The Land of Laughs (15 page)

I went to the town library and reread all of his books. The librarian was an old lady with oyster-shell-pink rhinestone glasses and puffy, rouged cheeks. She bustled around as if she had a million things to do every minute of the day, but I saw that the bustling was all busywork and that what she really liked to do was sit behind her big oak desk and read.

A couple of kids were plagiarizing reports out of the
World Book Encyclopedia
, and a very pretty young woman was glued behind a month-old copy of
Popular Mechanics
.

I went over all the France books with a mental magnifying glass to find parallels between them and Galen, but the search was uneventful. I assumed that what France did when he wrote was to take a grain from something real and then drastically reshape it for his own purposes. So Mrs. Lee had been a blob of human clay that he had sculpted into the Queen of Oil.

When I was done investigating, I pushed away from the desk and rubbed my face. I was working in the magazine room, and when I came in I’d noticed a surprisingly good selection of literary magazines on the periodical shelves. I got up to get a copy of
Antaeus
. The librarian caught my eye and crooked her finger for me to come over to her desk. I felt like the bad kid who’s been caught making noises in the back of the stacks.

“You’re Mr. Abbey?” she whispered sternly.

I nodded and smiled.

“I’ll make up a temporary card for you if you’d like. Then you can take books out instead of having to read them in here.”

“Oh, that’s no problem, thank you anyway. It’s a nice room to work in.”

I thought my charm would at least make her smile, but she kept a kind of prim frown. She had those little vertical lines under her nose that come from a lifetime of pursed lips. Everything on her desk was orderly too. Her hands were crossed in front of her, and she didn’t move or drum or twiddle them when she talked. I was sure that she’d kill anyone who put a book back on the wrong shelf.

“There have been people who came before to write about Marshall, you know.”

“Yes?”

“Anna didn’t like any of them, especially the man who wanted to write the biography. He was so rude …” She shook her head and clicked her tongue.

“Was that the man from the East? The man from Princeton University?”

“Yes, he was the one who wanted to write the biography of Marshall. Can you imagine? They tell me that Princeton is an excellent university, but if they’re turning out graduates like that man, they wouldn’t get my vote.”

“Do you happen to remember his name?”

She cocked her head to the side and raised one chubby hand from the desk. Tapping her chin with a finger, she never took her eyes off me.

“His name? No, I never asked him and he never offered it to me. He came in here like Mr. Mucky-Muck on a high horse and started asking me questions without so much as a please.” If she were a bird and had had feathers, she would have ruffled them then. “From what I’ve heard, he was that same way with everyone in town. I always say that you can be rude, but don’t be rude on my doorstep.”

I could picture the toad from Princeton with his little Mark Cross briefcase, a Sony tape recorder, and a deadline on his thesis, going from person to person trying to pump them for information and getting exactly nowhere because they didn’t feel like being pumped.

“Would you like to see one of Marshall’s favorite books, Mr. Abbey?”

“I would love to, if it isn’t too much trouble for you.”

“Well, that’s my job, isn’t it? Getting books for people?”

She came out from behind the desk and moved toward the back shelves. I assumed that she was heading toward the children’s section, so I was taken aback when she stopped at the shelf marked “Architecture.” She carefully looked all around to see if anyone was nearby. “Between you and me, Mr. Abbey, I think she’s going to let you try. From everything I’ve heard, she’s going to let you.”

“Oh, yes?” I wasn’t sure I knew what she was talking about. Her voice had fallen back to its front-desk whisper.

“Do you mean Anna?”

“Yes, yes. Please don’t talk so loud. I’d put money on it that she’ll let you try.”

It was heartening news even if it did come from such a strange source. What I couldn’t understand was why we had to come all the way back here for her to tell me that she thought Anna was going to let me write the book.

Somebody came around the corner and looked at us. The librarian reached out and took a book about railroad stations off the shelf.

“This is the one I’ve been looking for! Here you are.” She opened the back cover of the book, and sure enough, France had taken it out five or six times. Very few other names were on the card. When the other person got the book he wanted and left, the librarian closed the train-station book and slid it under my arm. “Walk out with it like this. That way no one will suspect that we’ve been talking back here.” She looked around and peered through a shelf to the next aisle before speaking again. “It’s Anna’s decision is all I know. We all know that. But it’s hard not to be impatient. Ever since —” The sound of approaching feet stopped her in mid-sentence again. This time for good, because a young woman with a little girl in tow came up and asked for a book on raising goldfish that she hadn’t been able to find.

I took my book back to the table in the magazine room and skimmed through it. Picture after picture of American railroad stations.

The guy who wrote the accompanying text was a little overenthusiastic about things like the “grandeur” of the Wainer, Mississippi, “antebellum masterpiece,” with its three ticket windows instead of one. But I spent some time with my nose in the book because I could envision France doing it and because, for whatever reason, it was a subject that interested him. I remembered Lucente talking about his Sunday train rides and the postcards of train stations at his house. On my third time through I flipped past Derek, Pennsylvania. A half-second later my eyes widened and I frantically turned back, almost afraid that it might not he there when I got to it. But it was. Someone had penciled extensive notes all along the border of the page. I had seen France’s handwriting only a couple of times, but this was it. The same careful up and down letters. The notes had nothing to do with either Derek, Pennsylvania, or its train station. In true artistic fashion, it looked like my man had been inspired and had written his inspiration down on the first scrap of paper he could find.

It was a description of a character named Inkler. I couldn’t make out some of the words, but essentially Inkler was an Austrian who decided to walk around the world. To raise money for his journey, he had picture postcards printed up of himself and the white bull terrier he would take along for company. Underneath the picture it stated Inkler’s name, where he came from, what he intended on doing, how far it was (60,000 kilometers), that it would take four years, and that the card was his way of raising money for the trip. Would you please donate a little to this worthy cause?

There were notes on what he would look like, the name of the dog and what it looked like, which places they would pass through, and some of their adventures along the way. The entry was dated June 13, 1947.

I copied all of it down on my pad. For the first time, I felt I had really come across buried treasure. There was no Inkler in any of the France books, so I was one of the only people in the world who knew about this particular France creation. I was so greedy about it that for a moment or two I deliberated on whether or not to tell Saxony. It was mine and Marshall France’s. Marshall’s and mine… . But goodness prevailed and I told her. She was excited too, and we spent a happy second day in the library poring over all of the other books that he liked, according to the librarian. We made no other discoveries, but little friend Inkler would end up being quite enough to handle.

The next day, we were in the kitchen having breakfast when I wondlered out loud where France got the names for his characters. It was something I especially liked in his books.

Saxony was halfway through a piece of toast smothered in orange marmalade. She took another bite and mumbled, “The graveyard.”

“What are you talking about?” I got up and poured myself another cup of the hideous chamomile tea she’d bought. My mother used to soak her feet in chamomile tea. But it was either drink that or else some kind of decaffeinated health-food coffee from Uranus that Saxony had gotten on Mrs. Fletcher’s suggestion.

She brushed her hands together and a hail of breadcrumbs flew everywhere. “Yes, from the graveyard here. I took a walk through town the other day to get the lay of the land. There’s a very nice church down past the post office that reminded me of one of those old English churches that you see in calendar pictures or on postcards. You know the kind — dark and dignified, a stone wall going around it… . I got interested, so I wandered up and noticed a small graveyard behind it. When I was a child I used to do a lot of gravestone rubbings, so I’m always interested in them.”

Sitting down at the table, I wiggled my eyebrows up and down like Peter Lorre. “Hee … Hee. Heeee! So am I, my dear. Rats and spiders! Spiders and rats!”

“Oh, stop it, Thomas. Haven’t you ever done stone rubbings? They’re beautiful.
Thomas
, will you stop drooling? Your imitation is marvelous, okay? You’re a wonderful vampire. Do you want to hear about this or not?”

“Yes, my dear.”

She put two more pieces of whole-wheat bread into the toaster. The way she ate, I sometimes wondered if she had been starved in a previous existence.

“I was wandering around, but something was wrong, you know? Just off, or wrong, or not right. Then I realized what. All of the names that I saw there on the stones, or almost all of them, were the names of characters in
The Night Races into Anna
.”

“Really?”

“That’s right. Leslie Baker, Dave Miller, Irene Weigel … All of them were there.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. I was going to go back with a pad and write all the names down, but then I thought that you would probably want to go too, so I waited.”

“Saxony, that is fantastic! Why didn’t you tell me about it sooner?”

She reached over the table and took my hand. The longer we were together, the more it seemed that she liked to touch and be touched. Not always a sexy or loving touch, but just contact. A little electrical connection for a second or two to let the other know that you’re there. I liked it too. But business was business and France business was big stuff, so I made her gulp down what was left of her toast and we headed out to the graveyard.

Fifteen minutes later we were standing in front of St. Joseph’s Church. When I was little I had a lot of Catholic friends who crossed themselves whenever they went past their church. I didn’t feel like being left out, so they taught me how, and I did it too whenever we went by the church together. I was with my mother one day in the car. She drove by St. Mary’s, and like the good little Catholic I wasn’t, I unconsciously crossed myself in full view of her horrified Methodist eyes. My analyst went crazy for weeks after that trying to dig out of me where the impulse came from.

While Saxony and I stood there, the front door opened and a priest came out of the building. He moved quickly down the steep stone steps and, giving us a clipped, formal nod, moved on by in a hurry. I turned and watched him slide into a burgundy Oldsmobile Cutlass.

Saxony started toward the church and I followed. It was an especially nice day. The air was cool and a strong wind had been gusting and whipping through the trees, raising summer dust everywhere. Overhead, it zipped all of the clouds by as if they were in a speeded-up movie. The sun was a sharp and clear seal in the middle of a cobalt-blue envelope.

“Are you coming? Don’t worry, the little men under the graves won’t bite you.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I caught up with her and took her hand.

“Look.” She pointed to a gravestone with her foot.

“Hah! Brian Taylor. How do you like that! And look — Anne Megibow. Boy, they are all here. Why don’t you start taking names down, Sax, and I’ll have a look around.”

To tell the truth, I wasn’t happy with the discovery. Romantic or not, I wanted my heroes to be struck by inspiration in every aspect of their work. Stories, settings, characters, names … I wanted it all to be completely their own — to have come only from them; not a graveyard or a phone book or a newspaper. This somehow made France look too human.

Once in a while some crazily devoted fan got by the security guard at our house in California. My father’s favorite story was the “Woman Who Rang the Doorbell.” She rang it so long and hard that my old man thought that there was some kind of emergency. He made it a point never to answer the door, but this time he did. The woman, holding an eight-by-ten photo of him, took one look at her god and staggered back off the front step. “But why are you so
short?
” she wailed, and was dragged away in tears.

Saxony was right about the gravestones: they were intriguing and lovely in a sad way. The inscriptions told the stories of so much pain — babies born August 2, died August 4. Men and women whose children all died long before they did. It was so easy to envision a middle-aged couple sitting in a dumpy gray house somewhere, never talking to each other, pictures of all their dead sons and daughters on the mantelpiece. Maybe the woman even called her husband “Mister” for all the years that they were married.

“Thomas?”

I was setting a squat glass jar of flowers straight on someone’s headstone when Saxony called. I guess that they had been orange marigolds once, but now they looked like tired little crepe-paper balls.

“Thomas, come here.”

She was off on the other side of the graveyard, which sloped downward in her direction. She was squatting by one of the graves and balancing herself with one hand flat on the ground behind her. I got up from where I was, and my knees cracked like dry sticks of wood. Mr. Physical Fitness.

“I don’t know if you’re going to be very happy about this. Here’s your friend Inkler.”