Betty's (Little Basement) Garden (7 page)

“Oh, Christ. You're high right now?”

“'High' is such a subjective word. It's in my system at this moment, yeah. But I'm able to function. I'm not into getting toasted. And I'm not out there ripping off car stereos. Don't be harshin' my mellow and call me a stoner, Betty. They exist, but I ain't one of them and I never will be. There's a huge difference between the typical stoner dude and the person who's using this herb strictly for medical reasons. A stoner dude blazes as much weed as he can until he hits the Sky Box, totally blotto, goonin', bent and stuck on stupid. But a medical cannabis dude takes the smallest amount possible to kill his pain and still be able to function. Can you tell which of those dudes I am?” He moved closer to her. “And here's another pet peeve. I actually hate it when medical cannabis patients call the herb ‘medicine' or say they're gonna go ‘medicate.' Cannabis is a plant. Terms like ‘medicine' and ‘medicating' makes it sound like it's just another Big Pharma drug. I prefer to say, ‘I'm going to take my herb' because it reminds me that this
is
still a plant and not a pill.” He put a reassuring hand on her arm. “Betty, cannabis can help a lot of people.
Really
help them. Pain, anxiety, insomnia, just to name three.” He pulled out a dining room chair and sat down. “Here's what I'm thinking, Betty. Pay attention. I'll teach you how to grow the plant and how to add it to your chocolates. I can set you up with some patients – people I know that would love to have someone like you growing for them and making them quality edibles.”

Betty's jaw dropped for the second time that night. “You really
are
stoned right now if you believe that's going to happen. Why in God's good name would you think I would
ever
be open to such an enterprise?”

“Simple. Out of the gate, you're a prize-winning gardener and an incredible cook. Right there, you have the talent needed in spades. But you've also got something else. You've got heart. You're a natural caregiver. I saw it when you were talking to my aunt today. You
really
care. There's no faking that. And I think helping people makes you feel…” He searched for the right word. “Useful.”

Betty looked at him, stunned. How in the hell could some kid who used marijuana every day have this kind of insight into the way she operated?

“And when you don't feel useful,” Peyton continued, “you lose your purpose in life. And that's a dangerous place for any of us to go.”

Through the haze of the pills and bourbon, Betty found herself in agreement with Peyton. But the second she felt the concurrence, she stiffened. “No. This goes against everything I've ever –”

“You can also use a little extra cash,” he quickly added.

Betty tossed him a snobbish glare. “I beg your pardon. Does this look like the home of someone who is in need?”

“Yes. Actually, it screams it. Over on that table where you're leaning –”

“It's not a table. It's a credenza.”

“Whatever. I saw the outline of two candlestick holders that had probably been occupying that space for years. And over there,” he pointed to where the antique chair used to sit, “you didn't vacuum out the grooves enough where that chair used to be.”

“I moved the candlesticks, and the chair is out for repair.”

He peered at her from his seat at the table. “Nah. I don't buy it. You're too defensive when you say it. Your garden out front is lush and your house feels thin. I can almost feel the dining room table trembling, wondering if it's the next to go on the auction block.”

Betty wasn't about to give in. “You have a very potent imagination, young man.”

“That sweater you wore yesterday? You kept messing with the cuff. You know, the one that was unraveling?”

She remained stoic. “So what?”

“It's just another piece of your puzzle that gives you away. You carry yourself with a lot of pride. Somebody like that would have a different sweater to go with every outfit, and they'd never have one that had a cuff unraveling. They'd throw that one out or keep it to wear around the house. But you wore it and you tried to hide the cuff. You don't want people to think you'd wear something that was unraveling…maybe ‘cause you're unraveling?”

Betty stared at him, taken aback.

“You know what?” he continued, “under the surface, we're all unmade beds searching for the perfect comforter.” He watched her intently. “I'm not trying to embarrass you, okay? I want to help you because you helped give me my aunt back, and nobody can ever take that away. She never would have eaten the cannabis, but
your
chocolates were the clincher.” He dug into his jeans' pocket that still hung precariously low on his waist. “And I already know that others will feel the same.” He handed her a wad of money.

“What in the hell is this?”

“I only had to give Aunt Peggy one of the chocolates. I took the rest and melted them down, added the right amount of cannabutter and ended up with forty-two pieces. I had ‘em sold within hours to my patients. There's four hundred and twenty bucks there. I didn't take a cut. It's all yours.”

Betty handed the money back to him. “I would never accept drug money.”

He pushed the cash back to her. “It's not drug money, Betty. I have legal patients on record with the state of Colorado who bought these from me, and I'm just handing that cash over to you.”

“Patients? So now you're a doctor?”

“I'm a caregiver. It's the name they've come up with for people like me who grow for five people who don't want to go to dispensaries because they want more control over how their medicine is grown. Hey, given an option, I'd call them my ‘peeps,' or ‘my dudes.' But as it stands now with the state, I'm the caregiver and they're my patients.”

Betty stood there, clutching the cash and feeling adrift.

“You know, Betty, a lot of people think that what Colorado is doing with cannabis is a sign of the cultural apocalypse. But I respectfully disagree. I'd say it was more akin to an evolution of consciousness when you wake up and realize you've been misinformed about this magnificent plant. Hey, if you're so worked up about dangerous plants, you better get rid of the Belladonna and the Digitalis I saw in your front yard. Oh, and the Angel's Trumpet too. Pull that sucker out of the ground. That's a crazy-making plant. Back in 2003, this German dude drank some Angel's Trumpet tea and cut off his penis and his tongue with a pair of garden shears.” Peyton crossed his legs. “As far as this whole deceptive campaign about cannabis is concerned, I look on it as an epic battle between the sacred and the profane. It's the sacredness of the herb and the profane disinformation foisted upon the people who believe whatever they hear.”

Betty placed the wad of cash on the credenza and opened the center drawer. “It's not just what I hear, Peyton. It's what I've personally experienced.” Rooting through the drawer, she removed a small, framed photo. “That's my son, Frankie. He died in 2005 of a massive drug overdose. And it all started for him with marijuana.”

Peyton intently studied the photo. In it, nineteen-year-old Frankie stood by a Colorado stream, staring off into the distance. “The cannabis didn't kill him Betty.”

“He never would have started harder drugs if it weren't for marijuana. It was the gateway.” Her voice shook with emotion.

“Oh, come on, Betty. Give me a break. I hate that whole ‘gateway' crap. He needed to escape from something. Something awful. If it wasn't drugs, it would have been alcohol. My cannabis use has never made me want to build a meth lab or light up a crack pipe.” Peyton continued to probe the photo. “He was a lost soul, reaching out for something that would make him feel a temporary sense of peace. Hey, did you notice the doobie he's got between his fingers in this photo?”

Betty rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

“What's that red stuff over his hand?”

“The head of the eraser I used to try and buff out the marijuana joint.”

Peyton focused his attention back to Betty. “Wow. Okay. So, that's why you keep this in the drawer? ‘Cause you don't want your friends to see it? It's a nice photo. I'd find new friends and display the photo.” He handed it back to Betty.

She carefully tucked it back into the drawer. “You know, Peyton, you're not stupid. You have a lot of potential. If you spent half your time doing something that was more acceptable…more conventional…there's no telling how far you'd go.”

“Gosh, Betty. If I did that, how would I find the time to grow cannabis?”

Betty looked at him like a stern schoolmarm. “You know what I mean.”

“Conventional, huh? That ain't me. I march to the beat of a different banjo.”

“You mean ‘drum.'”

“Nope. I mean banjo. If I did anything conventional, wouldn't I just keep perpetuating more of the same mind numbing, insipid crap that keeps us all in the same fuckin' loop? No thanks, Betty. Hey, is this the way you used to lecture Frankie?”

“You keep my son out of this.”

Peyton stood up. “Why?”

“He's a very sensitive subject for me.”

“All the more reason to talk about him. And put out his photo. No reason to keep him in the drawer…in the shadows. You're not ashamed of him, are you?”

Ire welled up. “Of course, not! He was a wonderful boy who had tremendous –”

“Potential,” Peyton quickly added. “Yeah, I know. Some of us take that potential, and if we're allowed to, we create ideas and build things that challenge the status quo. If your idea of ‘potential' is just barfing up the same bullshit, count me out. And my guess is that Frankie looked at life the same way.”

Betty shot him a hard stare.

“Don't tell me that idea hasn't crossed your mind, Betty. If you're not allowed to do or be whatever you need to be in this life, you get self-destructive.” He took another look around the room and then returned his attention to her. “You know exactly what I'm talking about. This place is your cell. And you're the prisoner. But you're also your own jailer, too. You have the keys to break out. You just forgot where you put them.”

Betty turned away from him.

He pulled out a crumpled receipt from his pocket, flipped it over and jotted down his phone number and address. “That's my info if you want to talk.”

Betty turned over the receipt. “The Flying Pig Dispensary?”

“Yeah, that's one of my two jobs outside of my grow op. You know how people said that cannabis would be legal when pigs could fly?”

“Ah, and the Flying Pig was born,” she said, shaking her head.

“I also work at Grow Do It, a grow store. Growers call it ‘Grow Doobie.' My boss is a tool but I get twenty percent off lights and shit, so I suck it up.” He headed toward the front door. “Hey, you know what I'd do if I had a lot of money? I'd buy an airplane and skywrite ‘Why not?' all day long. And I'd hope that somebody would look up, see it, understand it and then change their life for the better.”

Later that night, curled in bed with Ronald snoozing at her feet, Betty still couldn't shake Peyton's visit. She determined that his well meaning, yet insane proposition, was a passing impulse, brought on by the shock of his aunt's death. He was a nice boy, she decided, but certainly not tuned into the practicalities of life. Then again, his acute, candid observations seemed quite perceptive and dreadfully accurate.

The pills still made her woozy and ill at ease. She flipped on the TV to PBS, and through foggy eyes, watched the last fifteen minutes of
Nature
. The show was about a female insect somewhere in the world that spent every waking moment struggling for survival for herself and her offspring. She had to fight other, more formidable insects for food to bring back to her young, who constantly cried out for more. Finally, after the struggle reached a crescendo, her offspring left the nest, and cued by her DNA, she promptly died. Betty wasn't sure if it was the loopiness of the pills still churning in her body, but she found this segment sad and perverse. She began to blubber and would have continued if the phone hadn't rung. It was 10:00 – far past the acceptable time to call someone unless it was an emergency.

In her stupor, she forgot to check the Caller ID before answering. “Hello?”

“Hiya! Is this Betty Craven?” The male voice on the other end was unfamiliar and superficially overconfident.

“Who is this?” It was all she could do to maintain mental equilibrium.

“
Tom
! Tom Reed! I got your number from Judi Hancock. She said she mentioned me to you at some powwow over the weekend at your house?”

Powwow
? In her uncertain state, Betty flashed for a second on herself dressed in Native garb, smoking a peace pipe around a fire. “Uh, yes…right…Tom Reed, I'm –”

“She thinks you and I should get together for drinks. How's tomorrow look for you? Five o'clock at The Phoenix?”

“Well, Tom, I really am not –”

“Hang on a second. Let's make that five thirty. I've got a tennis game that might go a little late.”

In any other state of being, Betty could have cobbled together a reasonable excuse for not accepting his invitation. But it was all she could do at that moment to sit upright and focus. “The Phoenix?”

“Yeah! It's a nice little retro, sixties joint over at Franklin and Fifth Street. They don't mind if people linger there.”

It sounded as if Mr. Tom Reed was all too familiar with how The Phoenix rolled. “Tom, I appreciate –”

“One second. Gotta another call comin' in. See you at five-thirty tomorrow!”

And with that, he hung up. Betty was so out of it she kept holding the phone to her head for another minute, not quite sure what had just transpired. Finally, the sound of the elm branch scratching at the bedroom window brought her back into the moment. And while she couldn't be certain, she sensed Frankie's presence nearby and a swell of agitation engulfing him.