Among many other assignments for FTI, Gumbs still sat on the board of MF Global, former New Jersey senator Jon Corzine’s hedge fund, which collapsed in 2011. There, he was the primary finance adviser to former FBI director Louis Freeh—who oversaw the MF aftermath and supervised attempts to recover investors’ money. He’d never been the CEO of anything, interim or otherwise. But after FTI was approached by the EveryWare board to help it find a temporary CEO, he volunteered.
Simultaneously with Schoenberger’s e-mail, another one had been sent to employees under Gumbs’s name. “Over the coming weeks, I will travel to several of our operational locations and meeting [sic] with many of you to hear your ideas on where we need to invest in people, infrastructure and systems to grow and achieve EveryWare Global’s full potential. The purpose of my ‘listening tour’ isn’t to create a laundry list of projects that never get done—it is to meet with you, the dedicated employees of this company and to identify a short list of investments that we can execute to have a rapid and positive impact on our business.”
Solomon mocked the listening-tour idea. “We don’t need a listening tour,” he said, as if he still ran the company. “We need to get shit done.” Nobody could figure out just what Gumbs was supposed to do. For years, the employees watched Newell, Cerberus, and Monomoy walk through the factories and offices, to “listen.” They wondered what the hell those people were listening for.
As for Lancaster, nobody knew that Solomon had been fired. There was no press release, no announcement, no word at all. The Eagle-Gazette never reported it. Months later, some in Lancaster still weren’t aware of it. Most Plant 1 workers didn’t know, either—they didn’t sit at desks with computers and e-mail access. Chris Cruit, Joe Boyer, and Swink had no idea for days—for weeks, in some cases—that the company they worked for had a new CEO. Even Chris Nagle, the union leader, didn’t learn the news for two days.
Cruit thought Solomon’s firing was just one more thing to worry about. He was already anxious about his own job. Anchor had begun removing H-28s, and Cruit was a burn-off man. No H-28, no burn-off. His wrestling school was attracting enough kids—and a few adults—for him to almost break even, but there was no way he could afford to leave the $16-an-hour wage he was making at Anchor.
Nobody in Plant 1 was going to shed any tears over Solomon. Eighteen months after the 2014 shutdown, the fact that Lancaster gave concessions when Monaca didn’t still rankled. Solomon had been CEO at the time. So the way Plant 1 saw it, Solomon had screwed them. Monomoy was too vague a target to focus their ire on. Boyer didn’t care one way or the other that Sam Solomon had been fired. “I don’t see that he did anything for us,” he said. As for Gumbs, Boyer suspected the listening tour and the promise of coming fixes might be “blowing smoke up our rear ends.”
The average Anchor plant worker had long ago learned to ignore management turmoil. If the factory was open when they came to work, they still had jobs. If it wasn’t, they didn’t. “He’s another cheerleader,” Nagle said of Gumbs. “He’s just one that’s, like, he found his pom-poms, as if he’s gonna do something. Until he does something, he’s nothin’ to us.”
Five days after Solomon’s departure, somebody in Plant 1 fired up one of the air compressors that had been out of commission for a very long time. About twelve hundred gallons of water flooded into the air system, shutting the whole place down until about one o’clock in the morning: the same ol’ same ol’.
* * *
Mark Kraft stared at his smartphone screen, so focused on MobilePatrol he was oblivious to the dozens of fairgoers walking all around him. He’d been working a booth for the family business and was now taking a smoke break. As he strolled around the midway, bent over his screen, he looked pale and, if it were even possible, skinnier than usual.
He’d been released from the county jail on Labor Day, September 7, after a week’s stay. He’d spent most of that time with Jason.
Jail had proven to be interesting and educational. He was surprised by the amount of drugs he could find in county—dope and pills, mainly. And meds. Lots of meds. “They dole that shit out to everybody that’s been in there for more than thirty days. All you’ve got to do is say you’re depressed and you can’t sleep, and they fucking pump you full of sugar, bro.” He learned how to make a rope out of toilet paper, how to play spades, how to play the legal system.
“I’m telling you, bro, I went in there with a Ph.D. in being a junkie and came out half a jailhouse lawyer after listening to these guys talk for a week.” He did not, however, learn much about himself, and he couldn’t figure out what lesson he was supposed to have gleaned from the experience. The whole thing seemed like a waste of his time and the taxpayers’ resources.
He suspected that the real purpose of his brief incarceration had been to rat out Jason, Lloyd, and anybody else in town he could think of to snitch on. “The MCU guys were all like, ‘Where are you getting it?’ and ‘We’ll give you a deal.’ That’s all they wanted from me, man.”
Mark didn’t trust them or anybody else. Like Brian, he didn’t trust anything or anyone. The MCU’s interrogations made Mark a suspect in the eyes of the other inmates. People accused of felonies couldn’t find jobs after being released from jail or prison. That was an immutable law of the universe. Yet Mark had a job. How’d he keep his job? How’d he get an ILC if he wasn’t squealing for the cops? Some of the other inmates harassed him. They threatened to take his “hygiene”—the soap, toothpaste, and snacks inmates could buy with money on their “books,” an account established by an inmate or his family.
Inmate accounts and phone calls were quite a profitable racket. A $10 deposit yielded $7 for the inmate and $3 for the company providing the deposit service. Phone calls, operated by another company, were outrageously expensive, about a dollar a minute. Most inmates and their families were poor. But, as the dollar stores and out-of-own apartment owners, the car-title lenders and Monomoy Capital Partners all knew, poverty was big business.
Jason had looked out for him, though, so Mark felt an obligation to reciprocate. When Jason asked him to seek out Jessica, who’d been released with an ankle monitor, pending adjudication of her conveyance charge, Mark agreed. Jason was freaked out by the thought that Jessica would be out and cheating on him, maybe to get drugs. Jason wanted her to know his feelings hadn’t changed: He wrote letters that Mark promised to deliver. In return for the favor, Jason offered Mark the number of his Columbus hookup.
On Sunday, September 20, Jessica cut off her ankle bracelet and went on the lam. A few days later, Jason said, “She’ll be on drugs and cheating on me.” He’d cried the whole night before. He was so distraught, inmates had gathered around to pray with him.
All of Jessica’s charges had been dismissed except for the conveyance charge. Chances were good that she wouldn’t spend any time in jail for that. She’d likely receive probation and treatment. Jason would take the fall for the trafficking. She ran, she told me, because she didn’t have a place to stay when she was released. Her probation officer said she’d have to find a place. She tried her mother, but their relationship was fractured, and her probation officer forbade her from staying there anyway. She tried the homeless shelter at Community Action, but, she said, she was turned away. Fearing she’d go back to jail, she disappeared.
Jessica took their things and headed for Zanesville. She had a friend there who was on Suboxone. I sent a text message to Jessica. She returned the message, typing, “Idk a Jess you have the wrong#.” But it was her all right.
Jessica was still AWOL, and Jason still had had no word from her by the time he was sentenced by Trimmer on October 5. The defense and the prosecution had worked out a deal to send Jason to state prison for just over two years, including the time he’d already spent in county jail since his July arrest.
Dennis Lowe, the new MCU chief who’d replaced Eric Brown, was furious with the district attorney’s office over the agreement. Jason was the biggest fish they’d caught
all year. And all of Jason’s promises to help the cops shut down Lancaster’s drug trade had fizzled. Two years seemed like nothing in light of the amounts of dope Jason had been bringing into town. In the coming months, stories citing anonymous law enforcement sources would appear in the newspaper. These stories accused the DA of, among other things, cutting easy deals for criminals; Jason Roach would be cited as an example. The DA would lose his bid for reelection.
“I am really embarrassed to be here right now,” Jason told Trimmer. “I’ve been … I don’t really even know what to say. I’m gonna take this time that you are givin’ me and try to better myself. I mean, as you know, I’ve had a drug problem, struggled with it, and I am sick of it. I don’t want it no more. I mean, I am almost forty years old. And I’m tired of it. That’s it.”
“Mr. Roach, we’ve known each other quite a few years now,” Trimmer said. He was disappointed in Roach, who’d once been part of a diversion program. There wasn’t much he could do about the plea deal, but he could verbally flay Jason. As he spoke, Trimmer slowly ginned himself into a dudgeon.
“You are part of a much larger problem,” the judge said. “And it’s disgusting, Mr. Roach.” His voice rose until he was almost shouting. “You’ve become such a huge part of this true problem we have in our society. Not only that, but you are doing it while you have three children in your presence! And you are using a diaper bag to contain some of the illegal contraband. And not only that, you’re doing it with the children’s mother!”
Trimmer lectured, shamed, berated like an angry father until he was spent. He looked at a photo of the three children. “Your children are adorable, Mr. Roach. Mr. Roach, I’m not foolin’ around with you anymore. Enough is enough. You are really being a burden on society. And I don’t appreciate it.”
“Sorry,” Jason mumbled.
“I’m so disappointed in you.” As Trimmer rose to leave the bench, Jason half-shouted, “Sorry, Judge Trimmer!”
Trimmer turned around and shook his head. “Oh, Mr. Roach.”
Lloyd’s sentencing by Berens hadn’t been so fervid—Berens was a more laconic presence on the bench. Lloyd and his lawyer, Andrew Sanderson, sat down to read the papers detailing the agreement Sanderson had negotiated. Sanderson had to squint to see the words. “You’re getting old,” Lloyd joked. “You need glasses. I need glasses, too.”
“Yes, Lloyd,” Sanderson answered. “You are getting old. It’s time for you to be done with this shit.”
Lloyd balked at the stretch he’d have to serve—four and a half years, double Jason’s term. Sanderson reminded him that they’d gone over all of it before, but Lloyd grumbled about “some trumped-up shit.” “Go to trial, Lloyd,” a frustrated Sanderson said. “I wouldn’t do it, but go ahead. Go to trial.” Sanderson liked Lloyd, and Lloyd trusted Sanderson, but it was time for tough love. They retreated to a room off the courtroom to have their argument.
Most Fairfield County juries were staunch police supporters, but Lora Manon, the prosecutor, was sometimes surprised by how much sympathy they showed for defendants. She figured the sympathy stemmed from so many of their own relatives or friends having been through the system after facing drug charges. She wasn’t from Lancaster, and couldn’t understand why so many people still lived there when they didn’t have any good reason—in her outsider’s view—to stay. There was nothing there economically for them. Drugs were pervasive in all classes, not just among the poor. What they ought to do, she said, was “fly like the wind.”
Lloyd, of course, took the deal. During sentencing, Berens issued a perfunctory sermon. Lloyd and I nodded to each other, and he was led out into the chilly, rainy morning to shuffle back across the street. I’d been the only lay witness to Lloyd’s fate. No relative, no friend had come to offer a supportive glance. “There are lots of people who you think are your friends when you have drugs,” Lloyd had told me.
* * *
Mark walked past the Ping-Pong-ball-in-the-goldfish-bowl booth, the ring toss, the guess-your-weight stand, swearing off the drama of Lancaster’s drug life. He didn’t take Jason up on the offer of the connect. He wasn’t any more enlightened as to why he was a junkie, though, or why he was terrified of asking too many questions.
That was the hardest part about staying sober, his own thoughts. He especially hated thinking of his old BMX buddy, Ryan.
Ryan had moved to Columbus to be with his girl. She got pregnant, but the relationship soured. Worse, Ryan got popped by the cops one May, three years ago. He was out on bail that July, but facing prison time, a heartbroken addict with a conviction. So Ryan lay down in the bathtub of his apartment, held a shotgun under his chin, and blew the top of his head off. He was twenty-three.
The fucked-up thing was that Ryan lived for a few days. Mark had gone to visit him at the hospital. Lots of kids showed up, because Ryan was a good dude. Mark had held Ryan’s hand. He noticed dried blood caked under Ryan’s nostrils. He tried to dab the blood away, but a nurse stopped him. The dried blood was helping to hold Ryan’s brain matter in his head, she said. After a few days, relatives ordered the life support be stopped.
Back when he and Ryan were selling weed around Lancaster, Ryan bought Mark a fancy $600 watch for no reason at all. So Mark bought Ryan a similar watch, and those watches became their bro thing. Ryan’s fiancée gave Ryan’s watch to Mark. He still had it. He never wore it. The watch was too sad.
But he couldn’t shut it all down on his own. He’d close his eyes, and his brain would rev: mental tires spinning, but going nowhere, until he could smell the dope, visualize the needle going into his arm, taste the metal flavor in his mouth, feel the warmth. Mark hadn’t been out of jail long before he shot up with his buddy Nick.
Ryan had chosen his off-ramp. Mark often thought about taking his own. “I’ll tell you something I never told anybody,” he said one afternoon. “I’ll be, like, watching a movie, and see these people get unrealistically high—OD or something—and I have this feeling of envy, like, ‘Oh my God, why can’t that happen to me?’ For the longest time I’ve thought, ‘If I am gonna die, I wanna die like that.’ The times I was getting ready to get high, I wished I would have fallen out. I wished I would have got that high so it would just be over, that I would cease to exist, be done with it.”
* * *
Politicking was always as much a part of the fair tradition as harness racing and quilting. With the November election two weeks away, 2015 wasn’t different, just quieter. Mayoral candidates appeared, and yard signs popped up all around the fairgrounds perimeter, but nobody doubted who’d win. Brian Kuhn was the Republican candidate, so, barring some sudden revelation of malfeasance or shady dealings, he’d be the next mayor.
Not much would change with the election, though a lot needed changing. All three of the declared candidates talked about economic development, but none offered any coherent plan for going about it. Lancaster didn’t even have a full-time economic development director—the man with that title worked at the gas company.
The county had just hired a new director—a former employee of the newspaper—but he issued the same chamber-of-commerce happy talk as his predecessors. “It’s an honor to work for the people of Fairfield County,” he said when his appointment was announced. “We have so many things to offer businesses looking to relocate. Great schools, a skilled workforce, two amazing industrial parks, and a high quality of life. Fairfield County’s location makes it prime for economic growth in the next decade.”
The industrial parks existed, but none of the rest of this was true. Company Wrench founder Brad Hutchinson, for example, wanted to hire skilled workers but couldn’t find them. “We were getting frustrated, because we felt like the schools either weren’t listening or weren’t paying attention,” he said. “One guy, who runs the welding program at [a] school, said, ‘I’m gonna tell you, black-and-white, what the issue is.’ He says, ‘I’ve got twenty kids in my class today. You drug-test all of your people, right?’ I said, ‘Yep.
’ He said, ‘Sixteen of my kids can’t pass a drug test, I guarantee you. So that gives me four kids to work with. Two of the four can’t read a tape measure, but they got shoved into my class because they were struggling, and [the school] felt like, in order to try and get ’em to graduate, we needed to tuck these kids somewhere where they are out of sight, out of mind, and they ended up in my program. So I got two kids that really stand out and are excellent welders, and fifty employers, just like you, who are screaming to get candidates.’”
Some schools no longer offered trade programs, which meant that Lancaster, a town once filled with skilled labor, had an extremely shallow pool of it. Hutchinson was constantly annoying the local boosters by saying such things out loud. But other small-business people agreed with Hutchinson.
Over beers in a tavern called Bootleggers, a man who was the second generation of his family running a hardware supply business in town said he sold 144 broom handles at a time to Anchor Hocking, and nuts, bolts, and other industrial hardware to Diamond Power. Orders from both companies totaled a fraction of what they once did. Rumors were flying around town that Diamond Power might cut back even more, or close up altogether. “I’ll wait to sell my business until it’s worth absolutely nothing, shrewd businessman that I am!” He laughed like a crazy man. A friend of his, a real estate speculator with deep local roots, said houses that used to sell for $120,000 now sold for $85,000. “This is a dead town,” he said. “A dead little dying town.”
The schools were a brightening beacon, though. It was two months into the school year, and the new buildings were proving popular. Lancaster was justly proud of them. Despite those feelings, though, an operational tax levy to support them was no sure bet to pass in the coming election. The slogan IT’S NOT A NEW TAX! appeared all over town. You could almost see school administrators and teachers on their knees, pleading with voters to understand that the levy was only a renewal of the same tax citizens had passed by a hair several years before. It was as if they felt they were asking people to vote in favor of German measles instead of to maintain and improve their own schools.
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