Dank

Here is another installment of fiction from my work with The Writers Studio in SF:

            

            “Hello?”

            “Hey, Baby. Get ready to hang. We’re coming off the Mountain now. I’ll be there in about two hours. I need you ready to work. Love you, Sweetie. See ya soon.”

            “Bye baby,” and I hit end call.

            1:30 am. At least I get a few more winks…

            I’m up! I’m up! How long has it been? (Sigh) Great. It’s 3:15, and I don’t hear the truck yet. Better get the coffee going.

            As I sit in the still silence of the void between days, the darkness before the dawn, I can feel my pulse starting to quicken. My adrenal glands are already pumping even before the smell of coffee stumbles over to knock me in the face.

            The last of the black medicine sputters out of the brewer as Aaron runs up the walkway in the dark, dressed all in black with his hoodie up, carrying bags and bags of Hippie Gold. This is the first week of October—harvest season—and we now have over 50 pounds of wet material to dry and process in the next two weeks; our year’s livelihood is riding on this trip.

            No sooner has he thrown the first Hefty bag down, than I’m tearing it open to release the moisture, running cords along the ceiling and under the lights so we can get the tree limbs of dank up and drying. The colas are so dense this year we run a big risk of rotting, even with our immediate action.

            I ask what happened. The Boys weren’t supposed to cut until Thursday—the trichomes have only just started turning amber, and premature product doesn’t get a premium price at The Club. He says the rains came. They had to make the call. Do they keep the plants up through the rains? If it lasts only the night, then it could be a great last push, and we could gain some valuable weight. But if the rain lasts longer, and if the days don’t get warm and dry out, these nuggs would rot for sure, not to mention those bastard budworms. With no cell or Internet reception in the trenches of the Emerald Triangle, it comes down to your gut—what does that asshole tell you?

            50 pounds is a great deal of weed—even wet—and this task alone will probably take me a good two hours. Then I need to set up the fans, and start trimming off the large sun leaves. Trimming will take a hell of a lot longer than the hanging, but if we don’t get the main stuff off, the house will just get too moist, even in the dredged desert of Folsom. I’m still not sure how we’re going to keep the neighbors (and cops) from getting suspicious as the house starts to stink like a dead skunk, but that’s a problem for another day. In the words of Scarlett O’Hara, “I will think about that tomorrow”. For now, though, I probably won’t see sleep again for another eight to twelve hours. Not that I would be able to sleep, anyway, given the state of things currently. Between the police, and thieves, I’ll be on guard for a while.

            “Hey Babe! Get the fuck in here!!! I think we’ve got a problem.”

            Well that’s no good! No lady likes to hear that from her man, especially not when so much is on the line. I’m in the middle of putting up the last bag, when he pulls me away to check out what’s happening to that first lot hung under the halogen track lighting of the back bedroom. The cannabis has started to crawl with almost microscopic critters leaving cottony trails in their wake.

            Fucking spider mites.

            No worries. We’ve handled this shit before. It’s just a drag to have to fuck with this right now.

            The room gets quarantined.

            The dope gets bagged back up.

            The product not showing signs of infestation gets checked (and rechecked) with the jeweler’s loop; and moved from a warm, dry location (the favored climate of the dreaded mites), to a dark and cold territory.

            This is no way to dry any herb, much less $150k of premium purple dank. We will have to be even more diligent now.

            Jaime decided to focus on pure indica strains this year, since it retains more weight after drying than its sativa counterpart due to the density of the bud structure. The clubs will pay top dollar for a quality strain, and it’s a black market fave (especially with the High School kids), but now that means there is a much greater chance that the last five months Aaron’s spent on the Mountain, working Jaime’s property, could be in vain—and our rent is coming up on three months over due. If we can’t get the money for this round, then there’s no apartment—and definitely no lights—and we can’t bring our indoor crop to fruition. I’ve almost graduated, ironically, from a paralegal program, but I need a few more months of stability, and I’m not going to let some creature no bigger than a pin head fuck up our six-figure investment, damn it!

            Aaron loves this adrenal rush of an adventure—he’s eating it up, as I choke on my own stomach. He’s been doing trips to the mountain off and on for the past twenty years since he dropped out of high school. When I met him four years ago, he had a whole wardrobe of tactical combat gear and an arsenal of very real guns to go with his fantasies of being a rouge operative. He’s also been studying Tom Brown Jr.’s tracker manuals since he was knee high to a grasshopper, and has actually picked up a few things about covert conduct, and what to look out for from the other side. The dude is crazier than a shithouse rat, but I love him. I think the costumes, props, livelihood all add to the glamour of this movie we’re in; he spins plenty of webs of his own with how he lives his life, and has even caught a tasty tidbit or two in that trap along the way.

            We are nearly done putting out this fire. I can feel the hysterical laughter starting to rise in me as the panic wears off and I start to relax. Everything’s going to be fine, and it looks like fucking Christmas! Only, instead of stockings, we have the sticky icky bomb diggety. I can’t believe the life I get to live!!! Maybe this is why Aaron and I have stayed together so long—we’re both drama addicts who love the seedier side of life. We see the beauty in grit, and love the thought of stickin’ it to The Man.

            I start to get turned-on, and then stop.

            What was that?

            I hold my breath as I listen.

            Shit, there it is again! It sounds like somebody running through the back yard!

            Fuck.

            It’s four o’clock in the fucking morning, who could that be?

            Are we busted? Have they seen the crop? Where are they now?

            Aaron is out the door before I can even register what the hell is happening. He’s barefooted and shirtless, but that doesn’t stop this crazy son of a bitch. He’s grabbed a kitchen knife, God only knows what he’s thinking of doing with that if he finds someone!

            Holy Shit!

            Something just exploded. It sounded big, and it sounded like it was on the side of this building.

            Now I’m in here all alone, I can’t see (or hear, for that matter) The Dude. I have no idea where the explosion came from, either, but you can rest assured, I will not be heading out of this house any time soon. If it’s the DEA, they will just have to come in here and drag me out.

            What I am looking for, though, is the fire. I hear the trucks now, so at least I know this attack wasn’t directed at us. But, what the hell happened?

            Aaron’s only been gone for about twenty minutes, but it feels like hours! When he comes in, he has the story for me: a house around the corner and up the street was car bombed—a lover’s quarrel. While the woman and her children were asleep in the house, the estranged boyfriend exploded her minivan. No one was hurt.

            Wow. Thank God for small favors.

            Folsom might have a world-class prison, and good ol’ boy cops with something to prove, but it’s still a small town. With this kind of ruckus, the whole force will be tied up for days with paperwork and the investigation, leaving us to our semi-legal project free and clear. I never thought I would be so happy to be present during a terrorist attack!

            When I see Aaron’s bare chest enter the house unscathed, I remember to breathe again. A couple tears escape down my cheeks, and I collapse in his arms, kissing his stubbly face. He kisses me back. At first I feel his distraction. But, as the realization sets in that we are out of the woods, his kisses become more passionate, more ravenous, and we start groping our remaining clothes off.

            Soon we’re fucking on the floor (we will pay for that when we are done) with the kind of fervor one can only feel after having life threatened—rabid, drooling, juices flying. We are alive and free, and this is how we are shouting it to the world, to each other. We are in love, not just with one another, but with life—and more specifically, with this life.

            He comes, and we collapse on the kitchen linoleum in a heap of sweat and trim. Maybe a few winks can be found here…

            After all, we deserve it.