Gone to Pot

by Jennifer Craig

  “I am an older man. I have gained 2½ inches in length, and I am now 3¾ inches at the bore, and 9½ inches when hard. My wife is delighted. We are planning a second honeymoon.”

  “I am sixteen. Everyone used to point at my dick at school and laugh, but since I started taking Will-E-Up they now point at my Maestro of Mayhem wishing they had one like it.”

  Pictures of dejected penises raised to glory followed and all to be had for fifty dollars for one month’s supply of pills or a hundred and forty-seven for a three-month supply of patches, patches to be applied to any part of the body for a few days at a time.

  No doubt about it, there was much to be learned from the Internet.

  It was while I was washing up that the idea occurred to me. Would my buds benefit if I gave them Will-E-Up? Would they become larger, harder, and erect? There was only one way to find out.

  Life moved on. It felt great not to be constantly anxious about money. What a burden that is for people, wondering how to pay their bills, how to feed their kids, worrying about employment. Surely our wealthy society could do better than to tolerate the appalling percentage of children who grow up in poverty and have so many people without a home. And women of my age, women who have looked after everyone, raised families, been teachers and nurses and librarians—why should they end their days struggling to make ends meet? If I ran the universe it would not be like that. If governments followed the rule I grew up with—don’t buy what you can’t afford—we wouldn’t be in this state.

  I got over the showdown with Amy and the thought of packing it in. The fun I had had with my grow-op, the people I had met, people who cared about me like Swan and Maggie and even Marcus, the constant challenge and pleasure in my growing skills, the prospect of money—all these won out. I had changed from a nervous Nellie who couldn’t tell a marijuana plant from a chrysanthemum, to a competent indoor gardener. There was no way I was going to give it up.

  I still had dinner with the family every Sunday. The first time after our showdown Amy was cold and silent, but it’s hard to keep that up for long. It was Julie who rescued us. Over the last few months of her development she had turned into a right little chatterbox. As soon as I arrived at the door she hugged my legs and greeted me solemnly with her news.

  “My milk went down the wrong way.”

  “Oh dear,” I said. “Yes, that can happen.”

  She nodded her small, dark head. “But I’m okay.”

  Her speech was unbelievable for her age, and I delighted in her observations of life. “I thought a monster was coming to get me. I saw the monster. It was playing music.”

  “Wow. What did it look like?”

  “It was this big,” she said, stretching out her little arms. “With green hair and orange pants. But it’s okay. It went away.”

  Jason became the stabilizing force. He and I had regained the closeness we enjoyed before he met Amy, and strangely, his marriage seemed to have improved after our debacle. Maybe Amy respected his assertive stand. Who knows what goes on between married couples?

  After dinner one Sunday, Jason was upstairs dealing with a crisis in the children’s lives: Blankie Bear was missing. At bedtime. No one could possibly settle for the night. Amy and I joined in the hunt downstairs and eventually he was located in the stroller.

  I carried dirty dishes into the kitchen and helped Amy clean up. “How are you enjoying work?” I asked her.

  “I think I liked being home more, to be perfectly honest. If Swan weren’t so good with the kids, I would seriously think of quitting.”

  She had always been keen to go back to work, like so many married women, but the reality was not all roses.

  “It’s my case load that’s so depressing,” Amy continued. “Today, for example, I had a 65-year old woman, well educated, couldn’t get a job, not eligible for welfare, who ended up literally sleeping in the park. Now she’s in hospital with hypothermia.” She stood up from stacking the dishwasher. “The amount of money spent on treating her in hospital could have paid for housing for her. This government is—”

  Amy was interrupted as Julie ran into the kitchen. “I just did a poo-poo in the potty,” she said excitedly. “It was a mountain poo.”

  Both Amy and I expressed our delight at this news as we looked at each other and smiled.

  A small packet, wrapped in plain brown paper, contained one month’s supply of blue tablets in a blister package and a leaflet that promised satisfaction or my money back. Directions to take a daily dose, at bedtime, and to report unlikely side effects to the company were included on the insert. I popped out one pill to see if it would dissolve and to my delight, after a few minutes, it did.

  My fourth crop, the first without Marcus, was planted and in its third week of veg. When should I administer the growth booster? I should set up an experiment. What was all that about Mendel and his separation of crops? He divided his land into different sections to try out different methods. If I did the same, the four lights were the obvious separators.

  In the notebook I kept on my garden I wrote down:

  Light One: nothing

  Light Two: give pill three weeks into veg.

  Light Three: give pill end of veg and beginning of bloom.

  Light Four: give pill four weeks into flowering.

  How many pills? I had no idea. One daily worked for a man, but one would not be enough for all the plants. I would try one for each plant so that would be eight for each light. Eight, dissolved in a watering can, would feed them when they were dry and could better absorb. They would only get one dose—after all, they were much smaller than a man.

  What about the mothers? I’d better not experiment with them. If something went wrong, my future buddies would be lost. I could grow an extra mother next time and use that as a test case. Besides, the mothers didn’t flower.

  The eight plants under Light Two received their booster and I recorded this event on my calendar. I kept a file in the basement containing handouts from Michael, my notebook and a calendar that recorded waterings, feedings, harvest day, weight, and costs. I added a tape measure to my equipment to assess length of bud and—what was it?—bore.

  I could hardly wait to visit the garden as soon as I got out of bed. Should I tell Maggie and Swan? If nothing happened I would look like an idiot. Better to wait and see.

  My untroubled life was shattered when Maggie phoned one afternoon to see if I was home as she wanted to talk to me. She arrived looking anxious, quite unlike her usual serene self. We went into the kitchen and put the kettle on.

  “Marcus has been arrested.”

  “What?” I had to sit down. Suddenly the enormity of what I was doing came back to haunt me. My basement life had become so ordinary that I never thought about the risks any more, and now reality’s ugly face reared. “What for?” I managed to ask.

  “He was building a room for a guy and the guy’s friend called by and snitched on him. So the police came and found Marcus putting lights up.”

  “Surely that’s not illegal?”

  “No. And there were no plants around, thank god.” Maggie stopped pacing and sat down across from me. “He was lucky. There’s not much they can do. As you say it’s not illegal to put lights in your house. It’s the plants they want to see.” She took a sip of tea. “The snitch was stupid. He should have waited until the plants were in and then informed the police. Can you believe a so-called friend would do that?”

  “Yes, I can.” I hadn’t told Maggie about Amy finding me and I told her then. “So I’m never certain that she might not report me. She might if she had a row with Jason or something, but he made it pretty clear that their marriage would end if she did.”

  “Good for him.” Maggie stretched her arms above her head. “God, with all the things wrong with the world, people make such an issue over a harmless weed. I can hardly believe it.”


  “Where is Marcus?”

  “Still at the police station, I expect. I don’t know what they’ll charge him with. I think they took him in to frighten him and the guy he was working for. The trouble will be with Marcus’s dad. I don’t think his folks know what he does. Or,” she added thoughtfully, “maybe they do but just ignore it. Marcus does do some legitimate electrical work as well, even though he hasn’t got his ticket.”

  “Where does Marcus get his plants from if he doesn’t grow himself? I’ve often wondered, but never got an answer out of him.”

  “He has quite a network. He’s always setting people up like he did with you. He gets cuttings from them. Didn’t he ever ask you for cuttings?” I shook my head.

  I was about to tell her about my experiment but she got up to go. “I’ll let you know what happens.”

  24

  Maggie told me the next day that Marcus had not been charged and, after hanging around the police station for several hours, he’d been released. After that shock I’d found myself jumping when anyone came to the door, and I kept checking that the basement doors were locked. It was days before I settled down into my routine.

  The crop grew and I watched it with eager anticipation. Would the buds be taller, harder, and fatter? The first notable difference was about five weeks into the flowering cycle, with three more weeks until harvest. Each day the test plants seemed jauntier. I began to use the tape measure to record their height and girth and sure enough, each day they gained a fraction of an inch in both. Lights Three and Four, which each got the booster when flowering were doing much better than Light Two, which got it in veg. In fact, it was hard to tell whether Light Two had benefited at all as there was so little difference between it and Light One, which got nothing.

  I don’t know when the buds began to change color as the process was so gradual, but one day they looked more purple than green—not a deep purple but with a sheen of greenish lavender. Bugger, was that healthy? Maybe I’d poisoned them. They might be bigger, but bigger isn’t always better.

  About two weeks before harvest, a light bulb didn’t come on and I had to send for Marcus. I don’t know what he’d been doing, but he showed up in frayed cut offs and smelling of the forest.

  “Hi Marcus. A light won’t go on.” I had learned to stop babbling at him. Brief remarks seemed to elicit longer replies.

  He did look at me before heading for the basement, but said nothing. He didn’t even ask which light. I guess he would see that soon enough…why waste words?

  He twisted the bulb in its socket. “Got a new bulb?”

  I had just bought new bulbs, planning to replace them all at the start of the next crop. It was Light One that had gone out. He put in a new bulb but it still didn’t come on.

  “Turn it off,” he said.

  I turned off the ballast for that light and he produced a small screwdriver from his pocket and fiddled in the socket before putting the bulb back. “Now try.”

  The ballast hummed and the bulb glowed.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  Marcus looked around and suddenly noticed the plants under Lights Three and Four, plants that extended their erect buds to the ceiling. His eyes widened. “Wow,” he said. “What did you do?”

  I smiled. “Fed them my special formula.”

  He bent down to examine a bud more closely. Then he pinched it. “What formula?” He stood up and looked at me with the most animated expression I had ever seen on him. My plants had clearly excited him.

  “I’ll tell you after harvest,” I said. “When I know if it works or not. Will you be here for my harvest?”

  “Yep.”

  He took one last lingering look at the buds before leaving. “Hope they smoke,” he muttered.

  He left me with a horrible thought: what if the buds, large though they were, did not produce enough THC, or TLC as I called it, and were no good to smoke? Why hadn’t I thought of that? But there was no sense in despair until I knew for sure. At least I had given it a try.

  Harvest day arrived along with Swan and Maggie and their scissors. They didn’t know where Marcus was, but thought he was in town—‘tree planting’ hadn’t started yet. Candles burned all over the house, chairs and tables waited for the trimmers, and garbage bags and refreshments were at the ready. I didn’t want Swan and Maggie to see my giant buds straight away so I had clipped the plants from Light One ready for them.

  “You’re on the ball,” Maggie said.

  “I’m always nervous on harvest day,” I said. “Can’t sleep. Don’t know why.” I did know why. It was the same anxiety exam sitters get wondering if they will succeed or fail.

  Maggie and Swan began to trim and I made drinks before joining them. Swan worked with concentration and didn’t say much. “What’s up, Swan?” I asked her. “You look down in the dumps.”

  “My parents are on my case. Gotta go home.” She snipped away at a bud, threw it in the box and picked up another plant. “This’ll be my last trim.”

  “What are you going to do?” Maggie asked.

  “Go to school.”

  “Is your two years up?”

  Swan nodded. “Yeah. And my allowance.”

  “Allowance?” I was surprised. Was Swan a poor little rich girl? I had thought she was as strapped for cash as the rest of us.

  Swan seemed to pick up my thought. “They’ve paid my rent. That’s all.”

  “What are you going to study?” Maggie scraped leaves from her bin lid into the garbage bag.

  Swan screwed up her face, shook her head from side to side, and answered, “Physics.”

  “Physics!” I stared at Swan with my mouth open.

  She laughed when she saw the expression on my face. “You think I’m dumb, don’t you? I aced it at school, especially in math. My dad teaches math.”

  I didn’t think she was dumb, but I did think she was more, how shall I put it, artsy, more dreamy, more ethereal. Not the scientific type.

  Maggie was equally surprised. “What in heaven’s name are you doing in Nelson, waitressing and serving in a deli?”

  Swan dipped her scissors in rubbing alcohol, wiped them on a towel, and didn’t reply. She was close to crying. Poor kid. I felt sorry for her even though I couldn’t relate to her experience. I left school and went to work in a mill for a year until I was old enough to start nurse training in a hospital. There was no prospect of travel or taking a break and an allowance was out of the question.

  Maggie looked up from her plant. “I’ve taken a few college courses but not physics, that’s for sure. So, you’re going back to California, Swan?”

  “Yes. In two weeks. I’m enrolled at Berkeley. Starting September.”

  “Are you looking forward to it?” Maggie asked.

  “I suppose,” Swan said. She hesitated. “I want to go to school. It’s living at home that’s brutal.”

  “Can’t you live in a dorm? Tell your folks that you can work better living on campus. No commuting. Save time.”

  “Our house is practically on campus.” Swan thought for a moment. “But that’s a great idea. I’ll tell them I need to work in the labs in the evenings if I want good grades. They won’t like the idea of my coming home late at night.” She stared at her bud, clipped one small leaf off it and threw it into the box.

  “We shall miss you,” I said and meant it. I had known she would be leaving eventually, but the time to face up to it had arrived. Right then, I was too excited at the prospect of their amazement when they saw my giant buds. I would do my grieving later.

  We finished Lights One and Two and broke for lunch. When we returned Maggie and Swan settled in their chairs and I went to clip the first of my wondrous plants. I carried them in as casually as I could and their astonishment was just as I had hoped.

  “Holy Shit, what are those?” Maggie said, leaning forward
to pick up a plant.

  Swan’s eyes opened wide. “Did you put them on steroids?”

  “Are they another variety?” Maggie asked.

  “No, same old Jamaican.” I tried not to smirk. “I fed them a special formula.” I hadn’t meant to tell them what formula, but I couldn’t keep quiet. “I gave them penis enhancers.”

  “You’re kidding!” Swan said and they both cracked up. “Penis enhancers?” She picked up a bud and stroked its length. “I don’t believe it.”

  “I knew a man whose wife told him to get a penis enhancer,” Maggie said. “He did. She was twenty-four and her name was Tiffany.”

  We were all hysterical by this time and when we calmed down we began to trim the mighty buds.

  “This isn’t going to take long,” Maggie said. “There are only a few of them.” She hefted one. “They’re really heavy.”

  Swan held a bud under the light and peered at it. “They’re a funny color. Purplish.”

  “Yes, I wonder if I’ve poisoned them.” I picked up a bud, at least twelve inches long and so thick my hand barely circled it. “My big worry is whether they’re smokeable.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Maggie said.

  “If they’re not, then they’re no good, beautiful though they may be.”

  “We won’t know until Marcus tries to sell them. Then he’ll either arrive with mega-bucks or I’ll just get money for those,” I said, indicating the hanging buds we’d trimmed earlier.

  “I want to be here when he comes back from the seller,” Maggie said.

  “Let’s have a party to say good-bye to Swan and to either celebrate or drown our woes,” I said.

  We set a date for a week later; Maggie would bring her scale in the morning and we’d have the party the following evening, Swan’s last night. Swan said she would make sure Marcus was up to speed and could make our date.

  That was the beginning of a period of ear-pulling anxiety. Either I had ruined half the crop and would only get money for two pounds or else I had created wonder buds and would reap riches.