Smoke (33 page)

“John, don't talk like that! I won't listen.”

“Please.” He moves to her. “You have to do it.” His voice is trembling and weak. He hates that he's asking anything directly yet what choice is there? He has been his own fragile creation; not every doctor is, of course, but he is and now that the long empty silence is coming, he knows he must find a way to face it with her future in mind. He must think of what life will be like for Alice, after. He doesn't want to leave. He doesn't want to be that—dead. Discovered. But, if he is to go first it must be clearly planned, otherwise they will find him and he will cease to be himself in too many ways, unbearable. And, it will be Alice held to task. He slips closer beneath the covers, warms his feet on hers.

Alice stiffens. “You're not making any sense.” The wind picks up outside the window. She senses a storm coming on. “We'll talk in the morning when your head's clear.”

“I want what's easiest for you, that's all.”

“What's easiest is silence!” she snaps. And more softly, “There's nowhere I'd rather be. You should know that by now. We're not going anywhere. Please. Settle down to sleep with me.” She closes her eyes.

After a moment the faithful sound of Alice's shallow breathing, low and solid, fills the room. The doctor feels the heat of her mouth against his shoulder, smells the mint flavour of her toothpaste and a trace of their lovemaking perfuming the sheets. But Alice is not asleep. Her mind is awash in panic, a blinking, shutter-speed panic. She knows what it is he's dreading; she is dreading it also, but still cannot compel herself to confront it head-on. Knowing something in private and making it public by sharing it are two different things. It's hard for her to examine her marriage closely after all this time for in doing so she is made to once more examine herself. Alice knows John inside and out, knows him, no doubting it. But who is she? What woman would have stayed with him? Has she too slid along the slippery slope towards sin?

She won't think about these things. There is simply no point summing up life's accomplishments and failures, just for the sake of it. False comfort is a figure gleaned from all the minuscule bits of information that most people think account for a life. Her John, of all people, should know better. She should know better. If it's got to do with living it's all been immeasurable, imperfect. Blessed. Let people think what they want, Alice tells herself. A man shouldn't turn himself inside-out for what-ifs, and neither should I. Doubt can shake and rattle the whole house. A couple needs a strong foundation. Every family needs some stone.

Doc John reaches under his pillow to silence the radio, closes his eyes to soothe his restless soul. He's been taking in more sunshine and avoiding large, greasy meals and sugar but it's the anxiety that is grinding him down. After he is gone he won't be around to defend himself or to explain.
Mend
. This, above all else, is a chilling thought.

“Alice? You still awake?”

“Mmm.”

“I have provided well, haven't I?”

“You know you have.”

“Been faithful to my vows.”

“I should hope so!”

“Then promise me, no burial. Bury me after if you like. I need you to give me your word. There are things that money and the most impeccable reputation cannot buy. You must know it as well as I.” Alice drapes her arm across his midriff and pulls herself on top of his chest. Steels herself against a long overdue conversation, a conversation she's never been sure she wanted to finish. She hears thunder in the distance. Sees a flash of electric blue cut across the ceiling. It never strikes twice, she thinks. It never strikes twice in the same place.

“Shush.” She lifts her finger to his lips. She won't have him destroying all that they've built together. But what is the point of loving if it's all about parts and nothing about the whole? The
real
story. The point is their relationship, she tells herself. The point is that it works. She doesn't need to go digging around, looking for trouble. What they share is as truthful as it ever gets between two people. Imagine if everyone decided to reveal their most private confessions. There would no longer be men or women, husbands and wives; only people with nothing left to lose. Is there no virtue in silence any more? Can they not share a real marriage without cutting themselves open so crudely? Of course they can. They already have.

“It's the past,” Doc John presses. “It's been chasing and when something chases long enough it usually catches up.”

Alice sinks lower under the covers. “I'm not listening any more.”

“Please dear.” It breaks his heart to have to put it into words.

“I can't stand this one more minute.”

And then he can't. He isn't sure why but all at once her resigned tone and the chilly rib of space parting them on the bed tells him in terms he has not understood before: she would rather live in the pale dusk of wilful ignorance for as long as they have left before she'd live without him in the exposed dawn ahead. Telling isn't worth it. It never has been. Making her admit it out loud would only be selfish and mean. “No, you're right,” he says. “You're right. Let's not talk about it any more.”

“Good.”

“Alice?” He reaches for her hand and finds her ring finger, rolls her wedding band between his thumb and forefinger, his heart wringing dry like a sponge. Even after all these years she is beauty and openness. A true believer when he has many doubts. He married her for the same reason any man freely marries: to be recorded, to have
been there,
with someone, written into history. “I've always loved you,” he whispers. “You know that.” And in an instant that old, raw silence is back again, worn but comforting as a moth-eaten sweater.

“All right.” She rolls off of him, relieved. Defeated and yet relieved. “If it'll bring an end to this nonsense, I'll see to it. I promise. No burial, but I never want this subject raised again.” Every muscle in her jaw slackens, as if all the words that have ever needed speaking are finally gone and there's no longer a reason to clench. She'll do it. She'll keep him.

“Yes,” he says, sinking into the mattress with a lighter heart. “Of course. Thank you.” His eyes fall shut like lead curtains.

Alice stares through the darkness at the ceiling with a thickness in her abdomen she's not felt in years. A pit as hard and unrelenting as a child never to be conceived. This secret they share is a barbed wire fence that sometimes, for brief periods, holds them apart, holds her apart from herself too, and lately makes her feel unworthy. But the threat of death causes an even sharper division, a plume of smoke spiralling up and away, dispersing into the atmosphere. Mingling. Infecting, and possibly leaving her alone. It is no longer the time for revealing, for excavating old lives, if ever there was such a time. That time is long gone. Death is all around, Alice feels tonight. All corners of the house, every story untold. Lurking, hovering.

She will instead focus on what
is
known. Her husband is a good man. No matter what. A good man like George Walker who tends his sloppy hogs with the vital creed of a mad scientist or Tom McFiddie who tends his crop the same way. Yes, Alice reasons, farmers and growers and healers are all in the passionate business of chemistry and biology, of sustaining life and creating new strains. Tom McFiddie cures, she thinks as she drifts off. John cures. Aren't all men doctors, really? Looking to cure and yet helpless in the end.

MATURATION

On the first of August in 1959, harvest begins. It's wet out in the fields—a thin dew coats the tobacco as Buster trudges off at six o'clock in the morning. The plants have all matured and been topped, pinkish-red and white blooms broken off. The sun teases the horizon and he stands shivering, does up his rubber suit and waits for the others. A tobacco worm crawls up his sleeve and suctions on like a toilet plunger. He shakes his arm, plucks it off and flings it hard at the ground. The meaty green slime bursts on impact, like a water balloon.

His father has already demonstrated how the brand-new priming machine works, and being the youngest, Buster knows without being told again that he is to drive. He's glad of it, because though it isn't apparent at this early hour, tobacco's sticky gum mixes in with the sandy soil and wet leaves and makes for a particularly harsh brand of sandpaper that easily turns a primer's hands sore by noon. When the other fellows join him a few minutes later he steps onto the priming machine and takes his seat, six inches off the muddy ground. Two men sit on either side—Percy, his dad's best primer, Hank, Bob and Donny Bryson. Bob is either drunk or hungover, Buster can't tell which, though the smell of booze fuming off the man's body suggests both.

“Where do you want me?” Donny is none too happy being stuck working with his father. He's expected to pick up the slack and he knows that whatever money he makes is sure to be swallowed down by Bob and pissed out just as fast.

“Right there.” Buster points. “Hop on.”

The machine is lightweight, made of a thin metal and looks like an insect—a daddy-long-legs. Buster enjoys its sleek, wily appearance. He drives them between the stalks and each man reaches out and picks two or three of the sand leaves. Next run-through and they'll move up to seconds and up to thirds and up, up, up as the plant ripens, eventually stripping the stalks to mere skeletons and leaving the field full of scrawny green stems, naked as chicken bones.

Sitting low to the ground, brushing through the short, thick stems and pulling off the wide leaves causes the plants to snap back and slap them in their faces. It's a cheeky smack across the mug that they learn to anticipate, Buster sees, but that cannot be prevented. From where he's perched Bob is being punished hardest, though Donny is getting it too. Under the hard sun Donny's black hair shines like hot coal.

There are strong smells in the field, faintly skunky and restorative. Buster breathes them in and before he knows it he's off, drifting through his old life on a melancholy wave of newly primed tobacco. The memories should be comforting but they aren't. They fill him with a jumpy nostalgia, one that pulls him backwards, ripping him from his present situation and relieving him of the burden his life has become only to callously hurl him fast-forward again and land him smack-dab in the middle of here and now. He is skittish while he drives; can't shake the distance between who he used to be and who he has become. This restlessness will stay with him all day.

The same sinking sensation has been lodged in his rib cage when he wakes each morning dreaming of unmarked skin and average concerns, dreaming that he is whole and handsome only to realize yet again that the accident
has
happened, that the fire has actually burned him and his face has been destroyed. Driving, he shifts his posture and allows himself to be lost in sleepy indulgences where he's like everyone else, even better, where he is untouchable. He sees himself tromping through back alleys instead of trudging through the mud. Plotting to overthrow a rival instead of wondering how to get along with his buddies. He plans the capture of the local bandit in detail, thinks how proud his father will be and what others will say when he and Donny turn the thief over to authorities. He imagines collecting his share of the reward money, buying a car and finally skipping town. He may be leading a priming gang through another hot and heavy day but he is also someplace else, building a new future. He escapes Smoke and everything it represents, easily escapes, to a neat hideaway with an unknown address. He sits atop that primer as though he's sitting next to Ray Bernstein or Solly Levine. He is ready. He is driving. He stares straight ahead and he is there.…

At ten o'clock Isabel sends treats of banana bread and chocolate chip cookies out into the field with Tom. He passes the sweets around and sifts through what has been primed, lifting a couple of leaves from the pile in one of the canvas baskets. He inspects both sides.