The Homeless Millionaire

We continued discussing my artistic prospects over breakfast the next morning. It was a subdued conversation because we had gotten heavily involved with Captain Morgan the previous day.

Once again, Harry expressed the conviction I could sell my work. He followed that by saying he believed a few of the pot plants could be be ready for harvest by now. I suspected he was strongly motivated by the fact he didn't have any to smoke.

And so, right after breakfast and a quart of coffee each, we set out to visit Harry's pot plantation. We took along two plastic garbage bags, which I thought was highly optimistic. Harry had secateurs, and I had my Finnish knife. It was going to be nice to use it for harvesting pot instead of sticking it into people.

When we'd set out it was intermittently sunny, but halfway there we got hit by heavy rain that lasted all of five minutes. Harry explained that this kind of weather was called a squall, and that it occurred pretty frequently over or near large bodies of water. I'd seen that kind of weather before, when I was in Sweden with my parents. But somehow, no one ever bothered to explain the whole phenomenon to me. Back then, I assumed it was part of the Swedish climate.

I'd had to wait nearly ten years for Harry to explain it to me. And when he did, I had the thought that I probably had a ton of beliefs and assumptions that were completely off the mark, and would stay that way to the end of my life. My life, like any life, was guided by assembled falsehoods as much as it was guided by truth. Most likely, the falsehoods had the upper hand.

It took us a hell of a long time to get to the pot plants because of the beating we both had received from Captain Morgan the previous day. We had to stop a couple of times, and each time we smoked cigarettes and then had to stay put for a while to recover from smoking the cigarettes. This time around Harry didn't have any speed, and his water bottle contained just tea. It didn't quite do the trick.

The Cambodian pot looked like it was having a hard time. The plants drooped sadly, and the colas had grown plenty of tiny white hairs. Harry said that was good, the white hairs were a sign of maturity; we would be harvesting some of those plants in a couple of weeks, he said. I thought to myself that the whole Cambodian harvest would probably fit into a small shopping bag, and said so to Harry.

"Yeah, it's not going to be much, weight or volume-wise," he said. "But this stuff... two tokes and you're on top of the f.u.c.k.i.n.g Himalayas."

"Himalayas aren't in Cambodia," I said. "If I remember right, they run roughly between China and India. And throughout Nepal."

"That's right," Harry agreed. "That's why smoking this pot is such a trip. Couple of tokes take you all the way from British Columbia to f.u.c.k.i.n.g Nepal."

I smiled weakly; my head hurt too much for me to laugh.

It was a different story with the skunk. The colas were much thicker than when I'd seen them last and when Harry rubbed them, his palm was covered with resin. There were a couple of small seeds stuck to his hand too, and after inspection he said we were definitely going to harvest the whole field. He wanted to check out his third pot plant first, however.

An unpleasant surprise awaited us there. Around half of Harry's special hybrid plants had been cut down, and the colas on the remaining ones were badly mutilated: someone had torn huge chunks out of practically all of them. The damage to the pot plants and to the vegetation around the field suggested at least a couple of people had been involved.

Harry turned pale with anger. He raised his face to the sky and vowed to kill the f.u.c.kers that had ravaged his plants. Then he cursed himself for placing them within a short distance of the island's western coast. There was a small beach there, and occasionally a sailboat would stop by.

"They must have seen them from the shore," he said. "Man, I never expected those guys to grow that high. It's like they're on hormones or something."

It was true. A couple of plants were pretty close to ten feet high. The people who had pirated Harry's harvest had left them standing. I suggested that was because they intended to come back for the rest of the pot. The tall plants would be the ones that could be seen from the shore. It wasn't more than maybe a hundred yards away.

We got going on that field right away. I sawed away at the stems with my knife while Harry got busy with the secateurs. He snipped the colas off and put them in his bag, leaving the mutilated plants on the ground. The assholes that had raided his field would still get a couple of pounds of pot if they bothered to harvest all the small leaves.

I pointed this out to Harry and he said I was right and stomped on the plants we'd cut down, mashing them into the ground. It took us nearly a couple of hours to harvest all that we could, and make the rest unusable.

"Those guys might do a bit of exploring when they come again," I said, when we were making our way back to the skunk.

"Yeah," Harry agreed glumly. "They might. Problem is, there isn't much good soil left to cultivate elsewhere. It's already been taken over by trees and shit. I'd need a f.u.c.k.i.n.g bulldozer to clear a plot."

"You'll find something," I consoled him.

"Sure," he said, in a doubtful voice.

We had a lot of work with the skunk. It took us several hours because once again, we destroyed everything we'd left to make it absolutely unsmokable even for diehard pot addicts. We were both tired and hungry when we were done.

We smoked a cigarette each when we'd finished with the plants and had a short conversation about what to do next. I advised Harry to harvest the Cambodian pot, too. He didn't want to.

"I know that pot," he said. "It gets real potent in the late stages. Those buds you saw will be completely covered with those tiny white hairs, man. That's the right time to harvest it. We do it now, I get less product and of worse quality. No, if those assholes really come looking, they'll turn back at the second plot. When they see everything's gone they'll be gone, too. Besides, I sense that there's serious rain headed our way. And I am f.u.c.k.i.n.g hungry. You hungry?"

I was. So we headed home, and Harry talked briefly about his father's funeral, and at more length about his father. I listened willingly because he didn't go all panegyrical the way most people do when they're talking about someone who'd just died. It was really amazing the way total losers and assholes turned into achieving angels the moment they died. If Heaven was a place populated by angels like that, I preferred to go to hell. At least I'd know who I was dealing with, down there.

It seemed that Harry's father had retained some affection for people in general in spite of his job. He was really moved whenever a particularly horrific crime occurred, and often took part in their investigation in addition to his administrative duties, of which he'd had a lot. The Harry said something which gave me a bad shock. He said:

"You know, at least he lived long enough to see that highway killer found. Murdered, to boot. It really made his day."

I didn't say a word but Harry felt the vibe and glanced at me and instantly saw something was wrong.

"What's up, guy?" he asked.

I knew there was no use in lying to him. He'd know. But I didn't want to confess to killing Peter Schmidt. So I told him nothing but the truth, just left out the most important bit. I said:

"I read about that guy in the papers I'd brought from Lion's Bay. There was a photograph of this guy. It really shook me up, because I think I've met him."

"What!?"

"I met that guy at a gas station. I was hoping to hitch a ride from him. But I got a ride with a nice elderly couple instead. They even bought me a meal."

"F.u.c.k! You nearly hitched a ride with that guy? You were real lucky, man. That guy went after both guys and girls."

"Maybe he'd already picked up someone," I said. "I can't remember what exactly he'd told me."

"You were really lucky, man. No wonder it shook you up. F.u.c.k! Talk about narrow escapes."

Narrow escape was right.

But that wasn't the last shock I had that day. After we'd gotten home and prepared food and ate it all, Harry poured a couple of drinks with what remained of the rum. We tossed them back and he said:

"Listen, there's something we need to discuss. When I asked you to help with harvesting the pot, I reckoned it would take a number of weeks. I planned on taking only the fully grown buds every few days, and I wanted m.a.t.u.r.e seeds from my hybrids. But all that is f.u.c.k.e.d. My harvest won't be more than half of what I planned. Now, I'm a man of my word. I promised to pay you five hundred, and I will if you insist. But I think it wouldn't be unfair to renegotiate that, because of the new circ.u.mstances."

"Of course," I said. There was nothing else to say.

"Glad you think so. Okay. We still have the Cambodian bud to harvest, but it's gotta wait at least a couple more weeks. Unless it gets really cold, then we'll get it sooner. But either way, I need you to stay a couple more weeks even though I'll pay you less. You okay with that?"

"Yeah," I said. "But can you tell me how much I'll get? Based on what we've seen today, and on the assumption no one steals your Cambodian bud."

"I figure I'll have half of what was planned. So I'd like to pay you half of what we agreed to. Two fifty, all right?"

"That's fine," I said. I looked at my empty glass and sighed and reached for a cigarette. I lit it, and said:

"Just help me sell a few pieces, man. Then you don't need to pay me at all. I'm serious."

Harry smiled, maybe because he still had a few drops left in his glass. He drank them and said:

"I'll pay you what I said, and I'll help you sell some of your stuff. Now, how about a beer?"