Sweet Hitchhiker Ch. 02

That established the pattern for the next few months. I'd get home from school and Angel would be plopped up on my couch, wearing her 'house uniform', as she called it. Really tiny bikini panties and nothing else, and she made sure she went through some pretty elaborate stretching before giving me a kiss. "Hey, baby. "

"Hey yourself, you sexy devil. What smells so good?"

"Me, I hope. I been in heat for about three hours now, waiting on you. Oh, and there's a cassserole in the oven."

"Turn it off so it don't burn."

Every time I thought it couldn't get more intense she would surprise me. We'd collapse into a puddle when we stopped, and snuggle. Then she'd giggle and bounce to the bathroom, clean up a little, and go turn supper back on. When she was in the kitchen I insisted she wear an apron so nothing interesting got burned. She'd found a frilly little red and white gingham number that looked sexy as hell on her. It was not grandma's apron.

She'd spend two or three days and then disappear. It was getting old, but she deflected everytime I brought it up. I finally put an end to it after six months, when a friend told me she was dealin' over at Central Piedmont, the local community college. She was often seen with this huge black guy, and while they weren't affectionate, they were linked together somehow.

She was there on Tuesday afternoon, all smiles and sexy as hell. Her smile turned to a frown when I told her I wanted her key back.

"What's wrong, sugar? Why you like this all of a sudden?"

"If you don't know how I feel about you by now, you never will, but I don't need a part time woman. I need you in my bed, in my life, a hundred per cent. If you can't do it, and something makes me think you can't, then we're quits. I know you're dealing at Central. I also know who your supplier is. Big Ollie. Really? Couldn't he find a more ganster name? I'm not gonna go through life wondering when I'm going to get a call wanting me to bail you out, or watch you go to jail, because of your lifestyle. Or worse yet, get a call form the hospital or morgue wanting me to claim your body. Walk away from it. You know by now I got money and you'd be safe with me."

Honey broke into tears, that turned into wails, that went to snuffling. I tried to be strong but when she started wailing I opened my arms, and she flew into them. When she finally stopped she looked at me with the saddest eyes I'd ever seen.

"It ain't that simple. If it was you couldn't run me off with a stick. But I owe him, and Big Ollie always gets his money. Until I get him paid off, I have to keep dealin'"

"How much?"

"How much what?"

I snorted. "How much do you owe him?"

"Six grand."

"Why so much?"

"My momma was sick, and then she died. She didn't get the medical attention she needed because she couldn't pay, and who cared about a brokeass old nigger woman? He helped with the bills, then paid for the funeral. I owed him fifteen grand, and I been working for him for two years. He was willing to take it out in trade, but I didn't want to be one of his bitches on Trade Street, so he made me deal."

"Well then, we'll just go see him, give him the money, and tell him to leave you alone."

"Even if you got that kind of money, he won't let me go."

"I think he will, especially if I ask him nicely. Set it up for Friday, and if you leave before then, don't come back."

She went to the bedroom and didn't come back out. I made supper and knocked, telling her it was ready. It was pretty easy to see the tear tracks on her face. Honey was quiet while she ate, then did the dishes and tidyed up before coming into the living room and snuggling beside me.

"Why?"

"Why what?"

"Why you doin' this for me. You're white and i'm just a ni..."

My hand was over her mouth so fast she didn't have time to blink. "I know what you were going to say. You're just a nice girl. And you're right. You know why I'm doing it, nd if you don't you're a bigger idiot than I thought possible. And just so you know, I won't allow anyone to disrespect you, even yourself. You say something stupid and see how quick that hot little ass gets warmed up."

"But..."

I cut her off again. "Why don't we both stop talking? I can think of way better things to do with our mouths."

Everytime she tried to speak for the rest of the night ended up with my tongue in her mouth. Pretty soon she stopped trying, and we went to bed. We just snuggled, instead of our usual habit of trying to break the bed. We'd already broken one, and I didn't think this one would make another month.

She was really quiet when I got home the next day. Finally, she asked me how it could happen. "You go to him, you give him the cash, wish him the best of luck, and leave. It's that simple. What's he gonna say? I don't want the money?"

"More than likely. With him, it's more about the the power than the money, and he still wants me to be one of his girls. I've dodged it by being one of his best dealers, but sooner or later he would have forced the issue. That's why I carry my knife. He might get me, but he's gonna get gaped up a little if he does."

"He ain't takin' you. When we get done he'll be so much dust under your shoes. Believe me?"

"I want to."

......................................................................

The next day, after class, I asked a guy to have a beer with me. We went to the Double Door and got a table off by ourselves. Nat was like me, a vet, but he was a bit different. Nat was about 5'7" tall, and might weigh a hundred twenty. He'd been a tunnel rat in 'Nam, and that took a whole different level of balls, crawling into the tunnels, dodging poison snakes while looking for Charlie, carrying just a pistol and a knife. I'd seen his scars once in a pickup basketball game.

He was having troubles adjusting, and I'd been sharing my homegrown with him from time to time, to keep him on an even keel. We never talked about our service, except in general terms, and I had to talk him down from killing some asshole that called him 'babykiller'. He had the guy against a wall, a Kabar to his neck, and the guy was crying, begging, and had already pissed his pants.

Once I got Nat to let him go, I gently suggest the best thing he could do was keep as much space between him and Nate as possible, and he took it to heart. If they were passing each other on the sidewalk, he walked across the street. Word got out, and most avoided him like the plague.

I laid my problem out to him. He liked Angel, a lot. Said he reminded him of his sister. A sister who'd overdosed on heroin. Except for the occasional weed, he hated drugs with a passion.

Once I was done, I asked for suggestions.

"You don't want to go in there without backup. You could probably beat the shit out of him or anyone he sends, but you can't whip them all at the same time. I'll go."

"All I was askin' for was advice."

"And I'm givin' it to you. If I'm there it might not go sideways, but if it does I got your back."

He wouldn't let it go, so I listened to his advice.

That Friday, a very nervous Angel, Nat, and I took a little trip to the projects on the south side of the city. Ollie was laid up in an apartment, and there were guys hanging around outside, his enforcers, according to Angel. They kind of grouped around us. Nat and Angel were cool, but I was a white guy and stood out.

"What you want?"

I grinned at the guy, which surprised him. The fact that I looked kinda bored didn't make him any happier. "I got business with Ollie. Now, I could go in, or you could have him come out. It don't matter as long as I get to talk to him."

Most were lookin' at me, but a few were payin' attention to Nat. Before it could get ugly I heard a booming voice. "Where the fuck you been, bitch?"

Well now, Ollie was a big dude, six five or better, and had to weigh over three hundred pounds. Not a lot of it was fat, either. Angel had instinctively stepped behind me. He didn't like my grin.

"Call her a bitch again. See what it gets you. She's here to pay you the money she owes you, and when she does you and her are quits. Understand? She won't be working for you any more, and you won't bother her. She's kicked in an extra grand, as a thank you for your help. Take the money. We'll all be better off."

Ollie was beyond pissed. "Fuck that! I own this bitch. She'll do what I tell her."

I sighed. "I asked you not to call her that again."

"What ya gonna do, white boy? I'll kick your ass all over this yard and take your scratch just to teach you a lesson! I'll..."

That was all he got out before I knocked him on his ass. His boys rose up until the heard the slide rack, and looked to see Nat holding a .45. "You boys stay out of it. This will all be over soon."

While Nat had been a tunnel rat, I had been a Marine. A long range recon Marine, and I had my own set of skills. The big man was game and knew a little about fighting, but when it was over he was on the ground, his ass thoroughly kicked. I looked down on him as I spilled the bills, seven grand, over his body.

"Don't come around us no more. If you do, next time I won't stop. You hearin' me?"

The hundred dollar bills were spreading out in the breeze, and his boys were scrambling around to pick them up when we left. I looked at Nat and Angel. "Think it's over?'

Nat grinned. "Nope. You just kicked his ass in front of his home boys. He has to get back at you to save face. Watch your back, brother."

.................................................................

I had two more weeks of class, then I was takin' the summer off. I took Angel straight home, so she would be safe while I finished school. Uncle Buck kind of grinned when he met her. He'd married a Korean when he was there, and knew a little about mixed race relationships. Aunt Kim took to Angel immediately. They never had kids and suddenly she had someone to mother. Angel fit in just fine.

She cried when I left, scared to death for me. I grinned and told her I'd be just fine, but promised to be careful.

When I got back to Charlotte my apartment had been broken into and trashed. Everything I owned was either gone or in pieces. The upside was the landlord saw them and the cops got there in time to arrest two of them. Ollie's boys. He bonded them out, and they ended up with the shit beaten out of them. I had the perfect alibi, at home with witnesses, eighty miles away. Nat just grinned when I asked him about it. "I have no idea what you're talkin' about."

I did my last two weeks living out of a hotel room, and tried my best to get Nat to come back home with me. He declined, heading South to his family, tellin' me he'd see me in the fall.

"No you won't. I can't do school while I'm watching my back. Appalachian State has a similar program, and I'll finish my degree closer to home. You could come up, you know. It ain't that far from my house, and you could live with me."

"You already got a roommate. Best of luck, brother."

I knew I would probably never see him again, and it saddened me. I didn't make friends easily.

It seemed Ollie didn't want to leave it alone, and Nat, tired of him, did something no one suspected. He dropped dime on him, and he got caught receiving five pounds of skunkweed a week later. Ollie got free rent from the state for three to five years. He went to jail swearing he would kill me and Angel, but I didn't have to worry about him for a while.

By now school was over, and Nat came up to visit. We lazed around, smoked some very good weed, and relaxed. The second day he hit me with an idea. "Since your close freind has taken up residence in Raleigh, a supply vacuum has come up. It occurs to me that if you could set me up, we could both make a good bit of coin."

"You sure about that? I'd hate to have to visit you in jail, or you visit me."

"Unlike Ollie, I know how to run a tight ship. There won't be any loose ends. I've already recruited four dealers and I'll only sell to them. That way, if anybody rolls over on me, I'll know who to kill."

Honey was all for it, offering to courier the product. I didn't like thta idea at all. I called a few friends I knew I could trust, who also grew, and ran it by them. In the end, they were all for it. The weed would go far away, and be hard to trace back to them. For lack of better descriptions, we formed a co-op. Nat would get about three hundred pounds or better from five guys every year, and if he controlled distribution, it would last him. The profit would be enough to keep him in money while he finished school. Between us, we had about two hundred pounds left over from last season, so he took that to start his business. I made sure everyone involved knew I would guarantee their money if something went wrong.

By then it was late spring, so I started out the seeds in moist paper towels, then to small cups, then to pots. Probably sixty per cent of the plants never made it to the field, but I had the best shit in the area, so I made sure there were enough to supply my partners.

I took Angel with me to plant the fields, showing her the process. Every field we planted was only about a third of an acre and we planted close to the treeline to avoid detection. Angel really liked the canoe, so every third week or so our friends would join us and we'd float a river, stopping on sandbars to relax and maybe grill. The women all wore nice bathing suits, but Honey rocked the bikini she always wore.

It came in handy once, when a game warden stopped us to see if we were fishing. All we had in our coolers was beer and soft drinks, but most all of us had a joint or two. Honey started fooling with her top, saying it had become untied, and had one of the girls help her adjust it. The warden couldn't keep his eyes off the girls, and he wished us a good day and let us go. They giggled for miles.

Fall came, and we harvested our crop. It had been a good year, damn near perfect growing conditions, and we ended up with almost twelve hundred pounds. I had almost four just off my fields. I wouldn't get rich, but it was a nice chunk of change.

We dealt exclusive with Nat, although we shared a little with family and friends like we always did. I netted about sixty grand after Nat's cut. We decided to hide the money in plain sight. Buck got fifteen grand, and we decided to expand the farm. Sixty acres came up for sale just down the road, and we used his property as collateral and bought it, knowing we could pay the loan off anytime. He put it in both our names, just in case.

I was going back to school, and we decided to put a house on the land. I told Honey she was in charge of that, and after two months of looking we bought the biggest singlewide trailer we could find. It was brand new, and I let her furnish it, surprised at her conservative taste. She laughed. "You think the living room suite was going to be in purple crushed velvet or something? We're gonna raise kids in here, and I..."

It suddenly hit her what she said and she ran out of the house. I caught her at the end of the driveway and scooped her up, carrying her back to the house while she cried and tried to apologize. "You need to go on and hush now. I know we ain't said the words yet, but I'm carryin' you back in to our house, just like I will when we say the words. In case you miss my meaning, Angel Patrice Cunningham, will you marry me? I already got the ring, I was just waitin' for the right time to ask, and now seems good."

Angel was cryin' so hard I set her on the couch and walked into the bedroom, getting the box out of the sock drawer. I turned around just in time to catch her in full leap, knocking us back on the bed. We didn't leave it for four hours, but when we did the ring was on her finger.

After we calmed down, she asked questions. "Are you sure? A lot of people around here are still trying to get over the fact that you got a black girlfriend. How they gonna feel when we get married?"

"I don't give a fuck what other people think. If they can't handle it they don't need to associate with us anymore, because I damn sure I don't want to be friends with them. You already got a set of friends that will be happy for us, who gives a fuck about anyone else."

The wives and girlfriends of the guys we grew with had already accepted her as one of their own. She babysat for them a lot, because she volunteered to. We kept Jim's baby when he and his wife wanted a weekend away, and the way she doted over the little girl made me sure she'd be the perfect mother. If the girls were out somewhere and Honey was disrespected, the rants were epic. The community soon learned to leave them alone.

When Honey showed them the ring, the planning started. She wanted to be a spring bride, so we sat the date for early April. I had gone back to school and breezing through my classes. I was studying accounting, because I had always been good with numbers, able to solve complex problems in my head, and it was like I could just see it. I spent a lot of time from January until April working four nights a week for H & R Block, and they loved me. Between that and the farm, I could declare ligitimate income and keep the tax man from snooping around.

Nat came up over Christmas. He didn't have a family to speak of, much like Honey, so she declared him a brother. She often introduced him that way, and her nickname for him was "Bro". All our grow friends knew who he was, and they included him in any festivities they had planned.

I messed up and got him drunk from home brew Buck had made. He still had his still, and once or twice a year he would fire it up and run a batch, just to make sure he remembered how. It was smooth as silk but would knock you on your ass fast. We had all learned to pace ourselves.

I liked his peach brandy. He would let a peach get almost rotten, then toss it in a quart bottle and leave it for four or five months. Then he'd strain the pulp out, and it tasted so good you almost forgot how strong it was. It took Nat two days to recover, and when he left he had two quarts, as well as a gallon of the straight stuff. We nearly laughed our asses off over the story he told of taking two quarts of the straight stuff to a New Year's eve party, and how many got sick before the night was over. When they recovered they begged him to get them a bottle, but the business days were over for Buck, so he couldn't help them out.

I came home one day to see Honey and Buck in a field behind the house, talking and waving. "What are you guys doing?"

"Laying out a field. I'm figuring two acres ought to do it."

"And what are we supposed tro do with a two acre field, Uncle Buck?"

Honey spoke up. "We're going to grow tomatoes. I like tomatoes, and we need another income revenue in case anyone gets to wonderin' where our money comes from."

"You know anything about growing tomatoes?"

"Not a damn thing, but Buck is gonna teach me."

That led us to a new adventure. We had to build a greenhouse to start the plants, and after deliberation and a lot of consulting, we went with Rutgers, Yellow Boys, and Beefsteaks, proven commercial brands. A bonus to the greenhouse was I could start my pot plants in among the tomatoes. Then we had to transplant them, stake them, keep them weeded and free of pests, and make sure they had enough water to produce. It took all four of us, but we had a good crop, and made some money. Good money. They were already talking about doing two more acres of tomatoes, and maybe an acre apiece of of squash, cucumbers, and green beans.

We kept up our fields of pot, but it was getting a little more difficult. The river had grown in popularity for people canoeing and camping, and a couple of fields had been found by accident. One was raided, the other discovered by a citizen that turned it in, which led to the park service getting interested.