Another Roadside Attraction

by Tom Robbins

  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.”

  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 overfl
owing 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.