Free The Land of Laughs by Jonathan Carroll Page B

the dry snakeskin of a person who’s old and lived out in the sun all her life. More white, an inside-living white that had begun to go gray like an old postcard.
    “How d’ya do? I hear you’re out here to stay maybe for a while?”
    I looked at Saxony and wondered how much she had told Mrs. Fletcher. She winked at me in between bites of sparerib.
    “That you might want to rent a place?”
    “Well, yes, maybe. It’s just that we don’t know how long we’ll be here, you see.”
    “That doesn’t make any difference. I’ve got so much room downstairs in my house that I could rent it out for a bowling alley. Twice.” She took a black-and-gold-plastic cigarette case out of her handbag. Unsnapping it, she pulled out one of those hundred-millimeter-long cigarettes and a black Cricket lighter. Lighting up, she took a huge first drag that quickly burned down into a long ash. It drooped more and more as she talked, but she refused to tap it off.
    “Dan, these ribs look good. Can I have a plate of them?”
    “Sure, Goosey.”
    “Notice he calls me Goosey? All of my friends call me that.”
    I nodded and didn’t know whether it would he rude to start eating again while she talked.
    “You don’t have to worry about not being married or anything with me.” She looked at us separately and tapped the ring finger on her left hand. “That kind of stuff’s never bothered me. I only wish people’d felt that way when I was a girl. I would have had a great time, believe me!”
    I looked at Saxony for her response to that, but she kept looking at Mrs. Fletcher.
    The woman stopped as she was about to say something, and drummed her fingers on the tahle. “I’ll rent you my downstairs … I’ll rent it to you for thirty-five dollars a week. Now, you can’t get that kind of price at any motel around here. It’s got a good kitchen down there, too.”
    I was about to tell her that we’d have to talk it over when Dan brought her plate.
    “What do you say to thirty-five dollars a week for renting out my downstairs, Dan?”
    He crossed his arms over his stomach and sucked air in through his teeth. It sounded like a steam iron.
    “You people are thinking of staying in Galen for a while, are you?” I didn’t know if I was just paranoid, but I was sure that his voice clicked into being less friendly.
    Saxony spoke before I had a chance to. “We’re trying to see if we can talk to Anna France. We’re very interested in doing a book about her father.”
    And wasn’t there a silence then? Faces that showed a slow, thick interest that moved through the air toward us like smoke on humid air?
    “Anna? You say you want to do a book on Marshall?” Dan’s voice rose out over the cooking food, the quietness, the breeze that kept coming up out of nowhere and dying just as quickly.
    I was furious with Saxony. I had wanted to poke around the town for at least a few days before I started telling people why we were here. I’d recently read an article about an up and coming writer who lived in a small town in Washington State. The people in the town were tight-lipped about him to outsiders because they liked him and wanted to protect his privacy. Although Marshall France was dead, I was sure all along that the people in Galen would hesitate to talk about him. It was really the first stupid thing Saxony had done. The only thing I could attribute it to was her nervousness at actually being here.
    Dan turned around and bellowed to one of his buddies, “The man here wants to do a book about Marshall France.”
    “Marshall?”
    A woman wearing blue jeans and a man’s chambray shirt at a table across from us piped up, “On Marshall, you say?”
    I felt like standing up on the bench and announcing through an electronic bullhorn, “YES, FOLKS! I WANT TO WRITE A BOOK ABOUT MARSHALL FRANCE. IS IT OKAY WITH YOU?” But I didn’t do that. I took a sip of Coke instead.
    “Anna?”
    I wasn’t sure that I had heard him right. His voice