by Gerry Boyle
Our little convoy traversed the hills and rolled down into Florence village, past the abandoned mill and the beer-and-crawlers store and out of town again. When we came to the Mullaneys’ road, Bobby got out and gave a little wave and bent down to lock in the hubs on his front wheels. I got out and did the same and he called “Hidey-ho” as he climbed back in the cab, revved the motor once, and ground the Chevy into gear.
We lurched and jolted our way down the rocky path, their heads snapping left and right like masts on rocking boats. Bobby Mullaney followed a course down the road that avoided the worst of the rocks and I followed behind him. When we got to the place where my truck had been shot, I stopped for a moment and looked up the slope to the right. I saw trees and brush and overgrown slash piles and countless places where Stephen could fire, prone or sitting or in a crouch. I didn’t see Stephen.
Mullaney pulled up to the house and backed into the beaten-down space next to the garden. I pulled ahead of him and parked in front of the house. They dropped out of the Chevy and Melanie and Bobby walked over toward me. Coyote went and looked at the garden over the wire fence.
“Welcome to Green Acres,” Bobby Mullaney said, grinning. “Come on in. Take your shoes off. Set a spell.”
I followed them up the little steps and into the room where the potatoes were still spread on the newspaper on the floor. The woodstove was ticking cozily and the shotgun was leaning against the wall next to the door.
A place for everything and everything in its place.
“Tea?” Melanie asked me, taking off her heavy sweater.
I remembered the last cup.
“No, thanks,” I said.
“How ’bout a beer?” Bobby called from the kitchen.
“Sure,” I said.
There was a rattle of bottles. The door eased open behind me and Coyote sidled in. Bobby came in with two beers in unlabeled brown pint bottles.
“Unfiltered wheat ale. Buddy of mine makes it. We supply him with vegetables.”
I took one.
“I thought you were down on alcohol,” I said.
“Everything in moderation,” Bobby said. “And this is direct. No industrial corporation complex putting poison in it, bombarding the public with friggin’ propaganda, you know what I’m saying?”
“Cheers,” I said.
The ale wasn’t bad. A little yeasty, but not bad. I took another sip and Bobby went back toward the kitchen.
“Rustle up some grub,” he boomed.
I stood there and sipped and looked around the room, the posters of the Brooks Range in Alaska, the flyers from food co-ops. A sign for a pro-pot rally in Corvallis, Oregon. As I stood, I watched Coyote out of the corner of my eye. He had a bottle of ale but he hadn’t taken a drink yet. He went to a door at the far end of the room and opened it and listened, then shut the door again. Then he went to the old black telephone next to the couch and picked up the receiver, listened for a moment, then hung up. Finally, he walked over to a rickety table by the big window at the end of the room, sat down with his back to the wall, and took a small sip.
Maybe I’d plunk down beside him and say “How ’bout those Patriots.”
Maybe not.
Lunch was home-baked anadama bread and a big salad filled with plants that looked like roadside weeds but turned out to be pretty tasty. Melanie served from a worn wooden bowl and we ate sitting in the old easy chairs. Stephen hadn’t shown up, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t out there in the woods, watching through an eight-power scope.
It was awkward once the eating began and silence fell over the room. I complimented Melanie for the salad, but Bobby and Coyote just kept munching, leaves and stems disappearing inch by inch inside their mouths like grass huffed up by grazing cows. Finally, Bobby remembered his manners.
“So, Jack,” he said, buttering a chunk of bread. “What’s your angle gonna be?”
“Angle?” I said.
“For your story. You need an angle, right? A pitch. A hook. A play. A spin.”
He bit into the bread and chewed.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe that in places like Florence, Maine, the marijuana movement is alive and well.”
“And getting bigger,” Melanie said. “At the fair we got, like, nine hundred and fifty signatures, and that’s just—”
“Everywhere you go it’s like that,” Bobby interrupted. “We had some people down at the Maine Mall a couple Saturdays ago. They got, like, a hundred signatures in two hours. I mean, people are ready for these friggin’ police state laws to go. We’re gonna hold this massive rally at the statehouse at the end of October, and man, we’re gonna friggin’ pack that place. I mean, occupy the goddamn building, you know what I’m saying? We already talked to Channel Nine. They’re gonna cover it.”
“This is not just a few people from the backwoods,” Melanie said. “This is people all over, everywhere. We’ve got teachers, nurses—”
“College professors,” Bobby interrupted again.
“And what comes after teachers and nurses?” I asked Melanie.
She looked perplexed. And then she smiled.
Dessert was homemade ice cream with blackberries in syrup. Bobby filled a soup bowl. Melanie had one hefty helping, and even Coyote, who had only nibbled a piece of bread as he watched me warily, had a bowl with extra blackberries. Bobby finished his and had seconds. I’d hate to be in his way when he got the munchies.
We finished and Melanie took the bowls and plates to the kitchen. In this progressive household, a woman’s place still was in the home.
Melanie brought a pot of green tea but she was the only one partaking. I watched her and wondered just how much of this retreat to the woods had been her idea. Probably not much. For all their earrings and braids, the Mullaney men had Neanderthal blood.
Outside, the sun had dipped into the trees. I stood and looked out the window at the path that wound up into the woods above the house. Dishes clattered in the sink and when I turned, Bobby and Coyote were standing behind me, one on each side.
“So Jack,” Bobby said, more quietly than before. “Tell me true, man. Where do you stand on this?”
“Where do I stand?”
“Yeah. You for us or agin’ us, man?”
Coyote watched me closely.
“To do the story, it shouldn’t matter,” I said.
“Come on,” Bobby Mullaney said. “You’re a smart guy. You gotta have an opinion.”
I thought for a moment.
“Well, the laws are definitely out of whack. You’ve got the state selling rotgut vodka but putting people away for growing a little pot. That’s not right.”
“It’s outrageous,” Bobby said. “People going to jail for friggin’ years. Losing everything they own. For growing a weed. You know how many people die in this country from tobacco every year?”
I shook my head no. And took out my notebook.
“Like four hundred thousand. Booze, another hundred thousand. No, maybe it’s a hundred and fifty. I’d have to look that up. Friggin’ caffeine, man. I mean friggin’ caffeine. As many as ten thousand people die from caffeine, rotting out their stomachs and having heart attacks.”
I scribbled, not as much for the numbers as the spirit of the message.
“Now, you guess how many people die in this country in a year from marijuana.”
I didn’t guess, but Mullaney didn’t notice.
“Zero, Jack. None. Nada. Not one, and that’s a fact. I mean, what is the friggin’ threat here? I mean, we got cops in choppers buzzing this part of the country. Last fall, I mean, not right now, but last fall, last year, it was like friggin’ Vietnam out here. We got guys who are vets and they’re having, like, flashbacks ’cause these Hueys are buzzing the woods. Scaring the shit out of little kids.”
“And the cow,” Melanie put in.
“The cow,” Bobby Mullaney said, gesturing with his ale bottle. “This guy has this cow and it’s pregnant, you know? Chopper buzzes the cow and
it calves right there on the spot.”
“It miscarried,” Melanie said.
“Right,” her husband said. “Guy goes to the cops and complains and they tell him to take a friggin’ hike.”
He took a swallow of ale. I stopped writing and took one, too.
“Craziness, man,” Bobby said. “It’s gotta stop. People have to wake up in this country. This is turning into a friggin’ police state.”
“That’s right,” Coyote murmured.
“You think so, too, Coyote?” I asked.
“It’s a sacred herb,” he said.
I looked at him.
“Oh, you mean for your Native American religions.”
“For a lot of religions. Mexican. Jamaican.”
“Oglala Sioux, wasn’t it?”
Coyote looked like it bothered him that I’d remembered.
“Yeah,” he said.
“Hey, man,” Mullaney said. “Come with me.”
He turned and headed for the door. I followed. Coyote followed me. Melanie still was in the kitchen, clanging pans. When we got outside, Mullaney walked up into the woods from the house and stopped and turned to me. I stopped and he took two steps toward me, until he was a foot from my face. Coyote was somewhere behind me.
“I’m an up-front kind of guy,” Mullaney said. He was close enough for me to see the hair in his nostrils. “So I’m gonna tell you straight out.”
My deodorant’s quit, I thought.
“I trust you, Jack. I know people, and I think you’re good people.”
I tried not to blush.
“Thanks,” I said.
“So I want to show you something. But it’s gotta be off the record. Can you promise me that?”
“Depends on what it is. If it’s a couple of dead bodies, I might feel an obligation to tell somebody.”
He paused. Coyote pricked up.
“Just kidding,” I said.
“Oh, well, listen. It ain’t dead bodies. Off the record, man. I just want to show you what we’re talking about.”
“Hey—” Coyote began.
But Mullaney had already turned and was walking up the tote road. I followed. Coyote brought up the rear. We walked Indian file. Of course.
Mullaney walked thirty yards and turned off, though there didn’t appear to be a path. He picked his way around brambles and maple saplings, holding the branches for me so I wouldn’t get whipped in the face. The sun was skimming the tops of the trees to the west and the light was shimmering but fading. There still didn’t appear to be any path, just damp leaves and viny undergrowth that Mullaney picked his way around and over, rather than through.
Coyote moved silently behind me.
We moved deeper into the woods, walking for what seemed like a mile but probably was a little less. I heard a wood thrush somewhere off to my right and then just the placing of our feet. The second growth seemed to open, barely, and suddenly Mullaney stopped. He turned back to me.
“Bend over,” he said.
I looked at him and he reached out and grasped something in his fingers. I looked closer.
Black thread. Tied between two branches.
“Security,” Mullaney said. “There’ll be a lot of that from here on. I’ll tell you when to duck.”
I could see some sort of path now, not a track but a discernible opening between the trees, like a deer trail. Mullaney told me to duck a dozen times, and when I got closer I’d see the thread across the opening, neck-high. Then Mullaney told me to duck, and step. The threads crossed at the neck and knees. Once. Twice. Three times. Coyote followed twenty feet behind, moving easily in the woods. For a hood from Valley, Mass.
With Oglala blood.
And then Mullaney stopped. I did, too. He held his arm out to his left and smiled.
“Jack McMorrow,” he said, grinning. “Meet Cannabis sativa.”
The plants were about six feet tall. There were six of them, with trademark marijuana leaves like something off a T-shirt. They were growing in a tiny hole cut in the woods, with birch and small maples on its fringes. The pot plants seemed frilly and tropical next to their wild neighbors.
“Look at this, McMorrow,” Mullaney said, motioning for me to come closer.
“You notice anything?”
He was fondling the buds that grew head-high on the plants. The proud papa.
“I don’t know. They look healthy.”
“No, McMorrow. Look closer. The buds, man. Look at the buds.”
I looked, then glanced up at Coyote, watching from the edge of the opening. His face was expressionless. For this game show, I was on my own.
“Are they special buds or something?” I said.
“Man, look at those buds,” Mullaney exclaimed, unable to contain himself any longer. “They’re huge. No pollination, man. No boys. These plants are all girls. Cloned from one female plant.”
He looked at me like I should do cartwheels. Coyote looked at me like I knew too much.
“Great,” I said.
“No seeds, just buds,” Mullaney said. “All resin.” I searched back twenty years for the right word.
“Primo?” I said. “Maui zowee? Killer weed?”
“This is no weed, McMorrow,” Mullaney said. “This is a natural wonder. A gift from Mother Nature.”
Standing there in the little clearing, he showed me the dark green hose buried under the leaves. It ran uphill to a stream. Gravity pulled the water down to the pot patch. They started the flow with a plastic siphon hose, like you’d use to siphon gasoline. When the hose wasn’t in use, it was plugged with a cork and buried.
The soil was full of compost from the bin near their garden, hauled up in camouflage-painted five-gallon buckets. The plants were dried and bagged, somewhere, and the marijuana was traded within a small network of kindred spirits, Bobby Mullaney said.
“It’s the barter system, like before it was corrupted by capitalism,” Mullaney said. “Milk. Beef. Chickens. Kerosene. Parts for the trucks. A guy’s time to fix ’em. I traded two ounces for a ring job, once.”
“How much would those plants be worth on the street?” I asked.
“Four or five thousand,” Mullaney said.
“That’s a lot of chickens.”
“Yeah, well, it has to last a whole year. And we keep some for our use. So that takes a chunk.”
“I’ll bet.”
“So what we’re doing is bypassing the goddamn centralized government, the booze and tobacco cartels that have been running this country for so long. That’s why they want this stopped, McMorrow. It’s a revolution. And we’re winning.”
“What if you get caught?”
“No revolution is without risks,” Coyote said suddenly, startling me.
“Opening yourself up with this petition stuff, aren’t you?”
“They’ve got to find it first,” Mullaney said. “It’ll be gone next week. And next time it won’t be here.”
“Why’d you show me?”
“You’re covering a war, McMorrow,” he said. “I wanted to show you the front lines.”
There was a method to their madness, and I thought about it as we walked back to the house, but not using the route by which we had come.
By letting me in on their little—and illegal—secret, I became an accomplice of sorts. Chances were I wasn’t going to run to the cops anyway. They’d decided that before we went for our walk. Showing me the plot in the woods, which could be gone tomorrow anyway, was added insurance. By accepting their confidence, I was sucked in.
And I did find myself becoming more sympathetic. Mullaney was growing on me, with his cocksure naiveté. Coyote was intriguing, if nothing else. And I liked Melanie, though I felt sorry for her. I got the feeling her life wasn’t turning out as she had once hoped—that as a young girl, a younger woman, she hadn’t dreamed of living in remote western Maine, at the end of an almost impassable road, with her son and these two guys, so deep in the woods that no one would ever hear her scream.
>
So I thought about all of this as we slipped back down the hill, across a little ravine with the stream dodging through it. Eventually, we emerged higher up on the tote road, and it was almost dark when we finally reached the house.
Mullaney asked me to come in but I said no, I had to go, but I’d be in touch. I asked him how off-the-record our outing was supposed to be, and he said no names, no location, just somewhere in the county. I said that was fine, and stuck my notebook in my pocket and shook his hand. It was very strong and hard. From Coyote I got a nod, and that seemed hard, too.
The notebook went on the passenger seat. The truck started and I looked back at the house, which now had kerosene lamps burning, casting a soft, yellow light in this black expanse of woods. What did they do now? Play Parcheesi?
I pulled out and, in first-gear, high-range, four-wheel-drive, started up the rocky road. The transmission grated and I made a mental note to check the fluid. Even Toyotas needed some attention. And a new transmission was several ounces.
The truck lurched and bumped. The radio got country and western, with static. I was tired and needed a fix of Roxanne, even if only on the phone. I was considering calling her from a pay phone in the hinterlands, just for fun, when I saw it.
A glint of light.
In the woods ahead and to my left.
It went out but it had been there, glowing like a firefly, but fixed. I watched the spot, drove another twenty feet, then turned the truck hard to the left so the lights pierced the blackness.
I saw woods but nothing else. Leaving the lights on but shutting off the motor, I eased the door open and dropped to the ground, letting the door swing closed. In a crouch, I moved past the back of the truck and into the woods on the opposite side of the road. I slid deep into the brush on my belly.
And waited.
8
The leaves were damp and cold on my bare belly where my jacket and shirt had pulled up. I eased a hand down slowly and tucked my shirt back in, then eased the hand back up and was still.
I watched. I listened. My Marine friend, Clair, had once told me that kids could be turned into tough soldiers, and they even could be turned into brave soldiers, but patient soldiers were rare indeed. It was an exceptional man who could sit in the dark in the jungle for three hours with the bugs and the snakes, and not move a muscle.