winter and the world feels more dead than alive.
3
Friday
I was surprised how warm it was when I pulled myself out of bed the next morning. Normally I’m up before dawn—then again, normally I don’t drink. It was still early when I forced myself to take a run that was more penance than exercise, but it was already well into the seventies in the last few days of October. Indian summer had always been my favorite time of year growing up—the days when you woke up expecting to wear a sweater but got to pull on a t-shirt instead.
Instead of being happy, though, I felt disjointed and out-of-place in a myriad of small ways. The cozy, dilapidated Main Street on a small grid joined by Sycamore, Walnut, Elm and Oak Streets, the view of hills in the distance and the battered pickup trucks that crowded the church across the way could all have been ripped from my childhood, but the reproduction was imperfect. To an outsider, my Catskills town would be unlovely in its details. There, an overgrown lawn with an old Plymouth up on four cinderblocks is easier to spot than a flowerbed. The cement mill, tens of abandoned lots and miles of flecking paint and failing shingles all testify to our condition. But a sense of order persists. Our town center has its limits; we separate our commercial and residential despair.
Hamlin had an advantage to start. The mill that loomed over Conestoga was absent, replaced by a coal mine somewhere over the horizon. But instead of a town built by settlers before a mill overtook it, Hamlin was unambiguously a mine town. Driving in the previous evening on Route 3, I’d been greeted by a row of modest houses on half-acre lots on one side of the road faced off against an industrial yard filled with monstrous steel pipes on the other. Hundred-year-old houses with rocking-chair porches were pushed up against cinderblock office buildings and small warehouses. It was hard to imagine sustaining the bucolic disbelief of childhood on those streets. But most people would say that about my town, too.
I showered and found a diner a block from my motel. The eggs were good, and the sausage had a smoky flavor I’ve never tasted further north. I persuaded a waitress to part with the location of Stone Holler after confirming she had heard the “hippie kids” were camping there. I was tempted to check out of my motel but didn’t. Instead I left my single duffle bag on the bed but grabbed the large manila envelope I’d found propped inside the door when I returned from breakfast. My old boss hadn’t changed.
I’d spent seven hours the day before driving from Conestoga to see the man in an office building just outside of the District of Columbia, and then another six and a half hours straight from there to a hospital in Charleston, only to be told the girl whose name I gave them had never been admitted. A triage nurse with thin lips and the faint stink of tobacco on her scrubs refused me access to any of the other protestors who’d been assaulted. With more than a dozen hysterical and grieving parents in the ER, I didn’t press the point. I’d been told as much before I started the trip but wanted to confirm it myself; nothing makes you look so much like an idiot as not checking your basic facts. I was eager to locate the Reclaim campsite because, truth be told, I wasn’t sure the girl I was looking for was actually missing.
It was just one thing among many that had bothered me when I’d met my old Army commander. His office sits on the top floor of a nondescript building in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia. I hadn’t been inside the building in almost five years and felt an involuntary shiver run down my spine when I crossed the threshold.
We call him Alpha. I know his real name—I learned it some years ago by accident—but it was never used around the Activity. That’s what they call his unit, as the actual designation is classified. Alpha had phoned me at 5:30 on Thursday morning. He’s
3
Friday
I was surprised how warm it was when I pulled myself out of bed the next morning. Normally I’m up before dawn—then again, normally I don’t drink. It was still early when I forced myself to take a run that was more penance than exercise, but it was already well into the seventies in the last few days of October. Indian summer had always been my favorite time of year growing up—the days when you woke up expecting to wear a sweater but got to pull on a t-shirt instead.
Instead of being happy, though, I felt disjointed and out-of-place in a myriad of small ways. The cozy, dilapidated Main Street on a small grid joined by Sycamore, Walnut, Elm and Oak Streets, the view of hills in the distance and the battered pickup trucks that crowded the church across the way could all have been ripped from my childhood, but the reproduction was imperfect. To an outsider, my Catskills town would be unlovely in its details. There, an overgrown lawn with an old Plymouth up on four cinderblocks is easier to spot than a flowerbed. The cement mill, tens of abandoned lots and miles of flecking paint and failing shingles all testify to our condition. But a sense of order persists. Our town center has its limits; we separate our commercial and residential despair.
Hamlin had an advantage to start. The mill that loomed over Conestoga was absent, replaced by a coal mine somewhere over the horizon. But instead of a town built by settlers before a mill overtook it, Hamlin was unambiguously a mine town. Driving in the previous evening on Route 3, I’d been greeted by a row of modest houses on half-acre lots on one side of the road faced off against an industrial yard filled with monstrous steel pipes on the other. Hundred-year-old houses with rocking-chair porches were pushed up against cinderblock office buildings and small warehouses. It was hard to imagine sustaining the bucolic disbelief of childhood on those streets. But most people would say that about my town, too.
I showered and found a diner a block from my motel. The eggs were good, and the sausage had a smoky flavor I’ve never tasted further north. I persuaded a waitress to part with the location of Stone Holler after confirming she had heard the “hippie kids” were camping there. I was tempted to check out of my motel but didn’t. Instead I left my single duffle bag on the bed but grabbed the large manila envelope I’d found propped inside the door when I returned from breakfast. My old boss hadn’t changed.
I’d spent seven hours the day before driving from Conestoga to see the man in an office building just outside of the District of Columbia, and then another six and a half hours straight from there to a hospital in Charleston, only to be told the girl whose name I gave them had never been admitted. A triage nurse with thin lips and the faint stink of tobacco on her scrubs refused me access to any of the other protestors who’d been assaulted. With more than a dozen hysterical and grieving parents in the ER, I didn’t press the point. I’d been told as much before I started the trip but wanted to confirm it myself; nothing makes you look so much like an idiot as not checking your basic facts. I was eager to locate the Reclaim campsite because, truth be told, I wasn’t sure the girl I was looking for was actually missing.
It was just one thing among many that had bothered me when I’d met my old Army commander. His office sits on the top floor of a nondescript building in the Rosslyn section of Arlington, Virginia. I hadn’t been inside the building in almost five years and felt an involuntary shiver run down my spine when I crossed the threshold.
We call him Alpha. I know his real name—I learned it some years ago by accident—but it was never used around the Activity. That’s what they call his unit, as the actual designation is classified. Alpha had phoned me at 5:30 on Thursday morning. He’s