The Marijuana Chronicles

“And outside, a view of the back of the house, looking up to the watchtower porch.”

“I like the way you think, kid,” B. cooed.

“But in order to get the right perspective, I’m going to have to set up my easel over there …” I pointed to a spot in her neighbor’s backyard, near the enclosed vegetable garden.

“Oh, Eric,” B. sighed, removing the remaining scrap of reefer from her lips and stashing it in the folds of her kaftan. “I don’t know. That would mean asking that girl for permission to let you set up in her backyard, and I …”

“Well, unless your neighbor’s really unfriendly, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind allowing me to work there. It wouldn’t take long.”

B. looked at me and then glanced over at her neighbor’s backyard. “Are you feeling any buzz from that joint?” she asked. “That was supposed to be pretty good stuff.”

I replied that, unfortunately, I had not felt any notable effect. “Maybe next time,” I said, adding: “So, what do you think? I could go next door and ask your neighbor for permission to set up my things in her yard and set a date for—”

“No, no, no, dear, we’ll go together,” B. replied, taking my arm and pulling me up the stairs to the back porch and into the kitchen. “But first let’s get the lemonade—and we’ll also bring the brownies.”

4.

B. did not stand on ceremony when the time came to a

“Hi! I’m Barbara, but you can call me Booba or maybe Babs or whatever the heck else you might come up with, and this is Eric, and we’re stopping by to say hello and ask if Eric might be allowed to stand in your backyard to paint a picture—of the back of my house, that is, not of your place; that would be an invasion of privacy, and I assure you that we’re decent people and not into snooping or anything like that.” B. managed to blurt out all of this before her neighbor, a woman who appeared to be a few years younger than myself, could even utter a word to welcome us. “Oh! And we brought a little snack. Very refreshing on a day like this. It’s so hot.”

“Well, hello. Nice to meet you,” the younger woman replied. “I’m Claire. You live next door? Come in. Come in. You’re right, it’s hot. Don’t stand there melting.”

We stepped into a cool living room—there was no air-conditioning, but dark curtains were pulled shut to keep out the sun—outfitted with a large, oval-shaped rug and very little furniture. Near the center of the room lay four cats in various positions of repose.

“Let’s go to the back porch,” Claire said. “Here, let me carry that pitcher. I’ll get some glasses.”

“Thanks, dear. I’m delighted to meet you and also very embarrassed that I haven’t made an effort to say hello before today.”

“Oh, that’s okay. I’ve been here awhile but mostly I’ve kept to myself,” Claire responded, piquing B.’s curiosity.

“Why’s that, dear? You’re on the lam? Ru

“No, nothing so dramatic,” Claire said. “I had been working as a schoolteacher a few towns over, closer to the river …”

“The community college?” B. asked.

“No, an elementary school. Let’s just say that I was getting tired of it, and I also had to undergo an operation …”

“Nothing serious?”

“Not really, just routine, but after that I wanted a change. So I looked around and I moved here. I wanted room for a vegetable garden.”

“What do you do now?” I asked, anticipating B.’s next question.

“I copy-edit material for medical journals. Work at home. I’m not a doctor or a scientist but I’m good with technical language. I’ve copy-edited users’ manuals for all kinds of appliances too. Really anonymous literary work, you could say.”

We all laughed, and I mentioned that I was illustrating a book about modern inventions.

“Is that what you do?” Claire asked. “Barbara said something about painting.”

“Yes, I’m an illustrator, and she has commissioned me to draw some pictures of her house …”

“For my husband, Bob, for our wedding a

“I think that’s a very original idea for an a

“Or to Bob,” B. said reflexively.

“What do you all do?” Claire asked.

“Oh, I used to do this and that; I used to be a secretary at Bob’s company, in fact. As for my husband, he’s in gravel.”

“Gravel?” Claire and I responded in unison.

“Yes. He owns a company that sells gravel for driveways, for private roads, for gardens.”

“I suppose most people don’t think much about gravel,” I said.

“No, dear, it’s not the sexiest subject. But hey, it bought us a house and all the junk that’s in it, and here we are!”

Claire’s screened-in back porch was smaller than B.’s. Because Claire’s house was also built into the side of the same hill, its top floor overlooked the backyard from what felt like a high perch. She disappeared into her kitchen to fetch some glasses, plates, and a tray, and soon returned.

“Even though it’s hot out there, would you like to see the garden?” she proposed. “In fact, there’s a part of the vegetable garden that’s covered. It’s shady, and I think it would be fun to enjoy this snack together down there.”

“Sounds good!” B. replied.

We placed the pitcher, brownies, and other items on the tray and left it on the lowest step of the staircase that led down to the backyard, then followed Claire as first she led us on a tour around the exterior of her house.

“Did you do all of the landscaping yourself?” I asked. “Did you make the flower bed walls?”

“Yes,” Claire said. “I saved the branches I had cut down off the trees at the lower end of the yard and just started stacking them; I liked the way they looked and I like the way they’ve aged.”

Around the house, everything looked as though it had very naturally sprung up on its own—flower beds, groups of flowering shrubs or young trees with very thin trunks—but Claire explained that she had carefully pla

“What’s this gang over here?” B. asked as we made our way around the far side of the house and returned to the backyard.

Claire told us that the shaded patch Barbara had noticed was filled with Christmas fern, maidenhair fern, lady fern, and Japanese painted fern.

“There really are so many kinds of fern? Who knew?” B. said, as she poked around in the pockets of her kaftan.

“Over there you have a butterfly bush, a beauty bush, and a spice bush,” Claire pointed out, “and besides the big oaks—you have some too, Barbara—among the trees, there are some dogwoods, a white pine, and a Stewartia, which the Japanese call the ‘summer camellia’; it’s native to Korea and southern Japan. They have a beautiful flower.”

“I think I noticed them earlier this summer,” B. said as she bent down to pick up our refreshments. We all headed over to Claire’s fenced-in vegetable and herb garden. As she had indicated, a light-colored tarp covered about a fourth of the large enclosure, casting shade over a patch of grass where nothing had been planted. We spread out there, on the ground. B. poured three glasses of lemonade, and Claire cut and served the brownies on small clear-glass plates.

“That’s where I’d like to set up my easel to paint my picture of Babs’s house,” I said, pointing to a spot a few feet away from the far end of the enclosed garden.

“That’s fine,” Claire replied. “Whenever you want, just come and set up your things.”

“Hey, everybody!” B. exclaimed. “Let’s smoke some pot!”

“Huh?” Claire responded. “Really? I’m growing some, you know.”