"What the fuck did you think would be on the train tracks, a fucking boat?" I remember responding. Budboy is almost as crazy as me. That fool has a quarter brother! His half brother has a half brother, his family tree is a low lying shrub.
Meanwhile back at the ranch its drop off time, I pull up to the right spot and Budboy spills out, as I pull away he is already dissapearing into the tall corn. You'd think the harvest job, the high risk job is one that make you most nervous, you'd be wrong. I've done both and let me tell you waiting hours for that pick up phone call drives you nuts. When you are out there in the moonlight frantically stuffing garbage bags with fresh sticky bud, you are doing something, you are occupied. The waiting game is a nerves killer. Jesus H Christ I want a beer, but I can't have one, not yet, not until the harvest is all safe and snug in Dan's basement. Then I'll pound three of four just to normalize.
I gotta tell you what its like out there, on the night you dash for cash. When all those organic cash machines you've been tending for six months come home. You are alive, completely and totally alive. It's not, enjoyable, don't think that for an instant, it's stress beyond stress to somewhere else, to somewhere all you smarmy suburban fucks never go in your boring know it all cubicle crouching lives. It's my crack, Ill do it till I'm busted or until my heart gives out. It's just you and the screetching noisy critters. You know you are intruding, the owls, coyotes and farm dogs tell you so. You can walk the same place in the daytime and its completely different, no sign of wildlife. But the night is not our time, we don't belong there, and the varmits tell you so in no uncertain terms. It takes some getting used to. The night vision goggles aren't as useful for harvesting as you might think. I bought some cheap ones and they are always falling out of position away from my eye. A pencil flashlight held in the teeth is what works best for the actual cut and pack work. But that night vision monoscope works great for calming the nerves. You can't see well but at least you have an idea of whats around you. The pitch dark is just too nerve wracking. You always half expect a floodlight to go on and a booming voice to announce, YOU ARE UNDER ARREST. Budboy had a train come up behind and come close to running him over, no lie. Can you imagine? There you are, trudging down the tracks , carrying all the fresh bud you can possibly carry, nerves already shot to shit, when all of a sudden the bright light and the blasing horn of a fast moving night train. On the whole drive back to Dan's house poor Budboy kept insisting I should have warned him that trains acually used those train tracks.
The hours crawl by and finally, finally budboy two ways me for pick up. sometimes it takes two three drive bys to finally get to the pick up spot with no sign of headlights either direction. First time works this time, so I pull over turning off the lights. I hop out and help him load six garbage bags into the back of my pick up truck.
"You stink," I tell him, "take off your sweatshirt and throw in the back." He kind of resists this walking towards the side door to hop in.
"Take off those stinking clothes and throw them in the back!" I yell this time. He does it as quick as possible and then we're off. You don't calm down right away, not with what you're carring in the back. It's a long drive to Dan's and the tension only fades when you get there.
Dan has a nice little house, his wife takes his teenage daughter on a weekend trip every year at this time. Can you guess why? As soon as we get ther we haul the booty up to his attic. I have a room up there sealed off with plastic and a humidifier sitting in the middle of it. Now the mood changes, now we can relax, we dump the bags out on card tables and commence to truly party as we spead the fresh bud evenly out on window screens
saved for this purpose. I can't see budboys head even though he's sitting straight across from me, the bud is piled that high. We don't have time to manicure it, theres too damn much of it, we just spread it out on screens looking for any mold so it doesn't spread. Another year successful, another year complete. It'll run out in six months, until then the living is easy.