Kirby's Wright's Weblog

Part 2 of Story

The closest I'd come to getting high was raising Kona Gold in plastic buckets out in the backyard. I'd planted seeds Steve gave me in the high potency mix my father used for his hydrangeas; it didn't take long for them to germinate. Because the breadfruit and lauhala trees shaded the low areas, I put the buckets on the shake roof to catch more sun. They were a foot tall in a month and my father never noticed. After I bragged about my green thumb to Steve, he drove me home one day in his Dodge Dart and asked to see the plants. We snuck in through the back gate and I took six buckets off the roof. Steve examined each plant as if he were a doctor making a house call—he sniffed shoots, squeezed stalks, and cut leaves with a Swiss Army knife attached to his key chain. I could see my mother through the screen door preparing dinner; she was wearing a pink dress and a blonde wig. She reminded me of Mrs. Brady in The Brady Bunch. Steve showed me how to increase bud production by pinching the shoots. I was getting nervous because it was almost pau hana time and my hapa haole father would be pulling into the driveway. He was a lawyer and was usually in a bad mood the second he got home from work.
"This'll help production," Steve said as he pinched.
"I can do that later," I replied.
"This your first crop ever?"
"Yeah."
"They're your keikis."
My mother walked out to the lanai carrying a ceramic bowl full of hamburger, bread crumbs, sour cream, and raw eggs. She was making meat loaf from a recipe she'd found in The Boston Globe.
"The secret is the sour cream," she announced .
"Oh, goody," I said, "now we'll all get constipated."
"You used to be a nice boy," she whispered.
To my mother, anything that came out of The Globe was like the Word of God because she'd been born and raised in Brookline. "Hello, Steve," she said as she kneaded the ingredients with one hand. Her fingers were covered with sour cream and bits of raw hamburger.
Steve continued pinching. "Hello, Mrs. Gill."
"Would you boys like a nice cold drink?"
"I'll swig a beer," Steve said.
"How about some guava juice?"
"Beer's got more vitamins."
My mother walked out to the lawn. "My," she said, "what beautiful plants. Is that really marijuana?"
Steve pulled a joint from the pocket of his Aloha shirt. "Wanna puff?"
"Oh, no," my mother said, shaking her head. "I don't want to take a bad trip."
"That's only from LSD," I said.
"Are you boys taking LSD?"
"Only when I surf," Steve replied.
My mother massaged the sour cream into the hamburger. "Better put those plants back before you know who gets home."
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