Up in Smoke

Up in Smoke 

By Rachel McClain

I don’t know if me, the horses or Sam sensed Daddy first; but where seconds before the air had smelled of sweat and we’d heard nothing but soft snorting, now, a quiet fell, tucking around the semi-darkness like an extra blanket.The horses made no move to betray what they’d heard in the loft; but Sam’s sweat froze in traceable rivulets on his back and I stopped picking hay off my sticky thighs the instant I heard Daddy meander through the door.He leaned against the half wall of the stall beneath us, settling in for considering. Sam panicked and blindly began grasping for his pants, but I clasped his wrist and gritted my teeth at him. Daddy reached into his pocket with one hand and over to a horse’s head with the other. I heard soft snorting start up again from below as Daddy scratched the horse’s muzzle. Ease returned to the barn, but only some.Through the cracks between the floorboard slats I saw his thin fingers thumbing open his pack of smoking papers and flicking open his tobacco tin. He delicately laid a single sheet of paper on the palm of his hand, cupping it gently against his half-curled fingers. He lined a row of stringy tobacco against the edge, pressing it into shape. My nose ran at the acrid memory of the scent, though I couldn’t smell the dark, neat pile from where I sat now. I sucked in my breath and watched.Once, he’d rolled a cigarette and slowly and deliberately smoked it without saying a word to me while I perched on the edge of the dining room chair, hands clasped on my knees, waiting. He’d inhaled each sweet breath as if it were the last one he’d ever take before finally pronouncing that I’d indeed be allowed to go away to college in the fall. He’d roll a cigarette and smoke it before reaching any major decision, then he’d stick to it, even if he was proven wrong later, like the time he’d found our supposedly stolen tools in the back shed a week after letting Chet, the farmhand go.Daddy stopped short of sealing this cigarette. He pressed the tobacco firmly and then studied it as if judging the amount, deeming it not adequate for this thinking. He added more tobacco and then pressed it into shape again. He never licked the paper in a smooth, single stroke; he always darted his tongue in and out like a snake’s when he sealed the edge, almost attacking the paper in fits and starts of salivary globs. Not a wasteful man, he curled the ends for fear of even the smallest bit falling to the ground.The flame from the match illuminated his thin face and cast dancing shadows across his brow. The deep crags of his cheekbones created swoops and hollows that I saw even in the dim light of the barn with the quick flash of the match. He cast a thin and meager shadow in that instant of light. The boots stacked in the corner, gear left behind at the end of a hard day’s work done by strong men, didn’t belong to him but to the men he employed.The orange circle at the end of his cigarette gave off enough light to trace the half-lines of his face; but after each slow inhale, a waft of exhaled smoke obscured my view. Sam stared at me. He made a move to pick bits of hay off my skin, which was prickly and red from the dried sweat and dust, but I shooed his hand. Sam had worried about shaking Daddy’s hand at the front door, about calling him sir, about making sure he was seen opening my car door . None of that mattered.The orange circle grew brighter all the time and I could see Daddy’s fingertips pinching the end of it close to his lips. The decision would soon be reached. I was fond of Sam, but as I sat there, the night air beginning to chill my skin and the cigarette running to its end, I considered that Sam wasn’t as smart or as handsome as I could find.The orange circle burned the brightest yet and then out. Daddy stubbed it against the barn wall and then flicked it on the hay. He sniffed the air and cleared his throat.”Whore,” he said. He stuffed his hands in his pockets and meandered out of the barn, into the dark.