Once upon a time, oh almost twenty years ago, I found myself in such a position I never thought I’d ever find myself.
Backseat of my primer-colored ‘79 Honda Accord possessed a laundry basket with eight small cannabis plants, covered with a towel. The girlfriend of my boyfriend’s buddy sat beside me in the front. The streetlights of Hayward held back the night. A small comfort, if we were pulled over. And I was almost certain that’d be on the agenda. I mean, shit, the police were called.
Frenchie’s girlfriend, Arabel, tried to keep me in the moment instead of wondering what would happen if Hayward’s finest wanted to make their quota.
She fiddled inside her purse for a moment, the sound of pills rattling in their bottles. “Here, take one of these.” She liked her kava kava. She’d been popping horse-pills of kava since three pm, and they made her mellow and giggly. Since I was driving a stick shift, my hands were occupied so I opened my mouth and she popped in a pill. It was smaller than I expected. Arabel then held a soda cup up and twisted the straw into my reach.
I sucked up the watered down Dr. Pepper, and remarked, “I thought the kava were bigger.”
Wasn’t prepared for her reply. “That was a Xanex. Jesus, Caitri, look at your hands shake! You need something stronger than kava. Let’s drive around for a while. We’ll wait for Frenchie’s all-clear call.”
Fucking Frenchie. His ex-psycho, Miranda, stopped by the Pharm. The Pharm was Frenchie’s territory— in a large room off his grandmother’s garage. It’d been remodeled and possessed a kitchenette, Frenchie’s bed, TV and various entertainment apparatuses ranging from VCR to Playstation. But over by the corner, a large cabinet lurked with golden light piercing through the cracks. Smelled like a skunk. It was the brainforest, rigged with lights, drip watering system, and fans to keep the pot plants healthy. Miranda wanted them. She started the clones three years ago, when they were together, took half when they broke up, and now she felt the mother plant was hers.
Hers, as in barging through the garage, and trying to kick down the door leading to the Pharm. Steve, my boyfriend, held the door shut against her and it just pissed her off even more.
Frenchie had just passed the bong to me when the ruckus started. Despite being high as a kite, he busted out survival mode and leapt into action.
“Give me FVK! I know you’re in there with your whore. I’m gonna kick both your asses! Get out here, asshole! You fucking diseased cockwaffle! I’m gonna kill you! I fucking hate you!” She was loud, punctuating every sentence with a thump of her fist or foot. I hate to say it, at least Frenchie’s grandmother had Alzheimer's and was at the stage of being bedridden and out of her gourd. I’d hate for the old lady to get upset because her grandson can’t keep his dick out of crazy.
As Miranda screamed, Frenchie took a clothes basket, dumped the contents out on his bed and tossed it to Arabel. “Load the babies up and get ‘em out of here. NOW.”
Arabel grabbed me by the arm and dragged me to the brainforest. She lifted the latch and I pulled the doors open. A dozen clones, almost two foot high gathered around their mother. It had a trunk as thick as my wrist, twisted and gnarled. Kept in a vegetative state by use of lights on timers and a special fertilizer formulation, it’s little branches would be snipped off, with the ends dipped in rooting hormone before being plunked into a little cube of rock wool for use in a hydroponics system. When sufficiently rooted, they were planted in a compost mix. As far as we knew, Frenchie had the only supply of Fearless Vampire Killer in the Bay Area, if not the state of California. That mother meant everything to him. But since it was five foot high with a big-ass pot, it wasn’t as easily moved. We could only fit eight of the clones into the basket. Frenchie threw a teal beach towel on top to hide the foliage and pushed us out into the backyard. We could still here Miranda carrying on about kicking of asses and burning of buildings. I carried the basket, my heart in my throat, as I walked around a dozen terracotta pots with flowering plants. They too, were too big to take with us.
Didn’t know how long it’d take Miranda to walk out and see us, and I really, really didn’t want to get in the middle of a fight. So we hurried to my car and I unlocked the trunk while Arabel held the basket.
“No! We can’t put them back there, the tops will break!” Arabel whispered to me.
I shut the trunk and opened the back passenger door. She slid the plants in and hurried to get in the front seat. I got in the driver’s side, buckled up, and as I made to put the key into the ignition, there was a tap on the passenger side window. My heart thudded as Arabel rolled down the window.
“Hi Mr. Cabblan.” Frenchie’s father. Who lived next door. And just so happened to be an Alameda county deputy and was in uniform. OH GOD.
“Arabel. What’s going on with my son?”
“Miranda is trying to pick fights. Frenchie told me to go do some laundry and get out of the way… she’s pissed.”
“So I heard. Already called in the fight as a domestic. Backup will be here soon. Better go find a laundromat.” He nodded toward the backseat. “You might want to fix your towel, because I can see your laundry.”
Those words had a mixed effect on my brain. First, the more potent feeling with fear-tinged anxiety. Oh shit, a sheriff’s deputy just found weed in your car, kind of fear. The second and lesser emotion was disbelief, that holy shit, a cop just gave us a pass?
Arabel twisted around in her seat, tugged on a corner of the towel to cover up the emerging branch with it’s lush green leaves. We could hear sirens in the distance and knew which way they were heading.
As Mr. Cabblan turned around and walked to the driveway of his mother’s house, I started up my car and pulled out into the street to head out of the cul-de-sac. At the stop sign I asked, “Where do we go? If Miranda knows Steve’s there, then our place isn’t safe from being raided.” And that’s why we had to rescue the babies. The police were called, and when they’d arrive to handle Miranda, they’d probably not ignore the stench of growing marijuana. But then again, if they stayed in the garage and out of the Pharm, and if Frenchie lights a shitton of incense and maybe spray some air freshener…
Maybe that’d be enough?
“Let’s just drive around. You know, inconspicuous.”
Almost wanted to laugh. Inconspicuous? Uh, how? Already in the mindset to pretend every car on the road was a cop car in disguise, I didn’t know how else to act, other than not driving like a fuck nut. We couldn’t park anywhere, as loitering was strongly discouraged. It’s too late in the day to go to Chabot park to sit and kill time. And so I drove.
Turned left, and made my way to the nearest major thoroughfare and in the direction that’d take us away from incoming sirens.
For two hours we tooled around Hayward, San Leandro, and San Lorenzo, driving around the malls’ parking lots, every movement highlighted by the city’s lighting. Hated red lights and stop signs— any car that pulled up along side us could see inside the windows of my car, and to the basket of laundry. The Xanex took off a part of my edginess, but it couldn’t still my mind. My mantra was Everybody is a cop, you’re going to get pulled over and arrested, and this is so going to suck.
But my brain lied to me. As we turned from D Street to Santa Clara, Arabel’s phone rang. She answered and listened before hanging up without a word spoken on her end.
“Time to head back.”
Took us about fifteen minutes to reach the Pharm. No cars but Steve’s van were parked outside. Frenchie stood on the sidewalk, talking to his father, who looked damn disappointed. As we pulled up, Mr. Cabblan turned around and went inside his home. Frenchie came over, now sporting a long scratch that started under his eye and ended at his Adam’s apple.
“What happened?” Arabel asked as she wrapped an arm around Frenchie.
He heaved a sigh and replied, “she threw a screwdriver at me. Got arrested for assault with a deadly weapon. And possession of meth. But they raided. Made us watch as they tore the plants up. The mother is no longer among us. They tried killing FVK.”
“And the ones out back?” I asked, wondering if they went that far.
“Those too. Only three weeks from harvest.”
“That sucks.”
“Not as much as you’d think,” Steve chimed in with his observations and a smile. “They didn’t get the ones on the roof. Guess they didn’t notice the ladder and hose going up to the roof. They are just days from harvest.”