Pubdate: Thu, 11 Dec 2003
Source: Anchorage Press (AK)
Copyright: 2003 Anchorage Publishing, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.anchoragepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3078
Author: Haden Polseno-Hensley

STONED IN HOMER

One day in October my friend Yancey talked me into driving down to Anchor 
Point to score some pot. I hadn't known Yancey for that long, maybe a 
month, but he seemed all right to me. He likes being outside, kayaking, 
hunting, hiking. He has a couple of dogs, a Ph.D. in linguistics, and he's 
a writer. He yells at the top of his lungs when he's excited, which is 
pretty much all the time. He needed to go to Homer to register his truck, 
he said, because it couldn't pass Anchorage's emission test, and he had a 
buddy, John, in Anchor Point who would put us up and get weed for us in the 
morning.

I moved to Alaska from Wyoming in September to go to school. I'd never been 
to Homer. It sounded great - rural, spread out, like the small town I was 
raised in. And I wanted some pot.

"Homer is killer, man," Yancey yelled, "You're gonna love it."

We didn't get out of town until well after five o'clock. The dark set in as 
we passed the sign for Whittier. Yancey's dog, Huckleberry, a sweet 
Australian shepard stood with his front paws on the console between us. 
Yancey handed me a beer and we talked about writing and politics and women 
and the best way to keep fish, and the next thing we knew we were five 
miles from Anchor Point. We pulled the car over to take a leak and watched 
the moon dip down from the west, below the arc of green Northern Lights, 
just touch the horizon, and start on its way back up east into the sky. I 
had never seen anything like it.

In Anchor Point, Yancey's friend, John, held the door open for us as we 
jumped out of the truck and he tried to quiet his three dogs, which were 
all barking their heads off. His front porch was held up by three jacks and 
sided with plywood. "Come on in," he said.

John looked wasted. He had bags under his eyes and he wore sweat pants and 
a ripped T-shirt. He started ranting in a thick Southern drawl about 
marijuana and our constitutional rights to possess it. It turned out John 
didn't actually possess any at the moment, but he gave us a wink as we left 
for a campfire at the beach and said, "Tomorrow, man, I'll take care of you 
guys."

We grabbed some beer and a summer sausage at the Anchor Point store. The 
sky was really starting to go nuts, with red and green shooting up in great 
long spears. I spent a lot of time jumping up and down and yelling. There 
were slim pickings for wood on the beach but we managed to have a little 
fire, which Yancey started by squirting some "Cub Scout kindling" (lighter 
fluid) on the wood and throwing a match into the pile.

"John is an interesting guy," Yancey said. "He was Special Forces in the 
DMZ in Korea. I mean, he's killed people."

"Wow," I said - because what else can you really say to something like that?

Sometime after midnight we drove to the campground and picked a spot to bed 
down. I put my sleeping bag in tall, soft grass, thinking I'd pass out 
right away, but it was really, really cold. After an hour I was still awake 
and there was a shell of frost over my bag. An hour later and I realized 
that the bottom of my bag was unzipped, which explained why my toes hurt. 
After another hour I fell asleep, only to be woken by Huckleberry, who came 
over to investigate a small animal in the grass. An hour later I was able 
to fall asleep again, and right away I heard Yancey's footsteps on the 
gravel beside his truck.

"Is it morning?" I yelled.

"Oh, yeah," Yancey yelled. "It's morning."

"I don't think I slept very well," I said.

"Well, I didn't sleep a fucking wink."

We got in the truck, cranked the heat and drove to John's house. John 
stumbled out of the bedroom and pulled on his jacket. "Sorry Huck," he said 
to the dog as he climbed into the back of the Four Runner, "I've got to 
steal your seat."

We headed south, toward Homer. John started talking and didn't stop. He 
spoke in long rambling, emotive sentences that were a pleasure to hear. He 
told me about all the property being sold on the right side of the road, on 
the bluffs above the sea. "That land is falling off into the water at a 
rate of a few feet a year, but people are buying it," he said. "People will 
buy anything for a view like this."

It was an amazing view, one of the best I'd ever seen; better than the tops 
of mountains in Wyoming, where I'd spent the better part of the last four 
years, and certainly better than the skyline of New York, where I moved 
after college.

In Homer, "You've got your starving artist types," John said, "your 
tweekers, and your trust fund summer types. Anchor Point is just way more 
relaxed." As we drove into Homer I thought it would be hard to find a more 
relaxed town. We stopped at the DMV so Yancey could take care of his truck, 
but it was closed.

"I talked to her yesterday," Yancey yelled. "She said she'd be here."

"Yeah, but this is Homer," John said.

We went to Homer's new coffeehouse, which roasts its own coffee. John 
started talking to a short skinny guy in a camouflage hat and a backpack 
who was hopping from foot to foot and pouring tons of sugar into his 
coffee. John asked the guy if he could help us score some weed. The skinny 
guy looked quickly from side to side, grinning, his brow furrowed. Then he 
started talking and I couldn't make out a single word. I was standing just 
four feet away from him but everything out of his mouth sounded like 
muffled comic book talk: whoosh, bang, zip, kapow.

"Hey guys," John said and waved us over. "This is Tosh."

Tosh shook my hand and then went back to the coffee and pumped himself 
another cup. I stood at the coffee pumps, filled up my cup and poured in 
some cream. Tosh stood beside me and mumbled. I could sort of hear him 
mentioning names and he seemed to be reciting phone numbers, but he was 
speaking so fast that I was sure he was crazy and I tried to give him a 
wide berth. It was only after I turned toward him to go sit down that I 
realized he'd been talking to me the whole time.

We both went over and took a seat with Yancey and John.

"Yeah, I know this guy, Brian, right. Oh, oh, and I know this other cat, 
Dave. They'll hook you guys way, way up. Yeah," Tosh said. He spit out his 
words in little electric clusters. I still could barely understand him. He 
littered the table with little pieces of paper that had names and phone 
numbers written all over them, and he kept on talking, a low static sound 
with hisses and pops. "This dude, oh yeah, he'll help us, he'll be at work 
in ten minutes, we'll just go over there," he said.

"Where do we have to go?" John asked.

"To where this dude works, man."

"Where's that?"

"Oh shit, it's right there -" Tosh's hand shot out from under the table and 
he pointed to a garage beside the coffee shop.

We decided that Yancey and I should head over to the DMV and then hit the 
bank to get some cash. John and Tosh walked over to wait for the guy at the 
garage.

"I can't understand a fucking word that guy says," Yancey yelled when we 
got in the truck.

The DMV still wasn't open so we got some money and drove back to the 
garage. Huckleberry jumped out of the truck and Tosh tried to pet him. 
Huckleberry was wary.

"That reminds me of when my buddy Dave's dog took a big old steamy, yeah, a 
big old steamy right by Dave's head, and Dave woke up and he was all, 
Waahhh, you know, a big steamy on his pillow next him. Just Waaahhhh!" Tosh 
made a big wide-eyed face and held his hands up in the air to show how his 
friend Dave reacted.

"No shit," John said. None of us really wanted to ask Tosh what reminded 
him of that.

An old man pulled up. He got out of his truck and coughed for a few 
seconds, lit a cigarette, and left his keys hanging from a bungee cord by 
the door of the garage.

"Hey," Tosh said to the guy. "You know the young dude that works here, you 
know him right? When does he work?"

"Raymond? He doesn't work today. It's Alaska Day."

We were out of luck for pot, the mystery of why the DMV wasn't open was 
solved, but Tosh and John were unwilling to let our trip be a total bust. 
For a few minutes Tosh rifled through his slips of paper and picked out 
phone numbers. Yancey handed him the cell phone. "I can't figure these 
fucking things out," Tosh said, holding the phone away from him. Yancey dialed.

"Hey, it's me," Tosh said when he connected with someone. "Can you hook me 
up with a zip? An ozer man? Yeah, yeah. Shit no, that's too late. These 
guys have to go back to Anchorage tonight."

The phone calls proved fruitless so we piled into the Four Runner and 
started driving out of town. Yancey and Tosh began talking about guns, 
which put me totally in the dark. Evidently Tosh had a Ruger .44 in his 
backpack and they weighed the pros and cons of using it for bear protection.

"You're not gonna shoot anything past a hundred yards," Yancey said.

"Oh, I beg to differ, mon frA(c)rre" Tosh said.

"Well, let me say," John spoke up, "I've never shot a handgun at anything 
past twenty yards away, and if I didn't hit you, I damn sure scared the 
shit out of you." John was originally from Virginia, like me, and his 
gravelly, Southern accent demanded authority, so nobody mentioned that the 
conversation was about shooting bears, not North Koreans.

The first house we went to was just outside of town.

"Turn left," Tosh said. "No right. I can't fucking tell the difference 
anymore. Go downhill."

The yard was covered in stuff: There was a school bus, two broken-down 
trucks, a refrigerator and a dryer.

"That's a sweet refrigerator," Yancey yelled.

Nobody was home so we pushed on, driving several miles down East Road.

"There's a house out here with a trampoline in the yard and a green Subaru 
in the yard," Tosh said.

"There's a Subaru in that person's yard," Yancey said.

"It's not green."

We passed seven houses with Subarus in the yards. None were familiar to Tosh.

"I helped this cat pull in his irrigation hoses, and he got me high, so, 
shit, I can't really remember where it is," he said.

"Let's just go to Bart's house," John said. "This is Homer, for God's sake. 
I know we can get some weed somewhere."

"Yeah, Bart's house," Tosh agreed. "It's beside a green house which is just 
past some bushes by the road."

We drove past the house because Tosh couldn't figure out his left from his 
right again.

When we eventually made it to the right driveway, Tosh collected our money 
and then went to talk to Bart. When he came back, he told us to meet him 
over on Little Road, so we weren't hanging out on anyone's property.

"I'm gonna look at your gun, Tosh," John said. He pulled it out of the 
backpack. It was enormous.

"See, Tosh is smart," he said. "He keeps an empty chamber by the hammer."

Yancey weighed it in his hand. He said he had one just like it but older 
and bigger.

We pulled onto Little Road and Tosh jumped out of the car behind us 
carrying a McDonald's bag. "Now this is the best fast food I've ever had," 
he said and passed us our weed.

"Now we've got guns and drugs," John said. "We've got everything we need."

We drove down to the spit, passing a piece of antler that Tosh had made 
into a bowl. John told a story about being pulled over on New Year's Eve:

"I'm high as a damn kite, you know. The cop says, 'You boys been drinking?' 
and I say. 'No sir.' He says, 'Well it sure does smell like marijuana in 
your car.' 'I haven't been drinking, though, sir.' 'Well,' he says, 'what's 
in that plastic baggy there?' I looked at him and I say, 'Sir I told you I 
had not been drinking. I saw every one of your public service announcements 
about drinking and driving on New Year's Eve and I wouldn't be caught dead 
with a drink tonight.' That cop just thumped on the roof of my jeep and 
told me to have a nice night. It was that young skinny one who used to work 
for Johnson and them."

"Oh yeah, I know that cat," Tosh said.

We got out of the truck on the spit and let Huckleberry run. John told me 
about the bear he'd just shot across the inlet at the base of the 
Aleutians. The bear was crawling up on the hood of his jeep so John climbed 
up on top of the jeep from the back, stuck the barrel of his rifle up to 
the bear's head and pulled the trigger, he said. "People tell me that was 
unsportsmanlike, but a bear will kill you. I'm not interested in fair or 
unfair. I'm interested in staying alive and feeding my family."

Yancey looked at his wrist and realized that his watch had stopped a long 
time ago. He'd thought it was a quarter to ten for a couple of hours. 
"We've got to go," he yelled. "Got to get back for school tonight."

We had to watch the poet Jane Hirshfield read that evening.

"I'll write you a note," John said and grinned. We were very stoned by then 
and everything was hysterical.

We drove Tosh up to the top of East Hill where he lived in a van on a piece 
of unclaimed land.

"You need to get a car," John said.

"Then I'd have to get a job," Tosh said.

"You need to get a job."

"Yeah, probably."

"No, but seriously, Tosh, you do better than anyone else I know that 
doesn't have a job."

"Yeah, yeah, I do, okay. I get high every day. And I've got a great view."

"Oh God, you've got the best view that anyone in the world ever had from 
anywhere. Three glaciers and two volcanoes, the Kamishak Bay and the whole 
fucking Aleutian Range. How could you beat that?"

A little 250cc motorbike passed us going the other way.

"That's what you need," John said to Tosh. "A little dirt-bike to get into 
town."

"Yeah, yeah. I should get one of those."

"Nah," John said. "You'd die."

We all laughed hysterically.

"The safest way for Tosh to travel is on his feet," John decided.

We came to an intersection at the top of the hill. "This is as far as we 
go," John said. Tosh jumped out.

"Don't worry about him," John said. "I know that guy."

We wound our way down the hill in silence, mesmerized by the snow and ocean 
spread before us. Across Cook Inlet, about seventy miles of deep sea, sat 
the Aleutian range. Covered in snow, it sparkled. Redoubt Volcano shone 
high and tall, but the whole range emitted a pulse of powerful current.

"I don't know why anyone would want to live anywhere else," John said.

"I can't believe the DMV was closed," Yancey yelled. "Fucking Alaska Day!"

"What are you supposed to do on Alaska Day?" I asked.

"Get stoned and drive around," Yancey said.

"I thought that was Tuesday," John said.

"I thought that was every day," Yancey said.

We watched the sun play on the snow and ice across the inlet. Yancey and I 
had to go to school that night and John had to be at work in an hour, but 
for that one moment we were on the edge of the world riding high toward the 
endless possibilities of being stoned in Homer.