Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

  The young scientist in the checkered suit sighed again and let his stare drop from Amanda's eyes to the pleats in her short silk skirt. “Do you mind if I don't muck about in my early background? Oh, it's no big secret, it just isn't significant. I will tell you this, though: my department head at Johns Hopkins University wrote on my doctorate thesis—he rejected it and I never have gotten around to resubmitting it—'Brilliant but frivolous.' That seems to be the opinion of me in every scientific circle in which I've moved. Needless to say, I don't concur with that evaluation.”

  “Needless to say,” repeated Amanda.

  “Ahem. At any rate, my reputation for whimsy did not prevent me from getting a number of respectable jobs. A number of them.”

  “Were you fired?”

  “Not always. Only once, as a matter of fact. No, usually I quit because I didn't find the work satisfying.”

  “You dreamed of doing your own research.”

  “Yes. Yes, damn it. I dreamed of doing my own research.” Marvelous was annoyed that his plight seemed so familiar.

  “But you didn't have the money.”

  “No, I didn't have the money. What is this? Has my biography been on television?”

  “Many times. So, what did you do?”

  “Well, I received a strange break. That is, it seemed like a break at the time. An old acquaintance of mine, an airline pilot who flew out of Baltimore, got one of his stewardesses pregnant. He was a married man and she was too far along for an abortion. So, this pilot made me an offer. He offered to pay me fifteen thousand dollars to marry his girl friend. She wanted a husband, she wanted her baby to have a name. The flier introduced us and we went out on a date. She was a redhead. Named Nancy. A veritable gyroscope in bed. I decided to accept the offer. Hell, why not? With fifteen thou., plus what I had been able to save, I could move to the country, take two years off to research my own theories. Within two years, I probably could have pushed my work far enough along to receive a grant to finish it. Wow. All that and a glamorous wife and a new baby. I was really looking forward to settling down.” Marx Marvelous released yet another sigh and shifted his vision to the tsetse fly that lay in state like the fallen emperor of a planet unknown to the puny lens of man.

  “I gather that your scheme met with some obstacle,” said Amanda, moving across the room to unlatch the front door of the roadhouse. The zoo was now open for business.

  “Nancy and I were married and I quit my job. Rented a farmhouse on the Eastern Shore and began setting up a lab. But the pilot never paid off. Not a penny. He signed up for a transatlantic run and I never caught up with the son of a bitch. In three months I was back at work and most of my savings were down the tube. As for Nancy, we got along all right. She didn't talk much but she was quite affectionate. Nearly screwed my brains out is what I'm trying to say. Cheerful, too. But as soon as the baby was old enough to travel, she moved out. Let me without a word. The sad part of that was, I'd fallen in love with her, I really had. And that baby girl, why I was as proud of it as if it were my own. Why are you laughing?”

  “It's what you would call a feminine reaction. You wouldn't appreciate it even if I explained it.”

  “You're right. Anyway, if you think that part was funny, you'll go into hysterics when you hear what happened next. Nancy divorced me and the judge ruled that I pay alimony and child support. I'm obligated to pay it right now. Eighty bucks a week. Keeps me strapped. That's why I was reduced to subjecting my hemorrhoids to three thousand miles of Greyhound bounce instead of gliding west on a jet. What's more, that's why I changed my name when I dropped out of the Institute. I don't plan on paying any more.”

  “Changed your name?”

  “Why yes. Marx Marvelous is not a legitimate appellation.”

  “That's a pity. It's a handsome name.”

  “I'm glad you think so. I like it, too. Do you know how I arrived at it?”

  “I haven't the remotest idea.”

  “When I decided to take an alias, I wanted more than to apply a crust to the worn surface of my real identity. I wanted to make a statement, to express something through the unexploited medium of nom de plume. Being in a defiant frame of mind, I asked myself what it is that my fellows at the Institute—that, indeed, the average American males of my age and economic stratum—hate most. What do they most loathe? The answer I arrived at was Communism and homosexuality. Communists and homosexuals are the targets of the majority of the normal male's fear-honed barbs. Thus you can see how I in my rebellion selected the given name of 'Marx.' The surname was more difficult. Obviously, I couldn't call myself Marx Homosexual or Marx Queer or even Marx Fag. But I remembered having read in a syndicated newspaper column that the one word no red-blooded he-man would ever ever utter was 'marvelous.' 'Marvelous' is an expression reserved for interior decorators and choreographers and is as taboo in the bleachers, the sales meeting or the pool hall as a rose behind the ear or a velvet snood. So, I embraced that maligned term as if it were a victimized ancestor. And here I am: Marx Marvelous.” He paused while red monkey hands of shame tugged at his lids. “Isn't that a disgustingly romantic way for a scientist to behave?”

  Amanda, who until Marx's last remark had listened with rapture, looked at him the way an exasperated but tender mother looks at a child who has repeated a clumsy mistake. “Poor Marx Marvelous,” she cooed. “You do have a hang-up, don't you? Can't you understand that romanticism is no more an enemy of science than mysticism is? In fact, romanticism and science are good for each other. The scientist keeps the romantic honest and the romantic keeps the scientist human.”

  “You'll have to convince me of that,” said Marvelous stubbornly. But he appeared relieved.

  Amanda just shook her head from left to right. “At any rate,” she said, “you don't look any the worse for your misfortunes. Your eyes are very calm and humorous.” Once more she observed the bulge in his britches. “I find you attractive despite your woes and your wrongheadedness. With John Paul's permission, I'd enjoy getting to know you intimately.”

  Marx's nervous system was suddenly an amorphous screen upon which was projected a crushingly repetitious series of false starts. He felt himself being lowered into a vat of warm Karo syrup. His mind groped for some word to give his tongue, some direction to assign his hands, but he just kept sinking into the syrup and could respond to Amanda's suggestion is no coherent way. It was Amanda herself who ended the syrupy silence.

  “You were hurt by Nancy's desertion and you were dismayed, to say the least, by the financial consequences of your marriage-of-convenience. Yet you apparently didn't commit suicide or have a nervous breakdown or turn into an alcoholic brute. How do you account for your sane survival? Was it science that got you through hard times?”

  The subject was changed and Marx Marvelous was unsure whether he was disappointed or relieved. “Well,” he answered, “it damn sure wasn't the I Ching. I was fortunate in that when I went back to work after my abortive sabbatical I found a job that I was suited for. Yes, for the first time in my career I had employment that utilized my talents and, for a while at least, offered me some personal satisfaction. I'm talking about the East River Institute of Brain Power Unlimited.”

  Amanda, who was now sitting in a modified lotus before the tsetse fly shrine, said, “I believe you mentioned that place earlier. What is it?”

  “It's a think tank.”

  “Hmmmm. I've heard the expression but I'm afraid I don't really know what a think tank is.”

  “A think tank is an institution of closed learning, a miniature university whose students never come to class. The 'students,' in fact, are giant corporations, government agencies and foreign heads-of-state. But that doesn't tell you anything, does it? Look, it's this way. Life in the twentieth century is a great deal more complicated than the daily newspapers would have us believe, and as technology spreads in every direction—geometric as well as geographic—existence threatens to grow rapidly more complex. To cope with the nearly
devastating effects of technological growth, government and business—man, himself—must have access to heavier and heavier loads of information and must be able to sift and sort that data and apply the best or most relevant of it to present-day problems and to projections for the future. Luckily, there were a few enlightened men in government and industry, men who didn't accept the Candidean reality of the newspapers, who became aware some years ago of this situation. It was these men who stimulated the creation of think tanks—quiet, secure, scholarly institutions where resident thinkers of high intelligence, learned backgrounds and imaginative dispositions might, without commercial restrictions or academic fetters, mull over prospects in any number of given areas, shape hypothetical developments and recommend corresponding programs and actions. In this way, failures of planning, obsolete or premature notions of service and muddled or dangerously uninformed reactions to confrontations can possibly be avoided. Think tanks don't make the major decisions of the Western world but they advise and counsel those who do. They are terribly influential when it comes to policy-making in this country and abroad.

  “East River Institute in New York was one of the first think tanks and its clients are very big and important. It was exciting working there. What a collection of brains! The guy who runs the place, the director, delights in hiring what he refers to as 'genius kooks,' very brainy thinkers who are too creative or eccentric or temperamental or restless to get along well in industry, government or universities. That's how I got hired, I guess. A Johns Hopkins professor recommended me, even though I don't have my Ph.D., on the grounds that I was 'brilliant but erratic.' Well, maybe he was right. Because it was a job I liked considerably, one that I had aptitude for. Of course, I wasn't one of the big guns there, you understand; I was a junior member of the staff. I performed well, though, and got along fine. Until. Until . . . my last assignment. Then I became confused about . . . a number of issues . . . and due to . . . things . . . on my mind, I decided to leave. That was a few weeks ago.”

  A couple of truckers had come into the roadhouse, but they retreated when John Paul advised them of the lack of their favorite morning drug: caffeine. They growled over their shoulders as they left, wary as bears. Otherwise, the Capt. Kendrick Memorial etc. Entertained no customers.

  “Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty,” said Amanda. “I have the feeling that I'm about to learn what motivated you to forsake your career and seek refuge in our little menagerie. Here, why don't you sit down.” She patted the floor beside her exposed mackerel thigh.

  In turn, Marx Marvelous patted his backside. “My delicate condition prescribes that I remain standing,” he said. “It's really more comfortable this way.”

  “As you wish,” Amanda smiled. She tried to pull down her hem, to smooth it over her thighs, but due to the brevity of her red-and-silver skirt and due to the position in which she sat, it was impossible to conceal her pantied crotch. “Please go on. What was your last assignment?”

  “Normally,” said Marvelous, “the East River Institute concerns itself with probing relatively specific problems and situations. For example, the State Department and the Defense Department signed a joint contract with us for a study of Iceland. They wanted to know where Iceland was going in the modern world, whether she would be likely to constitute a threat. Considering her history and her racial character, her current state of economic growth, scientific activity and political ambitions, what should be America's long-range policy in regards to Iceland? In our twice-weekly seminars, where we would pool the results of individual research and think sessions, we dined on fish heads and mead and piped in rimur music, that's how immersed in Iceland we were. We even turned the air conditioner up as high as it would go to get the feel of the climate. The assistant director caught a terrible cold and missed ten days. That study was top secret, naturally, and I'm violating security by mentioning it, but what the hell. You see, generally, what kind of projects we undertook?”

  “Yes, I see,” said Amanda. “It sounds ever so important.”

  Was Amanda giggling or clearing her sinuses? Marx Marvelous could not tell which.

  “It is necessary that man extend his vision beyond the political realities of the present,” said Marx, somewhat defensively. “When science can assist him in that, it is its duty. At any rate, to get back to the point, about six or seven months ago the Institute contracted for a study with a markedly different flavor. It happened this way: some troubled governmental bigwig hit upon the idea that the United States was going astray. Surveying our internal turmoil and strife, he concluded (unlike the newspaper mentalities who view our various problems as isolated events) that America's many eruptions of discontent were interconnected and symptomatic of a single pervasive illness. He decided that the U.S. had broken with the Protestant ethic that nurtured it; that we as a nation had 'fallen from grace,' as he put it. He detected political, economic and cultural degeneration. And at back of degeneration he saw a bankruptcy of traditional Christian values.

  “Now, although his analysis was none too sophisticated, it was a monument of lucidity compared to the newspaper addicts' fragmented conception of events as separate entities with separate causes, or to the vastly more stupid judgment of those ignoramuses who view every defect in our system as a manifestation of the Communist conspiracy. His viewpoint may have been fuzzy and naive, but at least it was encompassing—and in a nonconspiratorial way. It approached the gates of rational thought. Didn't enter them, mind you, but nevertheless approached.

  “This gentleman convinced several other well-placed figures in government of the validity of his critique. Whereupon, under the auspices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, the government elected to spend several hundred thousand dollars of tax money to diagnose itself. It asked East River Institute to find out what's wrong with America. Why have traditional values been deflated? Why are we as a people guilt-ridden, anxious and prone to violence? Why is there suspicion that a nation of unprecedented wealth and power is tattering at its edges, coming apart at its seams? Where has flown the Great Speckled Bird of Christianity under whose wings we were once so secure? Why, with all our bombs and churches, are we afraid? What is to blame for the unmistakable evidence of social decay? You're laughing again.” This time, there was no doubt.

  “Yes. I am,” said Amanda. “But don't let that stop you. Continue. Please.” One lone, long pubic scroll had sprung loose from its place beneath her panties and unfurled against the creamy field of her thigh like a banderole. Marx Marvelous could not take his eyes off of it. He fancied riding into battle with that curly pennant as his flag. For a moment, the glory of it threatened to curtail his speech. “Please go on,” Amanda insisted.

  “Umm. Yes. Well, I'm concerned that I'm taking up too much of your time. Shouldn't you be helping John Paul in the kitchen?”

  Amanda checked the Puerto Rican clock on the wall, the clock with the crucifix coo-coo and the inlaid slums. “In fifteen or twenty minutes we probably will collect a rush of customers,” she predicted. “Then I'll have to take charge of the zoo and maybe help behind the counter. Otherwise, since we serve only hot dogs and juice, there aren't a great deal of preparations to make. So please go on with your story.”

  “Okay. It was like this. The Institute undertook to learn why the United States was going astray. We considered economic reasons, political reasons and social reasons, but our investigational emphasis was on the religious. Taking our cue from the government official (sorry I can't tell you his name), we sought to learn if a spiritual breakdown might indeed be responsible for America's disunity and commotion. It wasn't an unreasonable hypothesis, you know. After all, an individual who is spiritually secure is not usually an individual who goes to pieces easily. The same might be true of a nation.

  “My part in the study consisted largely of field work. Because of my boyish appearance (ahem), I was chosen to do undercover research among the young. I spent, oh, five months or more in the field. I infiltra
ted church groups and Sunday-school classes; played a lot of bingo, sang in a choir and drank ginger-ale-and-lime-sherbet punch until my bladder bubbled: man, those church socials! Conversely, I also hung around campuses, communes, rock festivals and ghettoes where I danced, sat-in, picketed, smoked a little grass, helped stone a police car and burn three deans and two judges in effigy. Those activities were, in all honesty, more fun than the bingo.”

  “Shocking, Mr. Marvelous. Absolutely shocking.”

  “All right, spare me your sarcasm. I thought you might be interested in knowing that it was while running around with a far-out crowd on New York's Lower East Side that I bumped into Nearly Normal Jimmy, whom I had counseled years before when he was in Johns Hopkins' High-School-Students-of-the-Year program. At seventeen, I myself had been named High School Science Student of the Year. As a twenty-four-year-old graduate student, I was a counselor in the program when Nearly Normal was selected High School Business Student of the Year. He was a miracle, that kid. Could have been another J. P. Morgan. Why, later, when he was a sophomore in college, he devised a system where-by his marketing professor was able to earn seventy-five thousand dollars on the stock market. Unfortunately, some crazy damn hermit down there in Arizona fed the kid some weird toadstools and after that he dropped out of school and he's never been the same since. He made a little money in show business, I guess, but the last time I saw Jimmy he was higher than a star. Hardly recognized me. Said he was on his way to the Himalayas to show Tarzan movies to the Dalai Lama. Poor nearsighted bastard. But I guess he isn't the only promising young mind to blow his fuses with drugs. It's a shame, though. That old hermit should have been tarred and feathered.”

  Amanda sat still as an egg, but if Marx Marvelous thought she was in silent commiseration for the drug-blown Nearly Normal Jimmies of the world, he was mistaken. She was, instead, in revere; revering the memory of Ba Ba, his bat cave, his ropes of mushrooms drying over the fire. Dear Ba Ba. You were the first one, the very first. O the wonders of Bow Wow Mountain.