Sunset Tobacco on the Nuestra Señora de la Concepción

He took a long draw from the cigar, the embers writhing at the end with each sunset glow. “Say mijo, how would you describe the smell of tobacco, mm?”

“What? The smell of tobacco?” The shifting atop the deck made the ropes squeal under the weight of so many barrels.

“How would you put the smell in words?”

“What do you need words for?”

“No need. What if I want to write a book, mm?”

“A book about tobacco?”

“Mm.. something else, maybe.”

“You’ll write no book about anything.”

“Why not? Why can I no write a book?”

“You’ll write no damn book.”

Putting his weight into his elbows against the railing, he crossed one leg over the other. “Maybe I write no book. But I want to know how you describe tobacco.”

“Smoky.”

“No, no, I don’t mean a cigar— tobacco. The smell tobacco has when it has not touched flame.”

“Leafy.”

“This is no description, mijo.”

“I gave you my description, what do you want?”

“No, no, ‘leafy’ is no description. I think it is something like, 'cacao over the forest floor before the rain.' Isn’t that nice?”

“That sounds good.”

“Mm. But it misses something. There is something in the smell of tobacco that has no word in my description.”

“You can’t say everything.”

“No, but a single word can show you everything— if it is the right word.”

“Why do you care? Just smoke your cigar, it’s better than words.”

“Maybe.”

“'Maybe'! You have the cigar in your hands, you can put it between your teeth, breathe it in. Words won’t do that.”

“That’s true. But some people have never tasted a cigar, perhaps the words are for them.”

“Anyways, I thought you wanted a description about tobacco, not a cigar.”

“That’s true.” He let the cigar dangle from his knuckles over the slicing waves. “I just did not want ‘smoke.’”

“That’s how a cigar smells.”

“That’s how fire smells when it eats the cigar.”

“Fire doesn’t eat.”

“It does. I am not the one eating the cigar, mijo, it is the fire, the fire eats the cigar.”

“Does not.”

“When I light a cigar, I am not feeding myself, I am feeding a fire.”

“Makes no damn sense.”

“It is a caring thing to feed another, to nourish it and sustain it.”

“You smoke a cigar to inhale the smoke.”

“No, no, I breathe the smoke out, I get rid of the smoke.”

“But you taste it before you do.”

“I taste it, but I do not eat it.”

“Who cares, that’s why you smoke a cigar.”

“I like the taste. But I do not eat the cigar.”

“You can choke on it.”

“Mijo.”

“Well, here you are talking about feeding fire and writing books…”

“Is there something else you want to talk about?”

“No. Describe the sunset or something. Anything else.”

“The sunset. It is nice today.”

“It will be over soon.”

“And we will be asked to describe it after that.”

“So describe it.”

“It is… very beautiful.”

“That’s just awful.”

“You caught me off guard.”

“Try again.”

“It is like the rum.”

“It does not look like rum.”

“Maybe you put milk in the rum, then it looks that way.”

“You don’t put milk in rum.”

“What do you put in rum, then, to make it look like our sky here?”

“It does not look like rum.”

“You tell me what it looks like, and I will be the one to disagree, alright?”

“My mother, she used to grow flowers that were that color.”

“What were they called?”

“I don’t remember.”

“She never told you?”

“I never listened.”

“That is a sad thing…”

“It’s only a flower.”

“But your mother cared for it.”

“She can like it. It doesn’t matter if I don’t.”

“But it will always be one more distance between you two.”

“There’s plenty.”

“That is a sad thing.”

“You have a good mother?”

“I had the best mother, mijo.”

“Tell me about her.”

“Oh, she was very hard working, my mother. My father he left us, that is why she worked. She worked! She traveled to Madrid every day to work... but she had time. She made time— for us, I mean. She used to tell me stories that she heard from her mother. Great stories, mijo, she was the best storyteller.”

“What stories?”

“My favorite was El Zorro y el Cuervo. I wonder, have you heard this story?”

“The sun’s below the sea now.”

“‘The Fox and the Crow’, a sweet-talking fox tricks a crow into dropping an olive for him to eat. It is a warning against flattery. Mi madre, she would make excellent voices for the fox and the crow. The fox would tell the crow how beautiful it was and my mother would make the crow caw and dance, and—”

“It’s cheese.”

“What, mijo?”

“The crow drops cheese. Not an olive.”

“I am sure it is an olive.”

“What would a fox want an olive for? The crow finds a piece of cheese.”

“What would you know, who does not listen to his mother?”

“I read it in school. It’s an Aesop story. The crow finds a piece of cheese, and the fox tricks it into dropping the cheese.”

“Not an olive?”

“Cheese.”

“I see…”

“It isn’t a big deal.”

“‘Not a big deal’…My mother, she told us it was an olive. Why did she say that?”

“Maybe she liked olives better than cheese.”

“She did not like olives, mijo.”

“You don’t need to be upset.”

“I am upset. Why would she lie, and say it was an olive?”

“It isn’t a lie. It’s a children’s story.”

“Stories are kind of like lies, aren’t they…”

“Stories aren’t lies.”

“Stories did not really happen. They are a lie.”

“Someone lies to deceive you. Stories tell you something. Telling something true isn’t lying.”

“But it was cheese, and she said it was an olive.”

“Maybe she thought it was an olive.”

“Someone lied to my mother?”

“Or she didn’t listen.”

“I do not think so. Not my mother.”

“Do you like olives?”

“I adore an olive.”

“There you have it. She wanted you to like the story.”

“Why would she lie to make me like the story, mm?”

He looked out over the infinite water, separated from the dusk by a shimmering line beyond comprehension, beyond sight and distance. The night's watch would soon make their rounds, soon call out from the crow’s nest and break the night’s ebbing, the swaying of the hammocks where the resting lay. “I don’t know. One word can change everything.”