Betty's (Little Basement) Garden (37 page)

But for now, the familiar darkness that had followed and shrouded her for so many years seized her body. She'd come so far and now it was all falling away, bit by bit, friendship by friendship. “You gotta hit rock bottom,” she recalled Greg telling her earlier that evening, “and then rebuild from there.” But how? Everything seemed meaningless to her. What was the point of her three months of enlightenment – of intense love and heartfelt satisfaction – if all of it was destined to be shattered in the end? The same feelings that hollowed her soul the night Frankie died reemerged. On that night, five years earlier, she'd wandered into the backyard and lay on the ground under the elm tree, begging God for answers. She felt the wet dirt beneath her palms and the kiss of the leaves as they fell across her aching body. And somehow, when she awoke in the same place the next morning, she was able to get up and keep going. It was as if the earth had infused her with enough strength to continue.

So, guided by that memory, Betty walked back to the basement, feeling her way in the coal darkness, and walked into the pitch-black bloom room, closing the door behind her. There, amidst the intoxicating buds, she lay down and prayed to the same God. Then, as slumber overwhelmed the pain, she finally let go. For the first time in her life, Betty Craven let go.

The bloom lights burst on at eight o'clock the following morning, quickly awakening Betty. Even with the fans blowing and the intake and outtake fans turned on, her head swam from the dizzying aromas. She looked up at her girls swaying back and forth and smiled. She checked their leaves and buds; the distinguished sparkling residue of sulfur that had been sucked in by the fans could be seen. But except for the disagreeable, rotten egg odor that was evident on closer examination, they all seemed to be holding up well. The other girls in the veg room, however, were not as fortunate. Helen's clones were all but dead. Only one, surrounded by blackened leaves, had a complete center stalk. Most of the remaining clones had lost their entire top-half, with only a few lower branches barely alive. But something ignited inside of Betty. Instead of falling into a crevice of gloom, she was determined to turn this all around. Even against the sorrow of losing Ronald, Betty felt a budding strength overtake her. As it moved through her, she realized the spasm in her neck was gone, her jaw had loosened and the perplexing flutter in her ear had disappeared.

She called Peyton and he came over immediately. After telling him about Ronald's passing, she told him about the girls. It wasn't clear which news hit him the hardest. After examining the plants, he almost started to cry.

“Some of these are gone, Betty.”

“They're quite resilient. You've told me that before.”

“They can't come back from the dead.”

“Look at the stalks!” she said, pointing to one of the Kushberry girls that only had a thin stalk left. “They're strong! They have a lot of willpower. I just need to figure out how to reboot them!”

“Reboot? They're plants, not computers.” He glanced around the room, shaking his head. “I can't help you on this one, Betty.”

She walked out into the main room as Peyton followed. Even though she'd swept up most of the debris, the occasional glass shard was still evident where the tree trunk burst through the window.

“When is Jeff showing up with his chainsaw?”

Betty felt her stomach tighten. “This is a job for a tree service.”

Peyton regarded her carefully. “Did you tell him about Ronald and the girls?”

“Not yet. Watch your step, dear. There are still small glass shards –”

“Why not?” he pressed her. “He liked Ronald.”

She searched for a proper lie that wouldn't confuse the issue, but quickly realized how the process was already tiring her. “I just haven't, Peyton.” She turned on the radio to the classical station, as the top of the hour news began. The lead local story was another solo protest by Doobie Douggie along a stretch of highway near his home. Apparently, the “Pope of Dope,” as the reporter disparagingly referred to him, had wheeled himself out onto the overpass that crossed the highway from his home and hung an enormous, red flag from the bridge, decorated with a huge, bright-green cannabis leaf. The man, as always, loved to wave his many flags. However, the visual distraction caused several minor accidents as well as gridlock. As Douggie was cited for the disturbance, he wasted no time and launched into a loud rebuke of the policies that made his venerated plant illegal.

Betty turned to Peyton. “That's it! If anyone knows how to fix this, he does.”

Peyton followed Betty back up the stairs. “You've gotta be kidding me! Did you suck up too much sulfur into your lungs last night?”

“I know exactly where that highway is. It's right near Dottie's ranch. It's a small area. I bet she knows where he lives.”

“Betty, you cannot just show up at this guy's house and expect him to welcome you! He's kinda out there. You know what I'm sayin'? He's smart as hell but –”

“Peyton, I don't give a damn if he's one wicker chair short of a summer patio set. Nobody knows cannabis like Douggie. When I have a problem, I go to the source!”

“He carries a gun, Betty.
A gun
?”

“I have a gun too, Peyton. Should I bring it along?” She marched into the kitchen, with Peyton right on her heels.

“Betty, he's like a rock star. He's really private. He's a grower, not a shower. You won't get past his gate!”

“Yes, I will.” She brought out her cacao powder and plain cocoa butter.

“What are you doing?”

“I'm going to make him some chocolates. With honey. You can catch more bees with honey, you know?”

“Betty, you're not hearing me! Douggie is not like the rest of us. He doesn't believe in daylight saving time. He thinks it's a government conspiracy to throw off the flowering light-cycle of his blooming cannabis plants! He has a target of Nixon's face he shoots, with Nixon's nose as the bulls-eye. This is not the kind of person who allows anyone to just show up unannounced!”

She stopped what she was doing and turned to Peyton. “Fear doesn't motivate me anymore, Peyton. So I suggest you put on an apron and start stirring.”

Three hours later on that Sunday afternoon, Betty was on the road. With Ronald tucked into a box on her backseat, she stopped first at the 24-hour emergency vet's office outside of town and carried her dearly loved cat inside. She made the arrangements to have him cremated, said her tearful goodbye and left.

Her next stop was Dottie's ranch. When she got to the gate, Hugh, the ranch manager, answered the intercom and buzzed her inside. Before she rolled to a stop, he was right there waiting for her, with a terribly worried expression.

“I need to speak to Dottie right away,” Betty told him, getting out of the car.

“Wait!” He said, touching her arm. “I gotta ask you something and you gotta tell me the truth. Does Dottie have cancer?”

Betty studied the man's eyes, filled with panic and worry. “No, Hugh. She doesn't have cancer.”

“Then why do you keep bringing her marijuana?”

Betty stopped dead. “I'm not bringing Dottie –”

“I found one of those chocolates in her office and ate it. I could taste the pot right away. Look, we all care a lot for her, and she's not the same since her ol' man died. She's like family to all of us. And if she's dying, I need to know about it.” He was shaking and riddled with apprehension.

Betty put a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “She's doesn't have cancer, Hugh. You have my word on that. She's just trying to figure it all out. And I guess my chocolates might help with that desire.”

He nodded and seemed to relax a bit. “She's in the house. I'll get her.” He turned to walk away and then turned back to Betty. “Thank you for helping her.”

Once alone with Dottie, Betty asked about the infamous Douggie. Dottie rolled her eyes and pointed up the highway. “You can't miss his house. It's about five miles from here, at the end of a dirt road. Keep your windows down. You'll smell it before you see it.”

Betty followed Dottie's directions and easily found the pot star's house. She parked her car and carried the cooler of chocolates to his modest front gate. A boxwood hedge, towering six-feet-high, surrounded the front yard. She started to open the latch on the gate, when she heard the distinctive
click
of a pistol being cocked.

“Now, who in the hell do you think you are?”

“I'm Betty Craven,” she replied, holding out her hand.

Douggie didn't move a muscle. Wearing his frayed “Legalize the Weed” t-shirt, he sat in his wheelchair – sans his usual protest flag – and with steely eyes never allowed his pistol to move a hair off his target. “So what?”

“Please put your gun away,” Betty said with a relaxed smile. “I didn't bring my little Tomcat, so you can't show me yours if I can't show you mine.”

Douggie's long mane of unruly grey hair blew in the wind. “Who in the hell sent you here?”

“I sent myself. I have a very serious gardening problem, and I need your expert assistance.” She handed him the cooler. “I brought you chocolates as a gift.”

Douggie lowered the pistol and opened the cooler. Holding one to his nose, he gave it a good whiff. “These aren't loaded.”

“Of course, not. Why would I bring you cannabis chocolates? That would be far too predictable, wouldn't it?”

He popped a chocolate in his mouth and let it melt across his tongue, the whole time never taking his eyes off Betty. “Shit…those are good.”

“It's the honey,” she said with a grin.

He silently sized her up and then tilted his head toward the back garden. Wheeling himself forward along the brick path, Betty followed close behind. “You sure as hell don't look like the assholes who usually show up here.”

“Why, thank you…do you like to be called Douggie or Doobie Douggie?”

“Neither,” he barked, skillfully rolling his chair over a few bricks and leading Betty around a sharp corner. “That's just the name some stoner kid came up with. I've had a lot of names over the years. ‘The Captain of Cannabis,' ‘The Wizard of Weed,' ‘The Rustler of Reefer,' ‘The Gardener of Ganja.'”

“So what do you want me to call you?”

“Use my real name. Frank.”

Betty stopped in her tracks. “
Frank
?”

He wheeled his chair around. “Yeah? What's it to ya?”

She shook her head in stunned amazement. “Everything. You wouldn't believe me if I told you…Frank.”

With Betty close behind, Frank rolled down a short brick path, through another gate and did a wheelie down a short ramp leading into an enormous, prolific, outdoor cannabis garden. Rows and rows of healthy, vibrant cannabis plants filled the space, sunk into the rich soil and surrounded with compost. Most were well over eight feet tall, each one easily spanning five- to six-feet across.

“It's kinda like the Disneyland of cannabis, huh?” he asked her. “All of them, E-Ticket rides!” He jutted his thumb in the air to accentuate his point.

One by one, Frank introduced her to each of the plants. She lost count after number twenty-two. Occasionally, he'd grab a nearby hose and spray a few plants that looked thirsty. It all seemed so natural to Betty, except most people didn't water their garden with a hose in their hand and a 9mm tucked in their waistband. After the tour, they wandered over to a sheltered patio where it looked like Frank spent most of his time. There was even a single bed in the corner, sheltered by a sheet of plastic.

“Are you so nervous you have to sleep out here all summer?” Betty asked.

“Nah. If people are dumb enough to bust in, my Sig will do the talking. I sleep out here because they protect me from myself. They remind me. They always remind me.”

“Remind you of what?”

“Whatever's important at the moment. So why'd you come out here?”

Betty explained her terrible sulfur mishap, told him she was a caregiver and how people were depending upon her to come through for them.

“Well, now you know what a farmer feels like when his corn crop gets wiped out by a tornado or pestilence.”

“I suppose I do,” Betty contemplated.

“I feel for them when that happens, but I don't think the farmer would give me the same respect if it happened to my crop. But that doesn't mean both that farmer and I are not expert gardeners.”

“You don't understand, Frank. I can't fail again.”

“Sweetheart, if you're afraid of failing, you better get the hell out of this game. You have a long list of people who came before you and failed badly. Some of them went to prison for growing this damn plant. Some of them lost everything – lovers, wives, parents, friends…all because they loved to grow and learn everything they could about this little weed.” He leaned forward in his chair. “It's a passion, Betty. Not an addiction. But try explaining that to all the people who scream and tell everyone how dangerous it is. I can't believe they're dredging up the same Nixon-ian bullshit about brain damage and the lack of motivation syndrome. Do you think it's possible to have a garden this big and not have a functioning brain and a tremendous amount of motivation to keep it alive and thriving? All the anti-cannabis speeches are filled with such inaccuracies, it makes me want to puke. It's incredible how much ignorance can be expressed with such insane confidence! But somehow, they pull it off!” He offered a joint to Betty who turned him down. He lit up and inhaled deeply. “You know what you don't hear on the news? You don't hear about how you can juice the fresh leaves, just like you would do with spinach. There are all these enzymes in the leaves that can cure anything from Crohn's Disease to arthritis.” He reached over and uncovered an old wheat grass juicer. “I drink a shot a day.” He opened up a zippered leather pouch and brought out a plastic baby syringe, filled with a dark green, tar-like substance. “And then there's this. You're looking at the crème de le crème, Betty. A guy out of Canada named Rick Simpson developed this method for extracting the resins into a thick oil. You concentrate one pound of cannabis buds down into
two ounces
of this stuff. We're talking holy shit potent! But it's curing the incurables. Cancer, diabetes, epilepsy, you name it. Some choose to run for the cure. I prefer to grow for it!”

“That's quite a statement.”

“It's true, Betty. But there's no money in it! Cannabis is the people's medicine! If weed were legal, the price would drop like crazy. Everybody and their cousin would be growing it and making what they needed out of it. Now, can you see how the powerbrokers in charge don't want that to happen? They'd lose control of their medical monopolies. When one plant can do the job of five or more drugs, there's no profit in it. The profit is in our pain. The profit is in prolonging our misery. The profit is in handing us false hope, that their pills, shots and poisons are better and healthier for us than something nature provides. I happen to find that line of thought disgusting. That's why I take every opportunity to discredit all those inbred, mono-celled drones, who insist upon making false statements about this plant. But sometimes I wonder why I bother. Nothing creates a pointless debate like an inaccurate supposition.”

“I think it's the stigma that gets in the way of intelligent conversation.”

“The stigma was manmade!” he bellowed, taking another quick hit before snuffing out the joint. “Political fraud meets Hollywood! Two whores in the same bed, trying to bend over John Q. Public. It doesn't matter if it's
Reefer Madness
or some botoxed TV drug-addiction doc spouting the ‘dangers of weed.' It's two cheeks on the same ass.”

Betty smiled. “Same church, different pew?”

He leaned forward. “
Exactly
. And if they're not trying to scare you, they throw out the morality issue. I never understood that one, Betty. Who in the hell ever said cannabis had anything to do with morality? They've foisted that false doctrine on us, ever since Harry Anslinger swore it made white women want to screw black men. That's not to say the right strain can't make sex incredible.” He winked. “So I've heard. There's nothing moral or immoral about it, for God's sake! It's a plant. Why don't we ban the iris flower, because Georgia O'Keeffe made it look a woman's genitalia? That painting still freaks out a lot of people…especially men.”

Betty leaned toward Frank. “I don't think that's what most people are afraid of, Frank, when it comes to cannabis. They're afraid of addiction –”

“Oh, hell, don't get me started, Betty. They've already proven that addiction theory to be wrong.” He wheeled over to a small table, where an automatic coffee maker sat, with its carafe filled to the top with the darkest brew Betty had ever seen. “You want to talk about addiction? Let's start with coffee.” He poured himself a cup and offered her one. “Don't worry. Just like your chocolates, it's only loaded with caffeine.” She nodded and took a cup. “If I miss a day without four strong cups of Joe, my hands shake like a Parkinson's patient. But the few times I've gone without my herb, after all the years of smoking and eating it, all I do is miss it. But I'm not flailing like a fish on the concrete, having a goddamn seizure!” He took a sip of the coal black coffee. “Look, there's impulse control versus addiction; habitual versus addiction. Cannabis can be habitual and if you suffer from the inability to handle your impulses, you just might feel that you can't live without your herb. But those assholes who believe that are the same ones who
a
l
ways
blame others for the tornado of shit that constantly hits them and how they can't catch a break!” His singsong tone mimicked a whiny brat. “Spare me! Unfortunately, somebody never sat those pricks down when they were little and gave them a solid foundation. Taught them about cause and effect, the consequences of their actions, and that you don't usually get everything you want the second you want it!”

Betty was quite surprised by Doobie Frank's perspective. “Careful there, Frank. You're starting to sound like a social Conservative.”

“Aw, fuck labels! All I can tell you is it fries my fritter when ignorant people blame this beautiful herb for their inability to pull their head out of their own ass! It's not the herb, Betty – it's the loser who happens to be using the herb. The jerk-off showed up first; the herb just happened to meet him on his muddled journey. Guaranteed Betty, that fool would act the same whether he was one toke over the line or not. It's not addiction when it comes to Mary Jane. If some idiot suffers from impulse control, that's a helluva lot different than the crack head down on his knees, sifting through the shag carpet, looking for a leftover rock he can plug in his pipe.” He scooted his wheelchair closer to her. “I'll let you in on why I really think the big boys want to keep the weed illegal. You ready?”

“Ready.” She took a sip of the burnt brew and had to think lovely thoughts so she wouldn't spit it out.

“Did you ever watch a movie when you were high?”

“No. Can't say I have.”

“Well, give it a shot sometime. You won't be able to focus on the story, because all you'll see is the ‘acting.' Doesn't matter if it's good acting or bad acting. It's the ‘acting' you won't be able to get past. You'll easily see the lie in the actors' performance – the pretending to be someone else. Now, take that understanding and watch a political debate when you're high. Oh, hell! You won't be able to get through the introductions, guaranteed! When they start lying and telling the audience what they want to hear, you'll see how insidious those pricks are. It's as if the herb removes the blinders and the truth is exposed.” He wheeled back a few inches. “So you see, I don't think it's the plant they're really afraid of. It's the
power
of the plant that scares the shit out of the people who want to ban it. They don't want a world of people collectively questioning their governments, their churches or their educational systems. They want us docile! You start becoming one with the weed and it will shine perspective on aspects of your life you never saw before. Hell, you'll wake up one day and say, ‘Why didn't I notice that?' Weed punctures the darkness and gradually exposes you to your own shadow and the collective shadow governing all of us. You start to realize there's more to life than the grind and the pursuit of crap that puts you in debt and prevents you from getting in touch with what's really important in here.” He pointed to his heart. “They want you to keep running on their wheel that goes nowhere, because that's what the machine demands. The machine needs to be fed by each of us. And they own that damn machine, Betty! However, when you wake up and see that the machine has nothing to do with your greater good, you elect to step away from it. But the owners of the machine don't want that to happen, because they need reliable slaves to do their dirty work. And that, sweetheart, is why cannabis is so dangerous.” He leaned closer to her. “
It makes you think
.”

Betty silently took in every word. “I know, and for some of us who opted to borrow our beliefs from others, it's quite an awakening.”

Frank sat back. “Damn! It's refreshing to sit across from someone who looks like you and loves the herb. If everyone looked like you, instead of the trolls who usually come ‘round, I'd build a pool and have lots of parties.”

“Well, Frank…you are so kind to say that.”

“I mean it! I wish there were more like you! Well-dressed, well-spoken, educated –”

“I'm a Republican.”

“Even better!
I love it
! The cannabis movement needs people who don't look like they need a bath or spell cannabis, c-a-n-u-b-u-s-s! The problem right now? We have too many dubious people filtering into this medical marijuana business from the illegal side. They might have a dispensary or a grow op, but they always have that creepy vibe, you know? They don't walk; they skulk. It's from spending too many years doing dark-alley weed deals. If we're going to get the public-at-large to understand what this plant can do, you don't want to put some skinny Rastafarian dude with dreadlocks on TV or some chick with stained teeth who looks like she does the ho stroll down at the truck stop.” He snapped his finger in the air. “Betty! You could be the poster girl for cannabis reform!”