The Buds Are Calling

by Coyne Davies, B.

  Back home in the city, Alice already had several potential clients and a number of people with a range of problems who were interested in trying marijuana. If the CannRose-Medi grow facility could get its act together and provide her with something to sell, she figured the two dispensaries would do well. As it was, they just sat looking discreet — which they were supposed to according to the regulations — but essentially useless, which was not according to regulations. CannRose still hadn’t even hired a chemist or extraction technician to get the derivatives happening. If the grow facility didn’t deliver by the revised state deadline, CannRose-Medi might have to cease operations altogether.

  It was frustrating. People were buying off the street. One elderly woman had terrible arthritis and got her supply from her nephew who was selling anything and everything. Just a matter of time before the law caught up to him and his aunt too. According to local gossip he gave his aunt a one-hundred-percent discount and she baked laced cookies and brownies for him in return. They were a big hit. Alice also heard that the father of an autistic boy was bringing oil across state lines. He worried about being arrested on one of these drug runs or that the stock of that particular oil would run out. It was the only thing that had helped his boy. The state-approved oils and tinctures were still a few months away, though Alice had heard one dispensary was way ahead in that regard. They’d have something within the month. Alice hoped it might work for that autistic child even if she wasn’t the one selling it.

  The neighborhood case that really disturbed her though was a young immigrant family. The father looked anxious and aged beyond his years and the wife seemed chronically exhausted. They had a baby, a five-year-old and a very sick toddler. The toddler was much like the Palmers’ child, the one she’d helped out years ago. The little girl in this family had over a hundred seizures a day. At three she hadn’t developed much past a baby and could barely sit up. The woman had the child strapped into a stroller and often brought her into the drugstore.

  “Ma’am, you think pot help my baby?”

  “Maybe. I think it could,” Alice said.

  “But they take my husband in jail. They send us back. Yes?”

  “You have to get the child registered. Then you can buy it for her.”

  “Ma’am, where I can buy this?”

  “You have to go to a doctor.”

  “Doctor first,” the woman said.

  “Yes. Doctor first. The doctor can register your child.”

  “But city social worker say we go in jail.”

  Alice took her time explaining about the state dispensaries and how the system would work. She even let the woman know that she would be involved with one of the dispensaries in the city and could help her once it was up and running. After a while and a few smiles at her own confusion, the woman finally appeared to understand. She looked hopeful for a few moments. Then she asked how much it would cost. Alice told her what CannRose would be charging and the woman’s face fell and she slowly shook her head. Alice said she would give the woman a discount and she would also ask the people who owned CannRose to lower the price even more for her. Alice even told her that once she got registered she could grow her own plants right away. “That might be much cheaper.”

  “Ah!” the woman’s eyes lit up. “I can grow in garden! In Paint Patches!”

  “No!” Alice had nearly jumped out of her chair at this suggestion. She envisioned the DEA arriving like grim reapers in black SUVs ripping everything out of the raised beds. “No. No pot in that garden,” Alice said with panic in her voice. “You grow the pot at home. Inside the house.”

  “Grow inside house? Not smart. Better is garden.”

  “No!” Alice said. “You could land in jail if you grow in Paint Patches.”

  “Okay.” The woman looked exhausted again. Alice was exhausted by that time too. The toddler started having another seizure and so the woman quickly left.

  That had all happened four months ago and Alice felt uncomfortable every time the woman came into the store now because she still didn’t have any good news for her.

  Alice checked the time again. If Caldwell didn’t show up in the next five minutes she was leaving. Alice found Caldwell’s concerns insulting. It wasn’t as if she had no experience. The way she saw it, she sure as hell had a lot more than Caldwell. In fact she couldn’t make out what Caldwell’s background was and she was beginning to think it maybe wasn’t much. Luther had intimated Caldwell was good at the legwork . . . and footwork too — “Just humor him,” Luther had suggested. But Alice wasn’t about to waste more of her day humoring anybody. Especially somebody who talked that much and said so little. Alice figured Caldwell’s behavior would be crazy-making if you had to deal with him for any length of time. She wondered if Lydia was damaged from having lived with the man for two years or if she was just naturally harebrained. Still, Alice quite liked Lydia. She’d never heard her say a harsh word about anybody or to anybody even during the most fractious of discussions. And that was a rare thing.

  Alice was about to leave when she saw Caldwell huffing up the street.

  “You didn’t tell me Baron Street had an east and a west,” he said. “I’ve been running for ten blocks.”

  Alice had no intention of apologizing. Baron Street West was residential. You’d have to be clueless to expect a storefront to pop up suddenly. “I did say what side of the overpass it was on and two blocks past the Episcopalian church. That steeple is pretty hard to miss from the parkway.”

  “I didn’t come by the parkway. I met with an old friend for lunch down at the harbor.”

  Alice wasn’t interested in his social life. “Well. It’s a good thing you found the place. I was going to leave. I have another appointment so I only have about ten minutes. Rush hour starts early on Fridays. I hope ten minutes is enough for you.”

  Caldwell smiled faintly. He felt somewhat stripped by this woman. It was as if she’d been privy to any doubts he’d ever had about himself and threw them back at him one by one — so Caldwell was grateful for the time restriction. “Ten minutes should be more than enough, Alice. A customer will form their impression within the first ten seconds. Did you know that?”

  “Well, these are sick people coming in here, Caldwell. It might take them a little longer.”

  Alice opened the first door. There was a bulletproof reinforced-glass fishbowl lobby, similar to the one at the grow facility, with a second locked door into the dispensary. Customers would be buzzed in from the lobby at the discretion of the security attendant or the dispensary staff. Alice unlocked the second door, walked across the room to the counter at the back, reached underneath and turned on the lights.

  Caldwell looked around. There were glass cases — empty at the moment of course — arranged attractively enough in a semicircle. The room was a very subdued sage green, almost gray, and the polished hardwood floor a deep amber. There was a small sign with the company logo suspended over the counter. The logo looked a little faded. Caldwell suspected it had been purposely toned down.

  The overall effect of the room was conservative, and Caldwell immediately felt it lacked a level of design that would impress customers. Initially he’d proposed the dispensaries adopt the same look as the grow facility but he’d been overruled. It was ridiculous. The administrative section in Hullbrooke was considered striking and Caldwell was very proud of the part he’d played in its design. He felt the dispensaries should be like satellites to the mother ship. Or like clones. Of course! The dispensaries should be clones of the grow facility. Each one flowering to maturity. It made perfect sense to him, and the notion could have been a vital aspect of the branding. It would speak to the powerful proliferation and multiple uses of marijuana as a modern remedy. CannRose wasn’t just selling marijuana to the sick and ailing. It was selling ideas. Ideas that made people’s lives better. After another intense gaze around the room he decided to take a risk in his dealings with Alice. “It’s a little bland,” he ventured.

&n
bsp; “Bland?”

  “Yes. Bland.”

  “And do you think that could cause a problem of some sort?”

  Caldwell saw her question as a sign of progress. She was asking for his expertise, so he continued, “If we want our customers to keep coming back, Alice, I think we need to be bold. Make a strong impression.”

  “I agree,” said Alice.

  “You do? Well then. I’d say we need to punch this place up a little.”

  “Yes, we certainly do.”

  “I’m delighted to hear that,” said Caldwell and he was. Finally they were on the same page, connecting on a matter Caldwell knew had significant consequences for any company. “I have an idea or two already,” he said.

  “So do I,” Alice said, staring intently at the glass case in front of her. “You know what I think would really, as you put it, punch this place up?”

  “What?” Caldwell was truly curious.

  Alice took a deep breath, then looked Caldwell in the eyes and leaned in with such a steely and determined expression it sent a little shiver down his back. Her voice was almost a whisper, and corrosive, like freshly spilled acid. “Product!” she said and gave a nod. “Having some product to sell would really impress. Possibly more than anything, don’t you think, Caldwell? In fact I can’t imagine anything more likely to keep customers coming back than actually having something to buy.”

  Caldwell recoiled. It was no use explaining to Alice why delivery of the product was delayed. It was hardly his fault. But she was turning it into his fault. “That goes without saying,” Caldwell replied politely. He was resolved to stay cool.

  “I’m not so sure,” Alice said. “It’s often surprising to find out what flies below people’s radar. Anyway I have to go, Caldwell, or I’ll be late. If you have genuine concerns you should take them up with Luther. He hired the designers.” She ushered Caldwell out and locked up the dispensary again. She bade him a good afternoon, a safe drive back and then walked away as quickly as she could.

  Alice was livid. Caldwell was an even bigger idiot than she’d originally thought. Punch the place up. Punch him up! And she was relying on him to supply the dispensaries. From the conference calls she’d been on it was clear Caldwell had an opinion on everything going on at that facility, and she’d witnessed the tantrums in meetings when he didn’t get his own way. Probably drove everybody nuts and caused way more problems than he solved. She’d read the DOH report from the first inspection too. It was a disaster. He’d blamed it on the clueless and overzealous teenage inspector who was just trying to score points in her department. The same inspector had shown up at the dispensary. Alice hadn’t liked the young woman, but she was organized and very efficient. And she couldn’t find any problems with Alice’s set-up. In fact Ms. Ligner had even asked Alice a few questions about where she thought the industry might go, and whether Alice really thought marijuana had any medicinal value or if it was all just something that would disappear as quickly as it had come about. Alice told her it had been a medicine for a few thousand years, so she wasn’t sure how quickly it might disappear. Maybe along with the human race itself. Alice almost felt sorry for the young woman. She seemed to be on a mission.

  As for Caldwell, the sooner somebody got rid of him the better.

  Chapter 19

  Ernie couldn’t help noticing how the revolving door of employees, mostly the friends and relatives of those in charge, were often only remarkable for their incompetence and unsuitability. And if he was honest he had to admit he was part of the larger family himself. His own mother was old Hullbrooke stock and had been Lazlo’s babysitter at some point. Connections. Connections. They were clearly a mixed blessing. It was curious how Ernie managed to hang on so well. Keeping his head down, looking busy and being as low on the totem pole as he could had no doubt been key. That and avoiding Caldwell as much as possible at the facility — Caldwell was very congenial with a beer in hand at Chelsea’s, especially if you didn’t mind hearing his philosophies and predictions for the marijuana industry. When he learned through the grapevine about Ernie’s food and cooking sideline, Caldwell suggested Ernie start thinking about managing the edibles division for CannRose. “It’s only a matter of time. The state has to wake up eventually.” But at work Caldwell found faults and inadequacies that enraged him and baffled everyone else. Plus he was prone to finger-pointing. Ernie was pretty sure the last thing he’d ever want to do was head up the edibles division at CannRose.

  Lazlo’s son Gus had recently taken over as the third production manager at CannRose. Ernie couldn’t imagine a worse job. Even though the bar was so low to the ground at that point a person would trip over it before seeing it, there was a pile of manure just beyond the bar that one would inevitably land in. Caldwell was bound to find fault with anyone who took the job after his precious godson had been fired. Never mind Caldwell had personally forked out for the best rehab money could buy and the scrawny little cokehead was utterly incorrigible and unrepentant; Caldwell was still deeply wounded by what he saw as the high-handed and cruel dismissal of the young man.

  Gus was pretty much the polar opposite of Caldwell’s godson. He weighed a few hundred pounds for starters. Sweat suits, gray, navy or black, were his daily attire, though often he would mix rather than match. He drove a little Ford Ranger pickup and was unhurried in his movements. He took his time about everything, and Ernie learned as he got to know him that it was because he liked to understand things before proceeding with action. He was stubborn too.

  He’d been working from time to time for his dad, running errands and generally assisting in administration as the facility was being renovated. As soon as cultivation began, he’d done odd jobs with Damian, Cassie and Joe. The plants ruled after all. He’d also periodically worked with Ernie just tidying up, pushing brooms and Shop-Vacs. He’s not a bad choice, Ernie thought, if you have to pick somebody from the family. But there it was again, the family.

  Over various conversations, Ernie learned that Gus regarded Caldwell with some suspicion. It wasn’t that Caldwell was a con. Not at all. That was perfectly acceptable, especially if you had to do business in places like Hullbrooke. A person has a right to make a living. No, it was because of where Caldwell’s brain went. “Head in the clouds,” Gus had said with a note of disdain. “Citified too. Never does anybody any good. They just end up looking like idiots.” Gus did admit that Caldwell’s original goal of building a commercial marijuana company was a good one, but still, he was too full of bullshit. Gus would overlook it though, he told Ernie. The job was a step up and they were going to pay him very well. Also he’d get to have his own office.

  #

  Ernie usually got to work before anybody else. When he showed up for his shift one Friday morning, he sensed something was off. The production wing felt slightly more humid than usual, and it was fairly humid to begin with. It was when he got in the air shower and saw the water coming in under the door that he got alarmed. He’d already pushed the button. Despite the word shower, it was a large piece of equipment specifically designed for dry operation. He briefly pictured himself hurled into the air by God knows how many volts sizzling his butt and frying his bones while his eye patch melted onto his wandering eyeball. Luckily the blast of air dried the sweat that was profusely oozing from his forehead. When he stepped out of the air shower, he could see water pouring into the hallway from under the doors of two flower rooms and he could hear water running in the West Mother Pod.

  He opened the door to the flower room that had plants in it. It was like the water show in Las Vegas. Plumes were spraying from the ceiling sprinkler system, great spinning arches of droplets and mist. The sprinklers were for fires not plants. Where was the fire? And then Ernie noticed the pipes for the fertigation system, lower down by the plants. There were three or four valves dotted around the room, burst or something, spewing like the Tivoli fountains, and the tables had water and fertilizer solution pouring off them like Niagara. Many plants were toppled o
ver, floating away, and some of were even shooting the falls. Ernie was so astonished he just stood there, immobilized. Greg came racing in after a few moments, having seen the disaster on the surveillance monitors.

  “What the fuck! Any idea where the turnoffs are?”

  Ernie was startled out of his trance. “Um, I know where the main is.”

  “Might be a good idea . . .”

  And then Ernie was running for the mechanical room. He slipped in the water in the hallway and came crashing down, nearly putting his head through the door of the air shower. “Shit!” He was soaked now. His head was bruised and his eye patch askew. He got himself slowly to his feet, straightened the patch and then met up with Gus, who was coming the opposite way through the air shower.

  “It’s a disaster in there,” Ernie said, a soggy strand of hair lifting off his forehead. Gus had pushed the button already, and Ernie couldn’t get out now until the shower of air was finished and the other door automatically unlocked.

  Gus looked at Ernie in his wet scrubs, then he noticed the water at his feet. He looked out the opposite glass door to the flooding in the hallway and then briefly back at Ernie, somewhat stricken. “Fuck,” he said in a whisper.

  “I’m going to turn off the main.”

  Gus nodded and then he said, “Might not do any good depending where it’s coming from.” Then Gus seemed to mentally vacate the situation, his attention riveted to the air rushing at his face.

  Within a half hour, everyone scheduled to work had arrived. Cassie began charging around leading brigades to move plants out of the flood waters. Joe got busy with Gus and one of the construction guys still on site to figure out the water problems. Ernie headed up the water removal and Lily from admin was sent over to Gerry’s Rent-All to see if he had any extra wet vacs on hand. And Damian was just wandering around with enlarged pupils muttering incoherently about “the wrath of God, man” and “one fucking thing after another.”