Chapter 34

Today we hit a bit of a snag.

Not so much a snag, really, as a ... an awkwardness. A problem that doesn’t have to be a problem, and I won’t let it be, but is still a little uncomfortable for me.

One of the things Hugo does to keep in shape is run. And I mean he runs. I tried to go with him one day, I do some jogging of my own, but within only a few hundred yards I was so out of breath that I just collapsed and told him to keep going, that I’d walk back. Instead, almost without breaking stride, he bent down, picked me up effortlessly and kept going, still running!

Anyhow, he’s taken to exploring different paths and trails. With summer here the neighboring cabins are occupied, and he tends to shy away from them and stick to the wilderness which, even with all the developers, is still pretty plentiful here. He can go gaily through woods and thickets that to me look impassible, and he does.

Almost every time he brings me back a little something from his runs, this time flowers, another time some plant he remembers from all those centuries ago that had some medicinal or other value in his time. He’s brought me willow bark (an analgesic like aspirin; in fact, aspirin was developed from it), St. John’s wort (anti-inflammatory), mint (for poor circulation), foxglove (it’s the source of digitalis for heart conditions) and a bunch of others I don’t recognize but he does. I guess the flora hasn’t changed nearly so much since his time as the fauna.

He’s especially proud of the one he brings today.

“This is exceeding good for many things,” he tells me. “If one is in pain, it makes easier. For those who do not eat well, it makes hunger. For those who sleep poorly, it can make sleep. In evening it may be used to make ease in mind from trouble of day. Do you know it?”

Oh, I know it all right. I saw plenty of it in college, and not a little since.

Cannabis. Mari-fucking-juana.

I ask him where he found it and get the answer I’d pretty much expected. There were a whole bunch of plants all together in a small clearing, he says; he knows where they are and can go back for more if I want.

He’s stumbled across somebody’s private pot plot.

As a lawyer I’m an officer of the court, duty-bound and oath-bound to report such things to the proper authorities. Which is where it gets awkward, because I’m not about to do any such thing in this case for three reasons.

Number one, there’s no way on God’s Earth that I’m prepared to draw this kind of attention to Hugo and me. Hugo’s Tremaine ID is OK for ordinary use, but I’m mindful that the real Jimmy Tremaine was a druggie and probably has some kind of official record to that effect. I’d be too dumb to live if I risked rattling that cage.

Number two, and kind of a rationalization, it won’t be a dealer’s plot. I’m no expert, but I know enough to realize you don’t grow the stuff around here as a commercial enterprise, or anyhow more than really small-time. What’s on the streets is the really strong, refined shit that’s smuggled in from Mexico or God knows where else. This is either strictly private stock or, at worst, kind of “family and friends” with petty cash changing hands; nobody’s using this to hook kids on drugs.