Smuggler's Blues/Short

No 401K for old Hustlers

In October the pot comes down and people like me get these frantic fuckin’ calls. His voice cocaine shaky, probably peeking out the blinds with all the lights out and the trimmers locked in a shipping container. Marijuana millionaire moved up to South Oregon, the Illinois River Valley. He sat on a hill for two years under a stolen scrap wood and corrugated tin shed he built himself with a faded six foot across orange and blue plexiglass sign from an ancient Phillips 66 dumped on top for a roof. He ate wild blackberries. He’d come to Oregon for a fresh start, but he was a Southern Missouri good old boy, smuggler, republican, climber, only drinks Budweiser and calls them road sodies, spoke with a corn cob pipe twang. Forgohorn Leghorn on dope.

“Now Nate” he only uses Signal, encrypted phone app.

“Milan, it’s Milan now Hoss.” This is 3am for me and midnight for him and he’s dusting his nose with more powder.

“Now Milan,” he always pronounces it Me-lan. Him saying fuck you, you’re too fancy now? I prefer the pronunciation Milan, like Milano cookies. “I’ll pay you ten racks to run my security at the big spot off Redwood highway this harvest if you can get up here in two days when it starts comin’ down, the rain’s a comin’ in and it’s all good and hardened off.”

The going rate was fifteen, but: millionaire republican. “I’m retired,” I say and light a smoke.

“Three weeks work, ten racks, come on buddy, help your old pal out,” and he snorts that deep cocaine snort and it comes across the phone like a hurricane. Worth a mention, he’s a recovered meth addict.

“Thirteen racks and I’ll leave tonight,” Clenching my eyes until pinwheels appear to keep smoke from my lit menthol from wafting up and burning them. This is the only way the bills get paid. Only way life continues. “Thirteen racks and hardware.”

“See you soon bud,” he said and hung up.

We’d lived together on two grows years back, taking each other’s measure. I figured he wasn’t just a hick, he was a former millionaire trucking magnate running from the IRS and a redhead who tried to stab him then divorced him. He found out I wasn’t just quiet and smart. We bonded. Our boss fired us both and we went into business together until a deal went south, you know, and after that shit you only call each other when you need something.

Southern Oregon at harvest never changes around Takilma and the 199. It’s Mogadishu in 1994 with evergreens. It’s last week in Lebanon with less drone strikes. There’s no cops in the valley, they voted them out three times. Staties come in once a day, in the morning, leave after they get breakfast. If you get caught, you’ll get caught on your way to Medford. I drove the Corolla hard to get there in time but by the time the fortress red cedar fence was opening, those gates wide enough to pull a tractor-trailer through, I’m steeled for trim scene stew, cocaine, and days of no sleep. I’m popping Xanax because felons aren’t supposed to touch guns.

Hoss comes out to meet me wearing white and blue striped overalls, tied-dye, and smoking something out of a corncob pipe. Big hugs. He’s an inch shorter than me. “Yer skinnier than last time I saw ya boy, harder though, got some muscle on ya. And ya got more tattoos. And you got grey comin’ in at the temples. Shit we’re getting’ old.”

Every time I see him, described like livestock. Laugh the laugh, “yeah, we’re getting too old for this shit Hoss.”

“Fuck, next year I’m going to retire,” he says, but he says that every year.

Running security I get the guest house, a hut with a shower, hot water, hot plate, real bed, blinding sun in the morning. I unload my duffels with him following me around, cocaine puppy yapping, and tell him to wake me up for shift. I just drove 39 hours. On his way out the shack I yell after, “you got my hardware?”

“Always baby, Uncle delivers. Comes out of your pay though,” then the elephant snort. So, that’s like, ten racks or less. If he charges me for room and food, I swear.

At the top of the hill looking out over the garden, 199 plants, fourteen feet tall, a forest of green, touch of grey clouds moving in from the south, drinking my Nescafe, watching the imported Spaniards work already bringing down plants with stalks two feet across at the base. Up on ladders, they cut the netting that holds the overgrown colas up first, then work their way into the plants. The music they’re listening to drifts up the hill, just horns and synth. No idea what the fuck it is.

The argument is when Hoss comes out with white wiped under his nose and red eyes. I’m yelling he’s got four men to cover 60 back acres and 199 plants this year and I’m in charge of them? “I’m not a fucking wizard, and you’re a big target this year Uncle.”

“I got your gear on your bed, we got stew and cornbread for lunch, have a beer and calm the fuck down Mi-Lan, your shift starts at 6,” And the quiet part is the shift ends in three weeks.

On the bed is a duffel with guns in it. the only important one is the Kriss Vektor sub gun with two fifty-found drum mags, a suppressor, and boxes and boxes of RIP ammo in .45. RIP stands for radical invasive projectile. And when you pull one out of the box it looks like something that’s going to eat you, bore into you, and it is. Expensive but worth asking for. They break apart and send thirty or so shards of metal tumbling through you. No good against armor, but up here no one has any unless they run security too, and security don’t knock people over.

The other four security are barely past tie-dyed idiot. Shotguns, an AR, and my friend Tin Can who got blown up in Iraq four times, shot eight, hard as nails. We hug. He’s short enough that he asks me to marry him. He’s a Southern Misery boy too. Me and him put the other two dumbasses on the gardens and we go out into the back acres.

“You got more tattoos hoss,” he says and spits chaw on the ground. “What’s it say on your knuckles”

“Dead Bird” I tell him.

“Well that’s fucking delightfully morbid, I need to get more ink.”

Went on like this with us huddled wet in the underbrush on the only obvious and easy path up through the back acres. Two too enthusiastic tweakers with no hardware and no plot walk past uss gibbering in the night with no flashlights. We let them pass, then stand up and whistle. After making them piss themselves we take their cheap pistols and tell them to go back to the Gutter. That’s what we call the Garter, one bar in town got a red door and a real shit karaoke night every week.

You’re getting soft Milan, 2013 those boys woulda been next year’s fertilizer.

“2013 I got paid 20 racks for this,” I tell him.

“You got a point.”

I’m not doing all the fishscale cocaine everywhere. Makes my hands shake worse than they do already.

Sun comes up, there’s less trees in the garden but I hear “Mi amor” and a heavy bass drop echo up. Hoss saunters up with his coffee asking if I’ve gone soft yelling why did I let them boys go last night. I ignore him, drink my coffee, tell him he shouldn’t hire people from other countries to harvest American pot.

“I’d fire you if you weren’t so good and I didn’t love your family,” he yells walking away to the house. I’ve seen him fire a lot of people.

In a still moment I pull out the Marseille tarot deck, because I hate the Rider deck, to do a three-card read.

Seven of Pentacles is the first card I flip over, but it’s inverted. The harvest is here, but it’s going to go wrong. 199 plants and rain in the forecast for tomorrow. This is going to mean molded weed on the most expensive top colas.

The back of my knuckles: Dead Bird

The second card I pull is the Nine of Swords: The Lord Of Cruelty. So I’m worrying for no reason.

The third card: I pull the Devil. In the Marseille deck the Devil is not Baphomet like in the Rider deck, but has both male and female features. In A.E. Waite's Pictorial Key to the Tarot, the Devil carries some conflicting divinatory associations

15.THE DEVIL--Ravage, violence, vehemence, extraordinary efforts, force, fatality; that which is predestined but is not for this reason evil. Reversed: Evil fatality, weakness, pettiness, blindness.

Being me, I only pay attention to half of them.

That night I guzzle half a bottle of one mil Klonopin and wash it down with a single shot of vodka when Tin Can knocks on my door, “hey, we goin’ out?” I yell back one minute, suiting up. He calls me a pussy from the city.

Out in the back acres, the valley is one of the darkest places in the country, on a starless night you can’t see your hand in front of your face if you’re touching your nose, and it was that night. I ask him. “How many times you got shot in Afghanistan” He says man, eight, why they call me Tin Can, they give you an award for it at the end of your tour if you don’t die, then I got blown up by four IEDs in convoy. I’m nodding but he can’t see. And he says shit, forgot his chaw, throw me one of them cigarettes of yours and a lighter.

I toss them to him, and he jock catches them because he’s always been a little small-town jock. He lights the cigarette and from six feet across the path I raise the Vektor and shoot him through the eye, then stand up and put three in his chest.

I smoke the cigarette he lit, blood on it and all.

See, no one knows I’m here. Hoss’ been exploiting everyone around him for his millions for years. He thought I was just some fuckin’ wook until he found out I was a family bag man.

Come up in the garden and the four other security are huddled smoking a bowl. They offer it to me, ask if I heard some weird muffled like, sound. I shake my head, then triple tap them fast coming up from the shadows and head over to the trim trailers. They’re chained. Spaniards don’t talk to cops. Not that LEO will be involved after it comes down.

The main house isn’t a mansion, just a nice Ranch house that’s been tricked out for partying. Smuggler’s Blues is playing on repeat loud enough to keep away every animal in the valley. I don’t even creep in, just open the door and raise the Kriss to low ready, walk through the laundry room into the main house, all open, mostly living room, the music joyless, sad to me, Hoss’ favorite line hits:

You've got to carry weapons
'Cause you always carry cash
There's lots of shady characters
Lots of dirty deals

Hoss’ mistake is he can’t have a bank account because of the IRS. I find him with party lights going, California King takes up most of the room. Him and three little trimmer girls.

“Hey, ain’t you supposed to be in the back?” his voice raises to that boss man bellow, and I shoot the girls, three round bursts. Smoke out the barrel, the acrid gunpowder smell, and ringing ears just a bit. A suppressor still gives off more than 900 decibels, enough to shake but not bake your melon. He gapes at the bleeding naked trim girls doll splayed on his bed and waves at them like we’re in a goddamn cartoon. “Why the fuck did you kill my whores?”

“Hoss. I’m jacking you,” I say, the short black submachinegun’s barrel swept to over his chest. He doesn’t even keep guns, scared of them, never said why. There’s a plate of cocaine on his nightstand with an iceberg that broke off of Antarctica on it.

“Well would it help if I offered you fifteen?” he laughs.

I shrug.

“Three quarter,” he says. “suitcase under the bed… Tell yer momma I love her.”

“Yeah Hoss.”

"Hey baby, we had a good run though didn't we?" He asks. "Han Solo and Chewbacca"

I shrug. "You're family, but it's just business."

It's not even the line that's playing in the other room, but he says it anyway, slow, his death poem: "I knew the gun was loaded, but I didn't think he'd kill. Everything exploded, and the blood began to spill." He dragged out that last syllable of spill and if you could hear a smile in the dark, before I lit him up with twenty rounds of .45, shredding his chest, misting his blood all over the room, tearing his favorite plaid robe into something that had been through a paper shredder, I could hear that last smile right before I pulled the trigger.