Kind Nepenthe

by Brockmeyer, Matthew V.

  She let out a deep sigh and tried to imagine the little farm they’d soon be able to buy. A cozy cabin tucked deep into the woods, with a big kitchen garden right outside the door. She pictured her and Megan canning together, making preserves and fruit leather. Starting trays of seeds: heirloom tomatoes, squashes, cucumbers for pickling. She just had to focus on the dream. Focus on the dream.

  3

  Rebecca never expected to become friends with Sunbeam. Didn’t want to become friends her. Nevertheless, in the days that followed, that’s what happened.

  The first-time Sunbeam had tried to ingratiate herself, sidling up next to Rebecca as she scrubbed burnt beans from the bottom of a pot, asking her if she needed help, Rebecca had rebuffed her.

  “No. Thanks. I’ve got it.”

  “You know, I just love your daughter.” Sunbeam leaned against the counter languidly. “She seems like such a sweetie.”

  Rebecca rinsed the pot and put it on the dishrack. Sunbeam handed her Megan’s plate.

  “So, you’re a vegetarian?”

  “Yup.”

  “Me, too. Have been all my life. My mom was some kind of super-hippie. Sunbeam’s my real name. Right there on my birth certificate. She did it all. Communes, Buddhism. Was even a Hare Krishna for a hot second.”

  Rebecca glanced at Sunbeam. She was wearing one of Coyote’s thick flannel shirts. It was much too big for her, hanging off her shoulders. She looked like a little girl dressing up in her father’s work clothes.

  “Huh,” Rebecca said. “That’s pretty interesting.” She looked into the sink, decided the rest of the dishes could wait, and poured some wine into a mason jar. “What’s your mom do now?”

  Sunbeam let out a choked laugh. “She works at a gas station. Swear to God. But she’s happy. And I wouldn’t trade the way she raised me for anything.”

  Rebecca offered her a glass of wine and she took it. That’s how it began.

  The next day Sunbeam insisted on cooking for them. She made a vegan lasagna, using nutritional yeast as cheese, kale and chard from the garden, and mushrooms Rebecca and Megan had harvested from the woods. It was delicious. After dinner, the four of them sat around the table—Calendula, Megan, Rebecca and Sunbeam—and talked.

  “Where’d you guys meet?” Sunbeam asked.

  “At the co-op in Ocean Beach,” Calendula said, rolling a joint.

  “San Diego?”

  “Yup.”

  “I know that place.”

  Calendula lit the joint, puffed on it and passed it to Rebecca. Megan doodled on a piece of torn paper. “Look Sunbeam,” Megan said, holding up the drawing. “Sunflowers!”

  “They’re beautiful!”

  Rebecca took a hit and passed it to Sunbeam, who took the joint with a gleaming smile, her eyes glittering. Rebecca saw that Sunbeam hadn’t been flirting with Calendula at all. It was just her nature. She was extremely friendly and didn’t even seem aware of the sexual vibe she threw off. She was a sweet girl, and Rebecca smiled back at her as she passed her the joint. She liked her. She couldn’t help it.

  But what really made Rebecca warm up to Sunbeam was Megan. The two just hit it off. Megan would pull her by the hand into the garden—“Come on, come on, Sunbeam, see how tall the favas have gotten!”—and the two would romp around. Sunbeam would pin two huge chard leaves—their stems and veins a fluorescent red—to Megan’s back and tell her they were fairy wings, and they would hold hands and spin in circles, pretending to fly off to some enchanted land.

  Leaning against the doorway to the porch, Rebecca would watch them run around the garden and the yard. Fairy princesses on an adventure. Seeing them play warmed some inner part of her. It felt so good to see Megan playing again. Happy and grinning, her tiny white teeth gleaming. She’d grown so odd and morose since they’d moved to the compound, and Sunbeam brought out the child in her again.

  And Rebecca realized she’d needed a friend as well. They’d make runs to the Last Chance Market together. When the weird local rednecks would try to flirt and stalk Sunbeam, she’d laugh right in there faces. “Back off, mister. Didn’t your mother teach you any manners?” They’d pick out wines and go through the shitty produce, plan that night’s vegetarian feast.

  In the evening, after Megan was tucked into bed and Calendula was off in the grow room, they’d sit on the porch and smoke and drink. Talking.

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Rebecca told her.

  Sunbeam laughed. “I bet. I can’t imagine being stuck with those freaks.” She gestured with her head into the kitchen, where Tatum, Boris and Theo sat around the table trimming. “Do you think they’re, like, together?”

  “Together?”

  “Yeah. Like are they fucking in that van at night?”

  “I don’t think so. Boris and Theo are brothers.”

  “I can’t see that stopping them weirdos.”

  Rebecca laughed, choking on wine.

  The ensuing silence, not unpleasant, lingered. Finally, though, Rebecca asked, “So, what’s your plan?”

  “Hawaii.”

  “Hawaii?”

  “Yeah. Ivy and I are moving to Hawaii. Fuck Humboldt. So over the rain and cold. We’re out of here. What about you?”

  “We want to get a little homestead. Just a piece of land where we can grow our own food. Someplace I can get my herbal business going.”

  “The hippie dream.”

  Rebecca chuckled. “Yeah. But, I don’t know. It’s only a couple of months till the next harvest, but sometimes I wonder if I’m going to make it. This place, it’s just freaking me out.”

  “You’ll make it. Don’t worry. And it will all be worth it.”

  “Jesus, how I needed to hear that. Thank you.”

  Sunbeam grinned and lit a cigarette. “Of course.”

  —

  Night. Megan was sleeping. Calendula was off somewhere with Coyote, and Rebecca was sitting at the kitchen table with Sunbeam, Tatum, Theo and Boris, making a half-hearted attempt at trimming. It was difficult, because she was halfway to sloshed and starting to see double, the scissors either missing their target altogether or gouging huge chunks out of the buds. She squinted at a thumb-sized hole she had taken out of a large cola and sighed, put down the nugget, and took another sip of wine.

  Out of the blue, Tatum asked, “Ever see any ghosts around here?”

  Rebecca pushed her glasses up her nose. “Please. I’ve had enough of that nonsense to last me a lifetime.”

  Tatum looked up from her tray, the dim light catching the hard angles of her face and casting the hollows of her cheeks and eyes into shadow. The strange markings tattooed across her cheeks seemed to shift and dance as her eyes turned to slits. “Don’t tell me you don’t know the history of this place.”

  “Okay, what history?”

  “This place has always been fucked. From the start.” Tatum put a manicured bud in her bag and reached for another stalk from the pile of weed on the table. “Back in the day, before white men came and chopped them all down, this whole valley was an ancient redwood forest. The Indians, the Weott and Hoopa and Yurok, wouldn’t live in ’em. Said they were full of evil spirits and only the mad and insane would live in such a place.”

  “Are you saying redwoods are evil?”

  “I’m just telling you like it is. Ever notice there’s barely any animals in the redwoods? No birds. No deer. Only thing you see there is banana slugs. Some say it’s the tannins in the duff. Redwoods release shit-tons of tannins to ward off insects and other plants. Even after the white man came, they didn’t live in the redwoods. Only outlaws and tramps made camp
in ’em.”

  Rebecca thought about the lack of any animals around here. No mice, no squirrels or chipmunks. Only ravens. And so many of them dead and lying scattered in the woods.

  “I think the redwoods are sacred and beautiful,” Sunshine said. Boris and Theo cast a quick glance at each other and giggled. Sunshine shot a look at Rebecca, and motioned towards the other three, mouthing the words: What the fuck?

  “So, that’s it?” Rebecca said. “Evil spirits from the redwoods?”

  “Naw, that ain’t it. They say these woods are lonely and looking for souls to keep.”

  “Give me a break.” Rebecca took a branch and began stripping off the sticky, lime green buds, her fingers black and caked in resin.

  Tatum said, “That’s why them hippies abandoned the commune. Things kept going wrong. Weird accidents. Then that little boy drowned. They were all high out of their minds on acid. Left the next day.”

  Rebecca tossed the bare branch onto a pile on the floor. “Is that story even true?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s true. My Uncle lives in Zenia and used to work for Spider.”

  At the mention of that name Rebecca nearly dropped her scissors.

  The room was quiet except for the clacking of metal against metal. Tatum looked around, her mouth a cruel smirk. “You do know about Spider, right?”

  “The guy who lived here before Coyote?”

  “That’s right. He’s the one got this place named Homicide Hill. They say he buried over a dozen bodies back there before a posse of locals took him down.”

  “More bullshit,” Sunbeam said, working the tips of her scissor into a nug.

  “Naw. That’s true as true can be. Look it up. Google it on your little phone.”

  Sunbeam gave Rebecca a look again. Rebecca could see that Sunbeam was getting seriously pissed.

  Tatum rapidly clipped the large fan leaves off a stalk, talking all the while. “Craziest thing, I once went back to Coyote’s shack, and heard him talking to him.”

  Sunbeam slammed down her scissors. “Are you really going to sit here and tell me you heard Coyote talking to a dead guy?”

  “That’s the question, I guess.”

  Sunbeam let out an exasperated sigh. “Why don’t you just quit it with the bullshit. You don’t scare me.”

  “I’m not trying to scare you.”

  “Yeah? Then why were you following me around in the woods?”

  “Following you in the woods? You’re delusional, girl. I never followed you nowhere.”

  “And you weren’t throwing rocks at the outhouse this afternoon? While I was trying to take a shit? Whispering all kinds of bullshit about the river?”

  “Bitch, I don’t know what the fuck you are talking about.”

  “The fuck you don’t.”

  “Are you calling me a liar?”

  “What if I am?”

  Tatum leapt to her feet, her tray somersaulting off her lap, spraying a shower of clipped leaves into the air. Crouched, brandishing her scissors: “Go ahead and call me a fucking liar. I dare you.”

  Rebecca was up before she knew what she was doing, holding her hands out placatingly. “Tatum? Chill!”

  Boris and Theo were up, too. Whispering to Tatum, getting her to sit back down again.

  Rebecca turned back to Sunbeam, who just stared open-mouthed across the table. “You’re fucking crazy.”

  “Maybe so,” Tatum said. “But I ain’t no liar.”

  Rebecca closed her eyes and took a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s call it a night. We’ve all been working nonstop.”

  “Ya, ya,” Boris was saying, tying off his bag of finished buds. “We just need some sleep.”

  Theo put his hand on Tatum’s shoulder. She violently shrugged it off. “Yeah,” she said. “It’s getting late. Let’s go crash.”

  Tatum turned and strutted out the door, Theo right behind her, while Boris gathered up their trays and stacked them neatly atop each other. He turned his attention to Rebecca and Sunbeam.

  “Sorry about that, guys. Tatum’s got a quick fuse, but she doesn’t mean anything by it. She’s had a tough life.” He nodded, his eyebrows lifted placatingly beneath his floppy felt hat, then focused on Sunbeam. “And she wasn’t fucking with you. Following you or anything. Trust me. I’ve been with her all day.”

  “Whatever,” Sunbeam said.

  Rebecca nodded appreciatively. “Thanks, Boris.”

  He gave her a grin and touched his fingers to the edge of his hat, like he was a cowboy in some western movie, and was out the door.

  Sunbeam got up and brushed the trim off herself. “Fuck them.”

  “Wine?” Rebecca asked, pouring a slug into a mason jar.

  “Sure.” Sunbeam took the jar and gulped it down, then handed the empty jar back, started off down the hall.

  Rebecca followed her into the living room, watching her as she gathered up a pile of blankets she had folded up in the corner, then sat down heavily on the sofa, pulling a fraying quilt up around her neck.

  “That was fucking nuts.”

  “Yeah,” Rebecca said, sitting down beside her.

  Sunbeam dipped her head down and began massaging her temples with the tips of her fingers. “And I’ve been having fucked-up dreams. Nightmares.”

  A chill went through Rebecca. So had she. And Calendula. Remembering how Megan had told her she had dreamed about Spider.

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t remember. But I’ll wake up in the middle of the night. It’s like I’m trying to scream, but I can’t get it out. And then I’m awake. All amped up. And I’ll just lie there. Listening to the generator. Imagining all kinds of weird shit. Does that generator ever sound like laughter to you?”

  “No. But I’ve had nightmares, too.”

  Sunbeam lay back on the sofa, her head on the armrest. “I’ll tell you one thing. I’m not going to be scared off by that bitch’s stupid stories. Fuck her. I’m not going anywhere.” She turned on her side, pulled her blankets up under her chin and shut her eyes. “I’m so tired. All I can see is weed.”

  Rebecca let out a weary laugh. “Yeah. I know the feeling.”

  “Will you lie down next to me for a minute? I just need a friend to hold me.”

  “Yeah,” Rebecca said. “Okay. Sure.”

  She lay down on the sofa and squeezed in next to Sunbeam. She had a musky, slightly dirty smell, but beneath that was a fruity, sweet scent, that reminded Rebecca of the lip-gloss she’d worn as a teenager.

  Sunbeam turned herself around so she was facing Rebecca. Wrapped her arms around her, stroking her dreadlocks. Then she was kissing her, gently placing her lips against hers and running her tongue softly over them.

  Rebecca pulled back. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing. I just figured we’d have some girl time. Don’t you like it?”

  A part of her did like it. She’d never done anything like this before. But then she thought of Calendula or Coyote walking in on them. Megan. “I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s all right.”

  Rebecca stood up. “I really like you. I do. I just…I can’t.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Sunbeam said. “I really shouldn’t have. Ivy would be pissed if she ever found out. I just felt lonely. Friends?”

  —

  Rebecca leaned against the doorway of the grow room, watching Calendula work, squinting against the bright light and humidity. She took a sip of her wine, though her head was already spinning. Kissing Sun
beam, just for that one moment, had electrified her body, more than she’d even admit. She was actually trembling.

  “You know, I saw you staring at her tits when she first got here,” she said, the words slurring, barely decipherable.

  “What?” Calendula asked, distracted, carefully pouring blue liquid into a beaker.

  “Sunbeam. I saw you ogling her tits.”

  Calendula sighed and put down the gallon of micro-nutrients. “Rebecca, what the hell are you talking about?”

  “You were flirting with her. It’s okay.”

  “Christ, you’re fucking losing your mind. You know that?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Dude, I was not flirting with her. I was just talking to her. She’s into permaculture.”

  “That’s not all she’s into.”

  “What are you going on about?”

  “Me.”

  “What? What about you?”

  “She’s into me.”

  “Why am I not getting what you are talking about?”

  “Girls, Calendula. She likes girls. I just wanted you to know that you’re not her type. She’s into girls. She’s into me.”

  “How do you know this?”

  “She kissed me.”

  “Really?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, that’s interesting.” Calendula walked up to her. She eyed him drunkenly with half-closed lids. The room spun slightly and she tried to focus on him.

  “Did you like it?”

  “Not really.”

  “Not really?”

  “Maybe a little bit.”

  Rebecca wondered at this weird feeling of victory she felt. That Sunbeam had wanted her and wasn’t interested in Calendula. Wondered why she wanted him to know. It just made her feel special in some strange way.

  Calendula took the wine from her and took a long drink, set it down on the floor, and wrapped his arms around her.