Walking the Sleep

by Mark McGhee

  The wanderer sat blinking. She was young. Twenty-something. Pretty. Ragged. Blue eyes and dirty blond hair. Her arms had deep lacerations. She was still carrying around her death image, that’s how I knew she didn’t know she was dead. Wanderers usually know they’re dead. These, like her, normally they just stay where they dropped.

  Some of them go about like they aren’t dead because they really seriously don’t know they are. She was wearing a pastel blue sun-dress. I looked into her vacant eyes – pools of blue. Watery and lost but not sad really.

  “You’re dead! Go home!”

  She looked down at her arms. No blood just deep vertical lacerations on the veins seven inches long.

  “Nice work. No bluffing with you huh?”

  She blinks again.

  She sees me for the first time. She looks back at her arms and begins tracing the cuts with purple finger-nails. She looks back at me.

  “Are you Jesus?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “What should I do?”

  “Go home.”

  “Where? I don’t know how to go there anymore. I ran away. I forgot how to get home.”

  She turns and looks. I know now there is someone waiting for her and she knows it too. I don’t know them but I wonder why they took so fucking long to get here.

  She points.

  “Over there…that’s my grandma”

  “Good for you kid.”

  “Thank you.” She lets a tear drop fall and smiles.

  She walks up a small hill to a cluster of desert oaks and she is gone.

  I head back down the road. I’m sick of the desert. Too many fucking ravens. I pause for a second to smash the head into the desert sand with the heal of my boot.

  I fucking hate ravens.

  DAY. I feel good. No walking the sleep. I watch the kids playing baseball and they are so intense. Some are having a good time and some are trying desperately to please their parents who are screaming from the stands. It’s been a good stretch for me lately. I wander from inland to coast. I watch people live, love, and laugh. I see the fortunate and unfortunate things happen. I’m becoming very distinctly aware of that which is happening, and that which is memory, and that which is someone else’s memory. It helps to keep my mind straight.

  Night. I’ve been walking the sleep again and don’t know how much time has passed. I have no idea how long I was wandering. Now I recognize when others are deeply walking the sleep. There isn’t a glint of recognition, and their eyes are dead. And I was thinking I was so glad that I didn’t have that fucking blank expression I have seen. I see a guy with his jaw hanging off, one eye, brain pulsing gray and red.

  “Hey, you’re dead asshole! Go wherever it is you’re supposed to be. There’s a light at the end of a tunnel five miles back that way…go towards the light jackass! Move towards the light.”

  Now, I see he never heard me because I am no different. I walk the sleep and I am in that state, and I am a stupid wanderer just like him. Walking hundreds of miles in the sleep and then becoming aware. And never really resting. I feel tired again. DAY. Maybe I should really leave. It doesn’t seem like I’m accomplishing anything anymore. I am having a harder and harder time counting DAYS. Counting NIGHTS. Sometimes I believe I have time and space clear but then I am walking the sleep and it seems a thousand days have passed and I don’t know where I have been walking. I am very aware now that there are people here that I know.

  I saw a friend of mine, Brian. He died in a motorcycle accident when we were both in our early 20’s. He was walking the sleep. I watched him for a while near the Golden Gate Bridge, and I don’t know what I was doing in the park, except that I had been sitting near the Russian River thinking about my mom. The sleep came, and then I was standing watching him as he walked the sleep. And now I know better than to try and speak, but I hope I can see him again when he is not walking the sleep. He is wearing tight fitting jeans and a multicolored button up silk shirt. His hair is long and feathered. He looks like he stepped right out of 1983 because he did. He stepped right out of 1983 into here. Into now that isn’t now. His head had been split in half when a truck ran him off the road. It was comforting to see that he was still that good looking kid with the feathered hair. His head was in one piece. Glad to know that he wasn’t walking around looking like the way he did when he left. I learn to appreciate the little things now. So I watched him wander along and saw the look of the sleep. He walked past me and looked right through me. I wasn’t hurt. I was sad for a second. Maybe I should follow him and see what he’s looking for. Why is he still here maybe 25 years after he came here, when people that left only a few years ago are gone?

  I’m beginning to think that most everyone here knows who is here, at some time or another, when they aren’t walking the sleep that is. Except for the extended sleepers, and those that don’t know they’re dead. For the extended wanderers, the ones that don’t know they’re dead and won’t listen….. I don’t know that they know anything, are aware of anything, or can be told anything.

  Sometimes people leave and you know. ‘Hey, Kenny left.” No one says that and no one cares. You just know. No celebrations here outside of memories.

  Chapter 5

  That guy in the liquor store that told me I was dead. I think I will talk to him again. It seems like the right TIME. I don’t like using words like today, tonight, sometime….these words frustrate me more than ever now.

  I stood on top of the First Interstate Building in Los Angeles one DAY and screamed:

  “What fucking day is it!!!! What time is it you meat bags!! Answer me! You have nothing to do but charge towards here! You fucking hamsters! Run yer fucking wheels to nowhere! Fuck you!!!!!”

  That was a bad DAY for me.

  Now I try to just avoid thinking about time passage and I seem to be doing better. DAY.

  Anyway, I might WAKE from the WALK and be in a very foul mood. DAY not tomorrow DAY. I can WAKE from the WALK and it isn’t today or tomorrow or fucking yesterday, or next week, or last week. So I try not to think about those things or use words that make me angry. No one cares if you’re angry here anyway.

  Wanderers rarely show emotion. Sometimes they are intense but I think it’s because they are headed in a direction to do something, or see something, and maybe they have a clue they need to leave? I don’t know that everyone here can leave. I’m beginning to questions things.

  So I watch Brian wander down past the entrance to Golden Gate Park. He leaves and heads east. I won’t follow him. It seems rude now that I think about it. So, I will see him again I hope. Before I leave. Before he leaves. And I still wonder why he is here. Maybe he can’t leave and that will be awkward because I know I can. I think I can.

  And I feel like hiding that secret because there are people here that maybe can’t leave? And maybe, maybe I really can’t either. But sometimes I truly think I can. And it’s my secret.

  He disappears into the morning fog. I sit and watch a family walking and taking pictures of the bay. I will go east. Time to go speak with the man in the liquor store in Santa Ana. He’s still there because I can feel it. He really isn’t a wanderer. I think he is a stayer. I’m not sure what makes a stayer – a stayer. For whatever reason they aren’t leaving. A little rat nibble of fear in my stomach. Nausea. I fear becoming a stayer. I push it out of my mind.

  DAY. My old dog showed up. A shepherd collie mix. Black, brown, and white crested chest. I hadn’t seen him since I was ten. He liked to run in the train yards and lost a leg. The neighbor had him put to sleep. I wasn’t staying with my dad that weekend. It was sad. I loved him very much. He had his leg back now. Good for him. It wasn’t some type of “Lassie” heartwarming reunion. He didn’t leap up and start licking my face. I didn’t pick him up and hold him in my arms.

  I was walking down the I-5 Freeway headed towards Los Angeles. I looked down and he was trotting next to me. He looked up at me like, “Hey, how ya doing?” I nodded and felt happy. But, no b
ig deal. He knew I was here and found me as soon as he could. I was glad. I don’t think I was always the best friend. I was a selfish kid I guess, but I did love him very much. He found me and for NOW, at least, he seemed quite happy. I have decided to walk south on the I-5. Through the towns and cities that people speed through on their way from southern California to northern California. But I was headed back. Other direction. Always back.

  As I walked, King trotted in quick step occasionally looking up and giving me that doggy smile. He seemed genuinely happy to be with me. In this second….DAY…I find enjoyment in that. I can think in seconds fairly well and in minutes also. Hours can at times be troubling. DAY.

  I half wonder why King seems so happy because extended happiness wasn’t something I ever knew on that side, nor would I expect to see on this side. I guess it made sense though. King was always happy there and so he is happy here. He was probably happy before I came. Good for him leaving his happy state to trot alongside me and yet remain happy, and that with very little positive reinforcement. I wonder if he remembers the little boy who held him tight and said, “You’re king of all dogs because you’re the best dog in the whole world!”

  Was he expecting that from me? Maybe not, but maybe just the memory made him still love me. That was fine with me. I know he didn’t get much from me after I was ten I suppose. I remember that’s when I no longer felt like a kid. Some murky and dark things happened. I guess there were some years I walked the sleep as a kid. No memories from 5th grade, I suppose, until about middle school. Murky. Foggy. Glimpses and moments. A few really bad beatings by my mother, who had finally lost her mind and was desperately trying to fix it with Olympia beer, wine, and pills…bags of pills. 1970’s prescriptions, phenobarbital, valium, all the stuff doctors gave out like candy to crazy and depressed house wives, angry people, insane asylum graduates, and anyone else that asked. Thorazine was only for the really crazy crazies. The insane fuckers at Patton State. You could drive by on Highland Avenue in San Bernardino and watch the crazy fuckers shuffling. The Thorazine shuffle they called it. Short little forward shuffles, like they were ice-skating in honey. Wearing their little institutional flannels and cotton sandals. Heads down, concentrating on pushing their feet forward. Forward. Forward.

  Desperately trying to lift those feet. I remember being very little and sitting at a waiting room in Patton. My parents were visiting someone in the capacity of pastors I think. I was very young. My mom was still a pastor. She was probably still very crazy but she was able to hide that behind her duties as a Pentecostal preacher. She was able to scream, yell, and chastise…but in the name of Jesus. Which made it ok. Later she would scream and yell and chastise, but normally only after lots of wine and pills. Not about Jesus or saving souls either. It was usually about what a fuck-up and “male” human I was. When my mom became a lesbian she really started hating men. My dad was number one on the list. I seemed to be number two. I was around and he wasn’t, so I got the belt, and the hot-wheel track, or whatever was handy when she flew into a rage. Somewhere, around ten, I blanked a lot of it out, and then for some reason, about twelve, I sort of popped back awake. I can’t say it was completely blank. I remember some good things in there, and some horrible things for sure, but more like being in a pitch black room, lights come, your blinded for a second, your eyes adjust you see, and then the lights go out again. Pitch black. Cold dark. Like that.

  I was pretty young. Maybe the blackout years. I learned to stop smiling at people. Somewhere along the way I learned that smiles were often perceived as weakness and I finally realized that most people weren’t as friendly as me. It sunk in that people tended to hurt other people. Little people like nine year olds, older people like twelve year olds (they could hurt you more) and older people…they were the most dangerous of all. Older people were full of hurt and confusion. They could make your world disappear. They could make you go to sleep in weird places on the floor and wake up not knowing where you were.

  They could make you hungry, and terrified in the night because they left you alone. There were horrible things in the night when I was eight years old, Evil creatures lived in pantries and under beds. Silent yellow eyes watched from the darkest places. Then you could hear the laughs of demons until, by sheer terror, you fell asleep clutching the covers, and praying that the step you heard outside was your mother coming home. “Oh dear god please be mother.” And how scary was it, how terrifying were those hours, eternal clock stop hours, such that you prayed for the abusive one, the drunk one, to come home? And the scary horrible reality of hearing your prayers echo in the corners of the dark and empty places, and knowing God didn’t answer but scary voices did. And they assured you they would rip apart your flesh and devour the last ounce of your soul.

  That’s what older people could do. They could make you wake up tired and with your stomach tight and aching. They could make anything look delicious.

  I glanced down at King.

  “Sorry boy”

  He gave me a doggy smile and trotted up ahead.

  Walking the sleep. King is gone. Maybe he has dog things to do. I can feel him but he is far away. He had stayed with me for miles and miles. I had been very awake and clear on my walk from San Francisco. It had been a long and boring walk. King had kept a sharp watch on the ravens. An alert bark whenever they started to circle, take a peek, or perch on a weathered telephone pole. We went through the DAY. NIGHT too. Lots of thinking. Lots of talking for me and doggy nods from King.

  It was good to have a friend again. Somewhere outside of Ventura I fell into the sleep. Began walking the sleep. I snap back sitting on a bus bench, clutching a brown bag. There’s half a pint of gin in the bag and my head hurts.

  In Santa Ana, California. Night. Liquor store. I walk in and see people milling around. An Arabic clerk quickly checks out small bottles of VSO brandy, Svedka, cheap beer and malt liquor. Blunts for smoking weed. One after another I watch. The guy who told me I was dead is sitting next to me watching. The clerk is oblivious to our presence. He doesn’t see us. This I know. Sam is sitting on his stool eating an orange Hostess cupcake. A half smoked Camel sits in his left hand. He takes a bite, chews, then takes a drag on the Camel blowing smoke between chews. Half a bottle of Jim Beam whiskey sits on the counter next to him.

  “Why do you watch this shit? Isn’t there somewhere you’d rather be?”

  “No. I love this.” He finishes the cupcake and washes it down with a long drink of Beam.

  “You love watching people come in with money they can’t afford to spend, lay it down for things that make their lives harder?”

  “Yes. It’s a symphony of despair from which I cannot look away, nor turn a deaf ear”

  “That’s fucked up.”

  He hands me the bottle and I take a long pull. He tosses me the pack of Camels. I light one and drag hard on it.

  “Yes, I know. See the guy wearing the Dickies and Converse shoes?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He’s thirty-five. He’s lost three shit jobs in two months. He’s got two kids at home that need shoes. He’s spending the last of what he has tonight.”

  “Wow….it’s so great to be fucking dead and have the insights huh?”

  “I didn’t ask you to come back here. What are you doing here anyway?”

  “Looking for something.”

  A strange looking man shuffles in and then out the door. The back of his head is missing.

  “Why doesn’t someone wake that guy up?”

  “Don’t think I tried? He’s gone. No hope.”

  “No hope. That’s pretty fucking funny. Hope.”

  “He’s been coming in here since before I came, I’m told. Walked in here years back. Bought a fifth of Scotch and walked in the alley to drink it. Found out his best friend was fucking his pretty little bride while he slaved away fifteen hours a day. They had a little house in Fullerton. Little kid too. I think first grade. I pick up a lot of shit when he talks to himself. So he drinks
his fifth of Scotch and looks at the picture of his kid. Then he looks at a picture of his wife. Nice looking. I stole a look few times. He pulls out a .38 special. He calmly places the barrel in his mouth. You know what I heard him say once? Gun oil is a weird flavor of turpentine and not completely unpleasant. So then he says…goodbye…Pulls the trigger and blows his brains all over the back wall in the alley.”

  They never found the gun. Someone came along while he leaked all over the alley. Took the gun and walked away…or ran away. I don’t know.

  “You don’t have any answers for me, do you?”

  “Nothing that would mean anything, really.”

  “But you knew me.”

  “I knew you like I know anyone came in here on a daily basis. Buys a pack of cigarettes, a newspaper… a twelve pack of beer. Talk about the Angels, bad weather, nothing substantial. Sorry.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Huh?”

  “What’s your name?

  “Sam. But then, you already know that, Paul. I haven’t heard my name in a while. It sounds weird. I’m glad you made me say it out loud… Sam”

  “Bye, Sam.” I walk out.

  And the time I search for the answers that always seem to furtively slip away, out of the corner of my eye, seem wasted and for no reason. I see them slip away quickly and quietly, never answering questions. A fleeting glimpse of time and a knowing stare in a moment. A glance of truth and knowing.