Leather Poet Hunter (and a Heater)
David Banicki's glorious Field Notebooks (Water Damaged), my tour guide to the macabre and the inexplicable, has finally spit out a clue that isn't just a drawing of a dragon with solar indigestion. It says, with all the pomp of announcing a main course: "A poet with leather and flesh."
Poetry. Leather. Flesh. It sounds like the menu of a very dubious themed restaurant.
With the solemnity of a low-grade detective, I march back to the Forbes Library, my makeshift office. The mission: cross-reference keywords until I find our man. I type into the search terminal, with the dexterity of a bear in mittens:
"Heaney" + "leather" + "meat" + "poet" + "Northampton" + "Broad Brook" + "please work"
And lo and behold, miracle of miracles, the machine spits out a name: Jasper Lee Heaney. A leatherworker. A saddlemaker. A saddlemaker. From Hadley.
Hadley! Across the river! A world of (relative) civilization where perhaps there are walls and heaters.
Deep investigation reveals that good old Jasper wasn't limited to horse saddles. No, sir. Diving into the depths of the internet (also known as page 2 of Google), I discover that Mr. Heaney's talent was celebrated in very specific forums. Forums for... "leather daddies." Posts from the 2000s praise his "skill" and "professionalism" in crafting... fetish wear.
A poet of leather and flesh, indeed. Quite literally.
Then things get dark (because of course they do). Online news reports that Jasper Heaney died four years ago. And that his house burned down last year.
Great. My leather poet is dead, and his workshop/pleasure mansion is a pile of ashes. Details? Zero. Of course not. Because nothing in this damn hunt can be easy.
Looks like I'll have to cross the river to Hadley. Maybe the ashes still hold secrets. Or, who knows, a remaining fireproof leather coat.
But then reality, once again, slaps me in the face with an icy iron glove. How many days have I spent on the streets? Three? Five? A decade? Time loses meaning when you're busy trying not to turn into a werewolf popsicle.
The cold, hard truth is this: not even a werewolf can survive a New England winter without a roof over his head. My regenerative powers are so impaired that a common cold would probably kill me. I need a place. A hole. A basement. ANYTHING with four walls and, preferably, a heater that doesn't run on old newspaper.
The hunt for the leather poet will have to wait. The next mission, the most epic of all, is the most humble: FIND A PLACE TO SLEEP THAT ISN'T A CONTAINER.
Next: Operation Don't Turn Into Dry Ice.