Routes

by John Okas

  “I see it,” says the boy.

  “If you count them you’ll find thirteen stars above its head, thirteen stripes on its belly, thirteen arrows in one claw and a branch with thirteen leaves in another, just as on the pyramid there are thirteen steps.”

  “Did those great white fathers figure thirteen for a lucky number?”

  “Obviously, they used it to count their lucky stars, but, believe it or not, many people on the Freeway nowadays feel otherwise. Some even think the number has something to do with the devil.”

  “Pop was forever telling me to watch out for the majority of whites, how they say they believe one thing and act a whole different way. It makes sense then, sort of, that the white man would have a deep distrust of his own lucky number. And Pop always says the dollar is one symbol that has power in the here and now. You don’t need to stretch your imagination to see how it works. Just take it and run.”

  “Of course, Hot Springs speaks the truth,” says Virgil, “but the dollar is a thing of great symbolic beauty, too. It points a finger to a better world. The stripe of the Freeway spirit is for straightness, the stars are for idealism.” He holds up a cruet of green oil, then pours it on his lettuce. “The branch is an olive branch, symbol of tranquility and cultivation. Taken together with the arrows it means the eagle is to be equally powerful in both war and peace. Green means ‘go’, ‘god’, in green we trust. Divine care, protection and direction. The message in the eagle’s mouth is that the currency of the Land of the Free makes one out of many. See how big the word ‘one’ is along the buck’s spine? As an ideal the Freeway is not just about a union of political states, it’s also about different states of mind, single, united in interdependence, trained on power and wisdom. The Freeway is about more than just government by the people, it’s about the individual as sovereign.”

  “Pop always says that money’s what you need to get ahead on the Freeway.”

  “That’s a popular view, Son. And I’ve heard people say it’s the root of all evil, too. For the Freeway to be worth its salt each of us must be able to go by a self-made set of values. Personally, I don’t hold actual money as sacred, only the good it represents.”

  “You mean I could burn this hundred and ten dollars you gave me, keep this single as a symbol, or even nothing at all, and still be protected by the idea of it?”

  “I say, money helps those who don’t have it and hurts those who do, but love always makes life worthwhile. Better not to waste it for the sake of free expression. Certainly, it would be a better statement to give the bundle to the poor. There are orphans that never had your advantages.”

  Virgil lowers his voice and tells Corn Dog that the Sprucewood Lodge is not the only secret society he belongs to. He is also a member of an organization known as the Mystic Knights of the Almighty Buck, a group of men who take contributions for the poor. “We Mystic Knights welcome poverty and value failure.”

  “What?”

  “We welcome poverty because losing it is a pleasant surprise, and value failure because our lives are not everything to us. What are our bodies if not the source of our death? Son, only he who is willing to lay down his life for the love of the world is worth being entrusted with it. But for a pledge fee of one hundred dollars you can become one of us, if you like.”

  The Mystic Knights of the Almighty Buck, eh? Corn Dog likes the sound of it. “What do you think about that, Pop?” The boy asks the guardian within, but the subtle Hot Springs, finishing up a plate of rolled veal cutlets, belches and says, “What? Did someone say something? I wasn’t paying attention, Kid. Ah, where else but on the Freeway could an invisible Elk Person like me enjoy the food of the Eternal City?”

  Connected in His Mind

  Bright and early the following morning, Virgil takes Corn Dog up Merton Street to a small dilapidated red brick building that houses the Blessed Sacrament Orphanage. They are greeted by a slim man wearing a floor length black garment with a starchy white collar. It does not surprise Corn Dog to find a man wearing a dress. Around the house Whitman and Hot Springs often wore shirts that covered them to their feet. Virgil introduces him to Father Dodge, a priest of the Church. Dodge advises his visitors not to get too close because he has a terrible cold. Corn Dog can see that. The poor man has a handkerchief permanently pressed to his nose, mopping up the mess there.

  Dodge has squinting eyes, a crooked smile and mannerisms that Corn Dog finds familiar, although he just can’t seem to place them. He gives Corn Dog and Virgil a tour of the cramped sleeping quarters, four to a bedroom, he shows them peeling paint, a crack in the furnace, and some stew in the kitchen. “My mother’s recipe,” Father Dodge says, shaking his head, blowing his nose, and smiling. “To cut costs I have to use horsemeat and beef byproducts rather than beef.” There is a mixture of anger, resignation, and absurd humor in his voice, and Corn Dog cannot tell whether he is joking or not. Dodge walks them outside where a dozen or so ragamuffin children are playing in a yard; little lambs with dirty faces in a small fenced-in coop. “Mush!” he says, as he calls his flock to table.

  Corn Dog hands over ten tens for those motherless children less fortunate than himself and swears to henceforth love the dollar not for its buying capacity, but because it is a thing of symbolic beauty, a meditation on the concept of physical and spiritual wholeness and well being, an ideal for a freer way of life than presently realized. He vows to trust in the One, and give away the many.

  Thus he is initiated, through Virgil and Father Dodge, into the Mystic Knights of the Almighty Buck, an informal, poetic lodge, counter to the cultural mainstream, and affiliated with that wing of the Church that protects the needy and performs good works. He keeps the extra buck his Uncle Virgil threw his way for good luck and one from the elevenfold of tens. It is enough for the train ride back home and to give the trainman an extra couple not to put him in half-breed class but to let him ride in peace like the other passengers.

  His homecoming leads him through Zion where he takes a moment to collect his thoughts before he sets out for the last long leg of his journey, those three hundred miles he must do on foot to get back to the spruce hills and Hot Springs and Whitman. He takes a deep breath and smells a dainty, musty nectar, like fresh peaches in the air, and he hears a ringing in his ears, a sensational supersonic whistle that spreads joy all over his body and dissolves his mind into the same vision of time and eternity that he had as a lone wolf sitting on the backstage steps of the Top Hat Club, listening to the jazz inside. Once more there is a girl in his mind, a figure he longs to hold, a face he longs to kiss, and once more she is gone, receded back into the aural dimension, before he can fix an inner eye on her. He could, of course, stick around Zion, follow his nose and ears and see what develops, but he knows that to complete the initiation he must come full circle and bring home the bacon. Another time.

  On his return, Corn Dog is greeted with many hugs and kisses. He tells his guardians about every step of the way. When he gets to the part where uncle Virgil told him about the fisher king’s dish, the golden fleece and so forth, Hot Springs begins to mumble; as he goes into Virgil’s explanation of the Almighty Buck and how he taught him the meaning of a dollar, that it was more important to appreciate the beauty of it as a token than its actual buying power, that he might just as well give it away or burn it, the rumblings of Hot Springs increase; when he announces that he gave one hundred of his dollars to Virgil’s friend, Father Dodge at the Blessed Sacrament orphanage and himself became a member of the Mystic Knights, Hot Springs blows his top.

  He yells, and pounds his fist on the table. “What kind of buffalo shit did our white brother fill you with? You were supposed to come back with a reward in your pocket and some healthy aggressiveness where money was concerned. Fuck and crap, he ruined you.”

  Whitman shakes his head disapprovingly. He says to Hot Springs in a low steady voice. “Surely, Partner, as you call yourself a shaman, you must agree that the nation of mind which exists within the bo
undaries of the union of political states is the more important of the two, that the dollar is more significant as a unifying principle and at its worst when it becomes a means of free marketplace gambling, shallow consumer gratification, and class exploitation.”

  But Hot Springs will have none of his partner’s pretty theories. “Oh, go fuck off will you, Partner, I don’t have to agree to any such shit!”

  “Dear Brother Hot Springs, why do you have to be so stuck on this point? Deep down inside you you know the modern industrial state is better in theory than in practice, that the individual enjoyed a more fulfilling life in Indigenous cultures. Freedom of enterprise is most valuable because it provides a solid symbolic framework for the contemplation of a pilgrim’s progress. And have some compassion. Not every Indigen has the mind and the spirit for business you have. The state ought to provide all native Freewayfarers with a welfare program—”

  “Welfare? Go take a shit, Whitman. How about compensation? You steal all the land and water, and you howl bloody murder if an Indigen takes something he needs to get along in the new, free way. If you’re serious about helping us, get the fuck out of here, back to whatever white devil land you came from.”

  “Now, now. I didn’t steal anything.”

  “Your way, we won’t have anything left in the Home of the Brave but a bunch of drunks. Those that can’t figure out which way the wind’s blowing and how to make the white man’s system work for them might just as well die. It’s your white man prejudice and assurance of being right and being in power that won’t let you take what I’m saying seriously. I swear if you or Virgil or any other rich white bastard puts any more progressive or commonist crap in the Kid’s head I’m going to get out my scalping knife. The Mystic Knights of the Almighty Buck! What an idea! Kid, with a dollar in your pocket you’re a card carrying member of the white brother’s ordinary everyday society, more powerful than any mystic knight or Indigen shaman. If you got it, flaunt it, you’ll have brothers and sisters everywhere.

  “Whitman, can’t you get it through your thick white brain? The Kid’s coming from another place. He’s an underdog, he doesn’t have a rich daddy to leave him money, a nice sprucewood lodge, and an income-producing business! Goddamn you, man, you never even went hungry a day in your life. I owe my life to a solid dollar in my pocket, not to any high and mighty flying horseshit mythology. Without money for payoffs and lawyers, the basic freedoms, guaranteed by law to all men, aren’t worth a buffalo pie. And wait until I get my hands on that egghead Virgil. I thought the man had some buck in his balls about business. Why, he’s a cream puff! He was supposed to show the Kid the hard facts of the business end of the counter, let him see what working for a living is like. Instead the Kid comes back softer than when he left, with his head up in the air loaded with of a lot of fancy fluff that blinds him to the fact that in this country the grass of home is only as green as the color of money behind it, especially when your skin isn’t white. He needs practical education and buying power not fairy tales if he’s going to have a plot he can call his own! Shit and corruption! Kid, if they take your land to build a road, the least they can do is give you a truck in return.”

  Whitman is visibly shaken by his shouting partner, but he tries to remain in control. “I respect your right to disagree, Hot Springs, I just wish you could be more of a gentleman about it. And you needn’t go on so long. We take your point.”

  “Is that patronization I detect in your voice, Partner? Oh, so now the truth comes out! Well, you see I’m just a crazy wild Indigen after all, in need of my generous white brother’s help. You asshole! Fruitcake!”

  “Don’t you be talking that way to me.” Whitman says extra firmly to hide the shaking in his voice. “And I hate it when you use that kind of language at all, especially in front of Cornie. Cornie, don’t listen to him. Stealing is wrong. Now come on, let’s all calm down, let me fix you a peace pipe, Partner.”

  Hot Springs is in no mood to smoke. He gruffly tells his partner exactly where he can shove it. The remark puts Whitman over the brink. It has a paralyzing effect on him. He sits up in his chair, clasps his hands, as if in prayer, seals his lips with the tips of his index fingers, and looks at Hot Springs with his eyes glazed over with the tears of being unfairly offended.

  “That’s just more of your bullshit, Whitman, crying when you run out of good arguments.”

  This debate has been going on between the men since they met one another, but this is the first time the happy Sprucewood Lodge is torn in half by such emotion. While Whitman sits in a defiant silence, Hot Springs kicks chairs into the wall and continues to swear how his people have been betrayed and mistreated by the white man enough.

  Corn Dog listens to Hot Springs rant and rave, shake the timbers and rattle the walls of the lodge while Whitman sits in his chair and cries. Over all he sides with Whitman, but he sympathizes with Pop’s pain. Corn Dog himself, only part Indigen, often enough feels furious and in need of letting off some steam, as when he kicked cars and dodged trollies in the City by the Bay. He knows that the angry Hot Springs will cool down, that in his heart of hearts he will see Whitman’s point, as he always does: money isn’t everything. People like Whitman, and Virgil, and Hot Springs and himself are here to let it not become the only thing that makes the world go around. There’s got to be something finer: love, ideas, beauty, cooperation, peace. He wishes the two men would kiss and make up, but no doubt Hot Springs will blow a little longer, playing to the hilt his role of devil’s advocate, which he hopes is the final trial of his initiation.

  Later the two men do indeed apologize to one another but the controversy continues in a quieter way over the next few months, with Corn Dog in the center, the personification, a screen for the two men to project their beliefs and convictions upon.

  What Hot Springs says about him is true, in fact. More was accomplished when he sent his strong silent boy to meet Virgil than making big bucks. The brazen warrior learned a share of aesthetic sensitivity. After his summer in the City by the Bay, never again can he go back to his simple craft, weaving what the white customer expects to earn a livelihood. His vision now is of a Freeway that is what it stands for, “all men created equal,” meaning all men created equal: one people of every race, color and creed. He cares not a whit about making money for its buying power. The ideals portrayed on the dollar inspire him as much as the face he experienced by the backstage door mystifies and enchants him.

  Memories of the peachy sensation he felt in the streets of Zion still ring in his ears. He closes his mind to this world and opens it to a dream of beauty coming to him. There’s no stopping the overflow of strange, unknown beings who come to his mind to show him the models, the realer than real forms that create the things of this world. When he sits down at the loom he can no longer twist out of the wool the traditional native symbols shaped in the normal, stylized way. In his post-initiation period his horses have seven legs and three eyes on the same side of their face, the corn he weaves is flaked or popped, the sun in the sky is replaced by the likeness of a light bulb. Gone in his art is the traditional native stripe. His fields are in the clouds, his rows have no parallels. He experiments with dyes, working in vivid primary colors and tones of the illusion of this world. He weaves, unweaves and reweaves and even then he can’t finish a pattern, won’t let it stay flat, but stitches into it woolen webs, pouches that billow like clouds, and while he is at it, he adds to the pile pieces of bone, stone, tooth and nail, wood, dried blood and leaves, whatever objects nature sends his way. The subject matter goes beyond legend and refers to its own making, the myth of the imaginer. Just as lines that come to meet in two dimensions create a semblance of depth, so by following his own line of vision and including his own perception in the picture Corn Dog is able to extend himself in a metaphorical sense to the fourth dimension, the encompassing state wherein length, breadth, and depth of this world are contained.

  It takes him a month to complete what used to take only ho
urs. The products, unlike any native craft Hot Springs has ever seen, are never really finished. “You’re going to drive the customer crazy with all this extra crap in here, Kid. It wouldn’t hurt if once in a while you would quit your mooning and come up with something quick and easy we could sell.”

  Corn Dog tries to follow Hot Springs’ advice, but the simpler he tries to make it the more complex it gets, shaman work in his own rite, traditional and progressive in a different direction than his teacher, sticks and stones, rags and bones, unwieldy spans of fabric stretched over out-of-kilter lattices of willow branches, unruly lines crooked as mother nature bent them, drilled and lashed together with rawhide twine, and recklessly botched with glued-on snatches of native craft fabric, patches of leather, and paper mashes made from the help-wanted ads from the Bay City Times, freakish flags, all washed red, white and blue.