Here Be Monsters (Tyler Cunningham)

by Sheffield, Jamie

  “There actually used to be more drugs sold in the Tri-Lakes then we have today, if arrests and related crimes are anything to go by.” Frank said. “Things seem to have settled down from a few years ago, although George somehow finds enough to keep himself in nice rides.” He pointed with his chin down to the end of the field where a big grey-haired sloppy-looking man in a fancy sweat suit was leaning against a jet-black Range Rover.

  “That guy's a drug dealer?” I asked Frank. “He looks so pedestrian.”

  “George stopped dealing ten years ago, nowadays he's management. He runs what passes for organized crime up here since chasing away all of his contemporaries; he gets a piece of most everything illegal that happens in the Tri-Lakes.”

  “If you know who he is and what he does, why isn’t he up in Dannamora?” Dannamora is a maximum security prison not too far away, one side of their Main Street is literally lined with bars and pawn shops, and the other side is a 60 foot high concrete wall with gun towers every 100 feet; it is both reality and metaphor for those of us living in the North Country.

  “He's clever, he's careful, he keeps clean, and he gives us a steady stream of little fish and little busts to keep the system happily chugging along. In some ways, things are better since he took over; he's actually clamped down on the drugs in the schools a bit since his son”, Frank pointed to the hulking center squirting the ball to the quarterback, “got into middle and then high school. Less drugs for kids than there were five years ago, but he still seems to do OK.”

  “Are you a fan?”

  I got a cold look from Frank, “He's a stain, but the pragmatist in me sees that my kids are safer with one in-control person running things than with 50 assholes competing for the souls of 7th graders.”

  “That's an interesting thought... a cop using a big word like 'pragmatist'... kidding, I meant the lesser of two evils in a practical situation.” I felt as though I/we were coming out of the dangerous segment of the conversation essentially intact, and that poking him a bit might close the deal.

  “Fuck you”, Frank said pleasantly enough, “If he ever falls in my path in a way that allows me to take him off the streets and put him inside forever, I'll jump at it. But in the meantime, rich ski-bums will always smoke and snort their fun and my kids are in less danger than they used to be.”

  We had transitioned away from Cynthia, I had some ideas of where to start looking and poking and I made a mental note to do some research on tiramisu... and George... and drugs.

  Smart Pig, astoundingly still 9/4/2012

  I left before the football practice ended, somewhat unsure which of the helmeted brutes was Frank and Meg's son, Austin. There is a number schema (normally my kind of thing) at play on the football jerseys, but it didn't help me in this instance, so I just waved and inserted a generic, “He's looking good out there!” into the space created by my standing up to leave. I walked back down to Smart Pig, stopping at the gas station across from the Town Hall for an ice-cream sandwich on my way. My office seemed dark and quiet after the football practice, which suited my needs and mood perfectly; I grabbed a coke from the coke-fridge and settled down to work through a couple of ideas.

  I did some light-duty data-mining in various state and federal databases, using access given to me by my SL and NYC public library accounts. I wanted to see if Frank had known what he was talking about in terms of the drug trade. I didn't think that he was lying, but we all run the risk of preferentially finding, organizing and internalizing the results that we desire. Rather than accurately assessing what is really out there, we tend to edit out or avoid the information/conclusion that doesn't fit our world-view or the tracks that our thoughts are moving in at a given point in time/space. The size and number of arrests for drug-related crimes had indeed dropped in our immediate area. However the far north end of Franklin County, up near Malone, had seen a spike in drug related crimes that seemed to outweigh our improvements. Moreover, our local arrests tended towards marijuana and cocaine, while outside of our safe-ish haven, much of the money and criminal activities (and violence) in the drug industry was focused on methamphetamine production, distribution and consumption.

  My drug of choice is caffeine (administered freezing cold, in combination with sugar, in the form of Coca-Cola), which is as mind-altering as I get. I have never understood why people drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes, much less use illegal drugs; there's no judgment involved with my stance based on the morality of drug-use, I just don't see how the cost-benefit analysis works out for people who use them. The world of people is filled with things that I don’t understand, but I can still study and learn from these things by looking at them as “Black Box Systems”; lots can be learned about a system by watching the input and output, to see how it functions, and how it affects the people and environment and other systems that interact with it. Using this method, I have concluded that drug use seems to be an empty expression of self-hate, that is expensive and dangerous and illegal to boot; it remains a mystery to me.

  I didn't have 60 plus days to wait for the IRS to get back to me about a form 4506 (FOIA tax return request) having to do with George Roebuck, so I would have to find other ways to learn more about him. Google didn't have much to say, he owned a couple of sandwich shops in Northern New York, he lived in a big house with his family (or so it appeared from satellite imagery), and he was (as Frank had opined) apparently the lesser of two possible evils. I had stopped at one of his sandwich places a couple of times... it was dirty and empty at noon and the bread was stale. On the upside, it was quick and cheap (which worked for me... as you may have guessed, I'm not much of a foodie). There were a couple of articles in various local papers mentioning him in passing, but nothing very informative. I finished the coke that I was working on, debated grabbing another, and decided to call it a day... when the going gets tough (or boring), the tough (or bored) quit for the day.

  I checked the weather outlook for the next sixteen hours, saw a nice/dry/cool night ahead, grabbed my Kindle Fire e-reader from the shelf where I charge stuff, filled a Nalgene bottle at the sink and headed out to my car. I keep the Honda Element packed with a breakdown kit, get-home-bag, some food/water, and a basic sleeping setup, so I didn't need anything else for an overnight; I headed for a quiet place to read and think and sleep. Given the structure of the Adirondack Park, this is easy; there are more great places to spend a night than I have nights left in my life, especially with the freedom that my hammock grants me. I need two trees, 12-16 feet apart, preferably with a nice view of sky or woods or water; I had a spot in mind a few miles out of town to the southwest on Lower Saranac Lake, a spot near Lonesome Bay. I found a dirt track to pull off onto, parked, grabbed my stuff and walked away from the road, and towards the smell of water.

  I found a perfect spot 150 feet back from the water, looking out at the tiny islands that dot the surface of that end of Lower Saranac Lake, and hung my hammock. I ate a bit of jerky and some GORP, drank most of the Nalgene, hung my food (more from squirrels than bears, although both frequent these woods), and climbed into the hammock to read for a bit before bed. There's nothing like gently swinging in a hammock, warm in a sleeping bag and fleece-hat, reading a good book, smelling the woods and water all around you, and fighting sleep because everything else is better than sleep... and you know sleep is going to be pretty great too. I read for almost two hours before I started dropping the book on my chest, so I got up to pee and stretch, drank a sip of water, and climbed back in to go to sleep, exhausted by a long day, with the promise of more like it to come.

  Homeless? 9/5/2012 (finally), 3:18a.m.

  I slept more than the desired 239 minutes, blamed it on the sound of waves from the lake down the hill along with the wind in the white pine needles above me, decided that I didn't care about oversleeping, and thought about leaving the hammock in place for a couple of days. Sometimes I move to a different spot every night for weeks, and sometimes I've stayed for as much as ten days in one spot dependi
ng on the location, the weather, my mood, my workload, and sometimes... laziness. In theory, I need a permit from the area ranger for stays of more than three days, but I keep a low profile, and it hasn't been a problem. In winter, I tend to stay in one place for a couple of days at each spot, because the setup takes a bit longer (tarp and a slick piece of kit called a hammock-sock which is just what it sounds like—keeps me warm as can be, even below zero). Sometimes in the spring or fall, I get tired of unremitting rain and sleep on the couch at Smart Pig (even though my lease forbids occupancy). I may be the first homeless detective in history (although to be fair, I don't advertise the fact, so it seems reasonable to assume that others in the same situation might also be keeping it on the down low).

  I left NYC, after settling my parents' estate and selling their house, looking for a change. It sounds teen-drama and angst-ridden to say that my world had ended, but I was a teen, and that's how it felt. My map of the world, and my place in it, made no sense anymore; large chunks had been ripped out and burned down by hateful men crashing planes into my skyline, tearing my parents away from me. Being in the insurance industry, my father had over-insured both he and my mother, and both policies had paid off doubly through the good graces of a double-indemnity clause that hadn't foreseen something like what happened on 9/11. I sold their apartment, ill-advised after a major terrorist attack, but my wish nonetheless, made three piles of our belongings, a tiny one that fit in my first car, and a pair of huge piles that I left for goodwill and the garbage collectors.

  Being socially retarded (in the descriptive, not the offensive, meaning of the word), I easily and effectively cut my ties to everyone and everything from my life in NYC on the sleety December day (the 20th, the solstice I believe) when I drove across the George Washington Bridge for the last time. I found out, however, that some people won't let go; Mickey Schwarz being one of those people. He had been a frequent leader of outings and explorations in our learning circle. His daughters Mindy and Rebecca were both brilliant and thoroughly uninterested in any of the lessons and experiences that he could guide us in; Mickey used me as a foil when we explored the art and music and architecture of Manhattan. He spent the night of September 11th watching me watch the television, and the phone... waiting; I never heard from my parents on the day of the attack, and no trace of their bodies was found in the weeks and months following. Despite strongly advising me against it, he helped me pack up my parents' home when the sale was complete. He brought his wife Anne and the two girls down for hugs and goodbyes when I had bought and packed my Element. He sent emails (daily at first), overcoming his dislike/mistrust of the technology when it became clear that I wasn't going to answer my cell-phone (I had chucked the one he had the number for out the window while driving up the Henry Hudson Parkway after realizing that no matter who wanted to reach me, I wasn't interested). He now sends an email once a week, early Monday morning normally, inquiring about my well-being (financial, physical, and mental) and sharing gossip about the other kids (that's how I think of them, frozen in time since the last “class” I attended with them) in the learning circle, and their parents; always asking when I planned to come down and visit him and Anne. I made a mental note to call him once I got back into cell-phone range.

  I arrived in Saranac Lake a few days before the end of 2001, and made all sorts of resolutions for the New Year (and my new life). To rebuild my map (both physical and social), to continue my studies/schooling, to keep my life and my belongings as simple as possible, to do what I liked and avoid things that I didn't like, and so on... homelessness was not one of my resolutions. I started out living in cheap college housing near North Country Community College, found/rented the Smart Pig space, and bounced back and forth between “home” and “office” for a few months while experimenting with thneeding (the money I had from my parents' deaths meant that I could live the rest of my life, if not in luxury, at least without starving or freezing to death, and doing whatever I felt like doing). It was months later, once spring turned into summer and I had discovered how close and easy and friendly the Adirondack wilderness was, that I considered making the woods my home (or no place my home, depending on how you look at it). I liked the Smart Pig office, and it felt extravagant keeping two spaces for just my use, so the little college apartment lease expired as painlessly as I drifted into homelessness. There's no shower in the Smart Pig building, but when it's too cold (or too far, or too much hassle) to bath in the lake, I have a “community member” card which lets me use the gym and pool and showers at the North Country Community College athletics facility (it's like a membership at a health club, but with smaller fees and smellier locker rooms).

  I got up and out of the hammock, had a drink and a pee and a stretch, and then grabbed some food and climbed back into the hammock to read until it got light; I had a bag of GORP with some jerky mixed in in a frontpocket of my hoodie, and grabbed a handful every few minutes; I don't think that a bear is going to assault me in my hammock/piñata, but I do worry about raccoons or mice or squirrels nibbling stuff while I'm asleep, so I don't generally sleep with food or other smelly stuff in my hammock. I was sufficiently engrossed in my book (and thoughts/worry about Cynthia) that I didn't really notice the gradual shift from night to morning, until a beaver-slap down on Lonesome Bay brought me back. I shut down the Kindle Fire to watch the sunlight creep over the tops of the mountains and roll down the trees on the far shore and then eventually the islands. I went for a swim, dried off, left my home in place for the day, and headed back to Smart Pig, in town.

  Early Morning, 9/5/2012

  I took the long way through town, topped up my tank at the cheap gas place, and stopped in at Dunkin Donuts for a mixed dozen. They always seem hurt that I don't buy a coffee while I'm there. As I do every time, I looked at the array of donuts available, and then decided (as always) that you just can't beat four each of: regular glazed, chocolate glazed, and “not powdered sugar” jellies. The street was wet with dew and mostly quiet and empty, and there weren't any lights on as I ghosted into Smart Pig for a couple of hours work.

  My first order of business once I got inside was to call Mickey Schwarz; he always gets to his office by 6a.m., and nobody else would think to call or visit him at that hour, so I almost always get him when I call at that hour. I was a bit early, but thought that I'd give it a shot anyway, and got lucky. On rainy days he often skips his jogged lap around the reservoir in Central Park, and it must have been raining down south, because he picked up sounding as though he was using coffee instead of exercise to start his day. He must have known that it was me, because he picked up the phone singing, “Happy Birthday!” with more enthusiasm than talent. When the dramatic warbling at the end finally finished, he drew a deep breath, and jumped (as always) right into our last conversation, exactly where we had left off.

  “It'll be snowing up there soon; do you have enough warm clothes? Anne was worried about it, and has a box of stuff all set to mail to you.” This was a lie, Anne had forgotten about me when my Element went around the first corner on the day that I left Manhattan, but it allowed him to both show and dislocate his concern for me. I told him to thank Anne.

  “Great... Great, she'll be happy to hear it. How are you set for money and work? Hopefully just enough of both... heh, heh.” His daughters had grown up with too much money and too little work, and they were beautiful and useless beings that embarrassed him; he joked/worried that the money my parents had left me would similarly 'ruin me'. Mickey loved his daughters loyally/absolutely, but had trouble finding anything to talk about with them when they returned home between boyfriends and husbands. I assured Mickey that I had just enough of work and money- to keep me interested and interesting (a callback to a discussion last month when he had said that Mindy and Becca were both bored and boring).

  “Funny you should say that” (uh oh, I tried to look both ahead and back in the conversation for the other shoe, certain that it was either about to drop, or squash me), “a fri
end of mine up in Albany” (had to be someone in State Government, Mickey knows legions of bureaucrats ) “said that your name came up recently in a particularly nasty bit of business up your way.” He ended his sentence with an upturned near-questioning tone that was begging for a response on my part, but I ignored it, waiting him out.

  “Yeah, someplace at the ass-end of the universe called Malone, or Mahoney.” Mickey often talked like this on the phone with me, and I spent some time and energy trying to decide if he was slipping into a country accent or out of his Manhattan accent; he had grown up 'North of 90' (Route 90 bisects New York State into “Upstate” and “Downstate”) and moved down to the city as soon as he could.

  “Malone,” I answered, knowing where this was headed, but not understanding how he had gotten there, “What happened, and how did my name come into it?”

  “My guy, we were in school together a million years ago, calls me from time to time with gossip out of the Capital Building that he thinks might interest me. Mostly stuff relating to my work.” (Mickey is a prominent oncologist who plays on both sides of the practical/research fence in the big leagues), “but also occasionally other things that he thinks would grab my attention. He heard me mention you at some point, and when your name came up, he flagged the report and bounced a copy to me after giving me the gory details over the phone.” He was stalling, playing with me a bit, to see how I'd take the news and the delay.