Where the Wild Things Grow

Mink snuck a glance up at the deputy as he rooted behind junk for the box. He was still suspicious about trusting the young man. What sort of deputy wore a Packers cap whilst in uniform? He’d given his hand and word though, and that was enough for the Montana way. But even so, he was still barely a kid, and a city kid at that. Didn’t belong out here; hell, there wasn’t even a cutthroat scar on his throat.
         Mink swore under his breath as he tossed aside the crap that had piled up around the edges of the room. The old records that he and Perish had danced to when they’d been young; Eli’s rusting tricycle; the cracked display box of medals. It seemed all this family left behind was junk. If he still had his left leg below the knee, he’d have been able to clear all this out in a day. But Mink was the sort who just got on with living. It was only a damn snake bite, he’d muttered, as Perish had sucked the venom from the wound. It was until the swelling forced him out of trousers and into one of Perish’s skirts did he think to go to the doctor’s in town. He tried to be friendly to the kid: “Whatchya doin’ all way out here, officer?”
         He winced slightly as the boy took the opportunity to slump down in the chair that had till now sat untouched since the day Pa died in it. “My folks used to live out here before they moved to the city. It seemed like a better place to raise the kids, ya’ll know. Got myself two boys. The eldest was bout getting old enough to start making that sort of trouble; the type that don’t leave ya. Well, I thought to myself, got to get him out, get the family out, my wife and all. So we found a bit of land out here that used to be part of the family’s and moved out here.”
         “Cohen, ya said. Sure don’t sound like the sort of people who live ‘out here’.”
         “Well, my father was a travelling salesman or somekind. My ma, though, she was a Root, from out Salem’s Creek way.”
         Mink nodded; he knew the Root’s. A good family, even if they were only hay farmers. Wasn’t it Old Mabel Root that had dug herself out of a snow drift after three weeks to turn up in town just in time for her own funeral? Maybe the kid was of better stock than he’d first thought. His hand finally found the box he was looking for and he lifted it into his lap. It was simple, made of rough uncut wood. Eli had fashioned it from a chunk of the old tree in the garden blown clean away by a lightening strike years ago, saving it from a slow rotting death. That kid always did fancy lost causes.
         Perhaps the kid sensed Mink’s suspicions. “Is that it? Hey, don’t worry, old man; I’m cool. I just want an ounce. Just leaves: don’t want to die of no cancer, if you know what I mean.”
         Mink decided it was best if he didn’t return what he presumed was a joke with a look in the deputy’s eye; he preferred people that took their living seriously. He slipped a packet out of the box and handed it to the officer, the weed wrapped tightly in old newspapers from decades ago, stories of droughts, dry dirt, and string tied round a shotgun trigger.
         The kid played with it in his fingers before slipping it into his back pocket. “Guess you and I, we’re tight now, old timer. Right?” Mink didn’t know what that was supposed to mean so he just nodded again, and followed the officer to the door.
         With his hand on the frame, the officer turned to look at Mink. “Just so you know,” he leant towards Mink and whispered to him in friendly coated animosity, “so long as this is all it is. Ya know, just a little bit of habit for you, the town, and,” he nudged Mink, “the occasional upstanding officer of the law.”
         Mink let his chest sink. “Officer, look outside. See all that?” He swept his arm. “See how much land I got to tend to? I got my horses. And that’s what I do.”
         
         Mink stood in the doorway, watching until even the plume of dust behind the patrol car had disappeared over the horizon. He looked around at the fields scattered with horses. Once, all of them had been his: he’d had to sell most of the land two summers back to buy enough hay to keep the stock alive through the drought.
         He wandered over to the barns. Perish was probably lost again in one of them, somewhere amongst the rows and rows of potted plants. A regular little weed factory. Damn little city boy, probably never crossed his mind that land people could enterprise for themselves.
All this they’d grown from one plant, the only possession Eli had left behind that had any sort of value. Mink supposed he must have picked up the taste before he’d come back from the desert. The only farmers Mink knew who’d smoked the stuff had started the habit out in ‘Nam: it was probably one of those army things. He probably should try smoking some himself one day; find out what all the fuss was about. Perish had tried some once and had turned the green of the leaves themselves. Maybe it only worked for softer people.
         He hoped that the dry summer wouldn’t keep the city folks from coming out for the holidays again: this crop was going to be too big to shift on his own, certainly for if his only customers were locals. But if holiday season was good, well, maybe he’d be able to get enough money together to buy back one of his fields, stop the endless creep of package built log cabins that stood empty for eight months of the year. Maybe everything he saw would be his again, and he could get back to the proper life. Would be nice to be able to enjoy it before he coughed one last time. Better to be able to die on your own land – that was what he’d told Eli before he’d gone off to fight. It was true too – it was better to die on your own land.