Part Two 5 page

"The woman who lived here –"

A voice like a sonic boom pushed its way in from outside. "Who the hell's in there? If you measly little fuckers broke that lock again, I'm going to break your fuckin' heads!"

Footsteps clunked across the wooden porch, and a man came in carrying a shotgun in his left hand like it was a flower he'd picked on the way over.

"Richard, it's me!"

"You little fuckers…" He was looking at me and bringing the gun up across his chest when Anna's words penetrated his thick skull.

"Anna?"

"Yes, Richard! Why don't you look before you start cursing at people? This is the third time this has happened. Really, one day you are going to go too far and shoot someone!"

She was angry, and you could immediately see how it affected him. Like a big guard dog that growls and then gets hit on the head by its master, he got all sheepish and embarrassed. It was too dark in there to tell, but I was sure that he was blushing.

In his defense he whined, "Christ, Anna, how'm I supposed to know that it's you in there? Do you know how many times them damn kids have gotten in here –"

"If you'd look once, Richard, you would see that the door was unlocked. How many times will we have to go through this? That is why I unlock the door every time!" She took me by the sleeve and marched me past him, out onto the porch. As soon as we were there, she let go.

When he came out, I recognized him from the barbecue too. A red, prickly farmer's face that looked half-tired and half-mean. He had a self-inflicted haircut that wobbled around his big head, a nose and eyes that stuck out too far from his face. I briefly wondered what kind of inbreeding his family had been up to for the past few generations.

"Richard Lee, this is Thomas Abbey."

He nodded absently but didn't offer to shake hands.

"You was at the barbecue yesterday, weren't you." A statement.

"Yes, uh, we were." I couldn't think of anything else to say to him. I wanted to, but I was blank.

"Richard's mother was the Queen of Oil."

I looked at Anna as if to say, "Are you kidding me?" but she nodded to reaffirm what she'd said. "Dorothy Lee. The Queen of Oil."

Richard smiled and showed an incongruously bright white set of perfect teeth. "That's right." He pronounced it "rat." "And if I didn't know your father as good as I did, Anna, I woulda said that he had something going on with my mama. You know what I mean – those two spent more time out here in this house than any of us ever did."

"Father would walk out here from town two or three times a week to see Dorothy when he was writing The Land of Laughs. He would put on his black sneakers and walk in the fields by the side of the road. No one would ever offer him a ride because they knew how much he liked the walk."

Richard leaned his shotgun against the wall and scratched his stubbly chin. "And my mama knew exactly when he was coming, too. She'd have us go out and pick a big bowl of berries, and then she'd sprinkle them with powder sugar. When he got out here the two of them'd sit out here on the porch and eat the whole damn bowlful. Right, Anna?

"Hey, you're the one who wants to write the book on Marshall, aren't you."

"That's what we have been talking about, Richard. That's why I brought him out here to see your mother's cabin."

He turned toward the open door. "My papa built this for her so's she could come out here and live a little in the woods. There were so many kids in my family that she said she needed a place to rest up once in a while. I couldn't blame her. I got three sisters and a brother. But I'm the only one left living in Galen now." He looked at Anna.

"Thomas, I'm sorry, but I have an appointment in town in half an hour. Would you like to stay here or come back with me?"

I couldn't see hanging around in the woods and jawing with Richard, even though I knew that I'd want to talk to him later if Anna ever okayed the book. I'd guessed that she would after dinner at her house and this little trip, but she still hadn't said anything definite one way or the other, and I was still too chicken to push her for a definite answer.

"I guess I'd better go back with you in case Saxony is there."

"Are you afraid she'll worry about you?" Her voice verged on being a taunt.

"Oh, no, not at all. I –"

"No, don't worry. We will have you back in time. Back in time for your tea. Richard, what about you? Do you need a ride?"

"No, I got my truck, Anna. I gotta get a couple of things out here. I'll see you all later." He started to go inside, but then stopped and touched her sleeve. "That Hayden thing's bad, isn't it? After last night, that's the fourth thing that's gone wrong. And now, one so close after the other…"

"We'll talk about it later, Richard. Don't worry about it now." Her voice was a quiet monotone.

"Worry? How the hell don't you worry? I pissed in my pants when I heard. That poor sucker Joe Jordan's up shit creek."

I watched Anna's face during the exchange, and it hardened more and more as Lee talked on.

"I said that we would talk about it later, Richard. Later." She held up a hand as if to push him away. Her lips had tightened.

He started to say something more but stopped, mouth open, and looked at me. Then he blinked and smiled as if something had dawned on him that made everything clear. "Oh, right! Jesus, listen to me and my big mouth!" He smiled and shook his head. "I'm sorry, Anna. You watch out for her, buddy. she can get pretty damn grouchy on you sometimes."

"Come on, Thomas. Good-bye, Richard."

The path was wide enough for us to walk side by side.

"Anna, I don't understand some of what's going on here."

She didn't stop and she didn't look at me. "Like what? You mean about what Richard was saying?" She pushed a hand through her short hair, giving me a glimpse of sweaty forehead. I love to see sweat on a woman. It's one of the most erotic, inviting things I can think of.

"Yes, what Richard was saying. And then Mrs. Fletcher kept asking me this morning if the Hayden boy was laughing when he got hit by the truck."

"Was there anything else?"

"Yes, there was. That man who hit him, Jordan? Joe Jordan? He kept saying that it wasn't supposed to be him, and that nobody knew anything anymore." I didn't want to push her, but I did want to know what was happening.

She slowed down and kicked a stone up the path. It hit another and caromed off into the woods. "All right, I'll tell you. Some terrible things have happened in town in the last six months. A man was electrocuted, a store owner was shot in a holdup, an old woman was blinded last night, and then this thing with the boy today. Galen is Sleepy Town, USA, Thomas. You can see that already, I'm sure. Things just don't happen here. We're the kind of place people joke about when they talk about hayseeds. You know – 'What do you people do around here for fun? Oh, we fish illegally or go down to the barbershop and watch them give haircuts.' Suddenly, these nightmares are happening."

"But what did Jordan mean when he said it wasn't supposed to he him?"

"Joe Jordan is a Jehovah's Witness. Do you know anything about them? They think that they are the chosen few. God would never let this happen to one of them, and besides that, what would you say if you had run over a child and killed it?"

"The boy died?"

"No, but he will. I mean, he probably will, from what I've heard."

"All right, that makes sense, but then what was Mrs. Fletcher talking about when she asked me if the kid was laughing before he got hit?"

"Goosey Fletcher is Galen's crazy old lady. You've seen that already, I'm sure. She orders everyone around and asks crazy questions and is perfectly at home in her nutty little head, God bless her. She was committed to an insane asylum for three years after her husband died."

We had reached the car, and she went around back to let the dogs in. Everything sounded reasonable enough the way she explained it. Yes, it sounded fine. So why did I turn and take a long last look back into the woods? Because I knew that what she had said was somehow a bunch of bullshit.

She dropped Nails and me off at Mrs. Fletcher's and said that she would give me a call in a day or two. She wasn't brusque, but she wasn't adorable, either.

As I reached the porch, Saxony loomed up into view behind the screen door.

"Ah, darling, you are a vision in wire mesh!"

"Were you with Anna?"

"Wait a minute." I unclipped Nails from his leash and he sat down on the top step. "Yes. She took me out to the Queen of Oil's house."

"What?" She opened the door and came outside.

"Yes. Some old woman named Dorothy Lee who was supposedly the inspiration for the Queen. She lived in an old dilapidated shack about three or four miles out of town in this big forest. Anna came by and asked if I'd like to see it. I did until Dorothy Lee's son appeared and almost shot us for trespassing. Richard. He reminded me of Lon Chaney Junior in Of Mice and Men. 'Tell me 'bout the rabbits, George.' One of those guys, you know?"

"What was the house like?"

"Nothing. A rickety dump decorated with old newspapers. Very uninspiring.

"Did Anna say anything more about the book?"

"No, not a word, dammit. I think she's into this big teasing thing, you know? She'll tell me all these things about her father and always phrase it, 'Here's something else for your book.' But she's never yet said whether she will let me do it or not."

Saxony shifted her stance and tried to sound nonchalant when she spoke. I loved her for the failed effort. "What do you think of Anna? I mean personally?"

I fought a smile down and reached out and ran my hand down her freckly cheek. I saw that she had gotten some sun when she was out shopping. She pulled away and caught hold of my hand in hers. My smile came up anyway. "No, really, Thomas, come on, don't be funny. I know that you think she's pretty, so don't lie about it."

"Why would I lie about it? And she certainly isn't what David Louis painted her. Christ, he had me thinking that we were about to rendezvous with Lizzie Borden."

"So do you like her?" She kept hold of my hand.

"Yes, so far I do." I shrugged. "But I'll tell you something, Sax. I also think that there's some kind of big weirdness going on around here that I don't like much."

"Like what?"

"Like, did you know… ?" I stopped at the last moment and lowered my voice to a whisper. "Did you know that Goosey Fletcher was in the booby hatch for three years?"

"Yes, she told me about it when we went shopping today."

"She did?"

"Uh-huh. We started talking about movies because of your father, and she asked me if I'd seen One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. I said yes, and she told me that she'd been in an asylum once. She said it like 'So what?'"

"Hmm." I took my hand back and played the dog leash through my fingers.

"But what's the matter with that?"

"Did you buy stuff for lunch?"

"Yes, all kinds of good things. Are you hungry?"

"Starved."

I make the world's most delicious grilled cheese sandwich, bar none. While I flitted around the kitchen whipping us up a couple of masterpieces, I filled her in on my woodland idyll with Anna.

"How great, you got whole-wheat bread! Now, now, now, a lee-tle boot-er…"

"Do you really think that Richard Lee would have shot you?"

"Saxony, I not only think so, I've got sweat stains to prove it. That man was not kidding."

"Thomas, you said that David Louis told you that crazy story about Anna screaming at him to get out, and that she wrote him mean letters whenever he sent someone out here to write about her father?"

"Louis didn't send anyone out, Sax, he would just answer their questions. They came out of their own accord, like us."

"All right, they came out on their own. But didn't he say that when they did come out, she would send him letters telling him that it was all his fault and that he had no right doing it?"

I nodded and slapped the spatula on the counter.

"All right, then tell me this: Why is she being so nice to you? If she hates biographers so much, why did she invite us to dinner and then drive you out to the Queen of Oil's house today?"

"That's one of the strange things that I was talking about, Sax. Either David Louis is screwy in the head, or else he just detests Anna France for some reason. Almost everything he said about her so far has proven wrong."

"But remember that she did lie about her father a few times last night, didn't she?" Her voice was triumphant.

"Yes, she did. She welcomed us with open arms and then started lying when she was talking about him." I flipped the spatula in the air and caught it by the handle. "Don't ask me about these things, dear, I only work here."

"It's interesting, you know?" She walked to the cabinet and got out two bright blue plates.

"Yup." I scooped the sandwiches out of the skillet at exactly the right moment and slid them onto a piece of paper towel to take up the extra grease. The secret of the perfect grilled cheese.

The next few days nothing much happened. I poked around town and talked to people. Everybody was very nice, but no one told me much that I didn't already know. Marshall France was a good old boy who liked to hang around and shoot the breeze just like any other mortal. He didn't like being famous, no sirree: a good family man who maybe spoiled his daughter a little now and then, but what's a father for?

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."

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 505