Ghost Town

by Richard W. Jennings

  Boy, would he ever be sorry!

  To demonstrate that I'm a good sport, I picked out half a dozen of the best shots and sent them to her in care of Poetry Week magazine. Maybe my gesture would encourage her to write something nice about Paisley.

  The second roll of film was like being inside the Dali Museum for the first time in your life or discovering the mind and drawings of M. C. Escher or possibly seeing your first painting by Henri Matisse or Gustav Klimt.

  It was an unexpected immersion into a mini-collection of truly original startling art, if I do say so myself.

  Nothing in life could have adequately prepared me for what I now witnessed.

  Fantasy Begets Fame

  ALTHOUGH NO ONE HAS ASKED, I offer a few words of explanation about my prizewinning photograph.

  I had begun by attempting to take pictures of the macro world, the world that's the size of a bug. I'd wound up photographing the human world as bugs see it, with the addition of a few phantoms thrown in for atmosphere.

  My portrait of Maureen Balderson after she kissed me is the one that should have won the prize. Her image was glorious, equal slivers of herself woven together into a tapestry and glowing like the sun.

  I could understand the judges' choosing the one with Merilee Rowling, the one they labeled "Romeo and Juliet" (how did they come up with that?), because it "told a story," however false, something that photo judges seem to like. But for sheer beauty, Maureen Balderson's image was the winner in my book, hands down.

  Immediately, I used one of the half-price coupons to order enlargements of the portrait for Maureen and myself. Then, while I was at it, I ordered duplicates of the entire roll to share with Milton Swartzman.

  As things were turning out, I could afford as many copies as I wanted.

  By the time the overgrown pastures of Paisley turned honey brown and blue ice had formed at the edges of the ponds, I received a letter from Milton Swartzman sharing my appreciation for the work made possible by the broken ghost camera and suggesting that we publish a volume of photos for national release.

  Such printing is very expensive, he advised me. Doing color work takes many steps, superior paper, quality craftsmen, and an editorial understanding of the artist's intentions. It is also typically done in short runs, which are more expensive as well, at least on a cost-per-book basis.

  Thus, the best I can offer you is fifteen percent of the gross receipts, he explained. I hope this is acceptable to you. I think you have something important to share, and I am trying very hard to be fair. Not so easy after all these years.

  Ever the businessman, Uncle Milton enclosed a contract, which I signed and returned to him with a note of thanks.

  Meanwhile, the latest issue of Poetry Week magazine was published, which would have escaped me altogether had I not noticed it on the side table by the mortgage department desk while depositing my monthly Milton Swartzman check in the bank across the street from Wal-Mart.

  "May I borrow this?" I asked.

  "Take it," the mortgage banker insisted. "The last poem anybody around here gave a pig's patooie about was 'Casey at the Bat.'"

  "Thanks," I said. "I'll get it back to you."

  "Not necessary," he insisted. "Just don't take the copy of Entertainment Weekly, the 'Top Twenty-five Starlets Under Age Twenty-five' issue. I'm not done with it yet."

  "How about Photo World?" I asked, detecting that the mortgage banker was in a generous mood. "Anybody need that one?"

  "Not unless it has naked ladies in it," he advised. "Let me take a quick look."

  Apparently it didn't, because he let me have it as well.

  Back home, armed with a fresh supply of contemporary reading material, I made myself comfortable in my nest, which, thankfully, had been returned to the top of the bed. Curiously, it still smelled strongly of Merilee Rowling's flowery perfume, a scent I since have learned is called L'Air du Temps by Nina Ricci.

  I don't speak French, but I sense the combination of air and time.

  My mother, of course, was too busy watching Oprah to be bothered with laundry, and I for one didn't really care. As long as it didn't stink, I figured, I could live with it.

  It didn't. I could.

  Merilee Rowling's story of Chief Leopard Frog and his breakthrough book of poems, Burl Hives, was a grandiose fiction from start to finish.

  Merilee claimed to have spent the night with Chief Leopard Frog in his tepee under a full moon in a wheat field in Paisley, Kansas.

  She said she'd met his daughter and her white husband of the heavens, who had presented her with a magic horse-shaped amulet that could predict the future.

  She claimed to have been inducted into the Sac and Fox tribe in a ceremony involving waffles cooked on a raging prairie fire set by lightning.

  It was a shameless, self-indulgent fabrication, and she included as proof of her presence one of the photos I'd sent showing her posing near the rusted tractor.

  Her article reproduced twelve of Chief Leopard Frog's poems in their entirety, a copyright infringement that was as outrageous as the rest of her story.

  She properly described Paisley as a ghost town, but went on to say that one peculiar family still held on, clinging to illusions, in a falling-down house that was haunted by generations of Native Americans.

  She described my mother as a baffled, harried, and forgotten employee of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and me as a diminutive teenager whose hormones had overtaken his mind.

  She expressed pity for our condition and predicted a bright future for Chief Leopard Frog. She included his picture in the story. The credit line for the photo read "Photo by Merilee Rowling."

  It was, in fact, just what I expected, and sales of Burl Hives doubled overnight. The checks from the Cayman Islands began arriving daily.

  You never know.

  Sore Legal Eagles Soar

  SUCH A LITTLE scam artist!

  I sent Merilee Rowling a postcard. It said, Dear Stranger: Read your story. Nice work. Please return my daddy's hat or I'm telling on you. Your pal, Spencer.

  Photo World was even more interesting.

  My prizewinning photo was on the cover. Inside, a brief article consisting of quotes from Mr. Leiberman and an assistant professor at St. Louis University named Jay Schmo, Ph.D., declared that a new branch had burst forth on the evolutionary tree of the visual arts. An exhibition in New York was predicted but no details were provided.

  How do people get away with such stuff?

  How do the disseminators of facts continue to engage in such egregious half-truths and falsehoods?

  Is the whole world made up of liars?

  Uncle Milton sent me a twelve-thousand-dollar advance on the book of photos. He had titled it Inside a Bug's Eye, which I thought was fairly restrictive, but when Newsweek magazine picked a portion of the collection for a special issue and the bonus check arrived, I couldn't have cared less if he'd called it Inside a Bug's Ass.

  The money kept pouring in.

  Who s the girl you're rolling around with in Newsweek ? Maureen Balderson questioned me on a postcard bearing an image of a hay bale wearing oversize sunglasses with the headline "LIFE IS A BEACH IN KANSAS." It looks a lot like that strumpet Merilee Rowling that I met at your house. What's happened to you? Always, MO.

  Immediately, I sent off a reply, also on a postcard, this one a split image showing wild turkeys happily gobbling in a field on the left half while on the right half they were being carried like gray flour sacks flung over the shoulders of two men with shotguns. It bore the headline "LIFE IS A SPORT IN KANSAS!"

  It's not what it seems, I swear, I wrote to Maureen Balderson. I am a victim of unscrupulous business opportunists. She means nothing to me. Less than nothing. Just a prop for a picture. Love, Spencer.

  Not that I'd been all that scrupulous.

  But the fact is, you don't get to be a big success without cutting a few people off at the knees when the situation calls for it, and having a smart lawyer for a br
other, or having a friend who has a smart lawyer for a brother.

  Milton Swartzman's brother was a big shot lawyer in Palm Beach, Florida. His name was Howard. His office was on the top floor of a bank building that overlooked the surging Atlantic Ocean.

  From his office, Howard Swartzman looked down not only on everybody else in Palm Beach but also on many rich Europeans arriving on private yachts and cruise ships.

  With Howard's help, I was able to stop Merilee Rowling from getting the money for the movie rights to Chief Leopard Frog's story, which Universal Studios had offered seventeen million dollars for, based on her fascinating and widely read article in the once obscure Poetry Week.

  The case was unique in the annals of copyright law and eventually became known as the "Frog Decision."

  The judgment hinged on this point: A heavily fictionalized story about an imaginary person, when presented as legitimate journalistic fact, is wholly dependent upon the imaginary person's actual existence. Inasmuch as the imaginary person in Honesty versus Rowling, namely, Chief Leopard Frog, was imagined entirely by Honesty and not at all by Rowling, the imaginary character is the exclusive property of Honesty.

  The court compared the case to Walt Disney's imaginary creation of Mickey Mouse. Many artists drew the character in various settings and with various appearances, but to this day Mickey Mouse remains the exclusive property of Walt Disney, his heirs, and his assigns.

  Although Rowling owns the copyright to her actual written words, in their unique sequence and configuration, the court explained, she is prohibited from exploiting the imaginative creation of Honesty known as C. L. Frog.

  In other words: Girl, get your own imaginary friend!

  You can't steal another person's delusions and expect to get away with it—not in this litigious day and age.

  Additionally, Howard Swartzman was able to extract a very generous compensation from the well-endowed Poetry Week magazine for its unauthorized publication of Chief Leopard Frog's poems.

  When Merilee Rowling tried to countersue for my failure to obtain a model release for the use of her image in my prizewinning photo, Howard-the-lawyer threatened to charge her with the theft of my peach-colored Columbus Catfish ball cap, a serious federal crime since the hat had traveled across state lines in violation of the Baseball Fann Act.

  Her case against me immediately collapsed.

  Clearly, genius runs in Uncle Milton's family.

  Howard then sued Photo World for failing to pay me for use of the cover photo, went after FedEx for routinely delaying my shipments, and, quite by accident, filed suit against his own brother for a number of contract violations involving the talismans, the pumpkins, and the books, but when that inadvertent action came to light we all quietly settled over an excellent home-cooked meal prepared by my mother. As I recall, it included chicken livers.

  Afterward, as a gesture of kindness, Milton gave Howard the Sammy Davis, Jr., pumpkin for his office in Palm Beach, where, I understand, it is much admired by his wealthy clientele.

  Peace prevaileth, so to speaketh.

  All's Well That Has a New Beginning

  MY PICTURE BOOK, now in its seventeenth printing, was going gangbusters. It had become especially popular in Holland, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, and France.

  Autographed reproductions of my photos, prepared at Sparkle Snapshot in St. Louis, Missouri, and mounted on fine art board by an outfit in Sri Lanka (to reduce labor costs, Mr. Leiberman explained), were selling for more than five thousand dollars apiece plus shipping and handling.

  Mr. Leiberman took care of everything for a mere twenty-five percent.

  The bank across the highway from the Wal-Mart sent me a personalized rubber stamp to endorse my checks so my hand wouldn't get tired when making all my deposits. They also let me select twenty magazine subscriptions free from a list provided by the bank vice president's daughter, who was selling subscriptions to benefit her high school band.

  I'll probably never get around to reading Cigar Aficionado, but as long as it didn't cost me anything, I figured I'd add it to the pile. I also checked off O, Oprah's magazine, and TV Guide, both for my mother, plus the new Reader's Digest, because it fit so neatly on the back of the toilet.

  What I was really looking forward to receiving, however, was Kansas Real Estate Investor Monthly, because I had big plans percolating.

  I was, by now, the richest kid in town. A dubious achievement given the population of Paisley, but worth mentioning.

  Just as paper covers rock, and rock breaks scissors, and scissors cut paper, so does business activity mask loneliness. In fact, there is a point at which business activity masks everything, from ethics to love.

  I had forgotten to write back to Maureen Balderson.

  It had been weeks since the last exchange of postcards.

  No, it was worse than that. I looked it up. It had been months. I'd been too busy getting rich to remember that the former girl next door was about to celebrate her sixteenth birthday.

  Being rich does not guarantee to make you happy, but if you've figured out a way to make someone else happy, being rich definitely helps you express your feelings.

  As it turned out, the Baldersons' house in Kansas City was part of a suburban real estate development adjacent to what only recently had been a farm occupied exclusively by wild rabbits and coyotes.

  Now, of course, it was a prime site for a housing development for sale to any fool who would pay the asking price of sixty thousand dollars an acre, an outrageous sum for land by Paisley standards.

  I bought all forty acres of it.

  I also bought the Baldersons' house in Paisley. Then I arranged with Happy Turtle House Movers of Pittsburg, Kansas (down here, there is no h in Pittsburg), to have it moved to my land in Kansas City, where it was carefully situated on a pretty, partially wooded half-acre lot next door to the Baldersons' new house.

  A little brass plaque on the front door read HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET SIXTEEN.

  Mrs. Balderson was thrilled. Not only did she now have enough room to put away all the stuff she'd been buying at the stores in Kansas City, but she knew exactly where it all would fit.

  Maureen Balderson was speechless, but her tears of joy said it all.

  "Oh, Spencer," she finally murmured.

  Her father put his arm around me and tormented me briefly with a half bear hug while Tim went tearing down the street after a rabbit that had been flushed from the bushes by all the activity.

  As dramatic as this gesture was, however, it was only the beginning.

  Within two months the entire town of Paisley, Kansas, had been rolled two hundred and fifty miles down the highway and planted like winter wheat in the fertile land of Kansas City's newest upscale subdivision, Paisley Paradise.

  In the center of the development, in a beautifully proportioned red-brick Georgian building reminiscent of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, stood the Louise Franks Memorial Free Library of Paisley, Kansas.

  Surrounding it were Mr. Heath's general merchandise store, the Honesty Gallery of Contemporary Art, Baskin-Robbins, Pizza Hut, PetSmart, OfficeMax, Subway, and Bed Bath & Beyond.

  (Give me a break! Every real estate developer has to make a few compromises!)

  The Best That I Could Do

  I MOVED THE WHOLE TOWN of Paisley, Kansas, to Maureen Balderson's new subdivision in Kansas City, but to my credit, I hope you realize, I did not move the plastics factory.

  Neither, for that matter, did I bother to erect a statue to the town's founder and first mayor, the vagabond bandit Colonel Daschell Potts.

  Instead, I commissioned a bigger-than-life bronze reproduction of an Indian chief leaning against a tree and whittling a talisman. My only regret is that through some hugely embarrassing mix-up, it got installed on a marble pedestal in front of the cigar store.

  The hardest part in all of this was saying goodbye to the subject of the statue.

  Chief Leopard Frog had not stood by m
e through thick and thin, but he'd certainly been with me through thin, which was when I'd needed him the most.

  Without his native strength, his optimism, his wisdom, his creative gifts, his presence, and his confidence in me, I surely would have withered away like the once doomed town of Paisley.

  We all owe so much to the native peoples who have gone before us.

  "Won't you come with me?" I asked him as we stood side by side in a blustery wind on the vacant ground of Old Paisley.

  "You know I can't," he replied. "You're merely being considerate of my feelings."

  "Is that bad?" I asked. "Being considerate, I mean."

  But already he was gone.

  My mother somehow managed to keep her job delivering mail to the residents of Paisley now reestablished in its new location.

  Who can fathom the collective bureaucratic mind of the United States government? Do they even have a clue? If so, does anybody care?

  Today Paisley is filled with young couples and little kids and packs of odd-size, strange-behaving pedigreed dogs, teenagers with brand-new used cars, and a few slow strolling people in their twilight years who wear big smiles and wave to everyone whether they know them or not, some using canes and aluminum walkers.

  Every year when the weather turns cold, I send a special pumpkin to Milton Swartzman. The last one looked just like President Franklin D. Roosevelt, glasses and all, I swear.

  Oh, and guess who, at the tender age of nineteen, wound up becoming the fourth wife of Milton's brother Howard, the rich genius Palm Beach lawyer?

  If you were about to say Merilee Rowling, you'd be absolutely right. But I wouldn't worry about him. He can afford her. The question is, how long can he stand her?

  To my way of thinking, what Howard should have done is gotten himself a dog, like I did: a little chestnut-colored miniature dachshund with short legs and a bobbed tail, full of frolic and kisses.