Little Kingdoms (7 page)

As Franklin coolly reported the interview to Max, he realized that what had most upset him about it had been Kroll’s crass assumption that he had animated his old strip. Of course he had drawn on “Dime Museum Dreams,” but there had been no attempt to drag his old strip out of the attic, brush off the cobwebs, and present it to the public all over again. Rather he had sunk into a familiar place in his mind and emerged with something entirely new, something mysteriously connected with his father’s grave voice in the kitchen darkroom. At the same time Max’s savage attack on Kroll, who he said had the look of a debauched Humpty-Dumpty, struck Franklin as wide of the mark, for he recognized with a kind of irritation that he did not entirely disagree with Kroll’s position. Kroll was by no means the corrupt buffoon Max made him out to be; his alertness to possible injuries to the
World Citizen
was surely proper. Franklin hadn’t given a moment’s thought to the possible consequences of his animated cartoon, his kingdom of shadows, and his carelessness seemed to him blameworthy. His next cartoon would give Kroll no grounds for concern, since it would have nothing whatever to do with any of his strips. Meanwhile he intensely disliked the idea of reviving the old strip, which no longer interested him; but he supposed he could stand it for a few months.

Perhaps it was the talk with Kroll, perhaps it was the sense
of having completed a long and arduous task, in any case Franklin felt tired—very tired—tired deep in his bones. In the mornings when he heard the rattle of milk bottles in the wire box on the front porch he lay in a heavy stupor of half waking, thinking how nice it would be to lie there a little longer, only a little longer; and the heaviness, the sense of being bound to his bed, made him think of his child’s illustrated
Gulliver’s Travels
, in which Gulliver was shown lying on his back with disturbingly thick, taut bolts of hair tied to little stakes in the ground. In the graying light of late afternoons, on the commuter train that made its way along the river toward the Victorian station one township south of Mount Hebron, Franklin sat back with half-closed eyes and listened to the soft squeak of the conductor’s shoes, the soothing click-click of the ticket punch; and in the lamplit evenings, sitting in the soft armchair in the parlor, he listened to Cora practice her Czerny exercises while Stella bent frowningly over sheets of paper at her round worktable or played on the rug with her little wooden wash set: her washtub, her clothes wringer, her clotheshorse, her washboard. Sometimes he read aloud to Stella while she sat in his lap with her hair tickling his cheek. He read
The Young Folks’ Story Book, Shining Hours, Grimm’s Household Fairy Tales
, and a boxed set of four small books called
Polly’s Jewel Case
, which included
Fireside Fancies, Very Pretty, Dear Little Buttercup
, and
Miss Mugglewump and the Thugglebump
(“Just kidding, Stel”). Later, when Stella had been put to bed, he would sit at the kitchen table with Cora and play one of the board games she sometimes enjoyed, like Innocence Abroad, or Steeplechase, or The Game of Life. Then he would retire to his armchair, where he would sit heavy-lidded and heavy-limbed, weary but not sleepy, while Cora sat reading on the couch. Sometimes he thought of his tower study, which seemed as remote and inaccessible as a tower in a fairy tale: to reach it he would have to climb innumerable flights of stairs, only to find, behind a moldering door, in an old room so thick
with cobwebs that he would have to part them like layers of gauze, an old clock with a rusted key, a pile of yellowed pages, a cracked bottle of dried ink.

On a Saturday house visit to Stella, who lay in bed with a sore throat, Dr. Shawcross lingered to examine Franklin. In a grave voice that reminded Franklin of his father in the darkroom, Dr. Shawcross said that he was suffering from nervous exhaustion as a result of overwork. He recommended rest, a curtailed work schedule, and as much time as possible in the fresh country air. Franklin, struck by the kindness in the doctor’s voice, thought how odd it was that this kind man, the very opposite of a Kroll, nevertheless reminded him somehow of the harsh editor, and later that night, as he lay in the dark staring up at the black ceiling that was the floor of his forbidden study, he suddenly made the connection: both Kroll and Shawcross had issued warnings, and both had exacted from him promises of obedience—as if they had secretly conspired, though for different reasons, to punish him for straying.

As the weather grew warmer and the leaves of the sugar maples, spreading their elegant designs into sunlight, cast broad patches of shade, Franklin played outside with Stella after supper under the still-light sky. On weekends he liked to explore with her the two acres of woods that were part of his property and rose up behind the deep backyard. He showed her little tight-coiled ferns that hadn’t yet unfurled, birch bark and beech bark, hickory nuts that looked like small green pumpkins, the striking shapes of maple leaves: sugar maple and red maple and silver maple. Each leaf looked as if it had been cut from a pattern with a pair of scissors. It struck him that leaves were the snowflakes of summer, each tree a storm of slight variations on a form. Sometimes he walked with Stella down to the village to buy seed packets and balls of twine at the general store. From there he liked to continue down to the river and sit quietly with her on the bank: he leaning back on his elbows with his legs
stretched out, she sitting with her arms around her raised knees. He was a little concerned about his daughter, who was very quiet, seemed sullen around Cora, hid when anyone except Max came to the house, and preferred staying indoors with Mrs. Henneman or taking walks with Franklin to playing with children her own age. Across the sunny brown water rose long low hills of pine woods with a scattering of blue spruce, oak, and birch. There were a few houses among the trees, and a patch of bare earth on which sat a brilliant yellow bulldozer. “When I die,” Stella said, hugging her knees and staring out across the water, “I’m going to keep my eyes open.” “Look,” Franklin said. “Over there: do you know what that is? It’s a blue jay. It looks a little like the kingfisher in your book, but take it from me, it’s a jay. I bet
he’s
not thinking about dying. Why would you want to keep your eyes open?” “Because that way it won’t be too dark. I hate the dark. When people die, do they come back again?” “Well,” Franklin said, and cleared his throat. Stella said vehemently, “They do come back again. They do.” She paused. “But not always.”

On weekends when Max visited, he and Cora and Franklin and Stella took long walks on country paths, had picnics in the woods, played croquet in the front yard, and drove to a landing ten minutes away, from which they took a small ferry across the river to the wooded hills on the other side.

“Stel’s been talking about death,” Franklin said one night. “I think she’s lonely. I’m away all day, and she doesn’t really have any kids her own age to play with.” He and Cora and Max were sitting on the open porch, despite a chill in the air.

“Death,” Max said. “A woman after my own heart. You know, I’ve seen two new bulldozers in those hills since my last visit. People are buying land up and down the river. In twenty years you’ll be living across from Chicago.”

“God, I love it up here sometimes,” Cora said, shaking back her hair and drawing her sweater close.

“The only land I’ve ever owned,” Max said mournfully, “is in
a flowerpot on a window ledge on East Twenty-third Street.”

“Well,” Cora said, “we’ve all got to start somewhere,” and Max burst into high, nervous laughter.

The weekend outings, the lazy evenings, the hours in the sun, the self-banishment from the tower study: Franklin had to admit that it was all having an effect, that he had never felt better in his life. In the mornings he rose before the rattle of the milk bottles and, filled with a kind of energetic serenity, went downstairs in the bird-loud dark, showing its first streak of gray, to put up a pot of coffee and prepare fresh orange juice. He sliced the plump Florida oranges in half on the breadboard, pressed the juicy halves firmly against the upthrust knob of the juicer, and carefully checked for pips. Freight cars loaded with slatted boxes of oranges picked from sun-drenched trees in orchards in Florida had rushed through the night at sixty miles an hour, through Georgia, the Carolinas, Virginia, all the way to the state of New York, where husky men with bulging veins in their upper arms had loaded the boxes onto trucks and driven them to country stores in northern villages, solely in order that he, Franklin Payne, could buy one dozen sun-ripened oranges and stand in his kitchen to make fresh orange juice for his wife and daughter. It was all astonishing, as astonishing as the milk that arrived in clear glass bottles every morning, with the cream clinging to the top, or the brightening air that poured through the large windows in their solid oak frames—yes, the whole world was simply pouring in on him. Soon he would make a breakfast of soft-boiled eggs, sputtering bacon, and toast with butter and apple jelly, and later, in his office, he would work hard, but not too hard, so that he would finish by the end of the day; and in the warm evenings he would walk with long strides, taking in the dark green scents of early summer. His body was trim, his step light, the skin of his cheeks and neck radiant with weekend sun and air; and at night he had begun to visit Cora in her room again.

As his health returned, as his energy increased, Franklin sometimes felt a touch of restlessness. In the warm summer evenings, sitting on the front porch as the last light drained from the sky and the green hills turned black beyond the darkening river, he would feel a vague regret, a wistfulness; and somewhere far back in his mind he would have the sense of an inner itching, as if he were on the verge of remembering a word that kept eluding him. Then he would get up from the porch glider and go inside, letting the wooden screen door slam behind him; and in the lamplit parlor he would look at the mantelpiece clock, flanked by a glass-covered oval photograph of Cora’s parents and a glass-covered photograph of Stella, in matching pewter frames.

One night Franklin woke beside Cora and sat up in bed. His heart was beating rapidly; the remnant of a dream floated just beyond his inner sight and vanished. The muscles of his legs itched. Through the screen beneath the raised shade the night sky was deep blue. Franklin slipped out of bed, glanced at Cora, and stepped out of the room. He walked down the hall, opened a door, and began climbing the stairs to his tower study. On the dark landing he paused; his heart was beating wildly; his temples felt damp. Somewhere a floorboard creaked. For a long time he stood on the landing before turning back down the stairs.

“No no no,” Max said a few days later. It was a hot blue Sunday afternoon. “My lips are sealed. Not a word until we’re there.” The wheels of the Packard made snapping and crunching sounds as they passed over pinecones on the rutted dirt path. Through overhanging branches, sunlight fell in trembling patterns, rippling over Cora’s straw hat, glinting on bits of mica in granite rocks, sliding over foot-high tufts of grass that sprang from the dirt between the ruts. The ferry had carried the car across the river, and Max had guided them onto a hard dirt road that became narrower and bumpier, sprouting ferns, buttercups, clusters of Queen Anne’s lace. “This will do,” Max said, “this is fine,
stop right here. Now follow me, one and all.” He led them along the vanishing dirt path, looking back impatiently. Suddenly he stopped and stepped into the woods. “Come on, come on, you lazy city slickers, get a move on, shake a leg. Watch it, we’re coming to a stream. Easy now. Easy does it.” After a while he stopped and held out his arms. “Well? What’s the verdict?”

“A nice spot for a picnic,” Franklin said. “We could sit in that oak tree.” Through the trees he could see the river below and, half a mile downriver, the village of Mount Hebron.

“Humble,” Max said, placing a hand over his heart, “but mine own. Three and a half acres of pinecones and fungus.”

Cora clapped her hands. “You’re not serious, Max! You’re not serious!”

Franklin said, “Do you mean to tell me—”

“It cost me an arm and a leg, let me tell you.” Max shrugged. “But I figure I’ve got two of each. I think of it as an investment. A larger flowerpot. Hey, Stella Bella, look: see this pebble? I own it. That leaf’s mine.”

“This calls for a celebration,” Franklin said, patting his pockets over and over again, as if he expected to find a corkscrew.

Two days later Max sat in Franklin’s office, his legs outstretched, his left arm hooked over the back of the chair, his right hand rippling through the air. “I feel like a kid with a new train set, Franklin—only my trains are trees. Is this crazy? It’s not even Wednesday and I’m counting the hours till the weekend. This place doesn’t help. Monday morning I don’t even have my hat off and already there’s a note on my desk. From the Troll himself. You know who Alfred the Fat is? I’ll tell you who he is. He’s the fat little drip-nose kid we all knew in the third grade, the one whose pants were always getting stuck in his behind. Now he’s sitting behind a desk and making us pay for knowing what we know about him. I’m telling you, one of these days—one of these godforsaken days—and take a look at this place, will you? Look at it. It’s like working in a loony bin designed by
one of the resident loonies. Christ, I’m raving. I’ve got a deadline.” He stood up. “You have a good life, Franklin.” He turned abruptly and left, rattling the blinds.

Franklin disliked being told that he had a good life—for some reason it made him feel that he didn’t have a good life at all—and he disliked Max’s abuse of Kroll because it had the effect of making him rise secretly to Kroll’s defense, and he preferred not to be nudged into Kroll’s camp against his will. His own work for Kroll was going well. For the revived Cincinnati strip, now called “Dime Museum Days” in honor of the popular animated cartoon, Franklin changed Danny to a girl and brashly borrowed incidents he had invented for the film. There was a daily black-and-white version and a separate Sunday one in color. Moreover, the daily strip was no longer closed, but continuous: a long adventure, each day’s installment ending in a suspenseful sixth panel, with an occasional small resolution and the introduction of secondary characters, who replaced the rather passive heroine from time to time in adventures of their own that took them to new rooms of the museum. Franklin worked swiftly, scarcely revising a line; the strip proved popular, although he knew that the drawing was inferior to that of the original strip, the situations less surprising and original, the whole thing hopelessly uninspired. Kroll had canceled “Figaro’s Follies” and rejected each of the new strips Franklin had invented to replace it; he was urging Franklin to create a strip in a more realistic vein to replace the old “Phantom of the City.” After several failed attempts, including a humorous domestic strip in which the husband stayed home with the baby while the wife worked as a newspaper reporter, and a mischievous-kid strip in which the real culprit was the cute little dog, Franklin returned to an idea in one of the late Phantom strips, replaced the Phantom with a likable street urchin with a patch on his pants, and set the strip entirely underground, in the subway and its tunnels. It was a continuous strip, in which the boy had a series of menacing adventures
in subway cars and in the system of tunnels under the city; the settings were precise but verged on the fantastic. Kroll was pleased, though he insisted that Franklin name the boy Sammy and the strip itself “Subway Sammy.” Franklin had suggested “Adventures in Underland.”