He unlocked the shed, checked the sky for bogies, then went in. The main room was filled with a blue glow thrown off by the bank of grow lights. Marijuana plants, spawned from Kona Gold seeds a friend had mailed from Hawaii, stood as tall as Alex, and the room was sweet with the fully flowering buds. The three dozen plants were grown in five-gallon buckets, and the soil was ripe with the best compost Mother Nature could produce. Alex sat cross-legged before the plants in a yoga position. He was at peace in this place, this shrine to the sacred buzz.
Too bad he had to hide it away. In a righteous world, he could grow it out there in the garden, right in front of God and everybody. Even Weird Dude Walking. If grass were legal, maybe the country's farmers wouldn't need crop subsidies. Get them off welfare and stifle the feds' war on drugs at the same time. Damn, why couldn't the Libertarians come up with any good candidates?
He let his anger at social injustices slip away as he breathed deeply of the Cannabis sativa. A spider had spun a web at the base of one of the plants. The spider was yellow with black streaks across its back, and it worked its way toward the center of the web where a struggling fly was tangled in the silken threads. Alex realized it was life in a microcosm, a symbolic play. You buzz around minding your own business, and then suddenly your ass is snared and along comes Reality to suck out your juices.
Just like the goats had sucked the life out of the man in the black hat.
Heavy.
Too heavy to contemplate with a straight head, despite what he'd told Meredith. He just didn't want to smoke with her, because then he'd have to either talk or silence her in bed. The only way to shut up a woman was to stick part of yourself in her. He needed to be alone. He pulled a joint out of his sock and fired it up, not shifting from his yoga seating as he puffed. He began a game of situation-problem-solution.
Situation: You had a vision. Nobody else will believe you, because you don't belong to any religion of the masses. Well, Meredith will probably believe you, but she believes in Atlantis and UFOs and even Dun/tin 'Fucking Donuts.
Problem: You either keep it to yourself and forget it, or you have to admit that miracles happen.
Solution: Smoke more dope.
He took a deep draw off the joint and held the smoke in his lungs. In his mind's eye, the blue smoke seeped into his bloodstream and sent its tendrils into his brain. The drug stimulated him and relaxed him at the same time, one of its contradictions that appealed to him and suited his worldview.
Been a long time since you were in Methodist Bible school, but miracles in the Bible sort of had a point to them. Like Jesus with the loaves and fishes so everybody could eat, and Jesus turning water into wine so everybody could get wasted. Far as I can remember, nowhere in the Bible did some dude feed his own ass to the goats.
Alex took another puff. The spider had reached the fly, which must have worn itself out, because it had stopped struggling. Or maybe the fly had sensed the jig was up and could see two dozen copies of the approaching spider through its compound eyes. Alex considered rescuing the fly, playing God, releasing it to go off and eat shit and hatch maggots. But it wasn't right to fuck with Nature. Besides, that would have meant standing up, and his legs had a nice tingle going.
Situation: Weird Dude Walking had to come from somewhere. Miracles don't just crawl down off the top of the mountain in the middle of the Blue Ridge, half a world away from the Red Sea and Egypt and Jerusalem.
Problem: That means Weird Dude was an emissary of some sort. Sent by God or the devil or what the movie trailers call the "dark imagination of M. Night Shyamalan." An emissary sent specifically for you, Alexander Lane Eakins, and for you alone.
Solution: Just because an emissary drags ass to your castle door doesn't mean you have to open up and let him in. Pretend it never happened. Denial is a Good Thing.
The joint was down to an orange roach, and Alex hot-boxed it until it burned his fingertips. He exhaled the smoke so that a blue cloud swept over the spider and the fly. One could get the munchies and the other could die with a shit-eating grin. Seemed to be some sort of circular cosmic justice in that.
He sat until the sparkling edges of his buzz wore off; then he went into the house to ignore Meredith.
Chapter Twenty
Katy's back ached. She'd ended up sleeping on the couch, unable to face Gordon, much less lie in the same bed. She'd cooked oatmeal for Jett, men walked to the end of the road and waited for the bus with her. Gordon must have arrived late and headed out early. He hadn't even made his usual pot of coffee.
After Jett rode away on the bus, sitting at a rear window and refusing to wave, Katy went back up the gravel drive. As she passed the neighbor's house, she hurried, afraid that Betsy Ward would come out on the porch and try to engage her in conversation. She'd always picked up on a distinct coldness emanating from the woman, as if Katy's big-city accent were somehow alien and even infectious. Plus the Smiths appeared to have a bit of a bad reputation, and Gordon's distant and antisocial manner certainly didn't help. Gordon had warned her that Solom was a little clannish, at least among the families that had owned land here for generations. He assured her attitudes were changing as more outsiders moved in, but she sensed resentment rather than acceptance was the more common response.
No one seemed home at the Wards', so she continued up the long gravel road to the Smith house. As she mounted the steps, she realized with alarm that she still thought of it as the "Smith house," even though by legal rights it was half hers. She put away the blankets from the couch, cleaned the bedroom, then found herself in the kitchen. It was only ten o'clock, too early for lunch. Besides, with no one else to cook for, she often resorted to an alfalfa-sprout-and-cheese sandwich or a can of vegetable soup. She was digging for a can opener in one of the drawers when she found a handwritten recipe on a dog-eared index card. She recognized the writing; it was done in the same elegant penmanship of the other recipes shed found tucked in books, on the pantry shelves, or amid stacks of dishes. Rebecca's recipe for sweet potato pie.
It sounded like a nice treat to draw the family together over the dinner table. She checked off the items she would need. She had cinnamon, nutmeg, brown sugar, and even whipped cream, but she had no evaporated milk. She could call Gordon at his office and ask him to stop by the grocery store, but she wasn't in the mood to ask a favor, even if the favor was for his benefit too. She would pick it up herself at the general store. That meant she had a four-mile round trip. Might be a nice day to walk, because the weather was clear and fortyish, with the barest whisper of wind. Besides, the house had started to become oppressive. She thought she'd get used to being a housewife again, the way she had been the first two years of Jett's life. But back then, she'd been busy with an infant. With the house to herself all day, she'd become increasingly bored, despite her newly discovered culinary adventures.
She changed into stone-washed jeans, blouse, jacket, and tennis shoes. At the last minute, she decided on a scarf in case the weather changed suddenly, and rummaged around upstairs until she found a green silk scarf that happened to match her eyes. She couldn't remember buying it; perhaps someone had given it to her as a gift and it had been packed away and forgotten. Outside, she made a cursory check of the hens' nests, spying several eggs she would collect for the pie when she got back, assuming she was brave enough. The goats weren't around the barn. They must have been up in the forest, working the underbrush.