I've always aspired to be a newsman. Never came to be one, of course. But there's always been something in the blood about it. All those family gatherings at the supermarket played a part in it, I suppose.
My mother, Dot, up front at the cash register , reading The National Enquirer (“Man Eats Multi-Headed Hare,” “Nixon Abducted By Aliens”), with sister, Lara, in the basket of the cart reading between the lines, and Papa, my father and best friend, bringing up the rear while smoking on his cigar and muttering in smoky silence to himself.
Afterwards, we would all gather at the coffee bar at Carmack Jay's, eating grilled sausage and discussing the eloquence of affirmative action versus states' rights. My brother, Jesse, would join us after cleaning out the Rotary garage sale, and Uncle Omiah would drive his cab over just for the occasion. A special moment it was to all of us.
Still, it was my skill with numbers that attracted the most attention. Prime numbers, fractions, zero sum numbers, all the variety in mathematical formulas that one can think of. Giving answers at the drop of a handkerchief, I became known by my teachers as a child prodigy from the worst of redneck families.
Shortly before I was due to graduate from high school, Papa took me into his office where he was known for a similar, if smaller, attraction. “Here,” he said, spreading out all the books and ledgers, “is a life a man can be proud of.” Yet it was the news that held my working mind – all those headlines just ogling at me from the background.
When Papa and Dot, together with Lara, were killed in a mysterious tailspin outside of Pittsburgh while on their way to visit lost kin in Poughkeepsie, I took to the news with what can best be described as a vengeance. It took a week, of course, of a quiet grief (flowers fluttering silently in the grave) and my move into Jesse and Omiah's townhouse over on Market and Seventh Streets. But the news, I did attack. I began with the Frederick News with its glorious tales of shootouts on South Street and fights over in the John Hanson housing project. These kept my blood rolling as I found solace in many another's trouble. I would turn the pages with ease on my return from the accounting firm where I'd been counting the virtuosity of a compact disk on my old Atlas calculator. Ah, those were the days!
But when I began reading (devouring, rather) The Washington Times, with its tales of “Vince Foster's Murder,” well, that's where the trouble began. You see, Jesse subscribed to the Times and would often rise early to browse through it before leaving for his job at the trucking company. Jesse being a large man with a gigantic frame, I knew I needed to give way. Yet my urge held strong.
It became a contest to see who could rise earliest to get the paper. We each began setting our alarms with conspiracies in our heads as to which of us would get the paper before dawn broke the horizon. Sometimes one of us would even get it from the driver at the curbside. And yet it always seemed that Jesse would prevail.
Hastened, I began stopping at High's and 6-Twelve in the middle of the night for the Star and Dot's old Enquirer – papers Jess would never touch. It seemed that in those late night walks, with the moon shining just right and “Headless Aliens” before me, I would recall Papa speaking in rugged tones, from a ancient Reader's Digest, of how “a learned man is mankind's best hope.'” So I began to study those mysteries that laid at the heart of man's peril.
What, for example, was the connection between the Sons of The Gestapo, the Whitewater Hearings, and the Ancient Order Of The White Knight? The Star had the answer, page six. And what about the connection between the death of local inventor/ghostbuster Harvey Scheetz and Hawking's Black Hole/Bubble Theory? Check the Enquirer, page four. Not to mention, of course, stories of O. J. and the post-trial romance of Clark and Darden. But those were simple matters compared to the Great Key which I sought most of all.
More and more, on those 3 a.m. walks from Seventh and Market, South and All Saints, and even shadowed walkways outside of Oppossumtowne U., I walked the journey for the answer to it all. My now-shaggy hair falling over my face, my sleep drained eyes filled with exhaustion, I sought the answer to it all. I poured over the tabloids in the all night diner on the Golden Mile with a cup of coffee sitting untouched before me. Or maybe at the Silver Dollar Lounge on the 270 Interchange, a glass of seltzer on my table (beer I never touched), I pondered the mystery of Masons and Moors as my bowtie slowly unfurled. Then back to my cot for scant minutes of sleep before rushing out again for that old Washington Times.
Soon, I began looking for how all these mysteries touched home. Say, the missing link between the West Patrick Street construction project and Swami's weekly horoscope in last year's New Paper. How to make the news and numbers come together? While all along lurking in the background was the plane crash that had taken Papa and Dot and Lara.
I ended up snitching Omiah's most valuable item, his genealogy book, from his study. I studied the details of Delaneys and Schombergs of Frederick and greater New York, hurrying then to my calculator to add up all the names. The minutes of sleep turned to seconds and then to nil.
My bosses at the Corporation were clearly growing irritated at my now slovenly manner. They didn't like, of course, my bringing the Enquirer to work. But they humored me because Papa had been their best numbers man and I was, of course, Papa's favorite.
But then – last week, was it? Or last year? I'm not sure – I was busy with Omiah's genealogy and a quicker calculator (filched from work) in his study, 5 a. m. , it was, and I had the answer. I knew it! Just somewhere between the medians and prime numbers of the Eucalyptic Theorem. And Omiah and Jesse were gone, out of sight.
When I punched the “Enter” button, with the Million Man March at the top of the screen and a dozen now-forgotten tabloids at my feet, the door to the study abruptly opened and there before me was my uncle, a dozen of his best drivers, a man in white I didn't recognize, and a police officer I did.
I scurried to the back of the room, holding the calculator against my chest, as I pushed against all of Williams' History Of Frederick County on the shelves behind me. Soon, I fell down, the books fell on top, covered me, and the men grabbed me. My mind then went blank before the world.
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