Marlboro Men

I wrote this for a writing thing that some friends and I are doing, it was very last minute, so it is very short. I will probably post more writings later.




The Christmas lights were up, but they weren't on- it was mid July. Dwayne went to the fridge, took a Budweiser, closed the fridge and then, on second thought, reopened the fridge and removed two slices of slimy lunchmeat. Dwayne was in his late forties and had hair and skin that looked like it was always dusty. He settled into a director's chair with the name “Sandra” across the back in big white letters. There was a matching chair next to it that read “Dwayne”, but that seat was covered with the week's mail. In addition to the two names, the chairs also featured smaller red letters that spelled out “Marlboro”. Dwayne was a Marlboro man, and he and Sandra, or Sandy, as he called her, used to joke that Sandy was a Marlboro man as well. They had gotten the chairs through a promotional offer that Marlboro had done years ago, back when their daughter Faith was young and around the time that they moved into the house on Cedars lane. They had set the chairs up in the garage and, on hot summer days, would both sit out there and smoke, perched in their individual chairs, watching the driveway.

Dwayne had moved the chairs into the house when Sandy took the couch nearly eleven years ago. One of the pieces of mail that rested in Dwayne's chair was from Faith. The handwriting on the address was large and childlike, despite the fact that Faith was already twenty five. Dwayne ate the first piece of lunch meat and draped the other over the wooden arm of the director's chair. He took out a cigarette, lit it, and smoked. It was Skoll because the easy mart was out of Marlboros. Dwayne finished his beer, got up from Sandy's chair, put the cigarette in his mouth, and began thumbing through the mail. He picked up Faith's letter, turned it over in his hand, eyed it, and then set it back down, unopened.

Finishing his cigarette, Dwayne went into the backyard. He threw the butt onto the small cement patio, but was carful to make sure that it wasn't lit. The weeds in the backyard had grown high, some even reaching over Dwayne's head.They had dried in the summer sun. Dwayne had not seen his Border Collie, Randi, in a few days and assumed that, as Randi was an old dog, he had probably either died in the backyard or escaped and gotten hit. Randi had actuarially been Sandra's dog but, since he was too big for her apartment, he had been left with Dwayne. Randi was not allowed inside the house. Dwayne walked the perimeter of the fence, searching for either Randi or a hole that he could have escaped through. Finding nothing, he began to work his way into the thick tangle of foxtails and grasses.

Dwayne found Randi's body in a patch of grass that had been shaded from the summer sun by the neighbor's cottonwood tree. He fetched a shovel from the garage and used it to push Randi to the side. He sank the shovel into the dirt where Randi had lain and began digging. He kept digging and digging.