The Thirteen Steps

There’s a list of rules next to Grover’s door that lays it down for customers sure as Moses laid it down for the children of Israel: "Thou shall not forget thy money, Thou shall not draw heat unto the door of my house, Thou shall not bring anyone unto thy Dealer who is a stranger to Him upon pain of death, Thou shall not refuse a toke should it be offered unto you. Thou shalt always wipe thy feet." The last one's for his mom's benefit and I can feel her eyes on me as I pretend to scan the list. You’re supposed to always read them before descending into the Sepulchre but most of us have the lot memorized. The first time I read them I thought they were a bigger joke than the original commandments and said as much. His mom told me that without rules there is disaster. I've since learned that she believes god acts through her. I just wanna' score but I do wipe my feet before descending into the Sepulchre.


The thirteen steps leading down look like a suicidal carpenter's afterthought and creak like a rusty hinge in the wind. There’s no railing at all, just bare wood leading down to bare cement. No Holy Steps these, just a narrow road down which one misstep leads to concussion or skull splitting death. The first time I took them I slipped on a cat and almost broke my leg. The cat didn't make it and Grover gave me a free gram for my trouble. It was his mom's cat and they never got along.

Grover knows every one of his customers by their foot wear, sees my surplus combat boots and calls out in his mushy voice, "One-Nut descends into the tomb of his Dealer. All praise One-Nut."


I half expect to hear an echoing chorus of worshipers but it's way to early for that yet and it's not nearly smokey enough. Instead I find Grover wedged into his spot in the corner and dressed for receiving in a not too stained bedsheet and a T-Shirt that doesn’t quite cover his nipples with “Welcome to Paradise” scrawled across the front in what looks like black lipstick. The floor's littered with empty beer cans, fast food take-out trays and enough fat roaches to pinch out half a pound of second hand green. "I like what you've done to the place? Very flop-house modern. Your mom must be shitting kittens."

“Fuck her,” he says. “She should have thought of that before she threw me down the stairs.”

About that: Grover's mom - all ninety-six pounds of her - pushed him down the basement stairs when he was fourteen. When I met Grover in Grade Eight he was just topping six feet and weighed over three hundred pounds. He was a bad lad back then and gave her no end of trouble with all of his petty theft and mob enforcement work. She locked the door and left him down there with a cracked skull to die. Not that she ever knew what state she'd put him in - she never bothered checking - she just locked the door and never let on to anyone where he'd gone.

Grover will always say that he pulled through out of shere hate and stubbornness but you have to give the man some credit in the brain department - even if it is the animalistic hind brain. He'll tell about slipping in and out of consciousness for hours (or days) before touching the crack in his head and realizing that his life was leaking through it. He'll tell about fumbling for his belt and looping it around his head to hold the break together. He'll even tell you about eating the vermin that came nosing around the rich meal of blood and matter left by his head wound. My favourite part is listening to him tell about climbing the stairs one agonizing step at a time over the course of interminable hours and finding the door locked. So he knocks on the basement door calling weakly "Ma...Ma.." sounding more like a lamb than a man to find it opened by Mrs. Kackas from next door. She's watching the house while Grover's mom takes advantage of his "unexplained absence" to make a pilgrimage to some shrine in Kilaloe. Mrs. Kackas feeds him lamb and rice enough so he can find his feet and he leaves the house to establish a dope connection and delivery windows. The rest is history.

Looking at him now it’s hard to say if he’s grown any taller since those days but his bulk offers one the impression that it’s pushing against the fabric of reality. He’s not so much sitting as he seems to have fallen and got a settee jammed up his ass. It looks like the basement was built around him. His mom hoped that the basement would be his tomb but he rose again so he calls it the Sepulchre to piss her off. Can't say as anyone would blame him. They've never mentioned the stair pushing incident again but she'll always have his mushy sounding voice and the crease down his skull (which is obvious when you know it's there) to remind her.

I hold up a brown paper bag in my hand. "Brought you tandoori chicken from Indra's."


"Awesome." He reaches a pale crablike hand for the bag and sets it down next to his seat. "You want the usual?"


"Yeah, Man." The only other seat's a broken down lazyboy that Grover grew out of two years after being pushed down the stairs. The seats sagging and broken but it's still a comfortable chair. I take it watching his bulk negotiate the process that is weighing out my bag.


"Remember Spacey Stacy Childers?" he asks while adding fat green nuggets onto his tiny digital scale.


"You mean that chick from the old homeroom, the one with the huge cans?"


"That's her. Georgie Porridge brought her by the other day and she knew me right off. Started talking all sorts of shit like where have I been and did I know that folks still get together on weekends to speculate about me." His hands move through their practised ritual of weighing while he talks without looking at me. "Says she always wondered where I wound up and never expected to see me stuck down my mom's basement."

"She still have a wicked case of chest mumps?" I ask remembering eighth grade erections in homeroom.

"Oh, Man, you'd better believe it. She even hinted at trading favours for smoke."

"Brave girl, " I tell him as he finishes the half-O. "Looking for your Johnson would be like searching for ancient buried treasure."

"Fuck you and gimme a hundred dollars, One-Nut." We trade money for smoke and he settles back into his seat while I stash it down my sock. "Had a kid question my weights and measures the other day."

This perks me up some. Micah "Grover" Groves is the most scrupulously honest dealer I have ever met. His scale is always a top of the line two points after the decimal job and he sells dry weight premium buds. No one questions his authority in the Sepulchre. "What happened?"

Grover shrugs and its like watching the Earth move from orbit. "He was going on about how the last couple bags he got seemed light and wanted to check the read-out on my scale. I told him he could take me at my word or get the fuck out. He took the bag and left."

"Sucks, Dude," I say trying to find an excuse to leave. "Maybe you should bow out for a while?"

"Fuck that," he says while opening his take out tray. "People just gotta' realize that you don't question Grover down here."

"I hear you, Brother. Enjoy the food and I'll see you next week." He mumbles something about bringing him a burger next time and I turn away. Watching Grover eat is like watching a starving crocodile tear an antelope to pieces. Sometimes he'll lose a piece of food in his folds and find it a week later - he calls them tit-bits.

His mom's waiting near the basement door. I know she always listens when it's just him and one other person alone down there. She lives in fear of being ratted out to the cops about what she did those years ago. Grover maintains that her current station in life - co-conspirator in a dope ring and living in fear of the truth - is more punishment that jail could ever be. Dressed in her house-coat and fuzzy slippers she looks like any other late middle aged mom but she pushed her kid down the stairs and left him for dead and it's hard not to see when you know what to look for.

There's guilt and fear crinkling around her eyes 'cause she knows that there are two pushers living under one roof.