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I don’t feel afraid of him anymore. We are kindred spirits. Two people lost in the shadows, preparing for the worst and never feeling safe again.
“They all want it,” he says seriously. “If I show you... you can’t tell. Can’t share what you see. Everyone wants my secrets. What makes it grow so fast. So green.”
Grow? I finally get it. What had brought us here in the first place. Walt is the local dope farmer. Chances are, that’s what is in the barn. His growing operation. Which would also explain all the roads exiting the property—for middle of the night shipments.
Walt leads us out the front door. Glance here, glance there, then he hustles us across the open yard to the massive barn. We press against the side of the building, staying out of sight of... Them? Drones? The ghosts of the mountains? He undoes the padlock with a key he wears on a long chain around his neck.
He has to set down his shotgun to push back the heavy sliding door. Neither Keith nor I make a move. We are holding our breaths, preparing to encounter a jungle of dope plants that will only add to the surrealness of our day.
Which makes it all the crazier when Walt steps inside the warm, humid space, flips on a bank of overhead lights, and proudly declares, “Yes, sir. I grow the purest crop in all of Georgia. Behold. Davies’s Microgreens.”
—
“THE TRICK IS COCO MATS,” Walt explains proudly. “No soil, no pesticides. Just plenty of love and water. I got four different crops, from micro mustard plants to pea shoots. I harvest every ten to fifteen days. Just me. Load it up, head to Atlanta. Gotta real following among the swanky chefs at high-end restaurants. Microgreens are very healthy, you know. High in vitamins, some even fight cancer.”
I honestly have no idea what to say. Standing beside me, I can tell Keith is equally stunned. We are staring at row after row of metal shelving units. Each holds eight shallow trays of densely packed, tiny green shoots, like a parade of Chia Pets escaped from the 1980s.
I walk closer, inspecting the setup. There are tubes running from each tray.
“Hydroponics,” Walt explains. “Makes for faster growth.”
I get it, the watering system. While hanging from the ceiling above are huge banks of lights, emitting a whitish glow.
“LED lighting,” Walt volunteers again, clearly proud. “Provides the best balance of light and heat. I got ’em digitally programmed. Different growth stages have different needs. You don’t gotta be too fancy about it, but I take care of my own. Best damn microgreens in Georgia,” he boasts again.
“How long have you been doing this?” Keith asks. Like me, he has started wandering the aisles.
“Three years.”
“How did you learn all this?” I ask, waving my hand around. Because digital lights, the automated watering system... With his unkempt hair, tattered jeans, and stained flannel, Walt doesn’t exactly look like an advertisement for sophistication, and yet this is clearly a high-tech operation.
He shrugs. “Here and there. I’ve always been good with my hands. Running a farm, fixin’ buildings, maintainin’ equipment, takes more know-how than people think.”
“Clearly.”
“Plus,” he adds matter-of-factly, “I grew dope for years. This is easier. More profitable and I don’t gotta worry about being arrested.”
“Of course.”
“I wasn’t always a good person,” Walt says abruptly. He’s standing near the door. For the first time, I realize I don’t know where the shotgun is anymore. Still leaning against the outside of the barn? Or tucked somewhere behind him? For that matter, is there a second egress to this place? Or if he wanted to, could Walt take three steps back, jerk closed the heavy sliding door, and lock us in with his precious microgreens?
I don’t know why he’d want to do such a thing. And yet, the hair is standing up on the back of my neck. Farther down the aisle, Keith turns and I can tell he feels it, too. A certain wrongness. A change in the air that doesn’t bode well.
Maybe a guy like Walt doesn’t need a reason. Maybe Keith and I have allowed ourselves to be lulled by trays of tiny green shoots while forgetting the obvious—crazy is crazy, and Walt Davies has spent decades earning a reputation as the town lunatic.
“I drank,” Walt whispers now.
Has he moved? I shift slightly, trying to calculate my distance to the open door. If I bolt now, maybe I could cut him off.
“I doped and drugged and drank my way through life. If there was an illicit chemical around, I injected it. If there was a fight to be had, I picked it. I hit my girl. Smacked around my kid. Then beat them more for making me feel bad about it. I was a mean son of a bitch.”
Keith and I don’t say a word. Walt doesn’t seem to be paying attention to us anymore. He’s telling his story, and the confessional air once again makes me shiver.
“Then, I got lost. In the mountains. These very hills where I had lived my whole life. I’d gone hunting, and ’course, packed more booze than common sense. I was on a trail. Then I wasn’t. Night came and it grew cold.
“I don’t know how long I staggered about. Day after day. Till my beer was gone, my flask dry. I’d packed a sandwich. Ate that the first afternoon. Then, with no booze, I started to get the shakes. Can’t exactly hunt when you’re too weak to hold a rifle. Hell, I couldn’t even manage to light a match for a fire. But the night sweats, hunger pangs, bone-deep thirst, they weren’t the worst part.”
“What was the worst part?” I drift toward the open door.
