Still Smoking

My father bought an old house way out in the country roughly two weeks ago. It's rudimentary architecture and shotgun framing, made it an ideal fixer upper. There was always something to be done. Replace the baseboards, re-wire the electrical outlets, shingles, shingles, shingles, paint, drywall, finish, re-finish, install central air ducts, etc, the list goes on and on. So for the past two weekends, Dad would have me drop him off in the earliest part of the morning. He would work in solitude for hours on end, and around mid-day, after yard sales were over, I would meet him out there with a couple of sandwhiches. We would eat on the back porch, looking out over the natural beauty of a yard studded with oak, pecan, and plum trees. "What an odd mix." he'd later say about those trees. And they were odd. There was no rythym or rhyme to suggest someone took time to plant them, however they are trees that don't normally grow in the same yard.

We would sit there, idley talking, me smoking a cigarette, him smoking out of the same pipe my grandfather used to use, a memento I will one day inherit. Our smoke would catch on the wind and go sailing through the plum trees, around the mighty oaks, and then scatter through the branches of the pretty pecan. After watching this, we would continue to work in a comfortable silence.



It was late one night several months ago, when a friend and I were drunk and making peanut butter and jelly sandwhiches to sober up before turning in. The only light in the house that worked was a dim stove light that made navigating especially difficult. We sat in silence, each of us with a peice of newspaper, and ate and read in complete silence. "You know", I whispered, "we must really be friends if the two of us can sit here and not say a thing and still feel comfortable."
"Shut-up", she hissed back, "I'm trying to read the paper."
Dad and I have reached that plateau where it's not uncomfortable teenage/adult parent silence, but an adult to adult level of understanding. While working, we sometimes sing old church hymns, which sort of makes me feel like a slave, and there is a lot of humming on his part. He hums and mummbles lyrics. It is either this, or full scale acapela concerto. I take my pick. We harmonize well together, and when my brother is in town and the three of us get in a car or sit on the same church pew-people stop and listen. We're good. Real good. Like a barbershop trio or something.


As we work and the sun wanes on the horizon hinting that it's time to go. We climb in the cab of the truck, both light our favored tobacco vices, then make our slow and steady way out of the dirt driveway. When I drive out of there it makes me think of the relationship between fathers and their sons-slow and steady. It's a growing understanding, one that takes years to figure out; to realize that you're just like each other, and how hard it can be to get along with yourself. I hate it that not all men have been able to get there. Not all have these weekends with their fathers.

My mom called me this morning and told me that the rental house burned to the ground last night. Vandals, electrical wiring, no one knows yet. She told me that my dad went out there and before it collapsed he saved our tools and some spare lumber. He glanced at the house one last time and noticed that the back door was open. Then it caved in on itself. Two weeks of work hung in the air around him, then it caught the wind, and went sailing through the plum trees, around the mighty oaks, and then scattered through the branches of the pretty pecan. I can see him standing there in the cloud of dancing smoke, his efforts dashed around him, and then, if I listen real hard, I can can hear my old man begin to hum.


Waiting on the Fire Marshall,


Andrew Greene