Page 27 of Sunburned
“Do your parents know about it?”
He shook his head. “Whatever, it’s stopping them from spending money on a plumber to fix the pipes.”
Curious, I followed them out to the back of the mobile home, where two plastic kiddie pools filled with water were connected by a series of pipes and pumps, one of which was indeed making a grinding noise.
“Fuck,” Ian said, bending over it. “It’s a snake.”
“Where?” I jumped back instinctively.
He shone the flashlight of his phone up inside the machine. “It’s dead,” he said. “It must’ve slithered up there and gotten stuck in the motor. Now what’s left of it is clogging the filter.”
“What is this thing?” I asked.
“Gonna be hydroponics if I can get the brine to power the system.”
“Brine?” I asked, blinking at him. Somehow, between the drug use and the squalid living arrangements, I’d forgotten how smart Ian was.
“The leftover mix of salt and chemical rejected by the membrane.” He pointed to a bucket filled with sludge beneath the contraption where the snake was caught.
“Does it work?” Tyson asked.
“Partially,” Ian said.
Tyson squatted next to the filter pump, inspecting Ian’s work. “I didn’t know this was back here.”
“Dude,” Ian said, seeming to remember Tyson was his landlord. “Please don’t make me move it. I’m getting rid of the chemicals so they’re not hurting anything, I swear.”
Tyson considered him just long enough to make him squirm, then grinned. “Shit, man, just give me a bag of that weed, my lips are sealed.”
Ian relaxed. “Sure thing.” He flipped a switch and the grinding noise stopped as the machine powered down. “It’s too dark for me to deal with it tonight. Andie and I are gonna head to Starfish if you guys wanna come.”
“Is Andie Australian?” I asked.
He nodded, lighting a cigarette as he led us to the front of the trailer.
“Where’d you meet her?” I asked.
“School.”
“But you’re both…taking a break?” I asked.
He nodded. “She’s on a student visa, so she’ll need to reenroll in the next few months if she doesn’t want to go back to Australia.”
“Or you could marry her,” Tyson ribbed.
Ian exhaled a line of smoke, shaking his head. “If you’d grown up with my parents, you wouldn’t ever wanna get married either.”
Andie opened the door of the trailer and poked her head out. “We gotta leave in fifteen,” she said.
I opened my mouth to introduce myself, but before I could get a word out, she’d let the door slam shut.
Ian went into the trailer, disappearing from our line of sight for a moment before returning with a gallon-size bag of weed. He handed it to Tyson, who opened the bag and inhaled deeply. “Sweet,” Tyson said. “Lemme know when you get that hydroponic system up and running. Maybe we could go into business together.”
Ian nodded as he mounted the steps to his front door. “Cool,” he said as he slipped inside. “See ya.”
“He always was a fucking smart kid,” Tyson said as we walked the path through the long grass back to his house.
“Yeah,” I agreed. “But you are not going into business with him growing pot.”
