"It sounds like a Ku Klux Klan meeting to me."
"Oh, Thomas, don't be cynical and horrible for once."
"I'm sorry, you're right. But can't we come to the train station too? I mean, if we're the bringer-backers and all?"
She bit her lip and looked at the floor. I knew that she was going to say no. "Do you want me to tell you the truth? We've already talked all of this over, and everybody would appreciate it if you would just let us be there. Is that a terrible thing for me to say? Have I really hurt your feelings?"
Yes, she had, but I understood why she said it. No matter how important we were in bringing Marshall France back, we would never be part of Galen. Never.
"It's fine, Anna. I completely understand."
"Really? Are you sure? I'd hate to think that I –"
"No, look, don't say anything more. I totally understand. We'll stay home and wait for your procession to arrive." I smiled at her and twinked her cheek. "And I promise to be done before five-thirty on Friday."
Saxony liked everything about what she called "The Phantom Homecoming" party except for the fact that Anna would be there. She didn't want to see Anna. Not even in a crowd. So far, they had successfully avoided each other, but that was only because Sax had been in the house for so long.
In the end I was able to convince her that even if the old girl was there that night, there would be so many other people around that she could easily avoid any kind of confrontation.
I spent an afternoon just studying the Galen railroad station so that I was able to go into detail about what it looked like inside and out. It had been built in 1907, but time had laid a light hand on it. I walked out on the platform and looked up and down the track. Nothing. Not even a boxcar on a siding. There were still patches of snow on the ground, sparse and dirty.
But Marshall France had arrived here. That was one of the reasons why he was so fascinated with train stations. Arrivals and departures. Beginnings and endings and in-betweens. That's from his journals, not me.
While I stood there looking at the dull silver rails, I wondered how I would end up changing the biography so that at the end of his life, instead of dying of a heart attack, he would… Have an attack but somehow survive it? Go off someplace and then later return to the town? I didn't know. That was all such a long way off. I shook my head and walked back to the car.
For the rest of the week Galen was jumping. The stores were jammed with people, everyone who passed you on the street looked like he was running from one important job to another, even the voluntary fire department brought the trucks out onto the street and washed them, preparing for the parade. There was a kind of pre-Christmas excitement in the air, and it was fun just walking around and soaking it in and knowing that I was the cause of it. Me.
"Hiya, Tom! All set for Friday? We're going to have some party!"
"Tommy, you just finish up that part that you're doing and leave the rest up to us!"
I got a free drink at the Green Tavern and all in all spent the whole time feeling like the conquering hero.
Once in a while someone would do something strange like run for his car and slam down an open trunk lid when he saw me coming toward him on the street, but I assumed that they were making special foods or little presents for us and wanted it all to he a surprise on the big day. I was all for that.
I finished the scene at ten o'clock Friday morning. It was eleven and a half pages long. I brought it in to Saxony and stood in a corner of the room while she read through it. She looked up at me and gave a professional nod.
"It's just right, Thomas. I really like it now."
I called Anna and told her. She sounded delighted and told me that my timing was perfect because she had just come back with hundreds of bags of flour and after calling everybody, would get right to work on the gugelhupfs. She reminded me to tell Saxony not to even go near the stove-they would do everything.
Before lunch I went out for a walk, but the streets were almost completely deserted. All of this anticipation was floating around in the air – you could feel it – but the streets were as empty as a ghost town, with the exception of a car zipping by now and then on a secret mission. I gave up and went home.
The scent of some delicious meat sneaked down from Mrs. Fletcher's all the rest of the day. In spite of my vast hatred of parties and social gatherings, I was tremendously excited about the evening to come.
Around four o'clock Saxony stopped work on her newest marionette head – a bull terrier, no less – and barricaded herself in the bathroom behind her bubble bath and shampoo.
I tried to read Bettelheim's The Uses of Enchantment, but it was no use. I wondered if Saxony had slept with Geoff Wiggins. Then I tried to figure out what was cooking upstairs.
At 4:45 Mrs. Fletcher went to the door without saying good-bye or leaving instructions about her roast upstairs. I watched her walk down the street, and as soon as she was out of sight I knew that I wanted more than anything to be at that train station at 5:30 to see what they were going to do. I told myself that I had every right to be there. They should have invited us in the first place, dammit!
I got up and went over to the bathroom door. I hesitated for a second or two, then went in. It was steamy gray, and the dampness made me feel hot and sweaty.
"Sax?"
"Yes?" She poked her head out between the shower curtains and squinted at me. Her head was turbaned in white lather.
"Sax, I'm going to sneak down to the station and watch what they do anyway. I just have to see what they're going to do."
"Oh, Thomas, don't, really. If anyone sees you over there they'll get really angry and –"
"No, no, no one will ever see me. I'll sneak over at a quarter after five and easily be back here in time for the parade. Come on, Sax, this is great."
She curled her finger for me to come over. "I love you, Thomas. I thought about you all the time that I was away. Please don't let anyone see you out there. They'll be so mad!" She took hold of the back of my neck, and dripping water down my back, pulled me over for a hard wet kiss.
It had been full dark for almost half an hour before I left the house and tiptoed down the stairs like one of Ali Baba's thieves. The first feel of night made me think that it would snow again. It wasn't as cold as it had been. It was very still, and the sky was that milk-chocolate brown it gets just before the flakes start to fall.
10
It has taken me over three years to figure out why I didn't throw Saxony in the car at that moment and get the hell out of Galen while all of them were still down at the station preparing for the "arrival."
He asked me one day when we were in Grindlwald, looking up at the Eiger from a sunny terrace restaurant in the middle of town. I glanced at him, but the morning sun was right on his shoulder, so I turned back to the mountain.
"God knows, I should have. Jesus, it would have been so damned easy! But you've got to look at what was going on: I had never thought in a million years that I had an ounce of the artist in me. Suddenly I was on the verge of… of… I don't know, being Prometheus or something. Stealing fire from the gods! Through my art, or through our art rather, we were going to recreate a human being. And the person that I would be doing it with was my lover! The person I knew I wanted to be with for the rest of my life. There were all kinds of other things too. There always are at times like that. The Galeners loved me again, and naturally that was a total ego trip. Anna was even doing what I told her…. When Saxony came back, things stopped screwing up in that town immediately. I felt invulnerable. As long as we were there together, nothing could happen to us. How could it? We were the new Marshall Frances, you know? We had his power. We controlled the whole fucking town."