The Sleepwalkers (7 page)

“I guess so,” says Caleb.

“Yep, well,” the sheriff says. “Book folks don’t usually stay around here for too long. Only thing for sure is he ain’t here and he ain’t been here in a long time.” His demeanor is becoming downright jovial now, amused.

“Do you know how long he’s been gone?” Bean asks.

“Nope,” says the sheriff, smiling. “Long time.”

“And nobody knows where he went?” Bean says. “Shouldn’t you investigate something like that? I mean, he didn’t even call his own kid and tell him where he went—don’t you think that’s strange?”

The sheriff shrugs. “Round here we investigate crimes,” he says.

“
Strange
ain’t a crime.”

“Maybe a crime
was
committed!” Bean presses. “The guy disappeared and left all his stuff at the house. Who moves and doesn’t take anything with him?”

“Bean—” Caleb says.

“No, no,” says Bean, “I just think they should do their friggin’ job and investigate. And if they don’t want to, that’s fine. We can just get someone else to come out and investigate for them. My dad knows a bunch of private investigators.”

The barrel-chested sheriff ’s grin melts into a frown, then to a fierce scowl.

“Boy, you gonna come in here and tell me what my job is?” He rises from his chair and sidles up to the counter. Now that he’s this close, it’s pretty easy to tell that he’s huge, much bigger than either of the boys.

“No,” says Bean, with a voice still full of righteous defiance. “I’m just saying, when someone goes missing, one way or another you have to find out the truth.”

The sheriff takes another drag off his cigarette. “Nobody knows the truth. The truth is unknowable. All you can know is what folks tell ya. And I’m tellin’ you, Mike Mason moved up to Georgia. Everybody knows that. I suggest you look for him up there.”

“Okay,” says Caleb before Bean has a chance for another outburst. “We’ll look up there. Thanks for your help.”

He takes Bean by the shoulders and steers him out the door.

“Hey, Billy,” the cop says. Bean is already halfway down the steps, but Caleb pauses in the doorway. “Watch out for your friend. This ain’t a good town to have a loud mouth in.”

Caleb tries to smile, but something in the sheriff ’s blinking, serious-as-granite stare squelches it, so he just nods and ducks out into the mounting Southern heat, shutting the door behind him.

“God, I hate pigs!” Bean says, too loud.

“Be quiet, man.”

“No, they’re so smug. And they don’t even give a crap about people. I mean, obviously there’s something going on, right? I mean, your dad is missing. Like,
missing
. Like, disappeared off the face of the earth, and they won’t even get up off their porky, doughnut-munching asses to check it out! I mean, obviously
something
is going on.”

They’re standing at the car now, Bean on one side, Caleb on the other.

“Maybe he just left, Bean. Maybe he just moved to Georgia. People move all the time.”

“But he didn’t even
tell
you, man,” says Bean, with a slap to the roof of the car for emphasis. “I mean, he’d tell you, right?”

Caleb’s arms are folded and he stares up the driveway. He sighs.

“Right?” says Bean.

Caleb sighs again. “When I was a kid he used to disappear. Sometimes for weeks. His law practice would shut down, I guess, and our lives would shut down and we’d just wait for him to come back. A few days or weeks would go by and he’d come back. No explanation, no ‘I’ve got a mistress,’ no ‘I went on a drinking binge.’ He’d just show up and act like everything was okay.”

“Maybe he was in the CIA,” Bean offers. “Sorry, man,” he quickly amends.

“It’s alright,” Caleb says. “I didn’t mean to get all ‘After School Special’ on ya. My point is just—”

“He might have left and not called you,” Bean says. “I get it.”

“He could be in Georgia. He could be in Brazil. Who knows, who cares?”

“Yeah,” Bean says, “I think this calls for the Universal Problem Solver.”

“What’s that?”

“Bacon and waffles, on me.”

“Amen, brother. Let’s roll,” Caleb says, his despondence dissipating.

Bean smiles as he gets in the car. As much as he screws things up, he sometimes has a knack for setting them right, too.

TRANSCRIPT—Patient #62, SESSION #77

(In this session, the patient attacks the director in an unprovoked episode of violence.)

PATIENT #62: I know what you’re doing and I don’t trust you. None of
the other patients do either. We all know what you’re doing.

DIRECTOR: Well, hello. That’s quite a greeting. And what do you and
the other patients suppose I’m doing, Patient Sixty-two?

PATIENT #62: That’s not my name.

DIRECTOR: I’m aware of that.

PATIENT #62: Then why won’t you say it? Why won’t anyone say it?

Why are you trying to make me forget my name?

DIRECTOR: You were sent here to rid yourself of your nightmares.
Nightmares are a normal phenomenon, of course, but when one
exhibits behaviors like yours—self-mutilation, sleepwalking, insomnia—
then nightmares pass out of the realm of normal and become a
disorder. Natural, or healthy, nightmares grow out of your identity.
In my school of thought, unhealthy nightmares, the ones that wind
up producing disorders, come from rifts in one’s identity. Hence,
a temporary break with your identity might be therapeutic. And
as you yourself have noticed, your nightmares have all but disappeared.
Does that answer your question?

PATIENT #62: Yes. But there’s another question, Director.

DIRECTOR: What’s that?

PATIENT #62: What do you replace the nightmares with?

DIRECTOR: I’m sorry, I don’t understand.

PATIENT #62: There are no more nightmares. That’s true. But there’s
something else. Something worse.

DIRECTOR: And what is that? I’d be very interested to know.

PATIENT #62: But you already know. You put it there, through the
hole you made in my head.

Note: The patient touches the side of her head here. This habit of hers
is becoming more pronounced. Watch for this behavior in the future
as a possible precursor to violent episodes.

DIRECTOR: I thought we agreed last time that no one made any incision
in your head.

PATIENT #62: But it’s there. I’m not crazy. Stop trying to make me
think that! I can feel it right now.

DIRECTOR: Let me see. No, there’s no incision there.

PATIENT #62: It’s easy to lie. Everyone does it.

DIRECTOR: Why do you think I made an incision in your head? Do
you have a memory of my doing that?

PATIENT #62: No . . .

DIRECTOR: Then what makes you think it happened?

PATIENT #62: She told me.

DIRECTOR: Who told you?

(The patient appears to be shaking. The director approaches to comfort her.)

DIRECTOR: Who told you I did that?

PATIENT #62: She never lies. She can’t lie.

DIRECTOR: Who? Whose voice are you hearing? Answer me, Patient
Sixty-two.

PATIENT #62: MY NAME IS CHRISTINE!

(Here, the patient attacks the director. She bites his face in several places and causes a wound on his scalp that requires over twenty stitches. This concluded the session.)

Maybe this town isn’t so bad after all. Everything looks better after a plate of hash browns and a fluffy omelet the size of a football— not just a junior football either, but something more akin to a big, old, massive NFL pigskin. These plates are heaped with the best stuff Bean has ever tasted. Bacon smoked by a real local farmer (probably in very dubious conditions from a sanitation standpoint, but still . . .), spicy venison sausage, buttermilk pancakes steeped in Tupelo honey. The only thing Bean can’t really figure out is the grits. They have all the texture of way overcooked white rice with half the taste. But by the time he gets around to prodding them with his fork, he’s so disgustingly stuffed that he’s actually relieved not to have to eat anything else, and he pushes his plate away and leans back in the seat. Caleb is still eating, slowly. He hasn’t eaten much.

Bean is already restless, needing to burn off the ten pounds of food that’s fast congealing into a bowling ball in his gut. So he does what he does best: talks.

“So what’s up with Amber? How’d she take your big disappearing act?”

Caleb grunts with a mouthful of French toast. “Mot ell,” chew, chew, “not well at all. But in the end, I think she thought it was cute or something that I was having a breakdown. She got me a teddy bear and gave me a card and a picture of her to take with me on the trip, and that was it. And, of course, she dropped about a million hints about coming along.”

“Way to be strong, brother,” says Bean. “This is a man’s mission anyway—saving a damsel in distress and whatnot.”

“Yeah,” Caleb says, “she might’ve been a little jealous about that, too. I didn’t mention it.”

“Probably best.” Bean belches softly.

Caleb looks around. There aren’t many folks in here—all the working people of Hudsonville ate their morning vittles, drank their coffee, and punched the time clock hours ago, and it’s still at least an hour away from lunchtime. The only people here are the shriveled-up old waitress who served them—and miraculously did so without uttering more than three words—and one quiet, middle-aged woman who sits in a corner booth, sipping her coffee and staring at the yellowing wallpaper. Of course, the banging of pans and the sizzle of grease from behind the pass-through window announce the presence of a short-order cook back in the kitchen somewhere, but he’s nowhere to be seen. Out here, it’s just the waitress, the woman, Caleb, and Bean.

“Ugh,” groans Caleb, “I can’t eat another bite. This stuff is, like, dipped in lead or something.” He pushes his plate back. “Let’s pay the bill and get out of here.”

“Cool,” says Bean. And they sit and stare at each other.

“Oh, right,” says Bean. “I was gonna pay.”

Bean opens his wallet, scrunches up his forehead, looks in a couple different compartments, takes out a few business cards, sets them on the table, and mumbles, “Man . . . ”

“Bean,” says Caleb.

“No, no, dude. I said I’d pay for it. I just have to find an ATM or something. It’s totally cool.”

“Bean,” says Caleb.

“No, no, I’ll get it. I said I’d get it. But I spent my cash on that travel Yahtzee game at the airport. Yahtzee rocks. I just need an ATM.”

Caleb is already halfway to the register. “Forget it, man,” he says. “Get it next time.”

Caleb weaves around a few chairs, heading up toward the front of the restaurant—but the woman, the only other customer in the place, has beaten him to the cash register, so he waits in line and looks around. The name of the place, “The Blue Crab,” is painted on the storefront window. Caleb sees the words backward now, and they look like they say something totally different. He can’t come up with what they look like; they just look strange. Somehow it reminds him of everything in this place.

Since his return to Hudsonville, he has seen his childhood home, and he has passed streets where he used to ride his bike and the creek, or
crick
, as the locals call it, where he and Rich Baker used to catch frogs and have contests to see how far they could throw them. He has passed the corner where he used to wait for the bus, where Rusty Brown once unfurled (with much fanfare and rhetoric) the first porno mag Caleb ever laid eyes on. This was home. And it’s just as he remembers it. The air still has the same indefinable sweet smell, the wind makes the same sound coming through the tops of the pine trees; even the paper kid’s menu at the Blue Crab hasn’t changed a bit. He had traced his finger through the maze on the textured paper just as he had done with a crayon a thousand times as a kid. Everything is the same. But nothing is
familiar.
It’s all here, every wrinkle of every long-lost memory—real, vivid, unchanged, rendered in perfect detail, but still
not quite right
. Like “The Blue Crab,” written across the window, everything is backwards.