The Marijuana Thief

The Marijuana Thief

by

Austin Mitchell

            
I was at the post office in Keswick when a police jeep sped into the station
yard, next door. I ran to see what was happening. They took out two robbers and
hauled them into the station. The back of the jeep was left open as it could
hardly hold the marijuana plants inside. None of us on the scene knew who the
two robbers were.

             Two minutes later Dukey Davis
barged into the station yard. On seeing the marijuana plants and no policemen
in sight, he broke off several branches and stuffed them into a bag he had and
made a hasty retreat out of the station.

               
A man named Leroy Nolan, who was in the station yard with me, shook his head in
disbelief at what Dukey had just done.

               
“What a man brave,” he remarked.

               
“You mean foolish,” a woman named Joyce Lyn, said.

               
Two policemen came for the marijuana. They gave no indication that some of it
had been stolen.

               
The excitement being over, we were moving out of the station when another
police jeep drove in with Dukey aboard!

               
Now what the hell, I thought.

               
We turned around and followed the jeep into the station yard.

               
“Officer, it’s the weed that they just brought in. He took some of it,”Joyce
Lyn said.

               
“Give him a chance, Sergeant, he just saw the weed and took some of it,” I
said.

               
“I can’t believe that a big respectable man like Dukey, is  going to make them lock him up for weed,”
Leroy opined.

               
It was obvious that these policemen were strangers to the area.

               
A Corporal came from inside the main office. His name was Marsh.

               
“What happen to this man?” he asked.

               
“We caught him with this bag of weed,” the Constable who was holding Dukey,
said. Another Constable showed him the weed.

               
“I never knew that you smoked weed, Dukey,” Corporal Marsh remarked.

               
Dukey started coughing.

               
“I use it for……..for………….for my asthma.”

               
 Sergeant Dennis, the station’s head, came out of his office.

               
“What happen to Dukey? What are you holding him for?” he asked.

               
“He stole some weed from out of the jeep,” the Constable holding Dukey, told
him.

               
We all knew that Dukey operated a shop and bar in a nearby village. If he
wanted marijuana, he didn’t have to steal it. There were enough sellers around
for him to buy any amount he needed. There were dozens of marijuana plantations
up in the Keswick Mountains. It had been rumored for years that he
even owned one of those plantations.

               
“I don’t know you as a weed man, Dukey. What were you going to do with the
weed?” Sergeant Dennis asked.

               
“As I said already, sir, I wanted it for my asthma.”

               
He started coughing again.

               
Sergeant Dennis laughed.

               
“But I don’t understand you, Dukey. You have to come into  the station to
steal weed. It grows wild on any road side up here.”

               
“What are you going to do with him?” the other Sergeant asked.

               
“Dukey, you see the amount of trouble you got yourself in. I don’t know how you
are going to get out of this,” Sergeant Dennis stated.

               
Several more persons, including Dukey’s wife and children had come into the
station yard when they heard what had happened to him.

               
His wife and their two teenaged children, a boy and a girl, were now crying.

               
“Give him a chance, Sarge,” a woman pleaded.

               
“Dukey will have to learn that what he did was wrong. We have two men in the
jail right now who we arrested for growing weed. It’s the same weed Dukey stole.
We don’t know what he was going to do with it.”

               
“I never knew that Dukey smoked weed,” a man named Tanny Mc Bride said.

               
“We are going to have to lock him up,” Sergeant Dennis stated.

               
“You can’t compare him with those robbers,” Dukey’s wife remarked.

               
Sergeant Dennis looked at the other Sergeant.

               
“What should we do, Carl?” he asked.

               
“Let him go about his business,” the other Sergeant advised.

               
“Dukey, count today as your lucky day,” Sergeant Dennis stated as the policemen
holding Dukey released him.

               
Most of us spectators left the police station before Dukey and his family. They
were still in the station yard thanking the policemen.

               
Most of us felt that Dukey had been foolish. As Sergeant Dennis had said,
marijuana grew in abundance in these parts. It grew by most roadsides, so why
go into a police station to steal weed. We felt that he was just being greedy.
We also thought he had put himself in a compromising position as far as the
police were concerned. The End.

Austins blog: stredwick.blogspot.com