Bruce Bauman - Broken Sleep

Soon, he dozed off. He didn’t awaken until they entered Gallup, a sun-scorched and desolate, mainly Native American town, whose streets and storefronts of liquor, pawn-, and gun shops were interspersed alongside the ubiquitous McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, and Burger King.

Alchemy flicked on the radio and bypassed the harangues of Rush Limbaugh and Louise Urban Vulter. He settled on a station with Native American music, which the deejay interrupted to speak words neither of them understood except for the hyperenunciated English “Big Sale at Gallup Ford” and “NO Money Down” repeated about seven times. At the same second, they both cracked up. It was one of those seemingly insignificant moments that made them feel like brothers who had shared a childhood of birthdays and Christmases or Passovers, silly games and arcane TV shows, lost toys and cracked bones, angry fights with sorrowful partings, first loves and ruptured hearts, and alliances with and against their parents.

“We need gas. Way, way back we played two high schools around here, and there was a great Mex restaurant we ended up finding at three A.M. after doing peyote. No time to look, I guess.” They pulled into the station. Alchemy ambled inside to get supplies and Moses pumped the gas. Then he called Jay. “Hey, I found him!” His voice burst out with a rare effervescence.

“Good, no, great. How are you feeling? Where are you?”

“New Mexico. We’re driving. And I’m fine. Better than fine.”

“Oh, Moses, I miss you.”

“In less than twenty-four hours I’ll be home.”

“I’m so scared.”

“I don’t know why, but I’m less scared now. You’ll see. He wants to stay at our place. Can you call Dr. Fielding? Tell my mom, too. I’ll call her later. The phone service goes in and out.”

“Alchemy’s staying with us?”

“Yep. Tidy up my room, okay? He can sleep on the futon in there.” He was talking too fast and out of character; he didn’t absorb the meaning of the beats between her silences or the tremulous cadences.

“Moses, it’s such a—”

“Look, it’ll be fine. Jay, I’ll … Shit, there’s a small mob gathering inside the gas station. Love you, and see you soon.”

Someone had a digital camera, and then everyone in the minimart wanted a picture with Alchemy. Moses stepped inside and Alchemy mouthed to him, “Wait in the car.”

A few minutes later Alchemy came jogging out. He hopped in the car and tossed two plastic bags filled with water, Cokes, Gatorades, chocolate bars, doughnuts, potato chips, and pretzels into the backseat. He placed a copy of the Star on Moses’s lap. It was open to two gruesome pictures of Absurda, one of her gaunt body, half naked with a needle by her side, dead on her bedroom floor and another photo of the obviously grieving Alchemy slumped beside her casket. The headline read, “The Tragic Last Days of the Nightingale.”

“This is exactly what I wanted to get away from. Guy handed that to me so I could autograph it for him. I do autographs, and most of the people in there were respectful, but that is too much. Too much .”

“It’s ghoulish.”

Alchemy lifted his hands off the steering wheel and then grasped it hard with his long, agile fingers, his voice pleaded to no one but himself. “What the fuck do they want me to say? I couldn’t save her. I tried. I fucking tried.”

“I’m sorry,” Moses said. He closed the magazine and put it under his seat. Alchemy pressed his foot down on the gas pedal as they sped back onto the 40. “Is this kind of crowd reaction typical?”

“Goes up and down. Depends where I am and if we’ve been in the news. It’s part of the bargain and I accept it. I despise mewling celebs, but sometimes you just want to buy a few Cokes and potato chips in peace. Or be allowed to die in peace.”

Or grieve in peace , thought Moses.

Alchemy lapsed into a turgid silence.

Moses didn’t know the extent of Alchemy’s tangled relationship with Absurda. He assumed that they’d had some kind of affair. They sped along for a long while with no radio, no talking, just the sound of the Focus’s hissing engine and the roars of eighteen-wheelers.

Alchemy broke the silence by asking Moses to grab him another water. He drained the bottle and asked Moses pointedly, “So, what did you think of your new mom?”

“I didn’t really meet her. I saw her. What I know comes from Dr. Ruggles. I wasn’t prepared to confront her.”

“Understood. If I’m still trying to get my head around the idea that you weren’t stillborn, no telling how she would react.”

“With what little I know, I can’t separate the various dueling mythologies.”

“Fabricate, bro. Family tradition.”

“I sort of have done that, but now that needs to be refabricated. If I don’t, I figure I’ll have some kind of nervous breakdown. If I even survive this other shit.”

“Mose, nervous breakdowns are also part of the Savant heritage.”

“You? You worry about that?”

“Hell, yes. Sometimes I feel like I’m in a state of perpetual breakdown.” Moses, unprepared for this admission, didn’t know if Alchemy meant it or was just trying to make him feel comfortable in his new clan. “It’s not just me or the genes. Famous people are the most unstable bunch you can ever meet. You said you’re a history prof, right?” Moses nodded. “How many of the people who had a tangible effect on the world were nuts?”

“Highly neurotic, most. Nuts, too many.”

“See? And with a mother like Salome … how can I not worry about a breakdown every now and then?”

“Great, I’ll add that to my list.”

“Ah, Mose, yours spiked in your body. You’re steady upstairs, I can feel it. You still have to meet our mother. After the operation, when you’re stronger”—Alchemy’s innate confidence that they’d be a match did not derail Moses’s pessimism—“we’ll both go see her. I need to spring her from Collier Layne again.”

“I’d appreciate that. You said before that about fifty guys have claimed to be your father. You don’t know him?”

“I guess you don’t tread in the gossip troughs much.”

“Depends what you call gossip. I read history books that are filled with academic-jargoned polysyllables dissecting Lincoln’s possible homosexuality or Hitler’s getting off on erotic asphyxiation while having someone defecate on him.”

“That’s what I mean about famous people being nuts. And politicians are the most craven ’cause they have the most power. Who was more twisted than the Adolf? Him getting dumped on makes sense to me. Was it a guy? Girl?”

“Supposedly it was his niece who did the dumping. I believe it.”

“Me, too. And Abe, a lover of man kind, that figures. Why he’d have the balls to free the slaves. I bet being a repressed gay guy back then was like being an invisible Negro. Who knew that you history guys were such a lurid bunch? Good thing they didn’t have the Enquirer or People back then, or you’d be out of business.”

“It’s not exactly a lucrative calling now.”

“Back to your original question, I do know who my father is. We met when I was six and then again when I was thirteen. And neither of us had any desire to keep up the relationship. It’s the one secret I’ve been able to keep from the predators.”

From Alchemy’s hard-edged tone, Moses understood that this subject was off-limits. But then he continued, “Our mom was pretty active and they had a one-night stand and, as she says, his sperm won.” His voice was once again relaxed, intimate.

“So you don’t know anyone named Malcolm Teumer?” Moses asked, not sure he wanted Alchemy to answer yes.