Chapter 3

I suppose I chose the pot business over making liquor, because I had some personal issues. It wasn’t all strictly a business decision I have to admit. I used the product to help with my PTSD anxiety and ease the depression attacks. Since I grew it, I had access to the best strains of the hemp related plants. Even Trina admitted to smoking the product now and then. Well I have to admit that it was more now, than it had been before she got involved with me. We smoked it before having sex. It made it easier to do certain things with our inhibitions reduced.

On the days I didn’t meet Trina, I had a very small pipe of the product after supper. I had only one and only after supper. I didn’t want to alter my reality, just to make it easier to deal with. When I was doing real work, I also had anxiety issues, but I could work through them. The three years on the farm helped me learn that if I took a deep breath. Then concentrated on the work, the anxiety worked itself out.

That is where I was with the product, when I met with Lucy for that first mornings school work. Fortunately we were both early risers. She baked biscuits and scrambled eggs with cheese before we began her classroom work for the day.

“After supper tonight, I want to try some of your product from the hills. You can try some of my product at the same time. In the mean time you are going to learn how to test the soil, and how to change it’s composition. Those changes will make a big difference in how big the plant grows and it will increase your yield. Trust me you will thank me one day,” I suggested.

“You are giving me a break from the holler, so I already thank you,” she explained

The kitchen’s slop sink, usually found in a barn, emptied through the wall of the shack. The gray water ran directly onto the ground outside. The composting toilet was set against another wall and behind a circular curtain. I had it inside, because I hated to spend twenty minutes shivering in the cold. I was willing to remove the paper bag full of feces from the toilet, and then take it to a burn barrel outside once a week or so. The composting toilet was a sealed unit when not in use. Grandpa Harold’s place wasn’t very sanitary, but it was livable. Which was another reason I was looking for a new place to call home.

Before the sun came up she got started on her classroom. When the day began to warm up, we went to the field in the old pick up truck. The cargo bed was filled by the Cub Cadet and a red plastic five gallon gas can. I had a home made plow to drag along behind it. The previous owner had thrown in all the equipment he used on the Cubbie. I found that I could use it all myself.

I had Lucy walk behind the Cubbie and pick up any stones it turned over. There were a few even after my fourth trip over the field. None too large for the mountain girl to haul to the edge of the field. I explained that there would be at least a five feet space between each plant.

“Those spaces I planned to use for a fast growing tomato tree type plant and pumpkins this year. “Just something to Hide the plants without shading them too much. The Ivy type vines covered the old chain link fence pretty well. I hoped they kept it from jumping out at anyone in the air. A state police traffic plane for instance. There were only three months a year that I had to worry about it after that it returned to a normal working farm.

Lucy and I spent a whole week testing the soil, then adding nutrients by hand to each of the growing beds for the product. It was a scientific approach to the growing of the product. There was also a huge amount of luck involved. You could only plan on so much intervention, after that mother nature could fuck you at any time.

Lucy was a good cook, and didn’t mind cooking at all. She also made excellent sweet tea, which was a staple of any southern household. I had to admit that I would miss her when our time together came to an end. Lucy would have made a great wife, if she would only have sex with me. She was only fifteen, so I didn’t make a move on her.

On the day I drove her to meet Amos, I said to her. “If you ever want to come off the mountain, I can find work for you.”

“Thank you Mister Tyler, but my roots go deep up there. I’m kind of engaged to a kid from the adjacent farm,” she said.

“Well he will be a lucky man to have you,” I suggested. We spent another ten minutes waiting for Amos to show. When he did, I threw her back pack into the back of the truck. I had slipped an envelope into her pack with two one hundred dollar bills inside it. There was one bill for each of the weeks she had worked on my farm. It wasn’t enough obviously but it was better than nothing. It wasn’t so much that she would feel compelled to mention it either. I hadn’t agreed, nor planned to pay her anything. She was just such a good worker, I felt the need to pay her.

I watched Amos drive away and felt a little lonely. It was a feeling of loss really. I wasn’t at all used to it. Since my time on the prison farm I was beginning to feel things differently. I didn’t feel angry all the time, but I still felt anxious and depressed now and then.

I began my search for a building to use as a home and a storage facility in earnest the next day. If and when the pot started to flow from the mountain growers, there would be no room for it at Harold’s farm. I had already begun looking, but had zero luck by that time. I did have several months to find something so I wasn’t paniced.

It was then when a post-it note on the bulletin board at the FCX caught my eye. I had gone in to buy fertilizer for the various crops I planned to plant in the back ten acres. I was desperate enough to consider anything when I saw the note.

The note read: 16’ by 40’ prefab chicken house built on your site in a day. Buy our house today and be in business tomorrow. I wrote his number in my little black book. Then there was a number for a construction company based in Sparta. It looked as though I was going to have to put all my eggs in one basket at least for a while.