The cleanup man

T

he men in canary yellow suits haul everything the meth users left behind out of the contaminated house. A purple camo chair, children’s toys, dirty blankets — all of it polluted with meth — are dragged through a screen door, down the patio stairs and into a dumpster’s maw. A pair of photo albums is all the men leave untouched. The team of meth cleaners try never to throw away what can't be replaced.

A ginger-haired boy, maybe 12, grins up from the albums’ pages. There are pictures of a happy couple with full smiles, family obituaries clipped from newspapers and pages ripped out of a book, with love notes written in the margins.

When the couple in the photographs darted, they left not only a specter of ruined family, but a house in a state of ruin. To be habitable again, the house needs a state-approved cleaner such as Ryan Weaver.

In rural Indiana, meth is a constant scourge. Regular users don’t destroy only their bodies, but their homes with the drug.

Indiana’s 1,471 meth labs seized in 2014 were the most of any state, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. For at least the past decade, which is as long as the DEA has made such data public, Indiana has been among the top four states in lab seizures.

In Indiana, many of those properties lie dormant for years. Weaver and his team bring some of those places back from the abyss. The job pays well, but for Weaver, 39, the work is a public service.

“Most people I deal with are victims,” he said. “I’m offering a service that’s giving them their place back.”

In spite of the destruction meth users leave in their wake, he offers something invaluable: a clean slate.

Weaver’s pickup truck and a white van are parked in the little green house’s gravel drive in Idaville, Indiana, an unincorporated town with a population of 461, 90 miles northwest of Indianapolis.

The team cleans mostly in small towns, where meth is most prevalent. Weaver has only ever had two cleanup jobs in Indianapolis, despite Frankfort being less than an hour away.

The team has joked about putting a “Methbusters” sticker on the van, but Weaver doesn’t want to attract too much unwelcome attention.

Though the house has damages that require thousands of dollars to repair, nothing seems out of place, aside from a neon orange notice plastered on the door. The police officers put up the warning sign when they found a meth lab inside.

“A clandestine laboratory for the manufacture of illegal drugs and/or hazardous chemicals was seized at this location on 9/14/15,” the sign reads. “There may still be hazardous substances, contamination or waste products on this property.”

Weaver and his team are careful, otherwise they could begin to feel the lingering effects of meth lying invisible on the walls, in the floorboards, in the air conditioning unit.

Each of Weaver’s three jobs puts him in a certain amount of danger. He spends 10 days of his month as a firefighter, extinguishing fires and rushing overdose cases to the hospital. Two more days per month, he trains with the local SWAT team as the medic. His remaining time is spent running Bio Recovery Specialists, his meth cleanup company.

For the house in Idaville, the bulk of the work is in clearing out the contaminated insulation coating in the attic that, judging by the high levels when Weaver tested, was the former tenants’ prime spot for meth cooking.

Adam Hoke, one of Weaver’s employees, scrapes loose pieces of insulation in the crevices of the attic into his hands and tosses them into a garbage bag. He struggles to breathe through his clogged respirator.

A loose nail hidden in the insulation breaks through the plastic hazmat suit and scrapes his knee. He'll have to change into a new suit.

“Damn meth heads,” he says.

The team fills garbage bag after thick, industrial-sized garbage bag until most of the insulation is gone. They still need to vacuum every dust particle they can reach, spray chemicals, scrub the walls, ceiling and floor and add a layer of paint. Every room that tested hot, or with high levels of meth, will need the same treatment.

For the moment, Hoke needs a break.

On the patio, he unzips to the waist and pulls off a top layer of gloves. Everyone is drenched in sweat — unluckily for them, the airtight plastic suit holds in moisture. Each of the men, except Weaver, who doesn’t smoke, pull cigarettes out of their pockets and pass around a lighter.

Trucks driving by kick up clouds of dust that settle over the porch. Every once in a while, the drivers slow down to peer at the team of men.

“I bet you 20 bucks they wave,” Hoke said, and they do. This is the part of Indiana where it’s unthinkable not to be friendly, even to strangers in yellow suits.

Growing up in Frankfort, Indiana, Weaver never noticed meth in his community. He was voted “Most Naive” by his class in high school. After graduating from college, meth became more a part of his life.

His sister’s boyfriend was arrested on meth charges after police found the drug inside their house. Weaver’s sister was giving birth to her second daughter at the hospital.

Though Weaver said his sister was unaware meth was being used in her house, the police transferred custody of her two daughters to Weaver’s parents, where the children stayed for about six months during the police investigation.

Her boyfriend had been cooking near the furnace in the garage. Noxious meth residue spread to the rest of the house through the vents. Every room had to be stripped to its bones.

“She lost almost everything,” Weaver said.

It was about a year later that Weaver began cleaning meth houses as a side job.

In the first house he ever cleaned, the kid’s room had the highest levels of meth. He was told the room belonged to a 6 or 7-year-old boy. He thought about his own son, who was about the same age at the time, as he threw away children’s blankets and toys.

“I pictured having to throw away everything my son has ever owned and ever loved,” he said.

The houses with kids are always the hardest for him to clean. Weaver’s first daughter was born when he was 20. He later married a different woman and had two daughters and a son.

The two divorced in May of last year and left Weaver with partial custody of his three youngest kids.

He prays with them every night. If they’re staying with their mother, they say prayers over the phone. On the nights they’re not at home, he closes their bedroom doors.

“I don’t like walking past that empty room,” he said. “I come home to a dog. She’s great to come home to, but it’s not what I wanted for my life.”

***

Driving down Route 24 in northern Indiana, it’s possible to leave Idaville before realizing you’ve arrived.

The town is nestled in between cornfields. There’s no gas station, no stoplight, only a grain elevator and a sleepy restaurant, called the Idaville Diner. Weaver describes it as “podunk, never-heard-of-it ‘ville.”

Tom Geisler, who has lived in Idaville for 67 years, said he prefers to remember the town as it was in 1960, at its centennial. He recalled bowler hats and gowns, beards and grown-out whiskers.

“You knew everybody and you knew their dog,” Geisler said.