Routes

by John Okas

  In the second afterglow she says, “Now I know what the poet meant when he said, ‘Freedom is doing time in love’s arms, all else is prison by comparison.’ Prison, that’s my father’s house, and the temple, the mission, and the choir loft, too.”

  “Then leave with me, Sarah, we’re free to roam. The muskrat will be our brother, the fox our sister. Edna Owl will be our aunt. If we really need something nature will provide it. What nature does not provide, in a pinch we can beg, borrow or steal from somewhere.”

  The daughter of the temple bookkeeper is not so lovestruck that she doesn’t see a problem. While Shibbolites avoid all forms of ostentation there are no restrictions on an individual’s right to accumulate private property and wealth. Her father’s position is one of great honor and carries a salary to reflect that, enough that she has always lived quite comfortably. Certainly she’s never gone without a new dress, plain as they are, whenever she asked for one. She’s not spoiled, but she’s used to more than shelter, food, and clothing. Why, she even has her own buckboard, even if it is registered in the Lord’s name. What other seventeen-year-old girl around Zion can boast of that? Fornication agrees with her, but she knows the primrose path leads to more than just sex, there are other sorts of things that make the Lord really steamed too. Shibbolite women don’t even legally own their own homespun undergarments and it’s considered unseemly for them to touch anything over petty cash, market money. It is nowhere near bad enough that she has become a shameless thief, stealing to get the books she wants. It causes her practically no remorse. Cribbing a few necessary items to get by hardly seems like enough to her. She is a much more ambitious sinner than that. As a female, barred from legal ownership, possession under law is nine-tenths of her pleasure. She is greedy for gold and jewels, and idolatrous where they are concerned. She longs to go riding high in fine carriages, horsed and horseless, own extravagant clothing and furs, wear expensive perfume, and have servants all around; she wants to eat fancy foods like snails, caviar and goose livers, and bathe in champagne. There is a wasteful streak in her that sees animals in the wild as a waste of good fur. But because of the split in her personality she can agree with the buck and love the romance of having the muskrat for her brother, the fox her sister. So the answer is yes and no. She would love to fly off with this sweet bird of Indigenous youth, worship nature spirits in rocks and trees and animals, and celebrate the abundance of their loins. All that is truly Collieresque. But without the proper backing she fears she will not be free to do as much sinning as she would like to in these other areas.

  She says, “Cornie dear, tell me, do you have any money at all?”

  He nods, “I have this.” He shows her a buckskin pouch with a roll of green backs that Pop and Whitman gave him as a going away present after they sold the gallery, five hundred dollars and some silver coins. He hands her the bag and lets her feel the marvelous weight of the silver change and the fistful of paper dollars. She’s surprised this underdog carries such a large sum, more money than she’s ever seen on her penny-wise allowance, but not enough, she knows, to live the life of wickedness and luxury she dreams of.

  He says, “My teachers taught me to love the idea of money in the abstract. As an artist, I think that the symbols on it, what it stands for, the unity behind it, are more beautiful than the actual cash in the hand. Nevertheless I wouldn’t mind selling some art work now and then. Too bad the critics say my art stinks.”

  “You mean there’s no more where this came from?”

  “Except for this.” He shows her his lucky single, the one Virgil explained to him.

  “What are you going to do for money?”

  “I’ve managed fine in the wild.”

  “What about a job? Don’t you want a motor car and a house?”

  The sorcerer laughs at the joke. “A job? A motor car? A house?” The thoughts have never before crossed his mind. “One summer I worked for Whitman’s uncle Virgil in the trading post, because Pop wanted to give me a taste of what it was like to be fenced in. It taught me never again. I’m not really one for motor cars, and as for a house, I guess if you came with me, we could hike up to the spruce woods and build something like the lodge I grew up in. It’s pretty country up there. But if we have one another we can call home wherever we are, no? Pack a bag and I will carry it for you.”

  She must be candid with Corn Dog. “My father has money, and he takes care of me. I’m not used to sleeping in the bushes. Of course here in Zion a woman is not allowed outright ownership of property …”

  “What about that horse and carriage you drive?”

  “Registered in the name of the Lord.”

  “Here,” says Corn Dog, “then you can have this.” He presses her white hands around the pouch.

  “No, I couldn’t.” She says, still holding the bag.

  “Sure you could. I don’t want it.”

  She sees he is serious about giving her the money and gladly accepts it. The gift gets her hot, eager to ignore the practical consequences and any qualities which might make them incompatible. Talking it over with her father is certainly impossible. If she runs away with this boy, who knows what then? How far is a white girl travelling with a half-breed buck going to get without a secure source for money? Certainly thinking about it all spoils the happiest moments of her life so far. She turns her back on the inevitable crisis day when, if she is really pregnant, the truth must become apparent, or, if she is not, she can gather the strength to free herself from her father. She will postpone telling the truth for as long as possible. For now she throws her arms around the big brazen boy, and goes back to timeless humping, the enjoyment of the time being.

  “Dear Corn,” she prays, whispering in his ears, “I’m already looking forward to tomorrow if it means seeing you again. Please let’s be a secret for a while. Stay here in this cabin and I’ll be back at the same time, around sunset.”

  She’s not alone on cloud nine. He has no objections to keeping himself secret if it means having the peaches and cream again come tomorrow.

  No Joke

  The family tree is beginning to show some signs of age. Unlike his father and grandfather Corn Dog stays around for the trouble to start.

  Now Sarah wants to visit her library every day. At first she’s frightened that someone will see her on her regular late afternoon runs into and out of town and so devises irregular routes to and fro, and never repeats the same steps two days running. But her fear of being suspect is groundless. Her years of model virtue continue to pay off. The wall she has built, the facade of silent, faraway piety, proves without chink. No one in or around town who sees the silver girl with the high brow and untarnished reputation going places in her buckboard jumps to the right conclusions. More discomposing is her fear that her father will investigate and find out about her lies, the daily stories she fabricates to keep the dusky hour open, that she must stay up late with a sick friend, or do overtime at the mission, or go to a late choir practice, or an after hours tutoring job. But Jeremiah too has come to rely too much upon the sweetness of Sarah to think otherwise. She is all he has left that matters, his own secret sin is that she is more important to him than the Lord. He’ll take her word for anything.

  During the day, while Corn Dog waits for her he puts together a loom from odd sticks, and begins to work on a lamb’s wool blanket, made of the softest deep sheep stuff Sarah can find for him in Zion. The theme on this one is the horn, the sign of angels, fallen and not, the trumpet that calls the Lord’s flock and the bony cone of the fertile Billy Goat God of the fields back together as one instrument again.

  In the twilight Sarah comes gliding in, picture perfect, cold and prepossessing, as if she were a personal friend of the Lord God’s, an angel on a cloud. His unabashed humility before her, the fact that he heels as an underdog to his mistress, waits, watches, wants nothing from her but love, frees her to be herself, a person, no better, no worse. She has a weakness for Corn Dog that she loves to show. She can n
ot be near him for more than a minute before she is jumping on him like a savage in warm wild wet abandon.

  Later, she admires the poetry of his plenty of horn symbol blanket, and introduces him to some of the hidden treasures in her library. Not only does the waiting buck weave but he reads books. She is glad in her heart that he loves to read, and has to marvel at how well be can do it, as if he were educated in the Prophet’s school himself. Thanks to Whitman Post they can both hail Clement Collier’s song Praise God, the Open Door together.

  Once a man knows where his love lies,

  he would be wise to shout it out

  from the tops of roofs and mountains,

  showing the worst the best way.

  If he keeps silent

  the world will be shepherded by the lost.

  Secrecy is the mark of falsehood,

  disclosure the lips of wholesomeness.

  The free in thought are free in love,

  as generous as rabbits.

  How are the worst to know

  if the best are ashamed to show the way?

  Praise God, the Open Door, my love,

  and the bird that sings under the rose branch that marks

  the secret place

  where lovers meet.

  “Isn’t it romantic!” sighs Sarah, kissing him, overcome with happiness to have someone to share her books and her mind with. The brave responds gently, running his hand up her graceful, well-proportioned legs. The peach loses some of her stonishness and is able to talk to him about the messy feelings she has had inside her all her life, how she has had to put a false face on them, and how whatever the dictates are, be they from her literary idol or her father, she has never been fully one way or another; she is changeable, unable to embrace either inside or out. Openly she is a different person than she is in her head.

  “I feel more ashamed of myself for not being able to live up to the ideal of self-revelation set forth in Collier’s song than I am being off the mark on the pious aims of my father’s religion. I believe in freethinking, and in acting wild and spontaneous, but I seem not to always behave the way I believe. Part of it is Zion, but part of it is me. I’m afraid I’m a complete coward when it comes to acting out how I feel. I’m not always a very good girl, but I’m not even that good when it comes to being bad.”

  Unaccustomed to opening up, with the tender buck on his back under her, his golden ear of corn getting hard for her again, frozen Sarah finds herself thawing on the particulars. Her secrets seem to slip right out. “Sometimes when I’m singing a solo in the dark in front of the lit tabernacle, I get this idea to slide my finger up my dress in front of me where nobody but the Lord can see and start fidgeting with myself in his sight. The only way I can keep from losing control is to freeze solid on the spot.” In the here and now she comes on, gets happier. Without warning she rolls off the bed and starts doing her most private exhibitions, the series of model practice poses she does in private for the Lord to get Him overpowered by lust. Practice makes perfect. How fetching she is stretching her spine and arms and legs, tossing her head of milk-smooth hair every witch way! As she goes through those infernal parallels corresponding to the good girl presentations she stages above board wherever Shibbolism is called for, whatever turns her body does, her brow remains raised, her nose up, her eyes distant and her mouth fixed in the slightly superior chosen person smile, the one she uses so often in temple. Even when she bends over the chair, turns herself upside down and inside out, and uninhibitedly exposes her ideal part, the face Corn Dog sees looking back at him in the cracked mirror has a complacent self-righteousness, a smugness that says, “eat your heart out. What I’ve got is mine, all mine.”

  Some boys would feel threatened witnessing what their girlfriends did for fun before they met, but not Corn Dog. He looks at her as she palms her soft breasts and twiddles her cotton tail, and is all wide-eyed and smiling, and straight as an arrow, poised in the bow, waiting for her to release him, to stop the teasing and call him to her.

  She says, “I think that no matter how much I respect Mister Collier, I have to use my own head, not his, to rule what I’m going to do and when I’m going to do it, don’t you? Besides, the way I read his poem, it says only a man need testify to his love off the top. I like to read the poem’s bottom lines as saying that a lady may take her bliss quietly and simply go to bed with it, crowing to no one else but God and her man.”

  Corn Dog will allow a woman’s timetable for telling the truth might be different from a man’s. “Well, Sarah,” he says, out of breath, as she hovers over him, dripping wet, sweet and sour, “if you’re not a freethinker, I don’t know who is.”

  Words of love were never sweeter to a woman’s ears. Certainly around the meek warrior she feels free not to take Collier’s word for it. And after all why let meaning interfere with the beauty of the words at all? She relaxes her false face, lowers her brow and laughs. “I was no virgin when I met you, Cornie. The Lord entered me several dozen times. He took it without even asking.” When she thinks this blasphemy, it is enough to get her worked up, hearing herself say it out loud she utterly loses control.

  What the Lord takes, Corn Dog gets without even having to ask for. Sarah’s smile becomes genuine. With a beam that comes from her heart she throws herself back on him, shaking her hips and rubbing her wet lips all over him. She straddles her puppy love and puts the thick wet lips in her soft white beard to his face and feels his tongue press into the deepest part of her. She squeals off-key, loudly, as much in pleasure as in triumph, a whooping war cry, giving new meaning to Collier’s song.

  Then she slides down astride him, tickles herself with his magic wand as if it were hers and slowly eases it inside her.

  “I’ve—of—ten—thought—the—Heav—en—ly—Fath—er—is—too—old—for—me,” she goes on, closing in on him, whispering, panting daintily and thrusting herself on every syllable, “oh—how—I—longed—to—take—a—boy—my—own—age—and—show—him—my—se—cret—oh—oh—oh …” Meanwhile, standing up to such tender trappings, Corn Dog kisses every well-pronounced feature of her serene face and, then, feeling her breathing getting heavier, hearing her sighs lengthening, holds tight and looses his wild oats. Ice cream Sarah, feeling his boyhood stretch and fatten to her core, liquefies entirely.

  Deep in the ecstacy of the post-coital snuggles, when she climbs off and lies next to him, Corn Dog makes a vow to love her until there is snow in the middle of summer, and swears he will keep her secrets secret. And as long as they are telling secrets to one another he tells her his, “I haven’t had much experience with women. You’re the first one, Sarah. And I never want another. I’d rather be dead than lose you.”

  Gosh!

  He tells her what he knows about himself. “Hot Springs had a few facts from the Running Rabbit medicine man he got me from. But the medicine man was a heavy drinker, not too reliable. As the story goes my father was an outsider, who exactly nobody knows, and my mother, a young Running Rabbit girl, was married, but not to my father. According to the medicine man my mother was very outspoken, a real trouble maker for the clan, and went down kicking and scratching, speaking out against the medicine man’s infallibility, rather than knuckling under to tribal religious authority. As the story goes, she died young, trying to defend me from her husband.”

  Some girls would find it hard living up to the image a man has of his mother’s saintliness, but not Sarah Blanche. When her watch reads seven and it is time for her to go, she begins to brush her hair, with each stroke raising her brow a notch higher. Corn Dog sees the silence forming in her eyes, the ice on her lips, and upturn of her nose, how she freezes on the spot like a piece of the rock of ages, putting on her angel face, resetting a hard mask on her misgivings along with her bonnet. The full expression with which she masks her feelings reveals to him exactly how cold, calculating, detached, defiant, and treacherous she can be. Indeed she becomes so still, as a marble statue, as untouchable as a goddess
, that he hesitates to kiss her goodbye. Yet he loves her all the more.

  Her feminine profiles are twin beauties, two separate, yet equally exquisite, selves each discreet from the other. One flowing with milk and honey, round at every corner, rhyming hips and lips, nose and toes, hands and glands, good-humored, open, communicative; the other unblemished, alabaster white, on a pedestal, taboo, cool as cash, cold as gold, heading for the land of silk and money. At parting time she is the latter, distant, as if she were a block of ice, as if once she has decided to leave the cabin and be on her way home, nothing he does or says will be able to unfreeze her. The underdog’s tongue, inflamed with an unquenchable thirst of desire, dry, would take to her all the more. The split pea’s contrariness, her lack of strength, the show of emptiness behind the beautiful show, overpowers him, begs for an excess to fill it. Yet he takes it as a challenge: is he brave enough not to ask her to stay? After all, the honor is all his. He nods his head and picks up the skein on his baby blanket, or of some other art work he has started. And it is by his presence and his strength, his respect that allows her to do as she pleases, openly or not, that deep down in her body’s folds she feels a quicksand sense of private possession, the enriching enchantment of love. She has waited for a fleshy instrument and now suddenly here he is, her fantasy is real, Corn Dog is no page from a picture book of men, for men, and by men. He is a living flesh and blood man and she has him captivated and contained in her reading room. That is enough to turn her stony self to clay, and feel the outpouring again.