Border Songs (17 page)

Brandon was helping him stack buds photogenically in the back of his rig when Talley pulled a crisp newspaper from the cab and handed it to him. “Brought you something. Seen this?”

It wasn’t the same woman Brandon had stored in his head. She was turning toward the camera with the ambushed surprise you see in Hollywood tabloids, her sprung eyes making her features even more dramatic. The photo was such a close-up that you could make out her individual hairs below the
Seattle Weekly
masthead and above the headline
STUCK IN LIMBO HELL
. “The Border Patrol calls her the Princess from Nowhere,” Brandon read, read it again, then stumbled into the next sentence.

“Heard some Seattle comic held that up last night and went, ‘Talk about the perfect date!’” Talley said, slipping into a stage voice. “‘No small talk. No past. No baggage. And we want to build fences to keep these women out?’”

Brandon read on, but the story wasn’t actually about her. It was about how some illegals were put in a detention center, given blue
jumpsuits and issued numbers; the princess was 908, just like Pearl was 39. Most of them, it said, would wait in cells for months, even years—if the government didn’t know where to send them—before they ever got a hearing.

“You hear your bomber woke up?”

Brandon shook his head numbly, suddenly so queasy he had to sit down in the dirt. Rain started falling, abruptly and aggressively, as if the heavens were getting in on it, if a little late, trying to raise the river and help the smugglers float their weed.

“They say he’s fine, but I guess they kind of fucked up on identifying him.”

Brandon looked up into the rain. “What do you mean?”

“Just what I said.”

“Well, who is he?”

“Fuck if I know.” Talley pulled on a hooded jacket. “Gonna give me a hand with these buds here?”

M
ADELINE
’
S DRIVER
pulled away from the maple-shaded split-level with blooming daffodils out front and a basement full of flowering cannabis. It was the fifth crop she’d tended to that day without a glitch, no longer feeling any relief that it had all passed without consequence. This illicit work still induced more adrenaline than nursing orchids and lilies but it had, as odd as it sounded, become a job, though a lucrative one.

The more she learned about Toby’s empire, the less anxious she felt. Cars parked in front of every house. Bills paid in advance. Lawns mowed. Christmas lights hung through December. Even the birdfeeders were always full. The growing logistics, too, were reassuringly consistent: Tables and lights on wheels. Holes drilled through water-meter paddles, the power meters bypassed on any op with more than ten lights. Five to six crops a year. Fourteen to seventeen pounds per harvest. And not one of the twenty-three sites she’d nursed over the last two months had been busted or ripped off. Still, Toby grew clones simultaneously in different locations to guard against losing a popular strain all at once. And he only hired people without records, reasoning that first-time offenders got such light sentences they were less likely to turn on him. All of which made everyone more careful, especially because Toby paid better than the competition.

Her driver, Michael, a large UBC undergrad, chattered about his door-to-door recruitment efforts on the American side of the border.
She pretended to listen earnestly as the beige minivan navigated Abbotsford’s rush-hour snarls until Essendene Avenue turned into Old Yale Road and ascended through suburbs, past freshly logged lots into neighborhoods of mock castles with vast stone decks, climbing still higher to where unique houses hung on blond cliffs and the hill narrowed to a rocky cone and the fresh asphalt finally ended in a broad, Lexus-jammed, clamshell driveway beneath a stilted glass palace.

The giggling woman standing by the door didn’t appear naked until Madeline got close enough to see her gooseflesh and paint smears. She swapped smiles, then glided through a candle-ringed vestibule into a high-ceilinged room with glass-jeweled chandeliers and a long oval table shoved against a wall cluttered with appetizers. Michael offered his hand and guided her past two more painted women—one so skinny that her hip bones flared like handrails—and through dozens of conversations and past strangers with intentionally messy hair to an even smokier room with a ceiling higher still and a massive diamond-shaped window overlooking the checkerboard of American farms. Her hand felt lost in Michael’s, tugging her toward a glass table behind which towered a loud, tuxedoed man with a gummy smile and a lime-green cannabis leaf stitched into his black cummerbund.

He spoke nonstop to four queues of people, interrupting himself with impersonations and asides, throwing his voice and answering questions with the agility of an auctioneer. Four tiny glass pipes billowed, the puffers smacking lips, closing eyes, wincing and squinting as if trying to remember something important.

“None of these are Vietnamese B-grade,” he told them. “This ain’t your father’s schwag. These are all pedigreed triple-A sativas or indicas or some mischievous blend thereof, cured for at least a week and usually two. You won’t see any freaky growths on these buds. No purple fungus here, my fellow stoners. Check out the crystal resin on these colas. You’re looking at the Bordeaux of buds.”

“Taste tests,” Michael explained, pulling her aside so she could see the featured buds displayed on gold platters. “Marcus,” he said, pointing
at the man in the tuxedo, “loves these things.” The chalkboard menu read:

Marcus was coaching the testers now to notice the various flavors, the orange mango chutney of one bud, the bubble-gum fruitiness of another, and to differentiate between the swift body high one strain offered and the soaring cerebral rocker of another.

Once Madeline ditched Michael she explored the noisy house on her own, taking in the neon sculptures and erotic ceiling murals, repetitive reggae pulsing from invisible speakers in every room.

All Fisher had told her was that it was a Drug War Party and everybody who was anybody in the B.C. cannabis scene would be there. A retort, he explained, to a flurry of news flashes, the first being
Forbes’s
report that indoor pot was now B.C.’s largest agricultural export, followed by the U.S. drug czar accusing Canada of flooding the States with “the crack cocaine of marijuana” and citing the Space Needle Bomber as proof of the link between drugs and terror. “If you buy B.C. bud,” he concluded, “you are sending a check to the terrorists.”

Madeline wished she’d showered and changed. Nobody else looked like they’d just come from work. Searching for a bathroom, she stepped into a den and found six men and one woman slouching on green leather couches and loveseats, listening to some mohawk in a wheelchair. “We’re all just animals,” he said, his voice reminding Madeline of pull-cord dolls. “I mean, we’re essentially advanced squirrels, aren’t we? Not as agile, but smarter. Or maybe glorified possums with big brains? Well, pretty big.” He cocked his head toward the lanky redhead sucking gently on a bubbling glass bong, smoke rising toward her exaggerated lips.

“Actually, we’re fancy monkeys,” said a man with a braided beard
and an eyebrow ring. “Fancy monkeys clinging to an average planet orbiting a dying star. Who said that, anyway? Chomsky, or was it Leary? Whoever. Doesn’t matter. It’s as true as—”

“Hey!” Fisher crossed the room, smoke curling from his fingers, the spotlight swinging from him to her. “How ya like Marcus’s crib?” He unfurled his spindly arms as if to hug her, but to her relief simply passed a joint. She inhaled hot smoke while Fisher introduced her as “Dahlia,” as he’d said he would. To her unease, they all nodded knowingly, including the big-lipped redhead who walked the loaded bong over. Madeline wasn’t interested, but didn’t want to seem rude, so she sucked the flame into the bud-packed bowl and gave it a steady pull until the ashes plunged. Her vision blurred on the exhale as she strained to read the sign on the wall:
OVERGROW THE GOVERNMENT
.

“Toby here?” she asked once Fisher escorted her out.

“Doesn’t usually show up at these sorts of things,” he whispered. “But he’s got business here tonight, so we might see him.”

He led her upstairs into what felt like a trade show, complete with T-shirts, banners and bumper stickers for sale. In one corner, a television was replaying drug-czar sound bites. In another, a manic bald guy was barking out the virtues of vaporizing hash as an “alternate ingestion strategy.” People lined up to get vaporized while a gap-toothed, green-haired woman sold grams and seed packets with the bored efficiency of a blackjack dealer. Another woman was pushing a petition. “Decriminalizing isn’t the answer,” she insisted. “It still forces everything underground.” Men bobbed in agreement, lost in her cleavage.

Fisher pointed out a refugee from the U.S. drug war and veterans of the B.C. drug courts, including an old attorney milling around like a proud grandpa. The King of Cannabis himself floated up the stairs a moment later, his head tilted back and nostrils flared. The visionary who’d invented the Marijuana Party and recruited candidates to run for everything from premier to the Vancouver school board had an entourage that included Toby, in corduroy shorts and a bowling shirt. His tanned forearms rippled as he opened a bottle of artesian water and handed it to Madeline. He’d barely made eye contact before he
laid his left hand on the small of her back, gently steering her away from Fisher.

People rose from couches and beanbags to meet “Dahlia,” whom Toby introduced as one of his top growers. Poached eyeballs settled on her respectfully, as if his flattery made her not only famous, but also desirable. They asked cloning and curing questions and whether she agreed that seabird shit was the best fertilizer until Toby grabbed a decorative sword off the wall and whirled it around with such grunting intensity and precision that it left Madeline sweating and others cheering. He put the blade back, his sword hand returning to the skin right above her belt, a disconcerting numbness creeping south from his fingers. He suddenly excused himself and stranded her with the king and his acoloytes, who took turns speculating on what effect the drug czar might have on local and federal politics and their legalization crusade.

The king offered no opinion until he finally decreed: “It’s Prohibition all over again. That eventually ended because it was impossible to enforce, because alcohol was everywhere.” He lit a joint the size of a breakfast sausage, and everyone waited for him to finish popping smoke rings. “A year after legalization, every stoner will grow an ass-load of weed and stick it in pickle jars like they used to.” He held the joint at eye level, rolling it between thumb and forefinger as if focusing binoculars. “And people won’t be able to smoke all they grow. It’ll go moldy long before they can suck it down. And they won’t be buying pot, either. Please get that through your heads. They will not be buying pot. Maybe one percent of the Canadians now making a decent living at it will still be in business, okay? The best will survive, yes, but nobody will be building these McMansions—not that I don’t love yours, Marcus. Trust me, this gold rush will pass, and that’s a good thing. Yes, there eventually will be Amsterdam-style coffee shops on every block in downtown Vancouver.” A cheer rose up. “And yes, people will be cooking with cannabis, breaking up buds, sprinkling them on salads and smothering them with balsamic.” He licked his dry lips, and everyone but Madeline laughed on cue. “And the persecution of people who enjoy cannabis, my friends, will finally be over. It’s not if,
it’s how fuckin’ soon. And you know the biggest reason it won’t happen soon enough?”

“Parliament’s fear of pissing off the U.S.?” Marcus suggested.

“Not quite,” he replied. “It’s the U.S. government’s fear of its own pharmaceutical companies. Follow? That’s the real cartel that needs to get busted up. For now, Uncle Sam does the ’ceuticals’ bidding by demonizing this sacred plant and keeping citizens from realizing they could grow this medicine in their backyard and not have to pay Pfizer and the others for Vicodin, Vioxx, OxyContin and the rest of that hillbilly heroin that’s killing people faster than any natural drug ever has or will. Am I wrong?”

After a respectful pause, a man with teeth the size of thumbnails said, “Word.”

Madeline smothered a giggle, excused herself around Marcus, then glided downstairs and outside into a Zeus-like view of the valley. The farmlands were spiked with almost as many steeples as silos, and out to the west the spangled water broke free of the islands toward the smoldering belt of orange clouds and the rest of the world. There was no sense of any border, no visible line of tension other than the narrow clear-cut in the sloping foothills north of Baker’s glaciered belly.

She had no idea how long she’d been standing there when she remembered promising to make her father dinner. She’d dumped everything she owned into his tiny guesthouse again after Toby’s promised alternative never materialized. Her father had stood long-faced in the doorway looking at her mess, then told her about Mrs. Vanderkool. Why had it taken until now to think about what he’d said? Perhaps because Madeline couldn’t imagine that the elegant lady who knew exactly what to say when it mattered most was actually losing her wits.

She’d pulled Madeline aside a month after her mother’s funeral, when everyone was still avoiding her, and said, without preamble, “It may get worse before it gets better, but I promise you that the older you get, the more strength and comfort you’ll draw from knowing that such a beloved woman absolutely worshipped you.”

Once her weepiness passed—
Jesus, I’m high—
Madeline felt relieved
that she hadn’t driven. She moseyed inside looking for a friendly face, then got wedged against the diamond-shaped window alongside a painted woman gnawing through a box of chocolates. “That paint hard to put on?” she asked, desperate for conversation.

“Ya don’t put it on yourself,” the woman drawled. “Least I don’t. Maybe you could.”