PRINCE
OF
POT
Tanya Lloyd Kyi
Groundwood Books
House of Anansi Press
Toronto Berkeley
Copyright © 2017 by Tanya Lloyd Kyi
Published in Canada and the USA in 2017 by Groundwood Books
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
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We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council and the Government of Canada.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Kyi, Tanya Lloyd, author
Prince of pot / Tanya Lloyd Kyi.
Issued in print and electronic formats.
ISBN 978-1-55498-944-7 (hardcover). — ISBN 978-1-55498-946-1 (EPUB). —
ISBN 978-1-55498-947-8 (Kindle)
I. Title.
PS8571.Y52P75 2017 jC813’.6 C2016-908207-5
C2016-908208-3
Jacket art direction by Michael Solomon
Jacket design and illustration by Guy Parsons
For Min
1
Mom sorts through a basket of fresh-picked herbs, Walt dozes in his chair in the corner of the cabin, and I sit at the table with my homework.
We look like a nice pioneer family, which is fairly ironic.
“There’s a druid convention,” Dad says, banging his boots against the stoop on his way inside. It’s raining a little and his hood’s pulled up, a few tufts of brown hair escaping. My dad hurt his back a few years ago. Now he stands with a slight forward bend, as if he’s leaning into the wind.
“A what convention?”
“Druids. The whole campground down there is crawling with them,” he says.
When I catch Mom’s eye, the corner of her mouth twitches.
“Fucking prick,” Walt contributes from his rocking chair.
“They’re wearing capes, Isaac,” Dad says, as if no one in a cape has ever been harmless. “With hoods.”
This time when I look at Mom, neither of us can contain it.
“What’s so funny?” Dad demands.
“You look…” Mom dissolves in giggles.
It’s even funnier because Dad’s bushy eyebrows are scrunched together in confusion. In his black rain jacket, standing crooked, with his hair sticking out of his hood, he looks exactly like…
“King of the druids,” I say.
That sends Mom off again.
“Bunch of idiots.” Dad shakes his head. But he’s smiling a little as Mom helps him peel off his jacket and hang it on one of the hooks below the gun rack. “They’re going crazy down there. You can hear the chanting halfway up the cut.”
He looks at me. “You’re going to have to take a trip around the boundary, Isaac.”
That’s enough to drain the laughter out of me. I let my head flop against the chair back.
Walt opens and closes his mouth over and over again, the way he does every time he tries to say something other than his favorite words.
“Bad feeling,” he manages finally.
My grandpa’s had bad feelings about everything since his stroke last year. But I admit, I’m no longer a fan of druid conventions, either. I’m definitely not a fan of hauling my ass up and down the mountain for the afternoon. My sister, Judith, used to get this job most often. Now it’s me.
“No complaints,” Dad says, rapping his knuckles on the table. “This is important.”
So I scrape back my chair and throw my sketchbook and a couple of pencils in my pack. Mom tosses me a muffin and a sympathetic look. Then I head out the door.
Straight into Big Bugger.
“Out of my way, beast,” I say, pushing against the black fur of his shoulder.
Not too hard, though. Big Bugger has a wicked temper. If he were human, he’d sound like Walt.
Eventually he moves his furry behind, and I manage to get my hiking boots on.
The rain’s letting up. Between the treetops there’s a bright patch in the clouds where the sun might work its way through. I take deep breaths scented with plant oils and cedar trees, and my irritation gradually melts away as I head south.
Though there’s a trail from the access road to our cabin, there are no paths back here. It’s government property, not ours, and we take different routes through the brush every time. That way there’s no visible connection between our cabin and the grow. If the police ever raided the place, they couldn’t prove we knew about the crop.
Not that the police are likely to raid. Dad says they’re probably smoking more than they’re confiscating these days.
I pick my way around prickly masses of devil’s club and through the bracken until I emerge into the sloped, south-facing clearing, where a couple of hundred seedlings reach for daylight.
At first glance the clearing looks as if it’s filled with sword ferns. But partnered with each fern is a cannabis plant, roots encased in a burlap sac.
It’s only the middle of May. A few months from now, the plants will be taller than I am and no longer so easy to disguise.
I turn my back on the grow and head toward the gurgle of our creek. Then I hop from rock to rock across the water and set off for the southern boundary.
I’ll start there.
•
I live on a grow-op. I’m a prince of pot. Future master of a mountain of marijuana.
Even in these days of legalized highs, my family exists on the edge of the law. We’re not licensed. We’re squatting on government land. And we don’t grow a medicinal variety with stable levels of THC. We grow true BC bud. The type that’ll get you talking to aliens and communing with your ancestors. Walt and Dad have been perfecting their hybrid for forty years now, and they’re famous as these things go. Or infamous, maybe. People call our crop Draft Dodger Dark.
If I were a different sort of person, I could get some saggy-ass jeans, hook a chain to my belt and sell dope from outside an elementary school fence. Or hang out in the back room of a bar like a small-town mafia king.
But I have only one buyer. I sell a bag a month to Lucas, the guy whose locker is next to mine. That’s it.
Being the prince of pot is usually the opposite of glamorous. Especially today, when it means a bushwhack through the woods to make sure no random druids are wandering too close to our crop.
After half an hour of clambering up and down ridges, I park myself on a boulder to catch my breath. Below me, an overgrown trail winds through the brush. It leads from the campground beside the highway to a small lake between the peaks to the east. It’s rarely used. Just in case anyone ventures this far, Dad and Walt have nailed No Trespassing signs into the tree trunks along the bank where I sit.
I pull out my sketchbook and, once my hand is steady, I try to draw one of the white-pink huckleberry blossoms from the bush beside me. They’re so light they float like soap bubbles. My lines seem thick and dark by comparison. A water drop on the petal looks more like an oil drip on my paper.
&nbs
p; I’m used to this. Used to my drawings not matching what I see in my head. Used to sitting by myself in the woods, scribbling things. And I’m used to being sent to scout for trespassers. Used to Dad’s orders and my grandpa’s bad feelings. (Walt doesn’t have too many other kinds.) I’m used to steam wisps emerging from the moss as the sun fights its way through the trees.
What I’m not used to — a girl, whistling, walking alone up the trail. The route here is steep as hell, which makes it pretty hard to whistle while you’re hiking it. It’s also insanely difficult to find, because we like it that way. And this is a well-known bear habitat. More than a little dangerous if you’re by yourself.
Walt and Dad tore down the trail markers years ago in favor of extra No Trespassing signs near the base, which this girl has apparently ignored. She doesn’t look like the type to be scared of much. She has spiky black hair and wears black-red lipstick, a black tank top and a denim skirt with leopard-print leggings. She should be in a dance club instead of a forest.
“Aren’t you worried about the bears?” I don’t really mean to say it aloud, but I’m not used to filtering my thoughts out here.
The girl leaps. Both feet fly off the ground at once, as if she’s been struck by lightning. Her eyes flick through the trees until she spots me on the bank above the trail.
She smiles then, looking relieved.
“That’s why I’m whistling,” she says. “So they have time to run away.”
Once she’s recovered from her shock, she stands with
her shoulders back and her chin tilted up at me.
“What if they don’t run?” I ask.
“You’re Zac, right? Zac Mawson?”
“Isaac, usually.” Though I don’t mind Zac, the way she says it. I climb off my rock and skid down the moss to stand beside her on the trail.
I know who she is, even though we haven’t talked before. Her name’s Sam Ko. She’s a year younger than me. Moved to town a few months ago.
I glance back at the rock where I’ve been perched — one of my favorite sketching spots. The sun pierces a stand of birch trees just where a hunk of granite makes a perfectly carved seat.
I’ve probably sat on that rock for a hundred hours during my lifetime, and not once has a girl walked by.
“It’s not a safe trail,” I say, turning back to Sam. “There really are tons of bear sightings near here.” But I don’t want her to turn and hike back down. There’s something about the perfect rosy brown of her skin that makes me want to wipe her lipstick away with the edge of my thumb.
“How did you get up here?” I ask.
“My dad’s supposed to be off today, but he decided to check on the campground. He dragged me along for the ride.”
“Is your dad a druid?”
She grins. “Definitely not. And he’s taking a billion times longer than he said he would. I just had to get away, you know?”
I should get rid of her. I should tell her a scary story, or point her in the wrong direction.
“Do you want to see a waterfall?”
Again, not what I should have said out loud.
“You’re not scared of the bears?” she asks.
“Not so much.”
I take the lead, and she follows close behind. I can feel her eyes on me, which makes me think about how I’m walking, which makes me place my feet awkwardly, which makes me trip on a tree root.
After that, I try to pretend she’s my sister. Not entirely effective.
“How do you know this trail?” she asks, when I veer off the main path and through a patch of shoulder-high brush. Twigs tug at my arms and I hold back the biggest branches so she can pass.
“We live near here.”
“On the lake?”
“Just up the hill.”
No, not on the lake where any passing boat could spot us from the water, or any tourist could pull into the drive with his RV and his overly sensitive nose. We live in a cabin way up the hill from the beach, accessible only by foot. There’s a logging road that goes part of the way, then a weed-choked wheel track. We stash our four-wheeler at the top. After that, it’s a half-hour hike onto the property.
“Just up the hill” sounds nicer, though. Like we might live in a mansion with a view of the water.
Sam’s footsteps stop behind me. When I turn, I find her bending to examine a huckleberry bush. She has one of the blossoms, still shimmering with raindrops, balanced on the tip of her finger.
“Look,” she says. “It’s like a soap bubble.”
I reach down and let another flower rest against my palm.
“I was trying to draw one a few minutes ago and I thought the same thing. Exactly the same thing.” Or did I imagine that? “It looks like it could float right off the branch, doesn’t it?”
“It’s perfect.”
After a moment she lets the blossom drop and we continue along the trail. But I’m even more aware of her now. This girl who appears as if by magic, shows no fear of bears and admires huckleberries.
“You sure your dad’s not a druid?” I call back to her.
“Quite sure. What about you? You seem like you could be a druid.”
I snort. “I’ve been known to talk to trees. But they don’t usually talk back.”
It feels like an accomplishment to make her laugh, but I’m glad she’s walking behind me so she can’t see me flush.
I hear the waterfall before we reach it. When I tell Sam to listen, her eyes widen between her eyeliner smudges.
I feel my face go hot again.
Once we push through the last of the underbrush, we’re on the edge of the pool, the waterfall pouring down in a thin, clear arc. Sam pulls out her phone and starts snapping pictures, which is another thing that would make Walt grab his rifle. Good thing he can’t get this far from the cabin anymore.
After a few minutes, Sam breaks a granola bar in half for us to share, and I clamber down to the pool for a drink.
“Is it safe?” she asks.
“Nothing above us but mountain.”
So she drinks, too. I like that. I like that she takes my word for it.
I’ve never hiked with a girl from school before. I’ve never hiked with anyone near my house. Never shown anyone this waterfall since Judith and I found it years ago.
I watch Sam as she stares at the rush of water. She looks softer. When she turns toward me, her eyes are exactly the same color as the water-slicked rocks behind her.
She settles herself beside me on the gravel bank. A woodpecker drums against a dead trunk across the creek, and a chipmunk darts between roots. A branch bobs in the white foam at the back of the pool. The stones glisten and ripple with reflections.
She seems to have forgotten I’m here. She gazes at the water, with a tiny crinkle between her eyebrows.
I can’t stop staring. I’ve never wanted to draw someone like I want to draw her. There’s a contrast between the sharp edges of her hair and the round, slightly plump line of her cheekbone.
I ease my sketchbook out of the back pocket where I jammed it.
She stretches. She leans across and plunks her head on my shoulder for a moment — just long enough for me to have a sudden image of turning my face toward hers, but not long enough for me to consider actually doing it.
Then she’s up.
“I should get back before my dad goes crazy.” She brushes the dirt off her skirt.
I shove my book away.
It’s still the most perfect hour I’ve ever spent on the mountain. I decide this as we hike down the trail, mostly silent, watching our feet on the slick spots.
And I’m an idiot.
Waterfall plus girl. That’s apparently what it takes for me to forget where and how I live.
A low, phlegmy grunt reminds me.
Another.
&n
bsp; Snuffling.
“Is that what I think it is?” Sam asks, her voice turned raspy. Then she starts whistling. She manages a few notes before she’s all air and no sound.
I know the feeling. It’s hard to whistle when your mouth’s gone dry as a creek bed in August.
That sound was a bear, all right. It was Hazel. I can tell before I catch a glimpse of her cinnamon-speckled fur.
She’s going to ruin my perfect hour.
I hear her front paws thump down. She must have been standing on her hindquarters, sniffing the air for us. Now her lumbering footsteps round the corner, branches snapping as she shoves her way through.
I shift a step, so I’m standing in front of Sam. Things will be fine unless she panics.
She grabs my hand. She huddles so close, I can feel her breath on my shoulder.
“Stay calm,” I say. “Never look a bear in the eyes. Look down a little, to the side.”
Look to the side, talk in a low voice, back slowly away. These are the lessons Dad fed me and Judith with our first venison purees, but these steps aren’t necessary with Hazel.
Hazel thinks she’s one of us. A huge, hairy human.
“Hey, bear,” I say, as Hazel’s giant head finally swings into sight.
Behind me, Sam’s breathing stops.
2
Hazel plods toward us like a short brown bus, slow and purposeful.
“We got nothing for you,” I tell her. “Go home now.”
She knows what I mean. And she doesn’t like it. Her dark snub nose — a nose I happen to love, most of the time — sniffs itself closer. After three more giant steps, she pushes it against me.
Sam sucks in air as if she’s breathing through a straw. That’s the only sound out of her, though, which is more than a little impressive.
I shove Hazel’s nose away.
“Go away,” I say sternly. “Go!”
With a grunt, she drops her head and turns uphill. It’s a scramble for her to get up the bank, but she does it, her bulbous butt eventually rolling from sight.
Sam releases my hand and plops herself on the ground. When I turn, she’s got her head between her knees. I can hear her teeth knocking against each other.
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