Poster Boy (8 page)

“Breast milk has carcinogens?” The thought made me queasy. “And nobody's doing anything about it?”

“You are, Gray,” said Mom, walking past Dad to grab some plastic bags. “And it's just great. I'm going to go, right now, and return these things for healthier alternatives.”

Dad glared at her back. “Well, you're not taking my shampoo.”

“Coal tars are on the American Cancer Society list,” I said, more confident with Mom on side.

Shampoo in hand, Dad met my eye. “The plastic of your iPod there is made using hundreds of chemical compounds. The cotton in your goddamn brand-name clothes is the most heavily pesticided crop in the world.”

I don't think I'd ever heard Dad swear in front of me before.

“The creature comforts of this modern world come with a price, Gray.”

“Cancer?”

He threw up his hands.

“You want to live like a caveman, go right ahead. It'll save me some money.” He smiled but it wasn't funny.

“Ethan,” said Mom, sounding disappointed. “We're all working toward the same objective — ”

“We all need to relax is what we need to do.” He sounded anything but relaxed.

“Relax?” said Mom in disbelief. “Relax?”

“Yes, and enjoy Maggie while we still — ”

“This is no time to relax.”

Dad shook his head. “I give up.”

“Great attitude.” She started jamming things in a shopping bag.

Dad took his tainted shampoo and left.

“Sorry, Mom.” Though I was pissed at Dad, I hated to see them argue.

“No, you are not sorry,” she said sternly. “It only makes sense to err on the safe side. Right?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Come on, help me bag. I'm going to return these things.”

“Can you return stuff that's already been used?”

“I don't see why not.” She sounded ready for a fight.

* * *

I'm not sure how, but Mom managed to return every last item and arrived home with organic this and that, non-toxic cleansers, unbleached toilet paper, etc.

“Had quite the public argument with the manager,” she said, laughing. She seemed all hopped. “People were stopping to watch but what did I care?”

Sure glad I wasn't there.

“I want to drive out to this organic farm my friend Kath told me about. Their food's supposed to have life-giving properties.” She was talking really fast. “Why don't you come with me, Gray? You can practice your highway driving.”

“Shouldn't we put these groceries away?”

“We can do that after. Let's go before it gets too late. Their stand closes at four, I think.”

“Yeah, sure.” I wasn't doing anything and I'd only ever driven on the highway once before. It was sick to go that fast.

After pulling out of the driveway, I gave the car that burst of gas for that rush of accelerating from a stop.

A few minutes down the road, it dawned on me that whenever I hit the gas, I was pumping out a hit of carcinogens. I pulled up to a stoplight thinking how the guy on his bike beside us was inhaling my exhaust, and the kid on the corner being pushed in her stroller. Her little nose was happily sucking it all in.

Man, I hated knowing this shit.

I tried to ease off on the gas after that, take advantage of hills and coast as much as possible.

“I read about this substance,” said Mom. “Oh, what's its name? Something fruits and vegetables produce to fight off pests and molds. It's found just under the skin and has cancer-fighting properties. Is even marketed as a cure.” She waved her hand, knocking the rearview mirror. She didn't notice so I fixed it. “Sprayed produce doesn't have to work to fight off pests so it doesn't produce the substance. Or much of it. Oh, what's it called…”

Up ahead I could see the light turn yellow. Normally I'd race up to an intersection and more or less ram on the brakes, but I took my foot off the gas and let the car coast the rest of the way to what was now a red light.

“I'm going to start cooking more,” Mom went on. “Not just dinner, but breakfast, too. Even your lunches. No more fast food.”

We were going slug slow. If I timed it right, I might just get to the light as it turned green again and never actually come to a stop. The guy behind me laid on the horn and Mom jumped.

“What was that?”

“Some jerk wanting to hurry up and stop.”

* * *

Over the weathered roadside stand read a hand-carved sign:
Produce That Makes You Happy
. Were these people so old school they didn't even know enough to call their stuff organic?

It was real quiet. Maybe spring came earlier to the country, because there were pale green buds on bushes and trees, something I hadn't noticed happening in town, and white snowdrops bloomed along the base of the produce stand.

Built on a slope, the farm backed onto a wooded park where we used to go for family hikes when Maggie and I were little. There was a creek running down the west side that we used to dam with rocks. We'd make pretend boats out of sticks and race them to the dam. From the top of the park you could see all the way downtown.

“Lovely afternoon,” said the woman working the stand.

“Yes,” said Mom. “Yes, it is. Heard terrific things about your produce.”

The woman just smiled. A thick mash of gray curls raged on her head like a small storm. She had these weird eyes, one brown and one pale blue, like a husky's. Her gaze was steady as a dog's, too. In contrast to the tense, jerky movements of my mother as she tested vegetables, this woman didn't move a muscle. For a minute I imagined this was on purpose, to try and calm my mom down. It was strange watching them together.

Being only March, there wasn't that much to choose from: green leafy things I didn't know the names of, chives, some squashes, onions, eggs, jars of jam, tomato sauce and various pickled things. There was a basket of muffins for a dollar each. At the end of the table were these doll-sized pillows. Above the pillows was a small sign that read
Happy Valley Farm: Nacie and Milan Daskaloff
. A small
Help Wanted
sign hung above that.

“And you're Nacie?” said Mom, pointing at the sign.

“I am.”

“And you grow all this yourself?”

“With my husband, Milan.”

“Must be an awful lot of work. I've always wanted to grow vegetables but it's hard to find the time.” Mom rattled away, holding a bouquet of chives to her nose. She had a stiff plastic smile on her face but I didn't think she realized it.

“I'm Julia, by the way, and this is my son, Gray.”

“Julia,” she repeated with a nod. “And Gray.” She was studying me with her calm two-tone eyes when this chicken shot out of nowhere, leapt on my foot and banged its beak into my knee.

“Ow!” I yelled, shaking it off.

“Cla-rence,” said Nacie slowly, and the bird tucked in its red neck, guilty as hell, and ran off, ass feathers trembling. “Means he trusts you,” she said as I rubbed the front of my knee. Clarence, I guess, was a rooster, not a chicken. “He'd peck you in the back of the knee if he didn't.”

Flattering. Knee throbbing, I checked my jeans for blood. Nacie just smiled at me.

Up the lane, I could see their farmhouse with its sweeping front porch and a laundry line of swaying sheets that ran from the porch's corner to a tree. Nice, I thought, not using a dryer. There was an orchard to the right of the house and a pond with a giant weeping willow whose branch tips swept the water's surface. Farther up the slope were the growing fields and a couple of outbuildings painted bright red, which looked cool against the green.

I wished I'd brought my camera. I'd take a picture of this woman's wacky eyes for starters. And a close-up of that rooster's butt. The pond would be dope with all the reflections and shit. I had a sudden urge to bolt up the hill and climb that big-ass tree.

Coming down the lane toward the house was a gray-haired guy and what looked like a small horse. The man was dressed in a tweed cap, khaki pants tucked into high rubber boots, white button-down shirt and stretched-out brown cardigan. He looked like someone out of one of those English TV dramas.

The horse looked our way and barked a deep booming bark that echoed up the hillside. A dog? The man hushed him and turned in behind the laundry, the freak-dog following.

Mom bought some of each vegetable, some pickled beets, a couple of jars of plum jam and three of tomato sauce. Nacie didn't provide any bags — I think you were expected to bring your own — but she sold crocheted cotton ones. Crocheted by her, we found out. A clever way to make a few more bucks, I thought, but also decent. These old people lived clean.

“Would be good to stop using plastic bags,” I said to Mom. “Producing them is real polluting and incinerating them a huge source of dioxins.”

Nacie smiled at me. “Is that so?”

I nodded and smiled back.

“Okay,” said Mom, and she bought every last crocheted bag, twenty some in all.

Nacie picked up one of the little pillows and slipped it into a bag.

“For you,” she said to Mom.

“Thanks,” said Mom without asking what the hell it was for. She started down to the car.

I looked at Nacie and was about to ask myself when she said, “It's a sleep pillow, made of lavender and flax seeds, to lay over the eyes at night. The flax has a cooling effect and the lavender calms, helps you sleep.”

I nodded. “Thanks.” If anyone needed sleep it was my mother.

In the car, my knee still hurt. I pulled up my pant leg to see a purple and yellow bruise starting.

By the time we got home, Mom was exhausted and went right to bed. I made her take the sleep pillow, told her how to use it. Dad helped me put the groceries away but kept making these stupid comments.

“Goat's milk, huh? Don't goats eat tin cans?”

He picked up the new shampoo. It was a leafy-green color. Organics was the name, the label claiming seventy percent organic ingredients.

“It's the other thirty percent you have worry about,” said Dad.

“I doubt it,” I said.

“Let me guess. Costs twice as much as regular shampoo.”

As I stuffed the shopping bags under the sink, I saw two Slurpee cups in the garbage. Dad must have taken Maggie when we were out. The amount of food coloring in that shit!

Just to prove Dad wrong about the shampoo and tell him so, I looked Organics up on the net.

Turned out it had just as much chemical crap as normal shampoo. Piss me off. Using the name Organics. Didn't anyone have any morals anymore? Or was Dad right that these small amounts weren't a big deal? But then what about the billion people flushing these chemicals down the drain into streams, lakes and the feckin' ocean. And what happened when they got mixed up with chemicals in bleach, detergents, turpentine and whatever else was going down our drains? The fish bathed in it, we ate the fish… man, this world was messed.

Just to screw myself even more, I looked up babies, breast milk and carcinogens.

A newborn baby in America has 230 industrial chemicals in its blood and urine the morning it's born — 190 of which are linked to cancer.

Jeez! I punched off the computer screen. I needed to go find Davis and nuke some brain cells. No doubt dope was grown with killer pesticides 'cause the bikers and gangs who grew it wouldn't give a crap. But I refused to think about that.

Davis's line was busy so I grabbed my camera and went over there.

10
Spermbags

Davis lived with his dad because his mom traveled so much, teaching yoga at various “voodoo centers,” as his dad called them. Yoga was what she got into after being married to Davis's dad. “Her detox,” Davis called it.

In his room, Davis was sprinkling leaf onto some papers.

“Look in there,” he said, pointing to his desk.

“Why?”

“Just look. Side cabinet.” His eyebrows did a little dance.

I opened the cabinet door and was literally blinded by the light. A hole had been hacked into the cabinet's back wall, and a lamp set in the hole was shining on a half dozen little plants.

“Grow light,” he explained. “Gray, meet my girls.”

“Are you kidding me?” I shook my head.

“Well, I hope they're girls because the females are the only ones that produce bud. And I'm going organic with them, you'll be happy to know. They're grown with love, organic compost, and some of this stuff.” He picked up a little plastic bottle. African violet plant food. “They go nuts for this stuff. Makes them sing and do the hula.”

“What do you do when they outgrow your desk?”

“Plant them.”

“Where?”

“Dunno yet.”

“Your dad wants you, Davis,” called Laurie, rapping on the door.

“Dad's slave,” whispered Davis, hooking his thumb at the door. Laurie was stepmom number two. Mom Two, as Davis called her. There was Mom One, and his actual mom who he called Real Mom.

Davis's dad met Laurie at an AA meeting. Davis said the only reason his dad had gone to the meetings was that he'd heard it was an easy place to meet women because they were all vulnerable with shame.

“One minute,” called Davis, licking the rolling papers.

“Now,” called back his dad.

“He wants to show you something with the fish,” said Laurie anxiously.

Davis pulled the joint through his lips and slipped it in his jacket pocket. “He got a fresh salmon off a buddy who's a commercial fisherman. He's all proud. Thinks he caught it himself.”

* * *

Davis's dad stood over the sink, a bloodied knife in one hand, a beer in the other.

“Come here, Dave. You, too, Gray,” he ordered.

“Go see,” urged Laurie.

There was a crucifix over the sink, a large cheesy pink thing that must have been new because it was too big for me to have not noticed before.