A few minutes later, Tiger started up again out of nowhere: “You know this is my grandmama’s house,” he whispered, “she came back after the storm, did her best to rebuild so I’d have somewhere to stay, but . . .” He trailed off.
T.C. remembered the floors; half were hardwood and half were plywood.
“She took the rest of her money to Birmingham, said she’s not gon’ stand by and get her heart broken again. But this was all I had left.”
“I’m sorry nigga,” T.C. said. “I shouldn’ta said nothing. I didn’t know.”
“It’s cool. No sad stories. In a few months I’m gon’ fix this place up, knock everything down, start all over. I already got a crew. That Mexican mothafucka that used to play guard with us at Joe Brown, he’s a foreman now. I ran into him on Bourbon Street and we already handled the logistics. I just need the dough.”
T.C. smiled, and they dapped it off. “That’s what’s up,” he said. “I’m glad I could help you out then.”
They laughed like they did, low grunts caught in their throat, and they got in Tiger’s car and drove to Home Depot for filters, fans, and lights.
T.C. was cutting it close with all the new purchases, but he wasn’t going to ask Tiger to contribute, not after he saw his place. He checked his balance on the way out of the store. With the help from MawMaw he might have enough left to last him the two months it took the plants to flower, but he just wouldn’t be able to eat out or anything like that. He supposed that wasn’t a big deal: He stopped by MawMaw’s every night to see her anyway, and she was happy to send him home with extra helpings of roast turkey, dressing, and gravy over rice.
That night at Tiger’s place, they pushed their first cut branches into rock wool cubes, sealed them with plastic, and lined them up in a row under the grow lights.
When they were done, they stood and surveyed the scene.
“All right, all right, I see about you,” Tiger said. “I wasn’t sure, dawg, I wasn’t sure. I thought they had scavenged you at that place, but you back just as ingenious as ever. Let’s celebrate then, nigga.”
They sat on the edge of the bare mattress. T.C. couldn’t afford to buy weed, but Tiger pulled a bag out of his pocket, unwrapped a swisher, licked it, and rolled.
T.C. coughed up the first hit.
“Damn, nigga, you sound like a Mack Truck; you gon’ be high as a mothafucka.”
“I haven’t lit up in a while.”
“Why the hell not?”
“I’m trying to save, nigga. Who you think bought all these cuttings and lights and shit?”
Tiger put the tip of the blunt to his lips. “Well, that’s all gon’ be behind us in a minute, lil’ bro. How long you said it take to flower, two months?”
“Yeah, but this is to sell nigga, not to smoke.”
“I know, I know,” Tiger said, “but how I’ma market it if I don’t sample it first?” He passed the blunt back to T.C., a smile spreading across his face.
T.C. didn’t say anything, just rolled his eyes and passed it between them for a while. This was his favorite part of smoking, the first fifteen minutes. After that, anything could happen, depending on the strain. He might pass out; he might get a ride home and gorge on MawMaw’s homemade jelly cake; he might turn on a movie and try to drown out his certainty that any minute a horde of po-po would bust through Tiger’s front door and send T.C. back to the place he swore he’d never see again. Now, though, he felt an ease in his heart, spreading out and touching everything that even crossed his mind. His problems showed up in different outfits, repositioned as opportunities. Alicia, for instance. He’d been wanting to call her since he came home, but he was afraid of what she would say, that she might try to lock him out of the baby’s life, or her own. Now though, three hits deep, it seemed like if he could just get her on the line, he could explain himself from the most genuine angle. He didn’t know exactly what the words were going to be, but the fact was, he loved that girl, and this baby was his chance to live again.
He reached for his phone.
“Who you calling, mothafucka?”
T.C. shrugged. “I don’t know, I wasn’t sure, but I was thinking about calling Licia.”
“Aww, hell no, put that phone down.” Tiger stood up as if he were going to wrestle it from T.C.’s hands.
“This ain’t the time for that, bruh. You all loaded and shit.”
“I ain’t loaded.”
“You ain’t loaded, you been over there smiling that goofy-ass smile of yours for the last fifteen minutes, that’s how I know you high.”
“Anyway when that ever stopped me from doing something?” T.C. asked.
“Yeah, but you ain’t smoked in a while. You liable to go and say something you can’t unsay, you feel me?”
“Nah, bruh, I just want to tell her I love her, that I’m always going to be there for her.”
“Yeah, and that sound all well and good right now, but she gon’ be able to tell you high, bruh, and then how she gon’ feel? You been out all this time, and you got to get out your mind before you call her?”
T.C. didn’t say anything to that. It sounded too much like sense. After a while, he relit the blunt, inhaled but didn’t cough, passed it back to Tiger.
“You hear that?” Tiger asked after he tapped it out.
“Hear what?”
“Them sirens.”
T.C. didn’t have to listen to know they were there, not directly but circling like he’d seen lions surround antelopes from all sides on the National Geographic Channel. Either way, he wasn’t worried; surely it was for the crackhouse next door. It was the perfect place to grow in that sense; nobody would be bothering to look out for them. “Mothafucka, you trippin’. Don’t get all paranoid on me now,” he said.
“All right, you right, you right,” Tiger said. Then, “T.C., that don’t sound right, man.”
“What don’t sound right? Man, you killing my buzz.”
“Better it’s me than some nigga with a burner, mothafucka, or worse, po-po.” He walked up to the window, peered through. “Come over here,” he said.
T.C. walked over. There was nothing out there. The emptied houses were even eerier at night, like gaps in a mouth where teeth had been shattered.
“You see something?” Tiger asked.
T.C. looked out into the darkness, the empty fields of brown grass.
“Hell, no, I don’t see nothing, mothafucka. Everybody’s inside. I told you wasn’t nobody out there. Now sit down.”
T.C. turned on the TV, looking for a movie. Friday had just started, and Craig’s mama was telling him she didn’t feel comfortable loaning him money without a job.
“Here, watch this,” T.C. said. “Calm your ass the hell down.”
They watched until Big Worm pulled his ice cream truck up on screen, and Tiger said he was hungry.
“Don’t nobody deliver over here but Domino’s though. I could fuck up some Domino’s right now.”
T.C. didn’t have any money, and he told him that.
“I got you,” Tiger said.
“Stop fuckin’ around.”
“Nah, I’m serious; you always getting me.”
By the time the movie was over, the pizza had arrived, and they huddled over the box in the dark. T.C. found himself feeling grateful.
“Thanks, nigga,” he said.