The Land Of Laughs

"And you never once thought…" He looked at his coffee cup so as not to embarrass me.

"Not in a million years." I picked up my espresso spoon and placed it inside my cup.

The houses on both sides of the street were lit up and cheery, but there was no sign of life in them. All of the people were at the Galen station, all happy to be out of their houses for a while, together, anticipating the moment in the future when Marshall France would really come back and take over the direction of their lives forever.

The smell of pine and car exhaust stayed with me all the way down to the railroad crossing that I had passed hundreds of times. I looked at my watch. It was 5:21. It would take five to eight minutes to walk the street parallel to the railroad tracks all the way to the station. That would be cutting it thin, but it was exciting, and already I could feel my heart thumping hard in my chest.

I took a right and went east on Hammond Street, breaking into a little run every once in a while. There was some snow on the sidewalks and I felt it up under the soles of my shoes – like walking over sharp stones.

I was breathing hard and my arms pumped back and forth at my sides, pushing me forward. What would they do down there? How would they all look right at 5:30? What would… ? And then I heard it off in the distance. I stopped and my eyes blurred. There were two short hoots and then a long one. A long one that rose and stayed in the air like an eerie animal calling out to someone. I leaped off the sidewalk and into the street. The whistle blew again and I knew that it was closer, almost there, the train almost in Galen station. But passenger trains didn't stop at Galen station anymore…. The street ended in a small circle, but I vaulted the low stone wall there and kept ru

It stopped. It was quiet except for the hissing and the clanking of the engine.

I just barely saw a conductor descend the steps and the crowd push up tight to one of the cars.

Then a wave of incredible heat moved out over everything. I could actually see it coming, and when it passed over me it felt like a strong hot summer breeze. Not stronger. Pleasant. I remember thinking that it was very nice.

People down there started to jam even closer to the train. Their noise returned.

And then from behind me the explosion came. This huge sound ripped through the sky, and without thinking, I turned around to see what it was. An oleo-yellow cloud of flame blossomed up and fell halfway back down to just above the tops of the houses and trees. Separate flames kept swimming up and away.

I turned back to the station and saw them mobbed around something on the platform. No one had turned toward the explosion. The train hooted twice and began to chug forward.

I was ru

The train was picking up speed and was right behind me when I reached the crossing and turned left again up my street. I saw the flames, and now I knew the house. I wanted to stop and look for a moment and take in what was happening. The right of any person whose house is burning down, wife is shot, child is run over. The right of the already doomed to see what their future is about to be. But I didn't stop. I heard the train pass behind me, and I kept ru

"AN-NA! AN-NA! YOU ARE SO FUCKING SMART! YOU WERE SO FUCK-ING SMAAAAART!"

That's all that was really necessary, wasn't it. Have us write a first draft that was so good that it didn't need to be fixed or redone. Write it right up to the moment that Marshall France arrives in Galen. Go down to the train station then and see if it works, see if it comes in at 5:30… if he comes in at 5:30. If he doesn't, then you've lost nothing. If he does, all you've got to do is get rid of your writers, get rid of your evidence. They're u

I watched the house burn from the other side of the street. I couldn't get any closer. There was debris strewn everywhere, some of it still burning: a pillow, an upside-down chair, books. And there was part of a body near the front gate. It wore the shredded remains of the bright red mackinaw that I'd bought at Lazy Larry's.

I didn't know how much time I had, but I needed every bit of it. My car was parked a few feet away. The fire owned everything. I was in the car, the yellow light flickering across the dashboard. I remember thinking that I wouldn't have to turn on the headlights for a while because it was so bright. I put it into gear and slowly drove away. There was another explosion while I was still driving down the street. The oil heater? Another stick of dynamite? Looking in the rearview mirror, I saw things flying high in the air over the house, high and in slow motion.

Epilogue

I saw a bull terrier the other day. It isn't the first one I've seen since then, but it is the first time that I haven't either cringed or run away. It was white with black spots and reminded me of Pete the Dog in the Our Gang comedies. I was sitting at a little round cast-iron table out in front of a cafй. I had been drinking pastis and writing a couple of things down in my diary.

The car had thrown a rod, but luckily there was a Citroлn repair place in town: one guy in a blue beret smoking one of those yellow Gitanes cigarettes. It wasn't so bad to stop for a couple of days anyway. The trip from Strasbourg had been done in thunderstorms and I had done most of the driving. But as soon as we got to Brittany the skies cleared and the sun threw out the welcome mat.

The dog's name was Bobo and he belonged to the owner of the cafй. After looking at him for a while I went back to my diary. Since Galen, I've been pretty good about keeping a record of what has been happening to me.

I bought the book in Burke, Michigan. The first entry went on for pages and pages. Half-coherent, messy, paranoid. A lot of "They're coming to get me!" sort of thing. Naturally I still have that paranoia, but you get used to living with anything after three years, even that. I don't know how long it took them to figure out that I wasn't killed in the explosion, but from the very first I assumed that as soon as they knew for sure, they would come for me.

So I ran like hell, I stopped to pick up a passport in Detroit and then went right over the river to Canada. I worked in Toronto at a paperback bookstore for a while; then I got in touch with my bank in America and had them transfer all of my money up there. When it arrived I quit my job and got on a plane to Frankfurt, Germany. My itinerary since then? Frankfurt, Munich (in time for the Oktoberfest), Salzburg, Milan, Stresa, Zermatt, Grindlwald, Zurich, Strasbourg, Dinard…

My mother still doesn't know what the hell is going on, but good Joe that she is, she's never asked questions. When out of the blue she got a wire from me asking for every bit of biographical material on my father that she could find, two weeks later a nicely wrapped package arrived special delivery at the fu