Sonofabitch! he screamed, ripping Seans’s mattress off. He'd searched everywhere else he could think of ... time to find some weed and get high brother! Mike heaved the mattress against the wall and the first thing that caught his eye was a packet of wax paper on the box springs. What the hell? He carefully opened it, placed his fingertip against the white crystals and then put it in his mouth. Well I’ll be damned, he thought. Sean’s got a frikken 8-ball of coke! Also on the mattress, a stack of twenties. Mike counted them. Three-hundred dollars! “You bastard,” he said out loud. Sean had owed him $150 for months now. No wonder he’d delayed in repaying him--he was shoving coke up his nose!
Mike didn't do chemicals or powder--just smoked the loco weed. That's all he wanted, some moon cabbage, a little bit of reefer madness. Was that asking too much? Where in the hell were the buds? He was not only running out of places to search, he was also running out of time. Surely they’d be back any minute. He strode to the kitchen window again, where he could see who came in the building. No red Camaro. Hurry! Find the marijuana!
He returned to Sean's room, lifted the box springs and slammed it against the wall. Well, how ‘bout that, a gun! Smith & Wesson 9mm. Christ! He didn't know Sean had a gun. Sean was crazy, especially when he was drunk, which was often. It scared Mike knowing Sean had a pistol. Why hadn't he told anyone? And an envelope, a letter to Sean from his mother. The postmark was five years old. Why would Sean keep a letter five years old? Mike took it out and began reading it.
My Dearest Sean,
I have to tell you this because you have a right to know who your real father is ...
Oh my God, Mike thought. Sean's dad isn't his real dad? What was that all about? Then a big wave of realization and guilt hit him. He didn’t want to know all this stuff--he didn’t want to pry into things he had no business prying into. All he wanted was a buzz on the 420! But that wasn't going to happen; he knew that now. He had simply run out of places to look. No magic-act rabbits squirming out of any hats today. He stopped reading the letter and put it back in the envelope, noticed his hand was shaking. Goddamn nerves!
His head was a boulder. He held it up between his hands, shook it slowly back and forth, clenched his eyes shut. He felt like he was vaporizing, that the cosmos was reducing him to atoms.
“NO, NO, NO,” he moaned, dropping to his knees. His aura grew black and crimson, seethed and boiled into the colors of a deep bruise; his chest struggled with all its might to prevent a geyser of pressure from disintegrating his heart into a million pieces, and there was a huge explosion and the mushroom cloud over Nagasaki took out the right side of his brain and the one at Hiroshima blew out his left.
Somehow in the middle of that vortex--maybe it was the only sound he could have possibly heard--the muffled whump of car doors closing registered in his brain, and he ran to the window one more time. It’s them! Havin’ a ball, as usual. Sean chasing Marcy to the stairwell door, grabbing, hugging, swaying drunkenly, hands copping free feels like a horny octopus, going back to the car for a 12-pack of beer.
They’re coming home. They’re going to find you out. You really fucked up now, buddy. They’ll tell all your friends what you did. You’ll be ruined.
Mike raced for the living room sofa and flopped down, pretending to be asleep, praying he'd put everything back in place in all the rooms. Calm down, he thought. Just ... calm ... down. Footsteps and giggles floating up the stairwell, the duo of fun-loving drug dealers inside, Sean standing by the couch.
“Hey dude, what's up? Taking a nap on us?” Mike blinked and acted sleepy. Sean tossed him a beer and Mike caught the cold can just before it thudded into his chest. Sean went in the kitchen to put the beer in the fridge, and when he returned he had the marijuana.
“Dude?” he said. “You okay? You look like shit. I thought you'd be tearing the place apart searching for this,” and he tossed Mike the big baggie, the whole chimichanga, the illusive half pound of Texas buds, slightly chilled from being left in the fridge a few hours.
“Geez,” Mike replied. “Give me some credit. You think I'd rip off my homey? I’ve just been lying here trying to get rid of a headache.”
Bright Lights and Live Wires
If ever there was a 420 Hall of Fame, Eddie would be in it.
You’re staring at the western sky on the night I’m describing, watching the sun sink in a glorious melting sprawl of red, purple and orange, and you’re thinking: You know, life can be pretty good.
And if you’re lucky like I was you have a friend to drink a pint with and smoke a joint with, too; and you’re sitting at an outside table like one at Joe’s Brew House in Denver just as Mark and I were doing that night.
Mark fished a joint from his pocket and slowly spun it around with his fingertips, smoothing it for proper smoking while the sun set itself in darkness. Then click! Mark lit the joint and at the moment the flame sprang to life it lit up an older fellow sitting behind us against the wall. Sitting there all by himself he was. Mark saw him before I did.
“Dude!” he exclaimed. “You scared the shit out of me! Where’d you come from?”
I turned and saw a thin man about fifty-five years old with long, wavy-blond gray hair brushed back over a worrisome-looking face. He was plainly dressed like the rest of us in blue jeans, tennis shoes and T-shirts but stood out in that his skin was ghostly pale like that of a person who hadn’t seen sunlight in years.
Or perhaps he was just recovering from an illness.
His high cheekbones, deep eye sockets and wiry eyebrows along with a fine, prominent nose gave him the look of a wise old bird – an owl or an eagle, I suppose. And I never thought of blue as a painful color until I found myself staring into his eyes burning like two dark sapphires in his white face.
He spoke then through a slight grin. “Sorry gents. Didn’t mean to alarm you. Slipped in quietly, I reckon.”
And we heard that his voice was one of those voices: whiskey-soaked, barrel-aged; tinged with grief, touched by sadness. It was a great voice.
And I forget which came first – the thunder or the wind – but after he spoke a huge thunder-boomer belched in the distance and came scudding down Larimore Street in a series of ground-shaking rumbles, followed by an icy breeze that roared like a waterfall flying in off the Rockies. Some people went inside and those who stayed turned up collars or pulled hoods over heads.
“What the hell!” Mark exclaimed, hitting the joint a few times and taking a righteous quaff of his hoppy ale. I smoked and found myself looking over at that curious fellow now looking back at me with his smoldering blue eyes.
“Well, you might as well join us if you wish,” I said to him. “I hate to see a man drinking alone.”
His glass was near-empty and we had a fresh pitcher so I pointed to it and added: “We may need some help with this.”
He came over and sat, saying “Thanks, guys.”
I was glad. Nothing makes a fair mood go foul faster than a person who rejects your good will overtures.
And I missed it at the time but, looking back, wasn’t it peculiar that when he sat down with us the wind disappeared and the thunder with it?
“I didn’t mean to stare,” he said, “but it’s