Boonville (19 page)

“The Earth carries the weight of man,” Sarah explained. “Not the other way around.”

“What about the house?” John asked.

“Fully solar-powered,” Sarah answered. “Hot in the summer.”

They unloaded the signs near a refuse heap that included hundreds of Sarah's crosses. Sarah said whenever anybody on the commune came across found-art or “ready-mades,” this was the drop site. You could take what you wanted and leave behind material for others to transform. The bush-hippie they had brought the signs for lived in the Pyrex palace and was an old-time socialist. He was the one who had taught Sarah how to weld. As a young man, he had helped to build the Golden Gate Bridge. That was part of the reason Sarah's trip over the span in the back of the truck had been so terrific – she remembered his tales of the Mohawks working unafraid of the dizzying heights and the men who had fallen to their deaths. Sarah said she enjoyed holding a blowtorch but was searching for softer lines now. John confessed his artistic inclinations had faltered after he broke the vertical knob on his Etch A Sketch.

He asked Sarah about the McKay Construction hat. She said it was her father's company, consisting of her father and three
pothead flunkies. Her father hadn't helped her learn to weld or do any carpentry. She hadn't learned anything from him except how to write a postcard. But she loved him and wore her lucky red hat when she worked on projects, or needed extra strength, or motivation, or some mojo to get through the day. She was convinced she was at her best when she wore it. She adjusted it on her head, making sure the good luck was flowing.

Returning to the truck, they drove on until the road ended. They would have to walk from here. Even with his eyes adjusting to the night and the glow of the moon, John could see about two feet in front of him. Sarah told him to take off his jacket, once they got moving he would be too hot. Her other advice was to stand still if they saw a bear and make himself look big if they ran into a mountain lion. Before John could mouth the words “bear” or “mountain lion,” Sarah stepped toward the trees, saying, “Stay close.”

John stumbled forward in a controlled fall, skiing without the snow. Slipping, tripping, crashing, cursing, smashing face first into branches, bushes, saplings, anything that got in his way as he rolled down the mountain blindfolded by the night. He would never have made it as a guerrilla. Aside from not being fleet of foot, he was afraid of the dark. Real dark. Not turn-off-the-lights-in-your-bedroom dark or the-bulb-burned-out-in-the-basement dark, but snakes-could-be-slithering-near-me-and-I-wouldn't-know-it dark. The kind of black that reduces you to your basic survival instincts, which in John's case had been dulled over the years by supermarkets, cable television, and alarm systems. In contrast, Sarah maintained her balance at all times, picking out the path of least resistance. Sandinista first-round draft-pick. She could have played for Fidel.

John continued his nose dive, thorns biting into his legs. He tumbled until the pull of gravity released him. Sarah stopped every so often to help him to his feet and request that he not fall so much. Head in a sticker bush, supporting himself on a root that felt as strong as teak wood, John suggested they use the flashlight he'd seen poking out of her backpack, so they could see where the hell they were going.

“The hills have eyes,” Sarah said. “No light until we get there.”

“How far until we're there?” John asked, playing the role of
a child on a road trip.

“Soon,” Sarah replied.

John didn't tell her he had to pee.

They were on their hands and knees, crawling through the thickest brush. The soil seemed to be swallowing him, a mulch of mushrooms, decaying debris, rotting logs. A forgotten autumn. John's fingers probed for handholds, coming up with palms full of bugs and mites. It was the perfect place to ditch a body. It would decompose before the FBI could say “serial killer.” He remembered reading about a psychopath in California called “The Trailside Murderer,” but for once John wasn't worried, there was no trail around here. They crept along like lost alligators for another fifty yards, finally arriving at a clearing where they could stand. Sarah reached into her bag for the flashlight. She fixed a beam on an area of stomped chicken wire, slashed garden hose, churned-over ground, and irrigation tubing cut into lengths of less than a foot. No plants.

“I've been CAMPed!” she screamed. “Bush and his bullshit war on drugs. How many marijuana-related deaths are there every year? How many from alcohol? That hypocrite supports dictators responsible for importing tons of drugs into this country, but for some reason, he makes it a point to get my plants. If my other patch is gone, I'll get that bastard.”

John didn't know what Sarah was talking about. He was too busy having a
Homo erectus
moment, holding his hands above his head and stretching. But if using a flashlight was dangerous, it seemed to him, screaming at the top of your lungs about killing the president would also be a no-no.

After her tirade, Sarah scanned the area with her flashlight. John thought it was unlikely that someone would be out here, whether they were paid by the government or not. He was amazed that anybody other than Sarah could find this place. Given a map, compass, broad daylight, and a bag of popcorn, John couldn't locate this spot again to save his life. But he also could never remember where he parked his car when he went to the mall.

“We haven't done anything yet, have we?” he asked.

“They've got infrared video cameras,” Sarah answered. “Last month they busted a school-board member watering his plants in the nude.”

“That sounds like an entirely different kind of crime.”

“At least one of those pricks hurt himself,” Sarah said,
illuminating a piece of bloodstained fabric and a section of ground saturated with a coagulum of red.

John noticed something else caught in the chicken wire. He asked Sarah to redirect the light. Hanging from one of the wire octagons was a hoop earring imprinted with skulls. Still clipped to its clasp, a piece of an ear.

“Let's get out of here,” John said.

“I have to check my other patch,” Sarah told him.

“And I have to keep breathing,” John said. “I don't like this.”

“Don't worry,” Sarah said, but John had no choice but to worry, it was genetic.

Sarah kept the flashlight on as they foraged through the brush to her second secret garden. John wondered if he should tell her about his encounter with Balostrasi. He couldn't help feeling his next step would have him tripping over the dope-poacher's dead body. There had been a lot of blood back there. It hadn't all come from one severed ear. John wondered if CAMP's standard procedure was “shoot to kill.” It seemed excessive. Newsworthy. But he hadn't read a newspaper in a week. His television was in the closet. Wouldn't the boys at Cal's Palace have mentioned it? Surely the newspaperman would have said something if someone had been recently murdered in the area. It must be a case of vigilante vs. vigilante. But who would be out here crossing Balostrasi's path?

“Whose property are we on?” John inquired.

“It's part of the commune, sort of,” Sarah said. “The government can take away your real estate if you're caught growing on your own land, so smaller plots are under our own names while the bulk of ‘the outback' is under the name of a cofounder who doesn't grow. He takes a cut from the harvest. Technically it belongs to him, but just on paper.”

“What's his name?” John asked, unsure if he would get an answer, not because he would use the information nefariously, but maybe there were other reasons he shouldn't know. Sacred commune vows of silence. Rituals. Sarah could be sparing him the burden of a certain kind of knowledge. Or maybe there were even limits to her honesty.

Sarah turned and lit John's face with the flashlight, looking for signs of recognition as she spoke the name, “Whitward,” then stepped through the low-hanging branches to another clearing and
plot of budding photosynthesis. Twenty plants, eight to fifteen feet tall. Money growing on trees.

“As in Daryl Whitward?” John said, stunned simultaneously by the name Sarah had spoken and the stalks of marijuana.

“As in Wesley Whitward, his father,” Sarah clarified, unsheathing her knife. “But I don't want to talk about it right now.”

Seeing the blade, John didn't argue. This wasn't the time or place to insult someone's taste in men. He held open garbage bags while Sarah stuffed them full, hacking away with her knife like she had spent a lifetime in the cane fields of South Florida. John had never seen this type of plant before, a bumper crop from the pages of
High Times
. After tying off the fifth bag, he wondered about the street value. They were dealing with a lot of dime bags here. Not that he was any judge. His only attempt to purchase marijuana had scored him three joints of oregano.

Sarah explained that she had a buyer in San Francisco that bought her product in one lump. She was no dealer selling stems and shake. The commune had their connections, she had her own. Even with her other patch CAMPed, she would make forty grand. If they could get it back up the hill.

Sarah looked over the grounds for fallen buds. John pushed the final plant into plastic, his hands covered with a sticky resin. He was officially a bagman. If the cops came, the excuse of a “nature walk” wouldn't be accepted, not at two a.m. on the side of Mt. Everest with enough product to tour with the Steve Miller Band. With his luck there would be cameras capturing their every move. Suspect number one, female, Caucasian. And suspect number two, blundering onto the screen. “That's him, your honor, the last one to see my Balostrasi alive!”

John wanted to run, but there wasn't anywhere for him to even crawl. Without Sarah, he would be lost anyway. She wasn't going to leave without her crop. Nine bags full. So they started on their journey up the mountain, sacks slung over their shoulders like twin Santas delivering presents to the Furry Freak Brothers. After a few punishing feet, John was ready to cut the contraband loose. He was struggling to follow Sarah's lead, the payload snagging and threatening to tear every third step. He had to create his own path by creating openings in the brush with a well-placed knee, dragging the bundles through the woods after him as he
sliced his way through the forest using his shoulder as a dull blade. The only thing keeping him on course was the sound of Sarah humming the theme to “The Brady Bunch.” He stopped for a breather, wiping sweat from his brow, trying to get a better grip on the bags.

The woods went silent. Not the kind of silence oceans afforded with their eternal crashing, numbing smaller sounds with the roar and anticipated repetition, nor was it the white noise of traffic or an electric fan. This was a complete absence of sound. The Earth almost ceased to be spinning. John was afraid to move, figuring every animal, redneck, and FBI agent within fifty miles would be able to track him. Inanimate objects seemed to suck a collective breath in an effort to bust him. He curled into a fetal position, remembering a theory that humans started to sleep because it was the simplest way to keep quiet during the night when they were most vulnerable.

He noticed a twig sticking in his arm and pulled it from his skin. It was too dark to see if he was bleeding. He hadn't been speared too deep. John tossed the stick aside to the sound of buckshot on a drum set.

“They're shooting at us!” John yelled.

He began to burrow, hands hurling themselves at the dirt. Sarah shouted something about staying calm, but John was clawing his way beneath the topsoil, half-burying himself in front of the bags of dope. When silence reclaimed the forest, he raised his head. That's when he saw the eyes, two bloodshot orbs as large as owls, glistening wet, with a row of Cheshire teeth beneath them. He tried to form a shape around the eyes, but they disappeared. He stared harder but they were gone. Or watching from another vantage.

“What the fuck?” Sarah screamed. “Are you having some kind of flashback?”

“I heard something,” John said.

“You heard a twig snap!” Sarah said, her voice amplifying and warbling in John's ears, then softening and solidifying into a normal tone.

“It sounded bigger,” John offered, his own voice playing the same trick, realizing he was under the influence of something. “I panicked.”

“No shit,” Sarah said, approaching him cautiously, taking his
hands in hers.

Marijuana resin clung thick to John's palms, along with a generous sampling of the forest floor. She studied a couple of cuts slashed across his lifeline.

“This stuff's getting into your bloodstream,” she said. “Maybe through your pores, maybe through these cuts. You didn't swallow any, did you?”

“No,” John said.

“Take deep breaths,” Sarah said, setting loose his hands and trudging back to her bags. “Nut up, Squirrel Boy.”

John concentrated on his breathing, telling himself there was nothing in the forest except nature; no government agents, no armed criminals, no malicious eyes. Apparently, paranoia didn't impress the chicks, especially when it was linked with hallucinations. He lumbered after Sarah.

When they reached Sarah's truck, John wanted to plant a flag. The hike up had taken longer than the trip down. He hadn't fallen as much, but the strain of holding the bags had sapped him worse than the toppling. Soreness seemed to be the special of the day in Boonville, every day. Tonight's menu also offered assorted greens and a dirt glacé. He swung the sacks into the back of the pickup. Feeling light-headed, he almost collapsed. Stars were fading in a sky that had turned three shades brighter in the last half-hour. John pressed his head to the dew-covered truck. They hadn't encountered any wild animals or narco squads, and despite losing one patch, uncovering a possible homicide, and learning that Sarah still had ties to her ex-husband, the mission was a success. It would just take a few months to remove the dirt from beneath his fingernails.