The Smell of Rain and Smoke

Before school let out, the sky was this yellowish type of ill.

This colour is before a storm. Like someone drowned the whole town in dishwater and dreams. The clouds hung low and heavy, and the wind smelt of metal and wet pavement.

I didn't go home. I didn't want to walk into that house with its empty TV hum and my dad's sour breath filling the hall. I didn't want to pretend that I had homework. Or that anything there made sense.

So I walked. Past the high school. Past the fire station. Down through the streets where the houses leaned sideways like tired old men.

My boots thudded the pavement with no rhythm. I circled the long way.

The long way through town always involved passing by the VFW, the shuttered movie theatre, and the now Sunday-only ice cream stand. It involved porch swing side glances and the sporadic "You skipping again, Thatcher?" from someone who didn't care anyway; I ignored them.

The heat had not yet broken. It hung heavy with the weight of impending rain, heavy and slow. Sweat dripped down my neck, and my hoodie was trying to choke me. I rolled the sleeves up anyhow, the bruise on my arm burning beneath the fabric.

A rumble of thunder echoed out in the hills.

It always made me think that something was waking up. Something ancient.

I didn’t have anywhere I needed to be.

But my feet kept moving.

The gas station buzzed like it was trying to die.

Flickering lights,  one pump out of order. A broken sign that used to say COLD BEER AND ICE now just says OLD CE I.

Jessie leaned against the counter, elbows on the counter, going through a dog-eared book. Her boots were up on a crate of milk, and she had one headphone inserted. In the background, the radio on the shelf above the old-timey piano wheezed static over some long-forgotten country tune that sounded like it'd been stuck on since Reagan's regime.

She looked up when the creak of the door and the off-key clang of the bell announced a visitor.

"Didn't think you'd be a road trip," she said.

I ruffled the water out of my hair and left the door to close behind me.

"Not here for gas," I growled.

"No kidding." She sat up from reclining on the counter, pulling out the earbud. "Guess I'd better let me guess. Needed a place to not be somewhere else."

I didn't respond. Just walked the length of the store, past beef jerky and dusty window cleaner, and then stood against the rack of sunflower seeds as though it were a bar stool.

She didn't question.

Didn't have to.

Outside, the storm was gathering itself, slow and heavy, like it was spying on us before falling.

Jessie pulled a cigarette out of the carton on the floor behind the counter, then another, and extended one to me.

We walked outside together, under the green awning that had split and was buzzing and popping in the wind that was rising.

The first raindrop landed on the pavement with a warning.

Then another.

Then five more in succession.

Jessie leaned back against the wall, her lighter's dance shielding her cigarette from the wind as if it were a fragile thing. I took mine off hers, orange tips flashing for a moment before falling back to the gentle glow between us.

"You always come just as the storm breaks," she said.

I exhaled through my nose. "So do you."

She grinned without glancing at me. "Yeah, well. I don't care to be home when there's a storm."

   I didn't say why. She didn't say why either.

   The wind pulled against the awning, causing it to groan. Thunder boomed over the hills like faraway boots on rocks.

   We sat in silence for a minute, observing the parking lot become specked with dark wet patches. The rain had not fully committed, but it was coming.

I glanced sidelong at her, the cigarette dangling from her lips, one hand deep in the pocket of her flannel.

She caught the glance.

"What?" she asked, flat.

"Nothing."

She blew a plume of smoke towards the lot. "You think he came back for closure?"

"Who?"

She gave me a look that said, Don't be stupid.

"Eli", she said.

I took another drag on the smoke and let it curl behind my teeth. "I think."

I paused.

"I think people don't come back to Pinegate unless they're running from somewhere bad."

Jessie nodded as if she already knew this answer. Maybe she did.

She always seemed to know what people weren't saying.

Jessie flicked her cigarette on the wet road and slowly ground it out under her boot.

The rain was getting stronger now... tiny needles across the road, just loud enough to make both of us silent

She didn't look at me when she talked.

"There was this woman who would come in here every Friday night," she started. "Same time. Eleven o'clock. Always bought a bottle of Coke and a scratch-off ticket. Never smiled."

I waited.

She pulled out another cigarette from the pack but didn't light it. Just rolled it between her fingers.

"She carried this notebook with her wherever she went. Wrote in it at the checkout line. Said one day she'd be a writer. Said she'd take off from Pinegate with nothing but a backpack and a thought."

"Did she?"

I paused.

Jessie nodded thoughtfully. "Yeah. Last spring. She just stopped showing up. Rumour has it she hitched north with some truck driver coming through." 

I regarded her face.

There was something in the set of her mouth—small, like she had some bitter piece of food stuck between her teeth.

"You knew her?"

Jessie shrugged. "Just enough to miss her."

I said nothing.

The rain streamed down the edges of the awning in long, curly lines.

Jessie finally looked at me, eyes sharp but not hard.

"Point is, some people stay here and rot. Some run. And the smart ones? They don't wait for someone else to give them permission."

She lit the second cigarette but didn't offer me one.

Didn't need to.

I was already choking on enough smoke from inside.

The rain came harder now, steady and sure, a beat like fingernails pounding against the metal awning overhead.

Jessie sat in silence after that.

She smoked the second cigarette more slowly than the first, as if it was the only one she was going to have that evening. The end glowed in the dark, then faded. I saw it come and go like it was going to burn out. It did not.

I leaned against the wall, dripping hoodie clinging to my back, and gazed out into the parking lot. At the steam rising off the pavement. At the smear of the streetlights through the rain.

And I thought of Eli.

And how he vanished. How he came back.

And how he stared at me as if he were still running and not sure if I was the goal line or just another closed door.

Maybe he believed coming back would allow him to bury something.

Maybe it already had.

Maybe, but I didn't believe you could bury something in Pinegate Hollow that didn't end up rising again. This town didn't hold secrets. It just kept them under until they kicked.

"You think she made it?" I whispered.

Jessie looked over.

"That girl", I said. "The one who went. You think she found what she was searching for?"

Jessie exhaled smoke through her nostrils. "I think she was able to find a place where she could no longer look over her shoulder."

It was a kind of peace.

But not freedom.

I remained silent after that.

Because I did not know what I was trying to leave behind.

And because I did not know if I could leave it without losing myself in the process.