Grower's Market

by Michael Baughman

  “Hello, Lan,” the hitchhiker said.

  “Hello,” the girl answered. “Welcome!”

  She had shiny black hair and smooth brown Asian features and when she looked at Stones he saw she was frightened of him and he knew it had to be his size that made her afraid. After a quick calculation he figured he outweighed her by at least a hundred and fifty pounds.

  When the hitchhiker went off to shower in a back room Stones offered to help Lan. He told her he had time to spare and if anything needed doing around the place he’d be happy to do it. At first she shook her head no, but he saw the cardboard boxes of food goods on the floor behind her desk and he offered to unload the boxes and stack the goods on the shelves. She looked at him with fear in her eyes but finally nodded her head yes and he ripped open boxes and began shelving canned goods and cartons of noodles and bags of rice.

  Neither of them spoke while he worked.

  The phone rang once and Lan gave someone directions to the shelter.

  When the hitchhiker came back showered and dressed he helped Stones finish stocking the shelves.

  After they were done Stones shook hands with the hitchhiker. “You need a ride back to your camp?” he asked him. “I’ll be headed back after the grange.”

  “No thanks, man. I got to use the computer here.” He nodded at the desk and Lan smiled. “Got to email my brother down south. The dude worries about me. Need some hot coffee too. They got good coffee back there by the shower room.”

  “Good luck,” Stones said.

  “Thanks again, dude! You’re a good man!”

  “Good-bye, Lan,” Stones said. “I’ll come by whenever I’m in town to see if you need any help.”

  She nodded again from behind the desk but didn’t answer and Stones could see she was still afraid.

  “That man’s so big,” he heard Lan say when he was out the door.

  In the six weeks since he had first seen her Stones had been back to the homeless shelter twenty-eight times. The first time she had seen him and been afraid Stones had been wearing loose-fitting khaki pants and a baggy light gray sweatshirt and he felt that light-colored clothing made him look even bigger than he was. He remembered how white uniforms always made football players look bigger so now he always wore dark tight-fitting clothes to the shelter.

  He had unloaded and stacked more food. He had swept and mopped the place. He had sanded and painted old furniture. He had laundered sheets and towels and he had twice done work on Lan’s old Dodge Dart.

  Gradually Lan overcame her fear and the two of them had brief conversations as Stones worked. Lan came from Oakland and had majored in sociology and graduated from Cal-Berkeley and now lived in town with a cousin who owned a café. The shelter was funded by a nonprofit and she earned little money but believed in her chosen vocation. They had been open for only two months and few of the homeless came for help but more came all the time as word spread. Stones told Lan that he worked on an organic farm and believed in his vocation too. He never told her anything about his past and he never spoke of her to anybody else.

  For Stones the strangest thing about their relationship was the fact that no matter how often he saw Lan he could never remember what she looked like. When he talked to her his pulse raced and he studied her face. He loved her lustrous hair and her bright dark eyes and her high cheekbones and her perfectly formed nose and her smooth and flawless skin. But once she was gone from his sight he found it impossible to picture her face in his mind. Today Lan had worked the evening shift and Stones drove in after the trouble in the woods and spent an hour sanding down old donated wooden chairs and talking to her. When he said good-bye she surprised and delighted him. She walked with him out to his Subaru and shook his big hand. It was the first time they had touched.

  “I’ll make it back tomorrow morning,” Stones said, “to finish up those chairs. Good night, Lan.”

  Instead of merely saying “Good night” she smiled up and said, “Stones, I like you very much.”

  At the crowded table in the Bird of Prey Stones tried hard to create an image of Lan’s smiling face in his mind and now it worked and he could see her clearly.

  “Hey, Stones, what the hell you smiling about?” Shakespeare said.

  “Nothing special,” Stones answered without looking up from his burger.

  “Yeah, well right before you got here I was telling these dudes more about Superpenis. You want to hear about him too? You want to get caught up?”

  “I guess so,” Stones said. “Why not?”

  But before Shakespeare could begin repeating his rodeo scene Sunbeam stepped up to the table.

  She was sixty-four years old and anyone who saw her could easily tell she had been a true beauty. She had perfect teeth and short white hair that was always neatly combed framing green eyes and high cheekbones. Tonight she wore beige slacks and a black silk blouse. She was tall and tanned and slim and erect and stood behind the last remaining vacant chair smiling at the five young men she thought of as her foot soldiers.

  “There’s a welcome break at the burger counter,” she told them as she took her seat. “A short break though. But I at least have time to say hello.”

  All the men nodded at her and smiled politely.

  “At least we can get started,” she said. “I got some news from Deputy Winter this afternoon. He stopped in for a margarita.”

  “Winter,” Shadow said. “If you ask me he’s an unreliable news source.”

  “No time for euphemisms now,” Sunbeam said. “‘Unreliable news source my ass. Call it what it is. He’s a fat ugly shit-kicker. But for better or worse he’s the source we have at hand and he wanted to tell me he’s heard about a gang of scumbags from somewhere down south who want to rip us off right before we harvest.”

  “Maybe that’s it,” Shadow said. “If he’s right it makes sense. We caught some scumbags this afternoon out by the grow by Piston Rock. We kicked their sorry asses.”

  “How many?”

  “Three is all. Or four. I thought I saw an old dude out ahead of the three we got, but we never found him.”

  “We looked all over,” Shrimp said, “but we couldn’t find anybody.”

  “We tried,” said Shakespeare. “We worked at it hard. But that’s some thick woods and tough country out there.”

  “Don’t start fretting yet,” Sunbeam said. “Winter promised he’d keep me informed.”

  “But like you say yourself he’s a fat shit and a stupid asshole,” Toon said. “I mean you said it right, he is. I wouldn’t piss on Winter if he caught fire. How’d he find out anyway? How’s he know? Where’s the sheriff stand in this?”

  “Never mind the sheriff,” Sunbeam said. “The sheriff himself’s definitely and obviously yet another scumbag. You’re right about Winter, he’s a certified dumb ass, and it’s a good thing he is. Good for us I mean. I told you what I heard. I need to head on back to the counter now. Some guy, some stranger, wants to try the challenge. Just found out a few minutes ago.”

  “The burgers?” Shrimp asked.

  “What else?” Sunbeam answered.

  “What stranger?” asked Toon.

  “A fat man in a weird camouflage cowboy hat with a rattlesnake hatband. He wants his burgers at midnight on the dot.”

  “That dude,” Stones said. “He’s weird for sure. Why midnight?”

  “How would I know?” Sunbeam said. “I didn’t ask him. Maybe he’s superstitious. We’ll talk more later, men. See you soon.”

  Sunbeam went back behind the counter to prepare ten half-pound buffalo burgers for the fat cowboy in the camouflage hat.

  With many patrons sitting with their buffalo burgers in front of them the Bird of Prey had turned fairly quiet with at least as much eating as talking or drinking going on.

  “If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me?” by the Bellamy Brothers played on the jukebox. Six couples slow-danced to the song on the small hardwood floor between the bar and the crowded t
ables.

  Shrimp sat eyeing the motorcycle dude and the sexy blond again. She was holding her beautiful body close against him when Sunbeam carried the platter of ten oversized burgers out from behind the counter. She carried the platter with both hands through the crowd toward a table near the bar where the fat cowboy sat waiting.

  Word spread quickly and nearly everyone in the place including the dancers gathered into a crowd around the table to watch.

  Sunbeam carefully lowered the platter and placed it in front of the cowboy and stood up straight and looked at her wristwatch. “Two minutes till midnight,” she announced in a loud voice.

  “I need me two big pitchers of water,” the cowboy said.

  “Two pitchers of water please!” Sunbeam called to Rainbow.

  “Make it quick!” said the cowboy.

  Rainbow hurried out from behind the bar and placed a two-quart pitcher filled with water and ice on each side of the burger platter.

  “Want a glass?” Sunbeam asked.

  “I’ll down it straight from the pitcher,” the cowboy said. “Saves time.”

  “Ready?” Sunbeam asked.

  The fat cowboy lifted his hat from his head and set it on the table behind the burger platter. He had long, brown greasy hair with a white bald spot in the middle. He took three deep breaths and massaged his jaw muscles with both hands and smiled and nodded.

  “Good luck,” Sunbeam said. “Coming up on midnight . . . Go!”

  The hatless cowboy lifted the first burger with both hands and took a huge bite and chewed hard and fast and swallowed and took another huge bite and chewed and swallowed and then lifted a water pitcher with one hand and drank deeply from it and swallowed twice and lowered the pitcher back to the table and bit into his burger again with water dribbling down his chin onto his neck. He finished the first burger in less than two minutes. Smears of shiny grease mixed with yellow mustard were visible around his mouth as he lifted the second burger and bit in and chewed and swallowed and drank again.

  Except for occasional shouts of encouragement the crowd watched in deferential silence.

  “Do it dude!” someone yelled.

  “Go dude!”

  “Grind, baby! Grind!”

  “Yeah! You the man!”

  “Eat it, dude! Go! Go! Go!”

  In fourteen minutes five burgers were gone along with one pitcher of water. The fat cowboy’s face had gone as pale as his bald spot, but he picked up the sixth burger and just as he bit into it the front door flew open.

  Two big men wearing jeans and black leather jackets with their faces covered with bright red ski masks that revealed only their eyes and their mouths burst into the tavern closely followed by six more identically dressed men who pushed through the open door in pairs. By the time all the intruders were inside the brawl was under way.

  No one in the crowd noticed that the fat cowboy spat a mouthful of burger onto the floor and clamped his hat on his head as he rose from the table and quickly circled the gang of intruders and disappeared out the door into the night.

  The first two masked men were punching and kicking the first men they had come to once inside.

  Women screamed and some of them ran behind the bar and others into the restroom as men screamed and cursed.

  “Motherfucker!”

  “Cocksucker!”

  “Fuck you!”

  “Suck that, faggot!”

  “Fuck you!”

  “I’ll rip your lungs out, motherfucker!”

  “Fuck you!”

  Rainbow had run behind the bar and ducked down to call Deputy Winter on the landline.

  Sunbeam made it back behind her serving counter.

  Shadow and Shrimp and Toon and Shakespeare and Stones were joined in the battle.

  Somewhere near the bar a shot was fired.

  “Motherfucker!”

  “Fuck you motherfucker!”

  “Faggot!”

  Another shot was fired as Stones came up behind one of the masked men and grabbed the shoulder of his jacket with his left hand and spun him around and landed a hard, solid punch to the Adam’s apple with his right. The man clutched his throat with both hands and made a loud ugly gurgling noise as he fell.

  Another masked man had the motorcycle dude who had been dancing with the blond backed against the bar landing one hard blow to the face after another. As the motorcycle dude fell backward onto the bar Shadow saw the gashed cheek and closed eye and swollen ear, and he brought his boot up with all his might between the masked man’s legs from behind. Shadow felt his boot flatten balls and the masked man grunted and screamed and spun around and crumpled to the floor. He landed curled up on his side and rocked back and forth with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth contorted with pain. Then as Shadow kicked the red mask with the toe of his boot where he knew the nose should be, something smashed into his skull and just as he felt himself begin to fall everything went black.

  STONES

  As early as kindergarten Stones had been big for his age so he had always played football. From the very start he was so good at the game that beginning in elementary school his teachers forgave his laziness and irresponsibility. No matter how poor his work was he was given passing grades all the way through high school and three years of college. No one including Stones cared about his grades beyond the academic requirement that minimal standards had to be met to keep him eligible to play. Stones believed along with his parents and coaches and friends that after Saturday football at a major college he would play on Sundays in the NFL. But he didn’t quite make it. He was big enough and fast enough and athletic enough but he wasn’t quite mean enough. “You don’t enjoy hurting people!” a coach admonished him not long before he was cut. “You got to love dishing out pain!” After the army at age twenty-three and minus his right eye he found his way to professional wrestling. He began his career as a villain dubbed Pirate Pete and he grew a beard and entered the ring with a bright red bandanna wrapped around his head and carrying a shiny broadsword to go along with his eye patch. The problem was he sometimes forgot his instructions and managed to lose matches he was scripted to win. Next he was hired as a bouncer in a nightclub but after a few weeks on that job he shoved an obnoxious drunk down the steep flight of stairs that led from the street up to club and the drunk collided with a middle-aged couple starting up the stairs and knocked them all the way out the door and across the sidewalk onto the street. The man was struck by a car and nearly died and Stones was fired and a lawsuit was filed against the nightclub. Thanks to family connections, the police department in a coastal town trained Stones despite his missing eye and took him on as a probationary beat patrolman. On a cloudy evening a few weeks after starting work he set out on foot down a lonely beach chasing two men who had just robbed a 7-Eleven at knifepoint. He caught up with one of the robbers and handcuffed him with his arms stretched backward around a palm tree and then set off running again and eventually caught the second robber farther down the beach and took him straight back to the station to be booked. He forgot about the palm tree man who wasn’t discovered until late the next morning and this resulted in a lawsuit filed against the town and Stones was fired again, but one of his friends on the force had told him about the money to be made up north in marijuana country.

  THAT POOR SUMBITCH

  Case reached his cabin shortly before 3 a.m.

  He stripped and stood sick and exhausted under a strong hot shower for half an hour. After the shower he wrapped himself in a terrycloth robe and then arranged crumpled newsprint with kindling and small chunks of madrone in his woodstove and lit a fire.

  Next he made a thick ham sandwich with horseradish on dark rye bread.

  When the sandwich was gone he poured three inches of Jack Daniels into a clean tumbler and pulled his favorite rocking chair up close to the stove and sat there sipping the bourbon and warming himself through. With the fire burning steadily he added larger chunks of the well-seasoned madrone and soon the woodst
ove roared with emanating heat. Case’s legs were stiff and sore and his right shoulder ached badly. The old wound on his back itched and the itching irritated him more than the various pains.

  He limped to the kitchen for ingredients and rolled a healthy joint and limped back and smoked it by the woodstove, and it helped.

  When the joint was gone he thought mostly of Heather for the half hour it took to finish the tumbler of Jack Daniels. She had been dead for more than eight years and the long days and lonely nights and tiresome months had passed too slowly ever since he had been living alone.

  After the last sip of bourbon he stoked the fire and carried the tumbler out to the kitchen and filled it with water and swallowed three Advil tablets and placed the empty glass on top of the sandwich plate in the sink. Then he climbed the stairs to his loft and set his alarm for 8 a.m. He dropped the robe over a chair and slid into bed and fell asleep almost at once and dreamed of Heather.

  The alarm awakened Case and he showered under warm water and brushed and flossed his teeth and shaved. He had come to dislike these basic daily rituals because they brought to mind better times when he wasn’t alone and had more reason to care about his hygiene and appearance.

  In his bedroom he dressed in jeans and a heavy woolen sweater and then phoned the Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Winter answered in a sleepy drawling voice. Case told him what he had seen in the woods the previous afternoon and Winter told Case he’d be out to his place within the hour to talk about it.

  Case’s aches and pains had subsided. He started a pot of coffee and made another thick ham sandwich for breakfast and rebuilt the fire in the woodstove with kindling and madrone. By the time the fire was burning well the coffee was ready. He carried a mug sweetened with sugar to the rocking chair beside the stove and sat in the comforting heat.

  He thought about Heather again. He couldn’t help himself if he tried and he didn’t want to try. He liked remembering the best times of their life together. They had lived here in this cabin in the woods since two years after Case returned from war. The Forest Service had given Case his old job back after his convalescence and he held it and did it well enough until he retired. The best thing about retirement was the mornings. After they woke up at dawn Case and Heather stayed in bed and listened to Steller’s jays and robins in the trees outside the open bedroom window. They listened to the birds and talked and gazed at each other and each saw love in the other’s eyes. Sometimes they made love.