Smoke

Benji’s mother leaned against a tree. He lay his head across her lap as she ran her fingers through his hair. Her husband had cut the grass the day before and tiny parts of clover and African violets scattered around them.

“See the smoke from the furnace?” she said.

Above them, thin ribbons of gray and black smoke from the foundry smelters stretched across an early-evening summer sky filled with wispy clouds.

“Imagine the smoke as fingers.” She smoothed her palm across her son’s hair with gentle, rhythmic strokes. “And the clouds, the feathery clouds, are the thin hair of an infant.”

A slight breeze ruffled the leaves and shadows danced across the yard like small waves in the shallows of a protected side water. The woman watched the shadows break across the grass until they finally washed over her legs and the body of her son.

“The smoke’s dirty,” Benji said.

His mother smiled and tilted her head in thought.

“That smoke is dirty,” she said. “That smoke, there, above us. You are right.”

She placed her palms together, as if her hands were books, then opened them.

“There are some things truer than what we see.”

Her arms spread wide in the gesture of opening a curtain.

“And behind what we see—”

A firefly came to rest on her shoe. She put her hand up to caution against quick movement. The firefly glowed and dimmed in a steady and measured meter.

“That is what I mean,” she said.

She bent forward and offered her hand. The firefly crawled up her index finger into her palm. Benji reached for his mother’s hand as if to test what he saw was true.

“Careful,” she said and held him back. “When I was young, on a summer evening like this, there were hundreds of fireflies. It was like we were walking among the stars. There aren’t so many now.”

“Were there angels?

“Where?”

“In the sky?”

“You mean with the fireflies?”

Benji nodded.

“No. There were no angels.”

“Then it wasn’t heaven.”

“No. It wasn’t heaven.”

She shook her hand and the firefly disappeared into the grey tone of the evening.

“Why?” Benji said.

“Why what?”

“Why aren’t there so many fireflies anymore?”

She picked at a bit of purple stuck to her pants.

“See this little piece of violet?” she said.

She held the fragment in front of her and Benji.

“See it?”

He nodded.

“It was once part of a flower, a beautiful flower.”

Benji took the bit of violet from his mother.

“Even now, after the mowing, it’s still beautiful, in its own way.”

She turned her son’s hand as if she were examining a precious jewel in its setting.

“It’s just a piece of trash,” he said.

“It is.”

She took the slice of petal from her son and placed it on her tongue.

“And now,” she said, “I have a part of its beauty inside of me.”

“Trash can’t be beautiful.”

“Sometimes it can.”

She let her head rest against the bark. With a deep breath, she took in the lingering essence of the cut grass.

“You never told me why there aren’t fireflies anymore.”

“I don’t know why.”

“And what’s the flower have to do with smoke?

“Who said it did?”

“You said that smoke isn’t dirty.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t say it but you meant it.”

On the tip of her finger, his mother lifted an uncut clover petal. She ground it between her thumb and forefinger.

“Your father will be home soon.”

“He’s not my father.”

“He is your father.”

“My father is in heaven.”

Benji’s mother smiled. 

“Yes, your father is in heaven,” she said. “And your father will be home soon.”

She flicked the speck of white into the cut grass.

Above them, the smoke did not stretch forth like fingers, as some might say, but more like a river having breached a levy, the water pushing through a gap in the earth and then blooming into a flood across farmers’ fields and down the streets of closely-built homes and finally to settle into a silent calm.

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Need more good reads? Check out these other fantastic pieces from the MockingOwl Roost family.

• For Sale
• A Silent Hello, an Unsaid Goodbye
• An RAF Childhood
• A Dream
• The Boy at the Back of the Room
• Faith and Dandelion Seeds
• Memories on a Rainy Evening