Grower's Market

by Michael Baughman

  Shadow had vanished and Shrimp kept sprinting with his head down and his arms and legs pumping as hard as he could make them go and he swerved through trees with rounds whining and buzzing by and several rounds smashed into a tree close beside him spraying bark, and another round whined off a rock on the same side and then there were voices screaming.

  He was sick and dizzy and had no idea what the voices said and after a few more seconds the voices were gone and then the firing stopped too and Shrimp kept running and dodging between trees and he heard his feet pounding and realized he was sprinting down a steep hill.

  At the bottom of the hill he came to a small creek lined with buck brush and willow thickets and occasional clumps of poison oak and he crashed through the buck brush and jumped the creek and labored up the hill on the other side.

  Oak trees grew on this north-facing slope and there were band-tailed pigeons feeding on the fallen acorns under the trees. As he passed close to the big birds they flapped into noisy flight with the tips of their wings clapping together underneath them as they lifted off the ground.

  Shrimp recovered his senses.

  He knew he wasn’t being chased and now he knew exactly where he was. This was the narrow draw where a year ago, or it might have been two, he had been searching for Indian artifacts and had treed a bobcat. The startled male cat had been feeding on a jackrabbit and Shrimp remembered how the cat had leaped onto an oak limb and under his weight the long limb had dropped so low that Shrimp could have reached and touched the cat if he’d been dumb enough to want to.

  He remembered that the small creek behind him led between steep slopes all the way to Samson Creek, which was a major tributary through the valley.

  He was certain that at least for now no one was after him and he turned and jogged back down the hill through the oaks. He was sweating hard and panting for breath and his thighs burned. A few more pigeons took flight and others perched motionless on oak limbs near the tops of trees and watched him with beady black eyes.

  Shrimp identified the bobcat tree and stopped to look at the limb where the treed cat had crouched on its long legs with his back arched staring at him.

  “Hello, buddy,” Shrimp remembered telling the cat as he walked up.

  The big cat had stared at him with bright green eyes and long gray whiskers and a lustrous coat and short black pointed tufts on his ears.

  Shrimp and the cat had stared at each other eye to eye with the cat less than an arm’s length away.

  “You sure don’t look scared,” Shrimp said. “What would you do if I scratched between your ears, dude?”

  The bobcat never moved and never blinked and breathed slowly.

  “What about it?” Shrimp said. “Would you rip my damn arm at least half off?”

  The bobcat’s left ear twitched.

  “I figure that means yes.”

  Shrimp had looked into the cat’s eyes for a minute or more and then turned and started up the draw. Searching along both banks of the creek that afternoon he found a handful of obsidian chips and three perfect bird points in less than an hour. When he hiked back downstream the bobcat was gone along with the jackrabbit.

  Now far behind him he heard gunfire. He knelt and drank from the creek. The water ran pure and sweet and cold with nothing anywhere upstream to foul it. He cupped cold water onto his face and over the top of his head and then began jogging downstream along the north bank toward the reservoir. He stayed close beside the creek except when he circumvented willow thickets.

  He thought about Shadow.

  A covey of mountain quail flushed with loudly whirring wings from a dense thicket. The big birds scattered in all directions and before the last quail had disappeared into cover a black-tailed doe crashed out of the next thicket down and bounded up the hill and quickly disappeared among the oaks.

  By the time he had gone about a mile Shrimp was sweating hard again.

  Then he saw an unarmed bare-chested man with his head down sprinting upstream toward him through the brush and he veered into the next thicket he reached and planted his feet solidly with his weapon ready.

  He watched the man continue toward him looking down at the ground all the while with his arms flailing as he ran. Then from a distance of thirty or forty yards he could make out Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny on the pale bare sweaty chest and he knew it was Toon.

  Shrimp forced his way through the supple willow branches and stepped out of the thicket and raised a hand and called out, “Toon!”

  Toon stopped short and looked up and then crouched and used a hand to shield his eyes from sunlight. “Shrimp? Is it you?”

  “Yeah, man!”

  “No shit? Is it you?”

  Shrimp stood where he was and Toon ran up and stopped in front of him. “All shit broke loose down below!” he said.

  “What shit?”

  “They killed Shakespeare!”

  “What the fuck? Who did?”

  “I got no fucking idea who but they did! I never even saw the motherfuckers and they opened up on us, whoever they were, and I took off running, I never even had a chance to grab my weapon, and they didn’t even shoot at me, they yelled at me. They said, ‘Tell everybody what you saw, asshole! Everybody! Tell ’em what happened here, asshole!’ That’s what they yelled.”

  “So they’re not coming after you?”

  “I never even saw the motherfuckers. Never even heard ’em till they opened up and blew Shakespeare away. That’s all I know. Don’t go down there, man. Where’s Shadow?”

  “Wasted.”

  “Dead?”

  “Yeah, dead.”

  “What the fuck’s going on?”

  “I got no idea.”

  “Well don’t go down where I just came from, man!”

  “I’m not goin’ back where I came from either. But the fuckers that killed Shadow hardly even chased me.”

  “Shadow’s really dead?”

  “Yeah. Really.”

  “What the fuck should we do?”

  “I know this country.” Shrimp pointed uphill to his left through the oak trees. “Straight up there and halfway down the other side there’s an old gold mine. C’mon, man! It’s as good a place as any.”

  Toon followed Shrimp straight up the hill through the trees. All the way up he watched Shrimp’s boots a few feet ahead of him. The boots clumped into the soft forest floor of moldered leaves and acorns and he heard Shrimp breathing hard and he heard his own deep breathing. He felt his heart pounding in his chest. He thought he could hear it. Every minute or two he looked back and once just before they reached the summit he thought he saw movement through the trees far below them. Then he stumbled and fell to his hands and knees, and then he looked again and saw nothing.

  When they finally crested the mountain and started down the other side they found themselves in burned over forest. The oaks were leafless and charred black and many limbless pines had fallen and lay across the ground at odd angles. Bright green grass and darker green brush had grown through the scorched earth. The old mine was almost halfway down the mountainside and Toon followed Shrimp past a small pile of rotted timbers into the dark shaft. When Shrimp stopped abruptly at a point where there was barely light enough to see Toon ran into him from behind.

  “Take it easy, man,” Shrimp said.

  “Sorry.”

  “This country burned in the Muffin Fire.”

  “Two summers ago?”

  “Two falls ago.”

  “What if somebody saw us come in here?”

  “Nobody saw us.”

  “What if they did?”

  Both men panted for breath and their faces were filmed with sweat. Shrimp stood bent at the waist with his hands on his knees. “Nobody saw us,” he said.

  “How long you figure we should stay here?”

  “Till dark.”

  “We left fucking footprints all over the place out there.”

  “Nobody saw us, dude.”

  “What’ll we do
when it’s dark?”

  “Head back. What else?”

  “Back where?”

  “The Bird of Prey.”

  “Shit, that must be fifteen miles.”

  “More like twenty.”

  Inside the mine shaft it was damp and cool. The air smelled dank and the floor was solidly packed earth and the walls and ceiling were solid rock. Shrimp knew that farther back out of sight in the darkness clusters of bats hung from the ceiling. He sat and leaned back with his arms clasped around his knees. “This sucks but we’re okay for now,” he said. “You and me’ve been in serious shit before. How many guys have we seen get wasted? How many buddies? Plenty. Seems like it never fucking ends. It always sucks. For now at least you and me are okay.”

  “Yeah it sucks,” Toon said. “This place does.”

  “Hey, man. The place reminds me of a song.”

  “A song?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What song?”

  “Old country song. ‘She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).’ Remember that one?”

  “Yeah I do.”

  “Well this time we got the fucking shaft.”

  “We sure as fuck did,” Toon said.

  The shaft was at least eight feet wide and Toon sat and leaned back against the cold stone wall directly across from Shrimp. He raised his head and closed his eyes against the sweat and then opened his eyes and blinked and looked toward the bright entrance off to his right. “What was that?” he said.

  “What was what?” Shrimp answered.

  “Didn’t you hear it?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t hear anything?”

  “No.”

  “Well I did.”

  “What?”

  “A click,” Toon said. “Or more sort of like two stones hitting together.”

  “I didn’t hear it.”

  “You sure?”

  “Hell yes I am.”

  “Well maybe I got better ears.”

  “Maybe you don’t.”

  “Shakespeare always figured he’d die in the war,” Toon said, “the real war, the one we were in I mean.”

  “Well it wasn’t a real war so maybe that’s why he didn’t die in it.”

  Somewhere from the bright sky outside a hawk screamed.

  “You hear that?” Toon said.

  “Yeah I did. Sure. I guess my ears are okay, right?”

  “Maybe.”

  Somewhere far back in the mine shaft water dripped steadily and slowly.

  Outside the hawk screamed again.

  “You believe in any kind of god or anything?” Toon asked.

  “Hell no,” Shrimp answered.

  “Me either. But shit, there must be some damn thing that makes shit happen.”

  “There’s some kind of power,” Shrimp said. “Some kind of force or whatever you want to call it that makes stuff happen. Makes everything happen. Nobody knows what it is though. Nobody has any idea. How the hell could anybody know? So they make shit up. Always have, always will.”

  “You believe in heaven and hell, all that shit?”

  “Hell no.”

  “I’m askin’ ’cause of Shakespeare,” Toon said. “He figured he should’ve died in the war, he told me all that. Then when he didn’t die in the war he figured he’d get it violently some other way. And he did. You don’t figure something made it happen?”

  “Hell yes something made it happen. A fucking bullet made it happen. A bunch of bullets did. A whole shitload of bullets.”

  “He ever talk to you about when he was a kid?”

  “No,” Shrimp said. “Not much. He said he had some troubles back then. Who the fuck didn’t though? But he never said much.”

  “He did to me. Talked to me about it I mean. One thing was, he felt guilty about stuff he did when he was young.”

  “Like what?”

  “The weird thing was he felt guilty about stuff that wasn’t even really bad.”

  “Like what though?”

  “He told me about this teacher he had, the one who first turned him on to Shakespeare. Some dude named Koch except the guys in class called him Kochsucker. Koch’s hero was Thoreau. You know about Thoreau? Henry David Thoreau?”

  “Shit yes I do. The dude who lived alone in some little cabin someplace out in the woods.”

  “Yeah, Shrimp. That’s the one. Out by some pond. Well this Koch lived in some primitive little cabin too and the cabin had an outhouse and on Halloween night one year Shakespeare and his buddies lifted the outhouse off the hole where all the shit went and set it a few feet back. Then they hid till Koch walked out of his cabin around midnight, before he went to bed they figured, and he walked straight for the outhouse and fell right into the shit hole instead. It was a really dark night, that’s why the trick worked, and Shakespeare felt guilty as hell about it, especially later on after he turned into Shakespeare. He never got over it and he figured he’d get paid back for that dirty trick sooner or later. That shitty trick he played.”

  “Well did the teacher get hurt? Did he drown in the shit?”

  “Hell no, Shrimp. He climbed back out was all and Shakespeare and his buddies ran off through the woods laughing their asses off.”

  “That’s way past weird. That’s crazy. How could Shakespeare feel guilty about that? That was a cool, classic trick is all.”

  “I got no idea why he felt guilty but he did. He even cried when he told me about it and he wasn’t even drunk or stoned. I mean, that’s how guilty the poor dude felt.”

  “That’s totally crazy,” Shrimp said.

  “Yeah it is. Yeah it was.”

  They sat in silence and thought about Shakespeare.

  “Listen,” Toon said. “You hear that water dripping?”

  “Yeah I do.”

  “You hear anything else?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like anything. Like a faraway four-wheeler. A Rhino it sounds like.”

  “Nope. No fucking Rhino.”

  “Well it’s out there,” Toon said. “You’re fucking deaf. I hear it better now. Also sounds like somebody yelling and screaming like a son of a bitch. Sounds like Stones in fact. You can’t hear that?”

  “No.”

  “Well you’re fuckin’ deaf, man.”

  “How can I be deaf? I hear that dripping. I hear you loud and clear. Did you fart?”

  “Yeah I did.”

  “Yeah, well I heard that too. Why the fuck would anybody fart in a mine shaft, man?”

  “’Cause I had to.”

  “Yeah, well, thanks, dude.”

  Shrimp leaned his head back against the cold stone behind him and stretched his legs straight out in front of him with his hands resting on his thighs and he closed his eyes and listened to the dripping water.

  “Shakespeare told me lots of shit,” Toon said. “We got stoned together damn near every night over in the zone. I can tell it now ’cause the dude’s dead. His old man was the real nut. He was a bus driver. I mean, I bet he’s the one who drove Shakespeare nutty. One time they lived in East Oakland, a shitty neighborhood from everything I ever heard. Bad shit on the street. Bad shit on his old man’s bus. His old lady was dead already, a drug overdose. Smack. Shakespeare figures she was on it when he was born. Anyway, bad shit on the street and the old man’s bus, practically every damn day. Some homeboys raped a girl, a young girl I’m saying, right on the bus one day. In the daytime. An’ I mean young. About twelve. When Shakespeare’s old man tried to break it up they beat the shit out of him. He woke up that night in the hospital. He got better but he had to go on disability after that. Shakespeare was about twelve himself then, the same age as that girl who got raped. Well starting right then when that happened Shakespeare’s old man nailed the doors shut, the front and the back door, in the little house they lived in. The shack, that’s what Shakespeare called it. He boarded up all the windows too. The old man cut a little hole in the roof and strung a rope out the hole and that’s how they go
t in and out of the house, the shack. They climbed up through that hole in the roof and lowered themselves down to the street on that rope. Somebody always had to stay in the house to pull the rope back up and then toss it back out when whoever was out came back and wanted in. How fucking nutty is that? It wasn’t Shakespeare’s fault he was nuts, that’s all I’m sayin’. All Shakespeare ever kind of liked was school. I guess he felt safe there. Protected I guess. Anyway, a few months after Shakespeare shipped off to war or combat or whatever you call it his old man took off south from East Oakland all the way to Mexico, to Baja. To Todos Santos, a little town on the Pacific there, way down south. An’ all he did there was play that Eagles song, that “Hotel California,” and drink tequila. After a few days he shot himself in his room at breakfast time. An’ that goddamn song was still playing when they went in the room after they heard the shot. I hate the Eagles, man. He never told you that shit ever? None of it?”

  Shrimp didn’t answer.

  “He ever tell you that shit or not, dude?”

  No answer.

  “Hey, man,” Toon said. “Ain’t you even talkin’ to me anymore?” Then he heard the soft snoring and he leaned forward to peer through the near darkness and saw his friend’s head tilted to one side with his mouth half open. “Okay, man,” he said, “catch yourself some Zs.”

  Soon Toon fell asleep himself.

  Toon dreamed not for the first time about a Mexican girl he had seen picking pears in an orchard farther north. He had been riding along a bike path that bordered long rows of trees laden with ripe fruit. There were acres and acres of the trees and the girl stood somewhere near the middle rung of a stepladder picking pears with both hands and placing the fruit into a sack held in place in front of her by a canvas strap over her shoulders. She wore faded jeans and a sleeveless cotton blouse. Around her neck was a delicate gold chain with a small golden cross. On the hot afternoon her brown face was filmed with sweat. In the glimpse Toon caught of her as he peddled by, her black hair shined in bright sunlight and her slim strong arms and small hands worked quickly and her facial expression showed intense concentration on her labor. Toon stopped peddling and coasted to a stop and lifted his bike around and pushed it back and stopped again a few feet away from the girl on the ladder. Without doubt she was the loveliest girl he had ever seen in his life anywhere. She didn’t look at him and showed no sign she knew he was there.