Prince of Pot
Page 15
I have to talk to him.
Mom keeps tearing up when she’s around me. Dad must realize that something’s changed. Even Walt seems to know. They all watch me the way I watch Big Bugger.
Finally, Mom sits down across from me while Dad’s out feeding the animals one morning.
“I found your email from the art school.”
“Mom!”
“I did the laundry. It was in your back pocket.”
Walt grunts from his chair. When I glance over, he’s holding my book of paintings. The book Sam made.
“What the hell?” I hiss.
Mom shrugs. “He wanted to see it. And I think we should talk about — ”
“George,” Walt says, squinting at me. “George…Ib. Ib.”
I have no idea what he’s trying to say. Maybe he’s forgotten my name. I cross the room in two strides, pull the book and the paper from under his hand and head for the lean-to.
“Not…name…”
I don’t wait to hear the rest of his gibberish. As soon as my stuff is safely tucked beneath my mattress, I stomp out of the house and slam the door.
I’m done with having everyone in my shit. I’m going to do it today. I’ll arrange things with Judith, then I’ll talk to Dad. No more chickening out.
•
When I pull down the drive, Judith’s sitting in her lawn chair. She goes inside before I park and closes the door after herself.
I don’t think too much about it. I figure she needs to put on her bra or brush her teeth. Mostly I’m just glad Garrett’s car isn’t here. I’m definitely not ready to discuss future plans in front of that guy. I can’t even say his name without my lip curling.
I tap on the door.
She doesn’t answer, so I flop into a lawn chair to wait.
I wait a long time.
“Hey, Judith!” I tip my chair back so I can knock on the side of the bus. “Any chance of breakfast?”
There’s a long silence.
“Today’s not good,” she says finally, her voice muffled.
What’s that supposed to mean?
“We can go out. I have cash. I need to talk to you.”
“I’ve got stuff to do.”
What the…
Now I know something’s wrong. I get up from the chair and stare at the bus, as if the walls might suddenly turn transparent. Which they don’t.
“I’m not leaving,” I call.
Silence.
“What’s going on?”
Silence.
“I’m counting to three, and if you’re not out here, I’m breaking down your door.”
How exactly do they break doors in the movies? I feel as if I should run and ram my shoulder against it, but Judith’s entrance is raised a few steps. I’d have to jump. Plus, her door opens out. Maybe if I braced one leg against the metal frame and hauled on it?
I shrug. This entire ancient bus is a piece of crap. If worst comes to worst, I can flip it on its side and shake it.
“One…”
“Two…”
Thank God. Before I get to three and have to maim myself, she opens the door. She doesn’t come out, though. She just lets the door swing free.
I step up and peer in, as if I might be entering Big Bugger’s den. There are no lights on and the curtains are drawn, but once my eyes adjust, I spot her sitting at the table. Her hair hangs limp, covering half her face.
“You all right?”
“Just a rough night,” she says. “Make yourself some toast.”
I pull out a loaf of bread and pop a few slices into the toaster oven. Her coffee maker’s still half-full, so I pour myself a giant cup. Then I slide onto the bench across from my sister.
She doesn’t look up.
“You going to tell me what’s going on?”
“Just stuff,” she says. “Private stuff.” She raises her own mug to her lips.
In that moment, as she tips her chin to drink, I see the shadow on her face. I reach across and lift her hair away. She bats at my hand, but not quickly enough.
Her eye is swollen, barely open, and a nasty mix of purple and black.
“What the hell happened?” I sound half like Dad and half like Walt, which is not what I intend. But there’s something about seeing my sister like this. My whole body’s suddenly tight and pulsing.
“Drunk guy at work,” Judith says.
“I’ll kill him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says.
My toast pops.
“I’m not being ridiculous. You tell me who it was right now.”
She gets up to butter the toast. I don’t think it’s just her eye. She’s moving like an eighty-year-old woman.
I get up, too, mostly because I can’t stay still anymore. But before I can figure out my next step, a car roars up the drive.
Garrett.
“Fuck,” Judith breathes. She puts down the butter knife and holds the counter with both hands, head dropped.
I move to the doorframe. I lean against one side and brace my arm against the other, like a human barricade.
“Hey, kid,” Garrett says as he climbs from his car. “Your sister around?”
He walks toward me. “I gotta talk to her before work.”
I glance at Judith, who is still gripping the counter. She shakes her head slightly.
I’m still not a hundred percent sure. That’s what holds me in the doorway. She could be hiding from him the same way she hid from me. It could be true, what she said. It could have been a drunk guy at the bar.
Garrett has both hands in the air now, like a man surrendering.
“Listen, I had too much to drink last night. I know things went a little crazy. But if I talk to her — ”
Before he can finish, I hurl myself from the bus and knock him flat on his back. I have tunnel vision. Black-and-white static everywhere, with only a tiny clear circle in the center. A circle just big enough for his face.
He tries to push me off him, but there’s no way. I pound through his arm blocks. I slam a fist into his jaw. Then another. He shoves me off-balance and my next swing hits his nose. There’s a satisfying crunch. Blood smears across his cheek.
I’ve heard nothing until now except the roar in my head, but Judith has her fingernails in my shoulders and she’s pulling. She screams in my ear.
“Stop! Stop it!”
A big part of me — the part with my fist already raised again — wants to keep pounding Garrett until he’s spattered into the dirt. But when Judith grabs my arm and clings, I let her stop me.
As I shift my weight off him, Garrett rolls to his side, hands covering his face.
“This is assault,” he says, his voice barely intelligible.
“Are you fucking serious?” I’m not intelligible either. It’s more of a snarl than speech. “I’m going to count to three, and you’re going to get in your car and drive away and you’d better never, ever show your face here again…”
I’m big on counting this morning, apparently.
“One…two…”
He staggers to his feet, blood dripping onto his shirt. He doesn’t make it to the car in time, but he’s trying, so I hold onto the “three” until he’s gone.
Once he drives away, my adrenaline leaks away. I drop to the grass, where I lie on my back and look up at Judith. She looks a decade older than she should.
“Why’d you lie?”
“I didn’t lie, exactly. He was at the bar last night, drunk, and he didn’t like the way I was acting with the other customers.”
“You could have told me that.”
“I didn’t want you to kill him.”
“I didn’t kill him,” I say, raising an arm off the ground to examine my fist. I open and close the fingers. Bruised, but otherwi
se fine. I don’t think I’ve ever hit anyone before.
“Proud of yourself?” Judith asks, shaking her head. She eases to the grass beside me. In the sunlight, her eye looks even worse.
“I am, sort of,” I grin. “Do you think being able to fight is genetic?”
She smirks. “If it is, you’re probably the best rifle-shot in town.”
I am a pretty decent shot.
“Ironically, Walt started the grow because he didn’t want to fight.”
“Or maybe he didn’t want to follow orders,” Judith says. “Can you imagine?”
“Fucking prick,” I say in Walt’s voice.
She cups a hand over her eye. “Ouch. Don’t make me laugh.”
“What now?” I ask.
“What about what now?” she says.
“He might come back.”
She shrugs. “I’ll call the cops. I can do that, you know. I’m not the one growing pot.”
Suddenly she’s crying, looking away from me and across the orchard.
“Hey.” I slide over on the grass until I can put an arm around her. “It’s done now. He’s gone.”
“It’s not even that,” she says. “It’s just…this is harder than I thought it would be, you know? It’s lonely. I get paid crap.”
“What about your courses?”
“What am I going to do with a psychology degree? Besides, it’ll take years at the rate I’m going.”
“Do you want to come home for a while?”
I almost laugh. I came to tell her I was leaving the grow, and now I’m encouraging her to go back.
“You could give this some time to blow over, then think about starting again.”
“Can you leave twice?” She looks at me as if I might really know the answer. But I don’t.
I make her breakfast. Then I leave for a while, drop off a lawyer envelope for Walt and hit the hardware store for rope and duct tape. I stop by her place again on the way home and offer to stay the night.
Judith shakes her head.
“He won’t come back tonight,” she says.
“I could stay to keep you company.”
“No,” she says. “I gotta deal with it eventually.”
Which is exactly how I feel as I pull my truck onto the highway.
16
Hazel meets me as I crest the hill, but I slip into the drying shed, push her nose out of the way and close the door behind me. I suppose I’m looking for one last moment of peace before all hell breaks loose.
I reach for Dad’s stash, tucked above the frame of the one small window, and I roll myself a different kind of temporary absence. Then I lower myself to the slat floor and wrap my arms around my knees.
After a while, the scenes on the walls begin to look more real than ever. They must have taken months to draw. Years. The faces of the people in the San Francisco street scene are incredibly detailed. I can even see the relationships between them. An old woman leans on the arm of a younger girl. A toddler runs through the crowd holding a stuffed lion against his chest, mouth wide in laughter. A harried-looking mother chases behind. There’s a young couple in a restaurant window holding hands across the table. The man is partly obscured, but the woman’s face is clear.
She has Walt’s eyes.
These could all be real people. Maybe Walt populated his mural with figures from his past. This girl…his sister, maybe? She looks like she’s in her early twenties, a little younger than Walt would have been when he was drafted.
I never thought to wonder about the family Walt left.
He’s always seemed like the trunk of our family tree. But of course he’s a branch like the rest of us. When he deserted from Vietnam, then crossed the border to Canada, he left people behind.
I know my dad will never understand why anyone would want to leave these woods. But Walt…maybe Walt will get it. He had to give up both his family and his art when he chose to live here. Or at least the possibility of sharing his art. Sharing his worldview, as Mr. Pires might say.
I suck in one last lungful, probably sacrificing a few brain cells for the sake of courage.
I’ll never be a spotlight personality. I know that. But I can’t put all my art into a shed, either.
Inside the cabin, I find Mom, Dad and Walt sitting around the table. They look as though they may have been arguing, but I don’t let that stop me. I drop into the chair across from Dad.
“I’m going to move to town for a while.” This is the only way I know how to say it. I have to blurt the words. “I’ll stay with Judith while I look for work. Then I’m going to save up and apply to art school next year.”
Silence. My eyes skitter their way to the cabin wall above their heads, and it takes all my willpower to drag my gaze back to Dad.
He looks heartbroken. As if his face is caving in on itself. But as I watch, he hardens.
“Well, that’s fine,” he says.
A brief flare of hope —
“Do whatever you damn well please.”
When I glance at Mom, her cheeks are wet. Walt, for once, is silent.
“I know it’s a bad time,” I say.
Dad pushes himself up from the table and heads for the door.
“Do what you gotta do,” he says.
Communication. We really lost the genetic lottery on that one.
•
Once Dad disappears, I can’t stand the way Walt keeps muttering about someone named George. I can’t handle the sadness leaking from Mom. I throw my stuff into my pack and promise that I’ll check in within the next few days.
Hazel joins me as soon as I walk out the door. She follows me down the trail, past the ATV and toward the logging road. For a while she scouts ahead. Then she stops to nose a dead tree and I pass her. But she doesn’t like that, and a few minutes later she bounds by me. Which feels a bit like being passed by a dump truck on a single-lane road.
“It’s a good thing I love you,” I say.
I’m not ready to leave her. I toss my pack in the back of the truck on my way past, then I lead the way to the highway. Hazel doesn’t stop until we’re a few steps from the ditch that marks our side, a bit north of the campground. There, she waits for me to catch up.
It’s almost dusk. A lone pickup drives by, then nothing.
I hop across the ditch, listen carefully for any wandering druids, and give Hazel a wave.
“C’mon.”
She does her own surprisingly agile leap over the bank and crosses the highway as if she owns it.
On the other side of the pavement there’s a gradual bank just high enough to hide us from the road. Then a tiny crescent of beach. There’s not a lot of room here, or sand, but there’s enough space for me to settle on the pebbles and lean back against a log, and enough space for Hazel to drop onto her haunches beside me.
The lake is a perfect mirror. Upside-down mountains and blue sky and the tiniest brush of a cloud. For a few minutes, all I can hear are soft ripples.
This is probably my favorite place in the whole world.
“That your bear?”
The voice makes me scramble to my feet. Hazel, too. She sniffs at the air, assessing.
The man sidesteps in flip-flops down the bank from the highway. He’s scruffy, unshaven and carrying a too-big backpack with a water bottle and a pair of hiking shoes tied to the side.
I glance at Hazel, then back at him.
There’s no way to pretend she isn’t tame. No way to pretend she’s not with me.
“I wouldn’t call her my bear, but we’ve known each other a long time. Her mother was killed by a hunter.”
“Safe to sit down?” he asks, nodding at the log beside me.
When I shrug, he drops his pack and swings his leg over, placing himself on my left, leaving plenty of room between himself and the bea
r.
“You live here?”
“Nearby.” I sit cautiously, examining him from the corner of my eye. He asks a lot of questions for a stranger.
“Just asked ’cause I could use a shower. It’s taken me three days to get here from Vancouver, hitching. I’m heading to Fernie. Got friends there.”
He gives a lot of information for a stranger, too. But his smile is friendly. Too friendly?
“Don’t have a shower you can use, sorry. Might have a snack.” I rummage in my pack and pull out a granola bar from the bottom. “It’s probably been in there a while.”
He doesn’t care, apparently. He rips open the wrapper.
I figure he’ll move on when he’s done. But he settles in beside us.
It’s time to get Hazel away.
I stand and brush the sand from my ass.
“We should get going. Good luck with your trip.”
He nods again. “Nice to meet you.”
He waits on the beach and watches as Hazel and I climb to the highway, check for traffic, cross the road and jump the ditch.
He watches, and I don’t like it.
“Go home,” I tell Hazel firmly, as soon as we’re in the shadow of the trees. “Git. Go home.” I give her a slap on the rump for emphasis, but she doesn’t need it. Maybe she hears the tension in my voice. She lumbers up the old road without looking back. Partway along, she plows into the trees.
When I glance at the road, the stranger’s standing on the shoulder, staring up toward our property. A car passes, but he doesn’t put his thumb out. Instead, he turns and saunters north.
Which is not the direction of Fernie.
I keep watching.
A few minutes later, an old white Dodge drives by, and I spot the stranger’s face in the passenger seat.
In the driver’s seat, a familiar-looking brush cut.
I feel as if they’ve run me over with that car. My pulse thunders in my chest and in my head. My ears ring so loudly that I can hardly hear the nattering squirrel above me. I try to start hiking up the trail, but I can’t catch my breath. I have to stop and put my hands on my knees.
They’ve probably been gathering evidence all week.
I’m an idiot. I’ve destroyed my entire family. For a girl who wasn’t worth it.