The End of the Dream (7 page)

It had to be broken down because he knew he would never be able to afford anything in Fairfax County that was even faintly livable. For the moment, though, he had to make do with, somewhat ironically, an old pie truck. He fixed that up, lived in it, and sold it for $1,500.

Then he bought a van from his old coach, Ed Zuraw. He saved his summer money, and fitted out his van as a studio. It doubled as his home.

Kevin Meyers and his brother Steve shared similar talent and ambition, but Steve was way ahead of Kevin in terms of selling his work. Even with the good traits they shared, they also seemed to share a kind of family curse, when things looked bright, something always came along to cast a pall. Much to the amazement of the villagers in Carrara, Steve had renovated an old building in the Italian hamlet where he lived. He had rescued what seemed to be an unsalvageable structure and made it into a home and studio. He loved his studio, his family, and his career. It was 1982 when Steve’s steady climb to critical acclaim and fortune as a sculptor in Italy hit several broken steps. A propane explosion in a kiln destroyed his home, all of his works in progress and most of his personal possessions, along with irreplaceable works of art. It was a tremendous blow for Steve.

He had wrenched something out of nothing, made it into a studio and home full of sunlight, only to have it disappear in one terrible moment.
 
Steve didn’t have the money or the heart to rebuild. While Maureen and their daughter waited in Italy, L Steve returned to America to try to find a way to sell art pieces on commission. He was welcomed into galleriesin Washington, DC, New York, Houston, just as he had been welcomed in Oslo, Milano, Stuttgart, and Paris. It would be slow, he knew but he would make it all the way back and beyond. Steve Meyers returned to Italy, and boxed up everything he had left. He shipped his belongings to Kevin to store, and, in the spring of 1983, Steve brought Maureen and Cara to Virginia. They lived one month with Joanna, while Steve looked for an old house he could afford. He was in his early thirties, strong and healthy, and he believed he could make a new life for his family. Steve found an old farmhouse that needed massive clean-up and carpentry work in Great Falls, Virginia close to where Kevin hoped to find a place. He transformed it into both a home and a studio.
 
But his hope of recouping his losses and keeping his “family” together soon faded.

Suddenly, nothing was right. His relationship with Maureen was rocky and growing more so every day. They had lost everything that had made their lives romantic and fulfilling. It was as if the explosion had blown up more than their physical possessions, it had blasted them apart too.
 
Living day after day in the midst of disarray and building supplies, it was almost impossible to remember their sunny studio in Italy. Their relationship shriveled like a grape left too long to ripen in the sun.
 
Maureen told Steve she no longer wanted to live with him. He stared at her uncomprehendingly as he realized all that would mean. He thought he could not bear to live without Cara. But, dully, he knew he would have to. Alone, he couldn’t take care of her. The most he could hope for would be visits. Nothing would ever be the same again. Steve finished the farmhouse so that it was pleasant and quite livable and left Maureen and Cara there while he returned to Italy to salvage a few last pieces from his ruined studio in Carrara. In May of 1984, Steve had an exhibition of his work by the BMS Studio d’arte at the Spoleto Festival.
 
Dana and Peter Gardner had divorced, but Peter was still a friend and patron, and he wrote the cover notes of the brochure that described Steve’s work, In confronting the works of Steven Meyers for the first time, one is struck by the apparent diversity of styles. Yet .

.. there is a subtle denominator which makes viewing the sculptures a coherent experience.. .. The use of light, as if the illumination of matter by spirit heighten(s) our awareness of shadow.. .. At The National Academy of Design in New York, the recent exhibition of Meyers’ “The Tomb of Lazarus” threw this aspect of his work into dramatic relief. The white marble was once again worked to translucency.. ..
 
These themes of love, death, spirit and matter are always in Meyers’ sculpture to varying degrees.. .. Inspired by great poets and writers, Steve Meyers often referred to classic literature to explain his work.
 
One piece was inspired by H. Miller’s poem, “Fragment, “, we are never whole again, but living in fragments And all our parts separated by thinnest membrane. Steve and Maureen were separated by more than that.
 
If either of them had hoped that absence might make them realize that they really did love each other, they were disappointed. It really was over between them. Lonely, Steve had met another woman while he was traveling in Italya woman who had been living in Brazil. Her name was Diana Gerhart. * There was definitely an attraction between them, and Steve hoped they would meet again. At least their meeting showed him that it was possible for him to find love again. In the meantime, he missed his daughter terribly.

Steve Meyers didn’t know Scott Scurlock. He had never gone to high school in Reston, and he’d never really lived there at all. When he first moved to Virginia, he had gone to college, and then he had headed to Europe. He may have heard Scott’s name as a friend that Kevin had lived with in Hawaii but he would have known nothing about him. Steve planned to gather up whatever he had left in Italy, return to the United States, and find a way to revive his career. His fondest hope was to win custody of Cara, although he didn’t think that would ever be possible.

When it first burst from the forest floor in the fall of 1971,

Evergreen State College in the Washington State capital of Olympia, was criticized by the state’s more staid and established colleges.
 
Detractors called it a “kiddy college, “ and claimed Evergreen was only for hippies and dropouts who weren’t really serious about getting an education. Evergreen did attract artists and musicians and freethinkers, but it would one day take a respected place in the hierarchy of higher education in the Pacific Northwest. Having been raised in a home where avant garde thinking prevailed, it wasn’t surprising that Scott Scurlock was attracted to Evergreen. Nobody in his family was a conformist, and he himself certainly was not. Scott had had his two years living the life of a carefree bachelor in Hawaii, with more adventures than most men ever know. He had soon grown bored with his Fairfax County building inspector job. Bill Scurlock thought it was time that Scott settled down to studying, and he approved of his enrolling at Evergreen in 1978. If Scott ever hoped to find a serious job, he was going to need a four-year degree. Scott assured his father that he would get his bachelor’s degree. He had lost enthusiasm about getting his MD. He had scholarships and loans when he entered Evergreen to study biochemistry.
 
The Evergreen College campus in the late seventies scarcely resembled any other in America. It was still the forest primeval it had been only a short time before. Fir and cedar trees crowded next to paths between buildings, and huge stumps remained from early logging days. When Scott Scurlock started there in the early 1980s, it was as verdant a forest as a “tree hugger” could wish for.

Scott first lived in student housing, and then he found a little gray house to rent on Overhulse Road NW outside of Olympia.

He was attracted to the house because it sat on nineteen heavily treed acres, close to Evergreen but with a comforting sense of complete isolation from civilization. Although Scott Scurlock had survived the cliff jumping, and other daring stunts in Hawaii, he came close to death in Olympia. “Scott was driving his Volkswagen bug and he almost died in it, “ a friend remembered. “A truck ran a red light and creamed him. He scooted right underneath the rig and it almost took his head off. The bug was smashedi mean smashed, he should have died.

That was his moment. I think his angels saved him.” After a brief hospitalization, Scott Scurlock was as good as new. But the accident did not slow him down or sober him. He wasn’t a typical college kid, he was nearly twenty-five and he was used to traveling and living a high life.

College scholarships weren’t going to pay for that. Scott had always had a knack for making friends. He kept those he had even though his antics some times caused temporary estrangement sand he made new friends constantly. He was the center of any number of social circles.

There was an energya vibrancy that surrounded him. As he moved through his twenties, Scott Scurlock only grew more handsome. With his thick and wavy dark hair and perfectly balanced chiseled features, he was catnip to women. And he loved women in great numbers. It may not have been in him to maintain a monogamous relationship, or it may have only been that he had not found the one woman who was right for him.

But Scott always had male friends too. As much as he loved women, he probably was more comfortable in the company of his male buddies.

While Scott studied chemistry at Evergreen, he was also learning how to augment his income by reducing an intricate chemical formula into a much-sought after product, crystal meth. “Crystal meth” is a delicately distilled form of methamphetamine, a popular and expensive street drug.

It is, essentially, “speed.” The drug accelerates users’ metabolism, generates a feeling of well-being and power, and negatesat least for a time the need for sleep.

Scott wouldn’t be producing the stuff solely for personal use or just for his friends. If he was going to distill purified speed and take the risks that came with the process, he would have to set up an efficient distribution system. Scott had met someone on the campus, a tall man with waist-length hair, who taught him everything he needed to know about extracting the methamphetamine from the prescribed chemicals.
 
Together, they worked on what Scott would always call his “experiments, “ pretending to be zealous students carrying out class projects. The money that would inevitably result from Scott’s hidden lab would pay for the thing he loved most, travel. Scott had always had itchy feet.

Even while he was attending college at Evergreen, he took off as often as he could, determined to travel the world over. Kevin Meyers crisscrossed America and Canada often in his van. He had named it “Az land” for the magic lion full of energy and strength in the Chronicles of Narnia. He left Banff and headed for Washington State.

He hadn’t seen Scott Scurlock for more than three years, but he knew he lived in Olympia and he had his address. Kevin arrived late one night and parked beside a Volkswagen outside the small gray house. He fell asleep in the van, waking the next morning to the sound of someone outside. Sliding the side window open, Kevin peered out and saw Scott.

He was sitting on the bumper of the Volkswagen putting on a pair of Converse tennis shoes. Time had seemingly stood still. Scott was wearing the same cheap shoes he’d worn back in the days of gang tag when they were in junior high the same shoes he’d worn in The Shire days.

Scott was unaware that Kevin was watching him he didn’t even know he was there, and he apparently hadn’t noticed the Virginia tags on Az land.
 
Kevin poked his head out and shouted, “You can’t . see the wizard today! “ a line from a long-standing joke between them.

Scott looked up and grinned. “Bubba! “

“The past was forgotten, “ Kevin recalled.. “All the bad stuff about the marijuana and losing The Shire. It had been years, but we were friends again. He was the same Scott I’d always known.” Or so Kevin hoped. Scott took Kevin to the Evergreen campus and showed him around. He ended the tour by taking Kevin to his private lab.

He laughed as he pointed to the sign on the door, it was the international symbol that indicates the presence of radioactivity.

He told his old friend that he kept it there to be sure he had privacy.

In retrospect, Kevin realized that Scott was testing him when he took him into the lab. “He was watching me to see if I saw anything unusual about the place. I didn’t have any idea what you were supposed to have in a chemistry lab. It looked normal enough to me.” During Kevin’s visit, he would sit on a stool in the tiny lab and work on watercolors while Scott did whatever it was he needed to do on his “experiments.” He didn’t know that they were in a bootleg laboratory and that the radioactive sign was to keep anyone from checking it out, including the college janitors. Inside, Scott Scurlock was manufacturing a vital ingredient of crystal meth, using the facilities and the chemicals that belonged to Evergreen State College. “Scott made drugs right there under their noses, “ Kevin recalled. “Even all these years later, they’re probably going to freak when they find out. I found out later that he had his own set of keys to most of the rooms in the chemistry building.
 
He got everything he needed. The school taught him chemistry, and he used it.” If Scott needed something that was behind one of the few doors he didn’t have a key for, he used skills he’d learned back on the days of gang tag in Reston. He would crawl through the ceiling and along the rafters, taking apart heating ducts if he had to, and dropping down into nearby labs to take what he needed.

Nobody ever suspected him, nobody even missed what he took. It was ironic. Scott Scurlock was a student who had the intelligence and, perhaps more importantly, the intellectual curiosity and innovative ability to work on mankind’s problems this was a man who read scientific journals avidly. But he chose to make drugs instead of helping humanity.
 
Even though he often talked about the need to find cures for AIDS and cancer, Scott was too busy filling the orders of drug dealers he had contacted in and around Olympia to do more than talk. Kevin inadvertently came close to blowing Scott’s cover. He forgot his paint kit one day and went to Scott’s lab. The door was locked and he asked one of the janitors to let him in so he could retrieve it. The janitor didn’t notice anything unusual either. “Boy, was Scott mad at me when I told him I’d had the janitor let me in. And I still didn’t know why.” Scott was making money simply from selling a vital component of crystal meth, and that, he told friends he trusted, was the most important thing to him. That was where he got the drive to study as hard as he did. “These are the keys that are going to make me money, “ he bragged.
 
“All these students are here, trying to get some stupid degree. Who wants a degree? What are you going to do with it? Go get a job for $45,000 or $50,000 a year with a chemical company, and you’ll be sitting there putting test tubes in line and growing things in petri dishes.
 
Bullshit. That’s boring.” Even more than his revulsion at the thought of being strapped for money, was Scotty Scurlock’s horror at being bored.
 
He had rarely been bored in his life. Everything had come easy for him good looks, health, excitement, pleasure, beautiful women, and sex.
 
Scott never did get his college degree although he went to classes regularly or sporadically at Evergreen for six years. Steve Meyers left Italy for what he believed would be the last time in 1984. His travels took him to Paris, and there he found Diana Gerhart. He had not forgotten her.