Routes

by John Okas

  She holds the precious little one to her breast and swears he’s the most beautiful thing she has ever seen. “I think I’ll call you Corn Dog.”

  But beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Grey Fox, the cowardly brave, sees beige rather than gold. Since he did not find the Buffalo Man, he has gone around the reservation trying to downplay the damage done to his reputation by dismissing his wife’s lover as the figment of a shrewish imagination. All along he has taken full responsibility for her condition, but now, seeing his wife has given birth to a baby whose only Indigenous trait is his mother’s cheekbones, he abandons saving face and flies into a rage.

  “A half-black paleface!” he shouts, and then more quietly, “I can’t even pretend to be this monster’s father.”

  He runs off to talk things over with the family doctor.

  Green Fly, the old medicine man, happens to be Grey Fox’s father’s brother. “Uncle,” he cries, “what medicine do you have to help me even the score for the shame that my wife has caused me? I couldn’t find this damn Buffalo Man to separate him from his ear of corn, yet I have the persistent feeling that I want to separate somebody from something.”

  Unfortunately for Cactus Flower there is no separation of church, state, and medical authority in the Running Rabbit society.

  The doctor thinks it over and says, “Nephew, there are old customs practiced back before the palefaces made reservations for us. One was that any child of mixed blood must undergo a trial by ordeal before he could be accepted as one of us. It’s about time we return to the old Running Rabbit way of weeding underdogs out of the mating population.”

  Green Fly and Grey Fox take a few fortifying belts of firewater courage, and ready to perform radical surgery, they go with the medicine man’s head medical assistant Passenger Pigeon and three strong male nurses to the sun-dried mud that houses mother and child. The medicine man informs Cactus Flower of the old ways. “You understand that this is nothing personal, but to keep the seed of our people strong, pure, and, if adulterated, at least not by unfit races with inferior seed, I’m going to take this baby from you and drop him back out in the desert where you say that this Buffalo Man left him in you. The test will be to see if he can survive. If, after nine days, he is alive, he will be accepted as a Running Rabbit and held up to heaven for the Great Spirit’s blessing. On the other hand, if he meets his end we will know that he was an enemy of the ways of our fathers. Not a red man, better off a dead man, I say. Now, woman, for heaven’s sake, cooperate. He holds out his arms for the baby.

  Cactus Flower, prickly as a desert pear, cuts in with her sharp mouth and bites the long arm of Running Rabbit law coming for her baby. “Not the desert, Green Fly! My baby is too young to be keeping company with the snakes and scorpions, not to mention the hungry cats that come down from the mountains, and there is no wind like the desert wind, the heat in the day and the cold at night, and what about those pesty white people who want to steal our reservations, those who swear that the only good Running Rabbit is a dead one?”

  The doctor orders his male nurses to seize the patient and separate the afflicted part from her. With Corn Dog gone Cactus Flower is fit to be tied, and gagged as well, and has to be, with itchy rawhide rope. The shrew’s razor sharp teeth bite through the gag and she spits on the medicine man’s power pouch, the little leather purse in which he keeps his holy power plants. Sacrilege! “You old cootie! You’re just jealous that I found someone who could do the trick. All of you, you have no balls, ganging up on one little woman weak from childbirth like this! No wonder all your wives were clamoring for double helpings of acorns and wild oatmeal to feed you.”

  The men all flinch to have their secret blurted out like this. Green Fly warns her of the serious consequences in the afterlife for going against the Great Spirit’s wishes like this. It’s not a far cry from sacrilege to blasphemy. “Your Great Spirit is probably the biggest fairy of you all. I don’t care if I ever see the happy hunting and gathering grounds. I would just as soon spend my after life underground, down in a burrow like a dog, where men can at least do what the animals do naturally.”

  It is all that Grey Fox and the three nurses have to do to keep the patient in bed for the nine days that are the terms of Corn Dog’s trial of solitary exposure. For nine days the crying of Cactus Flower can be heard all the way to hell. She continues to bite through gags, telling all she knows about the men, and cursing the Great Spirit. She calls on the wily Coyote to protect her baby.

  The old wives sit together in the tannery and pray with her. “So be it,” they say to the Coyote, “these odds are so uneven that the only way the baby will survive is by your cunning.”

  When the nine days are up Cactus Flower is untied. She runs straight down the old dusty trail, right to the spot where the Buffalo Man sat. A miracle! She finds her baby not only intact, but fat and happy. Off in the near distance she sees a coyote mother licking the faces of her litter of pups.

  “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” says Cactus Flower taking her baby back to the village, kissing him every step of the way.

  When Green Fly sees the underdog victorious, back on the breast of his mother, he tells her, “Maybe your baby has survived the trial by ordeal, but you have made the Great Spirit angry by putting the Coyote above him. Perhaps the desert dog protects the boy, but who will protect you from the Great Spirit’s wrath?”

  “The Great Spirit can kiss my ass, Green Fly, you lousy drunken son of a bitch,” she says and spits in his eye.

  The old wives have nobody but the Great Spirit to blame when two days later Grey Fox, in a drunken rage, thinking himself an authorized agent of the Almighty’s retributive power, strikes Cactus Flower dead with his warrior’s axe, and is just about to do the same to the baby that falls from her arms when the old wives, wise to trouble themselves, show up in the nick of time with a federal marshal from the Land of the Free to save Corn Dog’s life.

  If Grey Fox were a white man pleading “scourge of God,” “crime of passion,” or “temporary insanity” as his defense, it might have been considered second degree murder. But the brave does not get off lightly. The judge is drunk and half asleep when he listens to the evidence. He has already made up his mind to hand down the death sentence.

  “Hang him high!”

  On the Count of Three

  But Grey Fox, at the end of his rope, won’t bring our great-grandmother back to life. The underdog is now left a ward of the clan, clucked over by all the old wives.

  More than ever the medicine men consider him a hex, and want to dispatch him hence. Green Fly and Passenger Pigeon, his head assistant, next in line for the post of chief medical man, talk it over. “Any child who passes the test of solitary exposure is in reality no underdog. In fact, if anything, this brazen baby has supernatural allies with the power to destroy us both. Whatever it is that protects him, first in the wilderness and then from Grey Fox, is probably angry with us. It’s risky to let him stay. He’s a sure threat to our authority. Already there is a cult among the people who believe that this half breed is a god.”

  It is no light thing to get rid of a child who is the son of a buffalo and a shrew, and who has been adopted by a coyote and some old hens.

  “Then what to do?” Green Fly wonders.

  Passenger Pigeon has a great idea. “This little devil has proven he is special by staying alive in the rough. Sorcerers need apprentices as much as medical men need assistants. What say we give this baby to a wandering holy man, a shaman, who, when he moves will take our problem somewhere else with him? Even those indulgent old hens will have to admit that such a placement is a good thing for the baby, that the position of sorcerer’s apprentice is a privileged and powerful one, and appropriate under the circumstances.”

  “Good thinking, Passenger Pigeon,” says Green Fly. “But shamans are a rare breed of an endangered species. It’s hard to find one anymore.”

  Once upon the time in the Home of the Brave, even among strictl
y organized tribes such as the Running Rabbits, there were many movers and shakers in the spirit world, priests who went wild and ranged with the animals, visionary mad men who took life on the hoof and shook snake rattles at the rolling thunder on high and did the one step, the two step, the shake and the shimmy with buffalo, deer, and antelope. But this is the twentieth century, the herds are thin and those who follow the trails that link animals to heaven must move to the beat of different shakers.

  Green Fly and Passenger Pigeon send letters to the medical men in six other tribes, offering a reward for a tip on where to find one. In six months they get a lead from the Cloud People, who live up in the valley of unforgettable rock formations.

  “His name is Hot Springs,” Passenger Pigeon tells Green Fly the news. “And he doesn’t exactly play with the deer and the antelope. He’s an arts and craftsman who weaves the yarns of animal spirits into woolen blankets. The herd he follows is the paleface. He travels on the trading post circuit with his weavings. Who knows? We may even be able to make a few bucks on this deal. But we’ve got to hurry, he won’t be there forever.”

  The old wives don’t like the sound of it, but send one of their own, Lonely Trout, the most agile old hen in the tannery, to go with the medical men on the three-day, three-night hike to the valley. The way there is as rugged as it is unforgettable, no picnic for Lonely Trout who carries the baby in a little wool backpack, but baby Corn, a born mover, however undergoing separation for the third time in his short life, sings happily, “yuh-yuh-yuh,” all the way. He kicks his legs and shakes the beans out of his gourd rattle.

  At the edge of the valley, at the base of a towering chimney-shaped rock, the Running Rabbit party comes upon what it is out for, the sorcerer’s tepee. Even Lonely Trout, a nimble hand with a needle and thread, is impressed with the quality of the craftsmanship. The conical tent is deer hide, pieced together into forms of exacting symmetrical design. Converging seams run to the apex and meet perfectly there. Within those triangles are stitched wheels within wheels. The inner circles are crazy-quilted with remnants of hide, patterns that represent the wiggly quality of organic matter within the law and order of the cosmic machinery.

  “Craftsmanship like this is from the old world before the paleface came to the Home of the Brave and hurried the craft up by giving bucks to the artists,” says Lonely Trout. Then she goes around back like a young Running Rabbit girl and peeks at the occupant. She sees an older man, sitting on a blanket, dressed in wool, buckskin and the feathers of a warrior, peacefully smoking a ceremonial pipe. He is surrounded by his holy regalia and his weavings, a crop of obvious quality. The old wife is impressed.

  “Didn’t I tell you?” says Passenger Pigeon, pleased with himself that his solution will please everyone.

  Lonely Trout kisses Corn Dog goodbye. “No matter what, little one, you’ll be better-off off the reservation. Even if you don’t learn magic, at least you’ll learn a trade.”

  She turns the bundle over to Green Fly who goes to the tepee and wiggles the flap.

  “Who’s there?” grumbles a voice from inside.

  “It’s Green Fly, a man of spirit such as yourself, come to show you something that may interest you.”

  “Shoo!” says the voice from within.

  Green Fly enters anyway.

  “Didn’t you hear me say ‘shoo’?”

  The medicine man shows him the baby. “See how cute he is!”

  Corn Dog sells himself when he reaches out for a snake tail the shaman has on his table and shakes it in his tiny fist.

  Hot Springs says “shoo” for the third time, but doesn’t mean it. He looks at the child with the gold in his complexion and the subtle glow in his once-in-a-blue-moon eyes.

  “Not only is he cute but he’s tough too.” says Green Fly detecting the sorcerer’s interest at last. “I tell you, he’s been through the trial of solitary exposure and was saved in the nick of time from the axe of one of our bravest bucks by a hunch some old hens had. I thought such a survivor might be useful to a wandering well of wisdom such as yourself. Alone in the world like you are, you have no one else to pass your secrets on to. After all, they will be lost.”

  Green Fly is dead right, but Hot Springs says, “Maybe.”

  Once again one of our antecedents is on the trading block. Hot Springs does know how to drive a hard bargain. “I might be willing to take this baby off your hands. How much is it worth to you to get rid of him?”

  “Worth to me? You are insane. I know you see how valuable this baby is. You’re not fooling me. You’re not going to get something for nothing. I was thinking of some sort of a trade.”

  “Here is a bag of buffalo chips,” says the sorcerer, “a perfect sacrificial barbecue for you everytime.”

  Not much, but it’s a start. At least this time the trader will not have to pay thirty silver dollars to push the deal through.

  “I’m looking for a fairer trade than that,” says the medicine man, “I had to cancel appointments for a whole week to come here and show you this marvel. Do you know how much income I’ve lost?”

  “All right,” says Hot Springs, “I’ll throw in a few pieces of holy regalia as well. Here are two puppy dog tails and a thing I believe is the jawbone of an asp.”

  “Certainly a sorcerer’s apprentice is worth more than some old bones you picked up at a rummage sale. Come on, I haven’t got all day. This baby’s worth at least five of your finest weavings. What do you say?”

  “One. It’s my final offer.”

  “Four.”

  “Two.”

  On the count of three they come to an agreement. The crafty sorcerer turns over a trio of his wild and woolliest weavings and receives the complacent infant into his lap.

  The Mythic Lonely Ranger

  When Green Fly flies off, Hot Springs stands up straight and tall and brushes the grey powder out of his hair. Under the cloak of the old geezer is a youthful brave, about thirty, soft-skinned and delicate, with a dry smile and a salty sharpness on his tongue.

  “Kid,” he says, “you’ll learn about disguises soon enough. In both the wise man business and the naive craft game the appearance of youth is no asset. What pays is the seasoned look, experience adds up to authenticity in the mind of the customer. And if you can make them think that you’re crazy, you can catch them off guard.”

  Indeed, by his actual looks you would not think Hot Springs to be a first-rate sorcerer, at any rate, not like the amazing ones you read about in books, the remarkable men of the old southwest who fly through the air and shake the hills with their farts. Whereas the mythic lonely ranger is wild-eyed and wooly, shaggy as a buffalo, touched in the mind by devil’s root and locoweed, Hot Springs, the real thing, is cold and calculating, slick and sharp. Whereas the story book master might be fluent in the languages of beasts, the one in the flesh is not one for too much talking to the animals, it’s the forks of the paleface tongue that intrigue him more. He has Inklish down to a tee.

  “Let me tell you three things every good sorcerer should know, Kid. One is don’t be a fool for appearances. Two is the sentimental don’t survive. And three is always be ready to get up and go.”

  With that Hot Springs puts on a pair of thick wool trousers and a woolen overcoat, and packs his little apprentice in a sack on his back so he can hold his hands as free as any beast master. Then he lights his peace pipe and tosses the lit fire stick into the magical tepee, sending up in smoke all his weavings, paraphernalia, holy regalia and household gods.

  “There’s plenty more where that came from,” he says over his shoulder to the bouncing baby as he takes the first step on a long journey north. “Easy come, easy go, that’s the way I look at it. If only Green Fly had offered you for nothing he could have had the lot of it. Three weavings! Can you imagine? As if it weren’t obvious you were worth more than wool.”

  Hot Springs is a man of clear direction and no special nation. In his school of sorcery basic training is still basic. Marketin
g comes second, first things first. An interstate pedestrian, he walks the tracks that are wild and unpopular, he tumbles with the tumbleweed through the rocky wastelands, he cuts through the forests where he knows the secret trails that zig this way and zag that, he goes the roundabout way around the whispering waters, he enters the mountains where every mile forward means several up and down. Successful in avoiding all traces of civilization, Indigen and non-, camping out a week here a week there around the scenic monuments of the Beehive State, Hot Springs familiarizes his apprentice with the world behind the world, the old geologic order on which social institutions, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, are founded.

  Such a rough route makes the long journey three times longer. Six hundred miles becomes eighteen. Months pass. When he leaves the State of Enchantment, Corn Dog can do nothing but hang on to Hot Springs’ back, gurgle in his ears, and shake his own rattlesnake-tail toy, but by the time Hot Springs enters the Gem State the boy is on his own two feet, skipping up and down through the hilly back woods.

  The wayfarers come upon a lodge where the spruce trees tower up to eighty feet. Set into a hillside is a comfortable two-story place made of machine-milled lumber on a foundation of fieldstone and cement. A stone chimney bellows smoke, evidence of a home fire burner. From the porch springs a small yellow mutt with brown spots crooning “yahoo!” as he comes to meet the homeward bound sorcerer and his apprentice. Corn Dog runs up the hill in figure eights. Everywhere that he goes “yahoo” is sure to follow.

  Next, a slim white man, also about thirty, comes out of the cabin waving greetings. He’s wearing a red silk kerchief tied around his neck, and sports a buckskin shirt and leather pants. He has rings on all his fingers and his wrists clank with turquoise inlaid silver bracelets.

  “Oh, dear Hot Springs! I’ve been worried sick. I didn’t know if you’d ever be coming back. It’s been over a year.”