THE MORNING CAME TOO SOON, at least for Mary. She knew her kids were growing up, but until last night, the process seemed to flow as smoothly as sunrise and sunset. Now, suddenly, there seemed to be some outsider bursting in on them, carrying a very unwelcome weight—or should she say . . . smell.
The rest of the family rose like clockwork, as usual. For this, she was grateful. She really didn’t feel like dealing with more than one child problem at a time this morning, though she knew that day would come soon enough.
It was Timothy who didn’t appear at the breakfast table. His bed was under the lean-to portion of the cabin not directly lit by either the fire or the hanging lamps in the rest of the house. And the long lump that was his teen-aged body was still situated firmly in the middle of it.
Mary looked over at Jethro, catching his eye, then leading it over to the blanketed form.
“I know,” he mumbled over the top of his coffee cup. He needed more time to think, and to compose his temper. He drained the cup—slower than usual—then looked again over at the nook in the wall that contained his son.
“Timothy,” he called out, a little louder than he intended. He glanced up at this wife, who grimaced slightly. “Timothy!” Jethro called out louder. Apparently the first call actually wasn’t loud enough, at least to the boy’s ears.
Then there was a movement under the covers. The form slowly rolled toward the near side of the bed. A soft grunt of acknowledgment sounded from beneath them.
Jethro glanced over at his wife—again. “Timothy, chores are waiting,” he said with a mix of insistence and barely suppressed impatience.
“Unn-kay,” came the voice finally emerging from under the old green blanket.
“There’s coffee on the stove,” his mother added.
They both rose slowly from their seats, as Father scanned the room for his boots. “The goats are probably bursting,” he said in disgust to no one in particular.
* * *
The milking done, Jethro waited for a right time to raise the topic of last night’s activities with his son, who was shuffling slowly through his regular duties. Pa hated this. He was getting used to being able to converse with his son man to man. He actually looked forward to it, what with a house full of women. But now he was forced backward, back into childrearing mode: “You’re too close to the fire! … Don’t step on that slippery rock. … Wash your hands after using the privy. … Carve away from your hand, not toward it.” He had hoped those days were over.
“Son,” he said as Timothy walked past with a now-empty bucket of chicken scratch. “Come on over here a sec.”
Pa situated himself on an old stump to the side of the goat fencing. He had hoped the goats would stay quiet long enough for him to say his piece.
His son sat down on an old crate nearby.
“You know, we live a hard life out here. At least, I should say, there are easier ways to live.” He didn’t quite know how best to start. “There are some tough things to do, to endure. But there are enjoyments too. And we all would rather have more enjoyment than tough stuff.”
He paused as he wondered how this was coming out. It sounded really dumb from inside his head, but he went on, “And the good Lord gives us certain joys, pleasures to go along with the hard stuff. His book talks about the joys of family, of brotherhood, of food, wine … even sex.”
He glanced over at his son, noticing that he had quickly averted his eyes to the ground with that last word.
“And, as I said, or as he says, he made all these things for our good. But, well, you know the story of Adam and Eve, right?”
The son was unresponsive.
His father thought briefly that he had actually nodded off. “Timothy, you with me here?”
“Yeah.”
Pa noticed the absence of the usual “Yes, sir.” No matter. Not the issue of the moment.
“Well,” Pa continued, “I imagine you’ve experienced a certain new physical pleasure lately and I … uh … want to talk to you about it.”
The boy twisted his head slightly toward his father, his eyes darting around, then raised his head to face him. “Dad, I’m … what…?” he stammered.
His father had a sinking feeling that his well-crafted approach to the subject was just so many words lost in space. He decided a direct approach might be better: “Son, your mother and I smelled marijuana on you when you came in last night,” he said. “And we need to deal with it.”
The son looked down for a moment, then back up, then down again. His father realized the boy was trying to craft his reply.
“It was the Jaegers,” Timothy said. “Jason and Arnie grow some plants behind their bean field. They’ve been smoking it for a while now.”
His father had figured it was something like this. Had he naively thought his son was immune to peer pressure?
“Do their folks know?” Pa realized how stupid that question was—and meaningless—before it was even out of his mouth.
“They don’t care. Those two are all over the place. They’re never home. They even tried making ’shine a few years back.”
The father wondered whether to address the idea of peer pressure or pleasure-seeking first. He guessed it ultimately didn’t matter, and he said, “So how did they get you to smoke with them?”
“When I rode up, there was nobody home—or so I thought. I rode around back to tie up the horse and Jason was sitting by the back door with something in his hands. Arnie was kinda giggling next to him. I asked what was so funny. They just kinda looked at me like they didn’t know me. I felt really stupid. I jumped down from the horse and walked over. Then I smelled it. I thought it was just some strange cigarette—they smoke those too.”
His father nodded to him and he continued, “They kept staring up at me like I was some kind of foreigner, like they didn’t recognize me. It was weird, Pa.”
“Okay, what happened next?”
“Then they suddenly did seem to know who I was. And their faces changed from just kinda friendly-like to sorta mean, and then they grinned again, in a strange way. I said I had some canned goods for their mother, and they just laughed. ‘Oh, goody,’ Jason said. ‘You’ll have to leave them inside. We’re kinda busy right know.’ . . . And then Arnie said, ‘Yeah, busy harvesting,’ and he laughed. I didn’t say anything. Just tied up my horse and asked them what kind of tobacco that was. They kinda snorted and laughed again, looking at me like I had two heads.
“‘Well, some call it the wildwood wee-eeeed.’ Jason stretched out the word like he was flyin’. Then he said, ‘It’s just not your average ’baccy, if you catch my meanin’.’ Then they scooped some out of the old coffee can they were using and held it out to me. It didn’t look like any tobacco I’d ever seen. They held out some thin squares of paper—thin, like Bible paper—and told me to roll one for myself. That’s when I thought, Heck, why not? I’ve got a while before I gotta get back.”
His father bristled at that remark, as yesterday’s work around the homestead was extra heavy and he definitely could’ve used another strong pair of hands to help with it, but he said nothing.
“So they showed me how to do it, and I began smoking it. I choked a lot at first and I thought I was gonna vomit, but then my head started spinning and I felt really … well, happy … I guess. It’s hard to describe. I just didn’t want to leave. The next thing I knew, it was dark, and I was starving and I knew I had to get home.” He went silent.
* * *
“Well, son,” Pa said. “I don’t really know where to start.”
He paused, then wondered whether to call his wife out to help with another point of view. But then he thought better. This had to be man to man.
“You know,” Pa finally continued, “getting high … which is what you did … or, were …” He wondered how much terminology his son even knew. He hadn’t meant to shelter him, but it was kind of inevitable up here in the mountains. “That feels good at first. Like I was saying earlier, God made our bodies to enjoy pleasures in this world.” He wondered how to continue without getting too deep. “But there’s two things that enter in here. The first is: It’s easy to start to get in the habit of running away into that pleasure … like going fishing when there’re potatoes that needs planting or manure to be shoveled.”
His son snickered, remembering the lickings he got for doing exactly that when he was younger.
“It gets to be a habit real quick. Quicker than good habits, I’ll tell you that,” Pa said. “I know, I’ve been there too. Pretty soon things don’t get done. Important things. Things necessary for life … yours … and others’ too.” He shifted his position on the hard log. “But more important is the fact that it messes up your body. And what do we know about our bodies?” he asked, checking to see whether anything he and Mary had taught Timothy had stuck.
“They’re the temple of the Holy Spirit. First Corinthians six nineteen,” Timothy said in a rather singsong tone.
Gee, it did sink in, his Pa thought, grateful.
“So … you’re smokin’ out the Lord, in a way. And stuff like that builds up and starts to affect a lot of different parts of your body. From our lungs to your brain to your … uh … well, I won’t mention other things. The effects may not be noticeable right away, but soon enough …” he trailed off. “The bottom line is, it’s best all around just to stay away from it. And if that means staying away from the Jaegers, well, so be it. I’ll ride over next time your mother needs to make a canning swap.”
“That’s a deal!” Timothy smiled. “That whole place kinda smells like something died over there anyway.” They both laughed knowingly together, then his father squeezed his son’s shoulder and they got up and headed for the cabin door for some breakfast.
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