Humboldt Read Free Page B

brown hair of the man behind the wheel. It was late, and there was no emergency, but Crockett Randall sped as if his life depended on it. He loved to drive fast. He called it taking an engine to its limit, but it wasn’t really about the engine; it was about the adrenaline. The closer Crockett came to death, the more alive he felt, whether it was hurtling down a snow-covered mountain on a snowboard or driving thirty miles over the speed limit on a dark country road.
    At thirty-five, Crockett was old enough to know better, but teetering on the edge was part of who he was, and he did it in ways you’d never suspect just by looking at him. Crockett had a strong, square jaw, shy blue eyes, and a permanent tan earned by bobbing around on a surfboard off the North Coast, braving hypothermia and great white sharks in the hope of catching the perfect wave. One of Crockett’s greatest gifts was that he possessed the quiet, unassuming presence of someone you could easily forget was in the room.
    This chameleon-like quality helped him blend in with the ranchers he worked with at the volunteer fire department back home, and with the men he used to operate heavy equipment with. The aging hippies on the commune where he grew up still accepted him as one of their own, and when the police pulled him over for speeding, which happened at least once a month, usually all Crockett had to do was flash the license that permitted him to drive fire trucks, and the cop would realize he was part of the brotherhood. Then there was the underworld where Crockett made his money, where everything was built on trust and intuition. He belonged to that brotherhood, too.
    In many ways, Crockett was the perfect example of the kind of men who migrated to Humboldt County every year. They came from around the country and sometimes from abroad, like miners of old, hoping to strike it rich. In general, these newcomers didn’t tend to tithe their earnings with donations to hospice, or spend $1,000 on raffle tickets to support the community school. These newcomers often lived in isolation out in the hills, where they clear-cut hillsides and grew pot. Or they filled buildings with impossibly bright lights and grew their plants indoors, with dies el-​​ p owered generators. Crockett was part of this Green Rush, as it was called, but he also came to the marijuana industry honestly.
    He was born into it.
    The Avenue of the Giants that Crockett raced along was a thirty-mile strip of asphalt named after the redwood forest it meandered through. Back before the state built a four-lane highway through most of Humboldt County, the Avenue was the main thoroughfare north. Now it was a rambling country road, a parallel scenic route that offered tourists a way to submerge themselves in the splendor of the big trees without having to leave their cars.
    Sometimes when Crockett roared down the Avenue with his coworker Zavie, with “My Dick,” by Mickey Avalon, blasting on the stereo, Crockett would wonder about the tourists they passed, with their RVs and cameras. Did they have any idea what was going on here? But then he and Zavie would arrive at the South Fork of the Eel River and park so that Crockett could catapult off the truck’s tailgate into the water—the “Humboldt diving board,” he called it—and the sweat of the morning’s labor and that very thought itself would be washed away with the current.
    At this late hour, Crockett’s destination wasn’t the Eel, which was running low and dry beyond the trees. He was headed back to the cabin on the hill, to the place where he’d been on lockdown for the past few weeks. An hour or so earlier, he had snuck off to eat at the Avenue Café in Miranda. He dined at his usual spot, at the redwood slab counter. Under dim lights, he ate chicken parmigiana and scrolled through friends’ Facebook updates on his laptop. A lone highway patrol officer sat a few seats away.