neutral subject. “Madeline still racing?” The thought of her sailing was one of his favorite images for reasons he couldn’t place, but there it was—little Madeline Rousseau, shifting her weight to rock her boat and create her own wind, arriving at the marina a mile ahead of her becalmed competition. “She still racing Lasers?” he pressed when Brandon didn’t respond. “One hell of a sailor,” he added, as if defending the question.
He decided right then not to tell anyone about the mastitis just yet. The longer he kept the severity to himself, the less real it seemed—even if it coiled inside him like a scream. He imagined his herd, led by old Pearl herself, marching up the slaughter chute. Then Norm too, the steel bolt crushing the thumb-sized notch at the back of his skull, birds scattering at the pneumatic hiss.
8
M ADELINE KNEW the guard ducks wouldn’t shut up until long after she’d closed the trapdoor beneath the garage of the well-kept rental house nobody lived in on the western outskirts of Abbotsford.
The ducks were Fisher’s brainstorm. A dog they’d have to feed, train and walk, but if they built a shallow pond and planted barley and buckwheat, the mallards would come. And there was no more delicate or reliable alarm system, he insisted, than nervous mallards.
She felt the familiar rush of fear and excitement as the hatch clanked into place above her and muffled the quacking, leaving her with the ruckus of rustling PVC pipes, humming lights and a hissing CO2 generator. It was sweaty-hot, the moist air ripe with too many plants growing and exhaling in too small a space.
When Fisher first led her into this dungeon he’d acted like he was showing her some sunken treasure. The cockiness of pot growers astounded her, everyone was so self-congratulatory about growing hearty weeds that would stand five feet in September if you tossed seeds behind the barn in May. Still, they fawned over their homely shrubs and sticky flowers as if they were purple orchids.
Please
. Even the most spectacular buds looked like glorified sedge or burweed. Yet pot apparently brainwashed people into thinking it was not only breathtakingly beautiful and smelled heavenly but also channeled the supernatural—hallelujah!—and was worth, pound for pound, more than gold. So they grew these pumped-up clones that maximized speedand potency such that if you lit one on fire you could forget your name in the time it took for one long inhale.
Theoretically, there wasn’t all that much for her to do other than prune, harvest, clip and cure. Timers and pumps watered and fed the plants the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus they would’ve absorbed naturally if they’d been rooted in soil instead of rock wool. And six-hundred-watt bulbs delivered as much fake sunshine as the plants could handle. Still, there were so many things that could go wrong. If the power failed, everything died within twenty-four hours. Too many nutrients? The plants suffered heart attacks. She studied watermarks in the low ceiling. If water dripped onto the sodium lights, they’d explode.
Madeline hadn’t been here in five days. It didn’t look like anyone else had, either, except to cram more plants inside. Fisher had promised a max of four hundred. Right. There was barely enough room to get around the tables. After counting more than five hundred wide-leafed clones quivering in a fake two-knot breeze, she considered climbing out for good instead of being trapped inside when the trigger-fingered Mounties showed up wired on bad coffee. Fisher admitted he was juggling more than ten grows, which probably meant over twenty. But he insisted this was their baby, their safest op. Sure.
Dozens of baby clones—still trapped beneath humidity domes—should have been replanted days ago. And half the plants in the vegetation room belonged in the flowering room. She checked the thermostat: ninety-three. Far too hot, particularly considering that the rooms
He decided right then not to tell anyone about the mastitis just yet. The longer he kept the severity to himself, the less real it seemed—even if it coiled inside him like a scream. He imagined his herd, led by old Pearl herself, marching up the slaughter chute. Then Norm too, the steel bolt crushing the thumb-sized notch at the back of his skull, birds scattering at the pneumatic hiss.
8
M ADELINE KNEW the guard ducks wouldn’t shut up until long after she’d closed the trapdoor beneath the garage of the well-kept rental house nobody lived in on the western outskirts of Abbotsford.
The ducks were Fisher’s brainstorm. A dog they’d have to feed, train and walk, but if they built a shallow pond and planted barley and buckwheat, the mallards would come. And there was no more delicate or reliable alarm system, he insisted, than nervous mallards.
She felt the familiar rush of fear and excitement as the hatch clanked into place above her and muffled the quacking, leaving her with the ruckus of rustling PVC pipes, humming lights and a hissing CO2 generator. It was sweaty-hot, the moist air ripe with too many plants growing and exhaling in too small a space.
When Fisher first led her into this dungeon he’d acted like he was showing her some sunken treasure. The cockiness of pot growers astounded her, everyone was so self-congratulatory about growing hearty weeds that would stand five feet in September if you tossed seeds behind the barn in May. Still, they fawned over their homely shrubs and sticky flowers as if they were purple orchids.
Please
. Even the most spectacular buds looked like glorified sedge or burweed. Yet pot apparently brainwashed people into thinking it was not only breathtakingly beautiful and smelled heavenly but also channeled the supernatural—hallelujah!—and was worth, pound for pound, more than gold. So they grew these pumped-up clones that maximized speedand potency such that if you lit one on fire you could forget your name in the time it took for one long inhale.
Theoretically, there wasn’t all that much for her to do other than prune, harvest, clip and cure. Timers and pumps watered and fed the plants the nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus they would’ve absorbed naturally if they’d been rooted in soil instead of rock wool. And six-hundred-watt bulbs delivered as much fake sunshine as the plants could handle. Still, there were so many things that could go wrong. If the power failed, everything died within twenty-four hours. Too many nutrients? The plants suffered heart attacks. She studied watermarks in the low ceiling. If water dripped onto the sodium lights, they’d explode.
Madeline hadn’t been here in five days. It didn’t look like anyone else had, either, except to cram more plants inside. Fisher had promised a max of four hundred. Right. There was barely enough room to get around the tables. After counting more than five hundred wide-leafed clones quivering in a fake two-knot breeze, she considered climbing out for good instead of being trapped inside when the trigger-fingered Mounties showed up wired on bad coffee. Fisher admitted he was juggling more than ten grows, which probably meant over twenty. But he insisted this was their baby, their safest op. Sure.
Dozens of baby clones—still trapped beneath humidity domes—should have been replanted days ago. And half the plants in the vegetation room belonged in the flowering room. She checked the thermostat: ninety-three. Far too hot, particularly considering that the rooms
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