“Hey Z! You hear about Jordan?”
Zacchaeus barely heard the question, but it had registered enough to make him slowly lift his heavy eyelids. He relaxed in the grass, his back against a tree in his grandmother’s backyard. It would always be his grandmother’s backyard; he didn’t care if she had recently died and left all her Earthly possessions to him, the house would always belong to Mavis Turner. Just like the Canned Heat. Legally he was now the owner of everything that his grandmother had built in her life, and that gave him some pride that was deeply submerged beneath his grief, to know that his grandmother had loved him and trusted him enough to inherit her life, but he mostly just felt the grief and decided he could wallow in it for a while. A while had become almost two months and over that time, he’d ignored the angry visits from his relatives who refused to respect the will of Mavis Turner and tried to argue with him (they yelled at an absent-minded Zacchaeus who didn’t even pretend to listen). His parents had stopped by the house after Mavis’s funeral, which Zacchaeus did not attend to the rage of his jealous relatives, and they recognized his depression even through the haze of smoke that billowed around him. They didn’t say much because Zacchaeus refused to reply with more than one word answers.
“Yo! You alive? You look fucked up, bruh.”
Zacchaeus tried to make out the face of the body that the voice issued from, but his head was swimming. Everytime he moved it, he felt the momentum of his consciousness shift in that direction and it seemed that the world was moving in slow circles.
“It’s me! Ronnie!”
“The fuck you doing in my grandmama yard?” Zacchaeus said with all of the anger he could muster, though, admittedly, it didn’t sound very intimidating. He furrowed his eyebrows and squinted as the view of Ronnie stabilized before him.
“Calm down, man! You look high as hell. What you been smoking on? You got some more?”
“If you don’t get yo deadbeat ass away from me, I’ma tell Mavis Turner…” he stopped abruptly when he said her name. He couldn’t tell Mavis Turner anything. He never would again. This knowledge made a tear hover, quivering on the edge of his bottom eyelid.
“C’mon, Z! Jordan ain’t around no more, hook a brother up. I know you stay with that good shit.”
“Cause I got money,” Zacchaeus said. Talking seemed to help anchor him in his present and soon the world stopped swimming and spinning. Ronnie’s big eyes looked dry and exposed and Zacchaeus was temporarily hypnotized by the tiny red veins that spidered and made the normally white sclera of Ronnie’s eyeballs a deep pink.
“I thought we was cool, Z. Remember in middle school we was play cousins?”
“Hell nah,” Zacchaeus said as he managed to focus on the whole of Ronnie’s tan brown face. “Get yo crackhead ass away from here!”
“You one to talk, looking like you cracked out now.”
Had he smoked crack? Zacchaeus wondered to himself. He had been higher than he thought weed could get a person, but he shook that away. Jordan hadn’t given him crack, he knew Zacchaeus didn’t mess with that stuff. When Zacchaeus had bought weed from Jordan a few days earlier, he mentioned that he just got “the best shit you ever smoked. This that legal shit from Cali. They grow it super strong out there.”
And Jordan never exaggerated just to charge him more for some regular shit he’d smoked before. If Jordan said it was some special shit, it was always worth the money. Zacchaeus liked Jordan because he was reliable and there was no time of day Zacchaeus couldn’t call him to get what he needed. All weed got Zacchaeus as high as he wanted to be, he wasn’t a stickler for strong strains. But this Cali weed had fucked him up; or maybe it was the fact that he’d been smoking blunts back to back since he got news of his grandmother’s death.
“Let me smoke with you, man. Come on,” Ronnie pleaded. “You know you my nigga. You that nigga! Don’t do me like this.”
“You got Jordan number!” Zacchaeus said angrily. “You stay stressing other people shit. You ain’t never smoked me out before.”
Ronnie looked wounded. He grabbed at his chest, at the dingy and baggy tshirt that hung long over his sagging jeans. His underwear was visible despite the size of his shirt and Zacchaeus was convinced that Ronnie was showing his ass on purpose.
“You know I ain’t got it like that,” Ronnie said quietly, almost mumbling. “I can’t work since I got that long COVID, shit fucked me up. It happened to somebody at work, too, and I ain’t even believe that shit was real, but I guess I was too close to them or something. Ain’t been right for a while. You know if I had it I would let you smoke with me. But anyway,” he said more confidently, “you know Jordan died yesterday. I couldn’t call him if I did have something.”
Zacchaeus heard Ronnie say that Jordan had died like a siren blaring inside of his mind.
“The fuck you say?” Zacchaeus said with a dark glare on his face that made Ronnie startle with fear. “Don’t be joking about people dying, you know my grandmama just died, nigga.”
“Nigga, Jordan died yesterday,” Ronnie said from his cower away from Zacchaeus’ sudden anger that shifted the feel of the air between them. The hairs on Ronnie’s arm stood on end. “I thought you knew. I know how close y’all was.”
Zacchaeus stood in a swift motion that defied the haze he’d been swimming in; he shot up straight and stood steadily with a clenched fist in front of his chest. Zacchaeus and Jordan had been very close, even though they weren’t best friends. Zacchaeus enjoyed smoking weed, he smoked at least two blunts a day regardless of the fantastical situations in which he finds himself. He definitely smoked weed in the Fonlands, on the Discs of Ajê, Sakpata, Gû, and Xêvioso, and before he battled witches with Wazad. The Needy was a fan of marijuana as well and protected his body from the deleterious effects of smoking, so Zacchaeus could sometimes smoke up to twenty blunts in a single day. The weed helped Zacchaeus and the Needy to bond in a way that allowed Zacchaeus to be a positive influence on the Needy.
It was all thanks to Jordan, the most reliable plug in the business. At least he used to be.
“What happened to him?” Zacchaeus asked as he stared at his clenched fist. Ronnie could see black smoke rising from Zacchaeus as he smoldered.
“He fell in that creek behind his house where he grew his weed. They think he was out there late and fell in, hit his head on a rock, but they didn’t find him til yesterday.”
Zacchaeus shook his head slowly, staring at his fist.
“No,” he said quietly at first and Ronnie leaned in because he didn’t quite understand what Zacchaeus was saying. But he said it again and again until he shouted, “No!”
Ronnie startled and started to back away from Zacchaeus.
“I’ma leave you alone man,” Ronnie shouted from the distance he had put between them. “I know you been through a lot.”
“Calm yo scary ass down, “ Zacchaeus mumbled. “You want the rest of this?” He offered the blunt that he’d been smoking and he saw Ronnie’s face light up as he took a step closer to Zacchaeus.
“You know I do,’” Ronnie grabbed it and bowed graciously. “You that nigga, like I always say.”
Zacchaeus waved Ronnie away and he smoked cheerfully as he left Zacchaeus alone, stewing in his rage.
“First my grandmama, now Jordan, “ Zacchaeus said aloud. “Where you think I can go to find them?”
Zacchaeus, the Needy said in his mind, I too am deeply saddened by the passing of Mavis Turner, and I cannot fathom that Jordan has died so suddenly, but they are dead. You can’t find them, and even if you could, my purview is death, not life.
“Exactly, your purview is death. Where do the dead go?”
That is a difficult question to answer. There are several places where the souls of humans reside after the death of the body. Some souls practically cease to exist altogether, like the ones that I consume.
“Is there a place that most souls go?” Zacchaeus asked.
After the Ill Nights, many souls were freed from hell and I have noticed souls floating to a destination on Earth that is inaccessible to me.
“How is that possible? I thought that you were all around the world, under the crust of the Earth.”
Not completely. Think of me as an oily web, I have blindspots. But you could go there, I am not barred, just not ubiquitous.
“Tell me where to go,” Zacchaeus said resolutely.
Take me back to the Fonlands, the Needy responds without a beat.
“Fine. Help me find Jordan and I’ll take you to the Fonlands.”
What about Mavis Turner? Why do you want to find Jordan anyway? You can get marijuana from other people.
“He grew his shit and got the best shit from his connects all over the world. Can’t nobody plug like Jordan. I’m gonna find him and figure out how to bring him back to life. Mavis Turner lived a whole life. She deserve her rest. Show me the place the dead go.”
PRL Serials 