I didn’t know how Mike Crocker would feel about me taking his Porsche camping with my shelter-dog as co-pilot, but I assumed, as always, that it is better to ask forgiveness than for permission (although in point of fact, I planned to do neither).
The base of Floodwood Mountain, 7/15/2013, 12:49 a.m.
Hope loved our new car. Something about the sound or smell or being closer to the road invigorated her, and she kept her head on a swivel throughout the whole drive. I stopped at Donnelly’s for a pair of cones (Chocolate/Vanilla twist, which people insist will do horrible things to my dog, but I trust Hope’s judgment and we ignore those people). The car felt sleek and light after years of driving the Honda Element, which, to be fair, is like a toaster on wheels, and I made the drive out to the gate at the publicly accessible end of Floodwood Road in one third less time than it normally takes. The Porsche felt low and wide and nimble; four-wheel drive and grabby tires and Adirondack roads topped with pea-gravel instead of smooth blacktop made for a noisy ride, but the trade-off was that it felt as though the 993 was rolling along a set of invisible rails designed by my mind and hands moment by moment. We pulled off the side of the road eventually, up near Floodwood Mountain. I grabbed the overnight kit (I bought Hope a dog pack last year, after she came to live with me, but she refused to walk when I put it on, so I carry her camping gear as well as my own), and headed in a mostly southerly direction towards the mountain.
Hope was happy to get out of SmartPig and Saranac Lake, and spent the first ten minutes of the walk ranging far ahead and behind and to both sides in search of squirrels/birds/monsters/food, coming back to check on me every minute or two before running off again … tongue hanging out, tail wagging, eyes bright. I was glad to see her so happy and … doggy; the winter had been tough and long for her. She didn’t like camping in the cold (as I do), and her joints all bothered her, so she spent most of the winter on the couch, on a heated dog-bed that I bought for her, going for sleepovers with Dorothy whenever I went out for more than one night. She deserved to be happy, after having endured a tough life before we met.
I’d spent the spring and early part of the summer exploring new sections of the Adirondack Park with Hope, modifying my trip parameters/goals to fit an aging beagle mix. There are a huge number of places to get lost for a while with a dog who hates people and leashes and steep rocky trails, and this chunk of perfection at the end of the Floodwood road was one of them. I was happy to be walking with Hope and a backpack and not to feel/hear/smell another human within miles. This might be an indoor kind of project, and I wanted to enjoy the time with Hope in the woods, since it might be a week or two before we could do it again.
We set up camp literally in the shadow of Floodwood Mountain, next to a babbling brook that would provide more background noise than water for us. Hope loves to camp, but feels that it is her duty to investigate and report every sound in the nighttime forest (which is a lot of sounds); the brook, in combination with her failing ears, would allow both of us to get some sleep. I hung my hammock, laid out her blanket underneath it, got out our bags of kibble and my Kobo, and settled down on the ground, leaning against a tree, to read for a few hours. Hope explored the area, drank from the brook, found a perfect stick, and spun the proper number of times before laying down, snugged next to my right thigh.
I had been re-reading my way through some of my favorite authors’ early works; enjoying the beginnings of Travis McGee, Matt Scudder, Lucas Davenport, Parker, Nero Wolfe, Jack Reacher, along with some others. I remembered the books from having read them earlier, of course, but the pictures the authors painted of the characters and storylines were wonderful and comforting to sink into. The patterns of words/actions/interactions provided a suitable framework for my forebrain while I let the less conscious bits in the back of my head pore over the events of, and information gleaned during the day, in the hope that by morning I would find/see the way to advance with my research and investigation. I could feel the beginnings of thoughts about how I would proceed, the shapes, but not specific details, which was good enough for a start, so I went to bed at 8:32. Hope jumped up to join me seven minutes later, and we were both asleep by a quarter to nine.
“It’s nothing, Tyler. A branch broke off a tree about 100 yards up the hill from us, and crashed into stuff on its way down,” Ghost-Barry said, from a spot about 30 feet to my left. Although it was pitch black, my recall of the area, and a triangulation of his voice placed him sitting on the big boulder by the little creek.
Hope was growling at the woods from the safety of my sleeping bag; she had pulled the bag open and climbed down into it when the evening cooled off a bit beyond her comfort zone. She was invisible, except as an odd lump in my bag that had settled into/onto my lap/groin/stomach. I reached a hand into the bag, and rubbed her ears for a minute, until she went back to sleep.
The wind must have picked up after we went to bed, because I could hear it racing through the treetops, banging branches together. After a minute of feeling the trees and branches above Hope and me, I unzipped my bag all the way, slipped out from beneath her, and found my pack at the foot of the tree the head-end of my hammock was fixed to. I got out the amsteel, basically a strong and lightweight synthetic cordage that I used as a ridgeline when hanging a tarp or hammock sock while camping, and strung it a few feet over the hammock that we had been sleeping in. The amsteel would likely be strong enough to catch and hold a falling branch, if one happened to fall straight down towards us (not a foolproof plan, but better than nothing). Hope was in full-on boneless mode when I tried to shift her to climb back into the hammock, so I decided to read for a bit before trying to sleep until morning.
Barry was sitting there, in the dark, watching me read. He wasn’t, really, but I believed that he was, and since I only had my sensorium to go on, I had to move forward as if he was. I don’t fully understand why my brain is inserting the ghost of Barry into my life, but I have some idea that it is a witch’s brew of PTSD from the series of traumatic events last September and my subconscious’ inability to play nicely with emotions such as fear and anger. His pattern is to appear during, or just after, periods of noise, surprise, stress, and physical contact. After the first time, I chose to assume that his presence served me (and my brain) some useful purpose; the alternative was that I was simply crazy and/or that he really was/is a ghost (which is, oddly perhaps, a less appealing possibility to me). Since I had the time (and Hope was asleep and wouldn’t be freaked out by my talking to a person that she couldn’t see or smell), I decided to try speaking with Barry for a few minutes.
“Barry, you know that you’re not really here, don’t you?”
“It feels like I’m here, Tyler.”
“Do you remember me killing you?”
“Yah, with Justin down near Newcomb. Lights and noise and a long fall down that cold hole in the woods.” I shivered a bit here, remembering the long wait I had had, lying on the stone floor of the mine near Tahawus.
“Why are you here, Barry?” I asked, not really hopeful that I’d get a different answer this time (Einstein had once suggested that this was the definition of insanity, which was not heartening).
“There must be a reason, but I don’t know it, Tyler. If I have to be a ghost, why do I have to haunt you, and not some hottie or a person who lives in a cool place like Hawaii or Disney, instead of a mostly-homeless geek who lives in the woods near where I grew up. How about when we’re done doing whatever we’re doing, I could go haunt a hottie living in Hawaii?”
“Sounds good to me, Barry, when do you go?” His last response had actually been a bit different from previous ones, but still close enough that I wasn’t too/more nervous.
“I dunno, when we’re done, I guess.” This response seemed promising, but we’d been here before; he didn’t know what we needed to finish. He (or really I, I suppose) just knew that we had ‘stuff’ to do before he could/would go. At this point I decided to take off on a new, and hopefully useful, tack.
“I have some ideas about how to proceed with the Crocker investigation … what do you think?”
“The old Tyler standby of research in the library and online won’t help yet. You need the door open a crack first. Remember the ‘Informal excoriation’ that you talked with the old lady about? You should try some of that?”
“Informational Echolocation?” I find it slightly off-putting that my brain chooses for Barry to occasionally stumble on big words (as the original/actual Barry did).
“Yah, that. It worked well with George, almost too well. You got in touch, and his reaction (over-reaction, really) let you know that you were right about him. You could try the same thing here.”
“What you’re suggesting is that I make some waves/noise/fuss about finding Dee Crocker, or finding out about her disappearance, and that if people get back in touch, regardless of what they have for me, it could help direct my further research.”
“I guess. How would you do it?” Since he lived inside my head when I wasn’t hallucinating him in the real world, and he didn’t know, I must not know, so I thought about it for a bit.
“There is an Upper Saranac Lake Association (USLA); I could get in touch with them online and otherwise, and ask for pictures or for interviews with people who were around during the summer season of 1958. It would probably be better not to mention Dee Crocker at first, unless I have to, to improve the quality of signal return.”
“Huh?”
“Nevermind, Barry. While that’s cooking though, I need to do something else, something more … got it. The Adirondack Museum in Blue Mountain Lake (I say it this way these days to avoid people confusing it with the Wild Center, another museum in the Adirondacks, but a natural history museum, and as such less likely to be useful with research into a girl missing for 54.85 years). I got an email 13 months ago talking about their new program to digitize their massive collection of photos.”
“I remember going down there with my dad when I was a kid, and looking at those conveyor-belts of black and white pictures and postcards, it was like looking back in time; like a time machine.” Sometimes, the Barry construct surprised me, especially when its use of language or figurative language differed from mine. My assumption is that, based on our few conversations, my brain took a snapshot of his speech-patterns, and tried to mimic them for me … it seemed like a lot of effort for my PTSD to go to, but who knows.
“I’ll need a picture of Dee Crocker; I can’t believe that I left without one yesterday.”
“You couldn’t wait to beat feet with that old guy’s sweet ride,” Barry pointed out.
I was starting to feel tired again, so climbed back up into the hammock, lifting Hope up and out and then back into the bag, on top of me; she pretended not to wake up, but snaked a tongue out with unerring accuracy when my nose went by hers. I was satisfied with the progress that we (me really, but from two slightly different perspectives) had made. I had things to do tomorrow, and once they were in motion, I anticipated some returns from the noise that I was making.
“Remember,” Barry said, from deeper in the woods, as I settled down into the warm bag, “it was when things started moving last year that you almost died, and ended up having to kill me; so by all means push, Tyler, but be ready for when someone pushes back.” Lots of people might have had trouble getting to sleep after a ghost told them that in the dark woods … but I’m not lots of people.
“… For your crimes,
you have been judged.”
Camp Topsail, Upper Saranac Lake, 7/15/2013, 11:27 a.m.
I’d slept for a few more hours, until a loon in (I was reasonably certain, based on my mental triangulation) West Pine Pond starting making enough noise to rouse Hope. We got up and took care of morning business, ate and drank a quick meal, and quickly climbed the rest of the way up Floodwood Mountain to catch the sunrise over the ponds and lakes and woods to the east of us; I thought it was lovely … Hope was less impressed. We ran back down the hill, picked up our gear from where I’d hidden it off the trail and walked back out to the car. The drive back into Saranac Lake was quiet and quick and fun; I took Forest Home Road for the curves and wildness, although nobody would argue that it was faster.
I shot through the still-sleeping town of Saranac Lake, on the road to Lake Placid to load up on Dunkin Donuts for my morning’s work back at SmartPig. By the time I had finished a cruller, two jellies, a maple frosted, and a chocolate glazed, I had a small pile of eye-catching fliers including tearoffs with the number of my newest burner phone and an email address that would bounce to my permanent email account. I had sent similar messages to all of the emails that I could glean from the Upper Saranac Lake Association (USLA) website links/contacts/about/blogs/Facebook branching, asking for information and/or pictures from the summer of 1958 on/around Upper Saranac Lake for a book that I was (not actually) working on. I was certain enough that I had sent out enough informational ‘squeaks’ that I would start getting returns quite quickly (even though I hadn’t used Dee Crocker’s name). I also put out feelers to a contact at the Adirondack Museum (in Blue Mountain Lake), asking for a good time to drive down and put in some serious time in their archives.
I fed the beasties in my saltwater tank, took a washcloth-bath in the sink and changed into some clean/presentable clothes. I tossed a few cookies at Hope (who had gone to sleep on the couch within moments of our walking in), and headed downstairs to see about car-topping my canoe on the Porsche (it seemed like a bad idea, with the only possible arguments in its favor being that the canoe was carbon fiber and tough as nails, and the car wasn’t mine).
Hornbeck boats are built in the Adirondacks by Peter Hornbeck, and mine was a Blackjack 12’, made entirely from carbon fiber, and weighing a few grams under thirteen pounds. I loved it because it was light and fast and tough, and because I didn’t have to treat it gently. I have carried mine for miles along trails in the woods to explore ponds that may never have been paddled before, and also bashed it mercilessly on stretches of the Hudson and Moose rivers. I was anticipating a need that would call on a number of its strengths at some point in the next week or so, when I gently put a foam sleeping pad on the roof of the Porsche, balanced the boat on the roof, ran one strap through both doors, and tied the bow/stern to attachment points under the front and rear bumpers. It was relatively secure, and I was certain it would be fine as long as I kept my speed under control. I also put a lightweight 2-piece paddle into the car.
I drove back out to Upper Saranac Lake, via routes 86 and 186 and 30 this time, to minimize twists and turns, although I felt strangely exposed on this busy series of summer-busy roads. My first stop was at the boat launch at the north end of the lake, to stick up some of my fliers in various places where locals and summer people would likely see them. There were some fishermen running huge and shiny boats into the water who didn’t pay any attention to my activities; a number of people walking their dogs along what must be an accustomed route swerved over to look at the fliers I’d stuck up on the board, and followed me with their eyes when I drove down the lake towards my next stop … something cool and unfriendly/unhappy in their eyes and stances (except for the golden retrievers, who are always friendly and happy).
Next, I went past the turn-off for the Crockers, cruising by the wooden sign that Dorothy had classified as ‘slightly precious’ when we had pulled in the day before (a hand-painted illustration of a sailboat with a gang of barefoot children rigging a topsail). I gently followed the curves and hills and dips along the road that followed the contours of the lake, mindful of the canoe on the roof of my borrowed Porsche. The public campground at Fish Creek had a steady flow of people passing in and out of the gates in their Winnebagoes (a number of bumps down the scale from a great camp, but still a nice way/place to spend the summer), which slowed the traffic enough that I didn’t need to brake to turn left and into Donaldson’s once I crossed the bridge.
Donaldson’s is a general store and gas station and ice-cream
parlor and coffee-shop that serves as an anchor point for much of what goes on midway down the length of Upper Saranac Lake, between the fancy camps at the north end and the fancy camps at the southern end. They own a sizable chunk of waterfront parcels that can be leased for terms ranging from seasonal to 100 years (another couple of points along the continuum between great camps and my style of Adirondack living, homeless and hanging from a pair of trees most nights). The feeling was different here than at the north end of the lake. The Porsche and Hornbeck got more notice … from year-rounders who resented moneyed ‘summer people’ and from other summer people who weren’t driving Porsches and paddling carbon fiber canoes (nothing new in the Adirondacks, but since I was on the clock, I tried to pay more attention to how people paid attention to me).
“Lost yer dog, young man?” I heard a voice behind me ask; to get to the bulletin-board, I’d waded through a sea of working locals, not working at the moment (single-color outfits in blue or green, stained with grease and paint and dirt, drinking coffee and/or smoking away a small chunk of morning with other workmen or handymen or caretakers or contractors before getting back to work, likely at a camp like Topsail). The tone and phrasing sounded deferential and polite, but Barry’s appearance from around the corner of the building led me to suspect otherwise.
“Nope, I’m doing some research, hoping to write a book.” I hoped that would be enough to let me walk away, allowing the signs to speak for me (as I’d always prefer to do … I dislike initiating conversations about potentially stressful topics with people that I know, much less those I don’t know). Barry shook his head and chuckled ruefully at me.
Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) Page 7