by Christian McPherson

When I was thirteen, my father caught me with a pack of smokes. He didn’t say anything at the time. He just took the pack.

At dinner that night he hardly said anything, just: “Pass the goddamn peas,� “Pass the gravy,� etc. My mother cleared the plates and came back with dessert. She handed out little bowls of rice pudding to my grandmother, my sister, and my brother. When she went to hand me mine, my father pushed her hand back and said, “He’s not having that, he’s having this,� and whacked down my pack of smokes in front of me.

“You’re going smoke every goddamn one before you leave this table,� he said.

Father got me an ashtray and a box of matches. Tears ran down my face as I lit the first one.

Everyone, including my grandmother, ate their rice pudding in silence with their heads bowed. My brother was the first one done and asked if he could be excused from the table.

“Can’t you see your brother isn’t finished his dessert?�

Nobody was allowed to leave the table.

After the fifth cigarette I felt quite sick.

“Inhale the goddamn things! You wanna smoke boy, you’re goin’ smoke.�

I puked after the seventh. Father made me clean it up.

Mother said it looked like I had learned my lesson. Father threw his empty rice pudding dish, narrowly missing her head and told her to shut the fuck up. He told everyone that it would be rude to leave the table when I wasn’t finished.

Through tears and gagging, I somehow managed to choke down the rest of the pack.

Father put the ashtray filled with butts on the little nightstand beside my bed.

I was sick every time I went to bed and had to look at it, had to smell it.

After a week I finally worked up the courage to dump it out.

Christian McPherson's stories have appeared in Lichen, Arts & Letters
Preview, The New Quarterly, and The Grist Mill. He has new work appearing in an upcoming issue of the Nashwaak Review. He lives in Ottawa.