Smoke in the Room

Smoke in the Room

By

Charles Haynes

          It wasn’t long before the smoke rolled in like a resident fog. You might assume there was some sort of machine in the room responsible for producing the murkiness or that someone was spraying bugs. I was the only one in the room who didn’t smoke. It was hot. So hot that when I looked down at the cards which I held under the edge of the table, drops of sweat would begin to fall onto the lens of my glasses. I was miserable! 

         The smoke was relentless, though I was the only one that seemed to notice. Everyone else just continued to cough and hack and spit as if they were all part of the smoke. The smoke was their friend. I had some gross, lingering thoughts. I wondered how many different people’s smoke I had already reluctantly drawn into my body.

         It was difficult to see. Other than the door, the only light was on the end of a cord, dangling from the ceiling, right over the middle of the table. The dim light was woefully inadequate. The smoke impaired visibility more at times than others, depending on whom was smoking what. I wiped my eyes continually because the smoke caused them to burn and water.

         This was Charlie’s humble though quite unlawful abode. A forbidden ramshackle home away from home. Charlie didn’t own it or pay rent. He received no monthly bill for the boot-legged electricity. While others, some distance away were paying thousands for a retreat and/or land, Charlie, year after year, was enjoying his little piece of illegal heaven.

        The reason Charlie was able to continue to live like this was because it was in such a remote area.  It was so extremely difficult to get to. When it rained there was one section of road which was virtually impassable, not because of flooding but because of the steep red mud incline that had to be conquered. For some, during a time of rain, that section of dirt road would become the challenge. The old timers would just abandon their vehicles along the muddy road and trek in on foot.

         The older guys, just for the fun of it, would tell some unsuspecting newbie, “You can’t get up that hill”! That was all it would take, and the observers would enjoy the automotive antics, sometimes for thirty or forty minutes before the initiate would surrender and come on in, often embarrassed and humiliated, hoping the rain would wash the red mud off ol’ Betsy before he had to try and explain to his wife.

         As if the smoke and the heat and the noise were not enough, I was under extreme pressure! I never dreamed, at the dawn of this day, that I would be where I am, holding this hand of cards. I tried to hide my uneasiness. I wanted everyone to see that I had it all together. But I didn’t, and I’m afraid it was obvious! My heartbeat so fervently that I could feel it. It felt as if it were moving around! It seemed to be thumping here, then there, then somewhere else! I wondered if it was pounding, like a carpenter with a hammer, trying to find the stud in a wall of sheetrock to drive a nail. Only this constant thumping was sounding, listening for a soft spot, to beat out an opening and find a way of escape. I wanted to escape!

         I could hear it. KA-THUMP! KA-THUMP! It sounded like the big base drum at the back of the band at the Christmas parade. It’s the last thing to go by! Once the band is out of sight, you can still hear the THUD, THUD, THUD! I seemed as if my ears had filled with sweat, and were stopped up completely, amplifying the sound already inside my body far beyond normal, causing it to echo back and forth inside my tired head.

         The man on my left suddenly slammed down his cards, standing up so fast that his chair fell over backward. It clattered and rattled when it hit the floor in that loose way that lets you know it’s no longer new. As he tried to go, one foot got hung in the chair, causing him to stumble. He reached out in the dim light, grabbing for things invisible, surely influenced by what he’d been imbibing bottle after bottle. The chair rattled some more as he attempted to extricate himself, landing half on, half off an old ratty sofa, shoved against the nearby wall and hardly visible in the dimness. He stumbled resignedly out the door.      

         He seemed to think, as so many others do, that copious amounts of profanity would somehow fix things and repair the situation, as he applied more and more to his bumbling circumstances. He bent down, picked up the chair and slammed it back in place nearer the table, as if punishing the four-legged inanimate object would cause it to act differently in the future. As he stumbled through the opening of the door, still muttering and mumbling, mostly incomprehensible, he persisted in casting his maledictions.

        From where I sat, I could see directly out the door and into the yard. It was a somewhat restricted view, but I could even see the river and an occasional passing boat. It probably helped that I could occasionally look up and find something pleasant that requested my consideration. If only for a moment. There were times when I would be, almost forcefully, drawn from the drabness of my self-absorption and directed to a much less stressful landscape of birds and squirrels and sailing boats. 

         From the time I first sat down, I had noticed the lazy, lanky, loose-limbed mongrel of a dog, lying just beyond the steps, in the seldom mowed grass, answerable to no one. Nobody remembers how he got here some years back. Someone had to bring him. It was many miles too far for him to have wondered here on his own. He was a loaner. Something of a hobo mutt, you might say. No one knew his name if he ever had one. Everyone called him “dog”, or “boy” or “fella”. Didn’t matter. He wouldn’t come. He owned no master, and no one owned him.

         For the moment, he was lazily snapping at a fly which obviously thought the mutt’s head smelled like something on which a fly ought to land. The dog was merely attempting to intimidate the flying pest into leaving him alone. He certainly didn’t want to catch it. Then he would be faced with the greater task of determining what to do with it. He had already expended more energy than he was wont to do this early in the day.

         A man that I knew by sight only - Jim something or other – had wandered through my field of vision a couple of times already. He seemed completely absorbed in the activity of something that any man might find himself involved in this far from home, away from the judgmental spouse, well out of sight of the prying, nosy eyes of community. I’m not sure exactly what it was. Probably existed only and entirely inside his head. But he was free to do it, if only for a little while, and he was pursuing it with purpose.   Seemingly as focused as the mountain climber who pursues the summit simply because “it’s there”!

         Just then, Jim something or other, in his private, ego expanding, mental exercises had passed very near “fella”. “Fella” didn’t seem to notice. Jim tossed the old dog a slice of bread which he had retrieved from who-knows-where. The slice of bread landed deftly on “dog’s” unsuspecting snout which was half buried in the tall grass. While carefully conserving energy, the unkempt canine raised his head just enough to cause the bread to fall into the grass and then gobbled it down, all in one skillful motion. His head fell perfectly back into place exactly where it was before he was hit with Jim’s care package.

         As things calmed, and I was jolted back into the maelstrom of stress from which I had just been transported, although too briefly, I became aware that the man on my right was still riffling through his cards as if that was going to eventually change them into something he would rather have in his hand. He seemed deep in thought. 

         I had to endure this repeated fluttering until some unseen force was able to convince him to stop! Only then, he would begin to drum on the table with his fingers. BA-DA-DUMP, BA-DA-DUMP, BA-DA-DUMP, DUMP, DUMP! BA-DA-DUMP, BA-DA-DUMP, BA-DA-DUMP, DUMP, DUMP! The very same immature, repetitious, boring percussionist blast from the past that every child older than three is readily able to replicate. Children grow out of bottles and pablum and training pants, but apparently the miniscule portion of the brain which nurtures and protects this monotonous impact racket, is never allowed to mature past infancy! Add this to the tumultuous uproar clamoring for attention already inside my head and it becomes like a plague, a sudden, surprising epidemic of confusing and cantankerous sounds that will leave only when they have run their course!

         It became easier to see why gambling practitioners might suddenly lurch zombie-like into some altered state of consciousness and pull out a previously secluded weapon. Add the unpredictable influence of the devil’s brew and you could wind up with instant pandemonium! My one weird musing, though, was how the smoke from the gunpowder, added to the present threatening fumes, would impact my already labored attempts to breathe! 

         There was one other man at the table. He sat directly across from me. He was the most difficult to read. May not have been carrying a gun but had available, loads of confidence which he wasn’t afraid to flaunt, and with which he had been assaulting the other three of us since shortly after the cards were dealt. He was the dangerous one! He was the one to worry about! He sat perfectly still. He remained stoic. He had looked at his cards one time, placed them face down on the table and hadn’t looked at them since. He sat staring, waiting patiently, just like some great monster of the deep silently circling his prey!

         The inflexible and ruthless nature of the stress had continued to increase and had become quite palpable. It seemed there was no reprieve. I trembled inside at the weighty task ahead of me and pondered what lay beyond a faulty decision.

         I was quick to realize, though, that some of the trembling and nervousness that I felt was for another reason. I hadn’t eaten since yesterday. I was hungry. Not starving. Just hungry. I could feel it all over my body. It was like miniature waves of marauding agitators, all clamoring in unison for something to eat. I could resist it. I knew that eventually the feeling would subside. The threats would finally give up and stop harassing me.

         For the time being, however, I was enduring a slight headache. My hands were beginning to tremble. My stomach had begun to rumble as if some small, far away thunderstorm were developing.

         No matter! There would be no food until this hand was finished. I knew what Charlie had in mind. 

         Charlie doesn’t say much, and whatever he says is laced with profanity! Maybe I should say, “intertwined with profanity” … or “entangled with profanity” … It’s difficult to explain. 

         It’s as if Charlie has his own language. Most of the parts of speech have been replaced with words or semblances thereof which describe various parts of the human anatomy or point to the absence of the male figure in a person’s family relationship. There are frequent references to the use of the bathroom and to attributing some reproductive function to, at times, inanimate objects, which causes us to wonder, since we know that medical science says this is impossible! 

         But the last time I was here, and Charlie decided to feed people, he told me to come with him. It’s hard to argue with Charlie, especially since he has his own language. He led me to the water, down the length of his tottering pier, and onto his somewhat cramped boat with a tiny gasoline engine clamped onto the stern.

         While Captain Charlie was jerking and yanking and grunting and pouring on an abundant supply of his unique colorful language, to get the motor to start, I was checking for holes and life preservers. Since there seemed to be a significant amount of water in the bottom of the small boat, I nervously assumed there could be some of the former and, unfortunately, I found none of the latter!

         When the motor finally came to life, I was convinced that it had simply succumbed, acquiescing to the constant, unceasing barrage of Charlie’s expletives which had, in the last, become more than the little combustible engine could bear. It yielded to its master’s demands! I guess you could say, “It was the little engine that couldn’t”!

         Charlie steers, at a slight angle, directly across the river. He knew where he was going. He carefully maneuvered the boat to sidle up alongside the bank. Charlie knew every nook and cranny and where every fallen tree and stump was in the water. The first place he stopped, he reached over and grabbed a line that I never would have noticed. The line was attached to a wire contraption which he pulled completely out of the water and placed clumsily in the bottom of the boat. The cage-like object, which Charlie called a “basket”, had at least six to ten perch flopping around in the bottom.

         As most everything else associated with Charlie’s dilapidated retreat, the baskets were illegal, too. Handmade, but still illegal. In fact, Charlie explained that it had something to do with the opening with which the fish entered the trap. It is very easy for the unwary fish to get in, but impossible to get out! This, Charlie explained, is what makes the trap illegal! He further explained that if you used a cardboard box, and set it up on the bank, so that the fish could come up the slight incline, out of the water, and jump into the box whenever they chose, this would be perfectly legal! I hope he was being facetious!

         After a few minutes, we had relieved several baskets of their contents and had enough fish to feed the small crowd of men at the cabin. I knew that probably there would be baked beans, slaw, and French fries, as well. However, the Captain was not finished! He puttered over to another location where an empty bleach jug was bobbing up and down on the water. Charlie reached out, grabbed the handle of the jug, and pulled on the length of wire which was attached. Charlie seemed to strain more than when he was pulling up the baskets.

         This time his efforts produced a tire. A full-size automobile tire. One which had long ago been used used on someone’s vehicle. Fascinating! The inner ring of the tire was securely closed off with small lengths of wire twisted together. Then on one edge of the tire, where the tread is, a hole was cut, the size of a quarter, to let the water drain out. Directly opposite that hole, on the other side of the tire, in the tread, a rectangular hole was cut about three inches by six inches. The retrieval wire was attached near this larger opening. When the cable was pulled and the tire retrieved, the larger hole would be on the higher side, allowing the water to drain out the smaller hole. The fish could get in the larger hole but would be unable to fall out of the smaller hole. Then you could dump out whatever was inside, which, by the way, was always catfish, the best tasting freshwater fish there is. In short order, we had more than twice as many fish as we had with just the baskets. 

         Now the difficult part! The fish had to be cleaned and gutted before being battered and fried. Since there were several men there that knew what they were doing, it wasn’t long before everyone was eating. No one seemed to mind that not only were the cabin and land and electricity obtained by less than honorable means. The delicious fried perch were illegal as well!          

         This day, however, the food would have to wait. I had bigger fish to fry, so to speak.

         Suddenly I remembered why I was here. It was solely because of my father that I was in this place. He was a gambler. I was a gambler. He had made me a gambler. I no more chose to be a gambler than I chose to be born! But Daddy chose! He decided long ago that I, his son, was going to be a gambler! A player! A high roller! I was his unwitting protégé. Like it or not, he had molded me, at least where easy money is concerned, into the machine, albeit faulty, which I had become.

         It was at this point that I became aware of a presence near me. A figure of a man that earlier had receded into the shadows. I have a very active imagination. It serves me well at times like these. But this is not a product of my imagination! In fact, it is all too familiar. Over more than twelve years now, the two of us have become well acquainted.

         To my right I could sense this dark specter leaning over my shoulder, looking at the cards I held in my hands. It was not completely unexpected that the being spoke: “Ok, son, I’ll take over now! Go get yourself a drink out of the cooler!”