Nobody knows where he is. No one knows where he is living. He could be on the streets, he could be crashing in another apartment with someone he barely knows. The web of drug dealers and users is extensive but insular in that little, old and run-down factory city. Someone should know where he is.
The city is surrounded by rural and forgotten small towns. Far-flung, no-name towns with ranch houses and neglected Capes. The rambling farm houses with their summer porches and hallways to the barn are long gone. There aren’t many jobs. People go to the city for that, which explains, I suppose, why the real estate hasn’t been seized by land hungry families. There are two cities in this quadrant of Massachusetts, attached like two segments of a black ant, and they would not be the first choice for neighbors.
I talked to a woman over the phone one night when I was looking for someone else. She lives in the larger of the two cities, the worst one, and her son is a crack dealer. He’s so bad, she had him sectioned: she had him put in jail. She said to me, “I thought when I moved here I was starting a new life, a good life, you know? Now all this. This hell-hole of a city. It’s ruined my son and ruined my life. Keep your friend out of here.”
He’s out there somewhere, but where? You burn a guy you’re crashing with, he throws you out. You burn your dealer and you get a bad rep at best and become a danger by association. More often, though, you burn your dealer, you get dead.
A recent violation got him tossed out of yet another apartment. He was staying with some guys and the guy whose name is on the lease found a hypodermic needle on the steps. Heroin addicts attract trouble, even in these grimy, little cities that are filled with junkies and crackheads. Out he went with whatever belongings he still had, which was probably the clothes he was wearing, maybe a handful more, and his rig and dope.
I began this campaign to save him before his eviction. Maybe his closest friends couldn’t see that he was getting way too strung out. They had gotten used to seeing him high on junk. Or maybe they couldn’t be bothered. They all had their own problems that they addressed with drugs, muffling out any cries from someone else. But I knew. I only met him that one time, but I knew. And I care.
I had spent maybe half an hour with the guy. Much of the time he swayed on his feet. But he talked and didn’t seem to mind doing so. I got the sense he wanted to get the information out there. I don’t know if it was that he needed to hear his words or what, but a week later he checked himself into de-tox.
I have information about him that Linnie, who spent a lot of time with him, did not have. Tommy talked about his addiction and talked about his past. He was meant for better things. If he had finished college, if he had not become a junkie, if he had not achieved a sheet of crimes, he could have been a paramedic, maybe a doctor. He could have saved people. Instead he needs to be saved.
I don’t know what sent him back on the dope so soon, but he went down fast. I’ve heard a comment here and there, “He was a mess,” “He’s lost a lot of weight.” That’s not such a great thing in his case. It means he’s using, and he’s using too much.
I seem to be the only one frightened for him. I had connected with him too much for my own peace that day. He had stood there in the street swaying, large shades like the shades of the blind protecting his pinned eyes from the sun that burned out of the blue March sky and glittered off the chrome bumper of my car. He had told me how he came to be this person beside me, or rather not the person but the junkie. I would need to find him to get to know the person. But I got a glimpse of him that day. “You hurt the ones you love,” he had said. He was remorseful, gentle and honest with me.
I’ve been paying attention to the comments made, the noise from the street. No one really wants to get into it. They nonchalantly toss off their sentences about his condition when they last saw him, and then they change the subject. They have no answers to my questions. They can’t tell me where he is, only where he’s been. I can sense the slide, and I can sense the danger.
He’s thirty-four. Statistically speaking, how many years on junk does he have? Scientifically speaking, heroin is one of the cleaner drugs, doing relatively minor long term damage to the body when compared with shit like cocaine and crystal meth. But statistically? By forty most heroin addicts are either clean or dead.