The Land Of Laughs

by Jonathan Carroll

"Beauty and the Beast, huh?" I patted his head. "Hi, Beautiful."

  "Very funny. Don't just stand there like that. He's crushing me!"

  "Maybe he's a sex maniac and is really giving you some kind of nasty dog caress."

  "Thomas, will you please just get him off me? Thank you."

  After he had been shifted-wrestled over to my side of the bed (his head right on my pillow, no less), Saxony locked her hands behind her neck and looked at me. "Do you know what I've been thinking?"

  "No, Petunia, what have you been thinking?"

  "That after you finish this book you should do a biography of your father."

  "My father? Why would I want to do a book about him?"

  "I just think that you should." Her gaze shifted away from me up to the ceiling.

  "That ain't no reason."

  Her eyes slid back to mine. "Do you really want me to tell you?"

  "Yes, of course I do. You've never said anything about this before."

  "I know, but I've been thinking recently about how important he is in your life, whether you know it or not. Look, do you realize how often you talk about him?" She held up her hand to stop me from saying anything. "I know, I know – he drove you crazy and most of the time he wasn't even around. Okay. But he's in you, Thomas. More so than any kid-parent relationship that I've ever known. Whether you like it or not, he's staked out a big part in your guts, and I think it would be very important for you to sit down sometime soon and just write about him. It doesn't matter if it turns out to be an actual biography or just your memoirs…

  I perched on the edge of the bed with my back to her. "But what good would it do?"

  "Well, I never understood a lot of things about my mother, you know? I've already told you about her."

  "Yes, you said that she could make anyone feel guilty about anything."

  "That's right. But then one day my father told me that her mother had committed suicide. Do you know how many things became clear to me after that? How much made sense? I didn't actually like her that much more, but I suddenly saw a different person."

  "And you think that if I find out about my father's life, then it'll make my relationship with him clearer to me?"

  "Maybe, maybe not." She reached around and put her hand on my leg. "I do think, though, there's too much unresolved stuff that has ended up making you love and hate him at the same time. Maybe if you really dug into who he was, it would clear the runway for you. Do you understand what I mean?"

  "Yes, I guess so. I don't know, Sax. I don't really want to think about it now. There's too much else that has to be done these days."

  "Okay. I'm not telling you to drop everything and do it this minute, Thomas. Don't take it the wrong way. I just think that you should consider it."

  "I will. Sure."

  Nails shoved his nose into her neck, and that got her up and out of bed fast. I was glad that the conversation ended there.

  The sun was out, and after breakfast we decided to take a walk into town. It was still early, and everything glistened like wet glass from the dew and the leftover rain. By now we more or less knew a few people – store owners and others – who waved when they drove by. That was another pleasant thing about living in a small town: there weren't enough of you around so that you could afford to ignore anyone. You might have to buy a cabbage from one of them or have him work on your car that afternoon.

  When we got to the library, my friend "I told you so" was walking toward us on the other side of the street. I assumed that she was about to open the library. "There you are! The hermit. Wait there a minute. Let me cross." She looked so carefully both ways, you would have thought that she was crossing the San Diego Freeway. A Toyota puttered by, driven by a woman I had often seen in town but didn't really know. But she waved too.

  "I've got some more books for you, Mr. Abbey. Are you ready for them?" The rosy rouge on her cheeks made me very sad for some reason.

  "Thomas hasn't finished The Wind in the Willows yet, Mrs. Ameden. As soon as he does, I'll bring the whole bunch back to you and pick up the new ones."

  "The Wind in the Willows was never one of my favorites. How can you have a hero who is a greasy little frog?"

  I cracked up. She looked at me sternly and shook her blue-gray head. "Well, it's the truth! Frogs, little creatures with hair on the tops of their feet like the hobbit…. Do you know what Marshall used to say about that? 'The worst thing that can happen to a man in a fairy tale is to be turned into an animal. But the greatest reward for an animal in one is to be turned into a man.' Those are my sentiments exactly.

  "Anyway, don't get me going on that subject. How is your book going?"

  The more we talked with her, the more it seemed that everyone knew everything about everyone in that town: the librarian knew about the test chapter, how much information on France his daughter had given us, and the one-month deadline. But why? Sure, like Anna, the townspeople had a kind of claim on France, since he had spent so much of his life among them, but did Anna tell them everything because of that, or was there some other, more cloudy reason?

  A picture flashed across my mind – Anna, naked and tied with leather straps to a bar in someone's basement playroom, being whipped again and again with a bullwhip until she told all of the deadpan Galen faces around her what they wanted to know about Saxony and me.

  "Did you give him the train-station postcards too?"

  "No, never! Aaugh, yes, yes, I gave him everything!"

  Then (this is the same picture), the plywood door explodes and I come flying in with two Bruce Lee kung-fu chains whirling around in my hands like airplane propellers.

  "… the house?"

  "Thomas!"

  I started and saw that the two women were waiting for an answer from me. Saxony squinted daggers and sneaked in a killer pinch under my arm.

  "I'm sorry. What were you saying?"

  "He is a writer, isn't he? Head floating around in the clouds… just like Marshall. Did you know that Anna took away his car keys a couple of years before he died? He bumped into more trees with that old station wagon. Dreaming, he was. Just plain old dreaming."

  Everyone had at least ten Marshall France stories to tell. Marshall behind the wheel, Marshall at the cash register, Marshall and his hatred for tomatoes. It was a biographer's paradise, but I had begun to wonder why they had paid so much attention to him, and why there was so much contact among them. I kept thinking about Faulkner in Oxford, Mississippi. From what I had read, everybody in that town knew him and was proud that he lived there, but it wasn't any big deal to them – he was just their well-known writer. But the way people talked about Marshall France, you would have thought that he was either a miniature God in a kind of down-home way, or at the very least the brother that they were closest to in the family.

  We decided to skip the library and finish our walk into town instead, partly because I didn't feel like looking at any books that morning, and partly because there were a few places that I hadn't visited for a few days.

  The Abbey Guided Tour began with the bus station with its flaking white park benches outside and bus schedules posted right above them so that you almost had to sit in someone's lap to find out when the St. Louis express came through. A fat, pretty woman sat behind the tiny Plexiglas window and sold you your ticket. How many movies began with dusty bus stops like this in the middle of nowhere? A Greyhound comes slowly down Main Street and stops at Nick and Bonnie's Cafй or the Taylor bus depot. Above the windshield where the glass is tinted green, the sign says that this one is going to Houston or Los Angeles. But along the way it's stopped in Taylor, Kansas (read Galen, Missouri), and you want to know why. The front door hisses open and out steps Spencer Tracy or John Garfield. He's either got a battered suitcase in his hand and he looks like a bum, or else he's dressed in fit-to-kill city clothes. But either way, there is no reason in the world for him to be way out here…

  Favorite place number two was a macabre store a couple of steps down from the b
us dlepot. Inside, hundreds of spooky white plaster statues: Apollo, Venus, Michelangelo's David, Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chaplin, jockeys holding hitching rings in one outstretched hand. Christmas wreaths waited in ghostlike rows for people to buy them. The man who owned the place was an Italian who did all the work in the back of the store and who rarely appeared when you came in to look around. I had seen only two or three of his pieces in people's houses or out on their lawns in all of the time that I had been in Galen, but I assumed that he made enough money from them to survive. What was so ominous about it was the total whiteness of everything. When you entered the store, it was like stepping into clouds, only here they were John F. Kennedy and crucified-Christ clouds. Saxony hated the place and always went to the drugstore instead to see if any new paperback books had come in. I had vowed to myself that before we left, I would buy something from the guy just because I spent so much time wandering around in his joint. Not that there was ever anyone else in there.

  "Hey, Mr. Abbey! I was hopin' that you'd be in soon. I got somethin' for you that I done special. Wait here."

  The owner disappeared into his workroom and came out a few seconds later with a wonderful small statue of the Queen of Oil. Unlike the others, this one had been painted to match the colors of the book illustration.

  "Fantastic! It's wonderful. How did you – ?"

  "Naah, naah, don't thank me. It was strictly a commission job. Anna came in here about a week ago and told me to make it up for you. You want to thank anyone, thank her."

  Very cleverly, I slipped the statue into my pocket and decided for the time being that I'd hide it from Sax. I wasn't in the mood for a heavy discussion. I had a couple of minutes before I had to meet her at the drugstore, so I popped into a phone booth and rang up Anna's number.

  "France." Her voice sounded like a sledgehammer on an anvil.

  "Hello, Anna? This is Thomas Abbey. How are you?"

  "Hi, Thomas. I'm fine. What's happening with you? How is the book going?"

  "Good, okay. I finished the first draft of the chapter and I think it turned out all right."

  "Congratulations! Mr. Tom Terrific! You're way ahead of schedule. Are there many surprises?" In an instant her tone of voice switched from hard to coy.

  "Yes… I don't know. I guess so. Listen, I just went to Marrone's, and he gave me your present. I love it. What a great idea. I'm very touched."

  "And what did Saxony think of it?" Her voice moved again, back to shifty.

  "Um, well, I didn't show her yet, to tell you the truth."

  "I didn't know if you would. But why don't you go ahead and tell her that it is a present to both of you. Tell her that it's a little something for having finished the chapter. She wouldn't get mad at you for that, would she?"

  "Why would I do that? You gave it to me, didn't you?"

  "Yes, I did, but please don't misunderstand." Her voice stopped and hung there out in space, indicating nothing.

  "Yes, but look, if you gave it to me as a present, I wouldn't think of sharing it." I realized that I sounded offended.

  "But you wouldn't really be sharing it. You and I would know…"

  We actually went on and had an argument about it. The upshot was that I was disappointed, to be totally honest. Maybe getting it had created all kinds of Anna-and-me fantasies in my head. Then hearing her brush it off so lightly was a cold shower over everything. Anyway, she said that Petals had an appointment at the veterinarian for shots, so the rest of the conversation was short. At the end she repeated that she would be glad to help if we needed anything more, and then she was gone. I hung up but didn't take my hand off the black receiver once it was hooked back in its cradle. What the hell was I doing? I had just that morning been thinking about how nicely my life was going, then two hours later I was slamming phones down because I couldn't fool around with Anna France.

  I left the booth and trotted over to the drugstore.

  "Hey, Sax, what's up? What are you doing?"

  "Thomas! Eek, you're not supposed to see any of this."

  The man behind the counter stood in front of her and smiled beatifically at me. He had a couple of mascara containers in his hand.

  "Since when did you start wearing mascara, Sax?"

  "I'm just trying it, don't get excited."

  I wanted to tell her that I liked her eyes the way they were, but I didn't want to sound like a character out of My Little Margie in front of the druggist. He had a little white name tag on his jacket: Melvin Parker. He reminded me of one of those Mormon missionaries that come to your door preaching the gospel.

  Behind us something banged and I turned around to see Richard Lee finish off a quart bottle of Coke in one loud glug.

  "Hiya, Mel. Hiya, Abbey. Hello there." The last was for Saxony. He said it so gallantly that I expected him to tip his baseball cap. I felt a little ping of jealousy.

  "Mel, come over here a minute, will ya?"

  The druggist walked over to "Prescriptions" and Lee joined him there. Mel reached under the counter and brought out a gigantic red-and-white box of unlubricated Trojan condoms. Lee hadn't said a word to him about what he wanted.

  I don't want to sound like an elitist, but Trojans were the kind of rubber you kept in your wallet for three years when you were twelve or thirteen because they were so strong and thick. The word was that nothing short of a truck driving through one could put a dent in it. And yes, they were strong, but when the magic moment arrived and you actually used it, it was like screwing inside the Graf Zeppelin.

  Lee bent closer to Parker and whispered something long and low in his car. I tried not to pay attention but it was either them or Saxony's eyelashes in the counter mirror.

  "'Now if I can only find my goddamn keys I'll drive us both outta here in my bulldozer!'" I assumed that it was the punch line to a dirty joke, because Lee reared up like he'd been stung by a wasp in the fanny.

  The two of them had a good laugh, although Lee's was more forced and rough and went on much longer than Parker's.

  The Trojans disappeared into a brown paper bag and were paid for with a dirty twenty-dollar bill.

  Putting the bag under his arm, Lee got his change and turned toward me. I have a bad habit of judging people as soon as I meet them. Unfortunately I'm wrong about them a lot of the time. I'm also stubborn, which means that if I don't like a person right away – even if he is an angel in disguise – it takes a hell of a long time for me to see that I'm wrong and to begin dealing with him differently. I didn't like Richard Lee. He looked as if he walked around all day in his underpants and took baths on alternate Thursdays. There were gold sleep nuggets in the corners of both of his eyes, which is the kind of thing that makes me want to reach out and wipe them away. Like a crumb on someone's beard that he hasn't noticed.

  "I heard that Anna's letting you do the book. Congrats to you!"

  My heart melted a little when he stuck out his big mitt for a shake, but then it froze again when I saw him leering at Saxony.

  "Why don't you two come over to my house tonight? I can show you pictures of my mother and some other things like that. Why don't you come over and have dinner? I think we got enough for all of us."

  I looked at Sax and vaguely hoped that she would come up with an excuse. But I knew that I had to talk to this man sooner or later because of the importance of his mother.

  "It's fine with me. Thomas? We're not doing anything, as far as I can remember."

  "No. Yeah. No, that's great. That would he terrific, Richard. Thanks a lot for asking."

  "Good. I'm going fishing this afternoon, and if we're lucky we'll be having fresh catfish right off the line."

  "Hey, that's great. Fresh catfish." I tried to nod enthusiastically, but if my expression betrayed me it was only because I was thinking about the whiskers on catfish.

  He left and then Saxony decided to buy the Max Factor. I went to the counter to pay. While he rung it up, Mel the Druggist shook his head. "Personally, I never liked catfish. T
he only reason they're always so fat is that they eat anything. Real garbage fish, you know? That will be two-oh-seven, sir."

  There were crosses on top of crosses. Jesus bled all over the room from fifty different places, each showing him suffering some new kind of agony. The whole house smelled of frying fish and tomatoes. Except for the couch I sat on, which smelled like wet dogs and cigarettes.

  Lee's wife, Sharon, had the kind of innocent but odd pink face that you often see on midgets. She never stopped smiling, even when she tripped over their bull terrier, Buddy, and fell down. The daughters, Midge and Ruth Ann, were just the opposite: they slumped around the place as if the air were too heavy for them.

  Richard brought out his handgun collection, his rifle collection, his fishing-pole collection, and his Indian-head nickel. Sharon brought out a photo album of the family, but most of the pictures were either of dogs they had had through the years or, for some reason, pictures of the family when they were injured. Richard smiling at his leg in a thick white cast, Midge merrily pointing to an ugly blue-black eye, Ruth Ann on her back in what was obviously a hospital bed, and in apparent pain.

  "My God, what happened there?" I pointed to this one of Ruth Ann.

  "When was that? Let me think. Ruth Ann, do you remember when I took that one of you?"

  Ruth Ann scuffed over and breathed on my head while she looked at it. "That's when I slipped that disk in gym, Daddy. Don't you remember?"

  "Oh, that's right, Richard. That one's of the slipped disk she got."

  "Hell yes, now I remember. That cost me about three hundred bucks to put her up in the hospital. All they had down there was a semiprivate room, but I put her in anyway. Didn't I, Ruth Ann?"

  Tobacco Road-y as they sounded (and looked and were), you could tell that they liked each other very much. Richard kept putting his arm around the girls or his wife. They loved it; whenever he did, they would snuggle up into him with little peeps of delight. It was bizarre to think of this bunch together in their sad white house looking at pictures of Ruth Ann in traction, but how many families do you know that are happy and enjoy each other's company?