Routes

by John Okas

  “Pop knows all about this. You’re all in it together. This is another initiation, isn’t it, Uncle? In this trial I go it alone, without any of the tools, inside or out, that I’ve used in the past, without straight answers and advice from my teachers, right?”

  Virgil won’t confirm or deny what he says.

  Corn Dog has to wonder: Where have I gone wrong? Or have I gone wrong at all?

  Another Side of Virgil

  Corn Dog finds no Hot Springs, but does see another side of Virgil. Since he has been there, on two occasions, under cover of night, he has observed men in black bring an automobile to the old carriage house out in back of the cottage. They’re in there all night, banging away, and in the early hours of the morning they leave with it, dismantled, in pieces on the beds of pickup trucks. The morning after the second time he sees this he goes to Virgil and reveals his curiosity and his concern.

  Virgil Villon might be accessory to auto theft but he is not a liar. “Son, I know it goes without saying that you’ll stay quiet about this, but the honest truth is those cars are stolen.”

  “Whites stealing from whites?”

  Virgil nods his head, “Yes.”

  Corn Dog would be a rich man if he had a nickel for every time he heard Hot Springs, inside or out, advise him that if he wants to stay square with the white brother the only way to do it is to steal. He called it “compensation.” He remembers Hot Springs saying that since the white brother took the land to build roads, the least he could is give every Indigen a free motor vehicle. Corn Dog always took the suggestion as an overstatement to make a point, never thought his Pop was recommending he literally break the law. But when he comes to think about it, after seeing that nature is all chewed up and the good things in life, love and trust, do not come easily, he thinks that maybe Hot Springs wasn’t kidding after all.

  “Do I have a license to steal, Uncle?” he asks Virgil.

  “I think you might be honest enough, Son, but don’t ask me. If your Pop says its all right with him, it’s all right with me.”

  “Do I, Pop?” Corn Dog asks, and hears nothing but silence.

  Still, he is shocked that his Uncle Virgil would have anything to do with this, whether it be crime or compensation. Virgil was the one Hot Springs called soft for advising him to give his money to the poor.

  “Who are those men, Uncle?”

  “You’ll be surprised when you see,” says Virgil.

  A month later, February, Corn Dog sees three pairs of lights on the dirt road that leads to Virgil’s. A rather sharp looking long car rolls in, followed by two pickup trucks. “Come on,” says Virgil, “I want you to meet the boys.”

  Partially blinded by the trucks’ headlights, Corn Dog is still quite amazed to find that he already knows the man behind the wheel of the stolen vehicle.

  “Father Dodge!”

  Father Dodge was the man whose Blessed Sacrament Orphange Virgil suggested he contribute his earnings to, as a membership fee in the Mystic Knights, the very same bequest that set off the storm of the century between Hot Springs and Whitman. Again, the priest’s narrow eyes and crooked smile seem familiar to Corn Dog. He tries to place them, but there is much to distract him. Men are getting out of the trucks, and they are greeting Virgil. Four in all, and they are all wearing skirts. He is presently introduced to Fathers Morrison and Caetano, and two more out of the second truck, Fathers James and Dillon.

  They waste no time taking off their collars, rolling up their sleeves and getting set to work all night by the flickering light of kerosene lanterns turning the car into body parts and engine.

  “They think there’s more to caring for their flock than filling their heads full of moral platitudes.” Virgil explains. “On the first Friday of every month they steal a car, usually from a politician or bootlegger, but this is Bishop Reilly’s Road Runner here tonight, a real gas guzzler. The profits from the sale of the parts goes to help the poor. Fathers Morrison and Caetano run a home for the homeless, while Father James operates a shelter for unwed mothers. And Father Dillon helps the sick and very old people. On the first Saturday of every month, each gets to throw a big party for the indigent in his parish, with cash prizes going to the neediest cases.”

  “You can’t deprive a child’s stomach of food, a man or woman of dignity, and expect to save their souls,” says Father Dodge, squatting close to the ground, facing away, jacking up the car, going after the wheels with a lug wrench. “Sometimes you have to cheat a little to be honest. Morality is not just a lot of pretty talk. If you believe what you say, you have to act to make atonement. But sometimes it takes three lefts to make a right.”

  All of a sudden Corn Dog realizes who Father Dodge reminds him of. Like the nose on one’s face, so obvious he overlooked it. Of course. Hot Springs! The touch of ironic humor in Dodge’s voice, the way he finds forks in the white man’s tongue even the white man didn’t know were there, the wry smile, the googly way he screws up his eyes so you can’t tell whether he’s aggravated or joking or means the opposite of what he’s saying, it all recalls the Hot Springs Corn Dog loved and relied upon.

  “You sound like my Pop, Father Dodge.”

  Corn Dog remembers that Hot Springs was no stranger to wearing disguises. When he travelled he never wore his Indigenous buckskins. Is it possible that there is more to Father Dodge than meets the eye at first glance? He tries to get another look at the priest’s face, but Dodge remains faced away, now with the other three Fathers, under the hood, intent, pulling the engine, mumbling something, as if they were consecrating the Blessed Sacrament.

  “Come on, Son,” says Virgil, leading Corn Dog outside, “we’re only in the way here.”

  Outside, Corn Dog voices his suspicion to Virgil. “Is this Father Dodge only who he says he is? He reminds me an awful lot of Pop. Thinking back, I’d almost swear it was Pop I saw with those kids down at Blessed Sacrament years ago, and that it’s Pop in there now lifting the engine out of the Road Runner.”

  “But didn’t you recently get a post card from the Aloha Islands? You don’t think Hot Springs would go to such lengths to play a trick on you, do you?”

  “Maybe.”

  “It’s your mind playing tricks on you, Son. You don’t see the Hot Springs in your mind anymore and now you see him in Father Dodge. There’s no mystery. Call him what you like, your teacher is within you and without you. What does it matter what you call him? Everything is everything. Take away names and many confusing issues become resolved. Lose the distinction between inside and outside and other doors, those to a united world, begin to open.”

  Corn Dog thinks it over. Of course, Virgil is right. The “world” is “one” if that’s what you call it. But the pain he feels is in his heart not in his mind. There is one, and there is another one. There are lips he longs to kiss, a tongue no words can replace. Still, what good will it do him dwelling upon it, when there is nothing he can do? He will act in the spring, when the time is right, until then he will wait and contemplate and create.

  As before, contact with Virgil inspires Corn Dog, and puts him in mind of making art. While faraway a distraught young mother is fashioning a padded cell for her baby, having to bury her in the dead zone of the closet to protect her, Corn Dog is producing landscapes made of parts of the environment he is in. He incorporates small bits of driftwood, remnant wool Virgil has lying around, seashells, the bones of the lambs and sheep the men slaughter for meat, as well as a few spare nuts and bolts from the Bishop’s Road Runner, into wall-hangings which show nature’s nature as being an allegory of itself, an infinite regress, an illusion alternating between sense and nonsense, being and nothingness, just as the earth moves between night and day. The work is dedicated to the Hot Springs in his mind, whether he is there or not, to a different kind of hunter who brings back a car, rather then a dead animal, who sees money as the equivalent of food, and food as the equivalent of God’s grace, and who does not get attached to terms, who uses “body” and �
�bread,” “wine” and “blood,” “tires” and “beef” interchangeably.

  When spring is just around the corner Corn Dog tells Virgil he is going back. He wants to be early. The idea that dear Sarah would have to wait even a minute for him appalls him. Virgil gives him fifty dollars and the name and address of a wealthy art collector relation, his second cousin Atana Potney. He doesn’t think it would be wise for Corn Dog to have any connection with the Four Fathers Gang in the city.

  “It’s for our protection and the continuation of good works,” Virgil explains. “You never know, perhaps some intuitive policeman, a type like you, Corn Dog, who picks up the scent of crimes as you pick up spirits, might put one and one together and start nosing into the case. Those Four Fathers never see one another, except on First Friday nights here. The reason is that if one gets caught, there will be no direct trail to the others. The work will go on. So I’ve sent a letter on ahead to cousin Atana explaining your situation, and how you have this shyness around civilization. She wrote back and said she wouldn’t mind having a look at you and seeing what she could do to turn you into a city mouse. She’s really a dear. If she can’t help you, she may know someone who can. I told her what a creative genius you were and she said to make sure you bring some work.”

  And so in the first week of April, while Sarah is looking into means of transportation out of Zion. The beautiful buck, with a few samples of his new work rolled up and slung over his back, is back on the road off the road, shunpiking, avoiding the highway wherever possible, walking, walking, walking, until he is back the on streets of the City by the Bay.

  Coming From All Quarters

  Corn Dog decides to look up Virgil’s cousin straight away, before he gets into any trouble. He has no trouble finding the Potney residence. A large grey-shingled house on a hill overlooking the Bay is home to Virgil’s cousin Atana Potney and her art collection. Although the place is a palace, the lady of the house answers the door herself. She is a handsome woman, in her forties, thick graying hair, a fat face with an extra chin, but athletically built over all. She wears a simple, sleeveless blue dress, which fastens at the shoulders with bright gold buckles. She has a loud voice, an agreeable smile, and wears a perfume with a potpourri fragrance. Corn Dog’s nose knows, goes deeper than toiletries. Under the subtle vapors of rose petals and lavender she has an atmosphere of wealth and refinement, an air so rare it is barely noticeable and is, therefore, unmistakable. When he stumbles over his words, not knowing whether he should address her as Miss or Mrs Potney, she insists he call her Aunt Atana. Any nephew of Virgil’s is a nephew of hers.

  She invites him in for tea. Corn Dog’s eyes pop up she leads him through several rooms with high ceilings, galleries where disparate works are displayed side by side. Old World Masters are hung alongside painting in the abstract style that is the cutting edge of contemporary art. For the first time in his life Corn Dog sees layouts of the cosmos, concentric geometric designs from Shunyu, Pingp’yangpoong, and Bhimastaan. Also, there are sculptures of all types, marble nudes, metal abstractions, black basalt Bhuttis seated on lotus blossoms, as well as assorted artifacts, from ordinary to ceremonial, from naive and primitive cultures, knives, hair brushes, pillboxes, candle holders, masks, idols, bottles and so forth, some in glass cases, others simply spread out on tables.

  Such a wealth of objects and such an appealing blending of what one would normally not think of as going together! Corn Dog does not believe he could have done better himself.

  Atana sits him down and serves him raisin cake and tea scented with bergamot. It puts him at ease that she is relaxed, talkative, and genuinely friendly. She smiles sincerely as she watches him put ten cubes of sugar in his cup and gobble his raisin cake as if he hadn’t had a bite to eat in a month.

  She is casual but by no means superficial. She has some definite views on art and artists which she shares with him while he eats. “An artist can go through many different periods in his life,” she says, offering him some more raisin cake, “and usually in his early work you see the blueprint for it all. The same is true for the history of art in general, the same basic patterns, known throughout the world in every era, keep coming back. You see the forms of the serpent, the tree, the woman, the man, the child, the eye, the light and the dark, the warp and woof, the yin and the yang, in just about any art worth its name. Cousin Virgil tells me you are an artist. You have some work? Let me see it.”

  “People say I’m not a very good artist,” he says apologetically, swallowing his answers, and only after she asks a second time does he unroll his show of recent work: wool, bones, shell and wood, with a few nuts and bolts tossed in for tension. Well! She can appreciate art for art’s sake. What he has will not go at any of the galleries she knows, but that is no matter. She has an eye for the hand, heart, and soul that made it.

  She can see what Cousin Virgil meant. Corn Dog is too good to be true, yet there he is good-looking, kind, intelligent, shy, sensitive, and softly fierce. She’s collected enough art in her time to know that there’s more to it than just the object. A flower is a marvel because it so quickly fades. The miracle of fertilization is in the pollen and in the bee. The real beauty is in the whole process and the interdependence of living things. You cannot collect some art without collecting the artist. She rates Corn Dog as a true masterpiece, an artist’s artist, whose work is secondary to his self. For him the object is a consequence of the perception of truth, a natural repercussion of the very thing it stands for.

  She makes Corn Dog feel further at home by offering him a room in her house, a small plain white one with a pallet on the floor, three potted palms and two large windows opening out over the garden now rolling in spring pinks, blues, and yellows. It is a cry better than the warehouse doorway where he spent his last night in the Bay Area wiping the ice cream from his hair and face.

  “How can I repay you, Aunt?”

  “The pleasure will be mine to have you here. But if you must, you may give a piece of your work every month. I’d like that.”

  “And when my family comes?”

  “Well, I’m sure the girl is very nice if you love her. Certainly she and the child can stay with you here for a few weeks until you can get settled somewhere.”

  “But what will I do for money?”

  “Things will all work out. You’ll see, they always do.” The way Atana says it, as if she’s sure of it, calms Corn Dog’s fears. He appreciates her.

  Corn Dog is happy and sad in his new position. He is glad to be in a stable living situation at the right time and place to receive Sarah. But he wonders if she will approve of him for existing passively, filling a niche in Atana Potney’s art collection, rather than going out there, getting rich either by hook or crook, selling native craft or stealing cars.

  Being a warrior is not always easy. Before the war against ignorance and innocence is through one must face and fight, and often lose to, every sort of mortification. The fact that he has trouble making a mark for himself on the world, or even on his own finding a place in it to sit in peace bothers him no end. He gets some wool and tries to make some plain blankets. He wishes he could, but he can’t. As always his weaving goes astray into the fields of cracked corn and crazy self-expression. He’s not afraid to admit that he doesn’t have the courage to be a dishwasher or a busboy. As for taking automobiles which don’t belong to him, he doesn’t know the first thing about driving. Besides, committing grand theft and keeping the spoils for himself, even if it is to feed and house his family, does not sit right with his conscience.

  He sits back and lets Aunt Atana do all she can for him. She introduces him to some other artists whose work she collects, including a sculptor friend of hers, Angelo Penzini, whom she has commissioned to do a bronze statue of the human form for the garden. Penzini is an older man with a salt and pepper mustache and a thick head of grey and black hair. He is looking for a boy with a body like Corn Dog’s to do some modelling. He will pay a dollar an hour in e
xchange for Corn Dog’s sitting while he sketches him and makes preliminary miniatures of his likeness in both plaster and wax.

  Corn Dog thinks, “Me, a working model! I can’t wait to tell Sarah about this! Why she showed me everything she knew about posing!”

  Innocent, he expects, her any day now and has no sense at all that at the same time he is posing, so is she, stripping and then some all up and down the wild west.

  The strong silent type, he comes and goes from his place in Atana Potney’s house without bother or conversation. Atana, too, is not not one for idle talk. Although she is wealthy, she does not believe in having servants or like to have a lot of excitement around her. She spends almost all her time reading, writing about art, and working in the garden. In the evenings she goes to a gymnasium and practices fencing. She does not display her ribbons but once Corn Dog goes with her and sees her in a match. He hadn’t realized what fine quick feet she has. She is a prize swordswoman. He helps her out as he can, doing chores around the house, running errands for groceries and such, for his search for Sarah brings him around the city anyway. Every day he checks around all the same old places, the wharf, the Freethinker Press, the Gallery and Trading Post. Whenever possible, he spends mornings in the little park by the Freethinker Press making sketches of his own, watching out. He wants to talk to the man who works in the office, but since his run-in with John Fuoco he is shy around strangers. The best he can do is hand the man some of his abstract pigeons.