Meth A Memoir

by Wayne Huffman

  Lisa got off the phone one morning, and said she had to go over to Milligan Highway. It was important. I was just about to start a cook, so I didn’t really care where she went. I was focused on work. She took what dope we had, and said she would get rid of it while she was gone. Good idea, since we were completely broke.

  Sometime late the next day, Lisa had finally come back home. I was ready to kill her. This was getting ridiculous. She had never been gone for over twenty-four hours before. I had spent most of the time she was gone freaking out because I was convinced she had gotten busted. Now that she was standing there in front of me, acting as if she had done nothing wrong, I was convinced she had been out whoring around all night.

  I went off on her, and we started fighting. This went on for hours, when I suddenly remembered all the dope she took with her when she left. I told her to give me the money, and she handed me a hundred dollar bill. I told her she had taken a hell of a lot more than a hundred bucks worth of dope, and she had better come up with the rest of the money. Lisa, trying to act excited, said she would explain everything to me, if I would just calm down and stop screaming at her. In my defense, I wasn’t really “screaming.” I was speaking in a tone, and with proper volume, as to convey my unhappiness with her un-thoughtful actions. Fine, I quit screaming.

  She said she had some great news, and that, once I calmed down, we would discuss it. Sure, I’ll calm down for some great news. I couldn’t wait to hear this.

  Chapter 17

  Lisa had said that when she got to her friend’s house there was someone there she had never met. She was introduced to Bob, who she was told, was an old-school cook who had quit cooking a long time ago.

  Bob told Lisa that he was still heavily connected with the meth world, and that he had the means and the money to supply and run a high volume lab. He said he wanted to make high quality meth, and after seeing the quality of the dope Lisa was selling, arranged for them to meet.

  Bob had a plan. He wanted to teach someone to cook, his way. Once the cook was trained, that person would show up where directed, do the cook, and then leave. Everything would be at the cook spot waiting to be cooked when the person got there.

  When the cook was completed, everything, including the finished product, would be left at the cook spot, and someone else would come in to collect the dope and do the clean up. Payment for doing the cook would be picked up later. No one but Bob would know who the cook was.

  For a cook in my situation, this sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime. There was only one hitch; Bob didn’t want to teach another cook. He wanted to teach someone who had been around a cook enough to understand what was going on in a lab, but didn’t actually know how to do a cook; less bad habits to break. He wanted to teach Lisa.

  This was complete bullshit, and I was not going for it at all. I was just about to unload on Lisa and tell her exactly what I thought of the idea, when she pulls out this bag of pure pseudo and said it was a gift from Bob. It weighed a hundred and fifteen grams. Sure, honey, take the job!

  Bob was extremely paranoid. Lisa said he had been busted once, and he wasn’t looking forward to having it happen again. For security reasons, Bob would call Lisa and tell her where to meet him to learn whatever step in the process he was teaching her. When he called, he would give her the meeting place, and a certain amount of time to get there. If she was late, the lesson was over until next time.

  This was Bob’s way of being sure Lisa wasn’t working for the cops. If Lisa got a call at 4 a.m. and had twenty minutes to dress and drive from Elizabethton to Johnson City, that left no time for her to get wired by the cops. It was not uncommon for the phone to ring in the middle of the night, and Lisa would jump up and run out the door. It pissed me off a time or two when she got a call while we were having sex, but that was business.

  I started having problems with this whole arrangement when Lisa started staying gone for several days at a time. Many times she would be gone to sell dope, and would get a call to go to a “cooking lesson.” As usual, she would come home with barely enough money to resupply for another cook. Since I would be out of dope myself by the time she got home, just knowing I was going to get to cook soon would be enough to keep me from being too pissed off at her.

  Normally, Lisa would go to sleep right after she got home, and I would go buy supplies for another cook. By the time Lisa woke up, I would be finished cooking. She would take all of the dope, except for what I was keeping for myself, and leave. It was the same process over and over again.

  Joy, Lisa’s youngest daughter, had a birthday coming up, so we decided to put everything else on hold, so we could have a birthday party for her. We scrubbed the entire inside of the house and stashed the lab. Lisa spent two days decorating for the party, and also buying food and Joy’s presents.

  During those two days, I started piling dozens of trash bags full of cook trash into a small space under the basement stairs. I had let the trash build up, because I really didn’t have anywhere to dump the shit. Once all of the trash was packed in, I built kind of a false wall around it, so it was somewhat concealed.

  These couple of days were great. We were so focused on making Joy’s day special, that we never argued about anything the entire time. I wasn’t cooking, and Lisa was there with me, so it was almost like our early days together. Since we were also sleeping at night, my head was beginning to clear. I was starting to realize how screwed up we had become, and I wanted to go back to the way things were.

  The day of the party came, and besides Faye, Tina, Levi and Joy, we were visited by Lisa’s parents, her sisters, Katy and FJ, FJ’s daughter Chris, and a few family friends. Lisa had prepared a huge birthday dinner along with cake and ice cream. It was all very normal, considering the circumstances, and Joy had a great time.

  By late afternoon, everyone was clearing out. Tina left with Bernie, and Faye, Joy, and Levi were staying with us for the weekend. That left us with one problem. We were out of dope, and we never did a cook with Joy and/or Levi at the house. That was one of the few rules we had that were unbreakable.

  While I loved the normal-seeming family thing we had going, I was still addicted to meth. It was decided that Lisa would take the kids to see a movie, while I stayed at home to do a quick cook.

  I had to go to Wal-Mart for a few boxes of pills and a couple other supplies. While I was gone to buy everything, Lisa went down into the basement to set the lab up. This was to save time.

  I bought what I needed from Wal-Mart, then left. As I was leaving the parking lot, I remembered that I needed cigarettes. I drove to a grocery store in a shopping center that was next to the Wal-Mart. I got out of my car and started walking towards the store. No big deal, just a regular guy with a shit ton of meth supplies in his car getting a pack of smokes. That’s when I noticed two cop cars driving through the parking lot, away from Wal-Mart and past where I now was, at a higher than normal rate of speed. This felt wrong.

  When I got back to my car with my cigarettes, I just sat there for a few minutes with the feeling that something really bad was about to happen. I got back out of the car, and put the meth supplies I had purchased at Wal-Mart into the trunk of my car before driving towards home.

  As I left the parking lot, I stayed alert for anything unusual that might be going on. When I stopped for a stop sign, a police officer approaching from the opposite direction stopped his car just as he passed mine. I could see in the side mirror that he was checking the license plate on my car. He continued to drive on, but I knew at that moment I was in trouble. I just didn’t know how much trouble or what kind of trouble exactly.

  I kept driving towards home, being very careful to obey all traffic laws and hoping no cops got behind me. Just as I was about to make a right turn onto my street, I saw another cop coming at me from the opposite direction again. Knowing something was up, I hit my turn signal to try to hurry and make the turn.

  Because of the way the road was slanted, and the way my car was t
raveling down the road, I had to hold the signal switch in my car up while making the turn, so my signal light would blink as I made the turn. This was a hell of a thing to accomplish, because I was pushing the clutch with one foot, while using the other leg to hold the steering wheel where it needed to be, while I shifted into first gear. With all this going on, there’s no way in hell I could be mistaken about whether or not I signaled.

  The cop pulled in right on my ass as I made my turn. He followed as closely as he possibly could, but I wouldn’t go over the fifteen mile per hour speed limit on my street. I parked along the curb in the front of my house, and that’s when the cop hit his blue lights. Two other cop cars came out of nowhere, and boxed me in. You can imagine my stomach doing flips as I thought, “Oh shit, this can’t be good.”

  I opened my door to get out of my car, but the cop who pulled me over ran up to my car screaming at me not to move and to stay in the car. The cop said he wanted my license and insurance. I gave him the license, but I had to tell him I didn’t have insurance. He went back to his car, and I waited.

  Within a few minutes, our little party was joined by two more cops. One of these was a Captain with the Elizabethton City Police Department. The captain walked up to the driver’s side of my car, while the other cop approached on the passenger’s side. The captain asked where I was coming from, and I told him. “I had just come home from buying some cigarettes.” Okay, I get partial credit for the partial truth.

  The captain then proceeded to question where the pseudo I had just purchased at Wal-Mart was. I lied, as you’d expect one to do in this situation, and said that I had no idea at all what he was talking about. He then asked me if he could search my car. I told him no, of course, he had no right or probable cause to do so at all. He asked what it was I was hiding, and I said, “Not a damn thing, give me my ticket, and leave me the fuck alone.” This wasn’t fun anymore.

  The captain informed me that he believed I was in possession of precursors to manufacture meth. He ordered me out of my car, which I did, locking the door on my way out. This pissed off all of the cops, who then threatened to bust out my windows, if they had to, to get inside. I told them they’d better get a warrant, because, while I didn’t have shit to hide (Well I did, but it’s a matter of principal at this point.) I wasn’t giving anyone permission to search my car.

  They called the K-9 unit and, when they walked the dog around my car, the fucking mutt went nuts. This was all the cops needed. They took my keys and started searching my car.

  While my car was being searched, I was approached by a couple of guys who introduced themselves as agents with the Meth Task Force. This meant nothing to me, but they seemed pretty proud of themselves, so I took their word for it.

  The agent who seemed to be in charge was a short, red-headed dude who seemed a little too feminine. We will call this guy, “Agent W.” Agent W asked me what the cops were going to find in my car. I assured him that he wouldn’t find anything illegal, and he said that was good, and suggested we go inside the house so we could sit down and talk.

  We started walking towards the front door of my house, when I thought better of it, and sat down in a chair on the porch. I offered the agent a chair, but he said it would be better if we went inside. The other agent, as well as several of the cops, were standing there, waiting to go in my house, but I refused to go in, or let them in. At least, in this situation, I knew better than that.

  Agent W got pissed off, and walked away. He walked around my house and when he was finished trying to peek inside the windows, he asked me why someone was going in and out of the basement. He said that there were blankets over the basement windows that he said were suspicious enough in and of itself, but he could also see the lights going on and off. I told him that my wife was probably going down there to do laundry, and that the blankets were there to keep perverts from looking in. (Phew, way to think under pressure.) I don’t think he got the jab at him with that last line though.

  Agent W finally figured out I wasn’t going to agree to anyone coming into my house, so he played his trump card. He informed me, that due to some of the items found in my car, he believed there was a meth lab in the house. He said he was going to have everyone in the house come outside and wait, while he got a search warrant. This could take hours.

  Joy had asthma and got sick fairly easily, so I was worried about her having to come outside. It was getting cold. I figured I had to do something quickly, so I told Agent W, that if he would allow Lisa to leave with the kids, I would sign a “consent to search” form. He was all for it, and told me to tell Lisa to pack a bag, because she would need to stay gone all night while they conducted their search. Little did they know that the bag she was going to pack was going to totally save my ass a lot of trouble; for the moment anyway.

  Chapter 18

  Agent W and I walked through the door, and Lisa was instantly the scared, confused lady of the house. I told her to pack a bag, take the kids, leave, and I would explain everything later. Faye said she would pack a bag, and within five minutes, Lisa had Joy and Levi in the car. As Faye walked out with the duffel bag full of clothes, she winked at me and said, “Don’t worry.” Easy for her to say.

  Once the consent form was signed, Agent W said, “I want to see the basement first.” I told him that was fine with me, and he told the other agent to have the cops look around upstairs.

  My basement was pretty big and wide open. You could stand at the foot of the stairs and see everything. Since it was an unfinished basement, the only things down there were the water heater, and the washer/dryer.

  Also in my basement, there was an old, “butcher block” styled kitchen table and a couple of tool boxes. The kitchen table was where my lab should have been sitting.

  We got into the basement, and Agent W looked around for a second, then asked, “Where is the meth lab?” I looked at him just as innocently as I could and asked him, “What meth lab?” It was GONE! He started to get pissed again, and informed me that he was not there to play games. I told him, I wasn’t playing games either. I had agreed to let him in the house to search, and that is what he was currently doing. I never said he would find anything.

  Agent W stormed back upstairs to the kitchen, and I followed him. He asked the other agent if he had found anything, and he said he hadn’t found anything other than a bunch of clean mason jars in the dishwasher. One must keep one’s glassware clean. That’s a rule.

  Agent W must have been getting worried. Here, he had half the cops in the whole damn town in my yard, and as of that moment, it was basically for nothing. He looked at me and said, “Listen. I’m the guy that decides if you go to jail tonight or not. As of right now, you are not under arrest. I’ll make you a deal. Give me whatever you have in this house that’s meth related, and as long as you don’t have an active cook going on somewhere in here, I’ll only charge you with felony possession of drug paraphernalia, and you’ll spend the night at home tonight. If I have to search, I’ll tear this house apart, and I promise, I will find more than enough to send you to jail.”

  That threat was very real, because I could go into virtually any house in America, and find three components to a meth lab. Three items are all that are needed to charge you with a meth felony. These items include, but are not limited to; aluminum foil, coffee filters, hydrogen peroxide, glue, tape, aquarium air pumps and air lines, batteries, empty soda bottles, gas line antifreeze, starting fluids, camp fuels, paint thinners, and even the good old fashioned nickel. Yep, the loose change in your pocket can be used, along with your pillow case, (another component) and a few other things, to make meth.

  So, as you can see, damn near everyone in America has a meth lab in their possession. Don’t worry though, chances are the cops aren’t going to crash through your door and bust you. They have to profile you first.

  Knowing I was screwed no matter what, and with my lab sitting somewhere in the house just waiting to be found, I agreed to tell him where the stuff under
the stairs was. I had to take a chance that he would keep his word and not take me to jail.

  Emergency response showed up, with their huge, spot-light covered truck that lit up my house like it was the fucking sun. It was actually around 9pm. There was no mistaking why they were there, since people were running around wearing chemical masks and suits. The truck also said, in huge red letters on the side of it, “STOP METH”, just in case someone was left who didn’t fully understand it.

  While someone started removing the trash from my basement and lying it all out on tarps in my front yard for the whole world to see, some of the cops went to my neighbor’s houses and evacuated the area. Not only did they evacuate them, but they also made everyone go to the hospital to get blood tests to see if they had any medical issues due to living next door to a meth lab. Apparently, I was extremely popular with the entire county’s different forms of police, for giving them something to finally do in this Podunk town, and I was suddenly very unpopular with most of my neighbors.

  I would find out later that a cop was at the emergency room that night bragging that the lab they found was big enough to fill the whole E.R. waiting room, which, as you and I know is complete and utter bullshit because they never got a lab at all. The only thing they got was a bunch of cook trash from several months’ worth of cooks. The lab had gone out the door in the duffel bag Faye had packed, then proceeded to carry out right in front of all of those stupid ass cops. That’s one hell of a fifteen year old girl.

  It took several hours to bring all the trash up out of the basement, lay it out, inventory it, and seal it all up in fifty gallon drums. Just about the time they were finishing, the local news showed up. Agent W told me that since the news media had showed up, he was going to have to arrest me, even though we had a deal. Personally, I think the cock-sucker called them himself; double-crossing son of a bitch.