"The Land of Laughs was lit by eyes that saw the lights that no one's seen."

I expected everyone in the world to know that line. I sang it constantly to myself in that low intimate voice that children use to talk-sing to themselves when they're alone and happy.

Since I never had any need for pink bunnies or stuffed doggies to ward off night spooks or kid gobblers, my mother finally allowed me to carry the book around with me. I think she was hurt because I never asked her to read it to me. But by then I was so selfish about The Land of Laughs that I didn't even want to share it with someone else's voice.

I secretly wrote France a letter, the only fan letter I've ever written, and was ecstatic when he wrote back.

Dear Thomas,

The eyes that light The Land of Laughs

See you and wink their thanks.

Your friend,

Marshall France

I had the letter framed when I was in prep school and still looked at it when I needed a shot of peace of mind. The handwriting was a kind of spidery italic with the Y's and the G's dropping far below the line, and many of the letters of the words weren't connected. The envelope was postmarked Galen, Missouri, which is where France lived for most of his life.

I knew little things like that about him. I couldn't resist some amateur sleuthing. He died of a heart attack at forty-four, was married, and had a daughter named Anna. He hated publicity, and after the success of his book The Green Dog's Sorrow, he pretty much disappeared from the face of the earth. A magazine did an article on him that had a picture of his house in Galen. It was one of those great old Victorian monsters that had been plopped down on an average little street in the middle of Middle America. Whenever I saw houses like that, I remembered my father's movie where the guy came home from the war, only to be killed by cancer at the end. Since most of the action seemed to take place in the living room and on the front porch, my father called the movie Cancer House. It made a fortune and be was nominated for another Oscar.

In February, the month when suicide always looks good to me, I taught a class in Poe that helped me to decide at least to apply for a leave of absence for the following fall before something dangerous happened to my brain. A normal lunkhead named Davis Bell was supposed to give a report to the class on "The Fall of the House of Usher." He got up in front of us and said this. I quote. " 'The Fall of the House of Usher,' by Edgar Allan Poe, who was an alcoholic and married his younger cousin." I had told them all that several days before in hopes of stimulating their curiosity. To continue. "… married his younger cousin. This house, or I mean this story, is about this house of ushers…"

"Who fall?" I prompted him, at the risk of giving the plot away to his classmates, who hadn't read the story either.

"Yeah, who fall."

Time to leave.

Grantham gave me the news that my application had been approved. As always, smelling of coffee and farts, he hung his arm across my shoulder, and pushing me toward the door, asked what I was going to do with my "little vacation."

"I was thinking of writing a book." I didn't look at him because I was afraid his expression would be the same I'd have if someone like me had just said that he was going to write a book.

"That's great, Tom! A biography of your dad, maybe?" He put a finger to his bps and looked dramatically from side to side as if the walls were listening. "Don't worry about me. I won't tell a soul, I promise. Those things are very in these days, you know. What it was really like on the inside, and all that. Don't forget, though, that I'll want an autographed copy when it comes out."

It was really time to leave.

The rest of the winter trimester passed quickly, and Easter break came almost too soon. Over the holiday I was tempted to back out of the whole thing several times, because leaping into the unknown with a project I didn't even know how to begin, much less complete, was not at all inspiring. But they'd hired my replacement, I'd bought a new little station wagon for the trip out to Galen, and the students certainly weren't pulling on my coattails to stay. So I thought that no matter what happened, getting away from the likes of Davis Bell and Farts Grantham would do me good.

Then some strange things happened.

I was browsing through a rare-book store one afternoon when I saw on the sales desk the Alexa edition of France's Peach Shadows with the original Van Walt illustrations. The book had been out of print for years for some reason, and I hadn't read it.

I staggered over to the desk and, after wiping my hands on my pants, picked it up reverently. I noticed a troll who looked as if he had been dipped in talcum powder watching me from the corner of the store.

"Isn't that a superb copy? Someone walked right in out of the blue and plunked it down on the desk." He had a Southern accent and reminded me of some character who lives with his dead mama in a rotting mansion and sleeps under a mosquito net.

"Its great. How much is it?"

"Oh, well, you see, it's already sold. It's a rare one. Do you know why it's not around anymore? Because Marshall France didn't like it and refused to let them reprint after a certain time. Now, he was a strangey, that Mr. France."

"Could you tell me who bought it?"

"No, I've never seen her before, but you're in luck, because she said she'd he in to pick it up" – he looked at his wristwatch, which I noticed was a gold Cartier – "around now, eleven or so, she said."

She. I had to have that book, and she was going to sell it to me, no matter what the cost. I asked him if I could look at it until she came, and he said that he didn't see why not.

As with everything Marshall France had written, I fell into the book and left the world for a while. The words! "The plates hated the silver, who in turn hated the glasses. They sang cruel songs at each other. Ping. Clank. Tink. This kind of meanness three times a day." The way all of the characters were so completely new, but once you'd met them you wondered how you'd ever gotten along without them in your life. Like the last pieces in a jigsaw puzzle that go right in the middle.

I finished and quickly went back to passages that I'd particularly liked. There were a lot of them, so when I heard the bell over the front door ring and someone come in, I tried to ignore whoever it was. If it was she, it could end up that she wouldn't sell it and I wouldn't have another chance to see the book again, so I wanted to eat as much of it as I could before the big showdown.

For a couple of years I collected fountain pens. Once when I was at a flea market in France I was walking around and saw a man in front of me pick up a pen from a seller's table and look at it. I saw immediately from the white six-pointed star on its cap that it was a Montblanc. An old Montblanc. I stopped in my tracks and started a chant inside of me: PUT IT DOWN, DON'T BUY IT! But it did no good – the guy kept looking more and more intently at it. Then I wanted him to die right there on the spot so that I could pull it out of his lax hand and buy it myself. His back was still to me, but my loathing was so intense that it must have pierced him somehow, because all of a sudden he put the pen down, looked fearfully over his shoulder at me, and scurried away.

The first thing that I saw when I looked up from the France book was a nice denim-skirted fanny. It had to be her. PUT IT DOWN, DON'T BUY IT! I tried to cut my look straight through the denim and skin underneath all the way to her soul, wherever it was. GO AWAY, LADY! I WHAMMY YOU TO GO AWAY AND LEAVE THIS BOOK HERE HERE HERE!