More Like Not Running Away: a Novel by Paul Shepherd

Author:Paul Shepherd
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sarabande Books
Published: 2011-06-14T00:00:00+00:00

“Go out to the truck and get me another pack of cigarettes, will you?” He lay back on the bed. The daylight outside stung my eyes. There didn’t seem to be enough blood going to my head at first when I stood up, but now, in the truck, a hot redness flushed across my face.

I thought about just walking away, for good. I wondered if he came after me, if he’d be mad. But I’d never seen a place so tangled up with underbrush, with such hot empty roads, where someone could get so lost.

I pulled a pack of cigarettes from the glove box and thumped them against my palm. The dark smell of the Pall Malls was something about my dad I loved, like the power saws, and the stories about North Carolina. I turned the fresh pack in my hands, then gently pulled off the band around the top. My dad said that opening a new pack of smokes was easy and hard. It was easy because even when you were closer to forty years old, you still got to open a package of something just for yourself two or three times a day. It was hard because if you opened a pack in a hurry and tore off too much cellophane or forgot to tamp them down before you pulled off the foil, you had to live with the messed up pack. For a long time, he didn’t like me or Carson to open them for him, because we didn’t take the time to do it right. I held the little open square to my nose. I’d played with them often enough, tasting the white paper and nibbling bits of tobacco. I pulled one from the pack and stuck it in my fingers. I touched it to my lips. When the time came, I’d have my own packs to tamp on my palm, to light up when I started to say something. I’d drive the truck while my dad watched out the window talking and not talking, with the same sawdust under our boots, the same black coffee in our hands.

Back inside the room, I handed the cigarette to my dad and studied the match he lit it with.

“Does that ever hurt?”

He raised his eyebrows. “It gets easier.”

I picked up the pack from the dresser again and started to flick one out. My dad kept his eye on me. “Go ahead.” His eyes were still on me, through me. I picked up the book of matches from the dresser like I wasn’t thinking about it and lit the cigarette. The smoke rolled in my mouth and I blew it out too hard. Then I just let it drift around my face a while and didn’t think about it.

“Did you go to prison?” I asked him.

He nodded. “After I turned myself in, till they courtmartialed me. That’s who you’re named after, you know, Jack Levi, the man who spoke up for me. He was running a program in

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