The Buds Are Calling

by Coyne Davies, B.

  “Rainy Day Dope!”

  “That’s so sick!”

  “Fuckin’ genius!”

  “We should do that.”

  “Dude, we’d have to go to police academy.”

  “That would suck.”

  “Yeah. It’s just way too complicated.”

  “It doesn’t need to be. Let’s move to Colorado.”

  “We should move to Canada. Weed’s gonna be legal right across the whole country.”

  “Bro, moving to a different country is seriously complicated.”

  “Yeah, I don’t want to go to Canada.”

  “Maybe we should all go look up Greg.”

  “He’s in a different country too. Mom said he and Aunt Sal are totally retired. They got a big house with a sea view.”

  “Dude, you’re supposed to shut up about that.”

  “Whatever. They’ve even got a maid.”

  “Let’s all go to California.”

  “Yeah, California’s fire.”

  “California’s on fire. Let’s not.”

  “Let’s go to Oregon then.”

  Chapter 68

  Ernie was walking back from the cultivation area with his dust mop. He spotted Percy and Lydia stopped outside the lab with their hands over their ears. The walls dividing the storage and the potting rooms were being demolished, as was the concrete floor, all in preparation for an expansion. Guido’s plan was to break new ground as soon as the snow melted.

  “I don’t think they thought this out too well,” Ernie said to them over the noise. “Halls in the grow area are covered in dust. It’s coming through the ceiling cracks I think.”

  “Oh my gracious,” Lydia exclaimed. “It’s more extensive than I imagined.”

  “It’s rattling, is what it is,” Percy shouted. “I’m sure nobody thought of anything. They certainly didn’t consult me. And they were supposed to.” Another jackhammer started up. Percy yelled, “The new wankers are no better than the last lot!”

  “At least Lazlo listened to us,” Ernie shouted back.

  Percy shook his head. “Never mind. We shall prevail!”

  At that moment Petra opened the lab door behind the plastic curtain and waved them all in.

  “It’s positively haboobish out there!” Percy brushed off his lab coat. “Like Black Sunday in the Dust Bowl. Poor you!” He looked at Petra.

  She shrugged and raised her voice above the din that still penetrated the walls, “Apparently it’s molto necessario.” She mimicked Guido’s gestures flawlessly. “CannRose has to be ahead of any announcements.”

  “Ridiculous! There’s not been a peep out of the DOH about recreational,” Percy said.

  “It’ll be on the ballot again, dollars to donuts.” Ernie’s voice was still raised when suddenly all the equipment shut down, undoubtedly for the workers’ coffee break.

  “Probably also depends on who’s running for governor now.” Lydia sighed.

  “Do you know our disgraced governor, Lydia?” Ernie enquired.

  “No! Not well anyway. Jordan knew him of course, and Cyrus and Malcolm know him. I never liked him — he pinched me once.”

  “Where?” Petra said, perking up.

  “Where do you think!” Lydia raised her eyebrows. “I was about to smack his face. Jordan intervened. Brushed it off with some comment about my irresistible butt.”

  “Scandal was no surprise to you then,” Ernie said.

  “Looks good on him.” Lydia brushed some dust off her shoulder.

  “So what news of the project?” Petra asked.

  “I think your instincts, Petra, were unfortunately dead on.” Lydia said. “For all the assurances and enthusiasm I was finally getting a month ago, Herbert is hedging with both those universities you lined up. I’m sure they just want to stall buying me out completely. I gave them an ultimatum you know.”

  “Good for you, Lydia,” Percy said. “And for what it’s worth, I think pursuing the veterinary medicine line is a fabulous idea.”

  “Thanks. I get the feeling the plants are keen on it too. And I don’t care if people think I’m crazy, you know.” Lydia smiled but then paused and frowned. “CannRose would need to stick with the medical side of things to make it work, though.” She pointed her thumb in the direction of the admin section. “They’re going to throw all that out the window as soon as they can.”

  “You keeping the place afloat for months doesn’t move them in any way?” Ernie ventured.

  Lydia laughed. “Things change fast in the marijuana industry, Ernie. You should know that. No room for sentiment.”

  “Guess Alice got out just in time,” Percy said.

  “Meaner and Leaner. Those should be Herbert and Guido’s nicknames. Caldwell always had nicknames for people.”

  “So what’s your best bet, Lydia? They toss me out this month or next?” Petra smiled ruefully.

  “They won’t while I’m around. But when I’m gone . . . end of your contract most likely. It’s still the cheapest way for them. When is that?”

  “Another six months.”

  “Good. Keep collecting your salary and do what you like, Petra! Don’t leave until something better shows up,” Lydia said. “I know my dead husband’s old cronies. Malcolm and Cyrus will take their sweet time for a complete buyout. They’ll make Guido sweat and ensure they come out on top. I don’t care. If there’s anything left, it’s going straight to the Humane Society anyway. It’s the last thing they’re going to handle for me.” Lydia smiled again, only more broadly this time, showing her excellent teeth. “I think I enjoy being a thorn for all these people now.”

  At that moment Cassie popped her head through the lab door. “What’s the party? What’s happening?”

  “Oh we’re just gabbing about how a rat can best desert a ship it doesn’t like any more,” Lydia said. “How are you doing, Cassie?”

  “I’m okay. But this construction! Do you think this is the worst of it?” Cassie nodded in the direction of the loading dock. “There’s already dust getting into the nurseries. I think we need to convert one of the other grow rooms, just as a temporary measure, Percy.”

  “Right you are, and we need to write up some temporary cleaning measures too,” Percy said looking at Ernie.

  “I should let you all get back to your work,” Lydia said and winked at Petra. “Besides, I think Damian still wants to talk veterinary products this afternoon. For what it’s worth!”

  “Tell Damian thanks for the heads-up on that organic fungicide from Washington. It really worked.” Cassie smiled.

  Ernie stared open-mouthed at Cassie for a second. Someone started up a noisy machine again on the loading dock and Ernie looked around at the people in the lab. As Lydia waved a little goodbye and headed out the door, he pondered the changing dynamics of CannRose and was very glad that paid work was still only a small part of his life.

  #

  Ernie was squeezing water out of the mop, giving a brand-new side-press bucket its inaugural workout, when a woman came barreling around the corner into the production hallway at such a pace she nearly knocked Ernie and his bucket right over.

  “Didn’t anybody ever tell you to look around corners first?”

  “Ernie!” she cried. “How the hell are you?”

  Oh, not this. When did Jessica get back in town? “I thought you were in St. Louis.”

  “I was, but now I’m back.”

  “Visiting?”

  “No way. I’m here for good! How could I have ever left Hullbrooke? Hear you’ve been doing a great job on the Cranston terraces. I used to look after them, you know.”

  “I know. Gladys the toad sends her best.”

  “What a sweetie.”

  Ernie didn’t know if she was referring to him or Gladys. It didn’t matter. Her effusiveness was irritating regardless. He cleared his throat. “So what are you doing at CannRose? You have a job here I take it?”

  “I’m Guido’s new PA. What a gentleman!”

 
“I thought Jason was his assistant.”

  “Jason is his hound. Different beast.”

  “I’ll say.”

  “So we should get together. I hear you’re a regular at Chelsea’s.”

  “Yup. That’s me. A regular guy.”

  “I also hear you’ve been cooking up a storm. I’d really like to get some of those blackberry preserves if there’s any left. I missed the blackberries so much.”

  “Hmm.” It bugged Ernie that Jessica, back in Hullbrooke before he had any notion of it, seemed to know so much about him. That was the worst and best thing about small towns. If you ever forgot what you were doing, there were at least ten people on any given day to set you straight. “I think I gave the last jar to Mrs. Cranston.” That’s probably where Jessica got all her news.

  “So I’m renting the old Lansing house over by the side road. I heard that’s where Caldwell met his end. Had no idea when I rented the place. Not that it would have put me off or anything. I thought it would be good for the boys to get a taste of country living.”

  “No doubt. And what’s Matt think of country living?” Ernie asked. Jessica’s husband used to be an old video gamer and a buddy of Ernie’s.

  “Who gives a shit? I’m a single mom like every other woman I know.”

  More signs of the post-apocalypse, thought Ernie, though he had to admit even he’d found his old friend a jerk at times.

  Jessica was looking him up and down. He figured she was sizing him up for some future use. “You’re chunkier than you used to be,” she said. “More muscles.”

  “You’re chunkier too.” He smiled. Unwelcome personal comments could be a two-way street. “It’s the gardening. And the mop here.”

  “I’m a circuit slut myself. Gotta love the weights.” She made fists and flexed her arms, pumping them up and down like some boxer with an audience. “This place is really going to get up and running now.”

  “Is it?”

  “Yeah, I heard Caldwell was kind of loose-cannon ineffective. But pretty cool what he managed to build anyway. Guido has major plans though. A whole different approach. You know he owns several companies, and not just for marijuana.”

  “I just thought he was a shoe guy.”

  “Nope. Fingers in many pies. Owns a nutraceutical business, among other things.”

  “Well, you’re certainly in the know. Keep me posted.”

  “I will. We should go for drinks soon.” Jessica turned away, uttering the oh-so-trendy-at-the-facility “Ciao, baby,” and went into the production area.

  “Sure,” Ernie said as she left. He felt a cramp in his stomach. Had he ever actually had a thing for Jessica? Or was it just that one steamy grope in the back seat of Carl’s car when he was home for his first reading week? He couldn’t remember. Small town dilemmas. They could really bug a person.

  Recipe for Ernie’s Savory Gluten-Free Misdemeanor Crackers

  Ingredients

  1 cup boiled water

  ¼ cup chia seeds

  2 tbsp flax seeds

  1 garlic clove, crushed or minced (or powder)

  ½ cup oat flour

  ¼ cup almond flour

  2 tbsp sesame seeds

  2 tbsp chopped sunflower seeds

  ½ to 1 tsp salt, depending on taste

  A few sprigs of oregano (or approximately 1 tsp dried)

  A few sprigs of thyme (or approximately 1 tsp dried)

  (You can substitute or add your spices of choice — rosemary, sage, basil — whatever your palate fancies.)

  1 tsp to 2 tbsp* milled or coarsely ground dried bud (No decarboxylation needed, especially if you’re in a rush, because these crackers are special! Actually it’s just that they’re so thin and, as Sanjay would point out after he’d carefully reviewed the First Law of Thermodynamics with you, the heat transfer here is very efficient. You don’t use any oil either that might hang on to unpleasant flavors. But please note that Ernie recommends a pre-decarboxylation step before making all other edibles, particularly butter and oil infusions.)

  *Add more or less depending on potency of the weed and depending on how you plan to ingest the crackers. If you make them very potent then they might best be treated like communion wafers. Eat only one. Seriously if you overdo this and bring out the cheese and wine with a wafer batch and eat say four or five with your cheese, you are looking at a very unpleasant time of it. Your communion may be with the bathroom fixtures, provided you can recognize them!

  Method

  1. Preheat your oven to 315 °F.

  2. Boil water and add one cup to a small bowl. Add chia seeds, flax seeds and garlic and let sit for about a minute. Stir well, then stir again after a few more minutes. It will become quite gooey. Let sit.

  3. Meanwhile, mix oat and almond flour and the rest of the seeds in a medium mixing bowl. Feel free to experiment with different seeds — ones you don’t soak (e.g. pumpkin, black sesame, sunflower, poppy, hemp).

  4. If you’re using fresh herbs, chop them fine. Depending on the bud, if it’s not already milled, do that (a coffee grinder works well and a coarse grind is best). Add salt, herbs and weed to the dry ingredients. Mix thoroughly. Add the soaked seeds and mix again. It will be a sticky, sludge-like mass.

  5. Line the bottom of a cookie tray with parchment paper. Spread the cracker batter evenly over the whole area. It should be approximately one-eighth–inch thick. Score into appropriate cracker-sized pieces using a pizza wheel.

  6. Bake for 20 minutes. Take out the tray and flip the parchment paper so the cracker sheet is now face down on the tray. Carefully remove the parchment paper and separate the crackers from each other. Put the tray back in the oven for another 20 minutes or so. Keep checking — you can turn the crackers back over especially if they start to curl. They do shrink. You can also raise the temperature to 325 °F if you find they are not crisping up quickly enough. Keep monitoring — you don’t want to overdo them. But you do want them crispy and crunchy.

  Bon appétit! Don’t eat too many.

  Author Notes on Cannabidadas

  Is it even possible to be enthused about yet another discussion of Cannabidadas? Perhaps. These notes, along with the usual perfunctory descriptive summary, offer an alternative to the hastily conceived and, I’d posit, rather reckless consensus regarding the origins of the work.

  The four known original copies of Cannabidadas are listed as follows: 1) the Oregon Opus, typed and found stuffed above the driver’s-side sun visor of an abandoned Volkswagen van in Three Sisters Wilderness, Oregon; 2) the Port Authority Duplicate, identical to the Oregon Opus and found stashed above the ceiling tiles in the second-floor men’s washroom of the NYC bus terminal; 3) the LOC Copy, casual cursive, a partial manuscript found rolled up in a janitor’s closet on the first floor of the Library of Congress; and 4) the Paris Edition, chancery cursive, found in the Saint-Sulpice Church, Paris, France.

  All the originals are now in private collections. As has often been noted, it is unfortunate they remain unavailable for modern analysis techniques, especially dating. However, photos exist and we know from the purple color of the text that a spirit duplicator, similar to a mimeograph machine, was used in the printing. The two typed copies also indicate use of a manual typewriter, specifically an Underwood, circa 1940.

  All four copies were discovered in the early-to-mid 1960s and it has generally been assumed that the work was some curious creation of an amateur Beat poet. However, I believe the Paris Edition casts considerable doubt on this theory and the very existence of a Parisian manuscript suggests the work was penned at least forty years earlier.

  The Paris Edition was found tucked out of sight and gathering dust under a stairway, one of many among the ladders and catwalks within the organ of Saint-Sulpice. Surely this cannot be mere happenstance. At least two associations can be made that indicate the placement was purposeful, an act of art in and of itself, or rather an absurd un-statement by none other than a Dadaist in the throes of creative insurrectio
n.

  Firstly, the Dada Manifesto of 1920 by Francis Picabia not only references the cathedral but perhaps the very document within the cathedral’s organ. The manifesto states that “art is as easy to see as God (see Saint-Sulpice).” Consider the pipe organ, the king of instruments, often as visually remarkable as it is tonally sophisticated. The organ in Saint-Sulpice is a masterpiece of design and is regarded as the ultimate achievement of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Given the organ’s function and situation, it is presumably close to God. Additionally one could argue that Cannabidadas has at least a toe in the tradition of ecstatic poetry. It is of course possible that Picabia was referring to the actual saint, but his reference is followed by the line “Art is a pharmaceutical product for idiots.” Surely this is an oblique reference to cannabis and, by extension or association, Cannabidadas. The evidence could not be more persuasive from this author’s perspective.

  Secondly, the work is divided into eight “canntos.” The pun repeated ad absurdum provides the only structure and division to the continuous prose poem that is undoubtedly an effort of stream-of-consciousness writing. The style became fashionable in the early twentieth century and was both used and intentionally abused by the Dadaists. If this were not enough, the persistent anonymity of the work also suggests Dadaist roots in keeping with the nihilism of the movement, which included as its ultimate expression the annihilation of the artist. Add to this the eponymous title, Cannabidadas, containing dada as the probable suffix of the word, and I rest my case.

  One must inevitably ask, therefore, do the canntos themselves represent examples of Dadaism? Or was the work merely used by a Dadaist in the manner of, say, a found object? Clearly, the only answer can be, It all depends.

  One might also wonder, does the LOC Copy hint at an even earlier origin? The janitor’s closet housing the manuscript was located close to the library’s Asian collection after all. The collection contains rare and ancient texts as well as numerous translations including the Atharva Veda, which specifically references marijuana. Given the amount of text omitted in this copy though, as well as its sloppy cursive rendition, it seems just as likely that one of the janitors at the library was simply immersed in the culture of the day. They would perhaps have had access to one of the spirit duplicates and transcribed only what they “dug” about it.