The Methuselah Gene Read online

  “With your wife?” George asked.

  “No, I mean with everyone in town. I just hope I’m not too late. What time is it? My watch stopped last night.”

  George looked at his watch, dutifully. “Um, it’s ten-fifteen now,” he said. “What would you like for lunch?”

  “Lunch?” I tripped over my own feet. On regaining balance, I happened to look into the mirror in the adjoining bathroom. And there was Tactar’s office clown, purveyor of dry, ironic humor few truly appreciated. Bachelor, loner, jet lag victim. And also the perfect patsy, now.

  “What is it?” George asked me. “What’s wrong?”

  He followed me out toward the front of the store. What I’d only imagined in theory was beginning to settle on me like an enormous weight—that a conspiracy actually existed, and that something had been produced in short order to be tested on this small town, as if on guinea pigs. But why, and who was doing it?

  I paused at the front door, my fingers circling the brass knob. I turned to find George behind me. His look might have been one of empathy had he known my dilemma, and his concerned gaze increased my sense of guilt. “Charlie?” he said.

  “No, not Charlie,” I confessed. “That’s not my name.”

  “It’s not?”

  I began to pace like a rat left behind. A rat which has just discovered that the only way out meant jumping into the ocean. I thought about what I would tell the Sheriff, when I found him. Would he even believe me? “Water dispersal is not viable,” I heard myself say, as though trying to convince myself.

  “Water?” asked George. “What about the water?”

  “Stomach acids. It shouldn’t work. And how could they manufacture so much of the formulation so quickly? And who were they, anyway, George? The paranoid THEM.”

  I fished out the last of my change and used it to pull a grape soda up through the gray metal gates of George’s old cooler. I checked the label before opening it. The scuffed bottle read: Bottled in Omaha. I tasted it. It was delicious, and oddly reminded me of the one Little League baseball game that Dad had taken me to when we were both limited to drinking things soft or purple.

  “You only drink this,” I reminded George, whose reaction seemed the opposite of Jim Baxter’s, perhaps due to a lower dosage. “Are you listening to me, George?”

  “I hear you,” George said, “but I’m not sure what you’re saying.”

  “Neither am I,” I told him. Then I tried again to imagine my upcoming conversation. It would be dicey, at best. What would I say? I took a long draw on the soda, feeling the pleasant foam of it bathe my throat. On the wall a chubby red Santa seemed frozen, forever drinking Coke in the clock that hung over a shelf of decorative covered bridge miniatures. It was ten twenty-two now, and still I hesitated. What was wrong with me? Was I going to justify delaying even longer, and play God with people’s lives? Did I secretly want to know the effects of whatever might be in the town’s water supply, too?

  Resolutely, I set the empty bottle down on the glass display case with a loud, sharp rap. Then I started for the front door.

  “Where you going?” George asked.

  “To face the music,” I told him, and braced myself for it. But someone else made it to the door before me.

  The postmaster.

  He entered smiling, a sheath of mail fanned out in one hand, a blue carrier bag slung across one shoulder. “Hiya, George,” the postmaster said. “How’s your mother?”

  “Good, Tom,” George responded. “Where’s Stanley today?”

  “Stan is huntin’ quail over at Badger Creek with Willy and the boys. He’ll be back tonight, though. Who’s your friend?”

  I held out my hand. The postmaster passed off a couple of what looked like utility bills to George first, before turning to face me. “I’m Alan.”

  “Alan?” He shook my hand abstractedly while his eyes narrowed in recall.

  “The guy who was asking you about Walter Mills, at Box 16. We need to find him, Tom. It could be a matter of life and death. Can you help us?”

  His bony hand held mine loosely, and was first to let go. The skin of his cheeks sagged onto his skull like the paper thin tissue of an excavated mummy. His bright gray eyes clouded with suspicion, then glanced at George and back. “Us?” he asked. “Where you from, did you say?”

  Hoping he was not under the influence of something, I fished in my pocket, and came up with a dime and two nickels. “Lend me two quarters,” I told George.

  Mutely, George complied. I walked over to the soda cooler as both of them watched me. I opened the lid quickly, and dropped the quarters into the ancient metallic slot. Then I slid an Orange Crush down the grid and into the chute, and jerked it up and out with a levering thump. I opened the bottle by ratcheting the cap downward into the side opener, held the bottle up, and brought it back. I gave it to the postmaster. Postmaster Tom took it reluctantly, and held it gingerly, as though holding onto the back of a live crab.

  “Thanks,” he said with some bewilderment.

  “I thought you might be thirsty.”

  “This changes nothin’, though,” the gaunt man insisted, not yet sipping. He paused to admire the sweating bottle, with the little decorative dimples in the glass on its sides. Then he looked up. “I still can’t give out addresses for box holders. What’d you mean, life or death? Who is this man yer looking for, anyway?”

  “You don’t know him, then?” I asked.

  “Who?”

  “Walter Mills. I mean you don’t know where he lives?” There was no response, not even a blink. “He did have to fill out a card or something to obtain a post office box, right?”

  “Well, of course.”

  “Looks kinda like Anthony Hopkins, am I right?”

  “Anthony who?”

  “The actor. Plays Hannibal Lecter in the sequel too. Younger, though, this guy. Much younger.”

  “Hannibal who?” The postmaster sipped mechanically at his Orange Crush, now, perhaps believing he was earning it.

  “Never mind,” I said, exasperated. “When did he fill out the card?”

  “You mean the box request form?”

  “Whatever. When was that?”

  “Well, I guess that would be around . . . last Tuesday, maybe?”

  “In person?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Alone?”

  “As I recall.” He took another swig—a longer draw this time, tilting his hawk head back to do it. Then he looked at his watch. The bottle was almost half empty.

  “Anyone else listed on the form besides him? Is it a shared box?”

  Old Tom thought about that, and took another sip to fuel the memory. Then he shook his head as the sucrose reached his brain. “Nope, he was alone, that one. Pretty sure of it.”

  “Do you remember what he said?”

  “The usual.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  Another sip. Another tilt and slug. The Orange Crush was soon two thirds gone. I could feel my scalp sweating.

  The postmaster ahhhhed. “Oh, just small talk. The weather, you know . . .”

  “No, I don’t,” I said. “You mean a stranger comes in and wants a post office box, and you just give him one, and you don’t ask him who he is, or where he’s from, or why he’s moving to Zion?”

  The liver spots on old Tom’s face squinched up to meet each other as if the orange soda had suddenly gone bitter. He leveled one gray eye at me while the other closed. “Have I asked you who you are, friend, or where you’re from, or what yer doin’ here in Zion? Wouldn’t rightly be polite, now, would it?”

  He took another sip, more for emphasis than pleasure. Less than an inch remained before he would finish with it and with me, giving George his bottle on the way out.

  “You’re right,” I told him, giving up and letting it happen. “Absolutely right.” Then I followed him out as George just stood there and watched us go. Once outside, I started to ask Tom not to drink the water, and to tell ev
eryone else on his mail route not to drink it, either. But what did I know, really? It was more likely that sex was spreading M-Telomerase among the residents, if anything was. Still more likely that the guys I’d seen were simply repairing a water main leak. And here I was, running around like a fugitive, disrupting the peace. Putting all my cards on the table was the only way to the truth, despite Rachel’s advice. Whatever fallout came from that, I couldn’t take any more risks just to save my own ass. I had to come clean.

  “Thanks for the soda, stranger,” old Tom said. Then he glanced down at a spot a foot in front of my own feet.

  I felt the heat of the sun burn my forehead as I responded, “Any time.”

  10

  George remained in his store, staring out at me like a sad clown does a lost boy. When I crossed the street even the postmaster eyed me—casually, curiously, from the barber shop next door. When I got close enough to see that it was indeed a Sheriff’s emblem etched into the glass door, I turned to look back one last time. And I thought I saw George pick up the phone atop his display case over there.

  I hesitated. There was no one inside the Deputy Sheriff’s office. Only one desk was visible, beside several tall brown filing cabinets and a computer stand. A copy of Police magazine lay on the desk’s stained green blotter, next to the black rotary phone. The phone started to ring as soon as I caught sight of it, and before I could turn away, Sheriff Cody emerged from the back room to answer it. He stood under the shiny whirling blades of a ceiling fan, his short sleeved blue shirt stitched with the same emblem that the door displayed. The shirt hung out of his pants, as though he’d just taken a crap and hadn’t bothered to tuck in the tails over his paunch. The edge of two armpit smiles stained him, while his dreamy eyes regarded me with undetermined wariness as I stood at the glass entry. Before answering the phone, he ripped a computer printout from a lower level of the stand adjacent to his desk, and held up the sheet as if to make a photo match. While answering, he never looked away from me. So there was no turning back.

  With an overwhelming sense of defeat and apprehension, I reluctantly pushed my way inside, and immediately saw that my camera and binoculars lay atop a stack of boxes near the rear door. I looked beyond them to see an empty jail cell in the back room. The door of it was open too, as if it waited to trap me.

  “Sheriff?”

  The Sheriff held up one finger, pausing, then finally whispered into the phone, hung up, and smiled. He compared what he saw on the printout to my face again. “This is nice,” he announced. “This is how my job is meant to be. Morning to you, sir. You are smart and handsome too. ‘Course that’s relative, ain’t it?”

  “Sheriff, I can—”

  “Did you have a good night’s sleep in George’s back room? I hope you like our town, and I’m glad you decided to clear up this little misunderstanding. Honesty is always the best policy, and lies only beget lies, ya know.”

  “What? Listen, I’m sorry, really, I—”

  “Can I get you some coffee? A donut, maybe?”

  My nervous demeanor must have seemed peculiar to him, but he gave no sign of it. I stared past him at the coffee machine that was hidden behind the filing cabinets on a small table. Making the connection, I looked down into the cup on the Sheriff’s desk. It was clear, and full. Not coffee, but water. An ice cube floated in there. He noticed me noticing.

  “Makin’ it’s a habit,” he confessed. “I’m cuttin’ back, myself. Be too hot for coffee today, anyway, right?”

  With the back of his hand he wiped at the thin sheen of sweat that made his wide forehead shiny. I thought I sensed something peculiar in his speech, his vacant eyes. But was that a side effect, or just his usual self? “Sheriff, there’s something I need to tell you,” I began.

  “About your stolen drugs?”

  “Yes, that’s right. But not plural, and not a drug, exactly. Something stolen from the company I work for, Tactar Pharmaceuticals.”

  He riffled among the things on his desk, as if looking for note paper, then rechecked his printout instead. “And that’s in . . .”

  “Alexandria, Virginia.”

  “So you’re not a hit man, then.”

  “No, I’m . . .” I paused, stymied. “What’s that about, anyway? Who the hell would I be killing? No, don’t tell me. Sorry. I’m a scientist, a drug researcher, Sheriff. We were nowhere near the point of screening for any possible drug in terms of marketing it, you see, when the entire sampling and formula was stolen. Our project was canceled then, and . . . ” I paused again as Deputy Sheriff Cody frowned, his eyes becoming almost dreamy.

  He picked up his cup of cold water. “What kind of a drug did you say, son?”

  “No, don’t drink that!” I grabbed at his cup, but he leaned away just in time. I managed only to swipe it with my fingers. It slipped and smashed on the floor, splashing onto the Sheriff’s pant leg. As I kneeled, scrambling to clean up the mess, I glanced up to apologize, and saw the Sheriff’s look intensify into pity and sadness.

  “What’s wrong with you?” he said, like a man witnessing an indecency. “Are you high on this drug yourself, son?”

  I took several deep breaths, trying to calm down. “No, Sheriff. You might be, though. Whoever stole it could be testing it here on Zion now. I mean in your water supply. If so, they probably want to know what the side effects are, and so they’d be watching everything, and they—”

  “They,” he repeated, and then as if he’d overhead my conversation with my sister, “Oh my, they?”

  I faced the odd new look, now, that was frozen in his eyes, beneath raised brows. “Walter Mills, for one,” I insisted. “Ever heard of him?” The raised brows lowered as a smile curled his lips. “Okay, I should have come to you with this right away, and I’m sorry, all right? It’s just that I wasn’t sure of anything until now. I’m still not, but your reaction to this isn’t helping.”

  “My reaction? What about yours, son?”

  “I’ve done nothing wrong, I promise you, Sheriff. I’m here on my own free will, and Tactar doesn’t know about this either.”

  “Tactar. That’s not a code name? They didn’t hire you to kill someone?”

  “What? No, Sheriff. I just told you, that’s the company I work for.”

  “What would your boss say about your skulking around our town with a gun, then, holding up our gas station attendant?”

  “It was his gun, Sheriff. Wally’s gun.”

  “. . . lying to people . . . stealing.”

  “I said I’m sorry about that. It’s just that—”

  “Sorry? We’ll see how sorry you are. How . . . sorry . . . or if your boss even exists. Is he still alive, your boss? Or did you murder all your partners?”

  “Did I . . .” I almost laughed at him, then stopped myself. “What?”

  Unbelievably, I watched as the Sheriff now reached for the revolver at his waist, as sadness seemed to overwhelm him.

  “What are you doing?” I asked in amazement.

  “When they canceled your little ‘project’ . . . did they try to kill you, too?”

  “No, they didn’t try to—”

  He lifted the gun out of his holster in one swift movement, then aimed it deliberately toward me, a tear forming in his eye. “You stole those drugs yourself, didn’t you, son?”

  “No! Absolutely not.”

  “And now you’re going to test them on us?”

  “Not me.”

  “And pretend it’s someone else?”

  I spread my arms wide, fingers extended, palms visible. “No, Sheriff,” I said. “Listen to me. Walter Mills, he’s got a post office box here, you can find his address if you—”

  The Sheriff cocked the gun, aiming it at my head. Then he began to cry, as though doing his duty despite the overwhelming anguish it caused him. “When’s the lying end?” he almost sobbed.

  “Sheriff, listen,” I said slowly, calmly. “I’m not . . . lying.”

  “It doesn’t until I end it,�
�� he responded, as if he hadn’t heard me. “And this is where it ends. Right . . . n—”

  “Okay!” I shouted. “Okay, okay, okay. What do you want me to say? What, what? Tell me!”

  My words jolted him. His eyes widened, and seemed dilated. Finally focusing on what he was doing at last, he froze again, as if the film frame was about to burn and warp away, crisping at the edges. I imagined Hannibal watching from behind some glass store front across the street.

  “I should have known,” I muttered, ironically, as the crisis ebbed. “No one ever believes the truth.”

  Cody covered his mouth with one hand. The revolver in his other hand trembled.

  I held out both hands toward his gun hand as I slowly rose. “Easy now. Okay? This isn’t you, it’s . . . whatever.”

  We began to circle his desk, Cody backing away from me. Then I stopped and made a downward motion with my hand. Willing him to put the weapon down on his desk. Staring into his dilated eyes, but not wanting to see the truth there myself, either.

  Cody only looked beyond me.

  I glanced over my shoulder toward the door as he continued to sob. I saw George standing outside the etched glass door, and he was crying too.

  11

  From Zion’s dusty holding cell I could see the Sheriff drinking iced water at his desk out in the office. He was too busy trying to reach someone at Tactar to pay much attention to my repeated requests. It being Saturday, I understood his own frustration all too well, although anger never showed in his voice. Not sounding like a police officer anymore, he was forced to call several numbers in convincing Tactar security to believe he was with law enforcement, and not some tabloid reporter.

  As I waited, I looked down at the jelly donut and coffee on the tray beside my cot, and then dipped my index finger in the coffee, testing the temperature.

  Almost hot. But hot enough?

  I sipped and munched, feeling an odd sense of relief now that the truth would come out. This was nuts, since both the Sheriff and the town were plunging deeper under the influence of a situation I’d created, and I didn’t even know what was happening. But there it was. At least I’d come in on my own accord, so I couldn’t be prosecuted, could I?