Mercy Street(20)

The barn doors were open. Timmy pulled in and parked, twisting a little to unkink his back. Marcel pulled the doors closed.

“I heard something out in the woods,” said Timmy. “An owl, maybe.”

“A drone,” said Marcel, as though this were an established fact. He climbed a ladder to the hayloft and returned with a green trash bag. “The drones, they are everywhere. I had a dream last night. The subconscience is always working, even when I sleep.”

“Subconscious,” Timmy said.

“The subconscience is very intelligent. A change in the atmosphere, the subconscience will tell me.” Marcel knelt on the floor and opened the bag. Inside were several smaller bags, black plastic, labeled with masking tape: Blue Widow. Green Crack. Bay Two.

“No Bay One?” Timmy said, without hope. The supply chain was merciless. Asking Marcel for anything was like praying for rain.

Marcel barely shrugged, a microscopic movement of head and shoulder. “Sorry, man.”

Timmy lifted the bags one at a time, testing their weight. He trusted Marcel, but it never hurt to check. He could guess a bag’s weight to the ounce.

“What about edibles?” he asked. “You got any more of those gummy bears?”

“I have lollipops,” Marcel said.

The lollipops were pineapple-flavored and achingly sweet, with an aftertaste of yard clippings. Timmy had invested in several cartons and couldn’t get rid of them. Nobody had ever bought them twice.

“Nah, I’m good on those,” Timmy said.

He counted off tens and twenties, grubby pothead money from the roll in his pocket, bulging there like a giant hard-on. Then he packed the bags into his trunk, around and inside the spare tire. The overflow he stuffed into an Igloo cooler, beneath a case of Sam Adams he’d bought years ago for this purpose. The beer froze solid each winter and nearly boiled in summer and was probably, by now, undrinkable.

Unusually, Marcel took a joint from his pocket. “I have some news.” He inhaled deeply. “Florence and me, we are going to sell the farm.”

“What?” said Timmy, taking the joint. “For Christ’s sake, why?”

“We are going back to Canada. At the end of the summer, I think. After that, I am a pensioner.” Marcel took another drag. “You know that I am selling weed now for forty year? I think it’s enough.”

Stoned, he was expansive, professorial—the kind of pothead who lives to explain the world to other potheads. The weed business had changed, he said. Top-quality bud was no longer enough. Younger customers wanted wax, cannabis oil. They wanted edibles. The weed business was officially going to shit.

“And when it is legalize, forget it,” he said. “It’s finish.”

“If,” said Timmy. “If.”

“You’re dreaming, man. It’s going to happen.” Marcel inhaled heroically. “For me it’s okay. I am old. But you’re still a young man. What you are going to do then?”

Can you hear the clock ticking? Timmy could. He’d been hearing it for a long time.

Naturally he’d thought about it: renting his own storefront, selling weed out in the open like candy or breath mints. The start-up costs were intimidating. The weed store in Denver had stocked, in Timmy’s estimation, a hundred grand worth of product. That didn’t include rent and utilities, the shelving and track lighting and refrigerator cases, none of which came cheap.

And the problem was bigger than money. Even if he could scrape together a down payment on a storefront, he had no way to explain where the money had come from. He hadn’t filed a tax return in ten years. There was licensing to think about, insurance, a background check. Later there would be sales tax to collect, a blinding shitstorm of paperwork to complete. His ineptitude in these matters was half the reason he started selling drugs in the first place.

The truth was inescapable: when weed was legalized, Timmy would become a displaced worker, like his dad when Raytheon closed the plant in Northboro. The legal weed business would be run by lawyers and bankers, the same douchebags who ran everything else in the world.

“You want my advice? Win your money now. In a couple year, it’s going to be impossible. Im-poss-sible.” Marcel grinned, showing caramel-colored teeth. “If I were you, I would make a plan.”

“IF THEY LEGALIZE IT, I’M OUT,” TIMMY TOLD WINKY BLANCHARD.

Weeks had passed since his conversation with Marcel. In that time, he’d come to certain conclusions.

“If they legalize it, I am officially retiring from weed.”

He handed Winky the pipe. It was a Tuesday afternoon, the light already waning, the TV tuned to a golf match they weren’t watching. Timmy didn’t understand golf but found it soothing: the rolling green lawns, the announcers speaking in hushed voices as though a baby were sleeping.

Winky looked dumbstruck. “What will you do then? I mean, I guess you could get a . . . job.” He pronounced the word hesitantly, like he couldn’t imagine Timmy doing such a thing.

Timmy couldn’t imagine it either. The sort of job he could actually get wouldn’t cover his child support. It wouldn’t cover his adult support, though his needs were simple. He didn’t travel or go to restaurants or buy things. All he did was smoke weed.

Winky closed one eye, as though trying to remember. “Weren’t you going to open a tattoo parlor?”