George Higgins - A change of gravity

"Mom's new boyfriend's also joining us tonight. Ronald Bennett, early twenties, looks like he had an IQ of maybe ninety, ninety-one, last time he was sober enough so that someone could sit him down and test him. His father most likely was his grandfather, and his mother's father too. The five of them, him and her and the kids, all of them living in a cabin up there in the State Forest.

"I'm getting all of this outta the report the Park Rangers leave off when they delivered this human trash. The Department of Natural Resources guys, the ones inna green four-wheel-drive pick-up trucks always bangin' around inna bushes, the State reservations, like they're chasin' rustlers or something.

"Their guess is these people've probably been living inna woods there since around the end of June. They are not really sure. One of them thinks that's the first time he recalls seeing them. But he didn't make out a report, not having any complaint to act on, any reason to do so. So there's really no way to find out, exactly. Probably don't know themselves, these people, how long they've actually been there.

All you can do is ask them, knowin' if they do know they're gonna lie to you. It's their reflex by now, tellin' lies. And for Christ sake, why shouldn't they? What've they got left to lose?

"And anyway, doesn't matter what they tell you. All it takes is two weeks. Technically they're trespassing once they're living there more'n two consecutive weeks, fourteen days the same cabin, not paying their six bucks a day.

"Rangers say this isn't unusual, homeless people living in there, not this time of year. Rangers know they're there, see them all the time.

They don't try to hide or stay out of sight. But generally they keep moving around. Cabin to cabin, three or four of them, pathetic dirty little groups, generally a woman and her kids.

Sometimes they'll have a rat-ass sorry excuse for a man along, like this one did, and after they've been there a while, they get so they know each other. They organize, set up a system. Rotate themselves around the camps. So none of them're ever staying more'n two weeks, the fourteen days, in any one of them. But all of 'em're always there, in one camp or the other. They're not paying, of course, but the way the Rangers look at it, if no one wants to rent the cabin, why not let someone who needs it but can't pay for it go ahead and use it? "Stead of having it sit vacant anna homeless people out inna rain? Makes sense, 'less you figure the bums bein' in there means the people who can pay wont wanna come and use it.

"Anyway, you almost have to give them credit. They may be the castaways of our society, but they know the rules, and they do do their best to keep them. It's not enough, but they do try. The Rangers told the cops they generally don't bother them unless the squatters practically force them to. Like if the legitimate people payin' rent onna cabins start making complaints about their stuff bein' missin', they come back from swimming or fishing, out inna woods for the day.

It's pretty hard to lock the cabins, no one can get in. Food gets stolen, which upsets them. Get even more pissed off if their cigarettes and beer disappear although I'm not all that sure you're even technically supposed to have any beer when you're camping State property like that. Or if you can smoke inna woods; Smokey the Bear might not like it. But people do, I guess; pretty hard to stop them.

Rangers probably do the same thing as with the squatters; only go in, enforce the rules, somebody gets drunk or something, makes an issue of it. Otherwise leave 'em alone.

"But anyway, stealing. If the squatters get to doing that, stuff starts being missing, then the Rangers wouldn't have any choice but to go in and throw 'em out and make 'em leave. But not unless they have to; that'd be what it amounts to. It's not something they like to do.

"Seven cabins out there. No heat, light or running water, anything; and people're s'posed to use the latrines. Never very far from one; four three-stall portable toilets and a trailer with four showers, two for men and two for women. But they don't go to all that trouble. They do it in the woods, wipe their asses off with leaves; it's easier.

Messier, too, of course, and very unsanitary; little of that old E. coli bacteria in the drinking water; make a lot of people sick. But it's easier easier rules.

"The only reason Rangers finally went in last night and arrested this group was because some legitimate workin' people who don't have any too much money of their own, spend onna two-week vacation that they earned by their hard work, they picked out one of those cabins back last spring, and reserved it. Now it's comin' up on their turn and they want it. They've been looking forward to it ever since they put their name on the list. So, they don't live that far away, and I guess they must've gotten wind of what was goin' on, homeless squattin' in the cabins. You're liable to get up here with all of your equipment and stuff, lookin' forward to your two weeks in the woods, and there's already someone sleepin' in your house. Never heard of Goldilocks but prolly wouldn't mind getting their paws on your porridge even better, some of your beer.

"So yesterday, the husband of this family that reserved the cabin back in April, he goes to the trouble of taking a ride up there into the woods to make sure him and his family're actually going to get what they signed up for back then and've been looking forward to ever since, he starts his two weeks off with pay tomorrow. And what he finds roostin' in it is that woman and her three kids and her dirtbag boyfriend. And I guess it was perfectly obvious to him that they'd been in it a good long time, not just a week or so, and they had absolutely no intention of clearing out on his say-so when he shows up there with his wife and kids tomorrow.

"He didn't like it. I don't blame him. He got back in his car and drove back out to the office that they've got there and he bitched to the Park Rangers. Put it that way and they didn't have much choice.

They saw the guy's point and arrested the squatters. Also hadda have someone go in and then clean the place up.

"Now, I feel sorry for everybody who's down on their luck, but feelin' sorry isn't my job. My job's to bail people charged with a crime. So I look at them, this woman and her scumbag of a man, charged with trespassin." But the poor bastards've got no place to go, really.

They're livin' on food stamps, bummin' cigarettes off each other.

They're not denning up out in the woods because they're relivin' "Davy Crockett."

"These people're destitute. Kids're in rags. Mother's to blame for the squalor, of course, usin' her welfare, most likely includin' the kids' clothes-allotment checks, to buy booze for herself an' her fuckin' boyfriend, this Ronald shit bird He's also on Essesseye. I didn't see much evidence he might be in danger of getting a job.

"This means I'm now in the same box as the Rangers were. I'm sittin' in the back room of the PD lockup around ten-thirty on a Saturday night and I'm a court clerk. What the hell am I supposed to do about this fuckin' mess? By that time I wasn't exactly myself anyway, either.

What you'd say was on top of my game; I wouldn't've told you I was."

"Why? What was the matter with you?" Diane said.

"Oh I don't want to bore you with all the details of it," Merrion said.

"The day I'd been having yesterday up until then was bad enough without reliving it again today. We seem to be pretty well on our way here to having a nice day for ourselves, and I'd just as soon have it and leave yesterday back where it belongs: behind me."

"Well, you will tell me, though, you know," she said. "I always tell you, when I've had a bad day. And you're the same way: You tell me. So you might as well just get started. And that way maybe by the time we get to Tanglewood and it's time to hear the Brahms, you'll have it off your chest and we can just enjoy ourselves."