much distance we’d traveled before she turned up the low lip of the creek bank and took us in among the deep gloom of the tall trees. When she stopped, she flicked the headlights on, illuminating the money garden.
“There she is,” Niagra said.
The patch was planted beneath open spots in the tree limbs above, so as to receive good sunlight but be a little harder to spot from a chopper. It looked to be eighty or ninety green stalks of reddish-bud dope, spread out down a slope with southern exposure. The plants were mingledamong legal flora so as not to stand out. The crop looked to me to be close to harvest, standing five and a half feet tall or thereabouts. That red weed doesn’t tower, which is an advantage in concealing it.
Niagra doused the lights and said, “What do you think?”
“It’s close to harvest,” I said, and I was glad to have that ladystinger in my belt. “Rip artists would likely say it’s ready now.”
“It’s not, though. Ten more days should do it.”
“What strain is it?”
“The strain, that’s a sad story,” Niagra said. “Big Annie paid out quite a li’l bit of cash for a bottle of sinsemilla seeds, only it’s not sinsemilla. That’s a score to settle later. It’s just Razorback Red, that Afghan strain.”
“Razorback Red,” I said, “I like pretty well.”
“It’s fine enough,” she said. “Good enough everyday dope. But, man, that sinsemilla’d be worth double, at least.”
The Ozarks are rampant with dope patches. An article in the West Table Scroll had said that the average income for an Ozark family of four was right at twelve thousand dollars per annum, and with economics such as that shouting encouragement, all stripes of old and young in the hills had taken to dropping down those magic seeds that were worth a thousand bucks per plant, at minimum, when ripe. It’s crime, but it’s also tradition and common sense.
We got out and Niagra ran a hose from the water mattress into the garden. She gave that hose a long suck I coveted to start the water flowing. She then connected our hose to a nozzle that peeked out of the dirt. This was the irrigationsystem: hoses lightly buried and running among the cash plants. Then she said, “This’ll make a crop. All the males were choked off early, before they mingled with the gal weeds and weakened ’em.”
About then, my brain charted the geography involved and I knew where we were.
“This is our land,” I said. “Our old land.”
“Byrum land now,” Niagra said. Then she repeated the first rule of wacky backy croppin’. “Always grow on somebody else. We thought, Who is least likely to have his acres tromped all up and down by the snoopy law?”
“Choppers might still fly over.”
“We’ll just have to roll the dice on that.”
The hose gurgled into the garden. We moved it now and then, to other nozzles, as the purpose was only to heal the dried cracks in the ground, not drown the patch.
Niagra was a lovely vision, even in the dark. Not long before the watering was done she said, “If a married fella was to go for me, I couldn’t blame him. I don’t never dish out guilt. Guilt ain’t on my menu.” She sighed at the folly of her fellow man, who succumbs to guilt, or I guess that’s what it was, then said, “Guilt, what is it, anyhow?”
“Consciousness of doin’ wrong,” I said. “Assumin’ you feel badly about doin’ wrong.”
“I don’t consider what I ever do as ever wrong. I operate in the full range of my spirit. That can’t be wrong.”
There is nothing like youth for uttering reckless, absolutist pronunziamentos. How I longed to share a pure belief in them.
I didn’t want to say something too experienced and inappropriate, so I merely smoked and listened. Later, as she rolled up the hose, I said, “It’s hard to be good.”
“Bein’ good ain’t ever good enough,” she said. “Bein’ bad doesn’t necessarily even get the job done. Good or bad, whatever your dream
“There she is,” Niagra said.
The patch was planted beneath open spots in the tree limbs above, so as to receive good sunlight but be a little harder to spot from a chopper. It looked to be eighty or ninety green stalks of reddish-bud dope, spread out down a slope with southern exposure. The plants were mingledamong legal flora so as not to stand out. The crop looked to me to be close to harvest, standing five and a half feet tall or thereabouts. That red weed doesn’t tower, which is an advantage in concealing it.
Niagra doused the lights and said, “What do you think?”
“It’s close to harvest,” I said, and I was glad to have that ladystinger in my belt. “Rip artists would likely say it’s ready now.”
“It’s not, though. Ten more days should do it.”
“What strain is it?”
“The strain, that’s a sad story,” Niagra said. “Big Annie paid out quite a li’l bit of cash for a bottle of sinsemilla seeds, only it’s not sinsemilla. That’s a score to settle later. It’s just Razorback Red, that Afghan strain.”
“Razorback Red,” I said, “I like pretty well.”
“It’s fine enough,” she said. “Good enough everyday dope. But, man, that sinsemilla’d be worth double, at least.”
The Ozarks are rampant with dope patches. An article in the West Table Scroll had said that the average income for an Ozark family of four was right at twelve thousand dollars per annum, and with economics such as that shouting encouragement, all stripes of old and young in the hills had taken to dropping down those magic seeds that were worth a thousand bucks per plant, at minimum, when ripe. It’s crime, but it’s also tradition and common sense.
We got out and Niagra ran a hose from the water mattress into the garden. She gave that hose a long suck I coveted to start the water flowing. She then connected our hose to a nozzle that peeked out of the dirt. This was the irrigationsystem: hoses lightly buried and running among the cash plants. Then she said, “This’ll make a crop. All the males were choked off early, before they mingled with the gal weeds and weakened ’em.”
About then, my brain charted the geography involved and I knew where we were.
“This is our land,” I said. “Our old land.”
“Byrum land now,” Niagra said. Then she repeated the first rule of wacky backy croppin’. “Always grow on somebody else. We thought, Who is least likely to have his acres tromped all up and down by the snoopy law?”
“Choppers might still fly over.”
“We’ll just have to roll the dice on that.”
The hose gurgled into the garden. We moved it now and then, to other nozzles, as the purpose was only to heal the dried cracks in the ground, not drown the patch.
Niagra was a lovely vision, even in the dark. Not long before the watering was done she said, “If a married fella was to go for me, I couldn’t blame him. I don’t never dish out guilt. Guilt ain’t on my menu.” She sighed at the folly of her fellow man, who succumbs to guilt, or I guess that’s what it was, then said, “Guilt, what is it, anyhow?”
“Consciousness of doin’ wrong,” I said. “Assumin’ you feel badly about doin’ wrong.”
“I don’t consider what I ever do as ever wrong. I operate in the full range of my spirit. That can’t be wrong.”
There is nothing like youth for uttering reckless, absolutist pronunziamentos. How I longed to share a pure belief in them.
I didn’t want to say something too experienced and inappropriate, so I merely smoked and listened. Later, as she rolled up the hose, I said, “It’s hard to be good.”
“Bein’ good ain’t ever good enough,” she said. “Bein’ bad doesn’t necessarily even get the job done. Good or bad, whatever your dream
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