The Buds Are Calling

by Coyne Davies, B.

  The site was both delinquent and orphaned in the eyes of the EPA but prioritizing for remediation was clearly a dark art among federal officials. So Alice had been pressuring the city instead. Couldn’t they clean it up and send the bill to the EPA? Or sue the EPA? Everybody else did.

  “Mrs. Morgan, I saw the project outline you submitted and it is truly a lovely idea, but there are simply not the funds right now to put something like that in place.”

  Alice began to tap her meticulously manicured fingers on the table. “The funds? Or the will?”

  Rachel didn’t want to get into discussions about who was stalling the rehabilitation of this neighborhood and why. “Funds,” Rachel said.

  “That’s ridiculous. The city just spent over six million dollars . . .” And Alice went on to detail the expenditures used for the renovation of the recreation center and pool on the other side of town, miles away from where she lived. She also reminded the young planner of the monies blown on several other projects over the last half dozen years. Finally she got back to the subject of the community garden. “I priced out the topsoil. I even talked to a plumber. City water lines are already there even if they need repairing. I priced that out too. The funding required is quite modest. So frankly, Miss Clairmont, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Unfortunately, Mrs. Morgan, we don’t have a cent left in the budget to build the kind of community garden you’re talking about.” This was an exaggeration but necessary. “And because of the remaining contaminants you’ll need containers with liners. You’ll have to ensure the paths between the raised beds are properly finished so you can control runoff and ensure safety. You’ll have to bring in all new soil. We just don’t have the money for that right now.”

  Habitually beleaguered by the city’s stark realities, Rachel and the other planners really liked Alice. They would spontaneously smile when her name came up, even though she had only ever been cantankerous with them. The thing was, she wasn’t some big developer with dollar signs in her eyes hoping to buy up buildings cheap and hang on to them until the locals were driven out so they could throw up luxury condos or apartments. No, Alice was pushy for the right things. The things they thought they’d gone to school for.

  “You know what I say to all these excuses, Miss Clairmont?” Alice tilted her head back slightly and peered at Rachel. “Bull . . . shit!”

  Rachel suppressed a smile. “Mrs. Morgan, I find it as disappointing as you do. You know we approved your plan, in theory — that is with the adjustment I just mentioned, the containers and of course the pathways finished in some manner.”

  “So I bring you a new proposal and then you’ll fund it?”

  “Uh, no. But we won’t get in the way of you personally building it.”

  “Me?”

  “Well you and the people in your community willing to help.”

  “Miss Clairmont, it’s a community garden. Of course we’re going to build it. But we still need funds to get it started.” She stared at Rachel for a second and then began fishing around in her large leather handbag. “I have the full-color EPA flyer. Tells me how the various levels of government are going to chip in, how everybody’s so keen urban landscapes can be revitalized. Oh, and how the return on the dollar for investment in this kind of brownfield remediation is more than significant, benefiting all administrative branches and tiers.” Alice looked up briefly with an exaggerated smile that had all the sincerity and goodwill of a rattlesnake. “It draws a wonderful picture of universal participation. Have you seen these publications? They’re real nice. Oh, here it is.”

  “Mrs. Morgan, have you thought of crowdfunding?”

  Brochure in hand, Alice frowned at Rachel. “Is that what bankrupt governments resort to these days? Crowdfunding?”

  Rachel suggested it might bring in money from just about anywhere. And the planning department would help. They’d make sure all the right permits were issued, all the right materials were used, everything was inspected properly. And Rachel said she’d even show up after work with a trowel if that would help things along.

  That evening Alice called her son, Zack. She’d only called him once since he’d started his job with the big corporate law firm in the state capital. He’d been at the top of his graduating class and they’d nabbed him right away. He was, bless him, also technically savvy, so Alice wanted to ask him if he’d have time to help her set up the crowdfunding website. She wanted it to be attractive. Convincing too, and Zack excelled at being convincing.

  “Mom! What a cool coincidence. I was just going to call you.”

  “Good news I hope.” Alice adored Zack’s current girlfriend and in the back of her mind hoped they’d decide to settle down or at least not split up. He never seemed to have much luck with girlfriends sticking around.

  “Guess it depends on how you look at it,” Zack said. “It’s . . . interesting!”

  Alice knew from the tone it wouldn’t be anything to do with the girlfriend.

  “Mom, I have a favor to ask.”

  “Oh?” He’d never asked for a “favor” before. He’d just said, “Mom, is it okay if I bring home three weeks of laundry?” Or “Would you be your celestial self and cosign this car loan for me?”

  “So,” Zack continued, “you know the state is now allowing dispensaries for medical marijuana . . .”

  “I heard about that. My staff make a lot of jokes about it.”

  “No doubt!” Her son paused, trying to figure the best approach. It would be a tough sell but it could aid his progress at the firm. And chances were nothing would go further than the first step anyway. “So the firm is putting in an application for a registration. You know, to operate medical marijuana dispensaries and a cultivation and manufacturing facility. It’s all tied in with this wealthy woman’s estate the senior partner manages.”

  “That is interesting, I guess.”

  “Anyway, there will likely be hundreds of applications so our chances for getting the registration are very slim. But here’s where you come in. They want a pharmacist to help them with the application process.”

  “Oh, honey. I’m pretty sure I can’t do that. I haven’t read any of the literature on marijuana. I know there’ve been some studies but not enough to get it past the FDA. It’s not anything I’ve ever really looked at.”

  “Well . . .”

  “Really I don’t know about it. Mostly it’s a nuisance and a problem around here. You know that. I don’t think I can help you.”

  “No, that’s okay. You don’t have to know anything about marijuana. It’s just, the firm figures the more they use a pharmaceutical model for the dispensaries, the better the chance of success. Some of the other states already require pharmacists. I told them I had just the right mom for that!”

  “So you’ve already offered up your mother?”

  “No, Mom. I just said I’d talk to you.”

  “I see. And this application entails what exactly?”

  “Well . . . you need to read the regulations and what the team comes up with. Then you can change, you know, where they don’t quite have it described correctly for how you’d run a pharmacy.”

  “I guess that sounds easy enough.”

  Zack was very appreciative. And when she told him about the crowdfunding, he offered to get the website up and running for her that very next weekend.

  #

  Saturday morning, Alice finally got around to reviewing the documents her son had sent. She started with the state code, the new regulations on cannabis dispensaries. Lord, they were tedious and the state was profoundly schizophrenic. On one hand, authorities were bent on ensuring the availability of safe product, but on the other, they still considered the whole activity criminal. The restrictions around cannabis production and sale were more elaborate than those for opiates sold in regular pharmacies. Well isn’t that something, Alice thought. The state never failed to surprise. Alice soon needed a break to keep her eyes open. “Wonder how much all this
is going to cost?” she said to the coffee pot.

  Alice continued her reading and eventually got around to the application itself. She was into it a mere five minutes when she let out a gasp. She felt her blood pressure rising. She blinked to keep her eyes from exploding out of her head. She reached for her phone and practically put her back out in the frenzied effort. She pounded on her son’s number so hard she broke one of her fingernails and produced a hairline crack in the smartphone’s screen.

  “Hi, Mom,” her son answered innocently enough.

  “You want me to sell weed? Tell me! What did I do wrong?”

  “Mom. Please, be calm!”

  “Calm? You want me to sign this! Send my name to the state authorities letting them know I’m willing to deal marijuana. Speaking of which, what exactly have you been on lately?”

  “You’re overreacting!”

  “Are you stupid?”

  “Mom!”

  “You don’t think they’ll notice what part of town I live in?”

  “Luther thinks that’s what’s perfect about it. And you have exactly the right experience. You’d do it right. Everything by the regulations and . . . and you know what happens in the states where it’s better accessed and regulated?”

  “I certainly do not.”

  “The dealers leave town!”

  “Well, I don’t know where your head is. Doesn’t matter where the dealers are. Neighborhood’s still on the radar. And the people in it. Oh yeah, I forgot . . . you didn’t have to grow up in a neighborhood where ‘spread ’em,’ not hip-hop, was the dance everybody got good at. Yeah, ’cause you know, just comes natural to us folk!”

  “Mom!”

  “You know how many families around here been destroyed by drugs? By the war on drugs? And you know most were Black, right? Let me guess. You’re the only brother in that law firm and you—”

  “Mom! You’re taking this all wrong.”

  “I’m taking it as I see it, Zack. I thought laws on selling your mother down the river got changed a few years back! Did I miss something?”

  “Mom! We’re on the same side.”

  “No, we most definitely are not!”

  “Just listen for a minute. This is the thing you need to stand for. We need change! You think for a minute the laws on marijuana weren’t tied to racism to begin with? Goes right back to the nineteen thirties. Check out the history, Mom.”

  “I’m sure it’s fascinating.”

  “It’s a nightmare! You know the department that’s now the DEA was created by the same guy who headed up the Department of Prohibition? He was losing his old job so he made up a new one. Anslinger. You ever heard of him?”

  “No.”

  “Yeah, well he started the lies.”

  “I don’t care what he started. I’ve seen the people who get finished.”

  “Mom, it’s important! This guy Anslinger, this fraud, he fabricated all sorts of crap about weed. He wrote it was harmless, before his job was at stake. Later in the thirties he starts a war on it so he can head up the offensive. It’s a war on hemp too. Cotton and timber industries love it. Nylon is just coming onto the market so the oil industries back him too. William Randolph Hearst, timber giant and newspaper mogul, loves him in particular. Hearst revved up the propaganda machine and Anslinger, he just got creative with the facts to suit the times. About violence and weed, sex and weed, insanity and weed, most of it targeting race. So he’d hang on to his job. Keep rubbing shoulders with the ruling class. Reify the racial caste system and consolidate white prejudice.” Her son was just hitting his stride.

  “Spare me, Zack.”

  “Context is crucial, Mom. You taught me that.”

  Alice held the phone a few inches from her ear. It barely diminished the intensity coming through.

  “He claimed it made people violent. You know they used marijuana on the Caribbean plantations to keep slaves docile! All these lies he conveniently dished up. He played on white fear so he could put more Black people in jail. And even where the law wasn’t overtly prejudiced that’s who they targeted for enforcement. More free labor for the state. And then the drug war got revitalized under Nixon. Convenience again, Mom. They could target civil rights and the antiwar movements. All those years of politicians competing for who could be tougher on crime, and you know where that landed us. Eighty-some years of this bullshit! Now we have streamlined institutionalized slavery in the prison system. Black people use less weed than whites but are ten times more likely to be arrested for it. How much longer you want this kind of injustice to continue? Embrace the change, Mom.” Her son cleared his throat, and then his voice took on a steely tone. “And you lied when you said you didn’t know anything about weed. I heard what you did for the Palmers. Dad told me about it. So what have you got to say about that?”

  Alice took a breath. The Palmers were their neighbors when the children were small. They had a sick little girl and the doctors finally gave up on her. Family almost went broke trying various drugs. Alice had helped them out whenever she could. One day she’d noticed an article in an old journal from the seventies that talked about treating seizures with marijuana and it took her back to when she was a very little girl. She’d watched several times as her grandmother prepared her Great Aunt Evelyn’s “special secret medicine.” Aunt Evelyn was bedridden, not very coherent, and lived more or less in a bedroom at the back of Alice’s grandmother’s house. Every so often, her grandmother’s friend would drop off a package of dried plants and her grandmother would grind them up. She’d pour a little vodka or rum on the ground plants and let it sit for a couple of hours. She’d pour off all the alcohol and put it aside. Then she put the plant mash in a couple of cups of cooking oil and let it heat up. Not too hot and never so the plants sizzled. She’d keep it hot on a warming plate and let it sit overnight. Occasionally she’d give it a stir. The mixture was strained the next day and the oil from it was added to the saved alcohol. “Gotta shake it real good. Teaspoon with her juice in the mornin’ helps the fits,” her grandmother said. Alice realized years later the plants were marijuana.

  So Alice had passed this information on to the Palmers. The little girl didn’t live past the age of seven but at least her last four years weren’t plagued with seizures every fifteen minutes. Her parents could have been hauled away for illegal possession of course, abusing the child and who knows what else. And maybe Alice would have lost her license or worse at the time if word ever got out she’d given them the idea and a recipe to boot.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Alice huffed. “And besides it’s irrelevant.”

  “No it’s not. You know this stuff works whatever else it may be, it’s medicine. And you deal with medicine. Besides you handle way worse stuff.”

  Alice was starting to fume. She stared at her broken nail.

  “Oxycodone, fentanyl, morphine, tramadol to name a few. Am I right? And what about all those drugs the FDA cleared, the ones that were just fine and made billions until the patents ran out and then they published all the adverse reactions, the complications, the death statistics. People don’t die from marijuana overdoses. You know that.”

  Alice took the phone away from her ear and put it down on the kitchen counter without putting it on speaker mode. While her son’s voice squeaked away, she sighed and poured herself another cup of coffee before picking the handset up again.

  “And you know, Mom, this isn’t a bad law firm I work for, despite what you might think about the demographics. I mentioned your project to Luther and he had a talk with the senior partners. Every year the firm donates to a worthy cause whether or not it’s tax deductible. They’ve just picked your community garden as the worthy cause this year. What do you think of that? That’s twenty thousand, Mom, right away into your crowdfund account.”

  Alice maintained her silence but then finally said, “You mean they donate if I sign the application.”

  “No. They’re donating regardless. They’ve already
allocated the funds. I saw the statements yesterday. And they’ll pay you on top of that. A consultation fee for the time you spend on the application.” Her son let this sink in. It was all true. He had however left out the small detail that Luther already thought she was on board with everything. Zack was supposed to set up a telephone conference with Alice and the team in the next couple of weeks.

  “This is a deal with the devil. Brokered by my own son!”

  “You know that’s ridiculous. And you know what we’re doing here is right.”

  “I know nothing of the kind. All this gobbledygook you’re cultivating like a bad seed. Trying to sell me on it . . .”

  “Look it up. Think about it.”

  “Fine.” Alice spat the word and hung up.

  Her son called her back the next day with more rehearsed indignation on the obvious link between oppression and the history of weed, implying that only her participation could help remedy centuries of disgrace.

  But Alice was in no better mood for his soapbox sermon. She hung up on him again.

  #

  It took Alice almost a full week to come close to understanding what might be in her son’s head to offer her up like sacrificial hamburger. All for the benefit of some rich white woman’s marijuana operation. Just thinking about it made Alice’s head feel like it was going through a meat grinder. Marijuana, if not the cause, was at least on the scene of practically every tragedy she personally witnessed. Families ripped asunder, good lives ruined. Hell, people didn’t even have to use drugs, they just had to own the phone where the boyfriend made the call to the dealer. And what about her cousin Gerome? Wouldn’t hurt a fly ’til they locked him away for possession. And no chance in hell to turn anything around when he got out. Checkin’ the box didn’t exactly pave the road to success. Couldn’t even get a place to live. Then he did become a criminal.

  Marijuana was a weed all right. A noxious one. A scourge species with dubious or at least complicated medicinal value. No pharmacist in their right mind would waste their time with it. Would they? Let alone sign their name to something that went straight to the state authorities. One minute her son was bemoaning the unbearable whiteness of the new commercial marijuana industry while the brothers and sisters filling up the jails still paid the price for it all, and the next he was endorsing it for apparently the same reasons. “It’s time to shut down Slaves Incorporated!” he barked at her. “You know there’s more Black men incarcerated now than there were slaves before the Civil War!”