In the light of day, the drive between Empire Ridge and Bloomington is among the most scenic in the state. Southern Indiana is where the Ice Age stalled three hundred thousand years ago, the glaciers that rolled the northern half of the state and most of the Midwest flat and nondescript retreating back into the Great Lakes and Canada. You’d think people could get past the stereotypes. Corn rows as far as the eye can see. Republicans as numerous as mold spores. A basketball goal in every driveway or backyard, or better yet nailed to the side of a barn, hovering over a dusty court of game-saving shots. And yet, even after three hundred thousand years, nobody outside the state seems to know southern Indiana exists. The rolling knobs. The limestone caves carved out by underground streams. The valleys of sumac, maple, gingko, and sweet gum with their autumn hues of magenta, gold, orange, and peach. And Indiana University, one of the most liberal campuses in the country.
Not disputing basketball goals. We’re fucknuts crazy about that sport.
I stop at a gas station in Nashville for some malt liquor and cigarettes. With its own “Little Nashville Opry,” Nashville, Indiana, fashions itself as the next best thing to the country music capital, never mind there are six Nashvilles in America larger than the one in Indiana. John Mellencamp’s home isn’t too far from the city limits, but Nashville continues to hang its star on its quaint storefronts and the fact Theodore Clement Steele died here.
T. C. Steele was once apparently an American Impressionist painter of some repute. Whatever. I’ve seen Steele’s “House of the Singing Winds” oil on canvas, and it’s no American Fool album.
I pull into the apartment complex just off Kirkwood Avenue. My breath smells of malted hops and cigarettes from the Mickey’s Big Mouths and Marlboro Lights I’ve been inhaling since Nashville. Brinks and Cash’s place is on the first floor, steps away from where I park. I can already hear the music. Predictably, it’s “Sugar Magnolia” by the Grateful Dead. I just walk in. Cash is sitting on the couch, a bag of half-eaten Cool Ranch Doritos in his lap.
“Cash, what the fuck you up to, buddy?”
“Holy shit!” Cash stands up and sends the bag of tortilla chips flying off his lap. He bounds across the room, grabbing me in an inebriated bear hug. “Hey, Brinks, we got ourselves a guest!”
Neil Brinkley is Cash’s half-brother. He and I worked together at the box factory last summer. Brinks is a year younger than me, two years younger than Cash. Whereas a night with Cash is guaranteed to give you a good buzz, a night with Cash and Brinks together is guaranteed to give you an out-of-body experience. Brinks has a bad habit of slipping me LSD wrapped in rice paper during concerts. And by slipping me, I mean Brinks says to me, “Hey, Fitzpatrick, want to try this?” and I say, “Sure.”
Brinks screams from the kitchen. “Get the fuck out of here!” He walks into the family room, a slice of pizza in one hand, a small glass pipe in the other. He hands me the pipe. “Light her up, Fitzpatrick!”
I pull my lighter out of my pocket and raise the pipe to my lips. “You sure, Brinks?”
He nods. “Take a big fucking hit off that bitch. I just packed her.”
I raise the well-packed pipe to eye level, a half-dime sized nest of pungent marijuana just beyond the end of my nose. Judging by the smell of it—that strong hemp odor of sage, rope, and grass clippings mixed together—this isn’t the kind of weed I should be fucking around with. I place my finger on the hole at the end of the pipe, lighting a corner of the nest rather than the whole thing to leave some of the marijuana still green for my friends. I inhale the smoke and start to feel it inside my mouth and in my nose. I release my finger from the hole at the other end, at the same time sucking hard. The smoke surges down into my lungs. Like needles on my throat, inside my chest. I cough.
“Ewwwhuuuughhhh!”
I’m lightheaded. I bend over, handing the pipe to Cash. Each hard, guttural cough intensifies the buzz.
I cough maybe a dozen times.
Brinks pats me on the back. “Dude, take it easy. We got all night.” He hands me a tall ceramic cup of an unidentified steaming liquid.
“What is this?”
“Some hot tea with honey. It’ll keep your throat from hurting too bad. And with tokes like that, your throat’s gonna be hurting pretty bad.”
“Thanks.” I take a sip. The tea feels good on my throat, but there’s something not right about its flavor. Even with the honey, the taste is, for lack of a better descriptor, dirty.
Before I can think on it some more, the pipe is back to me. Another cough fit hits me.
“Jesus, Hank! Brinks and I got like a half shoebox of this stuff. You don’t need to try and smoke it all at once.”
“Fuck off, Cash!” The marijuana is doing my talking. I sip my tea.
We continued to smoke for maybe an hour. They handed me the pipe. I coughed. I drank my tea.
They handed me the pipe. I coughed. I drank my tea. Lather, rinse, repeat.
We’ve repacked that goddamn bowl at least three times. Our smoke-off ends when we laugh at a Comedy Central stand-up skit so hard I swallow the teabag at the bottom of my cup.
A piece of the teabag comes back up. I spit it into my hand. It’s brown, almost rubbery. I hold the regurgitated foreign object in the palm of my right hand, poking it with my left index finger. “What the fuck?”I say.
Everything starts to slow down. Time means nothing. A feeling of awkward sadness overwhelms me. I’m uncomfortable, not so much overwhelmed by being sad, but rather hyper-aware of my sadness. A total fucking puddle of melancholy.
Did I call my mom a whore today? Or did I just think it?
When are you getting back, Dad?
Everyone says you’re gone for good, but the joke’s over. Come home.
“Hank?”
“Dad?”
A hand on my shoulder. “Uh, no.”
I lurch up from the couch, startled. “Cash?”
“Yeah, sorry about that.”
“What did you give me?”
“Relax, you’re not gonna die or nuthin. You just drank an entire cup of shroom tea. Given that I put two mushrooms in your tea and you’re holding one in your hand, I think you might have swallowed a mushroom whole.”
Brinks drops to the floor, laughing and in tears. “See you tomorrow, Hank.”