The Methuselah Gene Read online

  I shook my head. “A movie. What kind of movie, and when would they start filming?”

  “I think it’s a horror movie. Independent thing. Felsen said some minor roles would go to folks in town, and filming would start soon.”

  “You mentioned disruption. What kind, did he say?”

  “No, but that’s when Jimmy Watson started acting weird, and I didn’t stay around to find out. Maybe he was acting, though. You know, trying out for a role? He’s always been a ham. Hog farmer, actually. Anyway, he had my vote. I left.” She paused, studying my face. “You think the movie scout Felsen mentioned is this Walter Mills?”

  “It’s a good bet, and an excuse to be here. They could blockade the town, control traffic. Control the experiment too, whatever the hell it is, while they look for me. But I still can’t figure it. If Tactar or terrorists aren’t involved, could I still be right to suspect someone like Darryl selling out? I can’t even call Darryl for help, with the phones down. Did Felsen mention anything about that?”

  “He said the telephone company is working on the long distance problem, and in the meantime people are welcome to come by the main switchboard to place a call out.”

  “Convenient.”

  “Folks have stars in their eyes, I guess.”

  “Or something else. So what happened when you told people there might be something wrong with the water?”

  “At first they saw me with Rebecca, and figured I was her mouthpiece. Didn’t take me serious. Then our school principal Rudy Morgan said he saw somebody up at the tower too, and figured it was somebody from the water company. Thought it was unusual, since the old tower hadn’t been connected to the system for over two years, not even for emergency backup.”

  “He said that?”

  Julie nodded. “Felsen confirmed it, and said he’d ask Cody to look into it. I was about to ask to use the phone when Rebecca mentioned you and Cody were already investigating it, and then I pictured the Sheriff coming through the door any second. So when Jimmy did his thing, I just . . .” She left the sentence unfinished.

  I shook my head in disbelief. “This is weird, and ironic. So we do need help here. Maybe a SWAT team with M16s, or a Special Forces unit fresh from Afghanistan with a tank mounted M60 machine gun. Somebody other than a drugged sheriff or some drunken Barney Fife with a silly grin. Especially if there’s bigger fish to fry.”

  “Bigger, like who?”

  I shrugged. “No way of knowing. But someone read an article I wrote, and obviously identified me as a person to spy on. It’s rumored some black ops agency once laced some marijuana and cocaine with an untraceable bio drug to scare dealers and junkies a couple years back. It was like an experiment for them, to see if it would scare people into rehab. Killed dozens of people up and down the eastern seaboard before the Washington Post got wind of it, and the operation was shut down. Could be they’re doing it again, experimenting here.”

  Julie’s piercing brown eyes narrowed. “For what purpose?”

  “Who knows? I was hoping M-Telomerase would increase lifespans, but what if someone saw a way it could do the opposite? Maybe the CIA intends it to aid population control in the third world, like with Arab countries hostile to the United States, as part of Homeland Security. But before they go global they want to test their new and improved formula.”

  “That’s pretty—”

  “Farfetched? I wonder. Darryl warned me about India. The exploding population there. They don’t have controls in place like China does, or anything in the way of environmental standards. And with so many new people hoping for SUVs, if not Mickey D’s, you can kiss the ozone layer goodbye. Meanwhile we’re getting older, not younger. Boomers will start to retire in droves, here soon. And then the Feds won’t be able to keep writing checks, in a tax revolt. They’ve already racked up enough deficits to bust Social Security as it is. Do the math, and then look at the oil fields either drying up or on fire, and you’d have to conclude there’s some pretty drastic action needed.”

  Julie was dubious. “So, if you’re right, you think the CIA would actually kill us for knowing what it’s up to? I thought all those agencies share information now.”

  I laughed, despite the pain of it. “Despite what they say, the Feds still don’t share much, except with bulk mailers. Their motive is to stay in office long enough to collect a big pension, because they’d never make it in the real world.”

  She sighed. “You sure have a cynical way of looking at things.”

  “Cynical? Me? Maybe so. Most Americans have couch potato eyes, and only flip the channel away from the NBA or the PGA when there’s a billionaire reality show on, or some terrorist does a suicide dance on a public bus downtown.”

  Julie favored me with a sour expression. Maybe I’d said too much. Maybe I was even wrong.

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “You keep saying that.”

  “Sorry.”

  We were silent for a while, trying to decide what to do. As Julie slumped onto the couch beside me, I considered the enigma presented by her furnishings. Her home was decorated on a western motif, with earth tones. Overstuffed pillows on a heavy wood framed couch. Images of horses everywhere, even on the mantle above the small fireplace, where the figurines of several stallions were forever frozen in defiant pose. It felt like a man’s house, except with no piles of dirty socks, and with the toilet seat in the bathroom properly down. There were no framed photos visible anywhere that I could see. Even the trinkets that she’d collected did not resemble a glass menagerie, indicative of some sensitive or lonely feminine homeowner, but seemed much more rustic, with the sharper edges of pine cones and the rougher symmetry of knotty wood in lamps and end tables. I half expected to see a pipe or chewing tobacco if I opened a drawer.

  “Do you own a horse?” I asked, tentatively. Julie shook her head no as I pondered my next question, having to do with the size of the robe I was wearing. But I chickened out, and instead asked: “What about your neighbor up the road. Will he lend you his car? With the phones out, he might not know to be on the lookout for me, yet.”

  “Earl? He’s not too friendly to me lately. Not since the day he made a pass at me, and I reminded him he was married.”

  I frowned and nodded. “If he’s the same Earl that I met, I know what you mean. What about Mabel?”

  “Pritchard? It’s a possibility. I did help her out once, but then again she’s got Carl to care for, and she’s paranoid about not having a car at her command in case he needs something. Even more paranoid than I am about not having a license plate someone can eyeball. Sorry, I really should have asked someone at church to drive me to Creston instead of panicking.”

  I tried to imagine her in a full panic, but couldn’t. “What happened, exactly?”

  Julie settled closer to me on the couch, but stared beyond me at the unusual antler-horned light fixture above her kitchen table. “It was strange,” she confessed.

  “Strange,” I said, and looked over at the light fixture too.

  “More than odd. Bizarre, actually, like he was in a trance. And he isn’t normally one of the holy roller types, either, I can assure you.”

  “Jimmy . . .”

  “Watson, right. Well, right out of the blue Jimmy just stood up on the pew and pointed at the stained glass window over the choir loft and started yelling that he saw Jesus. Gave me chills.”

  “Chills,” I repeated, putting one arm around her shoulder.

  “He was never one to act like that, either. So I don’t think he got religion any more than Rebecca did. No, he got something else. Like a virus, maybe. Whether it came from the water supply or not.”

  I looked at her in surprise. “What do you mean, or not?”

  She paused for a moment, pursing her lips. “I don’t know, but I didn’t see many people acting oddly, as you would expect. Maybe you’re right about the dosage and the time mattering, but think about the few who appear to be under the influence, so far. Sheriff Cody, Rebecca, G
eorge, Jimmy. And I think Felsen’s wife Sandra too. She seemed more than a little drunk, and she’s a teetotaler. Still, you have to ask yourself, what do these people have in common?”

  I shrugged. “Beats me.”

  “Well, not me. They all live over west of town, over by the Watson and the Jensen hog farms. Except for George, but his mother lives in a ranch house near there, and George visits her every week, from what I hear. Brings her one of Edie’s chicken pot pies. Maybe whatever is happening is localized there, somehow. It’s something to think about, right?”

  I studied her face. “Are you saying you want to check it out?”

  “No, I’m not saying that. Maybe I’m wrong. But Sandra did start playing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ on the organ when Jimmy stood up, pointed above the pastor’s head, and started yelling, ‘Look, there he is! It’s Jesus, come to Zion!’ The others, they were just singing like they usually do.”

  “I think I heard them, too.”

  “I stared at the space where everyone looked, but I couldn’t see zip. Then Rebecca knelt, as if being told to do it. Can you imagine? And Felsen starts quoting from the Bible, ‘wherever two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst of them.’ Right then and there I freaked out, and I left Rebecca kneeling right there in the aisle. I ran out past a water fountain in the lobby. Came right home, and locked my door.”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I contended.

  “Self-preservation reflex, really.”

  “Hey, I might have done the same thing.”

  “No, you wouldn’t. I let you down. It was a miracle you even found me.”

  “Yes.” I agreed with her there. “A miracle.”

  I touched her forearm, running the tips of my fingers gently, almost casually along her smooth skin. Then I stopped, a little embarrassed, at the bend inside her elbow. When she dropped her gaze, I realized how few of the details of her life I actually knew. That she was a stranger seemed odd to me, though. As if those details hadn’t mattered, and that the mystery woman beside me was no mystery at all where it counted most. “What do you do here, Julie?” I heard myself ask, after a more typical awkward silence. “In Zion, I mean.”

  “For work, you mean? I’m a substitute teacher. Elementary.”

  I looked over at the fireplace mantel—at the stallions and the missing picture frames. “Where’s your family?”

  “I can’t tell you that.”

  I should have let it pass, but curiosity, like an old and ill defined longing, craved secrets to be revealed, whatever they might portend. And I remembered my conversation with her opposite, too. Fake name of Nikki. “What can you tell me, then?”

  “I can tell you have ambition, but self-doubt. And that you don’t normally like to take risks with your life.”

  The owner of a studiously lonely heart, I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “Touché,” I conceded. “Right now I feel like I’ve stepped on my own fortune cookie. Have trouble even bending over to pick up the pieces.”

  She stared at my stiff leg. “Sheriff Cody probably isn’t going to help, either, I’m afraid. To him you’re a fugitive. That’s not your fault, though. We’ve just got to get word to someone on the outside about our theories, is all.”

  “And soon,” I added. “Although who would believe it?”

  “Well, if I can . . .”

  Her eyes met mine, and the look held longer than either of us expected. In those extra few seconds I thought I might need something like Tambocor if we ever actually kissed. “Why do you trust me?” I asked her, breaking the look before it broke me.

  She paused, and then for an instant resembled someone standing on a diving board over cold, dark water. “It’s not easy,” she confessed.

  “No, it’s not, is it?”

  At my words she seemed about to come to a decision, then to pull back again. When she finally spoke, it was more like testing the water than taking the plunge. “I’m in the Witness Protection Program,” she said. “Like you guessed. They chose this place for me. I didn’t know anyone here. My death was faked. A car accident. I witnessed a murder. An execution, really. That’s all I can say.”

  “A mob hit?”

  She blinked at me rapidly. “I didn’t say that.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, and considered the caution, bordering fear, which had lived with her in this space she called home. “Is that why your house looks like a man lives here? Why there are no photographs of you anywhere?”

  She got up and left the room for a moment. I was about to apologize for my indiscretion when she came back with a pair of men’s pants. She held them up in front of me, and smiled. “Close enough?” she wanted to know.

  “The legs are a bit long, but the waist looks about right.”

  “Good. I’ll cut and cuff them for you. The alternative is to cut and patch the hole and area of dried blood from those other pants with material, but this is easier.”

  “You have a sewing machine?”

  “No, I have band saw. It’s out back. I’ve taken up woodworking.”

  I chuckled involuntarily. “Do you have men’s underwear too?”

  “Why—don’t you want to wear mine?” The question took me by surprise. Her too. Then, after breaking the tension I felt with a grin, she surprised me again by sitting on the arm of the couch right next to me. “Do you know what it’s like to live in a prison of your own making, Alan?”

  “I . . . think I know what that’s like.”

  “Do you?” She studied my face. “Retired people live in gated communities where all the houses look the same—close together, no yards. Like in a prison. But even out here, in all this vast expanse, you come to have a different sense of self, too. Big city life seems remote, alien. No one is in a hurry. Afternoons are long.” She paused. “It’s different, but for me it’s the same. As a visitor, you aren’t afraid to tell me who you are, but I can’t tell you. Do you know how that is—not feeling you’re home, not sharing your past with someone? Only the present moment?”

  “All we have is the present. But you’re right, the past made us who we are.”

  “No one can know me like they know you, that’s right. My name’s not even Julie.”

  “Doesn’t matter. A rose by the name of Gertie is just as beautiful.”

  Trite though it sounded, she smiled. “My name’s not Gertie, either.” She looked down and pursed her lips, as though deciding whether to throw off the other part of my comment. “And I’m not beautiful, either.”

  “The eye of this beholder thinks otherwise,” I maintained, almost at a whisper. “And how you got here isn’t as important as who you are now.”

  She scanned the floor, as if she’d lost something down there, or I had. “Who am I, then? A teacher, pretending in a small town. A spinster, an actor. Hiding here alone.”

  “No,” I said. “Not alone. Not anymore.” Her gaze seemed frozen on one spot beneath her, but she said nothing. “After all,” I confessed, “what am I? A bachelor, also in hiding. Afraid of . . . whatever. I’m an actor, too. When the women I once dated didn’t care for the real me, I began to pretend I was someone else. That didn’t work either, but out of habit I never stopped pretending, even with myself. Then all my friends got married, and suddenly they didn’t have any free time. I felt abandoned. Like they dropped out of the world. Except it’s their world, really, isn’t it? Not mine. I’m the one who dropped out of theirs. And then I wasn’t in anyone’s demographic anymore. The advertisers don’t target me now because I’m not up and coming. And I’m not already there either, wherever there is. Career, marriage—where do I fit in? Too soon for early retirement. Too soon to sell me an assisted living condo yet, or even a time share on a cemetery plot. So who am I to anyone? A bachelor, a social outcast, frowned on by everyone. Even by the vast almighty and sacred sporting industry.”

  “Alan, the holdout,” she noted, glancing up with a wry but plaintive smile. “What about your family?”

  “Si
ster and father still alive. Rachel’s nice, you’d like her.”

  “And your dad?”

  “We haven’t really spoken in years. Wouldn’t know what to say.”

  “Say anything. Say, ‘Hi Dad, how you doing?’ Then take him to dinner.”

  “He lives in Florida, since a stroke took Mother.”

  “Is he okay there?”

  “Had a nervous breakdown years ago, but he’s fine. By now I’ll bet he’s hooked up with some nudist who has four grown kids . . . some liberal lady shares weed with him by candlelight in her Jacuzzi.”

  “You bet?”

  “If I were him.”

  “Really.” She looked dubious, now.

  “So how’s your relationship with your old man?”

  “He’s not an old man yet.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “I know, silly. But I can’t talk about that. And don’t change the subject. Promise me you’ll go to Florida, take him to dinner?”

  “Okay, Florida it is,” I said. “Guess I need to see how geezers live, since it’s inevitable I’ll become one someday. Time does that to men.”

  “Yeah? What’s it do to women?”

  “Makes you into little old ladies need help crossing the street.”

  “Sounds nicer.”

  “Women tend to be nicer. That may be why you live longer. Unless you’re bitches, in which case you live a lot longer.”

  She smiled, then asked, “What about love?”

  “Old folks do it too, I think. They just don’t make movies about it.”

  She chuckled. “No, silly, I mean—”

  “I know what you mean. And I never really thought about how it might last. The real thing, I mean. At least I didn’t until I came here, and found you.”

  I half expected her to laugh. It was just a ludicrous statement to make, even though I didn’t plan to make it. But as with any truth, spoken so easily, so matter-of-factly, it produced an effect. What it did to the woman next to me was make her brown eyes suddenly tick-tock between my own, as if the screw that had wound them tightly and slowly for so many years had finally snapped.

  Looking down at my mouth, she leaned slightly toward me, then, like a tremulous flower leans toward the sun. I closed the gap between us, feeling an identical need inside of me, too. The surprise of this couldn’t be easily explained. At least not by science. But the miracle also came with the knowledge that even here, in the middle of nowhere, two people could find each other on the same road, and somehow intuit more about themselves than the facts could ever tell.