Various by Mark Coakley

Author:Mark Coakley [Coakley, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Fire Ant Press
Published: 2022-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

FICTION

Cheap Smokes

(first published in The Broadway Theatre Literary Supplement)

CHEAP SMOKES, read the sign.

I was driving through a Native reserve when I saw this little store with the sign beside the highway.

The advertisement was just this big piece of plywood that someone had spray-painted the message onto, with bright orange-coloured spray-paint, the letters big and blocky. I parked my car and, after waiting for the old Lionel Ritchie song on the radio to be finished, I got out.

Since the tax cut, most of the black-market cigarette outlets around here had gone out of business. I did a lot of driving as part of my job that summer, and this was the first sign of this kind I'd seen in months. For my pack-a-day habit, I had gone back to buying cigarettes at places like Macs or 7-11, places like that. So I was curious about this place.

From the outside, it was crummy-looking. The walls were losing their paint in big grey flakes, and dead flies were piled on the ledge of the front window. The pile of dead flies was outside the window's glass, which seemed a bit strange. In front of the door, someone had left a van parked with the motor running.

I went inside the store. You know how some supermarkets will have a display pyramid of canned foods on the floor? Well, this place seemed a bit confused – it had a big sloppy pile of potato chip bags on the floor. A cute tabby-cat was sitting on the newspaper stand, licking its crotch and loudly purring. The clerk behind the counter was dealing with a customer. The clerk was a White guy with blonde hair and a moustache, and he had on this T-shirt that said WORLD'S GREATEST GRANDMOM. When I came in the store, the clerk glanced quickly at me a couple of times, in a way that seemed almost nervous.

The first customer left, carrying six or seven cartons of Dumaurier Lights in his arms. and I got in line behind the only other customer in the place, an old Native woman. She put onto the counter a copy of the Globe and Mail and a loaf of Wonder Bread and a 1.5 litre bottle of diet Coke.

"Anything else?" said the clerk.

"A large pack of king-sized Matinees," she said, taking her wallet out of her purse.

"That will be $3.35 altogether," said the clerk.

What? I thought. $3.35? For all that stuff AND the cigarettes?

The clerk put her purchases into a bag and said, "Take care now," and she smiled and left.

I quickly said to the clerk, "How much for a pack of cigarettes?"

"What size?" he said.

The clerk had this weedy, uneven voice. If the guy hadn't looked as though he was in his late twenties or early thirties, I would have thought his voice was breaking from puberty.

I said, "Regular."

"23 cents, " he said.

My eyes bulged. "23 cents!" I croaked.

He nodded.

"Then how much for a carton?"

"What brand? We don't have every single brand in stock right now," the clerk said.

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