Smoke by Elizabeth Ruth

of dirt underfoot, the holes in the road, bumps in the earth, through the colour of the fields. Each farmer’s aspiration is as evident to Buster as the pig shit fuming off George Walker’s place. George’s troughs, fifty yards away, are lined in rows of loud grunting and groaning. The hogs sound like a town hall meeting of seniors snarling local politics through their pipes. Rombout’s place comes upon him next and their “Private Property” sign stuck up at the entrance to the drive makes him even more defiant. A dirty-white flatbed is parked beside the house. Buster follows closely by the ditch at the side of the road and runs his outstretched hand through the feathery weeds growing there. He grabs a handful and pulls several stalks up and out of the earth.
    His black boots begin to weigh him down like anchors dragging a sinking ship. He’s been walking for hours, the longest he’s walked in six months, and he is exhausted. Blisters form on his heels like small bleeding flames. The low voices of cows in the pastures soothe his aching head and he is sleepy from heat and dehydration. He pushes himself, and notices how the road underfoot feels harder and the air unusually arid for fall. The earth warms as the sun moves directly overhead and rich nutrients rise up through a blurry haze of gravel. He also realizes as he walks that he longs for school, misses his friends and science experiments, making things bubble and blow up. He misses high jump and jogging around the track. He even misses history class where the past has always felt much duller than the present. He doesn’t miss home.
    Finally, he reaches Arthur’s Corners and is faced with a decision: north or south? All their lives divide here into sandy soil and rich clay loam. He hesitates and stares directly up at the sky, shutting his eyes to the blinding light. What would’ve happened to him if no one had ever grown tobacco? If his father hadn’t. His retinas sting and his patchwork skin pulls taut like a canvas sack. This place doesn’t belong to me any more than I belong to it, he thinks. I belong to the fire now. He takes a step forward and then stops. How will strangers react to his face? A hot fist clenches in his gut. There is no leaving, nowhere to turn, so he swivels and stomps back along the Old Coal Road exactly as he came.
    By the time Buster wanders onto Doc John’s porch on Main Street his new blue and yellow shirt is unbuttoned to the third hole, though he doesn’t remember undoing it, the waist is hanging out one side of his blue jeans, his sleeves are rolled up above his elbows, his hands are damp and dirty and he is parched.

The Grays live smack in the village centre, in a sparkling white wood frame house with a wrap-around porch. Number 237 Main Street. Company walks up the drive and enters through a screen door at the side leading directly into Alice’s kitchen, though patients always ring for Doc John at the front door off the veranda where the gold nameplate reads “John Gray, M.D.” Alice is working inside the house on lesson plans for her Sunday schoolers and writing up minutes from the last Violet Rebekah’s meeting while she waits for Hazel Johnson to arrive. Together they will begin a quilt for the sesquicentennial. In the past, Alice has assisted with her husband’s paperwork, booked medical appointments and answered the telephone. The calls are still coming in from all over the region, although she’s been whispering into the receiver of late: “No new patients right now. Try Doc Baker instead.”
    The doctor and his wife are two of Smoke’s most upstanding citizens. They are vocal in meetings about zoning bylaws and personal hygiene. They give ten percent of their annual earnings to the United Church. Most folks have rarely seen Doc John, regardless of the occasion, dressed in anything less formal than a starched shirt, tie, vest and pressed