"Matt Ruff - Bad Monkeys" - читать интересную книгу автора (Ruff Matt)

What happened?

It was kind of funny, actually. There was this big vacant lot across from our apartment building that some
hippies had turned into a community garden. You could sign up for a plot of ground and raise vegetables
or whatever. My friend Moon had some marijuana seeds, so we decided to try growing our own pot
there.

In a public garden?

Not the brightest scheme ever, I know. But you have to understand, weтАЩd only ever seen pot in baggies
before, so we had no idea how big the plants got. We figured, itтАЩs a weed, and weeds are small. We
thought we could grow bigger plants around it as cover, and then harvest it before anybody noticed what
it was.

So I signed us up for a plot, but under PhilтАЩs name. The garden was one of the places I used to leave
him; he didnтАЩt care about plants, but he liked animals, and there were these stray cats there that he could
play with. ThatтАЩs what he was doing, herding cats, the day our marijuana patch got raided.

YouтАЩd think the hippies would have been the first to spot it, but it was a beat cop. The guyтАЩs name, I
swear to God, was Buster Friendly. Officer FriendlyтАЩs vice detector went off as he was walking past the
garden one afternoon, and the next thing you know he had every adult in the place up against the fence,
and he was waving the sign-up sheet in their faces, wanting to know which one of them was Phil. Then
Phil came up and tugged him on the sleeve, and the officer asked him, тАЬAre those your marijuana plants,
son?тАЭ and Phil said yes, but without me right there whispering тАЬgypsiesтАЭ in his ear, he wasnтАЩt a very
convincing liar, so it only took about ten minutes for Officer Friendly to get the real story out of him. Ten
minutes after that, I came back from MoonтАЩs house to pick up Phil and got nabbed.

Did the officer arrest you?

He took us back to the police station, but he didnтАЩt book us. He ran us through the Scared Straight
routine: showed us the holding cell, introduced us to some of the losers they had locked up in there, told
us some horror stories about how much worse the actual jail was. Once I realized he wasnтАЩt actually
going to do anything to us, I wasnтАЩt impressed, but I pretended like I was, because I figured I might need
this guy in my corner once my mom showed up. So I called him тАЬsirтАЭ a lot, and tried to come off like a
little rascal instead of a little bitch.

Eventually my mom got there, and she went right for me, no preliminaries. By this point I had Officer
Friendly halfway liking me, but he still needed me to learn a lesson, so if my mother had just smacked me
around a little he would have let it go. But she was in full fury, screaming about the bad seed, and she
started, like, throttling me, and then I lost my cool and started fighting back, and it turned into this big
drama scene, with cops running in from other rooms to help pull us off each other. After they got us
separated they called in a social worker, and we had this three-hour encounter session, during which my
mom made it clear that if they sent me home with her, she wasnтАЩt just going to send me to bed with no
supper, she was going to drown me in the tub. So they had to come up with a Plan B.

What finally happened, my mom agreed to see a shrink for anger management, and in exchange she got
to take Phil home. I stayed at the police station while Officer Friendly went with them to pick up a couple
bags of my clothes, and then he drove me out to my aunt and uncleтАЩs place in the San Joaquin Valley. It
was the middle of the night by now, and it was at least a hundred-mile drive, but he insisted on taking me
himself. So at first I was thinking, wow, he really bought my little-rascal act. And so I kept it up, kept