Testify

And finally, Dr. Scorski took over. Preston Scorski. He could not take any more of Rev. Westmoreland’s talk. Dr. Scorski just stepped forward from the gathering of people and began. The deluge of people packed in the pews immediately locked into him as if he was some sort of messenger. Like in church. Only this was a church. Downtown Methodist. Count me amongst the anxious, the interested, in a room bearing witness. Like a huge prayer meeting. Wide open like a jazz orchestra. Players playing off one another. Call and response. Energy. Fire. Belief. Right here, right now. Can I get a witness? You know how it goes: people play off one another. Jump up and just testify. Talk until they can’t talk no more.
Rev. Westmoreland had the floor all to himself moments ago and he’d been on a roll. Going on and on about the evils of marijuana, how it would bring the city down, “drag us all into the tar pits of degradation and the chaos of decadence. . . the weed people,” he said. . . “let us not be weak now and allow this wickedness into our lives and destroy us. It has destroyed lives and will destroy more if we, the good people of this city, do not draw the line.”
But then Dr. Scorski sensed a dead spot in Rev. Westmoreland’s oratory, and he rose up, like a wave at the ocean and swooped in on the meeting, to seize control of the room from Rev. Westmoreland’s testimonials. There was a rhythmic hum throughout the church when Rev. Westmoreland was speaking but it eased. Everyone there, me included, turned to hear Dr. Scorski now. Scorski was a curious figure. Always had been. I didn’t think he could captivate a church full of people though. Not like he did suddenly.
But this was marijuana. Reefer. His expertise. The life he had come to lead and lead well it seemed.
“Don’t believe it people….Westmoreland is not who he says he is….Tell ‘em Rev. Tell them who you really are. Tell them of your life with marijuana…the weed.”
As he spoke, everyone turned around to the back where Dr. Scorski stood in his white coat. He began pacing around slowly, not far, but just enough to find his rhythm, his voice.
Scorski had the church now. Not everyday someone calls out a minister in that minister’s own church. But Dr. Scorski had done it. He looked like a doctor. Like he knew some things. Rev. Westmoreland just stood there quietly. The moment got away from him. Was it all true, Rev? What is Scorski talking about?

Secret Life of Plants

Where shall I start? My father, Raymond Jackson died in a crazy motorcycle accident while traveling to Daytona Beach Bike Week back in 2013. I dropped out of community college. I had promised my father I would try to get a college degree, so I enrolled in some business courses in a show of good faith. When he died, I got on with the life I wanted to lead: my own flower shop. Community college? Not me. It sounded like it went on forever.
I opened a flower shop on Michigan Avenue downtown in Lansing, Michigan in the heart of the city with some money he left behind. I always loved flowers and the outdoors and had told myself for years that one day I would get a flower shop down in some city and show people how to love nature and make a living loving it. T.J.’s Flower World was the name of the joint I opened, and I rented out one of the best vacant buildings on the block. And I got to tell you there were vacant buildings everywhere when I set my plan in motion.
The economy was sputtering. Most of the factories were long closed. R.E.O. Olds and his famous Oldsmobile company was long gone. Work was scattered. People pushing shopping carts full of soda cans for trade on the streets. Leaving the city like it was World War II and the Germans were about to bomb it. I wasn’t from Lansing, so it looked kind of eerie at times, like I was a fool to try to start a business here.
But I was trying to start a business there in Lansing. There was opportunity. Marijuana. Yes, weed. Reefer. The Ganga. Gage, as Louis Armstrong, called it. The Chronic. That is how I now found myself at Downtown Methodist where people had come to decide if medical marijuana would be allowed to be openly sold in the city. Like chicken wings. Or booze. Lansing people were kind of careful so the way it was to start was by using the sick. People with illnesses and diseases. This was the way the weed advocates always did it. Reefer is good for you. Reefer can make you feel better and even get better. The people even voted on and got a referendum passed that made it legal to use marijuana if you were sick and some doctor said it would help you.
That is what Rev. Westmoreland tried to reverse by holding the meeting at his church. Marijuana wasn’t the antidote for anything. It was, well, weed. Reefer. It got you high. Legalizing it would lead to weed smoking everywhere. What was the good in that?

I read about the coming wave of ‘medical marijuana’ in Lansing in the local newspapers but my uncle, Ralph Jackson, my father’s brother, worked downtown at the state capitol and he told me one day at the flower shop that it looked like there was going to be a citizen referendum, and medical marijuana would become a reality.
“Marijuana, Uncle Ralph? Medicine?” I acted like I didn’t care even though I did.
“Yep. The people want it.”
“Are you sure? People here are kind of, I don’t know, old fashioned.”
“Don’t believe it. Plus, the old fashioned people aren’t going to vote. They aren’t paying attention. The religious folks won’t either. Besides, who is to say marijuana is a sin. I never tried the stuff, but I don’t know what the fuss is about.”
I didn’t say anything. Hadn’t been a smoker either over the years. One time in high school years ago I had gotten high with some of my dedicated burnout friends. Found some joints in an alley down in Kalamazoo where my family had lived for a while and my curiosity got the best of me. Took a few puffs of one of the mystery joints and had never felt that good before in my life. Everything suddenly was better than it ever could be.
I went to McDonald’s and bought some burgers and a vanilla shake, and my burgers tasted like a Porterhouse steak. The vanilla shake was so good I went back inside the McDonald’s and asked a few questions.
“You guys put like candy in this or something?”
The girl at the counter looked at me like I was out of my mind.
“Candy…in the shake. What’s up?” Then I burst out laughing. I laughed so hard I got dizzy. I bought two more shakes to be sure. When I got home after eating those burgers I cut on some music, and I swore every song was the best song ever recorded in the history of human existence. It didn’t matter what I listened to either. I even put on Johnny Cash’s album, “Folsom Prison Blues,” and it sounded amazing. I couldn’t believe it. I hated country music and especially hated Johnny Cash’s music.
“I guess times are a changing, Uncle Ralph, people are living and letting live.”
“Shit. Live and let live? This is about what things are always about.”
“What?”
“You mean you don’t know? You are in the flower business.”
“Money?”
“Come on now. Guy the other day was on some radio show talking about he wanted to be a caregiver. Like a nurse. Help people who are sick by providing weed. Bullshit. But you know what. Who cares? Marijuana is part of this place now like whiskey right? Every President for the last 30 years except Reagan and the Bush, the father, smoked it. Barack Obama was a hardcore weed head, wasn’t he? Ain’t that right?”
I played idiot as my Uncle Ralph ran it all down. Times had changed. People had changed. And so maybe it was time at last for the world to be safe for marijuana.
As soon as my Uncle Ralph left the shop that day I began calling around to buy some growing equipment for my soon to be opened medical marijuana operation. Figured that I would just offer it as part of my flower service. I knew everything there was to know about plants anyway and marijuana was a plant. It would take no time to master the craft. I also figured I had a head start on all of the others interested in medical marijuana; my uncle had given me the inside track on the law so I could get ready. Would be open for business on the first day the law took effect and catch the wave. Everyone else would be scrambling around like amateurs.
But months later when the medical marijuana referendum passed overwhelmingly and was set to take effect, I saw the future and it was a bit more complex. A lot of other people right in my neighborhood had gotten wind of the new law and saw the weed as their cash crop. People who probably used to curse at hippies and people with dreadlocks were now going to go into the medical marijuana business.
Michigan Avenue, the city’s main drag, and the street where I had situated my flower shop, might as well have been renamed “Medical Marijuana Avenue.” Every vacant house, abandoned building, and even some vacant lots had been leased by aspiring medical marijuana entrepreneurs. People were even ditching their food truck businesses to move into medical marijuana. Once a street that was part of Lansing’s post-industrial death zone after the auto industry left town, Michigan Avenue now was simmering with foot traffic and economic bustle all connected with the coming legalization of marijuana as medicine. Would see it as I drove into my little flower shop further down the street and would shake my head.
I had purchased all of the necessary items to get going, including growing equipment, and special lights to make my plants grow. Even got a subscription to HIGH TIMES magazine (I used a fake name) so I could keep up with the trade as it evolved. Built a room beneath my flower shop where that part of my business would be located and did everything I could to make certain the smell would be contained down there. Did not want to be obvious and wide open like everyone else. I was going to fly way below the radar like a liquor store that didn’t even have a sign out front. My plan was the long distance run. Pick up some extra business with medical marijuana and slowly build. Even remained low key when my regular flower customers would come in and start talking about all of the medical marijuana shops opening up and complaining about them. Rev. Westmoreland was one of the early visitors.
“It is insane, I say,” he said that day and he sounded so convincing.
Rev. Kevin Westmoreland was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan. His family was still in Detroit but he had left that city decades ago to attend divinity school, way over in the city of Holland near Lake Michigan. He still every now and then made it down to Detroit to see his people but mostly he spent his time in Lansing. He came out of school, he said once, with a mission, and he was “gonna fulfill it.” I never bothered to ask him what it was he had to do in life but I did ask him what was insane about marijuana.
“The city is doomed if this marijuana law passes.”
“Why you say that?”
I played stupid and just clipped some flowers of dead weeds as he talked. I didn’t want to get lumped in with everyone else even though I guess I was everyone else. And I liked him. Black minister who bought flowers for the sick and shut-in members of his church, Downtown Methodist. Was always walking about right in the community, and in the streets. Not some minister who was afraid of people. He was the people. Last Easter he bought all of my lilies months in advance I had on order. I barely knew him and he just waltzed in and bought them all.
“All of the marijuana shops up and down this street about to open up. It is going to be like Jamaica in Lansing, I tell ya’. A city full of drug addicts. Zombies. People who won’t be able to think straight.” He chuckled a bit.
“It looks like this in Jamaica?”
“I don’t know. I imagine it does. They got marijuana down there right? There must be drug addicts.”
“Never been to Jamaica.”
I was hoping he would pick up his flowers and go and not keep chattering but he did that day. I also kept wondering if he knew I had applied for a license from the state of Michigan to sell the weed to people in need, sick folk.
“I haven’t either, Teke, but I heard they sell marijuana at the airports down there. That is where this is headed. Weed is for losers. It is going to ruin this town.”
He wanted me to say I was with him. Wasn’t happening. Nope. Rev. Westmoreland was good people, but I was going to play this one slow.
“And what about all of the people in jail, who are in there for selling the stuff. Young black kids doing 10 years, and now, it is gonna be legal? I’m not getting it.”
I kept clipping flowers, staying busy in the shop as he chatted it up. People rotting in jail over illegal marijuana moves was something I thought about as well. It was some lousy shit actually but I didn’t have a response. Besides, I said, this is just medical marijuana; wasn’t like they had declared the stuff legal, like Lansing was Amsterdam or something.
“I hear ya, Rev. What you hearing about that?”
He didn’t say anything that day. He just kept talking. Everywhere I saw him, he would be talking and doing like he was trying to stop the thing, but I wasn’t really sure what he was trying to do.

As the date got closer and closer, he set up a stand in front of Downtown Methodist with anti-marijuana literature. He also sat there part of the day, stopping people, handing out information, and telling them of other cities and places that had legalized marijuana, and which had “gone to hell” he said. I drove by there just about everyday just to see how long he could keep going and how much support he had for his resistance. It was steady and strong. Always someone standing with him taking in the instant sermon. ‘Marijuana was lilies from the devil.’ I heard him shouting once, ‘tulips. . . roses. . . ‘
Rev. Westmoreland even began asking for money in the collection plate on Sundays just to resist the encroachment of marijuana. The church was organizing a public forum soon and wanted to bring in some experts to once and for all settle this craziness. I could hardly believe that the church was throwing down the gauntlet on marijuana with so many other vices the church could address. Drunks and alcoholics were always coming to the church because the church provided free dinner several nights a week. And not to mention all the folks in the church I knew personally who were committed and addicted gamblers.
Wasn’t getting it. Rev. Westmoreland was messing up my groove. Like the friend who won’t leave your house even after you tell him you have a date coming over and you do expect things to get steamy, Rev. Westmoreland was that guy. But it also felt like there was something missing. Like Rev. Westmoreland wasn’t real or he was some sort of trickster.


As the date of the public forum approached for Rev. Westmoreland’s last stand against medical marijuana, I strolled the entire neighborhood. I saw the marijuana shops that were about to open that were going to be my competition. Some of the shops were bold. They had marijuana plant symbols in their front windows or marijuana plants painted on the glass of their front windows. Others had gotten marijuana plant neon lights that glowed in the window to try to draw attention to their shop. Then there were the low key establishments who were a little out front but who had taken a few precautions. Usually their shop said something about “mental health” or “alternative drug therapies” and then in smaller letters below all of the holistic jargon, two letters: “MM” for “medical marijuana.”
Then there were the names of the shops. “Higher Love Products.” “Top of the Morning Bud.” “Premium Cannabis.” “Spacey Love.” And then the cleverer ones: “Elevation Wellness Associates.” “Michigan Miracles and Medicine.”
The names were yet another way people were trying to lure folks into their shops to become patients. It was a bunch of crock. Those of us selling it were pharmacists and the people using it were in ill health. I laughed every time I thought about it. No fucking way.
I knew a bunch of people who had been getting high for years. Friends from way back. Committed weed heads that owned water bongs in their houses and still spent much of their time soaring in the sky. They had always bought their smoke off the streets just about anywhere illegally. They would now be patients.
Diane Berrien, an older woman who lived right around the corner, brought this up as well. She came into the shop three or four times a week and looked at flowers like people looked at cats. They were like her pets. She had to have fresh flowers and plants in her house all the time.
“They keep me from getting down,” she would tell me. “They are like company.”
However, the last time she came in all she talked about was marijuana and that she was beginning to see more and more burnout types in the neighborhood. Like they were waiting for the big day when they could score weed and not worry about getting jammed.
“I think I am going to get a gun. I don’t like guns, and I know that seems odd for Michigan, but I don’t like all of this coming marijuana activity.”
“I hear ya, Ms. Berrien.”
Customers like Ms. Berrien, I was sure, would be lost once I started into the medical marijuana business. But I was prepared for that. The increased income would offset any business I lost from people like her. And soon, she would return.


The guy who stuck out the most right before the law took effect was Preston Scorski. The guy who was speaking in Rev. Westmoreland’s church right now. He wasn’t from Michigan. He had moved to Michigan from California years ago because it had sophisticated agriculture like California he told me. He had been a motivational speaker out there and one of his main topics had been the wonders of the earth, the beauty of it, and how everything we needed was right there coming out of the ground. Pure California white boy hippie type. He worked mostly in the cooperative grocery stores all around the state of Michigan but now had settled in the Lansing area. His shop, Rising High Medical was just down the street from my flower shop and it looked beautiful. It just buzzed order.
I didn’t know who Scorski was or anything, and that was all the more better. When I finally entered the shop to check it out I was just amazed at the neat rows of lights and growing equipment and other agricultural products he had to offer. He always dressed like a medical doctor complete with shirt and tie, well tailored, and creased dress slacks, white lab coat complete with an engraved name tag that read: “Dr. Preston Scorski.” His hair was shaved close and there wasn’t a speck of beard on his face. He must have shaved two or three times daily just to maintain. Maintain that I’m not a Cali hippie no more look.
“Is it Dr. Scorski?” I couldn’t help but to ask him the first time we met. I didn’t get the whole “doctor” thing. No one had to be a doctor to sell the stuff. But, he had taken it to a new level.
“Yes, sir. You must be Jackson, Teke Jackson?”
“That’s correct, but how you – ”
“No worries. I saw you go in your shop a few times. I also know or try to know all of my competitors.”
“Competitor?”
“Come on, Teke. You need not hide with me. I welcome you to this honored trade. We need to stand together I haven’t told anyone you’re planning to get into this business.”
Now I was really worried because I hadn’t broadcast to anyone that I was thinking of getting in the weed game but I was out. He knew; who else knew? I stretched out my hand to shake Dr. Scorski’s.
“My pleasure, Doctor. Looks like you are well situated here.” Scorski laughed a little bit.
“Well, one doesn’t want to dive off the high dive and not do your best, if you know what I mean. This is going to be a big deal, so act like it is all I say. Especially when they extend beyond just medical.”
I scanned the store. It reminded me of the army it was so precise. There was nothing visible in his space except posters about growing hydroponic tomatoes and horticulture classes at a nearby community college. He was playing it by the book. Except for the name, ‘Rising High,’ you would not know this place was about to be a hangout for every weed head and career burnout in the city of Lansing proper.
“Are you worried about the feds raiding your place?” I asked out of the blue.
“Not really. The feds have bigger fish to fry as the saying goes than some small time medical marijuana pharmacist. Cocaine, meth, border violations. We are so far below the radar we are not even on earth anymore. Don’t sweat it, Jackson. If anything, watch out for the moralists. Those who will try to stop this by invoking morality. These are people who go home at night and drink bourbon and eat meat.”
Scorski chuckled at himself. Considering the way he had it all figured out I wondered why Westmoreland hadn’t parked himself right in front of Scorski’s store back then and took aim right here.
I didn’t come away from the meeting with Dr. Scorski feeling impressed with him in a serious way. It was more like I knew he had the whole game figured out better than all of us. Smoking weed was an escape. Scorski knew that but he played the game the way you had to play it. I knew better and it was hard to ignore it all.
My good friend Aaron Simpson from back in Kalamzaoo told me what this was really about. Aaron was a musician who starting smoking weed on the music scene. Eventually, he was smoking weed everyday all day and barely got up before 2 or 3 in the afternoon. He hung out all night playing gigs, rehearsing or just hanging, and soon, someone pulled out some joints or a bong. I had been there a few times. It wasn’t long before Aaron smoked every day any time of the day but he was still living his best life.
There were other friends of mine back there in Kalamazoo who smoked weed all the time and none of them were that focused. They got high everyday. They had jobs but they worked their jobs to get high. They got off work and got high. Space cadets. They got high on the way to work, high at lunchtime, stuffed their faces from the munchies, went back to work, only to be thinking about getting high again. These people would be my patients. I was sure that my good friend Aaron Simpson had a prescription for weed right now based on some concocted story to some doctor and I was sure he wasn’t sick or anything. He just wanted to get high all day long and not have to worry about getting busted or running out. All of us about to enter this new trade were just Starbucks for weed heads. We all knew that; it was everyone else who didn’t get it.

Reefer Madness

All of that came before Dr. Scorski seizing the moment and taking control of Rev. Westmoreland’s forum. Rev. Westmoreland had gotten everyone down to the church and for a moment, the floor was all his but now, he was like the tablecloth on some dinner table full of fancy dishes.
“See, people, I could understand the good reverend’s position if he had not once been out here himself, engaged in the selling and use of this product. And now he wants to condemn those of us who have found value in this gift from God. I just can’t get do it. There is nothing at all wrong with marijuana, especially when it is used to help people who are suffering, and this is what all of us intend to do. Rev. Westmoreland for his own personal reasons would deny that to people at a time of great need; I have to stand before you today and object. I mean, I have no choice in this matter. Can anyone, and I stress anyone here today, provide any support for the idea that marijuana is wicked and evil as Rev. Westmoreland is telling people? Can you?”
“What about all of those murders over marijuana in the city; there are killings every month?”
Somebody unknown had yelled from the audience. The gathering was getting antsy. I was beginning to feel as if I was standing in water that was rising over my head slowly. It all sounded so good weeks ago when I talked to my Uncle Ralph and began to picture that extra cash flowing into my coffers. But here I was, caught in some mad, crazy morality play.
“Yea. What about that?” Someone else yelled. The crowd began a slow rumble.
I looked at Rev. Westmoreland and felt terrible for him. I wished he would speak again and say something, but he didn’t. What was the use his face seemed to say. Scorski took the floor, spouted out some wild self-serving rhetoric, and now here we were.
I scanned the room, and it was hard to tell who was in attendance. There were a lot of people wearing dreadlocks, white and black. But mostly, it looked like a regular crowd of people. A Sunday congregation. Ordinary locals. They didn’t even look as if they smoked reefer.
I pulled the flyer for the event out of my pocket again and looked at it. Rev. Westmoreland had promoted the event as a screening of the film. Reefer Madness, followed by a ‘community discussion’ of marijuana to the city. Reefer Madness. I had never seen the film but that was one reason why I had come.
“Excuse me,” I finally said. Dr. Scorski was still bantering and barely heard me. “Excuse me!” I said louder. Dr. Scorski stopped talking and the audience shifted towards me. “If I may interject for a moment, can I just say, can we at least see this film, ‘Reefer Madness,’ and then have the discussion as indicated on the flyer.
Dr. Scorski and some of his hardcore supporters raised their commotion. They got louder.
“Hold on now. I am not taking a position here, but I came, like many here, right, to see the film. Isn’t that correct?”
“Maybe you did, Teke,” Dr. Scorski said, “but that film is old. That film was made in 1938. This is the 21st century. Times have changed. It is a meaningless film. Old news. Besides will you tell people in the room that you have applied for a medical marijuana license, and you will benefit from the law.”
Damn. Dr. Scorski was a snake. I kind of felt that the first time we met but I let it play out. Considering he called himself (and everyone else did) Dr. Scorski and he was not physician of any trade said it all.
“It’s true. Yes. I am hoping to get in the business, but I would like to see the film. It matters to me. Just because I am in this for my own good don’t mean that disqualifies me or anyone. And I would like to hear the community discussion. It is why I came here tonight.”
And, right on cue, as if I were a part of Rev. Westmoreland’s production, the lights in the church suddenly dimmed, a screen slowly lowered in the front near the church altar, and Reefer Madness began. The commotion in the room continued but by the time it was obvious that the film was to be shown, everyone got quiet and paid attention, at least at the beginning.
The film was black and white and clearly old, but it quickly shifted from the credits into a long rhetorical written statement about marijuana, setting up the story whatever that might be, like in many of those old motion picture films:

The motion picture you are about to
witness may startle you .
It would not have been possible
otherwise, to sufficiently
emphasize the frightful toll of the
new drug menace which is destroying
the youth of America in alarmingly
increasing numbers. Marihuana is
that drug — a violent narcotic —
an unspeakable scourge — The Real
Public Enemy Number One !

Its first effect is sudden violent,
uncontrollable laughter, then come
dangerous hallucinations — space
expands — time slows down, almost
stands still…. fixed ideas come
next, conjuring up monstrous
extravagance — followed by emotional
disturbances, the total inability
to direct thoughts, the loss of all
power to resist physical emotions
leading finally to acts of shocking
violence … ending often in
incurable insanity.

The chuckling in the audience began right after that opening statement. It was subdued, at first, like it wasn’t laughter, but it was clear where this was headed. I glanced at Rev. Westmoreland and could see this was not going to end well. Dr. Scorski was a snake, but he was right. No way in hell was this film going to make people turn against marijuana. That was a long time ago. This film would likely make people get high and laugh.
It was obvious there would be no discussion either. The church would be empty soon. I walked over to Rev. Westmoreland as the film continued.
“I know, I know,” he said before I even spoke, “but I had to try. We got thousands of young men, mostly black men in jail on marijuana charges and we think legalizing marijuana is okay before we deal with them. It is wrong.”
“What?”
“I just want to say, Teke, that yes I did once smoke marijuana and even sell it, but that has nothing to do with now. I just want you to know because you tried to help tonight.”
“But wait a minute, what did you just say? I heard you say that before.”
“You mean about black men in jail?”
“Yes.”
“Well, you heard me right. Why should we legalize this drug without first dealing with all of the people in prison for marijuana when it was totally illegal? How can we not?”
“You said that the day we first met, but you didn’t go into it. Why didn’t you just say that all this time?”
“I did, I mean, I have, only people don’t listen. They just waved it off, ignored it. Most of the people who came here still think most of the black men and boys in jail on reefer charges are just criminals. The others, I just call them referendum folk. They don’t give a shit. They just want to win the referendum battle. Dirt bags like Scorski lead that group. He, of all people, is white and privileged and don’t give a damn. He came here for himself. Fucking greenie, hippie muthafucka.”
“Rev!”
“Yea, you heard me. California hippie muthafucka. Fuck him and all the other weed head muthafuckas in this town.”
I don’t know if anyone else heard Rev. Westmoreland whip off the F bomb not to mention the MF bomb, but I had heard enough. Dr. Scorski was nuts, but he was what the future looked like regarding marijuana.
The sick would get their weed. The burnouts would get high legally with government approval and Dr. Scorski and a lot of other people would probably make some money on all of it. As for all those folks in jail on marijuana charges, God help them I thought, as I eased out of the church into the night. I walked into the church seeking answers and walked out more confused. I am pretty sure I wasn’t the only one. I actually felt like going to get high, but I just went home.

Out

The next day as I loaded all my spanking brand new marijuana equipment into my truck in the morning. An urban farmer in Detroit had agreed to buy it all. I told him I would drive it down to him. Diane Berrien walked up and caught me outside my shop. It was mid-afternoon, the day was slow, and I was unsure if she noticed that it was growing equipment in the back of my truck when she walked up.
“How are you, Ms. Berrien? Nice day, huh?”
“Not sure. But I got my gun this morning. I start lessons next week on how to use it. But I feel like I am part of something crazy. People are not supposed to walk around with guns.”
I kept loading. I didn’t want to talk to Mrs. Berrien. I felt like she had fucked it all up like Rev. Westmoreland only in a different way. I played unfriendly and she still followed me into the store and then back out as I loaded the last of the growing lamps.
“You own a gun, Teke?”
“Sure. I don’t generally walk around with them but I have a store, ya know; ya’ never can be sure.”
“Why are you changing your mind, Teke?”
“Changing my mind? Not sure I understand.”
“Medical marijuana. You are getting out.”
“Yea I am out. I guess I was never really in actually.”
“I knew you were getting out, Teke. Just like I knew you were in, but I didn’t say anything. This town is smaller than a gas station bathroom. I know you know that. But you never answered my question.”
“What was that?”
“Why are you getting out?”
“The best answer is I am not sure. Just my gut. My father always said that. Go with your first impulse. It don’t lie. I didn’t feel right from the start and then last night was it.”
“But why?”
“I said, Mrs. Berrien, my gut. My father – “
“No, I mean. Is your gut telling you this is wrong or something, because you would have done well. You didn’t come across like you were a drug dealer.”
“Not sure if I know how to handle that. Now if you don’t mind – “
“Was it because of Scorski or Rev. Westmoreland?” She cut me off again. I finished loading the equipment and hesitated to respond.
“Well?” she asked pressing me. “Because let me tell you, Scorski is a snake. Did you know he is not even a real doctor. He wears that lab coat and people think he went to medical school. They would probably let him take their blood pressure. He is one of those California hippies. Rich, white, privileged but always coming to other places trying to take over. But we will see, he will get his, you watch.”
I felt a headache coming on as I finished talking Diane Berrien. If only I had some medical marijuana, I am sure I could feel better. I was also sure my friend Aaron never had headaches like the one I was getting. He was in burnout heaven always. Not a worry in the world. I wasn’t going to answer her question.
“Well, Mrs. Berrien. I got to make my drop in Detroit. I will think about the answer to your question and get back. Come by the store anytime.”
“I will. And perhaps you can give me some gun safety lessons. I need to be confident with my pistol.”
“Sure, Mrs. Berrien. You know where to find me. But I got to tell you, I am pretty sure you don’t need that gun around here.”