Breaking Good

by Mike B. Good

  By the time I emitted a victory shriek, I’d burrowed deep underwater. Stoic with pain, I crawled crustacean-like along the bottom to the far shore, bright red, no hornier than a boiled lobster. The girls were too busy rubbing lotion onto Happy to compliment my athleticism. I cleared my thorax, clicked my claws for attention, and lied.

  “Man, that hundred-foot dive was fun.”

  “You dove?” asked Bambi.

  I spread my hands. “Jump, dive, what’s the difference?”

  “Do it again,” said Sharona, “we missed it.”

  “What? You guys didn’t see my spectacular performance?”

  “Nope,” said Bambi, rubbing oil on Happy’s inner thigh. “We were distracted, making sure Happy’s groin didn’t get sunburned.”

  “You mean I risked my life for nothing?”

  “Guess so,” said Sharona, with a giggle and a sexy shrug.

  “Come on, Mikey,” said Bambi, “don’t be a dick. Do it again.”

  What was I? A masochist? If repeatedly committing testicular suicide is what it took, the dentists could have the Hollywood girls. Obviously, searching for a love life was too dangerous for a guy like me. Staying on the farm, safely surrounded by Hawaii’s most fearsome felons, changing the world while living like a frustrated monk—that was the smart move.

  Chapter 20

  Changes

  By early August, reluctantly resigned to chastity (within reason), and on a first-name basis with many of the resident cockroaches, I felt at home with the farm’s funky scene. Meanwhile, some of the other farmers were not so comfortable. One of them in particular.

  “What’s with the incessant ass-scratching, Russ? You have fleas?”

  “I wish.”

  “Really?”

  “Let’s just say, I’d trade these mushrooms for them.”

  Mushrooms? Aha! His dark secret was out.

  “Are you serious? You have mushrooms growing out of your butt?”

  “Stop laughing, it’s not funny.”

  I corrected him. “Yeah, it is.”

  “Not for me.”

  With the perfect storm of temperature and humidity in his shorts, a rare fungal infection he’d brought back from ‘Nam had come bursting out of hibernation. No doubt, the result of a long weekend in a Saigon whorehouse. The one he didn’t want to talk about. Now that I knew his secret, neither did I. But no amount of scratching, and there was plenty of it, would heal his problem. He finally decided to fly home to San Diego and check into a V.A. hospital.

  “They’ll treat me with a daily series of fungicidal enemas,” he said.

  “That’s some treat. Aren’t there any other options?”

  “I could go for an anusectomy.”

  Suddenly, the enemas seemed reasonable. I’d miss his friendship and sharp wit, if not his recent bout of repulsive scratching. Then again, I appreciated the big jar of buds I’d inherited, and I said a silent mahalo to the infectious Vietnamese hooker who’d set things in motion. As if to cheer me up, Katey and Lynn decided they’d had enough farming and went back to Los Angeles. I’d miss their cooking and I appreciated, well, that they weren’t there anymore. As for Ray, he’d begun spending a lot of his time on Maui. And just like that, I was now the Chief Executive Assistant and in charge of the pakalolo.

  No longer an intern’s intern, I’d begun rocketing up the corporate ladder. Mellow Johnny had seniority at the farm, but for some reason, he never got the growing bug and stayed content watering lettuce, training dogs, and making delivery runs to Honolulu. With Ray’s plants already robust, all I had to do was make sure they were watered and occasionally foliar fed. Watering meant turning on a valve and letting the soaker hoses run for an hour. Thanks to the fertile compost and the killer weather, the plants grew fine without much input from me. Still, I felt an inordinate amount of pride for not screwing them up.

  As he decreed me the new Chief Executive Assistant, Ray handed over a Moon Sign Book. “Ignore all the lame astrological stuff and old wives’ tales, but follow their schedule for flowering plants.”

  I checked out the information. “You mean this schedule here, which seems to be based entirely on those things?”

  “Exactly. It’s the only logical way to grow.”

  The Moon Sign Book said stuff like: August 2, 1st Quarter, Cancer. Water sign, fruitful. Good time to start seeds and transplant, fertilize like crazy, and prune to stimulate growth. Or conversely, like an evil Plan B: June 26, 4th Quarter, Leo. Fire sign, barren. Good time to plant poisonous beets, shitty time for pot. Trim to retard growth.

  I’m paraphrasing a bit, but it was full of helpful tips like that. Basically, the idea was to plant, trim, and fertilize during a first or second quarter water sign if you wanted to stimulate growth and produce the nicest possible flowers. And any other time if you didn’t.

  I raised my hand. “We want Plan A, right?”

  “I can see why you were such an ace student.” Imitating my teachers, he said, “Now get out of my classroom.”

  _ _ _

  Armed with the strategic Moon Sign Book, I felt like an executive. Jackie and Johnny were still there, but losing three people almost at once left a big gap in our crew. We’d either have to work harder or find some replacements. An easy choice for a Chief Executive Assistant of my caliber. We recruited a friendly couple from the Omni Boogie commune: Happy the Spaceman, and his clever old lady, Rita. Rita was down to earth and had the armpit and leg hair to prove it. She had shiny black hair, pretty Mediterranean features, and (for a feminist) was a lot nicer than Katey or Lynn.

  Happy, my overly-helpful buddy from the Pali, a generic hippie with long hair and full beard, sharply unfocused eyes, and a ready smile at inappropriate moments, had a soft-spoken, kind demeanor. He’d grown up in Arizona, gone to school with Alice Cooper, and had a serious love affair with psychedelics. Thanks to the psychedelics, he’d become one of the more affluent of the commune hippies, drawing “crazy pay” every month—instead of no pay like everyone else. His day-glo brains had become sketchy, but no one had a bigger heart.

  When we’d first met, he’d told me, “I’m not really crazy.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  He scratched his head. “Good point. Hell, I’m not even sure I’m from outer space.”

  That begged another question. “Why not?”

  “Mom claimed to have been seduced by aliens, but she might’ve meant wetbacks.”

  “Ah.”

  “She is quite the alcoholic. On the other hand, I can’t smell a thing. Don’t tell anyone.”

  When he’d said as much to the Social Services people, hoping for assistance with an impacted wisdom tooth, he got an emergency appointment. With the staff psychiatrist. An hour later, a bewildered Happy walked away with enough prescriptions to keep Keith Richards in line. Not to mention a monthly paycheck and a still-sore tooth. After cashing his check and selling the pills, he was rolling in dough. Made so much he could afford a dentist.

  I rolled a welcome-to-the-farm doobie.

  When I raved about how good it tasted, Happy confided, “I’d give all this luxury up, if only I could smell and taste pot. Other stuff, too.”

  I thought of the drive along Makimaki Road and the pig farm next door. “Be careful what you wish for.”

  Rita agreed. “No shit.”

  “You really can’t smell anything?” I asked.

  “Nope. Not since childhood.”

  “What happened?”

  “My lactose-intolerant older brother, Fat Ralphie.” Reminiscing with a cringe, he recalled fainting under the sheets while sadistic Ralphie cut silent-but-deadlies like fetid machine gun bullets. “After a while, my nose just shut down. The doctor says I’m psycho-something.”

  “Psychosomatic?”

  “If that means hearing voices, then, yeah.”

  With our farm reloaded with high-caliber staff, I felt even more ready to take on the chal
lenges of Chief Executive Assistant.

  _ _ _

  By late August, the plants were packing on the flowers. When I’d first met the girls, they had only a primordial white hair or two, now they had millions. The flowering period was an exciting time for a grower. Maybe I should say an anticipated time, ‘cause watching pakalolo bud out is like watching a pot that takes eight weeks to boil. With the flowers compelling me, I’d sneak into the plot for the traditional sunrise doobie, after our trips to the beach, and again before sunset.

  I’d give them a pep talk. “Un-believable, girls. Is this all you’ve grown in the last few hours? Sheesh.” When I wasn’t haranguing the girls like an Eastern European gymnastics coach, I’d be good-vibing them. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but I can’t wait to smoke you.”

  Why was I so demanding? So impatient? Because on his last visit from Maui, Ray had said, “Once this crop is finished, I’m full-time Maui, brah.”

  “Really?”

  “Oh, yeah, Maui no ka oi.” That meant Maui is the best. Lots of people felt that way. “I found a killer scene up country. Amazing views, perfect weather, and plenty of privacy.”

  “Lucky you. Hey, what about the plot?”

  “Already started a big one.”

  “I meant the one over here.”

  “Well, that’s up to you.”

  “Really? I’ll be Chief Executive in Charge of Pot?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “You make a good point.”

  Just like that, in a matter of weeks, I’d gone from lowly intern’s intern to Chief Executive Assistant, and soon I’d have a plot of my own. My dream come true. For the first time in my life, I’d be a master of my own destiny. More confident than ever before, I vowed to tell Dad to take his law school registration and stick it where the sun didn’t shine. Or gentler words to that effect. His son was about to be a CEO. How could he complain? So many, many ways. None of which I wanted to hear. Which is why I broke my vow and neglected to mention my big promotion. Keeping Dad in the dark was the smart move. Given his access to the bizarre array of toys at the Secret Weapons Lab and his vengeful attitude, Dad was one mad scientist best left unantagonized.

  Ten days into September and the flowers were getting big, the branches filling out with buds. Another couple of weeks or so and they’d be fully ripe. I spent a lot of time supporting the heavy branches with Twist ‘n Ties so they didn’t end up splitting right off the trunk. Unlike the seeded crap I’d suffered through college with, sin semilla buds just keep growing. Picture gluttonous virgins with a fondness for pastries and sweets. Every day the desperate flowers engorged a little more, hoping a chubby-chasing male sexed them up before it was too late. Each of Ray’s plants, topped many times to keep them squatty, had dozens of heavily-laden branches. I must have used a case of Twist ‘n Ties. By harvest, the girls looked like kinky experiments in horticultural bondage.

  Ray had given me another task. “See how the older leaves are turning yellow?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Go ahead and pick those. It’ll let more light into the interior. But don’t overdo it or the buds won’t be happy.”

  “Got it. The leaves are like solar panels.”

  “Whaddaya mean?”

  “Just a science project I worked on in high school. Using the sun to stop our disastrous reliance on fossil fuels. The idea has been around for ages. The trouble is getting the cost per watt down so it’s economical, which is why I tweaked the. . .”

  “What’s wrong with fossil fuels, Edison?”

  “Only everything. Fossil fuels are responsible for rising levels of CO2.”

  “So?”

  “We’re gonna have global warming if we’re not careful.”

  “You rather have an ice age?”

  “No way, I hate being cold.”

  “So what’s the problem.”

  “The evil cows teaming up with the oil and coal industries to wreak havoc on our planet’s ecology.”

  “Evil cows?”

  “Like Happy’s brother Ralphie, they’re methane factories with legs.”

  “I’ll admit, methane is a stinky subject, but I don’t wanna poke my nose into it. Let’s focus on the pakalolo for now. You better leave the crazy New Age ideas to wackos like Louie the Flake.”

  I sighed. People just weren’t ready for the truth. It was inconvenient. The only person who’d listen to me was Al Gore. I guess Ray made a good point. I could be a visionary when I wasn’t busy figuring out how to change the world.

  “If you want, Mikey, sell the leaves,” said Ray. “It’ll be a little bonus for ya.”

  “Seriously? People buy leaves?”

  I’d bought some crappy weed during my college years, but no one had insulted me with a pound of pure leaves. They always made sure to throw in plenty of stems and seeds and moldy shake so I didn’t feel cheated.

  “You know hippies,” said Ray. “The dumber ones try smoking banana peels.”

  Still angry at angelic Donovan for that misleading song Mellow Yellow, I blushed. Electrical banana, my ass. Ray was right, a gullible enough hippie would try damn near anything. We had a book at the farm on psychoactive plants that suggested we could trip out on morning glory seeds and make opium out of lettuce. And with all that stony lettuce growing, well—I should have learned my lesson with the banana.

  “Do leaves get you stoned?”

  “Who knows? But there is a market for them.”

  Though surprised by the news, as a humanitarian, I couldn’t be a dick and deprive desperate stoners of leaves. Not if they insisted with cash money. I reckoned leaves had to be stonier than morning glories, lettuce, or bananas, but I sure as hell wasn’t gonna try ‘em myself. Not with a pickle jar loaded with nice buds. Born picky, like my mentor, I had become a snob. But only with fine drugs, sticking with the hippie credo. Now I just had to find a leaf market. I knew where to start.

  “Happy, you know anyone demented enough to buy leaves?”

  “I sure do.”

  “Who?”

  “My friends from the psychiatrist’s office.”

  “Perfect.”

  “Not really. They might be nuts, but they can afford better stuff.”

  “Rats. Well, the buyers don’t have to be psychotic, just indiscriminate.”

  “In that case, I know just the guy. Let me make a call.”

  The next day we added five pounds of dried leaves to our load of lettuce. Accompanying Happy on the delivery run, I met a transplanted New York couple named Adam and Eve. They were the headliners at a raunchy Chinatown dive called The Swing Club.

  “Not our real names, man,” Adam confided with his heavy accent.

  “Ah. I was thinking, you know, what a coincidence.”

  It would’ve been funny if Adam and Eve, the first humans, spoke like Brooklyn natives.

  Eve said, “We thought the religious angle would sell more tickets to repressed tourists.”

  They were right; their act was wildly popular. G.I.s, polyester-clad drunks, Compost Jimmy, and eager shutterbugs wearing I Prefer the Poop! t-shirts packed the place for three shows nightly. Adam had quite a skill for recognizing the marketplace. In the old days, he would have flooded it with apples and pimped for Eve. Between sets, they put on fig leaves and worked the crowd, selling ounces of leaves to horny tourists and soldiers, promising, “No seeds, brah!”

  Before I knew it, I was pulling in a fortune. Several hundred bucks a week while the supply lasted. That made me almost as affluent as Happy with his crazy pay and pill business. With a few thousand dollars in my pocket, I was coming up in the world, but I still had a long way to go before I could change it. Leaves, though seedless, weren’t gonna get the job done.

  There was another bonus from collecting leaves. A stony one! After pulling leaves for a while, I’d accumulate a dark and resiny goo on my busy fingers and hands. When bits of leaves began sticking like Velcro, I�
�d take a break. Rubbing my hands together like a mad scientist, I’d roll the resin into little balls. Sticking several together, it didn’t take long to get a gram of gooey fresh hashish. It looked like a rabbit turd, felt like a wad of gum, and tasted like the buds smelled—sweet as candy. To celebrate usable hands again, I’d sample the hash. I loved my work!

  “You’ve become obsessed,” observed Rita.

  I shrugged. “That’s what I do.”

  “You never go to town anymore.”

  “If there was something in town to motivate me, I would.”

  “You need a girlfriend.”

  “I’ve got plenty of them out back.”

  “See? That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

  Chapter 21

  Mom

  No matter how much I hounded them, like Third World bureaucrats, the girls did their thing at their own sedate pace. I don’t know, perhaps Rita was right. Maybe acting like an obsessive madman wasn’t healthy. I needed a distraction from the routine, something to take my mind off my fixation with the plants. So I called my old girlfriend. The gorgeous Lesley knew how to distract me, but I couldn’t get her to forgive me. Or dump her new upgraded boyfriend and role on a television series.

  “What’s he got that I haven’t?”

  “Perfect hair, chiseled features, and a house in Malibu.”

  “Big deal.”

  “And let’s not forget an Emmy, a production company, millions of. . .”

  Sorry I’d asked, I said, “That’s all superficial stuff.”