Author's Note: Todd Brendan Fahey is the author of Wisdom's Maw: The Acid Novel; his collection of short stories, Dogshit Park & other Atrocities, will be published in 2003.

At a patch of earth near the house, Jack Laroue plucked a handful of flowers by the root. "We'll drink this," he nodded. "Chamomile: it's kept me sane." Then he sniffed the reeking air and smiled. "Why don't we go back inside?"

The flowers rinsed painstakingly, almost obsessively, under a running stream at the sink, he turned to me, a picture of relaxation on his ruddy, elongated face. "You wanted to know about the headdresses," he offered. "I'll give you that tour now." But before he did, he opened a closet door and turned on the stereo, which I saw to be nothing more than two fifteen-hundred watt monophonic Carver amps and the same brand CD player, of rare vacuum-tube construction, running through two pairs of tall, elegant Vandersteens, one speaker in each corner of the room - a deceptively simple combo that told me more about this Mephisto than I had been able to infer all evening: Jean-Louis Lebris de Laroue was a natural-born freak for power, a champion of purity and grace, a man for whom Art is the only currency befitting reverence.

A familiar, snaky riffle came pulsing out of the Vandersteens, and I recognized it as the Spin Doctors' debut offering, A Pocketful of Kryptonite, even at molten volume. Laroue started in on an eccentric dance, moving his feet and snapping his fingers at critical junctures in the music, which he apparently had long ago memorized, note-for-note. "The prophets of a new millennium," he wailed over the din. "They had to have known! God, finally!" Then, recovering abruptly from the strange ecstasy, he went back to the closet and adjusted the volume to accommodate the average tympanic membrane.

"These headdresses," he said, suddenly reversing gears, "are from the Battle of Big Horn. Fifty four of them - every brave Custer and his men took. I needed them for polarity," he said, smiling inwardly. "It's what makes The Spin possible. I tell you, I felt like Tesla when it first came to me," he laughed arrogantly. "You'll understand, too, by the time you leave. You have to: the more people who know, the safer I am."

With the curl of a finger, Laroue motioned me over to what I had assumed was the coat closet, but which was really a small, walk-in humidor. "I want to show you where it all starts. Bring your eyes to the picnic."

I had probably seen more sheer tonnage in one place, but never in hell had I seen so many different strains of marijuana - it was like a field trip through the Tinder Box, every jar housing a unique, mind-bending synthesis. On the bottom quadrant of the closet alone, I counted a Purple Skunk #1; something labeled Cosmic Hippo; a fiery-orange, seedless number called Screaming-Engines-at-Dawn; Afro-Kind, a resinated indica trip guaranteed, he attested, to separate the limbs from the rest of one's body for a good four hours ("You never drive on that one"); Holy Moley; Ju-Ju Jones; and a harsh-smelling Mexican in a jar branded with a big black Death's head, which he explained was a continuing experiment in transforming paraquat, a lethal herbicide, into something uniquely psychedelic.

"I've got a team working on it, but it'll probably turn out to be too expensive. Besides," he chuckled, "everyone in the Sinaloa state smokes it anyway." He wrapped his tendrils around a jar with no label and brought it back to the coffee table. "Sit down," he said, and I did. "This is where it all comes home: the most important goddamn botanical breakthrough in the last half of this century."

Under a wall of Indian headdresses, he sank easily into the couch and unscrewed the top from the jar. "In 1986, I was commissioned to develop a strain of high-altitude cannabis indica to replace the Andean coca crop. I was living in Washington, working as the Poet-in-Residence to the Library of Congress," he said, "when I got the call from someone in the Reagan White House. The calls always came in the middle of the night; the guy sounded like he was speaking through cheesecloth, so it's hard to say exactly who it was. I've narrowed him down to three people on Bush's team, but really it doesn't matter," he shrugged. "What I was told was this: the White House would soon be reversing its strategy in the War on Drugs by replacing the South American cocaine crop with good old-fashioned hemp - the kind George Washington used to smoke," he beamed, as he began fashioning into a joint the shakey refuse from the bottom of the unlabeled jar. "In '91, the Bush team was about to cripple both the Medellin Cartel and the Democratic Party forever by legalizing marijuana as a valuable medical tool and an elemental way by which to rejuvenate the Earth's biomass. Can you imagine the voting bloc that dumb sonofabitch would've picked up!?""So what happened?" I fairly shouted, hooked on a story I knew was so insane that it had to be the truth.

"Bush started listening to Quayle's people," he scowled, shaking his head. "The Roundheads warned him to back off on the Dope Thing; that he didn't need it: The election was already In The Bag. All that was left for Bush was for our CIA to oust the heads of Peru and Colombia. They got it right in Peru when we installed that fascist Jap, Fujimori, but the Colombian cartels were just too powerful. We're still waiting. For the last six years, I've been customizing this marijuana varietal to replicate the amphetamine-like effects of the coca plant so these hill-niggers can keep working their long hours at unholy altitudes. Here, smoke a little," he said, offering me a tightly twisted pinner.

The dog-fight had completely neutralized the THC from my system, and by this time, I was feeling brand new. I drew several times on the stick before passing it back. "Yeah, but Bush is history. We've got Wild Bill now," I said, feeling my heart skip a beat, then race almost immediately.