Lightning nuzzled Franny’s neck, then looked right into her eyes. His own kind, dark eyes encouraged secrets, and Franny suspected that many kids had whispered private things into Lightning’s warm, odorous ears, just as she did. They knew he’d keep their secrets safe, always and forever.
Voices drifted over a hill, and Franny turned to see the Pack strolling toward her. The Pack consisted of Walter Walter; his brother, Seymour; Teresa Goodly; her little sister, Rose; the new girl, Quiet Katy Green; and the Solomon siblings, A (Albert), B (Bobby), and C (Carol). Franny herself used to be a bona fide member of the Pack, Before. All of them smiled at Franny as they approached the stables, but then, as if responding to a high-pitched signal only they could hear, they hurried past her toward Beechwood Boulevard.
“Whoa!” shouted Franny. “Where are you going? Fire? Parade? Circus in town?”
Or something.
Franny knew where they were going. Away from her, that’s where.
“Hey, guess what?” she yelled. “I’m not contagious anymore!”
Accompanied by a pungent whiff of garlic, Walter Walter turned and walked toward her, but not too close. He was carrying his bat.
“Thanks for the six Get Well cards,” said Franny.
“Seven,” said Walter Walter with a small smile.
“Right. Seven. Hey, you still wearing that stupid thing around your neck?” Franny asked.
Walter Walter shrugged, glancing down at the little bag attached to a string.
“I guess,” he said. “They say it works.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
Walter Walter shrugged again. “People. I don’t know.”
“Walter Walter, you tell me how a bulb of garlic can fight the poliovirus! Go on. Bet you can’t!”
“Virus hates the smell?”
“That’s stupid, and you know it.”
“Well, all the kids are wearing garlic. Nobody’s caught polio yet.”
“So you’re saying if I’d worn a stinky bag of garlic around my neck, then I wouldn’t have gotten it?”
“Don’t know,” said Walter Walter. He swung his bat at an imaginary pitch, then stopped swinging. “Why’d you get polio, anyway? Nobody else did. I heard they burned all your old books and toys and stuff because everything you touched was contagious.”
“That was then. But they say I’m not contagious now. I’ll be going back to school once I’m more ‘independently mobile.’ And nobody knows why I got it.”
“Who’s ‘they’?”
His pleading eyes stared right into hers. Franny could tell Walter Walter wasn’t being a smart aleck. He really wanted to know.
“Smart people. Doctors,” Franny said. “People who know how viruses operate. My pediatrician told us I’m definitely not contagious at this point. And neither is my mother or my father or Min. Viruses are like villains who ride into town, shoot like crazy, then gallop away, leaving death and destruction in their wake.”
Walter Walter was silent, leaning on his bat.
Franny held up her baseball. “Feel like hitting a few? I can still throw.”
“No time,” said Walter Walter, looking guilty. “We’re getting a game together at the school yard in a few minutes.” He brightened suddenly, reaching into his pocket. “Hey, I’ve been meaning to give you these buckeyes, since you couldn’t gather them yourself this year. They should be as hard as rocks by spring. You’ll be OK by spring, right?”
“Of course,” Franny said.
In the autumn, round buckeye nuts, as big as half-dollars, fell from the horse chestnut trees growing in Homewood Cemetery. After the nuts had dried over the winter, they were cherished and traded by the Pack as if they were expensive marbles, or they were tied to spare shoelaces like mini-catapults for the Pack’s buckeye-slinging contests.
“Here you go,” Walter Walter said. He dropped four round buckeyes into Franny’s outstretched palm.
“Thank you,” said Franny. “I didn’t think I’d have any this year.” Franny noticed that Walter Walter had been very, very careful not to touch her. She put the buckeyes into her pocket. “Hey, Mr. Double-Dose Pizzazz Walter Walter,” she said suddenly, leaning forward as if she had a secret to share. “Want to be a real superhero?”
“What?”
“You heard me. It’s easy-peasy.” Franny held out her hand. “Here. Shake.”
Walter Walter looked at Franny’s outstretched hand. He didn’t move.
“No viruses on it anywhere. I promise. Come on, shake!” Franny wriggled her fingers. “And tell the others to come by, too.”
Franny waited.
The seconds ticked by.
One. Two. Three.
Four. Five. Six.
A second for every year they’d been friends.
Walter Walter gently tapped Franny’s outstretched fingers with the tip of his bat.
“Hey!” cried Franny.
They stared at one another, eyes wide. Franny could tell Walter Walter was as surprised as she was at what he’d just done.
“I’m really sorry, Franny. I hope you get better. Maybe I’ll come visit soon, OK? My parents …” Then Walter Walter turned and raced away to catch up with the others.
Franny shouted after him. “You’ll never be a real superhero! You’re a yellow-bellied, lily-livered milksop!”
That night Franny picked at her chicken leg during supper, brushed Alf while they both lay in her bed, threw a book across the room (Little Women, not Charlotte’s Web), counted all the reasons she hated Walter Walter and other kids she knew, cried until she was too tired to cry anymore, and was just about to turn off her lamp, when she noticed the tiny chocolatey-brown writing in her journal.
Greetings, Franny!
Bonjour! At last
we connect!
“Who the HECK” am I?
Ich bin Fleabrain.
Je m’appelle Fleabrain.
Yo soy Fleabrain.
Fleabrain.
I am a proud representative of Ctenocephalides canis, flea of the dog.
I am thrilled to share
my thoughts about books and culture
with
you.
I am enjoying the plethora of books in the Katzenback bookshelves
and have completed the works of that Englishman William Shakespeare (April 23, 1564–April 23, 1616).
I have also recently read Die Verwandlung by Franz Kafka (July 3, 1883–June 3, 1924), who was from Prague but wrote in German.
Have you read it? Terribly overrated. It is a story about a man who turns into a bug overnight. I was rather offended by its silly, buggist plot. Can’t wait to discuss!
Not to brag, but I complete
one great work by a preeminent thinker almost every day,
often two great works, depending upon how long they take to digest.
Happily,
FB
P.S. Dare I add a bashful little postscript? Well, here it is: Would you be so kind as to meet me at the tip of Alf’s tail, tomorrow after your evening treatment, around 5:30 p.m.?
Yours,
Fleabrain
Other Things Fleabrain Knew
Fleabrain knew—he knew with all his heart, with every cell of his minute, ugly body—that he and she were Kindred Spirits. Spirits in Kind.
(“Ugly” was a relative term. His mama, whom he resembled, would have found him handsome and dapper. But if he were human-size, he’d be a monster.)
In fact …
… he knew he loved Franny.
And, as the English poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, born March 6, 1806, died June 29, 1861, once wrote in her moving poem “How do I love thee? Let me count the ways … ,” his own microscopic brain enjoyed counting the ways that he, Fleabrain, loved Franny:
1. Both were attached to the same dog.
2. Both of their names began with F.
3. Both felt small. Emphasis: felt.
4. Both felt invisible. Emphasis: felt.
5. Both were lonely.
6. Both had feelings about Charlotte. True, not the same feelings. (Yes, he was bitterly jealous of Franny’s adoration of that storybook arachnid. Certainly not proud of that, he had to admit.)
7. But, oh, how they both loved books! He himself was more than halfway through the texts of that lofty hallway bookcase, having absorbed treatises on geometry, philosophy, first aid, calculus, European history, and more. He was now gobbling up the foreign-language shelves. Spanish conversation. The French essayists. The German poets and philosophers. How clever of humans to communicate in a variety of languages. Nonhumans had only the Language of Instinct. Reliable, yet often limiting.
Bug it! He, Fleabrain, with his ever-reliable instincts, his marvelous, brilliant brain, and his loving heart, knew that he and Franny could be the very, very best of friends. She didn’t really need any others.
He could hardly wait to meet in person (so to speak)!
Believing
Franny believed.
She believed the Earth was wondrous, as was its plant-making Sun and tide-making Moon. She also believed there was life on other spinning planets, somewhere in the dark mystery of space. An infinity of wondrousness.
Teresa believed in God, who looked like a combination of Santa and her kindly great-uncle Donald, she said. But sometimes Teresa imagined God resembling Uncle Donald’s wife, Marie, also kindly, who made heavenly snickerdoodles.
Min believed God looked like Rabbi Hailperin, in a stylish suit and tie under his prayer shawl. Of course, she was sophisticated enough to know otherwise, she said, but that’s what she imagined during services.
Quiet Katy, the new girl, hardly ever said anything about anything. But one day she blurted out that she didn’t really know for sure what she thought about God. Maybe God was just a good feeling and didn’t look like anyone at all.
Walter Walter believed in aliens. Most of them had gigantic eyes and blinking spokes for ears. They always commanded magnificent flying machines. He was positive they were out there, but Franny wasn’t so sure.
In Charlotte’s Web, Fern had fervently believed in Charlotte. In Peter Pan, Wendy had believed in Tinker Bell and Never Never Land. True, those kids lived in books, but it had all seemed so real, Franny had believed, too! And wasn’t that kind of wondrous?
There were so many possibilities to believe in.
There were so many things, good and bad, that nobody could prove or understand.
But Franny believed—she knew—that there were invisible alien viruses that could turn you into another person one fine morning, a person who could no longer walk. Nothing ever again could surprise her as much as knowing that.
So Franny believed in a tiny flea, mutated and transmogrified into a writer of splendid notes.
Fleabrain.
At 5:30 p.m. the next evening, Franny checked the tip of Alf’s tail. Alf lay patiently stretched out on Franny’s coverlet, big head on big front paws. There had been no mention of a particular hair at which to meet, tip or otherwise. Franny combed through Alf’s entire bushy tail with her fingers. Unfortunately, Alf’s tail was darker in color than the rest of him. Something unusual would be difficult to spot. At one point Franny thought she saw a speck flit across one hair, but she couldn’t find it again.
That night Franny whispered into the darkness, “Are you there? Will we ever meet? Are you really just a flea?”
At the bottom of the bed, Alf didn’t stir, as if he knew Franny’s three questions were not for him.
By the Light of the Moon
Fleabrain had hollered. He had leaped. He had shaken his tibiae, frantic to communicate. He’d tried clapping his tarsi, clattering his mouthparts, and frantically raising the short hairs on his back, the latter considered an impertinent gesture among his kind. He had been desperate for Franny’s attention and was weak from his exertions.
Fleabrain heard Franny whispering her three lonely questions into the darkness. Replenished after supping on Alf, he was inspired to write a poem in Franny’s journal by the light of the moon. How gratifying it felt to translate his angst into a creative endeavor!
Unfortunately, by daybreak he realized his creation was not up to his usual standards. To wit, it was a very bad poem, and it was too late to revise it. It had been written in haste and frustration, though not without love.
Nevertheless, in his heart he knew Franny would understand and perhaps even appreciate his literary effort.
Franny—
I wail
To no avail
From a hair on Alf’s tail.
Yes! Three times yes!
But to hear me, you fail.
P.S. My dear Franny, the above is a work in progress. There is, one might say, “avail” available. So, yes, three times yes, to your questions.
We will find a way.
Yours,
FB
P.S. Hopefully, you will eventually think of me as more than “just a flea”
and
as a cherished friend.
The Bookcase
The day after receiving the very bad poem, which (as Fleabrain had hoped) she enjoyed for its clarity and honesty, Franny wheeled herself to the entry-hall bookcase, hoping to spot Fleabrain among its “plethora” of books.
Like Fleabrain, Franny loved the books in that bookcase. Some of the books used to belong to Franny’s deceased grandparents and great-grandparents; others her parents had bought cheaply in used bookstores. They had their own odor, ancient and mysteriously adult, smelling of woolen blankets and socks and soup and exhaust fumes and classrooms. That’s because the books were read in all sorts of places before they ended up in the bookcase. Many, many people had loved them.
Franny’s parents had read most of the books in high school and college. They often said they hardly remembered what was in them, even though all of their schooling had been an “enlightening experience.” Mr. and Mrs. Katzenback preferred reading about current events in newspapers. But her mother respectfully dusted off the tops of the books once a year, and both of her parents said the tall, lofty bookcase made for a handsome entryway.
Franny didn’t really understand how her parents’ schooling could have been enlightening if they’d forgotten almost all of it. She herself resolved to remember every bit of the higher learning of her life. The lower learning, too. Why else bother learning? Her parents didn’t want her nosing around “adult” books, which, of course, made the books more enticing, even though she hardly understood most of them.
“Hello, hello,” Franny whispered, opening a few books at random. She imagined letters and words and paragraphs dancing in a dusty, happy cloud from the yellowing pages, grateful to be alive again. Wheeee! We’re free-eeeee! Hello, hello to you, too! She hoped that Fleabrain would emerge from one of the books. But if he did, she didn’t see him.
As she didn’t know German, Franny had never read Die Verwandlung, the book Fleabrain had deemed “buggist” and overrated. But she did know it for its strange and deliciously horrifying book jacket. She decided to build up the courage to face the frightening jacket by first leafing through the French texts from her parents’ college days. Many of the books in the bookshelves had underlining and circled phrases and cryptic comments in the margins. But the French texts contained the love notes.
Je t’adore, Muriel.
Je t’adore, Sammy.
Sammy. Mon cher. Muriel.
Mon petit choux.
There were lots more mushy-sounding notes scribbled in the margins of the books. Franny’s parents, Muriel and Sammy, had fallen in love during university French class. They’d given their daughters French names, Minot and Francine, to commemorate their love. Franny enjoyed discovering those notes. They made her think of chocolate-covered caramels and lacy valentines. Although sometimes she wished her parents had written on a variety of topics in order to practice their French. Then they could have passed on that fluency to their offspring.
Finally, her hand trembling, Fr
anny reached for the small, thin book with the faded red spine.
DIE VERWANDLUNG. Franz Kafka.
What did Die Verwandlung mean, anyway? Die? Wand? Lung?
There were penciled exclamation marks scattered in the margins, and someone had scribbled Kafka has the answers in a margin. Another person had excitedly responded, HE DOES! HE DOES!
The book had been purchased in a used bookstore by Sam Katzenback, but he’d never read it, having dropped German literature and conversation for French literature and conversation after his first day of class, in order to meet the lovely Muriel, he said. Franny wished he’d remained in the class so that he’d be able to translate this strange book for his future daughter. Of course, if he’d remained in the German class and never met Muriel, his future daughter wouldn’t have been Franny.
Franny forced herself to carefully examine the Kafka book jacket again.
A giant-size insect lay on its back, waving its scaly tentacles. Its eyes were unseeing mounds in its forehead. Its mouth was a grimacing circle of sharp fangs.
But what made the illustration peculiarly horrifying was that the giant-size insect was lying on a four-poster bed, covered by a blue and white checkered quilt. A man’s brown leather slippers, toes touching, were by the bed, waiting for a man’s feet to slip into them. Newspapers were scattered on the patterned rug. A jug of water sat on a night table, and a white shirt and brown suspenders were draped over a chair.
Horrifying! Deliciously, shiver-inspiringly horrifying. Almost funny.
And yet.
So, so sad.
Why was the bug lying in bed? Why did the bug own human clothes?
Franny stared intently at the illustration. The more she looked at it, the more fascinating and interesting it became. The bug’s fanged mouth opened wide, then snapped shut. Franny blinked. Open, snap! As if the bug were trying to answer her questions!
“Oh!” cried Franny, startled. The book dropped from her hands to the floor. Straining forward to reach for it, she toppled to the floor herself.
“For goodness’ sake, girl!”
Fleabrain Loves Franny Page 3