by Mark McGhee
Walking the Sleep
By: Mark E. McGhee
Copyright © 2013 By Mark E. McGhee
All rights reserved
Defining moments direct our paths and change the fabric our lives. Charity: October 18, 1980
Inspiration, loyalty, an understanding none others ever grasped. Thomas: June 21, 1989
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Dying really is a unique experience. I had read about it, heard about it, and yet it was nothing like I really expected. I’m still surprised by it every day. There have always been “living” that can hear the dead. You’ll see one day yourself. It really is, as they say, a “passing.” I was unaware that I was dead for a very short period of time. I know they say disembodied spirits that remain earthbound don’t know they are dead. I’ve seen some of those who didn’t know they were dead. I have never felt compelled to tell them anything either. Why should I anyway? I do remember the night I “passed” over and someone did actually tell me I was dead, so I guess I will end up returning the favor down the road, sooner or later. Now, forget that clarity bullshit you hear about.
Everything was so clear! Everything made sense to me all of a sudden. I knew the answers to all the questions in the universe and my family was waiting for me…
…okay maybe some have that experience but not me. I never saw a bright light or anything like that. I’m still fuzzy sometimes and unclear about some things. I don’t know why I was at a liquor store in Santa Ana, California at 1:30 in the morning. I want to figure some things out.
Something isn’t clear. I look around and ask questions but, in this sense, I am a ghost, because no one answers. Well, one, but I’m not sure about him. I will tell you more about him soon enough.
People on your side, I won’t call you “living” because I see things clear in that respect now, most of you are swiping your ID cards and moving through life without ever seeing anything around you. This I watch. I see you inching down the freeways in your metal tombs, honking at each other, swearing, texting, combing your hair, masturbating, on your conference call - I see it all. Sometimes I stand on the overpass of the 55 Freeway and watch. Mostly I stay close to Santa Ana, because I want answers to the cloudy things, and they seem to be here, or near here. I can’t be sure. Some things are very crystal clear, but the last days aren’t. The past, the far away past, seems very crystal clear at times. I laughed inside the other day while standing on an over-pass of the 22 freeway to Garden Grove when I saw a 1976 Gold Ranchero, and I remembered my dad bought one. Then I recalled how he had related to me a trade the St. Louis Cardinals had made when he was a boy in 1939. He recalled the players traded and what they did. He recalled everything about the trade. He was 82 years old and couldn’t remember what we had talked about the day before, but he remembered that trade when he was ten years old. Now, I feel like that. I remember everything from long ago, but I can’t remember what happened in the final days. I’m looking and searching. I’m trying. Sometimes I feel tricked. I wasn’t that old when I died. I know this. Yet I don’t know exactly how old. I am guessing in my forties, but I’m not sure. Fuck it. I guess what I was really trying to say is: you’re not living any more than I am sometimes, so don’t call me dead, and I won’t call you alive.
You have beautiful moments in life. I see this too. I too have moments in here that are beautiful and simple.
I sat on the beach at Crystal Cove State Park one DAY and watched a little kid with long brown hair learning to surf. I watched myself out there. For those moments, I was alive again. I watched him struggle, and paddle, try to get up, fall, and then finally he got his first wave. And in that smile, in that moment of energy, where boy became wave, I was alive again. And I rode that wave, my first wave, again. And when he yelled with excitement as he paddled back out, I was ten years old again. I had just ridden my first wave. So, there are moments that I live here, and from what I can see now, I am, at times more alive than you are. Yet, life is not wasted on the living as they say; not always. I don’t know how I got there, it’s one of those fuzzy things, like I said, things are not as clear here as they are in your reality, not all the time. Time is fuzzy here. I mean. There is no time and then there is nothing but time. But I still try and operate in a linear time frame because if I don’t, I get anxious. I try and figure out how much time has passed, but it’s pointless. It frustrates me. I was trying to figure out why I was lying in a pool of dark, purple blood. I was watching it flow. It was beautiful really. It reminded me of a stream flowing out from larger streams, flowing into small rivers, forming creeks, and then small pools. A crimson pond formed now at the base of my head. It was breath-taking really. I’ve never seen anything so brilliantly violet. Angry, screaming red.
The soul that told me I was dead had directed me to the parking lot. I was talking to him in the store. I recall that I was laughing about something, with someone, in the store. I have no idea how long I was in the store, but then he cut me off mid-sentence.
“You’re dead”
“What?”
“You’re dead. You’re out in the parking lot. You just got robbed. Two guys right there. They shot you in the head. Go look.”
“Oh. Yeah. Ok. I see.”
I looked out and watched them going through my pockets. I grabbed my purchase and walked out. A bottle of Jameson’s Irish whiskey, a 3-pack of tall boys, Coors Light, and some vanilla Zingers.
One stood over my body with a .38 caliber snub-nose. He was looking back at the store and then out to the street. The other pulled my pockets inside out. He found my wallet and my .45 auto.
“Fucker was strapped, ese!”
“Grab it, fool, let’s get the fuck outta here!”
They were arguing as they ran off. I saw them but they weren’t anything special to tell you about. I watch this beautiful crimson flow. It’s pulsing from a large hole in my temple. I kept thinking, wow, it just keeps pumping out. It was truly amazing. Breathtakingly beautiful.
I look up and realize that I had been walking to an apartment complex off of Dyer Road, and I didn’t understand why. What was I doing there? It was my home. I knew that. But, I stood trying to figure out why I was there.
Seconds later? I’m not sure. It’s where my memory ended and started again. I was at Saddleback Memorial Hospital watching a couple holding their newborn baby girl. And that’s when I saw that life isn’t wasted on the living, because at that moment, that couple was experiencing life as it should be, or existence, or whatever it is on that side. Happiness.
I am not sure about TIME anymore. I keep looking for clues that time is passing more rapidly than I realize. I look at the models of cars for help. But then I get confused. I see a 1968 Mustang. I owned one. Is it a vintage car? Well fuck yeah, of course it is. I feel stupid for that thought. I owned many cars after that, and I sure as fuck knew a 1968 Mustang was vintage, but I get confused sometimes. Why do the other cars confuse me? I spend a lot of time looking at Mustangs and try to compare the ages. I look for newer models of cars and try to compare, but it gets confusing. Like I said, forget all that clarity bullshit, maybe it is clear if you cross over all the way. Clarity here is like that unexpected breeze that comes from nowhere and disappears as quickly as it had arrived. From nowhere to nowhere. Morning fog, offshore breeze, clarity, gone, confusion, walking, slipping, wandering. Clarity then confusion. Never total clarity. Never absolute confusion.
As for the relatives waiting and all of that: well, I had a distinct sense of so
me when I first realized it was me in that pool of blood in the parking lot. I did look up. I did sense that I had made some mistakes. I felt badly for a time. I sat beside my body and cried because I wasn’t ready. I dropped my finger into the tepid stream of blood and redirected the streams to new veins and pools. I had not made amends to some. I knew this. I had meant to, but I hadn’t.
I knew some were on the side I was, but so far I didn’t feel compelled to even try and contact them, though for some reason I knew I could. I just didn’t. I might. I have nothing but time, and time is nothing. When I think I have a handle on “time” I am somewhere else and then once again, I realize, I don’t know how long I have been there, how much time has passed, or why I came to that particular place until I see something that makes sense. Then I might understand why I came. But it’s frustrating getting yanked around sometimes.
There is no such thing as a free spirit for me. So, back to the guilt part. Some days, if that’s what these are called, I don’t know they could be years, they might be seconds, I feel guilt and sometimes I sit and cry for what seems like a long time. Have you ever cried in a dream and felt immense pain and sadness? You keep crying and crying, and then you wake up, and your pillow is soaked? Sometimes it’s like that except I might be sitting on the pier at San Clemente with people walking by me. They don’t see me except for the occasional wanderer. Wanderers. It’s something I came up with after I realized I had been wandering around seeing, and yet not seeing, walking miles. And then I saw others like me.
Ever see someone you recognize but can’t put a name to? You want to say, “Hey, how have you been?” or something that showed you cared and remembered them somehow? It’s a little like that. I see someone like me, a wanderer, and I sometimes think I know them, and sometimes they look at me like they know me, but we just keep walking. I can’t explain that completely. You’d think we’d be lonely and want to talk. I am. Sometimes I do feel very alone, but then none of us ever really speak. We might make eye contact for a second. I even heard a muddled, “Hey” from a guy that I knew in high school. I nodded. It isn’t unfriendly, nor is it friendly, it just is.
So, one day, I guess I just have to call them days, the sun was out, so it was daytime. I was sitting on the edge of the pier in San Clemente. I was watching a seal dive for crabs. He would pull one up and then crunch its shell in loud cracks and slurps. I looked over and I saw a strikingly beautiful woman about my age, or the age I thought I was last on that side. Maybe a little younger than I remembered being, but not much.
She was sitting cross-legged on the bench and sunning herself. She was golden brown, long and slender. She had brown hair and though she had sunglasses on, I knew somehow that she had brown eyes.
I wondered why this beautiful woman was relaxing on a filthy bench littered with bait. Then I realized her Hawaiian print shorts weren’t really touching the bench. She was staring directly at me and she had a little smirk on her face. For the first time since I had been wandering, I feel like I really want to talk to someone. I knew her and yet I did not. She stood, placed a Hawaiian flowered surfer cap on, nodded at me, and then she glided away down the pier in small fluid steps. I watched as she paused and bent down to look at a small child. And then she watched a seagull light on the side of the railing.
Then she was gone.
That’s the closest so far I had come to actually acknowledging, or being acknowledged, by another wanderer. I guess it was the look. The other wanderers I had seen, I didn’t care to see. They didn’t care to see me. So, again, I just came up with the term wanderer one day because most seem, like I must to them, to have some place to go, and something to do, but apparently taking the scenic route. I feel like that sometimes too. I certainly feel I have things to do, but I am not sure what they are. I have places to go, though I do not know where. So, along the way, I have been wandering. There is no sleep as it were because in this walking there is a sleep that is hard to explain. I told you it was hazy and fuzzy sometimes. I feel like I have something very important to do and I start out there only to find that I am somewhere I do not immediately recognize but know I have been before. And there I will stay for periods of time. I do not know how long I stay, and cannot say why. It’s not a bad thing or a good thing, it just is.
Sometimes it’s enjoyable, sometimes it is puzzling, sometimes it is nothing but watching and not knowing why. Yet, for whatever reason I am watching there seems a purpose in it, and there seems no rush. Day. Today. Yesterday. Someday. I do not know now.
I do not know now, for now, I say DAY.
The sun is out but it’s dark. The sky is filled with smoke and there are explosions. Have I been walking the sleep again? I’m dead. I’m in a ditch and there is smoke, and the acrid smell of gunpowder and artillery. I hear the zing of bumblebees whizzing by. Bullets flying at light speed to an unknown target, and not me anymore because I am dead. And they are picking me up. Soldiers. They are throwing my body on top of the other dead bodies. And I’m in camouflage and I wonder, why? I never fought in a war. I remember that. Why am I laying in a cart of dead soldiers? We are being pulled along by an old horse down a filthy and muddy road. And there are jets flying low and breathing fire. Helicopters are raining down machine gun fire and people are curling into fetal balls, like ants sprayed with poison. I’m laying prone, arms spread upward in silent gesticulation to the God. A forsaken and abandoned muddy Christ in a cart.
And I try to tell someone, ‘Hey, I’m not dead!”
I don’t know how long I lay among them but I saw no wanderers. I finally pulled myself from beneath the bodies piled upon me, and walked among the dead. These dead aren’t wanderers, they’re freshly dead corpse souls. Heading somewhere. Not me. I break off from the pack and head back to Santa Ana.
I came back. Back to the night my body was killed. I watched the blood pumping out of my temple and couldn’t help but laugh a little…it looked like thick tomato juice. This time I heard, for the first time I guess, some screams and the sounds of sirens. I didn’t feel like staying around to watch this. I was suddenly struck by the irony that I had only twenty dollars in my pocket but they left my bottle of Jameson’s whiskey on the ground, although the one was quick to grab my .45 auto.
I watch with fascination as the blood fills the half open plastic bag and surrounds my vanilla Zingers. I just don’t want to wait around to see what happens next so I leave. I walk over and watch a family eating hamburgers at the Yellow Basket. If I felt hungry, I suppose I could eat.
Chapter 2
I sit and watch the family eat. This is a good family. Father asks Saul about his day between bites of a double cheeseburger. They are speaking in Spanish and mine is limited the last I remember, but I understand everything they are saying. I should marvel at this. I do not. So I listen as they enjoy their meal. I learn that Saul is getting straight A’s in biology, has made the soccer team, but wants to play baseball also. I don’t wait to hear the outcome but I think all will be okay with this family. This is a good family.
I think maybe I should figure out a few things. I head back over to the store where my body was killed. Very peaceful and quiet. Nothing going on here at all. Nothing has happened here. Did it not happen? Did it happen a week ago? Ten years? I feel the frustration coming again. Inside the store I see the man that told me I was dead. He nods as I come in. Another kind acknowledgement from a dead person. How long have I been wandering? Maybe he knows something. Except for the beautiful woman on the pier, I hadn’t spoken to anyone else.
“Thanks for telling me I was dead.”
“Not a problem. I don’t like to see people walking around for years thinking they are shopping. As entertaining as that can be.”
“Aren’t they?”
“What? Shopping? Sure. But there’s better things to do than nothing at all, and there’s nothing sadder than watching a guy stare at a pack of Twinkies for three days.”
“Huh….guess so. I’ve seen some interesting things. I don�
��t know how long I might be starting at things now that I think about it.”
“Yes. Time is a tricky thing. You’ll figure it out. In the meantime there’s a lot to see.”
I started to ask him how he saw anything if he was always here but then decided it wasn’t my place. I looked around the store and realized I knew it very well. I had been coming here for years it felt like. I finally turned and studied him for the first time. Tall with a strong build, muscular, like a former boxer, or weightlifter. Must have been fifty years plus with grey showing around the temples. He smiled. Again the feeling, I know this person. But I do not. Maybe I do yet through a cloud intermittently scattered with clear patches.
“Why do you stay here? I mean, if there’s lot’s to see…”
“I get out and about. There’s no hurry.”
“I wander around a lot.”
He smiles and nods. For the first time I see he has green eyes speckled with tiny spots of brown and grey. Thick square jaw. Nose broken and healed but not set. Crooked to the left, but not menacing. His knuckles are gnarled. The borders between his knuckles are gone, rolled into masses of scar tissue and cartilage.
“You mind if I hang around here for a bit?”
“Not a bit. You can learn a lot here.”
“I just get tired of wandering around all the time. Sometimes it’s good, but when it’s dark..”
“Yeah. I know. You don’t have to explain. I wandered around a lot before coming here.”
“My head feels kind of stable in here. It’s not peace, but, you know, maybe calmer.”
“That’s good.”
“Thanks.”