Sleepwalk: A Novel

1

The Barely Blur

Will Bear,

                           William Baird,

         Bill Behr,

                     Willard Baier,         Liam Bahr,

                                       Billy Bayer,

                                                               Wilder Barr,

                        Bear Williams,

         Willie Bare Jr.,

                              Wilton Bairn,

                                                   Blair Willingham,

Barry Billingsly,

                        Bjorn Williamsen,

   УильямАю,

Three Times

The first time it happens it’s October, and I’m driving through Utah with this young Filipino guy named Liandro. We’re passing a joint back and forth, handing off over the head of Flip the dog who is asleep on the seat in between us, but we’re not really talking. Liandro is miffed because his ankles are shackled.

I picked him up at the Chef Cheng Diner in Elko, Nevada, and I told him then that it was just best practices, nothing personal. I had him sit down in the passenger seat of the pickup and take off his shoes and socks; then I bent down and applied the cuffs.

Dude, he said, flexing his toes. This is so unnecessary.

I know it is, I said.

Ah, well. I reckon he should be glad he’s got his hands free, but he’s not grateful in the slightest. He holds the nubbin of joint between his thumb and forefinger with delicate aloofness and takes a long slow draw. Puckers and exhales a little trail of smoke and stares out the window as if I’m not even there.

I hope he’s enjoying the view. We’re driving through the Bonneville Salt Flats, and he might as well be looking at a blank screen. I hold out my hand and he passes the joint back without glancing at me. Tiny, glinting raindrops are sidling along the parts of the windshield that the wipers don’t reach, and up ahead I see a piece of sleet turn into a snowflake. It’s falling and then suddenly it becomes a weightless piece of fluff. Now it’s flying, like it just grew wings.

Looks like it’s going to start snowing, I say. Must be from that typhoon they’re having up to Seattle.

Hm, Liandro says, and he is about as interested as any of us are in hearing a fifty-year-old white man chat about the weather.

At that moment, one of the burner phones I keep in a plastic sand bucket next to the gearshift lights up. It’s set to vibrate, and it starts jiggling and flashing and bumping against the others.

I reach down and fish around for it. I pick it up and flip it open. Hello, I say.

Hello! says a chipper young female voice. Can I speak to Will Bear?

I roll down the window and toss the phone out. In the side mirror, I see it hit the surface of the interstate and bust apart, shards of plastic and metal bouncing like marbles. Liandro looks over his shoulder wistfully. Dude, he says. Why did you do that?

Nobody’s supposed to call me on that phone, I tell him. He blows on the lit end of the joint, but it has gone out. Such a waste, he says. You could’ve given it to me. I don’t got a phone.

The second time it happens, I get a little prickle of concern. I have nine phones in that bucket, and they’re all supposed to be anonymous. I guess I’m looking at some sort of breach? But it could be a robocall. Nothing is safe from those. I dip my hand in the bucket and root around for the little vibrating rattlesnake egg and I snatch it up.

Hello? I say, and dang if it isn’t the same young female voice.

Hi, she says, talking fast. Mr. Baird, you don’t know me, but don’t hang up! I have important information for you!

Which is super alarming. I toss the phone out the window again, and Liandro looks at me sidelong.

Problems, boss? he says.

The third time it happens we’re pulled over by the side of the road. Visibility has gone to hell, the sleet-flakes are blowing in a horizontal stream like video static, and then a phone at the top of the bucket starts trembling and jostling. Liandro doesn’t look. He’s mesmerized by the storm outside, by the freshly rolled joint he’s sipping at. For a while, I think I’m just going to wait it out. The phones aren’t set up for voicemail, so I can just leave it ringing and ringing and ringing. Three minutes? Five minutes? Ten minutes? Let the dang thing hum for an hour, I don’t care.

But then another of the burner phones starts to buzz, and then another, and then all eight of them—Bill Behr, Bear Williams, Barry Billingsly, Wilder Barr, Blair Willingham, Liam Bahr, even Willie Bare Jr.—the names and identities that make up the Barely Blur—all of them zuzzing and trembling and shuffling around in the bucket like cicadas on their backs, and I seize one furiously.

Who is this? I say.

Best Practices

Later, Liandro and me and the dog are in the camper.

It’s a custom-built motor home that I acquired a few years back, and I must say that it’s a solid vessel. I’ve named it, the way ships are named: the Guiding Star, I call her, and she’s tricked out with three bunks, lots of storage, plus a pretty decent kitchen area. Outside, the storm is howling, but inside the Guiding Star, we’re warm and snug.

Liandro is sitting at the little dining-table booth, itching at the cuffs around his ankles as I bring a couple of bowls of macaroni and cheese. I hand one to him and put the other on the floor for Flip.

Nice, Liandro says. I get to eat the same food as a dog.

Everybody’s equal here, I say, and head back to the stove to scoop up some mac and cheese for myself. It’s a democracy.

That’s not what democracy means, Liandro says, and I clean off the ladle with my finger. I’m not going to debate politics.

Right on, I say. I sit down across from him and dig in, but he just sits there holding his spoon, eyeing me critically.

What’s with the braids, Pippi Longstocking?

And I don’t say anything, I just give him a tolerant look. I have rocked long braids since a teenager, and I am immune to rude comments. I’m a biggish man—six foot two, broad shouldered, bearded, and pale skinned, and I can stride through the world with little fear of being menaced. If you want to mock my hairstyle choice, be my guest.

You want to play a board game? I say. We got Monopoly, Stratego, Risk, Trivial Pursuit, Scrabble, Battleship…

You have any cards? he says.

Yep, I say.

You know Egyptian Rat Screw?

Yep, I say, and I may impress him by how quickly I can pull out a drawer and produce a pack of cards. Listen, kiddo, I say, I can play any game that you can name!

I’m a good shuffler, and I give him a little show; I riffle with a flourish, walking the cards between my fingers in a quick Sybil cut and then dribbling them between my hands in a long accordion like a waterfall. In another life, I was a magician, a card sharp.

Hm, says Liandro, and takes a glance around. I’ve done a lot of work on the interior, replaced the old paneling and cabinets with real antique wood, nice duvets on all the beds, muted, oatmeal-colored linens with a high thread count, some cute Día de los Muertos figurines for a touch of color and whimsy. Full bar, the bottles and glasses shining. It’s not like some dumps I’ve had to live in.

He points with his lips. What’s in there? he says, and his eyes rest on the long Browning safe at the far end, built in below my bunk.

Nothing for you, I say.

Guns? he says.

You want to play for pennies? I ask, and he gives me a hooded glare.

How about, he says, let’s play for my freedom.

Sheesh, I say, and pause in my shuffling. He’s an exasperating sort of person. Young man, I’m not holding you prisoner. I’m just your driver. You can go anytime you want, I say. Open the door and walk out.

Right. My feet are shackled.

Those are my cuffs, I say. They’re expensive, quality material, and they will not go with you. If you want to leave, I’ll take them off and you can be on your merry way.

It’s a blizzard out there, he says.

So stay, then, I say. But I’m not taking the cuffs off. House rules. Look, I’ve had people attack me in the past. I’ve had to tase aggressors. I had to fend one nimnut off with a soup ladle!

Hm, Liandro says unsympathetically.

Best Practices, I say. And I begin to deal, letting the cards fly smoothly from my fingertips.

But then one of the phones rings again. It’s the one in the drawer by the stove, with the spatulas and tongs and whisks, and Liandro and I both look over toward the cabinet that is emitting a muffled throbbing.

This is an outrage, I say.

This is an outrage: It would make a good tombstone epitaph.

Worst-Case Scenario

There is some unpleasantness when I drop Liandro off. He’s experiencing a lot of emotion, and I realize I probably shouldn’t have let him smoke so much weed. Too late now: I watch out of the corner of my eye as he sucks down the better part of his third blunt, and his hands are shaking hard.

There’s our destination up there, I tell him. Bear Lake. Look, I say, but he doesn’t, which I suppose is not the greatest loss. It’s not particularly pretty under these weather conditions—just a line of blue ice under a haze of fog, the snowy hills melting into heavy white cumulus clouds, all of it blotchy and abstract. You can’t tell that it is a magnificent body of water, a hundred square miles in size.

Hm, Liandro says, which is just about all I’ve been able to get out of him for the past few hours.

We’re about fifteen, twenty minutes from Rendezvous Beach, and then I’ll just pass you off to your sponsor and you’ll be on your way.

Rendezvous Beach, he says, under his breath, disdainfully. Jesus. This is a nightmare.

We drive in silence down Highway 30, past a somber field of Black Angus cattle, their backs dusted with a stripe of snow. The storm has passed, but there’s a thick wet fog hanging low to the ground.

Listen, I say, after a while. You won’t have to be on retainer forever. Just till you get that debt paid down. You’re resourceful. You’ll figure it out.

He turns to glower at me. Gee, he says. Thanks.

I’m trying to lift your spirits, I explain.

Fuck you, he says, as we turn onto Rendezvous Beach Road and head into Bear Lake State Park. I hate your fat guts so much, he says. And then he starts to cry. Up ahead I can see a red pickup sitting in the parking lot with its motor running, Utah license plate MT1 L47R—that’s the sponsor, all right, and the old white gent behind the steering wheel lifts one finger in greeting.

Afterward, I can’t help but feel a little misgiving. It wasn’t the worst or most upsetting drop-off I’ve ever done, but it makes me reconsider my habit of socializing with deliveries. A lot of drivers just sedate them, and that’s probably not a bad idea. I swing through the radio dial until I find a station that’s playing old-time sixties music, Connie Francis singing Where the Boys Are, and Flip glances at me skeptically. I keep thinking about the way Liandro cried—the way boys cry in grade school, that hitching, shamed noise, half swallowed. Tears running out of your nose.

Ugh, I hear myself grunt, and I try to center myself with a 4–7–8 breathing exercise and I focus my gaze on the license plate of the SUV in front of me. Life Elevated is the motto Utah puts on her plates. I exhale with a whooshing sound to a count of eight, and then I pluck my Willie Bare phone from the plastic bucket and give Friend Monte in Provo a call.

Monte, I say, I’m done with that drop-off.

Yessir, Mr. Bare, he says. He has the sandpaper voice of a wise old cowpoke, and I picture him with an elegant shock of white hair and a particular kind of wind-burnt wrinkling, though of course I’ve never seen him. The client has confirmed. You’ll have the credits transferred to your account here shortly.

Thank you kindly, I say, and breathe out, 1–2–3–4. Some Utah license plates say: The Greatest Snow on Earth. Some say: This Is the Place.

Listen, Monte? I say. Do we still have that friend in Straub, Wyoming?

We sure do, Monte says. Friend Riordan. He’s at the Walmart from ten p.m. to seven a.m., Saturday through Wednesday.

We stay off the interstate, stick to Highway 30, rolling into the treeless western Wyoming hills, not hardly a house in sight, and I breathe 4–7–8 again, and I think about the way Liandro was shuddering when I put the Guiding Star into park and the skinny old white man got out of his truck grinning grimly. Light glimmered bright blue off Bear Lake.

It’s not my fault that kid messed with the wrong people, I tell Flip, and he gives me a long, considering look—who am I trying to kid, he wonders, and rolls on his side so the heater can blow on the back of his neck.

Then out the window I see a big billboard for Little America—not far across the Wyoming border—and I think, hell, yes, maybe I’ll stop early for the night, get me and Flip a motel room with a good shower in it.

I’ve always had a fondness for Little America. It’s a vintage truck stop, with a filling station, a 140-room motel, and a travel center where you can get some food and buy some trinkets. Legend has it that in the 1890s, when the founder of Little America was a young man out herding sheep, he became lost in a raging blizzard and was forced to camp at the place where the Little America now stands. I read about this on a plaque in the motel lobby when I was a child, and it caught my fancy, and even today I can practically quote whole pieces of that plaque, how, shivering in the midst of the blizzard, the young shepherd longed for a warm fire, something to eat, and wool blankets. He thought what a blessing it would be if some good soul were to build a haven of refuge at that desolate spot.

Honestly, I don’t know why I was so taken with the place. It was maybe mostly the billboard advertising they did—they had billboards all along the Lincoln Highway and I-80, featuring a cartoon penguin with an outstretched, welcoming flipper, and the more billboards you saw the more you felt that the place was exciting and an Important Landmark, and possibly magical.

My mom and I stayed there maybe five or six times when I was growing up—sometimes only a few days or weeks, sometimes a month or more—and it has a little homelike glow of nostalgia for me now. There’s a green Sinclair Brontosaurus outside the motel, a cement statue about the size of a horse, and kids are allowed to climb on it. When my mom and I stayed there, I was always king of that Brontosaurus, just sitting astride his back and riding the hell out of him, and of course other children would come along and want to get up on him, too. So I met kids from New Jersey and Chicago and Houston, kids going on vacation to Yellowstone or Flaming Gorge, kids fleeing with their mothers from dads who wanted to kill them, kids who wanted to convert everybody to Jesus, kids who had an eye out for some animal or small creature they could torture. I even met a little girl from Japan once, she didn’t speak any English but I talked to her in my language and she talked to me back in hers, and I remember this being one of the most pleasant conversations I have ever had.

I’m adrift in these reminiscences when some crap begins to fall out of the sky. It’s not sleet or snow this time, but something I’ve never seen—dark flakes of some kind of substance come down like leaves from a tree and they make a muddy smear when my windshield wiper pulls them across the glass. I can squirt it off with the windshield wiper fluid, but at this rate I have to wonder whether the fluid will last another nineteen miles to Little America. A few drivers are already pulled over to the side of the road, and I pass a family van with all their belongings in cardboard boxes roped to the top of their vehicle. The boxes look like they’ve seen some extreme weather conditions, and also they are spotted in a way that suggests that they’ve been passed over by some flocks of birds.

I don’t know what, exactly, is raining down this time. Maybe detritus from the typhoon off the northwest coast, or ash from the Mount Silverthrone volcano up in Canada. But I reckon we’ll all get used to it and adjust our expectations accordingly. It’s true that the world isn’t in great shape, but I’ve read that it’s not the worst it’s been—not as bad as it was in 536 C.E., when catastrophic volcanic eruptions caused a short-term ice age, devastating famine, and so forth. Probably not as bad as it was in 1349, maybe not even as bad as 1520—but we all sense that worse times are ahead.

No doubt, a day of reckoning for mankind is coming, yet even for those of us who accept the inevitability of mass human death, there’s still a cautious hope; we’re waiting to see how Armageddon plays out, keeping an eye open for ways it might turn to our advantage. Even in the worst-case scenario, odds are that at least a few of our kind will struggle on long enough to evolve into creatures suitable for whatever new environment is ahead. I’m no evolutionary biologist, but I have faith in our species’ stick-to-it-iveness.

I put my head down and keep driving, leaning forward over the steering wheel, the better to squint through the translucent smear of silt that the windshield wipers leave as they make their sweep. I may only be going ten miles an hour, but I am a man hell-bent on a destination.

Small World

The dog and I walk into that Walmart just outside Straub, Wyoming—the giant twenty-four-hour one—but at this time of night it’s nearly empty. Two thirty in the morning. Flip’s toenails click against the tile floor as he ambles along behind me.

He’s a heavily muscled dog, is Flip, with a stance like a wrestler—about sixty pounds, a pitbull mix, with black and white patches like a Holstein cow, and ice-blue Malamute eyes. He was a fighter once, before I rescued him, and he still bears some scars and some shotgun BBs are lodged beneath his skin, but generally he’s a gentle fellow. He has some lingering post-traumatic stress: doesn’t like motorcycles or uniforms, hates fireworks and the smell of tequila, is terrified of thunder and belts and pinwheel lawn ornaments. God knows what he’s been through.

He’s not the sort of dog who will abide a leash, but he’s a faithful and focused follower, and I’ve rarely had to call him to heel. One customer glances at us sidelong as we go past the Aisle of Women’s Makeup. She pauses with a jar of unguent in her hand, keeping an eye on us as we continue on toward the back of the store.

We come to the wall of fishies. There are rectangular tanks from floor to ceiling, and each contains interesting swimming things: guppies and angelfish, neon tetras and Cypriniformes, cherry barbs and harlequin rasbora. Leopard-spotted suckermouths that suction themselves to the surface of the glass. Plecostomus, they are also called.

Flip sits, and I clasp my hands behind my back. In one of the tanks, a pirate’s treasure chest opens and closes, emitting bubbles that the fish dodge and avoid. I touch Flip’s broad troglodyte skull as the fish slide along the pane of glass, never knowing that they are contained in a box.

Small world, they think.

Then an employee slinks out from one of the side hatches near the fish tanks. I look up as he comes forward. A tall, heavyset white man of early middle age, with shaggy hair that is prematurely gray, a spotty beard, an oddly kind face. He is wearing the bright blue Walmart smock, his name tag pierced to his heart: Riordan, it says, and below that the words How may I help YOU? are jauntily embossed. He holds out his hand.

Mr. Bayer? he says. He glances down at Flip disapprovingly, but doesn’t linger.

That’s right, I say. I’m Bill Bayer.

We shake hands. What can I get for you? he says.

I’m in need of eight to twelve fresh burner phones, I tell him. And a full blotter of hundred-microgram LSD-25. And a case of those little airplane-size bottles of vodka? Miniatures, I think they’re called. And if you can get Tito’s brand, that’s my preference.

He inclines his head thoughtfully. Well, I can get you the prepaid mobile devices right away. The others may take … forty-five minutes? Can you wait?

Sure, I say. No problem.

Steely Human Resolve

First you submerge a hundred-microgram tab of LSD in a 150-milliliter miniature bottle of vodka, then you give it a shake and leave it in a cool, dark place for forty-eight hours or so until the LSD dissolves.

I like to take what they call a microdose every couple of days. Just a few drips from an eyedropper, maybe a fifth of a tablespoon. It’s sub-perceptual: you don’t even hardly notice it in the day-to-day, but it does a nice job of bringing the wonders of being alive to the fore and pushing the horrors a tiny bit back. Which is an important survival technique. Voilà! The bliss of temporarily giving a shit.

I open my eyes and it’s maybe ten in the morning. I could stand to sleep longer, but the dog is yawning and stretching beside me, then giving his ears a flappity-flap to make sure I’m good and awake.

So I stick my bare foot out from under the covers and test the warmth of the day. It’s a chill morning, no doubt, but Flip has already bounded down and he’s doing a little dance in front of the door, grinning that wide, tongue-lolling pitbull grin, and he’s pushing out past me even before I get the knob all the way turned.

The camper is still at the edge of the Walmart parking lot, which is as big as several football fields but mostly empty. Flip strolls around seriously, looking for strategic places to drizzle his pee on, and I have a seat on the stoop with a little ladyfinger joint, sorting through my stack of license plates until I find a Colorado plate with unexpired tags. Colorado is but fifteen minutes to the south, and in my experience their highway patrol are not keen on out-of-state vehicles.

At last, Flip finds a place by the fence to bestow his morning bowel movement upon, and comes running back to me, pleased and ready for breakfast. When you travel as much as we do, it’s good to have a routine. Flip gets four raw eggs and toast, and I settle down to French-press my coffee and do the crossword or the sudoku from the newspaper I bought on my way out of Walmart last night.

As it turns out, the crossword is on the same page as the Opinions in the Straub Star-Herald, which I think is a bad sign. The headline says: Another Quake, Another Hurricane: Evidence Not of End Times, but of Steely Human Resolve!

That’s the spirit, I say, and fold the article over so that I can focus on 1-Across:

Very funny. Six letters.

I lick the tip of my ballpoint pen.

… possible tombstone epitaph?

After my coffee and my puzzle, I wash out Flip’s dish and make myself a breakfast smoothie. I like to be adventurous in this, and so today I have a carrot, turmeric, a clove of garlic, frozen mango slices, half a banana, apple juice, and a shot of whiskey. Blend the shit out of it, and then gulp it down! In another life, I’d have a food truck in Los Angeles that I’d call Adventurous Smoothie, and my motto would be See how far I can go!

It’s probably eleven o’clock in the morning, time to get going, so I fire up one of the fresh burner phones and call Harry Longbeck.

Hey, Harry, I say. It’s Bear Williams. I was checking in with you to see if you had anything for me?

He does. A transport job, but it’s down in Texas, north of Abilene. I ask if they’ll pay mileage and per diem, and he thinks they will, so it’s agreed and I say it looks like twelve hours on I-25 south and he says it would be better if it was not more than eight hours and I say I’ll do my best.

At times like these I wish I had that satellite radio, but then again it’s probably not a great idea for someone like me to connect himself to a transponder in outer space that can follow my every move and potentially transmit that information to the government or other parties. I have to keep myself clean—that’s one of my main selling points: I don’t officially exist. I don’t have an address or a social security number or a credit rating, I’ve never had an email, or a Facebook page, or a wifi-connected phone. I’m a blank Scrabble piece, and that’s not easy to find these days.

Amnesiascape

Slightly empty, slightly lost, slightly delighted: Holding it in my chest like a sustained chord. Driving ninety miles an hour.

We leave I-70 and merge onto US 287 South. They say that tornados roam across this stretch all the time, but we don’t see any. In Campo, Colorado, we stop for a moment to pee and buy meat sticks and gas, and then we stand in the gravel parking lot of the truck stop, staring out. The town of Campo looks to be no more than a hundred souls, and God knows what they do with themselves here. It’s flat, gray-yellow sod all the way to the horizon, barbed-wire fences and transmission towers, kind of like the way amnesia would look, if it were a country. I unwrap a meat stick and take a bite, then give a piece to Flip, who mouths it thoughtfully from my fingers.

You have to wonder about these settlers of the Great Plains. These white people who in olden times killed the natives and laid claim to this dirt and stuck to it; who stranded their children and grandchildren with a birthright of dust. A collection of clapboard shacks with backyards full of unmown pigweed and junked cars and abandoned swing sets and withered, thirsty trees. Was the genocide worth it?

I think this and then I check myself. It isn’t a fair way to think. The customer service at the Campo Truck Stop is excellent. There’s a polite, round-faced teenage girl behind the counter, who smiles sweetly at my compliment. A tired-looking bald manager with a set of worries on his shoulders hunches over his laptop. Who am I to look down on them, after all, even if they are the offspring of murderers?

No doubt in the great scheme of things we are all of us the offspring of murderers. Right? If we weren’t, we probably wouldn’t be here.

Kickin Chickin

We’re just north of Abilene, Texas, and I park behind the gas station like I was told to. It’s an old Texaco station in the middle of the desert, a little stucco box with a couple of bare pumps and an impressively large logo sign on a pole.

We made it in just under nine hours, which is a miracle, but it still means that we’re a little late, and when we pull up, the metal back door bangs open and the silhouette of a woman stands in the doorway, her fists on her hips.

I clamber out of the cab of the Guiding Star and lift my hand. Howdy, I call, but already she is turning over her shoulder to emit an angry string of—what?—Russian, it sounds like?

Здравствуйте! I say. Прошу прощения за опоздание!

Fuck you, motherfucker, she says. Don’t you speak to me in your dirty Russian. I’m fucking Ukrainian, and I can speak English just as good as you, so take your Russian and shove it up your lazy ass. You’re late!

She comes into view under a security light that looks over the back door and the dumpster, a dark-haired woman—in her late thirties, maybe? A grimace of scorn so tight that it must actually be painful to wear, and I perform a little bow of apology.

Traffic, I say, and try to think of a compliment I might give to her, but already she has turned her head. She yells in Ukrainian or whatever, and a short, broad-shouldered Mexican kid comes hurrying out carrying a cardboard box that says Kickin Chickin on the side.

In the box, in a nest of blankets, there is a tiny Caucasian infant.

This is supposed to sleep for eight hours, the woman tells me. And we were told you would be here two hours ago!

Yes, I say, and the kid holds the box out to me. Delays beyond my control.

Tough luck! Now you got six hours before it wakes up! the Ukrainian woman says. Then it’s your problem!

Well, I say. I’m a little taken aback as I hold the box in my arms. The poor creature is literally the size of a stewing chicken. "How old is