The second winter after
I moved up here, I had a confrontation
with my folks. That was after my first small, less than impressive,
crop.
I'd driven south
in my truck, which was loaded with not only my few pounds of
sinsemilla, but Brenda's harvest too. At least, part of hers. She
and Eagle
weren't feverish to sell everything at first. They knew that they
had a steady
market in Southern California, so they'd let loose with a few pounds
right
after cleaning, then hold on and sell a bit here and there. I was
in no
position to do that, of course. All I needed was to unload my whole
crop, so I
could start worrying about next year. As I said, Brenda is cagey
about her
financial affairs. I think she even has a bank account in the Cayman
Islands. No kidding. My kid sister is actually involved with international
finance. I know that because she let it slip one time when she was
really
stoned, and drunk besides, an indulgence she allows herself about
once a
week. Usually, Eagle keeps a pretty sharp eye on her, and carts
her back to the
ranch when she gets too rambunctious. But this time, they were having
a party
at their place, so there was nowhere to cart her off to. So Eagle
just kept
filling her glass and hoping Brenda would pass out before she alienated
their
entire stock of friends.
Brenda can be
really loud sometimes, and this was one of them. She worked up to
a roar about how the IRS was the Gestapo of America, but they'd
never get her
to the gas chambers, by God. See, when we were kids, our grandparents
had
impressed on us how many of our relatives had ended up in Hitler's
"showers,"
just because they hadn't been alert enough, as had the Funk branch,
to see the
coming horror. It made quite a dent in our psyches. Grandad was
especially
inclined to take off into flights of drama around Passover, sounding
much the
same as Brenda does now. "Deliver us, oh God of Israel! From
the tormentors and
the tyrants." I had just been thinking about those childhood
episodes when
Brenda let loose with "Deliver us, oh God of Israel! From the
tormentors of the
IRS and the CIA, the tyrants of the DEA and the FBI, and all those
other farts
with initials for names!" God, she was Grandpa Funk all over
again. He would
have been proud. But she wasn't through. "Well, this little
girl ain't dumb,"
she bellowed, her decibles drowning the fourth playing of the Grateful
Dead
American Beauty album, "I've found a place where the fuckin'
IRS can't poke its
fuckin' nose. Yeah, sunny skies and secret bank accounts..."
suddenly the words
were muffled in Eagle's bear hug. I didn't get to hear any more
details. At
least not from Brenda.
Somewhat later,
after Brenda had ungracefully passed out, Eagle pulled me
aside. "I saw your beady eyes light up when Brenda started
spilling the beans,"
she accused.
There was no
use faking it. I nodded eagerly. "Sure. Why not? I'm curious
as
hell about my baby sister...and her money. I'm not after it or anything.
I just
want to know how she's doing. She makes such a big secret deal of
it, I want to
know why."
"How do
I know your intentions?" Eagle growled, looking worried. The
look isn't
unusual for Eagle, being the worrier of the pair. (It's strange
how people pair
up, picking partners who manifest their own missing traits.) Brenda
never
worried. She was a doer, and rash, scheming and shrewd all wrapped
up in one
package, just like Grandpa. But worry? Never. She didn't even think
very far
ahead. Eagle did it for her, I guess. I also guess it was Eagle's
idea that
they have an overseas bank account.
"My intentions
are always evil," I answered. "But don't worry, they hardly
ever
progress to action. I never learned how to get from A to B in that
equation."
Eagle nodded.
"That's probably true. Brenda always says you're the lovable
schmuck of the family. I still don't trust you, but I guess she
sort of let the
cat out of the bag tonight. We've been taking a lot of cash out
of the
country. It's no big deal. You'd be surprised at how easy it is."
"I guess
so, when you've got the cash to take, which I don't, yet. Are you
going to tell me the rest, like how much?" Eagle set her jaw.
"Nope. But it's
probably not as much as you think. We sure can't retire yet."
I tried to act
surprised, intrigued, interested, but it didn't help. She just
gave me a friendly punch to the midsection and went to refill a
couple of
glasses. So what help was that for my book? More nonspecifics. "Sister
of hero
has some money put away in a foreign bank." Hardly a headline
for the National
Enquirer. Hardly a match for "Men Eaten Alive By Starving Hog"
which I actually
saw in the paper one day.
I have no idea
how many other growers are in Brenda's position. Every once in a
while, you hear about one of them leasing his land out for a year,
and taking
off around the world, or going back to college. But I've never met
one that I
knew for sure was really rich.
There was this
one guy who had been growing for a number of years and who had
accumulated surplus funds. He admitted as much. But like a lot of
people who
choose the life of a marijuana farmer, he wasn't interested in the
high life.
He and his wife were just plain folks who liked getting dirt under
their
fingernails and listening to the rain on the roof for entertainment.
How much
money does that take?
So he bought
land. He bought it the name of every member of his family (luckily
he had a lot of kinfolk), and took back an unregistered deed from
each of
them. So on the books, it looks like Uncle Joe owns this 80 acres
over by Spy
Rock, but in the safety deposit box there's a piece of paper signing
it back to
Leroy Pogue and his wife, Maudene.
See, if they'd
been coke dealers, the scene would be totally different. There'd
be fancy cars, two or three sprawling houses, gold chains for each
day of the
week: the works. You see that sort of thing all the time on TV news,
usually
being seized.
None of the
foregoing might seem related to the confrontation with my parents
over my decision to grow dope for a living. It is. Because they
had this media
image of the sort of person who deals in controlled substances.
They knew all
about the wild plane rides entailed in smuggling stuff across the
border. It
even happened that a member of their yacht club was found to be
using his boat
to bring a few packages back from Mexico. They also knew about gang
murders
over cocaine in the streets of New York, and about the Colombian
connection,
and about those dangerous but exotic persons called "dealers".
But what they
didn't know was a damned thing about Northern California marijuana
growers. And
I made the mistake of trying to tell them.
Like your average,
pedestrian parent species, they proved unwilling, to say the
least, to be confused with facts. Or at least, my facts. They knew
they had a
crazy daughter of strange sexual persuasion, who had chosen this
illegal and
dangerous life. But me? Larry, the nice boy? How could this happen?
Had I
fallen in with evil companions? That was one answer, obviously.
Had I not moved
to the same neighborhood as my sister?
So from the
moment I pulled into the driveway, they were primed to save me from
myself. I had no idea what awaited me; they had no idea what was
loaded in the
back of my truck. But fresh in my mind was the time years ago when
my dad found
one joint and a couple of suspect pills in my glove compartment.
That the guilt
still hung on kept me mum about the fact that I was in possession
of
approximately $25,000 worth of dried flowers, even as I gallantly
and futiley
defended my present life style.
"Life style,
life style! Quit using that damned phrase!" My mother
shrieked. "Every life has a style. Life is style, or the reverse,
and it hasn't
got a damned thing to do with you being a no good criminal, and
a cliche-ridden
one at that."
My mother was
hard to argue with in any reasonable way. Her style was to
overwhelm the opposition with a high intensity stream of emotionally
charged
phrases that had little connection to one another, much less to
the object of
her scorn and invective.
I chose to rise
above the discussion's level. "I refuse to stand here and be
treated like a child."
"When you
act like an adult, then I'll treat you like an adult." That
was Dad's
contribution. At some point in every discussion for the past thirty
years, he
had assured me I'd be treated like an adult when I acted like one.
Somewhere
along the line, I realized that what he meant was that he would
treat me as an
equal when I acted just like he did. David had long ago mastered
the pose
(though maybe with him it was no pose), and was therefore treated
like one of
Dad's cronies, which of course, he was. I, on the other hand, was
treated with
the measured kindness and condescension one gives a dull child.
It was the
price of being different.
For a moment,
in this particular confrontation, I was almost able to feel sorry
for Dad, and Mom too. It's sad to assume that if others aren't like
you,
something's drastically wrong...with the other, different, one.
But it's hard
to be coolly objective about one's parents for very long. Too many
mixed
messages of love and hate come reverberating, in my case through
a 33 year
imprinted nervous system.
I wish I could
say that I handled the scene with my cool intact. I didn't. They
won the round, hands down, and I retreated in a state close to tears.
At my age
yet! So I ended the night at Marvene's place, huddled fetus-like
on her red
velvet couch. The next morning she made a terrific batch of pancakes.
"If you
dare make any comparison to Aunt Jemima," she warned, waving
the
spatula over my head, "I'll raise your consciousness with this."
After breakfast,
she paid me an outrageous sum of cash for my cargo. "Now get,"
she ordered. "Go have yourself some fun...or something. I'd
stir up some action
for you myself, but I got friends coming from L.A.. Don't forget
to come say
goodbye before you head north. I might even whip up a pecan pie,
like in the
old days." Grandpa Funk had been a slave to Marvene's pecan
pie. I still was.
So I got myself
a motel room in Ocean Beach, where I could look at the Pacific
and think long thoughts while sucking a couple of beers and watching
the
surfers. Later, I went over to Nati's and had a Mexican dinner,
the deluxe
combination plate, guaranteed to fill the emptiest stomach and warm
the dampest
soul. Afterwards, I strolled up and down Newport Avenue, trying
to remember who
I'd been before I moved north, and wondering what had happened to
him,
anyway. A growl from my gut was the only thing I got in the way
of an answer,
so I stopped at a raunchy pizza parlor that I knew from way back
and had a
deluxe combination large pizza and watched the bikers and their
girls.
I think I was
temporarily suicidal. But eating yourself to death is one hell of
a way to go.
The next day,
I more or less made up with my folks, at least enough to get
invited to dinner. They did not, however, ask me to spend the night
under the
family roof. I guess they thought there was a message there. Actually,
I was
happier at the O.B. Motel, where nobody nagged me to pick up my
clothes or
stand up straight (I didn't dare tell them that I was terminally
stooped from
shit-hauling.)
During that
family dinner, David and my Dad spent an interminable time
congratulating themselves on how smart they were to be doctors and
real estate
developers too. "Goddam good deal, that Smitz property."
"Right Dad. We were
wise to pick up on that. It'll net us 30% at least..." And
so on. Tuning them
out, I switched to David's wife and my Mother. "It was just
darling? I mean, I
can't tell you how darling it was!" (Debbie always spoke in
exclamations)
"Well, if it was darling, Debbie, why didn't you buy it?"
All channels
jammed, I gave up to concentrate on the leg of lamb. Leg of lamb
is an item I don't eat very often, not having an oven in my tent.
Tent? That
seemed about as far away as the conversation around me. Where the
hell did I
belong, anyhow?
A few days later,
I checked out of the O.B. Motel and headed north, to give
Brenda her money and to pick up Kiki for another trip to the land
of sun and
sand. Two years in a row now, she had agreed to take a trip with
me. Could it
be love? Brenda insisted it was simple greed. She never had a kind
word to say
about Kiki, at least not behind her back. Face to face at Blithe
Spirit dance
class, or at the Woodrose cafe, they were civil enough. At least
they didn't
punch each other out. Women, even dykes, are a mystery that way.
Brenda asked
how my trip south had been. I answered almost truthfully, though
I
probably exaggerated my skill at handling our folks. I don't know
whether she
believed me or not, but she didn't challenge my version. "I
try to stay away as
much as I indecently can," she said quietly. "I haven't
felt like a member of
the family for a hell of a long time."
"I just
don't want to hurt them," I tried to lie cravenly.
"You won't."
She smiled and we broke into laughter together, as though we
shared a secret.
