by Chad Norton
Even dried, stumped and discarded, the stale roaches said more about the man than his children ever could. Who and what he was was never as clear or available to anyone – blood relation, ex-wife, high school chum or otherwise – as was the detailed knowledge of how and what he smoked:
Half ‘n Half squeezed from a worn leather pouch, rolled with unconscious perfection in a Zig Zag between thumbs and fingers, or one-handed in a pinch. An anxious dab of drool from the tip of his tongue sealed the paper to itself and, without fail, the metallic flick of a Zippo’s lid rang out just before the cigarette’s tip glowed red.
That was who he was.
But that was not who he had always been. He became that person one summer years ago in a hijacked boxcar with friends. Amid the rumbling, swaying motion of the train, a sloppily made cigarette fumbled its way to the mouth of a boy. A boy with a devilish smirk and a penchant for pranks. A boy who strove for the coolness of his heroes while still the early mold of a man. It was then that his transformation began, where the unbridled potential of adolescence slowly devolved to a choking, solitary passion that aroused talk in everyone it seemed, but him.
Indeed, more smoke flowed from his lips than words for he had little need for conversation. Cigarettes were his most frequent companions, his most trusted, whispering advisors. And as expected and natural as a nose or freckle on the face of a passing stranger was to most people, he would have appeared freakish and incomplete, deformed in some way if a vacancy had fantastically arrived on his lip where a cigarette rightfully belonged.
To see him was to see cigarettes.
The yellowed, moistened ends he breathed returned his favor by kissing the tips of his fingers and nose with their formaldehyde pallor, staining his skin like the proud tattoo of his one true love. And he wore their scars on every shirt, pant leg, sock, coat and pair of boxer shorts he owned in the form of pock marks from an acne of burning, errant ashes. The same could be said for his couches, blankets, pillows, sheets, carpets and car seats since he spread the diseased look everywhere he went.
Though most apparent, most appallingly obvious, was his scent. The man was smoke incarnate. It inhabited his every pore and follicle, hid under his toenails and swirled about his eardrums. To new acquaintances, his rancid, sweet smell turned stomachs and was so a part of him it seemed to rise directly from his soul.
His wife knew him as best she could. She knew what he liked and when he wanted it: runny eggs sunny side up with bacon, toast and a pot of coffee before work; a big lunch for him to come home to mid-day; a gin martini as dry as the Sahara the minute he walked in the door at night; and tins of tobacco, bottles of lighter fluid and boxes of rolling papers fully stocked at all times in the cupboard for the cigarettes he would enjoy before, during and after each meal and throughout the rest of his day.
His wife didn’t smoke.
But she cared for his cigarettes much like she cared for him. She gave them everything they needed. She had ashtrays of every conceivable material and design strategically placed throughout the house on any surface large enough and flat enough to hold them. They were everywhere.
Some were modern glass and came as gifts. Others were stolen from restaurants and looked appropriately out of place next to ceramic masterpieces molded by the hands of his children, children the man sought to ignore behind his smoky haze. And before any ashtray had a chance to gather more than one or two of the handmade butts sucked lifeless by her husband, his wife was in motion. In a blur of efficiency, the defiled object was whisked away, its contents launched into the fireplace, before a sanitary thrashing of Palmolive and hot water in the kitchen sink ultimately concluded with a dish towel buffing fit for fine china.
She repeated the routine thousands of times over twenty-five years of marriage and each time, within those shiny ashtrays, she searched for something. For a speck of approval. For a glimmer of acknowledgment. It was there that she looked for her husband and never found him.
His existence was purely factual, proven by the physical space he occupied as a moving cloud of smoke. That was all.
Only his husk was observable and thought to be understood. Like the endlessly rolled layers of Zig Zags that sheathed the tobacco essence of his cigarettes, prying, unwanted eyes found the man outwardly visible, but as to what he was inside, speculation was their only option.
He was truly a world onto himself, a nicotine-addled topography of folds, creases and fissures draped in a perpetually replenished smog of cigarette exhaust. Fine, lengthening wisps of airborne tar and exhaled detritus reached out from his body as he sat in a chair at the head of the dining room table. The phantasmic fingers hung in the air at various altitudes and slowly crept throughout the rest of the room where they spread over lamps, chairs and books like ground fog over doomed, low-lying hills and forgotten headstones.
A child once squinted at the sight of the man and made a more astronomical comparison to the slow, deathly spiral of a black hole, which also seemed entirely within reason. Both visions were true to the man’s universe. And both foretold his destiny.
The dark, stained mahogany box with the polished brass fittings is temporarily displayed on the crowded mantle in the man’s home. Gleaming ash trays flank the box in silent tribute as they wait for an as-yet-to-be-scheduled garage sale or trip to the junk yard in the company of a rag tag collection of men’s clothing dotted with mysterious, little burns. Down below, just before the cold, charred, week-old logs residing in the fireplace, the crusty, stained remnants of abandoned cigarettes are also on display, sitting on a pile of ashes.