The Methuselah Gene (9 page)

Do you know where you'll be, or who you'll be with, in ten years?

Here it was, fifteen years later, and I still didn't know the answer.
 
All I knew for sure now was that Emily Danville knew the answer to that question, wherever she was.
 
While I was still asking it.
 
Among other questions.

As I finally stepped out of the corn, it was almost like leaving the past behind.
 
My decision, my intention, was to be shut of this before it ballooned out of control.
 
My hope was that in exchange for a show of good will, the Sheriff would favor me with an answer to the question I had with Walter Mills' name on it.
 
I owned some trepidation in the matter, but saw no other way out.
 
An hour and a half sitting in a corn field had brought me no new insights, for sure.
 
What it all came down to was facing my fears.
 
Fear of the company's disappointment in me, and fear that the cards dealt me ever since that night on the beach in Atlantic City with Emily would continue to be losers.
 
Add to this the fear of being caught up in a lie.
 
And not just those I told to myself.

The luminous dial of my watch read 8:21 p.m. as I walked back onto that darkened main road that was lit by no streetlights, only the softer
lumination
emanating from inside the few businesses still open.
 
The five diners inside the Slow Poke, who I spied though the plate glass from across the street, were unknown to me.
 
Although I saw Edie beaming as she moved among them over there with amiable grace, she didn't look in my direction, and so she didn't see me approaching the post office opposite her.

The postmaster's office was long closed, but the outer door remained unlocked, allowing access to the box section at any time.
 
The spring that kept the door closed squeaked as I entered the lobby, but I prevented the door from banging behind me with a hand positioned behind my back.
 
The fly-specked globe overhead cast an eerie twilight radiance on the narrow alcove.
 
Its bulb couldn't have been brighter than 25 watts when it was new and not caked with burnt dust.
 
So it was difficult to validate my suspicion that the young Hannibal
Lecter
was indeed Walter Mills.
 
Stooping and then squinting into the tiny box window, past the stenciled white number 16, I was greeted with a small square of darkness framed by the faint outline of an empty oblong metal box.

Two hours ago you had mail, Walter,
I confirmed,
and now you have none.

I stepped softly back outside, in stunned silence.
 
Immediately, a truck pulled up, freezing me like a deer in its headlight beam.
 
I squinted once more, and put up my hand, something a deer couldn't do.
 
Just shoot me,
I thought, dully.
 
But after the two truck doors slammed in unison, and the “
Howdi
” came, I knew it wasn't Wally and the Sheriff.
 
Instinctively, I moved out of the light before Edie could eyeball me from the Slow Poke.
 
Then I looked back to see two more hog farmers, one of them carrying a sheaf of letters, the smell of one or both of the geezers wafting outward like the electric tang of a cherry bomb.

From the darkness of the street fronting the closed hardware store, I counted the few lights visible amid this block of red brick buildings, which were surrounded in all directions by farmland.
 
Inside the barber shop a luminous clock cast a blue pallor over two sheeted chairs, like corpses in a morgue.
 
Thanks to a banker's lamp atop a hidden desk, the tiny branch bank glowed green inside.
 
The town hall that doubled as the Zion Baptist Church bore a fluorescent sign next to its one stained glass window.
 
The sign advertised bingo, an antiques auction on Thursday, and a sermon by Pastor
Felsen
on II Peter 2:9 and the nature of temptation.
 
The lawyer's office next door—also lettered to be a notary and tax service—was as dark as sin except for a pasteboard poster lit in front by a small Tiffany lamp, advertising real estate in ten acre parcels.
 
The only other light visible from where I stood was the one next to the brighter Slow Poke.
 
This was Zion Drug, a narrow frontage with a deep interior, like the old oblong drug stores seen in sepia black and white photographs from the turn of the last century.

I approached the drugstore from the left, out of view of Edie's window, and then peered through the yellowed plate glass toward a partly open door in back.
 
Toward the sliver of light that had attracted me.
 
In that brighter back room I could see a bed and a sink.
 
A shadow played across the white sheets on the bed as something or someone moved between it and the light source.
 
There was another light source back there, too, but the second seemed to vacillate, and for whatever odd reason the words
lava lamp
came to mind.
 
Meanwhile, the only light within the store itself emanated from the flickering glass display case containing, from what I could tell, cigars, film, electric razors and women's compacts.
 
Despite the dimness, I was certain there was no pharmacy here, only racks of nonprescription remedies, and sundries like rubbing alcohol, peroxide, vitamins, rental videos, and processed junk food snacks.
 
Stacked in one corner were cases of various soft drinks and beers.
 
In another corner, an ancient Pepsi cooler abutted the end of the display case.
 
It was the kind of cooler that weighed a ton, requiring you to pull your bottle up through a metal gate.
 
Frozen overhead were three dust-caked fans, their long aluminum blades as motionless as petrified bat wings.

I had just started to turn away when the sole resident of the back room suddenly appeared in the doorway.
 
He saw me immediately, and momentarily arrested himself in place.
 
Framed in the light as the door swung wider behind him, his silhouette revealed the man to be tall, muscular, perhaps in his late thirties, wearing a tank top tee shirt and cutoff blue jeans with frayed bottoms.
 
For a full three seconds we both stood transfixed, looking at each other.
 
But then his body language changed, and I sensed he regarded me with only casual curiosity, as though observing an undersized
Mako
behind the Plexiglas of a holding tank.
 
On the television now visible behind him at the foot of the bed, a pornographic movie utilized a swimming pool setting for an orgy scene.

I lifted my hand in a stoic wave, and then watched as this back room tenant seemed to work the stiffness out of his fingers, contemplating whether to return the acknowledgment.
 
Instead of waving back, he then chose to walk toward me with a indifferent gliding gait, stopping halfway to light up a cigarette with a stick match, the sulfur flare of it lending brief life to his otherwise hidden eyes.
 
I wasn't sure what I saw in those eyes, but it didn't register as caution or fear.
 
And yet now he had stopped, as if he'd made a mistake.
 
Or maybe he was waiting to see what I'd do next?

I knocked twice sharply on the window.

At that, the man blew smoke at me.
 
The smoke drifted out like the slow-mo blast of a shotgun.
 
Then he seemed to come to a decision, and shuffled quickly all the way to the door.
 
His eyes studied mine with a reptilian-like magnetism.
 
Another long three seconds without motion as I considered the possibilities of the man—the broad, vacant face, the V-shaped neck, the well developed arms and upper body, which gave way to a slight paunch.
 
He was a hairy ape, too.
 
In the U of his drooping tank top grew a clot of bunched black hair.
 
The stuff was alive on his arms, thick on his legs, and probably grew in his ears too.
 
It had almost connected his eyebrows.

Dumb after all, I concluded.
 
Thank God.
 
Only the eyes gave me trouble.
 
They were snake's eyes, and shone steadily, like a fresh corpse or a mobster going to a hit.
 
I made a circular motion with one hand, and it seemed to revive the man.
 
He pulled out some keys, and opened the door, blocking entry with his linebacker body.

“Yeah?” he asked me with an almost guttural voice.

“Hey, listen,” I said, my own voice sounding weaker than I'd ever heard it.
 
“There any place to stay in this town?”

“There's Mabel's,” he responded flatly.

“No, I mean without the roaches.”

He huffed with a casual smile, as if in memory.
 
Then he twirled his keys, thinking.
 
But thinking seemed a chore he preferred to do without.
 
“That's about it,” he concluded.
 
“‘Course there's a Motel Six in Creston.”

“Car broke down,” I told him.
 
“Can you drive me there?
 
I'll pay you.”

His face sagged under its own weight, like muscles do under the influence of certain relaxants, or after chugging a pitcher of Long Island iced tea.
 
Then the face tightened again when he arrived at a figure.
 
“Thirty bucks?”

I nodded.
 
“Sure, fine.”

“Of course,” he suggested, pausing to glance behind him, “for that, you can sleep here.
 
Got an apartment in the back.
 
Plus a spare place to sleep, separate from mine.”

I looked beyond him at the wide, bright door back there, wondering how many miles it was to Creston, exactly.
 
“Can I . . . see it?” I asked hesitantly, just before considering shower or toilet facilities, and thereby regretting my request.

“Why not,” he said, and turned.

“Wait,” I said, backpedaling.

“What is it?”

I thought about renting another car in Creston.
 
But how would that look?
 
Then I thought about just how good a hot shower in a clean roach free motel would feel.
 
Then again, would this big ape tell the Sheriff where he'd dropped me?
 
Finally, I thought about just asking where I could find the Sheriff, and getting this over with tonight.
 
But would I really be able to live with myself, going back to Virginia empty-handed to face
Winsdon
or
Hepker
?

“Nothing,” I muttered.
 
“Just . . . you have to promise not to tell anyone about me.”

“Oh yeah?”
 
He turned back to me, his upper arm muscles flexing.
 
“And why is that?”

“Well,” I paused, formulating a lie I thought he might believe, “my ex-wife is kinda looking for me.
 
She's hired a P.I.”

“P.I.?”

“Private investigator, detective, gumshoe.
 
I'm from Florida, see.
 
Naples, Florida.
 
Name is Charlie.”

He nodded, one hand to his chin, the other holding his elbow.
 
The brown eyes fluttered slightly, then his head bobbed once.
 
He took the hand I offered, and gripped it like I imagined a casting agent might.
 
“Okay, then,” he said.
 
“Deal.
 
And you can call me George.”

I followed him, wiping my hand across the side of my shirt.
 
His palm had been damp.
 
We went into the back, past the televised orgy, toward a second room that was a storage area.
 
To my chagrin, I saw there was no separate bathroom, and no bed visible amid the stacks of boxes and store stock.

Then I felt my own face slacken, and my mouth dropped open involuntarily at the sight of a large maple wood box supported on a heavy four legged utility table.
 
Its lid was open, and the thing was large enough even for a big man like George.

In shock, I turned to see George standing in the doorway behind me.
 
One of his hands now rested on the door frame, blocking my escape.
 
I eyed the steel back door, which was bolted against the night.
 
At that, George followed my gaze and then stepped closer to me as if daring me to try for it.

“You're not a pharmacist, are you?” I said, a detectable waver in my voice.

George laughed.
 
It was a short, quick laugh with a smile that lingered.
 
He nodded toward the open casket behind me.
 
“No,” he confessed, “actually, I've always wanted to be an undertaker.”