Bud Meridian

He reached to his ear but he had lost his kief-dipped preroll somewhere. He made his way down through the trees and stood looking at the cold swirling waters. Then he waded out into the river like some wholly wretched baptismal dope fiend.

He threw down the saddle and took up the trailing rope and tied the stoned animal to a limb and kicked it halfheartedly. It shifted slightly to the side and continued to chew the wild grown cultivars.

He found it about a hundred yards downriver. It was wet to its belly and it looked up at him with red eyes and then lowered its head again into the buds growing on the riverbank.

The other two budfarmers grinned. The kid looked off down the river. He spat and set off along the path through the Cannabaceae and swales of grass.

The budfarmer wiped his face with the back of his arm. Somethin come down the road about a hour back. I think it went down the river yonder. It might of been a mule. It didn't have no tail nor no hair to speak of but it did look stoned.

What? called the budfarmer. Have you seen a mule. Mule? Lost a mule. I think he was stoned.

They were sopping water over the sticky insides and one of them raised up and turned to look at him with his bloodshot eyes. The horses stood to their knees in the current.

He entered a deep wood of Blue Dream and Cereal Milk and the road took a rise and he could see the budfarms below him. Stoners were washing jars in the ford and he went down the hill and stood at the edge of the water and after a while he called out to them.

A dog in the shade of the portal rose and lurched sullenly in the wafting smoke until he had caught a second hand buzz and then lurched back. He took the road down the hill toward the river, a stoned figure enough.

He stood blisteringly high in the noon heat. Then he saw the mule's tracks. They were just the palest disturbance of the dust and they crossed the lot to the gate in the east wall. He hiked the saddle higher onto his shoulder and set out after them.

The weedleaf carved and paneled doors hung agape on their hinges and a carved stoned Virgin held in her arms a headless child.

The façade of the building bore an array of notable stoners in their niches and they had been tarnished by American troops trying their bubblers, the figures shorn of ears and noses and darkly mottled with resin oxidized upon the stone.

The facade of the building bore an array of notable stoners in their niches and they had been tarnished by American troops trying their bubblers, the figures shorn of ears and noses and darkly mottled with resin oxidized upon the stone.

He went on through the sacristy into the church again and got his budjar. He smoked the rest of the weed and he put the saddle on his shoulder and went out.

The domed vaults overhead were clotted with a dark resin mass that smelled dank and sweated. In the room was a wooden table with a few moldy plastic bongs and along the back wall lay the remains of several baggies, one with shake.

In the mud walls of the enclosure were hot boxes inhabited by stoned squatters and a few roaches smoked thinly in the sun. He walked around the side of the church and entered the sacristy. Buzzards shuffled off through the chaff and plaster like enormous stonedfowl.

It was nowhere in sight. The town was eight or ten warehouses of grow operations now abandoned, a barren purlieu that held a few potheads and burros.

He sat with his eyes red behind his eyelids, the sweat beaded on his forehead. Then he opened his eyes and hit the joint again. The buzzards stepped down one by one and trotted off into the smoke. After a while he rose and went out to look for the mule.

He'd put the budjar under his saddle and he found it and held it up and poured some shake out into a Zig-Zag and rolled a joint.

His head was in a deep high and his tongue swollen with cottonmouth. He sat up and looked around him.