Betty's (Little Basement) Garden

by Laurel Dewey

  ~~~

  After Jeff left for the store, Betty called Dr. Dave. He picked up after the second ring and expressed how much he liked the sample gourmet chocolate Peyton had given him. They arranged to meet near a lake located thirty miles west of town. “Wear something casual,” he said to Betty, after telling her he’d like another ten of her chocolates. “It’s still a little muddy around the water’s edge.”

  Betty didn’t ask Dr. Dave why he insisted on meeting at a lake and not his home or office. Searching for something casual to don, she settled on a pair of soft green linen trousers and a cream-colored summer sweater top with three-quarter sleeves. It was as casual as Betty got. In truth, the trousers were more akin to casual-with-a-chance-of-brunch-at-the-club. But she hoped they would work for their muddy lake meeting.

  Dr. Dave’s directions were perfect. Once Betty hit the rural dirt road, she traveled along the lonely ribbon of dust and rocks, keeping a keen eye out for the road markers he gave her. Arriving at the final one, she pulled her car off to the side and saw the silver Toyota Highlander he had described, parked under the shade of a large Aspen grove. She removed the cooler that held the candies and traipsed through the new grass, until she came to a short hill that descended and opened up into a pristine, glass-topped mountain lake. The only sounds were the birds chirping and the water lapping softly around the edges of the muddy bank.

  “Hello?” Betty called out, her voice echoing into the bluebird sky.

  “Hi!” Dr. Dave called back.

  Betty shaded her eyes against the arcing sun and spied the good doctor around the bend, fly-fishing about one hundred feet out into the lake.

  He removed a fat cigar from his mouth. “I put some chest waders under that aspen tree on your left!” he called out to Betty.

  Betty regarded him with a confused gaze. “You want me to come out there?”

  “Yeah!”

  This was certainly different. She set the cooler down under the breezy shade of the aspen trees and struggled into the waders that covered her body from chest to toe. She reasoned that the good doctor was still a bit paranoid from his time in Vietnam and needed a seriously discreet location in which to discuss his medical cannabis usage. Once dressed in the unforgiving rubber suit, Betty walked out into the water, ignoring the occasional sucking sound her feet made when she hit a pocket of air and mud. The closer she got, the better she could observe the doctor. His skin was rough and hardened by the sun; his short wavy grey hair was neatly combed and secured under a green baseball cap with the insignia of a medical institution embroidered on the front. He looked to be about her height with a square, stocky build. One thing was for sure – he was focused intently, almost in a meditative manner, on casting his line back and forth.

  She finally arrived by his side. The smell of cigar smoke clung closely, like an earthy perfume. Betty extended her hand. “I’m Betty Craven.”

  He kept the cigar perched between his lips and shook her hand. “Doctor Dave. Nice to meet you.” He sized her up. “You’re not what I was expecting.” He cast his line.

  “What were you expecting?”

  “Maybe more of a Bohemian.”

  “You ate one of my chocolates, and you seriously thought a Bohemian was capable of creating that?”

  He laughed. “You got me on that one.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, why are we meeting out here? Are you that concerned about people finding out?”

  “I don’t give a shit what people think.” He cast his line into the water. “This is my office. This is my refuge. This is my sanity. This and Mary Jane.”

  Betty took a gander around the pristine locale. “I can see your attraction to it. Peyton mentioned you were a surgeon in Vietnam? My late husband was career military.”

  “I’m sorry,” he said casually.

  “Yes. Thank you.” She wanted to fill the empty space. “He had a lot of…issues.”

  “Yep.”

  Doctor Dave was a man of few words, she reckoned. “If he knew I was growing the plants, he’d have one helluva fit.”

  “Well, good thing he’s dead I guess.” He cast the line, this time further.

  It was obvious to Betty that Dave wasn’t wrapped up in posturing himself in platitudes or polite chitchat. “Do you still practice as a surgeon?”

  “Here and there,” he puffed on his cigar. “I mostly do a lot of consulting.”

  “Do others in your profession know you partake of the herb?”

  “You mean, do they know I smoke doobie? Yeah, they know. And if they ever give me shit for it, I remind the bastards that most of them haven’t met a pain pill or sleeping pill that they don’t love. And if they keep arguing the point with me, I tell them to pull their heads out of their asses and do some research.”

  No, Doctor Dave didn’t give a damn about what anyone thought of him. Suddenly, the formerly taciturn physician became quite talkative. He spoke about how too many of the popular pain medications create detachment, whereas cannabis encourages introspection. “I realize now,” he offered, “how scared people are of introspection. Of focusing and delving into what’s in front of you and seeing it from a new perspective.” He whipped the fly line behind him and cast it forward. “Drugs and alcohol let you tune out. Pot makes you tune in. But you have to be open to hearing the message.” He puffed on his cigar. “Maybe that’s why the Feds keep it illegal. You ever think of that?”

  Betty shook her head. “Not really.”

  “Well, you see, this is the kind if shit one ponders when one tokes.” He said it with a smile, but it was laced with sincerity. “I don’t think the powers-that-be want a pensive populace. All those people questioning their lives, and why they do what they do. The usefulness or uselessness of it? I’m not saying progress is the enemy. I’m not saying work and diligence are worthless. It’s a question of whether the things you have been programmed to do, believe, become and repeat are useful to you. We’re all just puppets in this insane play, unless we choose to cut the strings and actually think for ourselves. That’s what pot does for me. It saved my life. That’s not an exaggeration, Betty. It saved my fucking life.” He turned around, seeking out a new section of the lake to cast his line. “Forty years ago, I had a noose tied so tightly around my neck, and then one day, I realized I was the one who put it there. I could hang myself or I could remove the noose and use that same rope to pull myself back into some scrap of sanity.” He let the line lay on the water a little longer. “You can’t simultaneously control people, while offering them guaranteed freedom as their birthright. You can pass all the laws you want, but in the end, people will find a way to do whatever it takes to get from here to there in their minds. Even a man in a solitary cell, with nothing but the four cement walls around him, can imagine himself out of that hell hole, running free in the open air and warm sunshine. He can shift his consciousness to another place by repetitively humming a single sound, holding his breath, spinning in circles. And nothing anyone does, short of killing him, will stop him if that’s what he chooses to do.”

  Betty thought about it. “There will always be those who need to toe the line.”

  “Of course. Those same ones believe the lie when they’re told they have no power. They trust that someone else knows more about their needs than they do. They think their noose is a trendy necktie.”

  Betty shifted in the muddy lake bottom. She found herself wanting to argue with the good doctor, and she didn’t know why. Part of her wanted to play the devil’s advocate, but she stopped short when she glanced over at the cooler holding her cannabis chocolates. Any argument she came up with would be as solid as the mucky soil beneath her feet.

  “I’ll let you in on a secret, Betty. Everyone thinks memories are so important. I disagree. There’s grace that comes with forgetting some things. I’m not talking about dementia. I’m talking about the ability to not hold the past so close to you that it suffocates the present moment. There’s a knack to forgetting one’s p
ain. Mary Jane makes that goal more attainable.”

  Betty couldn’t connect to Doctor Dave’s idea. “I would never want to forget my past or the people in it.”

  “What about the pain?” He released the fly line again. “What if those unbearable memories prevent you from moving forward and finding pleasure? Would you change your mind then? I watched kids as young as eighteen take their last breath on a dirty, gut-soaked stretcher in the middle of a chaotic firefight. I saw guys with their legs and arms blown off. All they had left was a torso and head, and right before they died, they’d tell me to let their mother know they loved her.” He puffed on his cigar. “There were thousands of those kids, and I was able to save ten, maybe twenty percent. I was expected to suck it up and keep doing the same thing every day, even though I knew the next day would be worse. All those dead bodies kept stacking up in my head until finally, their voices haunted me. I couldn’t tune them out. What good did that do me? Tell me.”

  Betty felt a chill down her spine. “I can’t answer that,” she said somberly.

  “I never got shot, but I was as much a casualty as the guys who did.” His cigar needed a tune up. He patiently re-lit it in contemplative silence. “There’s a quote from Albert Schweitzer that I have framed on my desk. ‘Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory.’ With the help of Mary Jane, I found that contentment through the slow murkiness that dissolved all those young faces from my mind. Memory can cripple us, Betty. The art of forgetting becomes one’s savior. Forgetting allows a respite from pain and regret – two chains that occupy every second and weigh you down. Forgetting is a gift one should never refuse, if within that is the promise that all the mind clutter will stop controlling and owning you.”

  They talked for another hour, moving only a few yards in the water the entire time. Finally, the beating sun forced Betty to depart. Doctor Dave instructed her to put the chocolates and caregiver paperwork in a large cooler he had in the backseat of his SUV. There was a one hundred dollar bill waiting for her in a white envelope in the cooler. When Betty asked him what strain he would like her to grow for him, he gave a slightly self-conscious smile. “AK-47,” Dave stated.

  ~~~

  When Betty got closer to town, she called around to various dispensaries until she found one that had three AK-47 clones for sale. All of them were over one month old and beginning to develop into beautiful girls. After securing them discreetly on the floor of the backseat, she reasoned she would soon need another ounce or two of sweet leaf shake in order to keep up with her patients’ requests. She quickly took a detour home, dropped off her three new girls under the veg lights in the basement and grabbed ten cannabis chocolates. Boxing them up and setting them in her cooler, she was back on the road in fewer than ten minutes.

  Rolling into the parking lot of Louie’s Lube ‘n’ Tube, Betty parked in the shade, removed the box of chocolates and walked through the side steel door with the gold wheel decal. The place was purring with activity. She glanced around until she saw Louie standing under a hoisted truck.

  “Louie?” she said.

  He turned, and when he saw Betty, his face froze. “Hey.” Skittishly, he looked around. “You’re not supposed to be in here. Insurance rules.”

  The greeting was certainly nothing like their first visit. “Of course. I understand. Could I have a word with you please? Outside?”

  Louie instructed a mechanic to check the air filter on the truck and then walked outside with Betty.

  “I’m sorry to bother you during business hours,” Betty stated before handing him the chocolates, “but I wanted to thank you for your generosity and give you a little taste of my efforts.”

  He took the box but seemed a bit distant. “Okay. Thank you.”

  “I also need to engage in another transaction with you. I’d like two more ounces of the sweet leaf shake please.”

  Louie looked lost. “I don’t have any.”

  “When will you have some?”

  He casually tilted his head toward the far end of the automotive yard and she followed him. “I got out of the grow business. I sold all my plants to a buddy and did the same thing with the bud and shake I had sittin’ around.”

  Betty wasn’t sure she was hearing this correctly. “I just saw you last week. What in the hell happened between then and now?”

  “Well…to be honest…” He hesitated for a second. “You happened.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. You.” He scratched his head, trying to come up with the right words. “You got me thinking. You asked how I handled it, havin’ kids in the house and all. I had a long talk with my wife and we both agreed it was time to fold it up.”

  Betty stood there in stunned disbelief. “Well, I’m so glad I could be of service to you. Now, where in the hell am I going to purchase more shake?”

  “I have no idea. Maybe the street?”

  Her jaw dropped. “On the street? Excuse me, but do I look like someone who purchases cannabis on the street? I need to know how it’s grown, what the strain is, whether it’s covered with mold or pesticides. Do you actually think that some poorly educated, street corner, drug-addled lackey can acquire that information for me? I think not!”

  “Uh, you know, technically, I am ‘the street.’”

  “Present company excepted,” she quickly said.

  “Ma’am, I hear you. But I can’t help you. What about Peyton?”

  She was still fuming as she tilted her imposing stature closer to Louie. “He won’t be harvesting his current crop until July. I can’t wait until then! I have patients depending on me to deliver quality cannabis chocolates in a timely manner! What do you think I’m running here? Some fly-by-night operation?” Betty realized she’d temporarily lost both her manners and her mind. She pulled away from Louie and took a moment to calm down. “I’m sorry. That was unacceptable.”

  “It’s okay, ma’am. Just my two cents, but maybe you should lay off the Sativas and move more toward the calming Indicas.”

  The whole way home, Betty berated herself for wasting one of the ounces of shake she originally purchased from Louie, in the coconut oil infusion. Sure, she could use that one for making salves, but if she’d used the entire amount of shake in the cocoa butter, she’d have an extra forty-eight dosed candies to hand out. Unfortunately, she knew she couldn’t substitute the coconut oil cannabis in her chocolates because of the odd soapy taste it imparted. At this rate, she only had seventeen cannabis chocolates left. Her balloon of enthusiasm quickly burst.

  Betty made a point of stopping by the nursery to pick up two raspberry and two blueberry bushes. She had no interest in them, but she figured it was important to cover her bases and at least have them, just in case Crystal wanted to see how “brave” she really was.

  She spent the rest of the day in her front yard garden, tending to the mass of weeds and pruning what she’d ignored for over a week. As the sun grew hotter and the solar fountain continued to spew arcs of water into the flowerbeds, Betty contemplated every possible way of obtaining more shake. But nothing she came up with allowed for the degree of discretion she needed. Jeff called mid-day to check in, which cheered her up. However, he wouldn’t be over that night, since Peyton and she would be heading down to sulfur the basement. When he said goodbye and she hung up, a striking loneliness took hold. Betty tried to push it away, but it was clear she truly felt something for him. Throwing all the unconventional drivel to the side, he was quickly turning into a good habit.

  She wrapped up dinner early that evening, put the dishes away and checked the girls several times before turning on the chirping birds CD for them to enjoy. After installing the remote thermometer in the veg room, she wandered back into the living room, figuring she’d kill time and read an old High Times while waiting for Peyton’s eight-thirty arrival. But even a scintillating Q&A interview, with a former cop who was fighting for cannabis reform, didn’t help her forget she would soon have nothing to offer her patients. Putting
down the magazine, she dozed lightly. But she was strangely aware she was falling asleep and conscious of the sounds in the room. Her body relaxed, but she still felt the soft couch under her body. Suddenly, she felt a wooden surface against her back. She opened her eyes and found herself in the attic. A dim lamp was the only source of light in the darkened room. There was slow movement in the corner of the room, and she watched without fear as Frankie emerged from the shadows. He looked somewhat different this time. He was still thin, but his face didn’t harbor the usual scars of drug abuse as it always did whenever she had seen him before in these altered states. He looked down at her and smiled. Then, for some odd reason, he walked to the narrow part of the room, where the ceiling slanted, and placed his palm against the wall. Without taking his eyes off Betty, he tapped his fingers repeatedly on the wood. She heard his voice whisper in her head, “Pay attention.” There was more and in that moment, she understood him, but when she awoke, the information evaporated.

  Betty turned to the clock and realized that half an hour had passed, even though she felt as if it had only been a minute. The air prickled around her, as if Frankie’s essence was still close by and waiting. Getting up, she turned around in a full circle, expecting to see her son without the fog of sleep, alcohol or cannabis encouraging it. “Frankie?”

  Silence.

  And then her feet, as Emily Dickinson wrote, “mechanical” went round and upstairs to the attic door. She opened the door, turned on the light and made her way up the narrow steps. After switching on another lamp, she stared at the spot where Frankie’s hand rested in her strange vision. Moving carefully to the slanted ceiling, she told herself this was ridiculous, and yet she peered closer. Betty brought the lamp toward her and illuminated the rough wood. She was just about to turn around when she noticed a gap where two panels of wood had been joined together. Finding a lone ballpoint pen lying nearby, she jabbed it into the thin slit and was easily able to pry one panel away from the wall. She removed the second panel and found a cavernous hole, rife with cobwebs and cakes of dust. Taking the shade off the lamp, she poked the lightbulb into the cavity and saw a reflection. Betty reached in and felt a firmly wrapped, brick-shaped object. She withdrew it and sat on Frankie’s bed. The object was covered in two inches of thick plastic. It took her ten minutes to slice through and remove the plastic, and when she did, she found a latched, metal box. Unhooking the latch, she stared in stunned disbelief.