In Contact

(This is 9 pages)


It started when the password for my email wouldn’t open. I tried my various other ones, including shared ones and my school account. Nothing opened. My Facebook account wouldn’t open. Interestingly, I could look at my page from the outside. My wall read, “Went on a trip. Will be out of contact.” Chills went through me. I looked around my room at the darkness behind open doors. I turned on the light and looked everywhere, even out the window. I had an idea of what might have happened. I called Andrea. She said, “Aran, where are you?”

“Home,” I said.

“Are you going on a trip?”

“I don’t know.”

“I read your blog.”

“Which one?”

“The one you just wrote.”

“What did I just write?”

“What do you mean? You said you need to take a break and think things over. You said you’re sorry if you've led people astray?”

“No. Someone hijacked my identity online. I can’t login to anything.”

“…”

“Andrea?”

“Be careful what you say Aran. Our phones are both bugged. They said you’re going on a trip. Think carefully about where you go. If I have any idea I’ll call you. Just get out of there.”

“Should I go there?”

“I don’t know. Maybe not yet. If anything, we need to not contradict the message that you’re on a trip.”

She hung up. I put on my shoes and coat, put my water bottle and journal in my tote bag and left. It was past midnight. I got on the train to Manhattan, not sure if I should go to Andrea’s. I looked around and it didn’t look as though anyone were following me. I figured if I went to any friend or relative’s place, I could contradict the message, so someone had to be after me, unless they weren’t so serious.

Walking down 6th on 10th street, I saw a cop car and waved to it. The cop got out.

“Hi,” I said. “I think I’m being chased. I’m afraid to use my phone.”

“Get in.”

At the station I was brought to a detective’s desk. He hard curly, brown hair and spoke very unenthusiastically. “What’s your name?”

“Aran Davis.”

“Age?”

“Twenty-two.”

“You live alone?”

“With my sister.”

He jotted this down. “Who do you think’s chasing you?”

“The natural gas industry.”

“The whole industry?”

“I don’t know. Someone made my blog say I needed to rethink things and that I was sorry I led people astray.”

“You write about natural gas?”

“Yea. And they wrote I was going on a trip and would be out of contact.”

“So you ran.”

I nodded.

“Did you call anyone or tell anyone else besides us?”

“Yes. I told Andrea Lewis.”

“Who is that?”

“She’s an organizer for Water Fights Back.”

“Did she also experience suspicious activity?”

“She’s been talking about it for a while now. She’s convinced her phone is bugged. She might have frightened me into leaving my apartment.”

“Can you write her number here?”

I wrote it down. He said, “Do you mind if I call her right now?”

“No.”

He called and I watched him wait for an answer. He sighed. He looked at me. “Hi Ms. Lewis. This is Detective Solonger. I’m
with Aran Davis. Call me back at 212-999-4454.” He said to me, “Stay here.”

I looked around. No one looked familiar. Solonger was facing the other direction on the far side of the room. I leaned
forward and tilted his computer screen towards me a bit. It seemed like my picture was on it so I pulled my chair forward. It was my picture. The words, “Warrant for arrest,” were on the screen and “Eco-Terrorist.” I looked over at Solonger again who glanced back at me and then turned back to another person. I got up and walked to the door. I looked once more. He wasn’t looking. I went out the door and walked down the steps. I kept by the side of the wall and turned the first corner. There was a bar two buildings down so I ran to it and entered.

It was somewhat crowded with people. The music was loud. I waited on line for the bathroom. It occurred to me I could try to get a hat from someone. In my wallet was just twenty bucks. Could they have bugged or cancelled my ATM card? Could they track me if I used it? In the bathroom stall I wondered if I should stay there but no, of course escapees always went to that bar, so even leaving was going to be tough, even leaving the bathroom. Why did I go to the police! If I lied on my phone about where I was, would they track my location anyway? Then I figured, what do I have to lose? The only thing left in my mind was, “Be careful where you go.” All I needed to do was not contradict the message so I needed to be out of contact. I turned my phone off.

I walked out of the bar and went to China Town, bought a fifteen buck ticket to Boston. I figured, I’ve hardly seen Boston, and as far as I knew, there was no movement against hydraulic fracturing there, plus I didn’t know anyone there, except for the food justice activists I knew there. This occurred to me on the bus and I started to worry. I only needed to stay out of Dorchester, I figured.


On the bus I got a good amount of sleep. Feeling calm in Boston in the bright morning, I wondered if I had overreacted and maybe I should go back. Maybe it wasn’t even the gas industry. Maybe there was something wrong with the internet. No, someone was trying carefully to get rid of me. Otherwise they would have killed me, no? Did they come with me on the bus? Still, no one looked familiar around me. People were walking to work.

I went into a coffee place. Maybe I should go to Dorchester. The organization could send out a blast about the whole thing. But I would probably be putting them at risk as soon as I talked to them. So far, I had done as they wanted me to do. I only contradicted their story with Andrea and I wasn’t sure what the deal was with detective Solonger. Maybe I should try to get to the hearing in Binghamton that was a couple days later. At least I could speak out before they arrest me. I took a break from thinking and drank my coffee.

Then I figured I’d open a new email account at a computer in a library. It seemed I could have done this in New York, if I walked around until dawn. I asked the counter girl where it was but got lost anyway. I don’t know why but I tend to feel more comfortable asking directions from people who also seem lost so I asked a tourist family, middle aged folks and a thirteen-year-old girl.

“Where’s the library?”

The bearded man said, “Don’t ask us.”

The woman said, “Are you from New York?”

“How did you know?”

“I’m from New York.”

“We’re upstaters,” said the man.

Where had I heard that phrase before? Oh yes. It was in Union Square. I held a huge sign that said FRACK with a circle around it and line going through it while my friends gave out leaflets for a meeting. A man said to me, “We need that. You don’t know what you’re talking about. It’s all we’ve got to get off foreign fuel. I’m an upstater.”

“Good luck,” the woman said.

“Thanks.”

Finally, I sat down at a computer. I figured I’d try Hotmail because I’d never used it before. For a username I sat there thinking, for too long. GreenFist@hotmail.com. BlueFightBack@hotmail.com. Then I knew my username. TurquoiseSoldier@hotmail.com. I skipped down to enter a password. The computer turned off and the lights of the library went out. I looked around. Should I stay still? Should I run? Should I wait? I probably shouldn’t wait. The police might come. I remembered the stall in the bar, got up and walked out the front door. It was already time to get out of Boston.

There was no destination as I walked down the street. Probably it wasn’t good to be arrested for eco-terrorism but I couldn’t let the industry make me paranoid. Someone tapped my shoulder. I kept walking.

“Hey New Yorker!” said a woman. I turned. It was the tourist family. The woman said, “Did you find the library?”

I walked to them. “Are you all leaving Boston today?”

The man, putting his hands in his pockets, said, “We might be.”

I said, “You live in Upstate New York?”

The man nodded.

“I think I’m going to Binghamton. Are you driving by Binghamton?”

“We’re not going quite that far,” the man said.

“Are you going in the direction of Binghamton? Maybe you could just get me maybe halfway there and leave me at a bus station. I’m an environmentalist. I’m just trying to get to a hearing.”

The woman’s eyebrows went up and she elbowed the man. “You’re talking about the hydrofracking hearing.”

I smiled, “Yes. Yes!”

She smiled too while the man rubbed his chin and the young girl had a look of suspense. The woman stood in front of the
man with her back towards me. The man looked over at me a couple times while they spoke.


Outside their car window I watched the country go by, farms, mountains and forest. The young girl sat across from me in the back seat. The man drove while the woman jotted numbers on a pad. The man said, “Aran.”

“Yep?”

“How’d you end up in Boston?”

“Oh, it was just so spontaneous. I didn’t have a full plan. I’m not sure I can really tell you why I was in Boston.”

“Oh,” he said. “Okay.”

The woman said, who might not have been paying attention, said, “I take it you’re against fracking?”

“Why, because I’m an environmentalist?”

“Well, seems to fit the ratio.”

“Right. What about you all?”

“You mean what do we think?” said the man.

“Yea.”

“I’m for it,” said the man. He laughed, “This is honestly why I was hesitant to give you a ride.”

“Alan!” said the woman, turning in her seat. “Aran, I think what you’re doing is great. I was really on the fence when I first heard about it, even before it got controversial. I just didn’t trust the companies, but I could also understand how people can blow things out of proportion.”

“What do you think, Tina?” I asked the young girl.

Surprised, she said, “What?”

“What’s your stance on hydrofracking?”

She sighed. “It’s risky,” she said.

“Do you support it?” Alan pushed her to answer.

She said, “I think I support it if you support it.”

“Tina,” said the woman. “You’re allowed to not support it. Aran,” she said. “One of the reasons I did want to give you the ride was because you were a flashback to our son, Francis.”

“Beth,” said Alan, annoyed.

She laughed. “Look, Aran. Two years ago, Alan and I both had jobs. Mine went quick but that was no surprise. It was an internet thing, a news site just online. I edited and took some nature photos. But Alan worked for the state, in charge of certain infrastructure decisions.”

“Like fracking would have been,” he said.

“The point is, Aran. We’ve been downward spiraling financially. We were in Boston because I had a job interview. We didn’t want to live in a city.” She shrugged. “You understand if we allow this drilling we’ll be able to live in our town peacefully and be able to take care of our kids, and even reduce our footprint in the atmosphere.”

I was calm. I said, “Well.” I wanted to say something but it hurt me to say it. Every time I tried, my heart beat faster. “I guess we don’t have to talk about it.”

“Oh yea,” she said, recovering something. Alan turned his head to her for a moment, seeming to dread whatever story she was about to tell.

“Francis,” said Tina.

“Is it okay if I tell this?” Beth said.

“I want to hear it,” I said.

“Why don’t you tell him, Tina?” she said.

Tina said, “When we got the form about the drilling in the mail, there was something we could sign to say we wanted to do
it. So they showed it to us, Francis and I, and just let us know about it. Francis ended up the next day saying it was dangerous and we shouldn’t do it. Dad was still doing research on it too, so he didn’t send it in yet. So maybe five days later, dad said he couldn’t find the envelope. Francis admitted that he’d burnt it.”


It was twilight when we drove up to the bus station. “Are you going to be okay from here?” said Alan.

I didn’t answer right away, because I was afraid to use my debit card. “I think I should tell you something,” I said. No! I
remembered I couldn’t tell them. “Thank you so much for the ride. It’s really hard to express how much it meant to me that you all risked driving me. Will I see you at the hearing?”

Beth and Alan stared at each other, not saying anything. She lifted her eyebrows at him. He turned towards me. She smiled. “We’re going to the hearing Aran. You can stay over and come with us.”

A tear actually emerged in my eye. I wiped it and got in the car. “I promise I won’t talk about hydrofracking,” I said.


Beth set me up in their basement with some blankets on the couch. I took off my boots and looked around as she left. I looked at the glass eyes of stuffed animals on a rack. I looked at the wine bottles in the wall behind the bar. Then I found it. There was a smoke detector on the ceiling with the usual red light, but there was definitely a glass eye on the side of it. I waved at it. I made the gesture of zipping my lips.


Francis came home around five pm. He walked into the kitchen. He was tall, had short hair, and an angular face. I was
wearing a watermelon apron, slicing a carrot. Beth was stirring something. I looked up and saw him. “Hi,” I said.

His eyebrows went up.

“Francis,” said Beth. “This is Aran. He’s coming to the hearing with us. We’re eating outside in twenty minutes.”

The bowls of food were on a picnic table behind the house. Their house was small, close to the hilly road and near about five other houses, stretched apart. In the distance was the river below by rocky terrain.

“You know what’s across there?” Alan said, sitting down as everyone came outside.

“Pennsylvania?”

“That’s right.”

“I heard that the states were drawn by guys walking around with thirty foot chains, making marks every thirty feet.”

“Well the river helped,” he said.

“Yea. They were lazy.”

Everyone sat down. Francis came out last. When he sat down, Beth said, “Let’s give thanks to our guest, and to this food.”

“Amen,” I said by myself.

“So what’s going on?” said Francis. “Is he with the gas industry?”

I said, “No. I’m on the opposite side of your parents.”

He smiled. “That explains it.”

“We found him in Boston,” said Beth.

“Oh,” Francis said. “How was the interview?”

She sighed and shrugged. “I don’t want to leave here.”

Francis turned and looked at the river or the scenery and turned back. “Well, if I go away to school it will be one less person here.”

“And to pay for you to go anywhere,” said Alan, “we’ll have to probably move to Boston.”

“Why not Mexico?” Francis said. “Or Africa?”

“What do you want to major in?” I asked.

“Everything,” he said.

“Maybe you can be a land surveyor,” I said.

“He just looked at me with his eyebrows up.

“They draw the perimeters of states.”

“Aran,” said Beth. “Why don’t you tell Francis about your environmental work?”

I gulped and looked around, in the windows of the house, in the trees. Alan said, “Sometimes it seems you’re looking for something, like the answers to our questions.”

“It’s hard to explain my situations,” I said. “But I volunteer with some groups. One organization pays me to blog.”

“Really?” Francis said.

“Yea, so, the free one is about the fracking issue, like crazy activism and stuff but the other is about Climate Justice.”

“Don’t you have to go to Bangladesh to do that?” said Alan.

“Yea well, actions happen in New York and stuff, and sometimes it’s really about extraction. So I’ve gone to fracking towns in Pennsylvania and destroyed mountains in Virginia.”

“Have you ever strapped yourself to a rig?” asked Francis.

I laughed and Alan looked concerned. “Francis,” he said.

I ate my mashed potatoes. Tina stared at me waiting for an answer. I looked at Alan. “I assume you’ve thought about that. I’m not sure that’s what you would do,” I said to Francis. “You’ve got to put yourself, and like ten other people on the road, or make a barrier around it with linked arms.” I could see Beth looking at me disapprovingly.

“What have you done?” Francis asked.

“Hunger strike, blocked a conference room, crossed a police line.”

Tina laughed. Beth said, “I think you just crossed a different line, putting thoughts in his mind.”


We were laughing in the car on our way to Binghamton. Tina said, “No, it’s not an airplane!”

Beth said, “Is it of the spider kind?”

“It’s not arachnid!” she said.

“Does it roam with the deer?” asked Francis.

“It’s not antelope!”

I was laughing when I saw in the rear view mirror a big, white van.

“Do you receive frequency with it?” said Alan.

“It’s not an antenna,” she said, exhausted, looking out the window.

After we drove into the increasingly developed scenery, Beth said, “Aran, you haven’t been playing for twenty minutes. I thought this was your favorite car game.”

Staring at the white van in the rear view mirror, I said, “Is it a chemical that sets things on fire?”

Tina couldn’t figure it out.

“Contact,” said Francis.

We counted down from three and both said, “Arsenic.”

“Okay,” said Tina. “The next letter is I.”

“Is it dry?” I said.

“We’re here,” said Alan. The white van pulled in next to us. There was a big rally in front of the building. There were over a hundred people, some holding signs that said, “Safe Water Now!” and “Stop the Fracking Hysteria!”

People wearing matching yellow t-shirts that said, “Respect our land rights,” and hats that said, “I support Safe Drilling,” walked through the crowd like rocks falling through a river.

Fortunately, we were able to sit down with each other. I waved to friends of mine that were standing with signs. The moderator called up the first testifier, Andrea Lewis.

She went to the podium. She said, “My friends. I’ve testified so often on this that I only want to say that I’ve learned that certain people will not believe us, that this is a nightmare waiting to happen, even though it’s a nightmare across the river. So I say that there are real solutions to our economic issues. People say they’re idealistic, or unrealistic, but I don’t see why. A sustainable economy is only unrealistic if we put it after this, and then it will be too late anyway. If the industry were here for you, they’d change their product. Thank you.”

All the water people cheered and the landowners booed.

“Next we have Arnold Solonger,” said the moderator.

I gasped. The man with curly, brown hair, wearing a yellow t-shirt said, “I do social research for Clear Skies Energy. It’s amazing what I’ve found. There are eco-terrorists, occultists, and people just trying to start wind turbine companies -that kill birds and ruin sceneries by the way- these people are creating false information for environmentalists. This water scare is a hoax that has fooled countless numbers of people. I have endless documentation to prove it and we’re going to email it to everyone who signed in here and the board. Thank you.”

Many of the landowners clapped. Someone yelled, “Yea, bubbling river hoax!”

The moderator called for order and called up Alan, our Alan Catoon. He made his way to the aisle. Someone handed him a
microphone. He said, “I live here just over in Sullivan, right by the Delaware. We are here because we do care about the beauty around us, the quiet, the wildlife. When we heard about this, we did research, lots of research from all angles before deciding that the risks were big in certain people’s minds, but not in ours. We see it for what it is. I think risks can happen, and this isn’t perfect, but I remember the hype about nuclear energy when I was a kid. This technology got off to a bad start. When my kids mess up, I don’t get rid of them, because they don’t repeat serious mistakes and no one wants to contaminate water. I appreciate the concerns of the environmentalists. I also know that we love our environment and that’s why we accept the opportunity to let us stay here. Thanks.”

People clapped. Some landowners stood up and clapped. The moderator said, “Now we have Aran Davis."

As I made my way to the aisle, police officers walked down the aisle from both sides. There were two at first and then others emerging. One said to me, “Aran Davis. You are under arrest for organizing an eco-terrorist scheme." He handcuffed me. "You have the right to remain silent.”

A sergeant said at the podium, “We apologize. We found our suspect. We’ll have him out quickly. This person has been organizing a scheme to wreak havoc on drill rigs and natural gas company sites.”

Andrea shouted, “That’s not true! Let him speak!”

All the environmentalists chanted, “Let Him Speak! Let Him Speak!”

“He has spoken enough,” said the sergeant over their voices.

As they escorted me towards the doors, several environmentalists blocked the door, even putting their pickets through the handles. “Clear aside,” a cop said. “You will all be arrested if you don’t clear aside.” More environmentalists blocked the doors until half the room, over a hundred were between me and the doors and another fifty tried to get there but a line of almost twenty police blocked them. The landowners made a lot of disapproving noise while the environmentalists chanted, “Let Him Speak! Let Him Speak!”

I wasn’t even sure then, what I would say. Beth shouted, “Francis!” I turned my head and saw Francis pushing himself into the mob. People pulled him in while police held him back. Finally he broke into the mob and disappeared.

Over the noise, the sergeant said, “Everyone blocking the exit will be charged with safety violations, refusing to obey police orders and other charges. He will not speak because he is a prisoner.”

Police cuffed people one at a time while they changed their chant to, “Davis Speaks or We Don’t Move! Davis Speaks or We Don’t Move!”

After some dozen people were cuffed, Alan said into podium microphone, “Please, everyone. I am a landowner. You are arresting my son. Please be quiet everyone. They are arresting my son.” The room quieted down. “Let me save my son, please,” he said. The room became totally quiet. He said, “I just testified. I’m a supporter of Fracking. I came with Aran Davis, and my son who is getting caught up in this. He’s only seventeen. So please just let Aran speak so no one has to get arrested.”

Some people cheered and applauded. The sergeant nodded and a microphone was held up to my face. I said, “Thanks Alan. I came here with these great people. And a lot of people here know I’m not an eco-terrorist, whatever that is. I’d like actually, to give up my spot to someone else in the Catoon family that has a different point of view but was maybe too shy to sign up, Francis Catoon.”

There was applause while the microphone passed around the mob to Francis who emerged with his hand in the air. He said, “I’m Francis. I grew up by the river in a small town. I might leave it if I can go to school. We are getting increasingly poor. I know I’m the younger one. I don’t know what will happen to us. I could be wrong, even. But I’m not going to give up the river.”


It’s been a day in jail and no one told me what happened to Francis or at the hearing afterwards. There are no computers here, but I’m going to copy this by hand and pass it around. It’s like a prison-blog. My pen name could be Turquoise Soldier. Hopefully someone will visit me while I still have a copy and then they could type it up and tag it with: “Prison,” “Fracking,” “Hearing,” “Delaware River,” “Eco-Justice,” “Burnt Letter,” “Contact,” “Upstater,” and “Eco-Terrorist.”