back at us. “I reckon we can work something out.”
We wave goodbye now as I pull the Acura out of the driveway and proceed down the mountainside with the cop car trailing behind us.
At $2,300 a pound for top-quality commercial product, we can’t lose. We’ll become the dealers’ dealers’ dealer. It was that simple — just one little favor on behalf of the Universe, and now things will never be the same.
“Just one problem,” I say to CJ as we lumber down the bumpy dirt road. “Where are we gonna get an extra thirteen grand?”
“Not sure yet. I didn’t think that far ahead.”
Kenny and Walt had agreed to a sale price of $2,300 per pound, but on the condition that we buy ten pounds or more at a time. After all our scrimping and saving, CJ and I had only $10,000 in the operating account, leaving us well short of the $23,000 needed for the first purchase. They’d told us to return in three weeks, after the weed had been dried and trimmed and ready to move.
There’s no time to waste. Growers like Kenny and Walt have wholesalers driving in from all over the country to pick up merchandise. I’d even heard of dealers from out-of-state descending onto the Triangle during harvest season and buying up a grower’s entire yield in one trip. In the days of the Trap, when the supply of marijuana on the market was still finite — once a grower sold out of his stock — it meant just that, no mas . Then, his wholesalers would be left scrambling to find other growers. After all, a dope dealer ain’t much good to nobody without any dope to sell.
“I’ve got an idea,” I say to CJ, though I don’t speak it aloud. It’s the only thing that comes to mind for a pusher in need of a quick cash injection. The old-fashioned way. The ski mask way.
Invasion
This game is a motherfucker, and boy I ain’t never lied. You worship the ground it walks on all these years, and then finally it shows you some love back. Now you’re out here getting money — you probably even think shit is sweet, don’t you? That’s when the tax man appears, demanding his cut. He doesn’t send you a bill, either. Your money or your life, punk — one way or another, you’re gonna run that shit. Speaking of someone who owes too much to the game, this loaded .38 cocked inches from my face has me thinking I might have some unpaid debt.
His adrenaline is kicking, breath coming heavy, and through the eye sockets in his ski mask, I see his pupils darting frantically left to right. An old fashioned Jooks is underway — a jack, a lick, a kick-door — a motherfucking home invasion. I’d give anything to be on the other side of that gun, if only for the thrill. You have to admire the set of nuts on these two — broad daylight on one of the busiest streets in Eugene. Caught us with our pants down alright, but that’s how the game goes — always when you’re at your weakest.
We’d been in the living room at the time, four of us gathered around the TV playing a spirited game of Mario Kart for Nintendo 64 — our favorite pastime aside from the drinking and the whoring.
“Bet me fifty on this one, pussy,” CJ slaps down half-a-C on the coffee table in front of me.
“Make it a hundred,” I say, tossing out another fifty. “I get to be Toad.”
“Fuck that, he’s the best character. I’ll be Donkey Kong and you be Bowser.”
The gale banter of two assholes who have no clue their fortune is about to pivot on a dime.
Shit is good right now — too good, in fact. It’s spring of ’07 and Kenny and Walt’s bricks are moving like clockwork. We’ve leveled up alright — you want a bag of weed to smoke, you better call someone else. Our clientele has thinned to a handful of lieutenants who take the work from us in quarters, halves, and whole pounds, then disperse them onto the invisible market. It took a few months after our initial meeting in Southern Oregon to get straightened out, but once we were, it was full steam ahead.
Each week we rotate, CJ or myself, making the drive south under the protective blanket of darkness with a duffel bag full of cash, then return north hours later with ten fluffy pounds of immaculate merchandise stuffed inside of it. Once again, the plan is to undercut — I want all the pushers on my team. Soon, we’re clearing over $2,000 in profit a week, more than we could make in three months selling crumbs for Sweet Tea.
“We’re fucking rich,” CJ mused one day after throwing a fresh thousand stack into the fireproof safe.
He wasn’t wrong. Barely twenty-one years old, and we were each making a teacher’s salary off of our humble little trade. The way things are going I won’t even need to get a summer job. This is all I’ve ever wanted — freedom. I didn’t waste it.
I stopped going to class almost entirely — after all, what could my professors tell me if I’m already doing better than them? Besides, I’m probably hungover from last night when I drank until the lights went black. No more virgin Johnny, either — I’m stuffing my nub into every sloppy cow who will have me. Life is a feast and every day is like Thanksgiving.
No wonder I didn’t see it coming.
There’s a loud knock on the front door, and then the creaking sound of it swinging wide open. Nothing unusual about this — we often leave the door unlocked during the day for the constant stream of friends and roommates coming and going.
“Anybody home?” a man’s voice yells out.
“Who is it?” CJ calls back, but by then they’re already standing in the living room — two black-clad figures wearing ski masks and Timberland boots. The taller one’s got a .45 and the shorter one a snub nose .38, the midnight special. It’s an invasion alright — don’t get no realer than this.
“Uhhh, can I help you?” CJ says, like he’s waiting tables.
“Where the fuck is it?!” the tall one screams.
“Where’s what?”
He’s barely got the question out before a snuff across the chin sends him sprawling to the floor.
“The fucking work!” the man yells as he unloads his Timberland into CJ’s ribs.
“Check the basement,” the shorter one says.
Without hesitating, the tall one heads for the basement entrance next to the kitchen. Ah, so they’ve been in the house before? Makes sense — to have the drop on someone like these two have on us requires inside information. Could be anyone — a competitor, a disgruntled customer, or a pair of wolves who smelled dinner. Or maybe, just maybe, this is payback.
“Everybody on the fucking floor!” the short one commands.
Kissing dirty carpet now, I think back to the Oriental kid. Karma is playing out before my eyes.
After returning from our meeting with Kenny and Walt in Southern Oregon, we’d gone on the prowl for a victim. We needed investment capital fast — $13,000 — before they sold off their supply to another dealer. Since neither of us had a relative who would loan us the cash, that left only one other option: the Jooks.
The Jooks was common in the days of the Trap, accepted as a legitimate reality of the game like cops and droughts and price fluctuations. Even in an airy college town like Eugene, pushers were getting ripped-off on a weekly basis. For the small timers and
