Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 93961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93961 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 470(@200wpm)___ 376(@250wpm)___ 313(@300wpm)
“You’re not having any liquor or any weed when you’re on medication.” He paused in front of her. “And no damn peyote either.”
Again, Sybil rolled her eyes.
“This is delicious lemonade,” I said, interrupting their war of wills.
“Jury made it this morning before heading off to work,” Grandma Sybil explained. “Used the lemons from the lemon tree out the back. It’s over a hundred years old, you know, and gives us some of the finest lemon juice in the state. Jury says it’s all in the way you squeeze the juice. You gotta do it right with your hands, coax the juice out real slow.”
“Jury is Grandma’s boyfriend,” Caleb explained.
“Yes, and he’s very good with his hands,” she said with a playful wink.
Caleb paled at his grandmother’s innuendo.
“How did you hurt your ankle?” I asked, suppressing a smile at the old lady’s mischievousness
“Sex act,” she said, taking a casual sip of her drink.
My lemonade caught in the back of my throat and almost exited out my nose.
“Jesus Christ,” Caleb said, looking pained.
“We have a chair,” she started to explain. “A recliner. Big enough for two people—”
Caleb stood up. “I think I’ll fetch some of that banana loaf I saw in the kitchen.”
He hastily made his escape off the porch and out of earshot of his feisty grandmother. When I looked over at Grandma Sybil, an amused grin curled on her lips and a mischievous glint sparkled in her eyes.
“Now that we’ve gotten rid of the fun police, pass me that box on the table over there, will you, sweetheart?”
She nodded toward the wicker and glass table beside me. On top of it was a vintage wooden box, intricately carved and about the size of a jewelry box. I handed it to her and watched on, amused, as she pulled out a silver hip flask. Unscrewing the lid, she poured a decent nip of liquor into her lemonade, then offered me the flask. I shook my head.
“Caleb’s a good boy. Sweet. But damn if he’s not infuriating, fussing over me like I’m an old woman. I broke my foot in two places having some rather fun sexy time with my man. Don’t mean I have to sit here in purgatory until I can walk again. I like my liquor and I like my weed. And I usually like them together. When you get to my age, you’ll see, you won’t be told you can’t have either.” She added an extra nip to her lemonade and rescrewed the cap. Placing the flask back in the box, she handed it back to me, just as Caleb came back into the room with a plate of banana loaf. She winked at me. We had a secret.
“Is it safe to come back out?” Caleb asked.
“Just having some girl talk,” Grandma Sybil replied. She raised her drink to her bright red lips, but Caleb smoothly glided past her and took it out of her hand before she had a chance to take a sip. He smelled it and gave her a filthy look.
“Seriously, Sybil?”
She glared at him and smacked her bejeweled fingers against the arms of her chair. “Goddamnit.”
“If you’ve got to have something, you’re better off having a joint than mixing this with your meds.”
“Fine. Get me some weed and I’ll gladly give up the liquor.”
“Now where in the hell am I going to get you some weed when the whole goddamn south has run dry?”
“You can visit your granddaddy’s cabin. Last time I was out there I saw a few plants growing rather nicely down by the river. I’m not sure if they would’ve survived when the river got high last winter, but it’s worth a look.”
“I doubt anything survived the flood,” Caleb said.
Grandma Sybil turned her attention to me. “Did my grandson tell you I used to look after the weed production for the Kings in the 1970s. We grew the best buds in the South. Plump. Aromatic. With a purple-tinged hue. It was potent. Sweet and smooth. We had a roaring trade, earned the Kings a fortune. Of course, this was in the day before they shifted their focus to pussy and pornographic movies.”
Hearing the words pussy and pornographic almost sent another spray of lemonade out of my nose.
“Wait, I thought you said the Kings weren’t involved with drugs.”
I said it to Caleb. But it was Grandma Sybil who replied.
“Hutch never worried about weed. He enjoyed it. More than alcohol. He always said liquor was worse than cannabis. It was the heroin and the opiates he despised. The shit he saw destroy his fellow comrades in the war.” She smiled, her eyes fading as she recalled her memories of times long past. “He encouraged it, you know. The cannabis fields. Taught me everything there was about growing a crop. From sewing it to cultivating the plants into fat, bud-producing plants. He was a purposeful man, my Hutch. He was a gentle man with gentle ways. He saw the merit in those plants, so he loved them—gave them life, if you will—then gave them to me to raise.” She shrugged. “And I turned them into a money tree.”