“Movie’s starting!” Fellis yelled to me, but I was already around the side of his house, heading to Overtown, and I wondered if there was a way around those dead caterpillars and the smell of shit, of bait. But I knew there wasn’t.

THE BLESSING TOBACCO

Grammy slid the pack of Misty 100s across the kitchen table. Under the ceiling light the age spots on the back of her hand looked like sprinkles of dirt, and like the dirt, the age spots hadn’t always been there.

“Help yourself to a smoke, Robbie,” Grammy said. “I’ll make us some coffee.”

Grammy was sick. Not cough-cough sick, the way some old people got before they slid over to the other side like a pack of smokes. Well—maybe she was cough-cough sick, but not in her lungs. The cough came from her brain, from below the soft gray stuff, burrowed deep in tissue, something tickling her there in an indescribable way. And like a thick, hacking chest cough, the one from Grammy’s brain was bad.

“Go on, Robbie,” Grammy said. She poured water into the coffeemaker and then dumped the old coffee grounds into the wastebasket with a thump. “The lighter’s in my purse.”

I dragged the pack to me, the back of my hand dirtless. With my fingernails, I pulled out the cigarette. It smelled like mint and was longer than my fingers. When I put it between my lips, it dangled there, the tip of the cigarette so far away.

“Robbie,” Grammy said, “I know you do it. Mom knows you do it. The lighter’s in my purse. But please—don’t get me in trouble.” Grammy went to the fridge and opened it.

Robbie had been Grammy’s little brother, and he’d been dead since before us skeejins even had rights. I never knew him. To me, he was only a relative who left young and stayed young. Little Robbie. Little Great-Uncle Robbie. He’d been my age—twelve—when the river took him, keeping him little forever.

“Are you hungry?” Grammy said.

“No,” I said. “I’m all set, Frances.” Mom had sent me down to see if Grammy needed firewood brought in—that was why I was here—and before I left Mom told me to play along if Grammy’s brain coughed. Mom didn’t say “brain cough,” though. She said, David, if Grammy starts up, go with it.

Grammy’s purse hung on the side of the kitchen chair. With the Misty hanging from my lips, I unzipped her purse and dug through papers, receipts, some braided sweetgrass, loser scratch-off tickets. Dirt in the bottom of her purse lodged itself under my fingernails. The loose change stuck to my hand. Two times I pulled from the purse what I thought was a lighter, but was actually lipstick and mascara. I took the purse from the chair and set it on the table under the light, and dug my face in there until I finally found the lighter. A purple Bic.

I sat back down, the cigarette filter all wet and slimy and damp in my mouth. The coffeemaker gurgled, then steamed and hissed, and finally water tunneled through the fresh grounds and sputtered out and into the stained coffeepot.