Narrator: Does anyone REALLY like their job?
Jenny: I used to like mine when I was an elementary school teacher, before we got married. But once we got married, Charlie wouldn't let me work.
Narrator: Then consider yourself lucky. I've never had a job that I didn't end up disliking.
Jenny: You sound like Charlie. He hates his job too. He regrets not attending law school while he was up there at Ole Miss.
Narrator: I know what he means. I always wanted to be a literature professor... until I saw how much they got paid.
She laughed. Her chemically whitened teeth flashed a smile and, instantly, I knew what had attracted Charlie. It was one of the prettiest smiles I had ever seen, and when she was smiling, she seemed to suddenly go from very average, but well displayed, to down right cute as a button right before my very eyes.
Jenny: Well, I guess life is a series of compromises and disappointments.
Narrator: But it shouldn't be. Something inside of me knows it shouldn't be and that if I can just stop being my own worst enemy, I might finally figure it out.
Jenny: Well, Mr. Beebur, I need to get ready for the close of my art auction on EBay. Let's see how much the fools are willing to pay for the work of a painter with soft brushes and bad eyes. Charlie gets upset when I make more money from my art than he does at his job. He doesn't consider it real work.
Narrator: Well, it was nice meeting you, Jenny.
She turned and walked away. That's when I noticed her limping slightly and the barely visible deep red mark peeking out from the edge of her tennis shorts as she moved. More of Charlie's work.
*****
It had been sitting there, waiting for me to address it. The obvious thing that could not be ignored, but I tried to ignore it anyway. PROBLEM: Domestic violence across the street will continue to draw cops. This is a security risk that is too great to sustain. Fuck, fuck, fuck, damn, shit, fuck! There would be a whole house full of weed ready for harvest in less than two weeks! FUCK!!!
As I drove back home to Florida, I once again returned to my analytical ways and began to consider the alternatives. Alternative 1: Walk away. Right now. Never go back. Nothing was traceable to me as far as I knew. But Henry had turned that from a 100% certainty to a probability calculation with a huge penalty for getting the answer wrong. Fuck, fuck, fuck! I reached over and took a sip from my bottle of orange juice, and then put it back in the cup holder.
Alternative 2: Go back one more time, strip out the cameras, the other vital equipment that could possibly cause a problem, and then never go back.
Alternative 3: Same as alternative 2, but burn the fucker to the ground too.
Alternative 4: Shit my pants again, suck it up, grow a pair and finish the grow and harvest. Then shut down the house.
I did the math in my head as I exited the tunnel in Mobile, Alabama. To walk away would result in two negative outcomes. One: a manhunt for a grower with people who can identify me, and two: the loss of $600,000 dollars. Damn, this was the biggest payout I had ever gotten from a single harvest. This is what I'd been working so fucking hard for.
The Florida state line was a twenty-minute distant memory by the time I finally grew a pair of balls. It wasn't just the money; it was also my inflated fucking ego that told me that I was a risk management specialist. Sometimes our own self-image gets in our way. Looking back, I now know that I should've chosen differently. My problem has often been that my mistakes are big ones.
I started noodling on the problem. What could I do to increase the likelihood of success in completing the grow and harvest? Security Sweeps came to mind. I had two cameras aimed at the front yard and the street. They were well concealed, but with rotation capabilities that would give me a good view of anything going on. I would never have to do the freak out drive past the cops again if I would just check the cameras from a few blocks away. I would check these cameras every ninety minutes when I was away from the house and on the hour when inside.
Growing cannabis indoors is a labor intensive process, and it's easy to lose track of time when going through a room full of bud, checking for disease and pests, checking water levels, and looking at trichomes on each plant. My phone alarm would remind me to check the cameras. I also decided to spend more time exploring the backyard and what an escape out the back would require. I also decided that I needed to bring another gun back. Fuck! I hate traveling with an unregistered, untraceable handgun in the car. It made me almost as paranoid as the harvest drive.
If I wanted to reduce my exposure to risk, then I realized I needed to reduce my exposure to Jenny and Charlie. Any further interactions with them needed be avoided. Seemed like a real bastard move, but a necessary one. It simply wasn't my problem to fix. Fuck! My sweetest producing house ever, and it's ruined because some man couldn't come to terms with his own failure... or whatever else was going through that warped thing atop his shoulders. He should spend the rest of his life apologizing to her every morning, followed by bringing her breakfast in bed. Instead, he beats the fuck out of her, and there isn't a fucking thing I can do about it.
The gray BMW pulled into the driveway just after 10PM. My wife was waiting at the door for me. She put her arms around my neck and kissed me hard on the mouth. She held me as tight as she could and pressed herself against me fully. After a long kiss and hug, she turned me loose, took me by the hand and led me inside.
Wife: I always liked that suit on you. Bet you were the best looking project manager at every meeting.
I didn't really have anything to say. She took me into the kitchen. I made a pot of coffee, fixed myself a cup, and sat down at the kitchen table.
I wish I could tell you that I was completely honest with my wife about everything. I didn't tell her about my original plan and how I had not only considered killing Taylor, but had also stopped and bought all the stuff I needed for the deed.
When I told her about Animal Cop, she started crying. As I told her that I couldn't remember hearing the gunshots, only the flash on the screen and the flash from the house in my peripheral vision, I heard her gasp. It was the kind of gasp I had witnessed only once before: when we saw the films from the Nazi extermination camps. I tried really hard to tell her about burying Taylor, but I couldn't make it through that part. I stopped talking, and she looked at me and saw the pain in my eyes and the tears running down my cheeks. I never finished telling her what happened.
Wife: But you recorded everything they did, right?
I cleared my throat and wiped my cheeks with a napkin.
Narrator: Yes, everything, and they had their masks off.
Wife: Then we need to make sure that the animals pay for what they did to that poor girl. We can't let this go unpunished.
One of the things I most admire about my wife is that she has a near perfect sense of fairness. We agreed about which side to be on nearly 100% of the time. It's simple: we always support the person or group getting screwed over in the deal. It makes it easier to sleep at night.
Wife: They're going to pay for this, so help me fucking god.
I smiled a little.
Narrator: Thanks, darling. We need to work through this very carefully. There can't be any mistakes if we're going to pull it off.
Wife: Let's work up the plan.
She was as serious as can be. I had seen it before, what the British call "bloody-mindedness." It's the way I used to become on a large software project when no one was cooperating and everyone was only throwing up obstacles. It's similar to owning a large dog in the city. It's 10PM at night and he needs to go out for one last crap before bedtime, but he doesn't want to go. He's big and struggles well for his size. Bloody-mindedness is when that fucking dog is going to go for a walk, even if his ass is raw from being dragged for several hundred feet along concrete in a sitting position. My wife was displaying bloody-mindedness in spades. She demanded justice.
Wife: What're we going to do about that jerk who sold us out?
Narrator: Papers?
Wife: Yeah. If the little prick hadn't talked, Taylor would still be alive. He needs to pay for what he started.
Of the two events, Taylor's death affected me more. Henry was as deserving a bastard as there ever would be, but at this exact moment in time, I had no response to give her question.
My wife interpreted my non-responsiveness differently.
Wife: You do agree with me, don't you? The asshole needs to pay for the chain of events he started.
Narrator: Definitely. Just need to think of a way to get to him.
*****
Harvest is always a lot of hot, sweaty work, and this was my biggest one yet. Harvest is also one very sticky mess. I worked wearing paper coveralls, only a t-shirt and boxer shorts underneath. Vinyl gloves kept my hands from becoming as sticky as glue.
The Harvest Pro automatic trimmer was an excellent mid-sized bud trimmer. But with around 200 pounds to trim, it was smaller than what I needed. It would be a long five days to harvest the house. I looked forward to the break after the third day, when I would spend a day at the farmhouse in Georgia. It was the one place dearly departed Henry fucking scumbag Papers hadn't known about. I cut the plants down one at a time. I took my shears and cut the main stem of the plant. Then I removed the side branches. The large fan leaves, so synonymous with the popular idea of cannabis, were then cut off and put into a garbage can. I laid the entire plant out on a large rolling stainless steel table. The long stems had beautiful buds attached. Then I took each branch individually and cut the buds off. Some were too small to bother with, so I put those into a five-gallon bucket on the table. Those that met the standard were dropped into the opening of the Harvest Pro. They fell down the chute onto the surface of the grating blades. I turned on the machine, and the blades beneath started spinning at high RPMs. The whirlwind effect started and the buds began running around the trimming drum as if caught in a tornado. Their leaves would fall between the grating mechanism and be sliced off by the razor sharp blades. After about thirty seconds, I opened the side escape chute and the trimmed buds began to fling themselves into the side chute and then fall into the five-gallon orange bucket below. I calculated that with this process alone, I had twenty-seven to twenty-eight hours of work. But there was much more. Grinding and disposal of stalks and stems had to be done. Setting up the drying tents and air filtration system had to be done. Final trim would take two days, even with the spin bowl trimmer. Then there was the sweet spot.
The sweet spot happens with all those small nugs that didn't measure up. Added to them are the THC laden little snippets of the leaves from my final hand trim or from the spin bowl trimmer. These may not look like much, but they were one of the best business investments possible. All of this was used to make bubble hash. Bubble hash is three times stronger than smoking buds and often leaves people gasping for reality. Nothing cements a solid commercial relationship like lagniappe, that little something extra thrown into the deal at no extra charge. It was always one pound of bubble hash. I threw in a free pound of bubble hash into the deal with every harvest, and every harvest it caused an enthusiastic smile. David never sold all of it on to his customers. He, too, used some of it as a deal sweetener.
The music playing was an eclectic mix of songs, everyone from Louis Armstrong to Filter to Beethoven. My Iolite vaporizer was full of Satori as I worked away on the next plant, the next stalk, the next stem. Satori is my daytime smoke. Cheb Mami was playing. North African music is very good in small amounts. It always has a good beat; so what if I can't understand the words. Cheb Mami is meant for dancing and sliding across the floor in your socks. Someone as spastic as me can only dance when I'm alone.
Lunch was a large salad my wife had insisted that I bring back with me. It was good, and I enjoyed the walnuts and the spinach. I sat in my sticky overalls and looked at the mess I had created. The floors would definitely need deep cleaning when I finished. It was an interesting contrast, that at the end of a grow house, assuming you don't burn it to the ground, that right before leaving with the fruits of the harvest, the grower must put in several days of janitorial work. David had mentioned a very special cleaning team that would come in and clean a grow house spotlessly for ten thousand dollars. Not even the DEA would be able to tell there had been a grow when they'd finished. I was too paranoid to use them. David was the only person in the business I dealt with, and I wanted it to remain that way until I finished.
The Latin countries weren't wrong with their idea of a siesta. I laid down on the futon and slept for ninety minutes after lunch. The short nap would permit me to recharge my batteries and clear my head. The space foam pillow was nice, but it only reminded me of its inadequacies. I felt it slowly begin to conform to the contour of my head. It would be a long day and night. My time on the clock wouldn't end until 10PM tonight, and begin again tomorrow at 6:30AM. I fell asleep, pleased with my progress so far. The iPad was beside me, the image of the front outdoor cameras on the screen.
I woke up to the Chemical Brothers album, Exit Planet Dust, and a vaporizer full of Satori. The next few plants went quickly as the hyperactivity of waking up took hold. After the fifth plant, I rolled the garbage can with the big fan leaves and the wooden stems and stalks into the kitchen. In the corner of the kitchen stood the TEK Model 29 20HP Chipper/Shredder. It was a vicious machine that could easily consume my arm, so I always treated it with great respect and only started it when I was standing as far away from it as I could and still reach the pull chord to start it. It was noisy and efficient; the chips and tiny bits of shredded leaves fell into the large contractor bag underneath it. Several hours later, when it was dark outside and I had run it a few more times, I took the bag of shreddings outside with a shovel and a bag of lime. It took me about twenty minutes to dig a hole for the scraps of my grow. Lots of lime went on top of the mulch before I shoveled the soil back on top.
I was almost finished cutting down the second room when I noticed movement out of the corner of my eye on the iPad, which was running a continuous feed from the two cameras outside the front of the house. The image came just in time for me to see Jenny as she reached the front door. The timer had turned on the television, so from the front door, she would know that I was home. The camera zoomed in on my command to get a good look at her. She didn't look to be injured. She rang the doorbell. It was not a simple, polite one or two rings. It was a manic series, as if to annoy as much as possible, or as I later decided, to show desperation. I immediately switched off the trimming machine and turned off Cypress Hill's Black Sunday album, and then sat down on the floor and watched her. She was moving side to side nervously. She moved her hand up to her face to wipe it. It was obvious that she was, or had been, crying.
Come on, seriously, what would you do? Would you be a Good Samaritan and open the door to a house in the middle of a massive cannabis harvest to deal with a woman whose husband was the lowest of the low? Would you risk a long prison sentence because every time he looked in the mirror he saw a loser and was too dumb to figure out how to change? Yeah, I didn't think so.
She tried the doorbell again, this time along with the knocker, both executed again in a desperate manner. I heard her call out my "name." I cringed from my own cowardice. I remembered crouching in the shrubs across the street, watching the web-cam on my phone as Taylor was raped and murdered, frozen as my own fear rationalized itself as survival instinct, my honor leaving on a long vacation with its best friend, self-respect. Sometimes we SHOULD die trying. My problem was that I never could.
Jenny: I know you're home.
I heard her call out to me as she gave another long staccato blast on the doorbell. Still, I cowered. She rapped the knocker hard three more times, and then stopped.
Jenny: I understand.
She called out again as she shook her head in the same disappointed manner I remembered from my father.
Jenny: I'm sorry I bothered you.
Then she turned and walked back down the sidewalk to the driveway, and then down to the road. I sniffled a little and realized that she hadn't been the only one crying. I turned off all of the appliance timers and lights, except in the room where I was working. Add another failure to my long list.
More Satori in the vaporizer helped me get back to work. I had three buckets of nugs for bubble hash. I would get several pounds of bubble this run. David would get an extra pound.
It was closing in on 10PM and my arms and back were aching. Another thirteen minutes until quitting time. My progress was on schedule, having lost the early lead I had established. I've always been a sprinter, good for the short burst. Long games are difficult, but I make the effort. Bloody-mindedness. Anyway, it was right about that time that the ambulance came screaming down the street. It pulled into the driveway across the street, and two EMTs got out of the large red and white box on wheels and walked briskly to the front door, bags in their hands. Within ten seconds a police car came to a flying stop behind the ambulance, and a cop got out quickly and ran to join the EMTs at the front door. He unsnapped his holster as he ran, then left his hand on the butt of the pistol.
Charlie answered the door. He was wearing slacks and a business shirt. Everyone moved inside, but the front door remained open. My heart dropped. My god, had the bastard finally killed her? What the fuck did he do to her? How much of it was my fault for not helping her?
One of the EMTs came and got the wheeled gurney. It was six minutes and thirty-nine seconds later when they emerged again. Jenny was on the gurney. She had her head lifted up and was complaining to the EMTs. I zoomed my camera to the max to see her. As she talked, I could see that her mouth was bloody and it looked like some of her teeth were missing. She also had a long red laceration above her left temple, extending around to her forehead. Her face looked like she had just been put in the ring with the heavyweight-boxing champion for a dozen rounds. It was red all over. Her left eye was nearly closed like the boxer trying to finish before the referee stopped the match. Reaching the open back doors of the ambulance, the cop emerged from the house with Charlie. This time he was in handcuffs. As much as I dislike the police, I was happy to see them doing their job. The cop jerked Charlie to a painful stop with the handcuffs. I could see Charlie complaining. The cop reached behind and pulled the front door closed. Then he shoved Charlie hard on the shoulder to get him moving again. And again, Charlie complained. Another cop car came to a screeching halt out in front of the house.
The black female cop from the previous night jumped out of the car and ran over to the ambulance. Charlie was being led past the ambulance toward the cruiser parked behind it. The woman cop turned and spoke to the other pig. She shook her finger from side to side and pointed toward her cruiser. The other cop shrugged his shoulders and took his hand from Charlie's shoulder. The woman walked over and took his place. She pulled his handcuffs up hard and high. Charlie's face scrunched up in pain. She shoved his shoulder hard to get him moving. He started yelling at the woman. She responded by pulling his handcuffs even higher, forcing him to bend forward. She steered him down to her vehicle; his angry words flowed nonstop like a river. When she got him to the back door, she jerked him to a stop. She opened the door and placed her hand on his head as cops do to force your head inside of the car. She had different plans and slammed Charlie's head hard into the top frame of the door opening. His head bounced back slightly. She caught it in her hand and slammed it again. Charlie fell down, dazed and barely conscious. The woman yelled at him, and it didn't take a lip reader to know she was yelling, "Get up, you piece of shit." She reached down and grabbed him by the handcuffs. She jerked them hard, forcing him to stand up. He only made it onto his knees. He was very unstable, like a boxer who's one good shot from losing the fight. She kicked him over and over until he scrambled into the back of the cruiser to escape the pain from her boots. She kicked him one last time, and then leaned in the back door of the police car and spat on him. She slammed the door shut as hard as she could. She got into the front of the car, turned on her headlamps and blue lights, and sped away.
I watched as the other police cars and then the ambulance turned on their lights and followed her lead.
Another police cruiser arrived at the scene about five minutes later, after everyone had left. He pulled into the now empty drive way across the street. He got out of his car and turned and walked away from the house. It only took me a second to realize that he was headed for my house. I slammed the trimmer off button and killed the lights. Fuck me! Fuck me! The cop is coming to my door. Fuck. Fuck. What to do? What to do? Need a gun, yeah a gun. I ran into the room with the futon and got the two Berettas I had stashed there. I moved quietly into the living room and sat in the dark, on the couch, directly across from the front door. I pointed both pistols at the door and left the safety in the ON position on both pistols. The ringing of the doorbell or the knock on the door, even though completely expected to happen in the next few seconds, might just startle me in my current state of hyper paranoia, and I might accidentally fire the pistols. The safety had not been disengaged on the gun that killed Henry until about two tenths of a second before it fired. I began to take long calming breaths.
When the doorbell rang, I leapt to my feet with the fastest, smoothest motion I have ever performed. It was like I was shoved up from the sofa by a spring. The sound was like electricity for my muscles. A fraction of a second later, I realized that my index fingers were straining against the locked triggers. Fuck me. If my heart had been even the slightest bit unhealthy, this moment would've been my last because a heart attack would've dropped me like a rock. But good diet and exercise are the only things that help the "noia." This time I didn't die.
Late Cop: Open up. It's the police.
He said the words in a baritone voice. Not the phrase I had hoped to hear, but it didn't matter to me. As long as he stayed on the other side of the door, he would remain alive, and my life wouldn't turn to shit in an instant. He walked over to one of the windows. He didn't try to look in at first, but rather tried to raise it. I sat down on the sofa again. The aim of my guns moved with him as I watched him on my iPad. He tried to look in, but the nice window cover that looks like one of those heat blockers people put on windows, the ones so popular in the south, prevented him. It was actually a special product disguised to black out windows. He went back to the front door. This time it was the knocker. My eyes had adjusted to the dark over the last few minutes, and that fact will forever be one of the most important of my life as this simple thing permitted me to see that despite all of my planning, my strategy, my technology, and my fancy education, my project plans, and my risk management, despite all of it... the front door was unlocked!