Real Smoke
- Oct 16, 2020
- 4 min read
by Kip Knott
Jack smokes. Sure he smokes. And not those goddamn electric cigarettes. “Dildo Smokes,” he calls them. Jack smokes Camel Wides. Almost two packs a day. And the smoke that fills his lungs, the smoke that clings to his beard and hair, that is real smoke, not some kind of manufactured smoke that comes from a microscopic motherboard.
Jack’s daddy smoked, too. So did his granddaddy. His daddy smoked Lucky’s. His granddaddy smoked dried cornsilk wrapped in newspapers when he was 10-years-old before moving on to Old Gold’s he rolled himself. Both Jack’s daddy and granddaddy lived to be 84. Both men died in accidents: his granddaddy having fallen from a hayloft; his daddy killed trying to beat the train at 7-Mile Turn on Route 13.
Jack was born, raised, and still lives in the same house on Route 13 just outside of Moxahala, an old coal town in the Appalachian part of Ohio. He was born on November 13. He weighed 13 pounds and 13 ounces when he was born. His momma, who smoked Salems, had to be cut open after nearly two days of trying to push Jack out. Doc Miller told Jack he was lucky to come out alive. “Babies big as you usually aren’t breathing once I get to them,” Doc told Jack. “The mothers never survive.” That last part about the mothers was true for Jack’s momma. Jack still had the last pack of Salems his momma never got around to smoking. He kept it in an old tin Folgers can along with his daddy’s beat-up but still ticking Timex and his own dinged-up wedding ring.
Every year on his birthday for the last ten years—ever since his wife left him for the vice principal of Miller K-12 after 13 years of a marriage that was rocky even during the good times—Jack got a carton of Camel Wides from his son. His son smokes Camel Menthols, the same cigarette that his momma, Jack’s now ex-wife, used to smoke. Jack always thought any cigarette with a flavor other than tobacco wasn’t a real smoke, but he never said anything to his son because he wanted that carton of Wides every year.
“Found me a vintage Joe Camel money clip on eBay yesterday,” Jack’s son tells him this year, the year that Jack turns 65 and can finally retire from his janitor job at Miller. Jack pulls a twenty from a wad of other twenties wrapped in a heavy duty rubberband and sets it on the counter of the 7-Mile Turn Gas-N-Go, the best place around for a chopped steak sandwich and a basket of onion rings.
Out in the parking lot, Jack’s son pulls the carton of Wides (unwrapped) and a birthday card (not in an envelope) from the passenger side of his candy-apple-red Toyota RAV4. “Thanks for lunch, Pop,” his son says, handing him the carton and card. “You can have the money clip if you want. I should get it in a couple days.”
“I’m good,” Jack tells his son. “Got my rubberband. It holds what I need good enough.”
“I gave momma a Joe Camel bathrobe on her birthday. She loved it.”
“She still good?” Jack asks.
“She’s still got the oxygen,” his son says. “Some days is better than others. Carl left her, you know.”
“Nope. Didn’t know,” Jack says. “She all alone now?”
“No. You know Momma. It weren’t but a month before she found someone else. Some guy who sold her that new CPAP contraption she has to wear at night. They been carrying on for the best part of six months now.”
“Your momma’s a survivor,” Jack says. “She still smoke?”
“She ain’t supposed to. Mostly she don’t. Used to be I’d notice a smoke or two missing after I seen her. I never said nothin’ to her, though. There weren’t no point.”
“Like I said, she’s a survivor,” Jack repeats.
“What about you, Pop?”
“What about me?”
“You a survivor?”
Jack waves the carton of cigarettes in the air. “Thanks for the smokes,” he says as he climbs into his rust-bucket Ford pickup. He start’s the engine after a couple of tries, then rolls down the window. “You know menthols ain’t real smokes,” he yells to his son over the mufflerless rumble of his truck.
“I don’t smoke them no more,” his son yells back with a smile. “I vape now. Doc says if I won’t quit, I’m better off vaping.”
Jack shakes his head and rolls the window back up. He sits in the truck until his son pulls away, then opens the carton and grabs the first pack on top. He bangs the pack thirteen times on his palm before he unwraps it, expertly taps out one cigarette, clenches it in his teeth, and lights it with his daddy’s Zippo, letting the real smoke fill his lungs. Jack always bangs the pack thirteen times. Ten times, he learned, wasn’t enough to pack the tobacco right. Fifteen times packed the tobacco too tight. So Jack settled on thirteen, even though deep down he knew thirteen was never his lucky number.
Kip Knott’s writing has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Flash Fiction Magazine, MoonPark Review, Stone of Madness Press, and Still: The Journal. He is also a regular monthly contributor to Versification, an online journal of micro and punk poetry. His debut full-length collection of poetry—Tragedy, Ecstasy, Doom, and so on—is available from Kelsay Books. More of his work may be accessed at kipknott.com.
