Greasy Spoon Origami

The sharp, acrid smell of burning lighter fluid filled his nostrils first, a whiff of hot metal from the perforated brass casing following soon after and finally the familiar scent of burning tobacco. And then came the snap to close her Zippo lighter.

“I really need to refill this thing,” she said, shaking the lighter before putting it on the side table by the ashtray he’d made her. She waved her free hand in the air to dissipate the smoke.

It was Sunday morning. Time to catch up on Coronation Street. She worked nights at the diner, so missed the show all week. That made Sunday morning Coronation Street time, when the CBC ran reruns for working people. She sat with her legs curled up on the couch, cigarette dangling between her fingers. One slipper had fallen to the floor. There was a brown spot on the ceiling above her seat on the couch. He leaned against her legs, his cartoons on hold for Mom’s show. Their show.

“I’ll need you to go to the store when this is done,” she said, waving her burning cigarette at the TV. He’d been expecting that. He’d noticed just two smokes left in the pack.

Once the show was done, she’d take out her last two cigarettes, pull the pack apart, smooth out the foils on the coffee table and write a note inside the old pack for him to take to the store.

“Please sell Scott 1 pack of Export As, no filters. King size. He can spend the change on anything he wants.” Always the same note. Then she’d sign it. Make it official.

Scott looked at the note.

“Just one pack?” he asked.

“Ya. Elsie’s getting me a carton at the duty free. She’s bringing them in to work tomorrow,” she said. “If I need more before that, maybe you can go to the store in the morning.”

“I’ll be in school.”

She looked at Scott, biting the corner of her lower lip. She took the note back and changed the 1 to a 2. Read it again and added an s to pack.

“Just to be safe,” she said, and handed the note back with a bit more money.

Mom hated running out of cigarettes. Sending him to the store with a couple of smokes to spare was pushing it a bit. Usually, she’d send him when she was down to three or four, but this was Coronation Street day, and David Platt was doing something stupid. She could wait.

Once, she’d run out and bummed a cigarette from his older brother. The brother hesitated, then handed her a cigarette with a filter. She looked at the cigarette, up and her oldest boy, then back down at the cigarette. She ripped the filter off, stuck the cigarette between her lips and lit it without saying a word. “Quite the burn by Mom,” the brother’s friend had said, once she was a safe distance.

Mom rolled her own when money was tight. Until she could get more shifts at the diner or Dad got some overtime. She kept the supplies in the kitchen cupboard, next to the fuel and fresh wicks for the Zippo. She had a machine for making cigarettes, but could roll a tight smoke without it. She told stories about cigarette rolling parties back in Winnipeg, where she got her practice in. Wives spending a night rolling hundreds of cigarettes to send to their husbands in Korea. The air filled with cigarette smoke and gossip, the night fueled by G and Ts and laughter. The quality of cigarettes got worse as the night wore on and the gin ran low. They sent the best cigarettes to Korea and kept the worst ones for themselves. For the war effort.

She kept the old tobacco tins for storage. Paper clips, twist ties and the like. She kept her curlers in an old bleach jug. She cut the top off to make it a bucket, and embroidered plastic ribbons around the top to make it pretty. It didn’t smell like bleach anymore. It smelled like hair spray. His father stored leftover screws and nails in jam jars with their lids nailed to joists in the basement. Asked why they did these things, they both just said, The Depression.

There were two routes to the pharmacy that sold the cigarettes. Straight up Portsmouth Ave or through the parks and winding roads of their suburb and past friends’ houses. He knew no one on Portsmouth at that time. He generally took Portsmouth to the pharmacy. Two reasons. Faster, and mom needed her cigarettes. Plus, he was anxious to spend the change.

The pharmacist barely looked at the note these days. He knew what it said, who Scott was and who he was buying the cigarettes for. He knew about spending the change. Scott sometimes wondered if he could get away with buying cigarettes without the note, buying them for himself. It was getting to that point. Oh, he’d still spend the change. That’s for sure. As camouflage, like. He was just about old enough to contemplate doing such things for real.

He often took the longer route home. No good reason. Just different. Maybe see a friend. That route began by walking out the back door of the pharmacy and past the old farm house that once ruled this land. A house that used to look out on corn fields or herds of cattle, he wasn’t really sure, but now faced lookalike bungalows, traffic lights and a pharmacy that sold cigarettes and had a machine for testing TV tubes. It sat at an angle to the street. There first, and now out of place. He’d bought a giant Freezie and a chocolate milk with the change. The pharmacist kept scissors behind the counter to open the Freezies. His favourite flavour was blue. Or banana. Orange in a pinch.

“Gimme that.”

It was Deacon. A bully he knew from school and generally avoided. If Deacon was in the soccer field, Scott wasn’t. Deacon was often alone. Scott doubted Deacon knew his name. Deacon called him numb nuts, but then he called everyone that. Deacon was older. Scott pulled the Freezie closer to his chest. Protecting it. One bite already gone.

“You want my germs?” Scott asked, wiping his nose for good measure and looking down at his Freezie. He wasn’t sick and nothing came off on his hand with the wipe.

“Not that, numb nuts. The smokes.”

“They’re for my mom.”

“Well, then, she’ll just have to get some more, won’t she?”

“I really don’t think that’ll work.”

“Don’t you sass me,” Deacon said, wagging his finger.

What’s sass mean? Scott thought.

“Okay?” he said.

“Deacon! You get your ass back in here.” A woman was yelling from the side door of the bungalow next to the old farm house. “How the hell did you get out? You know you’re grounded.”

“Ah, mom! C’mon.”

“Don’t sass me, boy. Get in here.”

Scott froze for a second, then took the opportunity to run. He looked back only once to see Deacon, arms hanging limp and his feet kicking the dirt as he trudged back to his house. His mother was still yelling.

Scott took a shortcut down the street that ran between two houses. He looked down at the spot where he and Jessy found a bunny last year. Scott had cats, and couldn’t keep it. So Jessy took it home, hiding it in the basement from his mom. The next morning, Scott went over to Jessy’s place to see the rabbit, bringing carrots. Jessy was crying. The rabbit had died in the night. Scott’s mom said wild things can’t be kept indoors. Scott couldn’t stop thinking about bunnies committing suicide.

Scott surveyed the houses as he walked, looking for one where no one was home. It was Sunday, so church goers were his best bet. His family didn’t go to church. His mom hated churches. As a kid, her mother had relied on church food baskets, and his mom remembered the condescending looks of the church ladies handing out the donations. She never returned. Scott wasn’t sure all church people were like that - he knew nice people who went to church - but never said anything. He spotted what looked like and empty house, and ventured up the driveway to throw his Freezie wrapper and milk carton in the garbage can.

“Hey, what the hell do you think you’re doing?” a woman yelled from the window.

Scott turned and ran, confused. What did she want him to do, throw his garbage on the lawn? Jeez.

Scott stopped running by the time he got to Jessy’s house. Jessy wasn’t home. Scott could tell. No truck in the driveway. They were at the farm, maybe. Or the trailer. Jessy kept promising to take Scott to the farm, but it hadn’t happened. He’d been to the trailer. It was a long way from the water. The swimming was okay. Jessy got in a fight with his mom because she forgot matches for a campfire. She ended up using the lighter from her car.

Scott was pushed for time anyway. He needed to get home. He’d taken the long way and knew his mom would be looking for her cigarettes. Pulling the living room curtains every little while to see if he was on his way. If she was really anxious, she’d be sitting on the porch.

The last two cigarettes were done by the time Scott got home, like he knew they would be. His mom took the new pack and smiled as she handed him a miniature trophy she’d folded from the foil of the last pack. A trick she’d learned at the diner. She kissed him on the forehead, then licked her thumb and wiped away chocolate milk from the corner of his mouth. Finally, she opened the cigarettes and took one out.

He walks into the bar, music spilling onto the street, and past a girl half his age at best. She is wearing all black. Hair black. Eyeliner black. She’s lighting a cigarette. The sharp smell of burning fuel and hot metal fills his nostrils, and he is taken back to a couch, to Coronation Street and a brown spot on the ceiling as the Zippo snaps shut.