and waxes (to which well-paid marketing experts had given names such as Pow, Rid, Thrill, and Zap—carefully chosen for their simple violence), Amanda and John Paul set out to clear all those compartments of dirt, dust and debris. Mon Cul was put to work washing windows and although easily distracted and prone to slope, the baboon did get them clean. Even Baby Thor had duties: emptying dustpans and fetching materials. With painting and decorating to follow, the project was destined to take weeks.

  At first, Amanda was too occupied to pay much attention to John Paul's detachment; he's an introverted and private man, she thought, and he needs time alone in his head. But the bride, after all, was a female animal and when Ziller's contemplative mood held over into a second day and a third, she began to suspect the worst, wondering if he had turned remorseful about having married her. Eventually, she approached him with her fears, which he dispelled somewhat by balling her on the spot (dust rags beneath her bottom, her head on a mop). Then he confessed that he had been worrying about Plucky Purcell. Not a word had been heard from the Mad Pluck since that memorable morning-after near Sacramento.

  “He doesn't strike me as an excessively reliable sort,” consoled Amanda. “He's probably followed the charmer's pipes down some remote path of eroticism and simply forgotten all about us.” She then admitted that while she was not immune to Purcell's roguish charms, she found him something of a hypocrite: he seems aggressively preoccupied with the wickedness of the American economy, yet he is employed as a logger. And if one is going to pollute one's consciousness with hate, fear and blame, one might as well acknowledge that no single facet of the economic power structure, except for the oil ogre, has so brutally and insensitively pillaged America's natural resources as has the lumber industry. According to Amanda. So there.

  Thus, it became incumbent upon Ziller to offer in behalf of L. Westminster “Plucky” Purcell some

  BIOGRAPHICAL DATA I

  A career as a public servant became necessary for the youngest Purcell son when other avenues of accomplishment were closed to him as a result of particular indiscretions. Not that he wasn't allowed a second chance. To wit: The United States Navy felt that Plucky had the makings of an officer and a gentleman despite the notoriety that surrounded his Mexican vacation. Despite his silly grin. He was accepted for pilot's training and was graduated from the Pensacola air school, third in his class. Next came advanced training in jets; swifter, more complicated crafts which he flew with his by now customary aplomb. But fate lay in wait for Plucky in the shape of raisin bread.

  What irritated Ensign Purcell most gruffly about the navy was the hour which it deemed imperative for its junior pilots to quit their beds. “We are, through the good taste of Congress, legally gentlemen,” he argued, “and there are hours, specifically those between midnight and noon, when no proper gentleman would permit himself to be disturbed.” Still, Purcell did his duty, arising at five thirty each morning (despite having caroused through most of the soft Florida night) and attending to his toilet prior to visiting the officer's mess for breakfast. Now the mess officer (being, of course, in charge of the officers' mess) had decided, for reasons known only in his most secret and greasy heart, to serve toasted raisin bread each morning. No other kind of bread or biscuit did he provide his guests. Just raisin bread. Toasted. Ensign Purcell complained about this daily, pointing out that only a pervert or a geek would enjoy sweet gummy raisins mucking about in his mouthful of egg, though he said this none too loudly, for all around him the cream of American manhood was chomping away with gusto.

  Whatever had initially motivated the mess officer (and it could have been, in fairness, an innocent ploy), sadistic tendencies soon revealed themselves. Mess Officer gleefully ignored Purcell's protests and kept the raisin toast po
pping.

  Came the hour for satisfaction. From the Ship's Service, Purcell purchased a giant family-size tube of Colgate toothpaste. By the light of his desk lamp, he slit the bottom of the tube with a razor blade and patiently extracted is contents. The next evening he spent meticulously refilling the tube with uncolored oleomargarine. He then resealed it. And took it to breakfast. Mess Officer sensed that something was amiss when Purcell cheerfully refused eggs, took a tall stack of toast instead. Raisin bread toast.

  Plucky sat at a table in the center of the dining hall and unwrapped his big tube with the Colgate label. Nonchalantly he began squeezing out coils of slick white stuff onto the toast which, piece by piece, he devoured. Conversation in the mess was first paralyzed, then a fierce buzzing commenced. All eyes were on the madman eating toothpaste. Some of Purcell's fellow jet trainees were amused. Most were aghast. The older officers boiled immediately into a stiff-faced huff. Mess Officer observed this and knew that he must act.

  MESS OFFICER: Ensign, just what in hell do you think you're doing?

  ENSIGN PURCELL: Eating breakfast, sir. The toast is especially palatable this morning. Raisins plump and chewy. (Licks a curlicue of margarine off a grinning lip. Flashes a Colgate smile.) Cleans the breath while it cleans the teeth.