A Schedule of Drugs in the Valley of Death by Sarah Reith

Author:Sarah Reith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction - Literary
Publisher: Bedazzled Ink Publishing
Published: 2018-06-10T16:00:00+00:00

Patron Saints & Beasts of Burden

I’M SURE YOU’VE heard of mules. I don’t mean the dead ones you find in Southern novels. I mean the live ones you can visit—if you clear it with the right authorities—in any one of many women’s prisons. They are the bad boy’s lovelorn dupes, caught with a diaper bag full of cocaine. They are desperate village maidens who can barely write their own names, swallowing condoms full of heroin. They are hardly ever single childless women just a few credits away from completing a master’s degree in comparative literature. There is a sense of being insulated when you are doing something completely unsuitable, as if you’re safe because you’re not really doing it. As if at any moment you could retreat to your proper destiny.

And besides, I was just going to the post office in Finley.

The Finley post office is a run-down little outbuilding on the edge of a pear orchard in Lake County. If it were fulfilling its proper destiny, it would be providing shelter to a few old garden implements. The postmistress can warm the whole place with a space heater the size of a milk carton. According to Google maps, it is forty seven point three miles east of Serendipity Organics. Mendocino County is vast, but not unlimited.

To the south, the famous wineries of Napa and Sonoma offer endless opportunities for high-end alcohol consumption. The vines of Bacchus reach for the horizon in orderly rows. The tasting rooms are eminently tasteful. But as you travel toward the setting sun, the hills begin to jumble together. There are vagrant waterways and broken fences. There is desperation east of Mendocino County. The meth labs are unrelieved by the presence of eloquent activists, speaking up on behalf of their most beloved controlled substance. No speed freak ever got up in front of the Board of Supervisors and delivered an impassioned speech about the medical or religious value of methamphetamine. Consequently, the District Attorney of Lake County is free to be an unreconstructed drug warrior, making no distinction between cannabis and speed. The sheriff is not required to satisfy a constituency that includes a large percentage of politically active felons. The chief of police does not hesitate to take action when he sees a cloud of fragrant smoke pouring out of a moving car.

However, as Caitlin used to say, I am the flower of white womanhood. “People who look like me don’t get pulled over,” she declared, when she wasn’t plotting unlikely encounters with law enforcement. Simone de Beauvois asserts that successful prostitutes are fundamentally conservative, since their profession would be impossible without a profoundly unequal status quo. Still, Caitlin’s copy of the Bill of Rights was bookmarked with a bright pink sticky note at the fourth and fifth amendments.

I’m not sure how many pounds it was. I do remember that we filled two coolers, both with Alizarin’s full name and phone number written on them in black capital letters. Alizarin planned a lot of outings in her role as a community arts educator, and found it useful to identify her equipment.

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