by Logan Miller
DID HE KNOW?
But her father provided a reprieve without further ordeal.
“Well, we’ll let you two get back to whatever it was you were talking about before we interrupted.” He threw the cruiser in drive and was about to pull away when he shifted back into park. “Lelah, come here.”
Her heartbeat pounded even louder and her entire body seized up and she was momentarily frozen in place. She thought she was going to throw up.
Finally she stepped forward across the gravel and placed her right hand on the roof of the cruiser above her father’s head.
Gates craned out the window as if to whisper a secret into his daughter’s ear and instead placed a kiss on her cheek.
“Remember,” he said, “it ain’t that important.” He paused, then, “You can tell me anything.”
“I know.”
“You sure?”
“Yes.”
She felt as though her father was staring into her thoughts and she smiled in hopes of ending the inspection.
“Catch you later my little Lovebug,” he said.
The tires crunched the gravel again and the cruiser drove across the parking lot and onto the empty highway toward the lonely mesa land that was now without shadow against the coming night.
“How does your dad know what kind of beer we were drinking?”
“He saw me at the store when I was buying it.”
“Did you tell him where you were heading?”
“I said I was going to meet you. I didn’t say where.”
“So he doesn’t know we were up in the forest?”
“No.”
“Are you positive?”
“I think so,” she said.
“Either you are or you aren’t.”
“I’m tired. I can’t really remember, but I don’t think I told him—why are you raising your voice?”
“I’m not raising my voice.” He placed his hands softly on her shoulders and looked into her eyes. “I’m just asking, baby. I’m sorry if you thought I was raising my voice. I’m just trying to keep us safe. I’m just trying to protect us.”
“I feel like I’m betraying my dad by not telling him what happened up there. I feel like I’m in my parent’s divorce again and that I have to choose between two people I love. I feel so horrible each time I see my dad right now, I can’t even look him in the eyes for two seconds.”
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her tight. He rubbed her back and warmed her against his body and he could feel her trembling against his chest. She looked up at him with tears coming down her face.
“I never told you this before, but my mother had an affair,” she said. “That’s why they got divorced, that’s why the marriage ended. Because she was selfish. It was her selfish desires that broke up the marriage and she gave up on my dad. She’s the one that was selfish. She gave up on us just as he was getting sober, when he needed help the most.” She paused and he continued rubbing her back. “I don’t want to be selfish, Caleb. I just want to be good to you. But I don’t want to lie to my dad. I love you so much and I love my father too.”
He wiped the tears from her cheeks and stared down into her sad eyes with a tenderness that she could feel within.
“I ain’t asking you to choose between me or your father,” he said. “I would never do that to you. You know that, right?”
She nodded into his chest.
“I just think that not telling him right now is better than telling him,” he said. “I’m confused too. But sometimes you gotta ride out the confusion with patience.”
He kissed her on the forehead and she lifted her chin and kissed him on the lips and tucked her head back into his chest and nestled there with her arms around him.
“I’m nervous about going to the doctor,” she said. “I’m pretty sure I’m pregnant.”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
He kissed her again and told her that he would be there with her forever and that she wasn’t alone and they would raise beautiful children together.
“I’m just so nervous,” she said. “It’s like my brain is just going and going and it won’t stop. Do you think they would take our baby away if this thing went to trial or something?”
“Who?”
“Child Protective Services, or somebody like that?”
“I don’t know, babe. I don’t know how that stuff works.”
“If you had to guess?” she asked.
“I don’t think it’s good to think about that right now.”
“They took away Jenna’s baby after she was arrested for fighting with her boyfriend, and she was just protecting herself. She swore to me that she was just protecting herself and they took away her baby anyway.”
“No one is going to take our child. OK?”
But she didn’t say anything. He tilted her chin back and looked into her wet eyes.
“Nobody is going to take our child,” he said. “OK?”
“The guy up there had a gun to Jake’s head, didn’t he?” she asked.
“Yes he did.”
“And he probably would’ve shot Jake if you hadn’t come back?”
“Probably.” He nodded. “It was certainly looking like that.”
“And your brother would be dead,” she said.
“I don’t know how else it would’ve worked out.”
“I’m glad that you went back.”
“So am I.”
He looked across the two-lane highway. A vague stillness owned the twilight as the land settled into the arrival of night and the cliffs rose up to meet the birthing stars. There was wood smoke in the air. At their backs the muddy Chama silted against the willow and aspen in the monsoon swell and brought water to the farming fields along a plexus of irrigation ditches carved four centuries ago by Spanish settlers.
He thought about her father and the unsettling questions he was asking. He wondered if they were only unsettling because of the narrow scope of his mental vision right now, his preoccupation, his clouded prism. He was confused and his thoughts were jumbled. But he couldn’t show Lelah. He had to stay composed. He had to maintain a level head for her. He could see the pain inside her and it hurt him to see her this way.
Perhaps her father didn’t know anything about the situation and him stopping by with Sparks was just a coincidence. Her father stopped by her work all the time to say hello and bring her lunch or dinner or just something to drink. Perhaps it was nothing. Perhaps it was only paranoia playing tricks on Caleb’s mind. Sheriff Gates was the law. If he needed to speak with them about the matter, if he suspected them, he would come right out with it. He would ask, perhaps even arrest. But why would he suspect them? His daughter?
You’re looking too deep into things. You’re being paranoid right now. You need to relax. This is when you need to relax most of all, not only for yourself, but for Lelah. Most of all for her. You’re forming those cognitive distortions like the psychiatrist at the hospital used to talk about in the discussion circles. Remember? You remember that. You’re jumping to conclusions without sufficient evidence. You need to relax and measure the situation in the light of reason.
He told himself that the body of the young man was an MIA from another kind of war whose soldiers would conceal the kill from any law enforcement agency or formal authority. They did not erect monuments for their dead.
At the end of his internal ramblings and rationalizations he reckoned that Sheriff Gates was ignorant to the whole grim affair. At least for now.
“I don’t know how much longer I can do this,” she said. “I just want to go back to the way things were.”
“Moving forward is all we got now. And I need you to stay strong for us. I know you can do that, Lelah.”
“I can.”
25.
They parked the red, white, and blue cruiser on the mesa a thousand yards distant and surveilled the wood yard through the night and into the next day. In the late afternoon a blue sed
an entered the long dirt driveway and stopped in front of the brother’s trailer. Gates read the license plate with his Leupold Mark 4 spotting scope and Sparks ran the vehicle on the laptop.
26.
Inside the woodshed the brothers pulled back the tarpaulin and revealed the heap of plundered marijuana. Sticky vapors of ripe bud pushed into their nostrils and they could taste the cannabis perfume on their tongues.
Edgar Rivera owned the blue sedan and stood with a bottle of IPA in his left hand, cold from the brothers’ fridge. His ass ached from the long drive and his knees were stiff. He pulled on the bottle and the beer provided comfort to his injuries from the road.
“How many plants you got here?” Edgar asked.
“A few hundred,” Jake said.
“Big fuckers.”
“Yes they are,” said Jake, playing expert. He had asked Caleb to allow him to run the deal, to captain any negotiation that might ensue. Caleb had agreed without protest. It was Jake’s show.
“Ten-footers?” Edgar asked.
“Yessir.”
Jake threw Caleb a look of growing confidence. It was all coming together, just like he said it would.
“How long have they been stored like this?” Edgar asked. His rounded features and sloping shoulders belied a shrewd and cunning intelligence.
“About four days.” Jake said.
“Why’d you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Store them like this.” Edgar stepped across the dirt floor and bent down to inspect the health of the plants. He plucked a handful of serrated leaves and rubbed them between his fingers and dropped them to the floor. He pushed aside several thick stalks and peered into the middle of the pile. A mild steam rose from the organic mass and he could feel the moisture upon his face as he inhaled deeply through his nose.
“How else were we supposed to store them?” Jake said.
“Properly. It’s still fucking wet. You guys have never harvested before, have you?”
“This is our first time.”
“It’s a shame,” Edgar said. “You guys definitely have a green thumb but you sure as hell don’t know shit about getting it ready to smoke. Why the fuck didn’t you ask somebody?”
Edgar glanced at Jake and received only a blank stare.
“You can’t just chop it down and pile it all in one heap like this,” Edgar said. “You need to dry out each plant separately. It’s probably already got mold and maybe even worms by now.”
Edgar snapped the crown bud from the top of a plant and stepped over to the open doorway. He studied the cannabis nugget in the sunlight, the purple resin crystals and the fine red hairs, the tiny involutions and the stickiness of the pungent herb. The smoky smoke.
“This bud is all fucked,” he said. “Look at it.”
“What does it matter how it looks?” Jake asked.
“All that matters right now is how it looks. You fucking serious? Do you care how your steak looks at a restaurant? Yes, you do. If you ordered a filet mignon and the waiter brought you a stuffed squirrel with its eyeballs sticking out its butthole, would that bother you? Yes, it would. You’d send the shit back. You wouldn’t pay for it. This ain’t fucking Chinatown we’re smoking.”
Edgar smelled the bud again and his nose wrinkled.
“It’s already molding. Smell it.” He brought the bud to Jake’s nose. “I don’t even want to see how fucked up the plants are at the bottom of the pile. It’s probably like fucking seaweed. Just a bunch of soggy decomposing shit.”
“Can’t we just trim off the mold?” Jake asked.
Edgar chuckled. “What, like the crust of molding bread? You fucking kidding me?”
“Or spray it with some sort of pesticide?” Jake asked.
“Yeah, a death joint,” Edgar said. “People love smoking those. Where can I buy one? I wanna get so high I die.”
“We need to sell it,” Jake said. “We’ll take half price, whatever you can give us for it.”
“Sorry guys. Chalk it up to a hard lesson learned. It’s worthless. I can’t do shit with this pile of bushes.”
“It can’t be worthless.”
“Yes. It can.” Edgar sipped his beer. “It is.”
“Do you know anybody that will buy it?”
“Worthless means worthless, Jake. Call me earlier next year. I’ll help you build a drying room. Set you up right. Make sure everything is in place. I’m disappointed too. It’s a damn shame. You got some good, big, tight buds here. Great color and crystals. I reckon you just blew close to a million dollars.”
“We gotta get rid of this, Edgar.”
“You’re right. Burn it. It’s a liability sitting in here. A worthless, illegal substance. I don’t know nothing good that can come from that.”
“You don’t understand, Edgar.”
“No, you don’t understand. I mean exactly what I’m telling you. It’s worthless and I can’t do shit with it and I don’t know nobody that can. Why would I lie to you? I want to make money just like you do. I drove all the way up here for nothing and now I gotta drive my ass back. I just wasted a whole goddamn day.”
The farcical episode had taken an unsettling turn. The bungling brothers no longer amused Edgar. There were darker implications working through the situation that were now troubling him. If you were intelligent enough to grow marijuana and see it safely through to harvest, overcoming blights, mites, diseases, mold, voracious insects, a host of horticultural afflictions, set up an efficient irrigation system and not kill the plants through overwatering, cull the first sign of a male plant and extirpate him before he turned the entire crop sterile, prune along the way for maximum growth and yield, enhance the soil with fertilizer and carefully administer nitrogen and other nutrients and numerous other considerations—if you had the knowledge to survive and prosper in the face of this terribly capricious agricultural odyssey, you damn well knew the basics about cutting it down and drying it. These were fundamental considerations of the grower’s trade. You could always hire some ladies with nimble fingers to trim and manicure the buds.
Edgar took a swig of beer. He swallowed and then asked a question that he should’ve asked earlier.
“Just out of curiosity,” he said, “what strain is this anyway?”
Jake fumbled for a response.
“It’s uhm…”
“Indica, Sativa?”
“Yeah, Indica,” Jake said. “It’s Indica.”
“Indica, what?”
“What do you mean?” Jake asked.
“You know, Green Crack, OG, Triple Diesel?”
“Yeah, that’s it.”
“What’s it?”
“The last one you said.”
“Triple Diesel?” Edgar said.
“Yeah. Triple Diesel. That’s the one.”
“But you said this was Indica.”
“It is.”
“Triple Diesel is a Sativa strain,” Edgar said. A smile opened his lips. It was a smile of anger. “It’s not Indica.”
There was a hard silence and Edgar could see that the line of pointed questions had produced a baffling effect. Jake stood rigidly with his hands out from his sides and his mouth partially open. He had the telltale look of someone caught in a lie.
“This ain’t yours,” Edgar said.
“Of course it’s ours,” said Jake.
“No. That’s not what I meant.” His head was tilted back and his chest was puffed toward the brothers in an attitude of bold challenge. His warm and unassuming aspect had changed and he showed the commitment and courage of a hardened trader in a violent and ruthless business. “You didn’t grow this shit.”
There was another long silence and the undercurrent of tension closed the walls of the aluminum shed around them.
“You fucking stole this, didn’t you?” Edgar said. “You ripped off a million dollars of weed and called me to take it off your hands? Fuck you. I’m not here. I never was here.”
Edgar strutted toward the
doorway and turned back around to face the brothers before he exited.
“When you steal this much from somebody in my business people turn up missing. They end up in holes in the desert around here. My advice to you is burn this shit. Immediately. Make it go away and pray that whoever you stole this from doesn’t find out. And don’t ever call me again. Or word might get out what I’ve seen. You motherfuckers. Fuck you, Jake.”
Edgar cocked across the yard and hurled his beer bottle at a pile of wood where it shattered. He ripped open the door of his blue sedan and kicked up a tail of loose dirt and rocks as he sped down the driveway and onto the county road.
ᴥ
From the vantage of the mesa the cruiser watched through binoculars. Gates put the vehicle in gear and drove down the spine and turned onto the county road and they took their time until the land flattened out and the road was deserted in front and behind the blue sedan.
27.
Jake stood in the doorway and watched the blue sedan recede down the long driveway in swirls of dust, shaking his head, refusing to believe the terminal diagnosis. He took the pack of cigarettes from his jeans and sparked one with his lighter. He inhaled and blew a thick jet of smoke into the chilling air that rolled under and around the bald sun low on the ridge.
“Well that sure was a waste of time,” he said. “Edgar has always been full of shit. I knew he wouldn’t come through. He’s just a big fucking talker, is all. A big bragger. Fuck him. Pussy. He doesn’t have vision. Pussy ass bitch. He’s lucky I didn’t swat him in the face getting all bold like that.”
He inhaled and blew another jet of smoke up and around the falling sun.
“I got other leads,” he said.
Still inside the woodshed, Caleb stared at the rotting heap of marijuana. The deadly circus had played long enough. It was time to close the show—run the fucker out of town.
Without a word Caleb brushed past his brother in the doorway and limped across the yard and up the ladder of the new backhoe. He climbed into the cab and gassed the engine over to the woodshed and kept the diesel running. He limped through the doorway and grabbed a bushel of plants and hauled them outside and threw them into the shovelhead. He returned to the pile and grabbed another bushel.