Eventually the fire burned down to mostly the hot red glow of coals and the meteor shower subsided, and I decided to go find Marty. I wasn’t sure exactly where on the shore he would be, but I figured since the park was mostly empty that I’d probably see his lantern. I carried a small flashlight to light the trail from the site to the shore, but once I made it out of the woods, the waxing moon, which was now lighting the sky and reflecting off the water, made seeing relatively easy. The lake was calm and glassy and along the shore I could see five or six lantern lights spaced intermittently. The closest one was Marty’s, and I approached it without difficulty.
Marty hadn’t caught any fish worth keeping, yet he seemed uninterested in returning to the camp. He said that he too had seen the meteors, but that he was glad they were over. He said that they were bad for fishing, that the streaking lights had strange effects on the fish and kept them away from the surface. He said now that the moon was full, the fish would stay down even lower. Fishermen always seem to know weird stuff like that. After several more casts, Marty put his rod down and lay back on the big rock on which he was sitting. He had a couple cans of beer soaking in the water to make them cold, and he told me to reach in and grab two. I did and Marty sat back up and took one. I opened the other can and took a sip. “I got some pot if you want some.” I had been carrying it with me for several days with the hope of impressing Marty. I really never smoked much pot, but I knew Marty did, and so I figured he would be impressed that I had some for us. But as soon the words left my mouth, I knew it wasn’t the way I had wanted to tell him. I had wanted to be smooth about it, like pull a joint out of my pocket and hit him with some awesome line, but instead, I sounded like a kid, and he smirked. He set down his beer and reached his hand toward me. I pulled the plastic bag out of my pocket and handed it to him. He held it close to the lantern, opened the bag and sniffed it. Then he smirked again. “Hell, this is Mexican shit. I hope you didn’t give noth’n’ but pesos for it. It ain’t even all pot.” He reached into his tackle box and lifted out a bag. “Now look at this. This stuff’s for real.” He grinned and opened his bag. Fast and skillfully, he rolled a joint. I wanted to ask him to show me how he did it, but I was already embarrassed, and I figured I’d better wait a bit before asking a question like that.
He was right though, about my pot being weak, because when I took a few hits of his joint, everything started spinning, and I wasn’t exactly sure where I was, I mean I was not used to being around Marty, and the camp was new to me too. Still, I knew I was really high, and I knew I didn’t want Marty to think I couldn’t handle it, so I focused all my concentration on thinking about the fire and the stars and the meteors, but the more I focused my attention, the more I forgot to focus my attention: the more I tried not to be disoriented, the more disoriented I became. And the cycle spiraled down with the pot holding me tight, and I began to imagine that I could not breath, that a clamp was around my chest and that with my every breath, it tightened, and that all I could do was suck in tiny amounts of air and pant. I even forgot about looking cool and started a paranoid struggle for survival. I must have hyperventilated at that point because my panting became so bad that I eventually couldn’t breath at all, and Marty had to cup his hands around my mouth and talk me down. I don’t know how long that lasted, but eventually I blacked out, and the next thing I knew, Marty was standing knee-deep in the water pulling me to the shore, and I was coughing and all mixed-up. I think Marty probably threw me in the water to revive me, but I never had a chance to ask him.
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