The Adventures of Flash Jackson Read Online Free Page B

mother or others would bring her every once in a while. She used her own waste as fertilizer (don’t get me going on the specifics of that —it was quite an involved process, and not very pleasant to talk about, even for me) and got her water from a stream that ran nearby. In short, she preferred to do things her own way.
    You might be wondering to yourself, now, why didn’t that foolish girl see what an interesting grandmother she had, and why didn’t she go out there and spend more time with her? There are two answers to that. One, it was a god-awful pain in the ass to get to my grandmother’s place, and that was the way she liked it. She wasn’t crazy about having visitors, not even her own relations. Two, my grandmother and I never did have much to say to each other. She didn’t approve of girls who wore shorts, for example. In her opinion, a woman ought to wear a long plain dress, and not let any part of her show except for her hands and face. Ankles were out of the question. So you can imagine her reaction whenever she saw me in cutoffs and a halter top. There are other examples I could give, but you get the picture.
    Once in a while, some curious soul would go out there to see if they could strike up an acquaintance with my grandmother. This was usually a graduate student, or some religious type, or somebody like that. I have read a bit of Henry David Thoreau’s Walden , and I see how folks living a modern life could be interested in someone who was living “deliberately,” as Mr. Thoreau said—which I took to mean living like you meant it, doing everything for yourself and not relying on anybody else to help you. Grandma was nothing if not deliberate, and she never wanted anything to do with anybody from the outside world. It was hard enough just to get her to talk to my mother and to me.
    She had reason to be careful of outsiders, too. Another thing about my grandmother that I don’t mention much, for obvious reasons, is that she had a big old patch of marijuana growing out there in the woods. She’d been using it medicinally for decades. I don’t think she even knew it was illegal. She smoked it herself once in a while in an old pipe, but mostly she burned it over her patients, whoever they might happen to be, and chanted the little “spells” that she’d learned when she was a girl—I don’t know if they were really spells or not, but they sure sounded like it, and stuff like that didn’t help her reputation any.
    There was another kind of person who went out to see my grandmother: those who had someone sick at home, and who needed her tocome take care of them. You’d be surprised how many people still have more faith in the old ways than they do in the new. Grandma didn’t trust many people, but if there was somebody in a bad way somewhere she’d always agree to go out and see them, after hearing a description of their symptoms and bringing along the things that sounded right. Often as not that included a little box full of dope. She’d smoked me up good a few times before, when I was sick—though I was rarely ill as a child, except the one winter when I got pneumonia, and the odd cold.
    My grandmother, the pothead. I don’t know how many plants she had out there, maybe ten or twelve. The law had never given her any trouble, but sometimes high school kids snuck out there and tried to help themselves to her stash. I guess it probably would have been the kind of thing boys dared each other to do. I know some boys who were likely to do such a thing, and to tear up her garden besides, just out of plain meanness. It had happened before.
    So I knew what was in store for me when Mother got back with the old lady. I’d have to drink some nasty brew that made your tongue want to curl up and die, she’d burn a little of the green stuff, and that would be that. Strange thing was, it always worked. She’d put her