The Marijuana Thief

                                                      The Marijuana Thief

                                                                                                                                 by

                                                                                                     Austin Mitchell

             I was at the post office in Keswick when a police jeep sped into the police 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 inside.  Two minutes later Dukey Brown barged into the station yard. On seeing the marijuana 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 Reid who was in n 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, is 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, going to make them lock him up for weed,” Leroy said.

                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 said.

                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 him, 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 get 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 arrest for growing weed. It’s the same weed Dukey stole. We don’t know what he was doing to do with it.”

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

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

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

                Sergeant Dennis looked at the other Sergeant.

                “What are you saying, Carl?” he asked.

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

                “Dukey, count today as your lucky day,” Sergeant Dennis said 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.