Author: Thoughts On The Dead (Page 68 of 1031)

The Pulaski did not smoke. For both energy and relaxation, they chewed the leaf of the peregrine maria tree, which grew an hour’s walk south of their village; to get schnockered and loopy, they chewed a big honk of it at once. For the Midsummer celebration, all the adults (and the sneaky children) drank a tea made from the psilocybin cybeline mushroom, which grew only in what would come to be called the Segovian Hills. The nictotiana rustica grew in the foothills, but only the Pulaski’s shaman knew that plant’s secret meaning, and did not distill it via burnt vapor. They knew that other tribes made a ritual of inhaling smoke, but it made no sense to the Pulaski. All of them had once stood too close to the fire when the wind shifted, and the thick fumes slammed into their lungs; how could this be desired?

The Whites that murdered the Pulaski loved to smoke. Tobacco was omnipresent in the massacre: they puffed on pipes while planning, chewed on chaw and sniffed snuff during it, and celebrated with fine cigars afterwards; thereafter, lighting up was permitted in all of Little Aleppo for a very long time. Until the 30’s or so, surgeons at St. Agatha’s still did minor procedures with butts dangling from their lips. In 1961, a health food restaurant named  The Boisterous Plantain was the first in the neighborhood to offer a non-smoking section; the building was consumed in a fire the Cenotaph described as both “ironic” and “absolutely, positively arson.” The principal didn’t put a stop to teachers at Paul Bunyan High (Go Blue Oxen!) bumming Marlboro Reds from their students until well into the 80’s.

But, though Little Aleppo was a neighborhood in America, it was also a neighborhood in California, and each year there were fewer and fewer places to enjoy the rich, true taste of a Camel, or the woozy, gummy taste of a Cigarette, which were the generics only found locally. (The packs were completely white, without a warning or any labels at all except CIGARETTE printed in black, in Helvetica.) Locals came to begrudgingly enjoy some restrictions, such as the ban in restaurants, and utterly ignore others, such as the ban in bars. Eating without getting smoke blown in your face is pretty sweet, the average Little Aleppian reasoned. But it’s a bar. You’re poisoning yourself while looking for partners in debauchery. It’s a bar, for Christ’s sake! My grandfather didn’t STORM THE BEACH AT HIROSHIMA SO I CAN NOT SMOKE IN A BAR, the average Little Aleppian further reasoned and then freaked out about.

“And now the Verdance.”

“Not right, Dr. Balls.”

Murphy Can was not sure what Dr. Balls was a doctor of, or whether the title was self-assigned. He hoped for the latter, frankly. The doctor came in every morning, earlyish, bought a pack of Lucky Strikes, and brayed about whatever was on the Cenotaph’s front page. He always wore a tie, and  would slap the paper against the counter in time with his harangues.

“Smoking in the park. Fine thing, Murphy. Sunny day, take off your jacket, light ’em up. Puff away under God. You ban smoking, it’s like banning God.”

Murphy Can was perhaps the only Murphy who is not a Murph. He hated “Murph.” That’s the sound of almost vomiting, he thought. A belch on the brink. He insisted on Murphy, but virtually nothing else.

“In some ways, I suppose.”

“In important ways. Theological ways. It’s in the Bible. Jesus smoked like a goddamed chimney.”

“Is that in there?”

“How can a government infringe on the rights of its citizens in such a fashion?”

“We on the Constitution now?”

“We shall attack this injustice on all fronts. Hogfuckers sucking on our freedoms!”

It was only the two of them in the shop, so Murphy did not ask Dr. Balls to leave hogfucking out of it.

“Know what I like doing?”

“What?”

“Flicking lit butts at the swans.”

“Well, that’s probably one of the reasons they’re passing the law. Do people see you doing it?”

“Hell, yeah. Kids cry. But mostly people encourage me.”

“Those birds have made a lot of enemies,” Murphy said.

The Ash Can was on Ribbon Road, right off the Main Drag, and not really named that. Legally, technically, on all the paperwork, the incorporated business was known as “The Ash Can,” but Murphy had, around a minute after filling out all the paperwork, soured on the title as too cute by half, and so he had never put up a sign informing the public of the store’s name. Everyone just called it “the smoke shop on Ribbon,” and that’s how he answered the phone, too.

Walk-in humidor on the right. Counter opposite the door. Wall of cigarette packs behind the counter, reds and yellows and blues but no browns, colorful like a stage 4 rainbow. Students from the Art Department at Harper were always begging him to let them turn it into a mosaic, a portrait, whatever. Murphy always said no. They were organized by price, just like liquor: generics on the bottom, the name brands in the middle, and the fancy imported shit way up top. The name brands sold the best, as Ribbon Road is just very slightly on the Upside, and so his customers would gladly pay the extra buck for the packaging that let the world know they were not poor.

Up near the window, two old men played chess. Murphy did not know their names; they did not speak; they had been there since the first day he opened. Neither had ever purchased anything, and Murphy had never seen a game begin or end. The guys changed every now and then. He was almost positive the one on the left used to be black. He enjoyed their presence, though. It was fitting, he believed. Bookstores have cats, barbershops have raucous conversations and magazines; smoke shops have two old guys playing chess in the corner. Murphy was just glad they weren’t playing backgammon. The dice would have gotten on his nerves a long time ago, he figured.

“Tighter. That’s what it’s getting around here, tighter,” Dr. Balls pointed out. He did not have a mustache, but he should have, and then he walked out without saying goodbye. He never did. Murphy didn’t care.

Immense poster on the wall. Man shooting an elephant. Sur la chasse pour le goût read the logo. Please do not translate this poster to me anymore read the hand-written note taped up next to the logo.

Fancy Delaware walked in. She was wearing jeans and a fleece coat because she would not go in the smoke shop while in her scrubs. Addicts love to draw lines in the sand. Lets ’em point to a group of people and say At least I’m not them.

“Murphy.”

“Doc.”

“Hell of a morning.”

“Hasn’t made any left turns so far.”

He pulled a pack of Marlboro Lights from its berth behind him, laid it on the counter, topped it with a plain-white matchbook; she snatched it into her pocket. Murphy had always wondered if Fancy knew Dr Balls, but not enough to have ever asked.

“Smoking ban in the Verdance,” he told her.

“Good.”

“You think?”

“Couple months ago, someone nearly took out a swan’s eye with a cigarette. Asshole.”

“Those birds have made a lot of enemies.”

“Oh, yeah,” Fancy agreed. “I was calling the swan the asshole. They brought it to my goddamned ER.”

“Wouldn’t it need a vet?”

“Without question. No wiggle room on that one. A bird goes to a veterinarian, not the hospital. But the vet refused to open his door when he saw how angry the swan was, and so the cops brought it to us.”

“Pissed-off?”

“Apoplectic. Hysterically enraged. I don’t know if the brain of a waterfowl is capable of entering a fugue state, but that’s what it seemed like. Broke a nurse’s jaw. A male nurse.”

“They’re all muscle under those feathers,” Murphy said.

“Which were all over the place. Swan feathers are actually quite greasy. And don’t forget the terror-shit it squirted on every surface. We had to sterilize the whole damn place.”

“Did it lose its eye?”

“No.”

Fancy laid bills on the counter, piled exact change on top of them. Her ball cap was yellow, and had a blue cartoon bull on it. The register was third or fourth-hand, and no longer calculated, but was solid and bronze and made noises that reassured the customers. TICK TACK TICK the keys even though none of them did anything except the one that opened SHA-CHACK! the drawer; that was the sound of honest commerce right there. He wrote the transaction’s details down in a pad. Running tally.

“That’s a win for all involved.”

“Didn’t feel like a win. I didn’t even want to be playing the game. It was traumatizing, and I’m an ER doctor. I’ve sewn people’s faces back on. I’ve never had a nightmare about work until those cops chucked that fucking swan into my emergency room.”

“Maybe you should see a shrink.”

“Nah, I’d tell her that I calm myself down after the swanmares by fantasizing about going up to the Verdance in the middle of the night with an air rifle and murdering all of them.”

“All six?”

“Yeah,” Fancy said. “Fuck ’em.”

“An overreaction, but an understandable one.”

“That’s the sort of thing psychiatrists write down, and I’m simply not comfortable with that.”

“Also understandable.”

“99% I’m not gonna do it.”

“I like those odds,” Murphy said.

“See you if I see you,” she nodded, and out the door past the chess players. One was playing the Catalan Opening, and the other was countering with the Semi-Slav Defense. Fancy didn’t know how to play chess past the basic moves, so she did not recognize the boldness of the counter.

It was quiet again, just the radio murmuring KHAY, only loud enough to tamp down the silence. His pack of True Green 100’s was next to the pad he wrote his business on, picked it up, shook one from the ripped-open mouth. The match FFT shake it out PHWOO and the smoke bandied about his skull and Murphy Can figured there was a metaphor in there, but he didn’t figure much beyond that in the smoke shop on Ribbon in Little Aleppo, which is a neighborhood in America.