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everyone he met, there were only a handful of people he trusted
completely. Scott was one. They were best friends, brothers,
coconspirators, adventurers together. Kevin would recall those days and
say, "I honored Scott's pathi honored him.
" They still had little money, but they didn't need L much.
Their landscaping jobs paid them enough to rent The Shire and buy what
they needed. They weren't joined at the hip, Scott spent time in
Honolulu, and Kevin took short trips to Edmonton, Alberta, and sailed
with his friend Rich. But The Shire was their home base, it was the most
stable, dependable, welcoming home either had ever found. But then their
perfect way of life hit a roadblock. Kevin's job with Hawaii Plant Life
was phased out, the tomato farm was in a fallow period, and he didn't
have the money for his share of the rent. He didn't miss the jobs,
though. He had made up his mind to believe in his skill as an artist.
But Scott didn't have enough to pay for both of them, and he said,
"Bubba, we're in trouble. We haven't got the rent."
"Don't worry, " Kevin said. "I'll get the money." At that moment, the
phone rang. Scott answered and handed it to Kevin, saying, "It's for
you, Bubba." It was Michael Lau, who owned a wonderful tourist
attraction called Paradise Park. Kevin had put his bid in to do some
murals at the park, even though he'd never painted a mural in his life.
But Lau didn't know that and he hired Kevin on the spot to paint a
seventeen-by-fifty-five-foot mural at Paradise Park. He would pay him
$3,000. This amount of money was unheard of in their world, but Kevin
accepted the commission without betraying the excitement he felt. It
would mean leaving The Shire for a long time, but it was necessary if
they hoped to continue renting their home. "I wasn't going to waste any
money renting another place, " he recalled. "I bought a tent from
somebody for $150 and found a place out in the jungle next to a stream.
It was gorgeous, and I ended up living there for six months." Kevin
painted thirteen murals at Paradise Park. It was fortunate that he was
an athlete, the murals rose so high above the ground that he had to be
both an acrobat and a painter. The wall he created in the Bird Theater
looked so real that you had to touch it to tell it was a painting. A
crystalline waterfall cascaded over lifelike rocks and banana leaves and
crimson halacoya shaded the "water." One night, there was a violent
tropical storm and Kevin woke up in his tent to the sound of trees
crashing down all around. When he ventured out at dawn, he saw that a
huge coconut palm had fallen inches from his tent. Rather than being
frightened, he felt blessed. He was alive, he had finished his
assignments at Paradise Park, and he had more money than he had ever
made in his life. Most important, he had proved to himself that he
could, indeed, make a living with his art. Kevin Meyers had come to
believe in signs and omens. Some unseen hand had saved him from being
crushed by a falling tree in the jungle. He was free now to go back to
The Shire. Kevin's homecoming was not what he expected. On the surface,
everything looked the same, the gardens they had planted were, if
possible, even more lush than they had been. But, as he walked through
the property, Kevin felt the hairs prickle at the back of his neck. He
looked closer and saw that someone had cleverly planted marijuana in
sheltered pockets of space between The Shire's gardens.
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leaves hid themselves among the coleus and the hibiscus plants, but they
were there, as luxuriant and thriving as everything else they had
planted. Kevin turned to Scott with a question in his eyes. "Who planted
it? " Scott grinned. "I did. See how it blends in? I hid it so well that
no one will ever see it." It was one thing to rip off somebody else's
illicit field of pot, it was another to plant the illegal drug in front
of their home.
Scott couldn't understand why Kevin was upset. And Kevin couldn't
explain that growing marijuana on the land that Bill Pfiel had leased
was a betrayal that could bring them all down. This wasn't like stealing
cherry pies, or bananas, or even somebody else's marijuana.
This was fouling their own nest. Kevin didn't want to be at The Shire.
His friend Rich was sailing to California and needed him to crew.
Kevin accepted. He hoped that when he came back, things would have
returned to normal. But a Pandora's Box had been opened, and there was
no way in the world to close it.
Scott wasn't at all deterred by Kevin's shock and disappointment.
He simply went ahead with his bumper crop of marijuana, reaping it when
it was ready, rolling the leaves and preparing to sell it.
It was his second foray into the world of drug dealing, only this time
Scott was selling his own product. Perhaps because he had no real
experience in the cultivation of marijuana, Scott Scurlock was clumsy.
Bill Pfiel found out about the forbidden crop. It would be difficult not
to notice that the gardens of L The Shire Plantation were full of
growing things one day, and virtually decimated the next. When Pfiel and
the owner of the tomato farm verified what was going on, they evicted
Scott. By the time Kevin returned, Pfiel knew that he had had no part in
growing the illegal plants, and Kevin was still in favor to a degree. But
since Kevin had brought Scott to The Shire, he was now somehow tainted
too. "They told me that I could move back in but everything had changed,
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