Crowns of the Kingdom
Chapter 6: Weirdness in the Wild West
To underscore the point, there was nothing wrong with Frontierland per se. That wasn't the problem at all. Every prop, from the barrels outside the dry goods store to the genuine hide tepees in the Indian village, was the right size and shape and in the right place. What made the Fab Five feel hair-raising (and in one case feather-raising) apprehension was nothing that would show up in a photograph…or, for that matter, any scientific measuring device of any kind.
Without any single element seeming bigger, or brighter, or bolder, or indeed different in any expressible way, Frontierland felt somehow more than it ought to have been. The sharper smells could very well be due to some quirk of the weather—unseasonably low barometric pressure, say, or abnormally high humidity. But no prosaic atmospheric fluctuation could account for the eerie sense, almost subliminal, that the area wasn't as empty as it appeared…that lurking just out of sight around every corner were…the real cowboys.
So what was wrong with that? Frontierland was supposed to feel like that! Walt had spent a great deal of money to make it that way! But that was just it. People who have been a long time in show business know how to see through the kind of "authenticity" that can be bought. This was not that kind of authenticity. It was the kind of authenticity that comes only as the result of being, in fact, authentic.
So it was that, for no reason they could put a finger to, the Fab Five clustered together as they walked down Frontierland's main avenue. They were aware of the incongruity of keeping so close when normally the wide-open spaces of the area invited people to spread out and relax. But the impulse to huddle could not be dismissed through rationality because it was not born of the rational mind. It was much more visceral than that, the reaction of true red-white-and-blue-blooded Americans to the essence of their cultural heritage, recognized through something akin to racial memory.
All Americans know, instinctively, that the popular view of the Old West as depicted by Hollywood bears only a distant relationship to the truth. They know, even if they don't know that they know, that even the most carefully researched and faithfully reproduced movie cowboy is only a pale, sanitized imitation of the real ones, who were harsh, reckless men who drank whiskey like it was water and took baths the way their descendants take dental appointments—twice a year and with dread. A modern American's feelings about meeting such a person will be at best mixed, and Mickey Mouse and his friends were as quintessentially American as someone listening to rock-and-roll while eating apple pie baked by a baseball player.
Oddly enough, it was Donald who finally mustered enough clearness of head to break the spell. Standing up straight, he averred, "This is ridiculous. What are we all so afraid of?"
The others stopped dead in their creeping tracks and gave him their attention. "No matter what year this is, or how it got that way, it's only Frontierland, right?" Donald continued. "We're falling for our own hype!"
"Gosh, Donald, you really think so?" Mickey asked.
"Here's what I think!" Donald replied, kicking a pebble on the dirt path hard enough to send it tumbling with a plop into the Rivers of America. He spent the next several seconds hopping on one foot and howling a streak as blue as his cap while he nursed his bruised toe, but as soon as the smarting subsided, he planted both feet and folded his arms across an outthrust chest. A smug smile topped off the ensemble.
"I know I don't say this very often, but Donald's right," Minnie said. "We're letting this whole situation get to us. I'm not sure what we all keep dreading, but whatever it is, it's…well, it's silly. There's nothing here that wasn't here in 1955."
"You mean like the Rafts to Tom Sawyer's Island?" said Goofy innocently, pointing to the water's edge.
They all stared. Something was conspicuously absent from the riverbank.
"Where's the raft dock?" Donald squawked.
"Oh, no, I forgot!" Mickey yelped, smacking his own forehead. "The island wasn't an attraction until the second summer! We've got no ride across!"
"Gawrsh," Goofy mused dejectedly.
"Well, I guess it could be worse," Mickey went on philosophically. "Go ahead, Donald. Hop in."
Donald was the very personification of skepticism. "Hop in?" he repeated incredulously.
"Well, sure!" said Mickey with an ingratiating smile. "You're a duck, aren't you? It's only about fifty feet to the island—swimming that should be a piece of cake for you! Heck, I've seen the regular ducks do it in under a minute, and you're much bigger than they are!"
"Ha! What 'regular ducks'?" Donald argued, gesturing expansively at the water. Sure enough, the common mallards that usually populated the Rivers of America, growing tame and prosperous on the popcorn and French fries thrown to them by amused guests, were nowhere to be seen. (First the guests themselves, then the Cast Members, now the not-so-wildlife…it seemed to be a trend.)
"Anyway," Donald went on, "what kind of duck do you think I am? Not the kind that paddles around on top of the water, that's for sure!"
"You're still the best at swimming," Mickey reasoned. "How could you not be, with those big webbed feet?"
Donald heaved a huge sigh and, grumbling, slapped his hat down on a convenient horse hitch.
"Thanks, Donald," said Mickey. "I'll make it up to you."
"Just remember to let us know when you figure out what you're the best at, so you can do some of your own dirty work for a change. First you send Minnie up the Castle, and now this," the duck replied sardonically. But his expression was more wry than disgruntled and he winked as he finished speaking. Then he marched right up to the very edge of the Rivers of America, put his palms together, bounced his knees a few times, waggled his tail feathers, and dove into the dingy green water.
He knew something was going wrong before he was even fully wet. The river seemed to be…it was a nonsensical thought, but it felt like the water was changing shape around him, and not just in the sense of fluid dynamics. And when he surfaced from his dive, he discovered the true horror of his situation.
Somehow—he could not even begin to speculate how—the placid manmade waterway, technically more lake than river, had become real. The Rivers of America had transformed into…the great rivers of America, whose gathered waters had on Opening Day dedicated their manufactured namesake to the memory of the great explorers who, in centuries past, first charted those famous courses. It was no currentless canal, a mere fifty feet across, that had Donald in its grasp. It was the Missouri, draining the broad agricultural plains of the Midwest, and the Ohio, doing the same for the Northeast. It was the Columbia, gateway to the Pacific Ocean. It was the Rio Grande, drawing the line between Tex and Mex, made famous in song. It was the Colorado, no broader in places than a four-lane highway but so swift and powerful that it had carved the Southwestern landscape a mile deep into the Grand Canyon. Most of all, though, it was the mighty Mississippi, the very queen of American rivers, whose enormous southbound flow had made possible the commerce that financed the infant United States.
It was all of these at one and the same time, and yet it still managed to also be the humble Rivers of America in Disneyland. Donald could see, through growing panic and confusion, the rest of the Fab Five standing on the shore, watching him with faintly puzzled expressions. But that shore was hundreds of yards away and growing more distant as the powerful currents swept him downstream. Big webbed feet notwithstanding, he was helpless to swim against the tug of so many waters combined…and the surge was getting rougher. There would be whirlpools in the depths.
He might have drowned had Goofy not calmly reached out, taken hold of his middy collar, and fetched him back to dry land. He lay sprawled on the ground for a moment, coughing and panting and reorienting himself, while the others looked on in baffled concern.
"Uh, Donald…" Mickey said, and cleared his throat before continuing. "Not to criticize, but do you…have you…what I'm trying to say is…did you, maybe, you know, forget how to swim?"
"No!" Donald exclaimed, sitting up. "It was huge! And there was all this water, and—"
"How much of it did you swallow on the way in?" Minnie asked doubtfully.
"Take a look for yourself!" the frantic duck insisted, pointing at the river…
…which was completely back to normal. The far bank was only a few dozen feet away, the water calm except for the residual ripples of Donald's thrashing.
"Huh? Where did it go?" Donald wondered.
"Where did what go, Donald?" asked Mickey. "The only unusual thing we saw when you jumped in was, well, you flopping around like a really confused fish."
"I'm not crazy, if that's what you're implying," Donald said petulantly. "I'm telling you, it was a gigantic river! It went on for miles and I was way, way out in it!" His arms flailed with agitation.
"There is definitely something strange going on here," Mickey said thoughtfully. "Something else strange, I mean."
"Goofy," said Minnie, "when you pulled Donald out, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?"
Goofy screwed his face up and rubbed his chin with one hand, as he always did when called upon to think. "Hmmmmm…" he drawled. "You know what? Now you mention it, I did feel kinda like I was leanin' awfully far to grab someone who was right close to the edge. But I thought I was just havin' a little bit of verteego from all the excitement."
Curious, Mickey stepped up to the very brink of the Rivers of America and carefully shifted his balance so that the upper half of his body extended out over the water. He was too short for it to amount to much, but even so he was struck by a disconcerting sense of enormous open space. It seemed to radiate off the water's surface, as though the clay-lined trench contained a lot more river than was visible. (Not a lot more water, but a lot more river, which is an important distinction.) And when he bent down ever so cautiously and let his fingertip barely brush the wavering murky liquid, he could see it—a grand majestic expanse, so vast that he couldn't even make out the far shore…except that he could see it plainly, because the intervening miles fit quite comfortably in the span filled by the Rivers of America. Impossibly, both scenes—the one cozy, the other immense—occupied exactly the same space. Both were equally present, equally real. Trying to reconcile the conflicting views was dizzying; Mickey very carefully retreated from the water's edge lest he lose his balance. As he did so, he watched the Mississippi—or whatever it was—fade, its hugeness dwindling, until Frontierland's waterway was once again the safe, manageable Rivers of America and nothing else.
"Gosh," Mickey breathed. "Donald's right. There's a huge river in there after all. I've never seen anything like it."
"How will we get across?" Donald wondered.
"I don't know," Mickey sighed. His expression turned steely. "But there must be a way! Maleficent said the crowns are within reach. I'll figure out how to get to that island if I have to stand here until the solution finds me!"
As if consciously in response to the mouse's resolute statement, a sound broke out over the gently rippling water. In fact it was a sound that they had heard several times since entering Frontierland without thinking anything of it…because never during fifty years of their experience, except for comparatively brief stretches involving maintenance, had Frontierland been without it. It was almost background noise, a sound they took for granted, Its absence would have been a deafening clamor.
It was the low, mellow blast of the steam whistle on a paddlewheel-driven riverboat. Simultaneous with the distinctive note, the plume of steam that caused it became visible over the hump of Tom Sawyer's Island, and a moment later, the source of both—the magnificent Mark Twain—came gliding around the bend in the Rivers of America. Spotlessly white despite the constant rinsing by the grimy river water, it gleamed under the afternoon sun. As it approached, the steady chug-chug of its twin smokestacks—the heartbeat of the massive paddlewheeler, pacing out the rhythm of its stately progress—could be heard.
At the sight (and sound) of it, Mickey's face broke into a beaming grin. "Of course!" he cheered. "Why didn't any of us think of the Mark Twain? C'mon, gang, let's go!" Without even waiting for an answer, he took off at a run for the boarding dock, leaving the rest of them little choice but to follow.
They arrived at the dock just as the elegant steamboat was cruising to a halt. The three decks—as they had come to expect by now—were empty of passengers and crew alike, but someone had to be driving the boat and blowing the whistle, and someone was—one Cast Member, his face obscured, stood in the wheelhouse on the uppermost "Texas" deck. Glad as the Fab Five were to see some signs of non-animated life at last, they had to wonder—why this guy?
Pluto suddenly began barking wildly and lunging for the boat. Mickey was barely able to restrain him. "Whoa, boy! Not so fast!"
"So what's the plan, Mickey?" asked Minnie.
"I'll explain on the way up to the wheelhouse," said Mickey. "All aboard!"
The five of them trooped across the dock and onto the riverboat, cautious of their footing as the unmoored vessel drifted slightly on its own wake.
"I hope you don't think we'll be able to ride across the river," Minnie said to Mickey as they headed for the nearest staircase. "You know this thing's on a track."
"I know," Mickey explained, "but it's the best we can do. We'll have the driver stop the boat at the point where the track passes closest to the island. Then we'll make a bridge to cover the rest of the distance."
They reached the mezzanine deck. "Make a bridge? Out of what?" Minnie pointed out.
"I haven't gotten that far yet," Mickey confessed. "But don't worry; we'll find something. If we have to, we'll dock again and go get something."
"But Mickey," said Donald, "what if the river turns real again?"
"Well, uh…then we won't be on a track anymore!" Mickey reasoned brightly, although the logic was not ironclad.
They scaled another set of stairs, emerging onto the Texas deck behind the wheelhouse. Pluto was practically frantic by now, whining and straining against Mickey's hold on his collar.
"What's gotten into you this time, boy?" Mickey asked with a chuckle. "Did someone leave a steak up here?"
Pluto wrenched free and charged at the wheelhouse, barking so loudly and rapidly that he sounded like a canine machine gun. "Why, is that—?" the boat driver said, turning to face them.
It was a moment Mickey would always be able to recall with crystal clarity, especially on nights when his dreams walked the uneasy line between fantasies and nightmares. He pulled up short, his jaw dropping, and stared. And stared some more. And kept staring, even after his eyes had misted over to uselessness.
"Oh, hello there, Mickey," said Walt Disney, patting an ecstatic Pluto on the head.
He looked shockingly young, even above and beyond the shock of seeing him in the first place. Mickey's last memories of his creator were of a man not only a decade older than the apparition now before him, but seriously ill as well. But there was no mistaking that pointed nose, or those laugh-lined cheeks, or that fussy little mustache…or the twinklingest pair of eyes that ever graced a human face.
"Walt…" whispered Mickey, the only one of the Fab Five not struck entirely dumb by the encounter.
"I was just taking the Mark out for a little spin," Walt said conversationally. "Sorry if I startled you all. So, how are things?"
"Uhhhhhh…" Mickey stammered, "…h-hard to say, really."
Walt raised an eyebrow. "Is something wrong?"
Well, yes, actually, Walt—you've been dead for almost forty years and a character from a movie you haven't made yet is trying to destroy Disneyland via time manipulation. Even an imagination like Walt Disney's would be hard put by to swallow that, put so bluntly. Mickey settled for saying, "Sort of…we need to get over to the island, but there's no ra—uh, no free-moving boat available. We were hoping the Mark would at least get us close enough that we could jump or string a rope or something."
"No problem, then," Walt grinned. "To tell the truth, I was hoping for an excuse to take her around again. I think I know just the spot, too. So kick back and enjoy the scenery." And with that, he turned back to the controls of his very own life-sized toy steamboat, clanged the bell, and started up the boiler. The Mark Twain lurched to life again.
A moment passed while the paddlewheeler picked up speed.
"So then!" Mickey chirped with forced cheerfulness. "Let's all go kick back and enjoy the scenery, just like Walt said!"
They dispersed, still looking rather dazed, and took up various posts around the deck, ostensibly watching the landscape of Frontierland pass by. Mickey hung around by the wheelhouse for a few minutes, trying to work up the nerve to speak to the creator whom he had missed so dearly for so long. But he couldn't think of a thing to say that would mean anything to the 1955 version of Walt. It was a cruel irony, after all the times Mickey had fervently wished for the chance to see the old boy just once more, that the chance should come in such a fashion.
Finally, he gave up and wandered toward the bow, where Minnie stood leaning on the railing, lost in her own thoughts. Mickey noticed that her hands were trembling.
"You all right?" he asked, sotto voce.
"I will be," she replied in the same tone. "It's just…I wasn't prepared for this!"
"Neither was I," he said. "But maybe we should just appreciate it for what it is. He seems to be." He nodded back mid-ship, where Pluto was cavorting in circles around the wheelhouse as Walt gleefully blew the steam whistle and pretended to steer the track-bound boat.
"Sometimes I really envy that dog," Minnie said wistfully. "Living in the moment, never worrying about any problem unless it's right in front of him."
"Actually, I was talking about Walt. Look at him; he's like a kid on Christmas."
"Of course he is: he doesn't know anything is wrong. I don't think he's even noticed that there aren't any guests. And that makes me wonder: if there are no guests or Cast Members, for whatever reason, then why is he here?"
"He belongs here," Mickey said almost automatically. "He's as much a part of this place as any one of us. Cast Members come and go, but Walt…it's almost like he's an attraction in himself. Why shouldn't he be here, in the right time period?"
"That's so crazy, it might just make sense," Minnie quipped, and Mickey knew she would be all right. She was as sentimental as the next mouse, but she was emotionally resilient.
"I should go see—" Mickey started to say, but before he could finish the sentence ("—how the guys are doing."), the Mark Twain abruptly slowed in the water and coasted to an unsteady stop. Walt had shut off the boiler.
"I guess we're here," said Minnie.
"I guess so," Mickey concurred.
Walt exited the wheelhouse and approached them a hint of sheepishness in his grin. "One of these days," he said, "I'll get the hang of braking this thing. We're a little past where I meant to stop, but hopefully you'll still be able to reach the shore without getting your feet wet."
"Thanks, Walt," Mickey said with a wistful smile. "Listen…we don't know how long this is going to take. How long can you wait?"
"As long as you need," Walt replied. "You may not believe this, but I've actually got nothing but time today. Anyway, I could really do with a smoke about now."
Deliberately, and with great care, Mickey bit his tongue. Inside, he was yelling in protest, and making a vow to sign on as spokesmouse for the American Heart and Lung Association as soon as he got back to the 21st Century. And he wondered: what if he did convince Walt, here and now, to quit smoking? Would it change anything?
Would it even be wise to try?
Mickey forced such thoughts into the background. The quest to restore Disneyland was monumental enough without worrying about the twisted science-fiction ramifications he might unleash if he were foolish enough to try changing the past. One thing at a time!
On that note, Mickey waved the others toward the nearest staircase and started thinking about how to cross the gap to the island.
To Be Continued…
