Kind Nepenthe

by Brockmeyer, Matthew V.

  Calendula added his armload of wood to the pile beside the old top loader. Getting it started could be tricky, having to reach down into its soot-caked opening, so he liked to always keep some coals burning. He opened it up and poked a stick down into the ashes, stirring up a few glowing embers. He pushed a couple of twigs in, adjusted the damper, and watched as a tendril of fire crept up and curled around the kindling. Adding larger pieces as the flames danced and grew, his eye began to twitch again. He hadn’t had an eye twitch this bad since high school. Senior year. When he began to suspect that his supposed homey Brian Evans was fucking his girlfriend, Chelsea Beaumont.

  Ever since he’d gotten here he felt nervous and twitchy. But also utterly ecstatic, like he was on some kind of amphetamine. As he watched the fire catch and roar into life he once again nervously ran his thumb over the scales of the wart on his finger and thought about his situation.

  He had to convince Rebecca to stay for another run.

  He’d mastered this grow room and wasn’t going to let all his hard work and new-gained knowledge go to waste. Nine grand: that was what they were going to get for the last nine weeks, and what was that? Nothing. But Coyote had promised them half of the next grow if they stayed for another run. Half. You could get ninety pounds easy out of that room, easy, maybe even twice that if the crop came out perfect. Now that was some cake. If they could walk away from here with close to a hundred grand that could be their nest egg. All they’d need to make a start, put a down payment on a piece of land. He had to convince her.

  The hum of the grow room permeated the building, saturating the air, making the walls tremble. The grow room. It was always there: the buzzing of the lights, the churning of the fans, and very faintly, beneath it all, the hydroponic solution slurping through tubes, circulating like blood in a body. A click and a whoosh as a sensor triggered the air conditioners to life. It was truly a living, breathing thing. It was alive.

  Rebecca didn’t like it. Though she was quick to say how good the plants looked and what a good job Calendula was doing, she would rarely go in, and often complained about all the plastic and chemicals, about the way it sucked up such huge amounts of diesel and fertilizer. But to him, it was a thing of utter beauty: an exquisite, mad scientist’s laboratory, like something from a monster movie with tubes and wires running everywhere, flashing meters and sensors, one wall covered with panels of breakers and timers, labyrinthine heavy-duty electrical wires running from humming ballasts, CO2 tanks standing on the periphery.

  In the beginning Calendula had been overwhelmed by it all. The first time he entered the cavernous room, Coyote casually swinging the door open with that usual look of bored disdain in his hooded eyes, and Calendula had been stupefied. For one the room was so huge. It was hard to tell from the outside of the house that there was a room this big inside it; it seemed impossible. And the set up: a hundred high-pressure sodium, thousand-watt lights, air-cooled and connected with ducting, hanging on adjustable chains from the ceiling over a maze of three-gallon blue containers connected to two-inch white pipes. Each container held a one-gallon basket of orange lava rock with a two-foot-tall plant growing out of it. Twelve hundred plants in all. The plants’ canopies all touched, making a sheet of green which glowed preternaturally under the intense white light. The tubes connecting the containers snaked their way across the floor and up to eight two-hundred-gallon tubs of nutrient solution that lined the far wall, bubbling and gurgling, faucets, drains, aerators and heaters poking out, wires running down into the solution from wall mounted pH and ppm meters.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” Coyote had said, “but it’s not as complicated as it looks. It’s basically self-regulating. You just got to keep an eye on the pH and ppm meters, adjust the fertilizer mix week to week.”

  That was over two months ago and now Calendula knew that room, that laboratory, inside and out. Intimately. He was constantly checking the pH and ppm. He’d meticulously followed the fertilizer schedule, gradually increasing the phosphorous, lowering the nitrogen, adding aminos and catalysts. Then, as the buds swelled and the hairs darkened and shriveled, he’d finally flushed the whole system with flora clean, and for the last week had kept it running with nothing but water. Over half the hairs on the plants were dark now, the calyxes bulbous, coated in a thick blanket of glistening white crystals. He spent hours every day pruning back the lower branches, plucking large fan leaves that shaded parts of the plant, making sure every flowering branch received direct light.

  Even when he wasn’t in the grow room it permeated his consciousness, filling his brain, controlling his thoughts. Staring down into the open top loader, thumbing his wart, his left eye twitching, he grinned an idiot’s grin and giggled quietly as he wondered: Who serves who? Do I control the grow room, or does the grow room control me?

  8

  As Diesel and DJ came in the door, Amber began to frantically shout at them. “Shoes, boys, shoes!” She came from Tennessee and had a thick, Smoky Mountain drawl.

  She’d come out here for the Redwood Harley Run a couple years back, met Diesel in a bar in Garberville—the Branding Iron—and never left. She was a pretty woman with long dark hair, high cheek bones and kind, warm eyes. But the skin on her face was stretched too tight, giving her a gaunt, skeletal look, and her teeth were a brown and yellow mess, littered with black, empty gaps.

  She was wearing a black Harley shirt that had been custom cut into elaborate fringes, and sat cross-legged on a brand-new, white, L-shaped sectional sofa, smoking a cigarette and pointing a remote at the eighty-five-inch flat-screen television that dominated the far wall. Two glass display cases, which didn’t match, were crammed in the corners on either side of the television, jammed full of random knickknacks.

  Beside her sat Katie, a sweet-looking girl who appeared more fourteen than seventeen, gazing at an iPad perched on the mound of her pregnant belly.

  “Yeah, yeah, we know.” Diesel squatted down onto a stool by the door to unlace his heavy, black-leather logger boots. DJ slipped easily out of his basketball sneakers and gave Katie a curt nod when she turned and shyly smiled at him.

  “Look at y’all,” Amber said, “a filthy couple of grease monkeys.” She crushed her cigarette into a large, Christmas-themed ashtray with a smiling Santa Claus that sat on the end table nearest her, amongst a clutter of porcelain figurines. “Y’all are just gonna ruin this here sectional. Let me get a sheet for y’all to sit on.” She disappeared down the hall and returned a moment later with a sheet which she draped over the sofa, patting it and smiling. “There you go, boys.”

  Diesel grunted and limped past a stack of boxes given to him by customers looking for a good deal on meth: a George Foreman grill, a stereo receiver, walkie-talkies, Legos. His trusty AR-15 leaned against the pile, the black metal well-oiled and gleaming. He made it to the sofa and eased himself down onto the sheet. “How you like that iPad, Katie?”

  Katie looked up, her face a glow. “I love it, Diesel. Thank you so much.” She really was a pretty little girl, Diesel thought, giving her his best fatherly smile. She was going to make one damn-good-looking grandson for him, that’s for sure.

  “Katie, you’re family now. I want you to call me Pops like everyone else around here.”

  She blushed and looked down for a moment. “Okay, Pops.”

  Amber pulled her legs back up onto the sofa, curling herself around her knees, and flicked the remote again. “How’d it go with the transmission?” she asked absently.

  “Good,” DJ said. “Got her in there and she’s running great.”

  “Well that’s wonderful, honey. I just knew you boys would get ’er in there.” Her eyes never left the screen as she continued to flick the remote, finally stopping at QVC.

  “Damn straight,” Diesel said. “I am a certi
fied Diesel mechanic.”

  DJ sighed loudly and Amber patted Diesel’s thigh. “We know, honey. We know.”

  Stretching out a bony hand, Amber picked up her lighter—encased in a black-leather case—lit another Newport 100, and blowing a blue jet of smoke from her mouth, leaned conspiratorially over to Katie and whispered, “You see that little elf they got for sale there? Now, isn’t that the cutest thing? That darling little elf there?”

  “It really is,” Katie said.

  DJ rubbed at a spot of grease on his jeans. “I saw Coyote’s new workers yesterday down at the Last Chance Market. Bunch’a dread-locked super hippies.”

  Diesel said, “Yeah, I seen ‘em around, too.”.

  “They was filling up on diesel.”

  “I’m sure they were.”

  “Driving your old truck. The Ram with the custom tank.”

  “I said I seen ’em.”

  “Well aren’t you going to do something? That fucker owes us fifty grand.”

  “Owes me, boy. Me. Now mind your own business.”

  “Bullshit, Pops. I helped set up that grow room. I wired it. We put in that whole hydroponics unit.”

  “You’ll get what’s coming to you. Now quiet it up.”

  “That Coyote shouldn’t even be over there anyhow. That should be our land. Now this Coyote has got a parade of freaks coming through there. Blowing the whole mountain up, in front of God and everybody.”

  Diesel reached over and took his son’s thin shoulder in his big hand, giving a firm, steady and mildly threatening squeeze that he could feel DJ recoiling from.

  “I said, it’s none your business, boy. Listen, this is the best my life has ever been. I’m not going to risk going back to prison for something stupid. I don’t want any trouble. Now let it rest.”

  He relaxed his grip on DJ’s shoulder, and DJ violently shrugged the hand off, his face twisted into a look of utter contempt.

  “And I don’t want you getting yourself in any trouble either, son. Specially on my account.”

  “Yo, I’m only trying to look out for you, Pops. It ain’t right.”

  “Well, it is what it is.”

  “Shit, I’ve got my own forty acres. Land I bought with my own damn money.”

  “I know that, son. I know. And I’m proud of you, too. Damn proud.” Diesel’s brother, Steve, who lived down in Sacramento now, had sold DJ the last of his inherited land at a good price, to keep it in the family. Whenever Diesel got on DJ’s case about anything, the boy was quick to bring up how he had bought his own hunk of property. “But I can handle my own problems.”

  The two stared at each other in uncomfortable silence for a moment. Then DJ stood up, brushed something from his shiny basketball jersey, now stained in grease. “Come on, Katie, we gotta get going.”

  “Kay,” she said, pushing herself up from the sofa.

  Diesel looked at his boy’s face. Eyes narrowed, jaw clenched. He hadn’t meant to make him angry. He pushed himself awkwardly up and limped to the corner, carefully setting his rifle aside before he started rummaging through the mound of merchandise piled up there. “Now, Katie, I got a case for that iPad over here somewhere, one of them good Otter cases to keep that thing protected. Ahh, here it is.”

  He limped up to the doorway and offered her the cover. She took it in her small hands and looked up at him—a little-girl face with big, wet eyes.

  “Thank you, Pops. For everything, the truck, the iPad, everything.” She threw her thin arms around his hulk, pressing her cheek into his chest and pushing her swollen belly against him, squeezing.

  “Well you’re sure as shit welcome, sweetie.” He swallowed her up in his arms, gently patting her back. “You’re a wonderful addition to the family. You just take care of that little one you got in you. That’s my grandson in there.”

  “I will,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes.

  DJ pulled on his basketball shoes. “Come on, Katie,” he said, opening the door.

  As they walked out to the truck, the dog barking and snapping, Diesel stood in the doorway. Katie climbed into the passenger seat, and he called out, “I already got a whole mess of clothes and toys for the little critter when he gets here.”

  DJ hopped in the driver’s seat, turning the loud diesel engine over. Katie waved as the truck lurched forward, its tires kicking up a small shower of gravel.

  “Watch the fucking gravel!” Diesel shouted as the truck pulled up the driveway. He watched the pick-up move away up the driveway and into the hills.

  He had to admit, DJ was right. They had put in that whole indoor setup. Wired it. Gotten Coyote the generator at a good price and tuned it. Installed all the lights. Set up the hydroponic system. Even got the lazy, hippie fucking bastard the clones. And the fat, hood-eyed, weasely fucker still owed him fifty grand. And Diesel didn’t like people bringing outsiders here anymore than anyone else. Especially with a little girl. She couldn’t be older than five or six. That was no place for a child. That place was so hot if you spit it sizzled. Who knows how many bodies Spider had buried out there. He’d taken care of a lot of people before getting taken care of himself, gunned down right there in the back cabin.

  Diesel had been in prison when Spider was murdered. Apparently there was a big hub-bub and lots of commotion with the cops and their murder investigation. But nothing ever came of it. Nothing ever did out here. When he got out of the slammer that joker Coyote had somehow bought the place. Diesel never had a chance to get it back to his family. DJ was right, that land really should be theirs. It had been in the family for years. He had a deal with Spider, too, to get that hundred acres back. Spider had owed him. Diesel was probably the only one who hadn’t wanted that dirt-bag dead.

  Back in the day, Diesel’s family had owned all the land out here. His cousin Bobby was the only one left with a big chunk: a five-thousand-acre cattle ranch. But Bobby was getting old and Diesel had no doubt that when he died his kids would subdivide it up and sell it for maximum value. They had no interest in ranching.

  His grandfather had been the one who leased the land to Pacific Lumber, then grazed sheep in the meadows. They called them meadows back then, not clear cuts. His grandfather had brought the first hippies out here. Sold them the land for their commune. That crazy old hippie commune. Grandpappy thought they were neat-o. No one wanted that land anyway, a steep and rocky hundred acres: no good for sheep or cattle, and he sold it for twice the price that it should have been: fifty bucks an acre instead of twenty-five. Crazy how cheap land went in the old days. But it wasn’t that bad a piece. It had that old cookhouse—which was a big, solid structure—those back cabins, and good water with the river there.

  He could remember being a little boy and seeing his grandpappy at the Last Chance Market, in overalls and a Caterpillar baseball hat, holding court with all the locals, defending his decision to sell the hippies land.

  “They’re nice kids. Let ’em have it, see what they do. If they can make something out of it, good for them. Genepool’s too fucking small out here anyway.”

  Diesel had known the little boy that drowned over there—Tommy. They were the same age and had played together. He couldn’t really remember him, couldn’t even put a face with the name, just remembered being told: You used to play with him. Before he drowned.

  Now all Diesel had left was this two-hundred-acre piece which used to be his dad’s, right fucking next to the old hippie commune. It was crazy the way this place was subdivided up. When he was a kid you could just walk and walk for miles and miles. Nothing but hills and cattle. Find hidden creeks, patches of spooky woods. Now it seemed every forty-acre piece had somebody on it, growing herb, and no one wanted anybody w
alking around anywhere anymore.

  DJ’s truck disappeared into the hills and the last bit of dust faded up into the gathering storm clouds. Diesel was unsure just how he should go about laying down the law with the boy, especially now that he was full grown. He had never been there to discipline him when he was a child, had never been much of a father to him at all. He grappled with how to make things crystal clear now, how far to take it. He had to tell him not to meddle in his business, had to let him know who was boss, but he had to control his anger, too, that rage that he always felt brewing within him, that rage he was always struggling with, that rage that always drove him wild and got him in so much fucking trouble.

  And there was that other thing. That thing that sometimes woke him up at night, making his heart pound, knowing he wouldn’t get back to sleep: DJ had once watched Diesel beat his mother to the ground. DJ couldn’t have been older than six or seven at the time.

  Diesel and DJ’s mother—Ella—were arguing. He couldn’t remember why. He couldn’t remember much of it at all. He was blacked-out drunk, of course. Woke up in jail. But later he had seen the bandaged face, purple, blue and yellow bruises, arm in a sling. Seen it when she got her stuff and finally left him for good, taking DJ and moving to Eureka, getting an apartment and a job at the new Target store out where the Montgomery Wards used to be.

  Though his recall of that night was mostly blurred at best, one thing stuck stubbornly in his mind: DJ, up and out of bed, in his pajamas, staring at him. Not crying, or screaming, just standing there, staring. Ella on the floor, whimpering. Sometimes he awoke at night and that was the image in his head, little DJ, just staring at him.

  He sighed. Ran a hand down his face, through his tangled beard, and went back into his palace.

  9