Troy Rivera loves his garden. He fukkin’ loves it. Every morning you can see him out there in front of his house, hands and knees up in the dirt, throwing weeds against his board fence with a hefty force. “Fuck you you fukkin’ weed.” The tufts of dirt exploding like little brown bombs. He has all the good stuff. The good stuff he likes to eat. Troy doesn’t need to go to one of those fancy places with the wilting basil in sad little plastic pots that die a day after you bring them home. He has the real ass deal, all thanks to his kick ass cousin, Cleveland. His cousin is in the importing business and travels all around the fukkin’ land, buying up diapers from Lithuania and bringing them back over to the US to sell to the corner stores for five times what he paid for them. Just slap a Huggies label over the packaging and they’re Huggies. Forget that they’re actually made from “washed” his cousin would always enunciate “toilet paper from a local landfill.” Then he would laugh. Troy didn’t care one way or the other. Have to make a buck some how.

What was really special about his cousin is that he was a little bit of a trickster. He had all kinds of little places to hide things, in his bags, in his hair, under his fingernails (that was for gold dust from Botswana) and would take all kinds of orders from his special trusted friends. Nothing too crazy though. He could probably figure out a way to get an RPG launcher back to the US, maybe up his ass or something, but he never dug too deep into that kind of stuff. Think more like, endangered animal hide boots, illegal lizards from the Amazon that can kill a person by spitting in their eyes, embargoed tobacco, shrimp flavored Doritos, and sometimes, special special seeds.

Seeds are small. You ever looked at one up close? Of course you have. Troy wouldn’t even need a sneaky cousin to bring them over, could just sprinkle them in the bottom of his suitcase and there isn’t a trained airport dog alive that could sniff out vegetable seeds, but Troy didn’t have the wherewithal or the desire. But on top of Clevelend’s trickster skills, he was also very good at procurement. He had friends all over the world that owed him favors for doing exactly what he did. Sometimes he would even give them their requested item for free (if it didn’t cost him too much). A good ‘ol pal was Troy’s cousin.

Cleveland would come over to Troy’s house on occasion just to shoot the shit, watch some TV, drink beers. Guy stuff. Sportsball stuff. Troy casually mentioned something about how shitty the cucumber was that he recently brought home from the local Savers. It was a throwaway comment, one of those “let’s talk about the weather” type things when things start getting a little too quiet. Cleveland perks right up at that. “You know” he says “I got this old guy, friend of mine in Norway who has like, the fukkin’ biggest cucumbers you’ve ever seen. They’re like something you would see in the Guinness book of world records. Shit was as big as my fukkin’ arm.” They get comfortable again, the silence broken. “No, but for real” Cleveland goes on, reaching for a brewski in a cooler placed between them on the couch. No knees touching here. “He showed me his whole garden setup. Got corn that you can smell from inside the...” he pauses, thinking. “Wrapper.” Cleveland takes a satisfied sip from his can. “Corn wrapper?” Troy says “you mean the shuck?” Cleveland furrows his brow, “no. I’m pretty sure it’s called a corn wrapper.” “Tusk?” Troy says. Troy shakes his head. “No that doesn’t sound right either.” They both think about it. Cleveland says “mmmmmmmm HUSK!” they cheers their beers and say “ayyyye, fukkin’ husk!” At the same time.

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“Yeah!” Cleveland goes on “he also had some beets that were the size of pumpkins, I shitith you notith good buddy.” “Nice!” Troy says, then goes back to watching the tube and sipping on his beer. They’re both quiet for a time. The commercial with the big titted broad selling... something.... was on. Troy crosses his legs. Cleveland puts a pillow over his lap. Guy stuff. The commercial switches to gutter cleaning and Cleveland continues as if the thread of the conversation hadn’t been broken. “Point is, he’s my good buddy. I got him hooked up with something from China, some kind of a laser pointer that’s illegal to own anywhere else but over there. I didn’t ask him what he was going to use it for and he didn’t tell me. Just took it from me and gave me a nod. He’s a fukkin’ cool guy, we should hang out with him some time.” Cleveland is in the five beer zone where anything seems possible, even taking a trip to Norway to see a man that nods at you when you give him something. The five beer zone is where you start promising things to people that you regret later. That’s how you get roped into helping your grandpa hang drywall at five in the morning.

“That sounds cool” Troy says “we totally should.” He grabs another cold one from the cooler. Cleveland says “he’s got the hookup on the seeds from those fukkin’ huge plants. He cross breeds them or something. He does it with a feather. He showed me that too, but I didn’t know if it was a really good feather for plant breeding, or he just thought it was, so I just told him that it was awesome. He liked that.” Troy is in the seven beer zone and starts twirling his finger. “Fine” Cleveland crosses his arms “forget I even brought it up. Was trying to tell you a story.” Troy apologizes and offers Cleveland another beer from the cooler as a gesture of good will “sorry, sorry, tell me about this dude.”

”Well, that’s pretty much it. But I’m going back over there pretty soon if you want me to get you some seeds. They aren’t exactly legal over here though. They’re not illegal illegal, like cocaine illegal, but they’ll get confiscated from you at the airport if the TSA catches you with them. They’ll probably give you a good "internal onceover for you too, just to teach you a lesson for taking up their time.” Troy says “In that case, you’ll probably get caught on purpose.” Cleveland laughs hard then they’re both laughing. “Yeah” Troy says “gimme them seeds. Sick of this busted ass cucumber shit.” They slap hands and reach for more beers.