Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) (17 page)

Somewhere West of Little Pine Pond — near Horseshoe Lake, 7/17/2013, 3:18 a.m.

I woke to one of the cans comprising my crude alarm system jiggling at 2:54 a.m..

“Fuckin’ deer! Go back to sleep,” Barry yelled from the direction of the thumps and crashes as the scared animal bounded away.

My mind raced, partly from unspent adrenal products racing through my system, but also in searching for significance, not my own, but in the time. I’ve always invented my own games (
even when I wasn’t picked last, I didn’t like/understand or excel at games that other children played
), and one of my longtime favorites has been numbers. I love numbers: their precision, their power, their span across fields of thought and endeavor. I love sequences of numbers also; I love the patterns and rules and seeing them pop and glow on the number lines in my head. 254 was tough for me to place for a minute though; I could feel neurons snapping and popping all through my head until it suddenly came to me … Lazy Caterers!

254 is the 23rd number in the lazy caterer’s sequence, which is an informal way to refer to the central polygonal numbers. It measures the maximum number of pieces that a circle (
think reindeer, goat-cheese pizza
) can be cut into with a given number of straight cuts/lines (
for example, a reindeer, goat-cheese pizza could be cut into a maximum of 254 pieces with 23 cuts by a lazy/imprecise caterer, a neat one would make 46 similarly sized pieces with those same 23 cuts
). I wracked my brain for a minute trying to think of the corresponding cake number (
which is the same proposition, using a three dimensional cake, instead of a flat pizza or pancake, and allowing cuts in those three dimensions
), and eventually came up with 1794 pieces … by the time I had worked it out, and decided to try it when the investigation for the Crockers was all settled, I was ready to go back to sleep.

“About time, you dick. That shit hurts my head, and, now I’m hungry, and we’re on the other side of the fuckin’ planet from the nearest pizza or cake. Go to sleep Tyler, you drive me nuts, but we’re safe way the hell out here,” Barry said as I was falling into sleep once again.

Adirondack Museum, Blue Mountain Lake, 7/17/2013, 10:47 a.m.

I slept until it was light without further alarm, and had a breakfast of Tyler-Kibble and warmish Coke; I’d had better, but I’d also had worse (
corned beef hash came to mind, as it always does at times like that, as an example of how food could be worse … it tastes to me exactly like cat food smells
). I had slept last night with a clear view of the sky, but wanted to add a tarp to my hammock setup for a couple of reasons: it was supposed to cloud over today and possibly rain a bit over the next few days; and my tarp was camouflage colored, rather than the straight black (
and slightly more visible
) hammock alone. When I eventually puttered off for the day, I stopped a hundred yards away from my campsite to drag a heavy log across the access-road I’d camped at the end of, and felt more safe/comfortable, knowing that even I couldn’t see my hammock/tarp setup.

Zipping quietly through the morning fog that still covered the hamlet of Long Lake, I noted that Hoss’s Country Corner wasn’t open yet, but Stewart’s was, so I pulled in to fill the car with gas, and load myself down with junk food for a day of research. The smell of their egg and sausage sandwich seduced me while I was in line, and I got two of those in addition to the Coke, and egg-salad, and cheese, and candy that I picked up to fuel my body and brain. I left my bag of stuff with the woman behind the counter, and ran into their bathroom for some morning splashing and brushing that couldn’t be taken care of in the woods earlier; smelling and looking clean(
er
) couldn’t hurt my chances of getting access to the premiere collection of Adirondack artifacts and the help of those who kept/ordered/loved it.

Going back through the three-way intersection at Hoss’s, this time I went south and west out of town, towards Blue Mountain Lake, picking up speed once I left the main cluster of buildings centered around Hoss’s. The drive was pleasant and deserted, so I opened the Porsche up a bit, remembering
Niko’s father, a tall man with wild white hair that blew out behind us like a cape as he sped through the lower west side of Manhattan’s quiet mornings with his son and me. He had always insisted on ‘warming the rubber’ with a series of gentle arcs across the painted lines on the road
(‘those lines and lanes and limits are there for the lowest common denominator behind the wheel, Tyler, cabbies and tourists’ he had said, time and again
), then pushing the gas pedal to the floor, and spilling out gales of maniacal laughter as the power pushed me/us back into the seat and headrest like a gentle but bossy God.

Coming around the last big turn before getting to the museum, I was nearly startled (
which at 84 mph means killed
) by a rafter of wild turkeys coming out of the town dump (
really a transfer station, as no towns actually dump/bury garbage inside the Blue Line anymore
). They were headed downhill, and back the way I had come, and besides one gigantic tom, there were at least a dozen other turkeys spread out across and down the road for 100 yards. In the Element, I would have lost traction and ended up in the woods, but the rubber was warm, and I kept my foot on the gas (
possibly even increased the pressure a bit
) and let the car grab the road and slalom through and around the extended family of birds. I could hear the Cokes and food jumping around in back, and made a mental note to let the soda sit for a while before opening it, but found myself enjoying the thrill. Most of the time, driving is a bit boring, mostly composed of waiting and braking and stopping; in comparison, this morning’s drive was all happening at the outer edge of what my eyes and brain and hands and feet could handle. I hadn’t touched the brakes, and wouldn’t dream of stopping. The last turkey, an immature thing not fully feathered out yet, kept walking across the road despite the noise and spectacle that the 993 and I must have presented, and we missed it by less than a foot (
I saw it spin delicately around, as though it had been dancing with us, in the rearview as I pulled onto the last steep grade towards the museum
).

I pulled into the museum parking lot, and drove up and around to the top of the raised parking structure … both for the spectacular view, and so I could keep an eye on the comings and goings of any people potentially interested in stomping me. Once the Porsche rolled to a stop, I stretched, unbuckled, and grabbed some food/drink and my Kindle to pass the time until my appointment with Terry Winch, Collections Manager. The Porsche kept running at a low idle, to keep the chill off, and to charge up my iPad and phone (
I had a charger for both in my backpack, but wanted to start the day with them topped up
). A few cars started coming by 7:30, and by almost 9 a.m., the lot around the side of the building was more than half full. Organizing/checking/loading the contents of my backpack one more time, I pulled down and out of the raised parking, and around/behind the sprawl of main building that housed boats and artwork, parked, and went in to find Terry.

The first time that I met Terry Winch, it occurred to me that he must have been vat-grown or cloned to match some idealized image of an Adirondack researcher, literally from the ground up. He wears old and creased, but clean, work boots to work every day. Dark green wool pants washed smooth and soft, with suspenders arching over a medicine ball belly that stretches the front of his worn chamois shirts. I’ve never seen him without two pairs of glasses on librarian leashes: one his regular bifocals for walking around and reading, the other a pair of extreme magnifiers for fine-detail work/examination. His eyes are bright green and alert, and never stop measuring and moving and cataloging and comparing. His hair’s an unusual salt and pepper mix, and combed straight back with something that smells like woods and bug dope to me, but must be some kind of hair tonic (
Terry once told me that it’s the pine tar that makes me think of the woods, and also why he uses the stuff in his hair
). He reached out to shake my hand in a slightly too-firm grip, that felt more calloused than a sixty year old office worker’s hands should be, and clapped me on my bad shoulder (
although since he didn’t know about my getting shot last year, he couldn’t be blamed for this
).

“Tyler! Good to see you. I hope you’re going to give our new systems and people a good stress test. We’ve been improving the cataloging system and archives organization and the staff and interns know our collections better than at any time in our history. I told them you were doing some research for a book, and could have access to anything we’ve got. I implied that you were a billionaire, and that if you were impressed with our system, you might fund a position in the back of the building (
an archivist or curator, as opposed to a displays-geek or guide or educator
), permanently. They’ll be looking to make a good impression on both of us, and I’ll be looking for you to run them, and the systems we’ve set up, ragged. Find the holes or weaknesses in the systems, write them up for me to deliver to the board, and you can have whatever you want.”

What I wanted was Cynthia Windmere, the woman who used to help me with my research projects at the Saranac Lake Free Public Library (SLFPL); she had died, been murdered, last year though, so I couldn’t have her. Dorothy and I had ended up leaving her body where it was dumped in Lower Saranac Lake, deciding that the potential difficulties and dangers of retrieving and moving her would outweigh all possible benefits (
she wouldn’t be less dead, after all, and I didn’t/don’t believe that we’re anything but rotting meat after our heart and brain stop working
); we had walked out to an abandoned cemetery near Olmstedville, and held a two-person service for her this spring, once the snow had gone. I had tried to adjust my old patterns of using the SLFPL without her, and it just didn’t work; I still used their collections and access to networks and databases and the inter-library loan system, but had adjusted my expectations and work-habits in the library to accommodate her absence in the world.

“Okay, Terry, how does this work? How do I know what’s there?” I asked, pointing to/through/beyond the wall of the entry hall, in which we still stood.

“Let me give you the short version of the VIP tour, and you’re smart enough to ask me questions along the way. Once you get the lay of the land, I’ll introduce you to the intern that’ll be helping connect your brain with our collections. Sound good?” I nodded, and gestured for him to go. I was eager to see what they had ‘in back.’

             
I’d helped Terry a few years back with a problem, and he’d seen something of my gift for research. We’d spent days poring over old maps and letters from people dead for a generation, and at the end of the time, my brain had somehow digested/processed the mass of information and excreted an answer letting me know the who and where in that particular challenge. It occurred to me that he might want to watch me work in his environment, to see either: how/why it worked, or if it was luck the last time around. I turned the concept around in my head, looking at it from all sides, and decided that he probably wasn’t … but that even if he was, I didn’t care, as I was getting what I wanted.

We had been walking down a fairly ordinary workplace hall … coffee-makers, desks, Dilbert, Far Side, elderly desktop computers, acoustic tile ceilings, smiling people taking a break from their work to look up as we passed by … and then we passed through a sturdy metal door with rubber gasketing all the way around and into the first of the collections. The air-handling system buried the office sounds entirely, completing the feeling of isolation/separation. Sealed concrete made up all sides of the container that I was in, and it felt cold to me. I walked over to the machines literally conditioning the air to optimize preservation of the museum’s collections, and saw the temperature was set for 55 degrees and 40% humidity.

“I hope you brought a sweater along, Tyler. We keep it this cold in all of the collection rooms, and the room you’ll be working in is set to the same environmental conditions to avoid condensation and such.”

“I’ll be fine, thanks. What about the lights?” It wasn’t that I actually needed to know, but I was curious.

“They’re specially formulated, carefully modulated wavelengths. Some people get headaches or feel funny after working under them for too long; shouldn’t be too bad for you though, you’re a short timer, and you spend a lot of time outside, getting the right kind of light.”

He grabbed the handle of what looked like a wheel on the side of a floor to ceiling bookcase, and cranked it over to one side, the bookcase rolled across the floor on tracks. “We can fit more shelving in each room this way. The museum has in excess of 70,000 photos, and thousands of diaries and letters and journals and ledgers, and that’s just the documents. We have rooms and rooms of artifacts: furniture, furs, guns, fishing rods, skis, clothes, tools, machines, and we get more all the time.”

“How?” I asked.

“People give it to us or loan it to us mostly, although we
do buy pieces from time to time, mostly art or singular pieces of historical value.” Terry was starting to talk museum at me, so I pushed forward.

“I anticipate sticking to documents. Photos and letters and diaries/journals probably, but I might see what comes up through looking at a few of the ledgers. You never can tell.”

“Indeed not,” Terry said, warming to the subject, “shopping lists, menus, guest lists, construction materials, trips the owners completed during the course of a summer … some of the ledgers offer one a rare look into the life and times of the people who lived and worked and played in the great camps.” I might have felt guilty or creepy about invading the privacy of these people if: a) I had those sorts of feelings, and b) that wasn’t exactly the sort of thing I was down here looking for … Terry nodded his appreciation for the understanding of the power of these documents he could see (
or thought he could see
) in my eyes.

“Photographs are cataloged when we receive them with dates and subject matter and location and people when possible; we’re in the process of going through our entire collection to digitize them into a searchable database, but are only a bit better than 20% through the process. The best way to find what you’re looking for is still a brute-force attack; look at hundreds of picture
s to find the one that you need” he said.

He talked more about the organization and searching, but in those areas, I would be a hostage to the people helping me, so I tuned it out, and just looked at the collections. We walked from one room to another to another to another to another, some needed keys, other touchpad codes; I remembered which keys Terry used, and the codes that he had entered for certain rooms, not through any desire or plan to make ill-use of the information, but simply because it passed in front of my eyes and into the stronghold of my brain. My excitement and anticipation at the upcoming massive research project had my entire sensorium highly tuned, I could feel the differences in the air in the hallways and stairways between collections rooms, and felt my brain plotting a map of the spaces that I visited with Terry, adding them to my pre-existing map of the public sections of the museum (
I was surprised to see staff passing through tiny doors out and into the public display areas in places where I had never noticed entrances before
). We went through seventeen different storage spaces in all, seeing even more things than Terry had promised; I could have spent a lifetime studying them (
and felt a rare twang of jealousy at Terry’s being able to do exactly that
). The tour ended in a climate and light controlled room next to the first photo-vault that we had seen.