Ghost Town (10 page)

Never mind that Carl Sandburg had been dead for years.

Chief Leopard Frog was not amused by Uncle Milton casting his work as an ongoing struggle with whites for Native American recognition.

And to think,
I thought,
this nightmare cost me three hundred dollars!

Here's an example of what I was going to have to deal with:

THE RAVEN CALLS
By Chief Leopard Frog

Pin feather, tail feather, wing feather, beak
The Tempur-Pedic Swedish Sleep System cant be beat
Down he hurls from pinnacle and peak
The Euro-Bed by Tempur-Pedic guarantees sleep
He calls the wild wind as he calls the slumbering me
The pressure-relieving comfort is extraordinary
Nevermore?
I disagree.
Forevermore is far more likely.
It's the latest in NASA-endorsed technology
Bird becoming human becoming spirit becoming god
Microfiber suede textile sample, free video
Indian blood.

Within a fortnight the post office at Paisley was overwhelmed. My mother, increasingly annoyed, missed
Oprah
three days in a row because of the need to sort mail for Chief Leopard Frog.

"Who is this guy, anyway?" she complained. "I thought I knew everybody within fifty miles of here."

"He's a transient," I explained. "Basically, a time transient. But I can get his stuff to him. Just give it to me."

"Dang," she muttered. "If I had known that raising kids would be like this. Time transients. Indian chiefs. Two hundred pounds of first-class mail. Lord love a duck! Where will it ever end?"

Of course, as should have been expected,
The New Yorker
declared Chief Leopard Frog's debut tome to be "brilliant beyond belief."

The
New York Review of Books
claimed in a five-thousand-word essay, "Here, at last, is the long-awaited amalgamation of the first America with the second. In a literary sense,
Burl Hives
is the authentic missing link."

Praise was pouring in from everywhere. Invitations to appear on television, at dinner, at receptions to receive awards and honorary degrees. Offers from other publishers throwing out astounding numbers. A letter from the wife of the former president of the United States.

What you've captured in a few simple words is so us,
she wrote.
I hope you are not offended when I say you are the Norman Rockwell of our age.

Cordially,

(Mrs.) Laura Bush

PS. What is your e-mail address?

And orders.

Hundreds and hundreds of orders for the book from all over the world.

As a poet, Chief Leopard Frog was off to the races!

MIXED IN WITH
the worldwide acclaim for the work of Chief Leopard Frog was a desperate plea from the Cayman Islands.

Dear Partner,
Milton Swartzman wrote.

(
Partner?
I thought.
Since when have Uncle Milton and I become partners?
)

Help. Send me more copies of the Indian's poetry book until I can print some more down here. The demand is unlike anything I've ever seen, including the scratch-'n'-sniff fake vomit that put my kids through college. This Indian friend of yours must know what he's doing.

Yours affectionately,

Milton Swartzman

President and Publisher,
Uncle Milton's Thousand Things You Thought You'd Never Find

P.S. That gourd that looked like Lindsay Lohan was okay, but I had no takers until I dressed it in a swimsuit. Didn't I always say it was about salesmanship? I enclose fifty (dollars—no, make it sixty dollars. Hope it comes in handy.

If nothing else, the sixty dollars came in handy for buying stamps and small manila envelopes for sending books to people who ordered them by check. Uncle Milton had put a fifteen-dollar price on the book, and while that seemed high to me, it didn't seem to dissuade the American public.

My mother and I had to change our routine. We went to the city twice a week now just to deposit checks. My hand grew tired from all the endorsing I had to do.

Yet it was not my name that I was writing. Each time I signed a check, I had to sign the name of Chief Leopard Frog. That I knew he was imaginary was something I figured I'd best keep to myself. No point in spilling the beans to the whole world just yet. And certainly not to the bank.

Interestingly, the chief hadn't shown his face since the day he'd lost his temper. I knew he was furious, but come on, shouldn't his curiosity have prompted him to look in on things? How long are you supposed to stay mad at somebody before it becomes an affliction?

Some of the mail was not so nice. One letter from the lawyer representing the estate of the late singer Burl Ives threatened to sue. Another, from the director of the Carl Sandburg Foundation and Museum, said he'd been in touch with the Burl Ives lawyer and was thinking of suing also—sort of a tag team. A couple of Indian tribes from Minnesota and Wyoming accused me of making the whole thing up, claiming there were no chiefs of the Sac and Fox tribe left in Kansas, but they enclosed complimentary coupons for free nights at their casino hotels, nevertheless.

I got some snapshots back from Sparkle Snapshot in St. Louis, and one of them was a real good picture of my missing toe—like a medical study. There was also a picture of Chief Leopard Frog on the front porch, hunched over and whittling an alligator talisman. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail and his nose seemed sort of like that of a gargoyle on the side of a tall granite building. Even so, he was an imposing presence, as much as someone can be in an amateur photo. I should add that it was the only picture of Chief Leopard Frog I'd ever seen.

There was also a snapshot of Maureen, her fingertips together as if in contemplation. The lighting was such that the dimple in her right cheek was quite pronounced.

Then a reporter showed up from
Poetry Week
magazine.

That's when the trouble started.

The opposite of boredom is excitement. And the definition of excitement is "a sustained period of anxiety."

Be careful what you wish for. Be especially careful when you choose to rearrange a quiet, peaceful life. The day may come when you will miss watching pumpkins grow.

Merilee Rowling was a stringer for a big, wealthy poetry magazine back east. It used to be a little, insignificant poetry magazine back east, but then a famous, rich, and somewhat empty-headed widow of a hamburger czar died and left the magazine her vast fortune. Now the magazine felt inclined not just to publish poetry but to investigate poetry and poets.

Holy smokes!

Investigative poetry.

How did they come up with
that
idea?

Now the reporter was on my doorstep.

"I've looked everywhere for somebody breathing in this godforsaken town," she said. "You're my last hope. Do you actually live here?"

"Have you checked the motel?" I asked.

"What motel?" she replied.

"Then I guess you have," I replied. "Welcome to Paisley."

"Actually," she explained, her car still running in the front yard, "I'm looking for some Indian chief—Bullfrog, Tree Frog, Hopping Frog, something like that."

"The only Indian chief around here is named Chief Leopard Frog," I said.

"That's the one!" she exclaimed. "I need to talk to him right away."

"What's the rush?" I asked. "If you want to see the chief, you'll have to learn to be patient."

Patience, apparently, was not one of Miss Merilee Rowling's virtues.

THE HEADSTRONG YOUNG STRANGER
stood defiantly at my doorstep, demanding an audience with Chief Leopard Frog.

"And whom shall I say is calling?" I replied as formally as I could under the circumstances.

"The assistant to the assistant editor for light features for
Poetry Week
magazine," she announced with considerable pride. "Miss Merilee Rowling."

"Have you had lunch?" I asked.

"They serve lunch around here?" she replied. "Where?"

"I can make you a tomato sandwich," I told her. "Do you like mayonnaise?"

"I'd eat anything," she said. "It took me forever to find this place, and I'm famished."

"Please come in," I said, although as events would turn out, I should have said, "Please go back the way you came."

Since mail was stacked up on all the kitchen countertops, we had our sandwiches in the living room. Merilee Rowling sat in my dead grandmother's rocking chair. I sat on the torn sofa.

"What happened to this town?" Merilee Rowling asked between bites.

"Bad luck," I answered. "Same as lots of towns."

"I live in a big city," she said. "Our bad luck comes and goes and nobody notices."

"Everybody noticed here," I explained. "That's why they left."

"Hmm," said Merilee Rowling. "Yet one of the country's greatest undiscovered poets stayed."

"I guess you could say that," I replied. "Would you care for some chips?"

"Sure, anything," she answered. "Chips, Fritos, pork rinds—whatever you've got."

To my mind, Merilee Rowling didn't look any older than Maureen Balderson, but I suppose she had to be, because she had a job and had driven a car all the way from back east, and you don't do that if you're fifteen years old.

It turned out that Merilee Rowling was seventeen, almost eighteen, and had just gotten out of high school. She decided not to go to college because, as she put it, "How can you see the world if you're stuck in one place?"

I thought about that one long and hard.

"So you've seen the world?" I asked.

"Not all of it," she replied. "But I've seen a lot more than I'd seen by this time last year."

"And how does Paisley stack up?" I inquired.

Merilee Rowling choked on a Triscuit.

"You must be kidding," she said.

As our conversation continued, a blaze burst up beside the road in front of the house. My mother was burning dried pumpkin leaves.

"Maybe you should turn your car off," I suggested. "Just for safety's sake. Plus, if you run out of gas, you won't see any more of the world except Paisley."

"Oh my gosh!" she exclaimed. "How careless of me."

When she jumped up from the rocking chair I noticed for the first time how cute she was. She reminded me of a girl I'd seen on TV, a guest on
Oprah,
who was starring in a new TV series, something about witches and high school.

Why does it take me so long to notice things? Is it because I'm not looking through my camera?

While Merilee Rowling was outside dealing with her car and, unfortunately, meeting my pyromaniac mother, I recalled a story I'd read when I was merely a child, no more than six years old.

It was about two children, a boy and a girl, who'd been skating on a frozen pond, something commonplace in the olden days, and although they knew each other, they were merely neighbors, outside to enjoy whatever frolic winter affords.

Alas, as fate would have it, they fell through a patch of thin ice—certain death under most circumstances—but a kindly old woman saved them, got them out of their wet clothes, and tucked them into a feather bed, where she covered them with thick down comforters and brought them steaming pots of chamomile tea while drying their clothes on a rack by the fire.

In a way, the story was the opposite of the fairy tales in which the witch entices children into her sugarplum house only to toss them into the oven for dinner. I suppose that's why whoever wrote the story decided to write it. A good deed—doer protective of the happy ending.

But what I recalled from the story was something other than the kindness of a stranger.

I remembered the thrilling thought of being naked under the covers with a girl whom I knew but didn't know that well. I remembered it as being an exciting, exhilarating idea, a stroke of good fortune, and a reasonable outcome to pursue for one's entire life.

Some people think that children don't have such thoughts, but these people have forgotten what it is like to be a child.

As I say, I couldn't have been much older than six. Now, in my early adolescence, the idea seemed even more compelling.

What if,
I thought,
I could persuade Merilee Rowling to stay overnight at my house?

This was Paisley, Kansas. It was getting late. Where else could she go?

It's not as if Maureen Balderson would ever need to know,
I assured myself.

Heh, heh, heh,
I chuckled to myself, proud of the grandiosity of my sudden cleverness.
Perhaps homeschooling isn't such a bad idea after all.

WHERE WAS HE?

Chief Leopard Frog, who should have been around to offer consultation on a subject as big as this one, namely, the entrapment of a stranger, was nowhere to be found.

What a petulant, petty man he was turning out to be!

The screen door swung open and clouds of smoke followed Merilee Rowling and my mother inside.

"Spencer," my mother said, "did you know that this poor girl has traveled all the way from back east and has nowhere to stay the night?"

"That's terrible," I said insincerely.

Then I applied a little bit of psychology

"Maybe she could stay at the Baldersons'," I suggested. "If we could figure out how to get the place unlocked."

"Nonsense," my mother replied. "She'll do no such thing. She can stay right here in this house with us. Our home may be modest, but as long as the Lord gives us breath in our bodies, we'll always have room for one more."

"Actually," I said, to no one's understanding or approval, "if one of us were suddenly to stop breathing, there'd be room for an additional person, wouldn't there? So the Lord providing us with breath in our bodies is really something of an impediment, accommodation-wise."

"Spencer," my mother instructed, "you may sleep on the couch. Merilee Rowling will take your room."