“Smokes” by Richard Ploetz

Smokes

Mereck and I drove out to Hunting Island State Park, near Beauford. “Real tropical,” Mereck said, “unbelievable. . . . Might see an alligator.” We turned off the highway onto a dirt road that snaked into a swamp. It was August, no water much less alligators. Mereck maneuvered around ruts and holes, steering with one hand, cigarette in the other. It was tropical all right, with palmettos, vines, and what not closing off the sky.
We lurched along in Jeanette’s old Buick with the windows down, the ac broke.  He’d asked right away when we started if I minded if he smoked. The inside of the car in the parking lot with the windows up smelled like an ash tray. Jeanette smoked, and they both obviously smoked in the car. Mereck had been lighting one cigarette off another since we left. I had to be glad the ac wasn’t working.
           I’d driven down from New York to South Carolina to visit my stepmother. We got in touch after dad’s passing. And my divorce from Trudy, who Jeanette despised. Thought she and dad had had something going on. But I hadn’t seen Jeanette in a long time; this felt like it might be the last.
I hadn’t counted on Mereck. When I knew him, he was young; now 62, pale, emaciated, he looked like death. Mereck started downhill a while back. His wife had divorced him and taken the kids — all now married with kids, wanting nothing to do with “grandpa” — then his teenage girlfriend left him — he lost his house — his German shepherd bit the mailman and was put down. So back to the little town in France where he’d been born. Back to the roots. That didn’t work out. So why not Italy, meet a woman from Belarus, not bad looking, live in Belarus. Greatest place on earth — primitive — they get around by horse and cart — and cheap — you can live for a year on what a month costs here. Then he gets caught speeding with a passport six months expired — so long Belarus, hello Beaufort. He hates it. The humidity, the heat, the people, being broke, living with mom. Being sick. Being old.
          It was Jeanette’s idea we drive out to the island in the morning before it got too hot, be back for lunch. Maybe she thought he and I had some catching up to do.
         “There’s a historic lighthouse out there,” she said. “You like that sort of thing.” I’d mentioned stopping at the Petersburg Civil War Battlefield, staring down into “The Crater.”
         “Ya, climb to the top,” Mereck cracked. “I’ll clock you.”
There wasn’t much catching up to do, my stepbrother sunk like a cadaver in the old Buick’s bench seat. But then, hey, you couldn’t stop him. The Belarussian, Ludviga, retired schoolteacher (not bad looking) — owned a couple businesses in that primitive village — live there for a year on what a month — maybe marry her, settle down, who knows? He’d gotten a little work, even, repairing motorbikes. The villagers called him “Frenchie.” Bike don’t work — see Frenchie. It was great. Really great. And going great until that damn speeding ticket. Lately, Ludviga had stopped responding to his emails. “Fini, man. Christ. If I could just get back — sneak across the border —”
Mereck yanked the wheel, just missing a big turtle.
“I was feeling better,” he said, “I’d make us terrapin soup.”
He lit a cigarette from the stub of the previous and yelped “Merde!”, hot ashes showering down the front of his tee shirt. I reached across, tromped the brake — the car stopped, half off the road. Mereck took out a book of matches, lit up, and on we went.
When he’d first arrived in Beauford, Mereck found a job tutoring a guy in French. It was great. Then the guy left for Florida.
Mereck pointed at a sign: Parking, Lot 1. “We want numero two,” he said, “that’s your lighthouse.”
It seemed ironical — or strange — or maybe just coincidental — that my father died in this town at 77. I turned that exact age last month. And this wreck of a car, Jesus, must have been new.
Through the trees of Lot 2, the ocean sparkled. Forget the lighthouse. A wooden walkway went out. Mereck shuffling along, supporting himself, sometimes on the railing. At the beach, I took off my shoes, tied the laces together, slung them over my shoulder.
“I’m gonna check out the water,” I said. It must have been low tide because the ocean looked a mile off. It was a slog through soft sand, Mereck falling behind. Then, where the tide came up to, the sand turned smooth, hard as sidewalk.
“Go on,” Mereck called. “I’m taking a blow.”
The beach graded out a long time to the water, clear bath-water warm. To get to any depth, you’d have to go out again as far as I’d come. It was calm, the ocean a giant blue disk pasted to the horizon. There was a nice little breeze, and I splashed along ankle deep, following the shore. Mereck, a hundred yards inland, paralleled my course like a scarecrow let loose. I picked up a dead horseshoe crab by its sword tail, waved it at Mereck. He had paused trying to light a cigarette, cupping the match against the wind. One, two, three, without success. Then he fell over. I looked away so he wouldn’t see I’d noticed. I went on a way and looked again. Still on his back, arms and legs waving like an overturned crab.
When I got to him, I reached down to pull him up but hadn’t set myself and down I went. We looked at each other.
“Here, give me that.” I took the unlit cigarette from his mouth and stuck it in my shirt pocket. “Now, get your feet under you.” I took both his hands in mine and got him upright.
He stood, teetering, and started to go over again. I got my arm around his waist, held him, and we headed for the parking lot. We must have looked odd, locked together staggering through the heavy sand. The midmorning sun broiling down. The nice little breeze gone.
“Vertigo,” Mereck muttered. “Medicine makes me dizzy.”
When we got to the car, he didn’t need to ask me to drive.
It felt like a long haul back, across vast grassy inlets, here and there a fishing boat, a gathering of shacks with a restaurant offering Gullah Food.
At the edge of town, Mereck came alive: “How’s about a beer?”
“Why not.”
The bar he frequented didn’t open till noon. It was too early to go back to Jeanette’s.
“We’ll go downtown,” Mereck said. “Beautiful old fucking colonial Buttfort.”
We passed a municipal hospital. I wondered if that was where dad died.
Big old trees draped over the main street, Spanish moss swaying like curtains we drove under.
“Bet you don’t see that stuff in La Grande Pomme!”
We parked on the waterfront and walked along the marina. Then sat on a bench in the shade, killing time.
“Guess we can get back now,” Mereck finally said.
At the car, he stopped and stared off across the bay to a headland. “Paris Island. I went there with a friend worked there. The PX, man, stuff cheap like you wouldn’t believe. I thought about getting an interview.”
We got in the car.
“How did I end up here?”
He looked at me like I knew.
We passed the hospital again on the way back.
“That where dad died?”
“Uh huh.”
I remembered the story Jeanette told of his last ride. Sitting where Mereck was, smoking his Chesterfield. When she got home after leaving him, finding his pack in the side pouch. The last butt stubbed out in the ashtray. This ash tray.
Back in New York, I found Mereck’s cigarette in the pocket of the shirt I wore. It’s in a sandwich bag taped to the wall over my desk.

Richard Ploetz

Richard Ploetz has published short stories in The Quarterly, Outerbridge, Crazy Quilt, Timbuktu, American Literary Review, Hayden’s Ferry, Passages North, Nonbinary Review, Literary Oracle, Ravens Perch, Front Range Review, Lowestoft Chronicle, Roifaineant Press, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Reverie Journal, and Haymaker Literary Journal. His children’s story, The Kooken, was published by Henry Holt.

Headshot: Carol Dudgeon

Photo Credit: Staff