From the journals of Don Wanderley

1

The old idea of Dr. Rabbitfoot… the idea for another book, the story of the destruction of a small town by Dr. Rabbitfoot, an itinerant showman who pitches camp on its outskirts, sells elixirs and potions and nostrums (a black man?), and who has a little sideshow-jazz music, dancing girls, trombones, etc. Fans and bubbles. If I ever saw a perfect setting for this story, Milburn is it.

First about the town, then about the good doctor. My uncle's town, Milburn, is one of those places that seems to create its own limbo and then to nest down in it. Neither proper city nor proper country-too small for one, too cramped for the other, and too self-conscious about its status. (The local paper is called The Urbanite. Milburn even seems proud of its minuscule slum, the few streets called the Hollow, seems to point at it and say: See, we've got places where you want to be careful after dark, the age hasn't left us high and dry and innocent. This is almost comedy. If trouble ever comes to Milburn, it won't start in the Hollow.) Three-fourths of the men work somewhere else, in Binghamton mainly-the town depends on the freeway for its life. A feeling of being oddly settled, unmoving, heavy, and at the same time nervous. (I bet they gossip about one another endlessly.) Nervous because they'd feel that they were forever missing something-that the age after all has left them high and dry. Probably I feel this because of the contrast between here and California-this is a worry they don't have, there. It does seem a particularly Northeast kind of anxiety, peculiar to these little towns. Good places for Dr. Rabbitfoot.

(Speaking of anxiety, those three old men I met today-my uncle's friends-have it bad. Obviously has to do with whatever made them write to me, not knowing that I was getting so sick of California I'd have gone anywhere I thought I might be able to work.)

Physically, of course, it's pretty-all these places are. Even the Hollow has a kind of sepia thirties prettiness. There's the regulation town square, the regulation trees-maples, tamarack pines, oaks, the woods full of mossy deadfalls-a sense that the woods around the town are stronger, deeper than the little grid of streets people put in their midst. And when I came in I saw the big houses, some of them big enough to be called mansions.

But still… it is wonderful, a heaven-sent setting for the Dr. Rabbitfoot novel.

He's black, definitely. He dresses gaudily, with old-fashioned pizzazz: spats, big rings, a cane, a flashy waistcoat. He's chirpy, showbizzy, a marathon talker, slightly ominous-he's the bogeyman. He'll own you if you don't watch out. He'll get you seven ways to Sunday. He's got a killer smile.

You only see him at night, when you pass a piece of land normally deserted and there he is, standing on a platform outside his tent, twirling a cane while the jazz band plays. Lively music surrounds him, it whistles through his tight black hair, a saxophone curls his lips. He's looking straight at you. He invites you in to have a look at his show, to buy a bottle of his elixir for a dollar. He says he is the celebrated Dr. Rabbitfoot, and he's got just what your soul needs.

And what if what your soul needs is a bomb? A knife? A slow death?

Dr. Rabbitfoot gives you a big wink. You're on, man. Just pull a dollar out of your jeans.

Now to state what is obvious: Behind this figure I've been carting around in my head for years is Alma Mobley. It also suited her to give you what you wanted.

All the time, the capering smile, the floating hands, the eyes of bleached and dazzling white… his sinister gaiety. An' what about that little Alma Mobley, boy? Suppose you see her when you close your eyes, then what? Is she there, hee hee? Has you ever touched a ghost? Has you ever put your hand on a ghosts white skin? And yo' brutha's peaceful eyes-was they watchin' you?