There were no plants now. Only a few scattered buckets, some dirt on the floor I had neglected to sweep. A handful of dead yellow leaves. And the lights were diminished. Grayson shielded his eyes from the glare, but it was only half-strength, I knew. Five fluorescent lights hung on the ceiling, strung from a complicated nest of extension cords and wires—not the usual ten. Lobo and Mama had taken half when they left for California.

“These are the lights,” I said, tugging on the one nearest me so it bobbed up and down on its wire like a mobile. “This is what the Pumpkin King wants.”

“The Pumpkin King? Jesus. Is that really his name?”

I bent to the light, working to unfasten it.

“Wait a minute,” Grayson said. “You aren’t actually going to give them to him, are you?”

“It’s a trade. People do that now.”

“But lights for seeds? That doesn’t seem like a good trade.”

“Help me for a second.” I had Grayson hold a light while I unhooked it. We lowered it to the floor, and I wrapped the cord around it. “These grow things even in dark, closed spaces with no sunlight. Even in basements.” I looked at the light on the concrete floor. “Especially in basements.”

“Can we get more?”

You could buy them in town at the hardware store, but you had to be careful; you couldn’t buy too many at once. You had to talk loudly about tomatoes—that was what Lobo did. You could buy them on the internet, but you should probably buy orchids at the same time. “I don’t know if you can buy them now,” I said. “But I should pack them up, get them ready, anyway. I should take them with me.”

Grayson looked at me over the light. He wanted to know. He had been dying to ask. He had been patient, but I felt the questions coming; I knew they would come. “Did you do a lot? Did your folks make you?”

“They didn’t make me,” I said.

“What did you do? Make deliveries?”

“It’s not like that. It’s just farming.” That was how I felt about it.

That was how they had explained it to me.

In fifth grade, the drug dogs came. The confident deputies, with their bellies and their holsters, had talked to us about bad men, and things that looked like candy. We had had the bad-men talk before. The Earth was full of bad men. They walked amid the holler, as populous as apple trees, studded with acne and cursing without control. Bad teeth tumbled in their mouths. In their clothes lived the devil. But this talk was different. It concerned what we might smell or see at home, and if we saw the plants—brittle, innocent—or the pipes, smoky blue glass, we should tell someone. Tell them.