Roots of Smoke

by Amethyst Loscocco

When the man from the government returned for the third time, Grandpa stood outside the smokehouse, a knife in his knotted hand, wielded like an extension of his own body. He deftly cut slabs of boar into thin strips that he laid out in rows like war paint. 

“Rest assured you will be adequately compensated for the land, sir,” the government man repeated. “The new highway will bring stores where you can buy your granddaughter new dresses.”

I watched silently from the hammock strung between two trees. I’d never owned a dress that came from a store. The man was tall and balding with a thick mustache that I wanted to yank. He held the letter out limply in his hands as if he didn’t know how to proceed, and looked at my Grandpa’s swiftly moving red hands, caked with the salt he sprinkled on the meat.

Grandpa muttered harshly in Hungarian, and I knew this was one of those moments he would pretend he didn’t know English. Mother came out from the smokehouse frowning and wiping her hands on her apron. She took the letter from the man. 

“The President’s Federal-Aid Highway Act is going to bring jobs, money, and progress to us all,” the man said in a rehearsed tone.

“We don’t want to sell the land,” she said. Grandpa’s knife stabbed deep into a new flank of meat, as if to emphasize her words.

The man mopped his brow and shifted on his feet.

“Well ma’am, you can take the money or take the government to court,” he said. “The road is coming either way.”

Mother looked at Grandpa, but he wouldn’t look her in the eyes. 

I’d heard them argue in fierce whispers about the new road at night when they thought I was asleep. Not again … No choice. The newspaper that Grandpa had crumpled and tossed in the cold fireplace was smoothed and tucked under my pillow. Earlier, I had sounded out new words like turnpike and transcontinental and travesty.

“Fine,” Mother said, and I knew it was anything but. The knife swished and sliced.

“Thank you, ma’am,” the government man said, “I’ll be back next week with a check, and in a month, we will start clearing the trees.”

Mother turned her back on him. He made a hasty retreat, pushing his cap onto his sweaty head.

“Come help, Hanna,” Mother said, tucking the letter into her apron. I slipped from the hammock and followed her into the dim interior of the smokehouse, past Grandpa’s knife.

“Why’s Grandpa angry, Ma?” I asked in a hushed voice as she handed me twine to knot around the supple slabs of meat. “It’s just a road through the back forest we never use.”

“He already lost everything once during the war,” she said.

“Like what?” I asked.

For a while she said nothing, and everyone’s hands moved to slice and tie and hang.

“Back in Hungary, he had Nana and a forest,” she finally said. “He built her a big house from the giant oaks and a bed from silver fir. He hunted red deer and stalked lynx. Then … then he lost them.”

“What happened?” I asked.

“The Germans cut them down.” Her lips thinned as she stretched her arms high above her head to string up the meat in neat rows in the rafters. The word them snagged in my mind. The trees or Nana?

Mother sighed and continued, “He escaped with just a suitcase.” 

“Why’d the Germans do that?” 

The smoke from the coals in the circle of bricks at the center of the smokehouse twirled between her fingers and wove through her curly hair. A loud thunk from outside stilled her hands. 

Grandpa had stuck the knife deep into the wood of the blood-soaked table. He grabbed a shovel and strode to the empty field in front of the smokehouse. He began to dig with as much determination as he had wielded the knife.

Mother stood watching him with her hands on her hips. Two lines tightened her brow.

“What are you doing, Grandpa?” I asked.

He said nothing. 

“What’s he doing?” I asked Mother.

She said nothing, just turned and continued to tie knots up in the rafters.

He dug for hours. Mother begged him to come in and eat but he kept digging, his grunts punctuating his silence. The summer light stretched far into the evening. I stopped asking him questions and watched from my hammock, a silent wide-eyed witness. A shallow trench emerged around the empty field. As the sun began to dip below the horizon, he finally stopped. 

He lit a match and set the field on fire. 

Wind eddied and the already sun-dried grasses and weeds burned easily. I watched his dark silhouette stand like a sentinel as the bright flames reared and funneled his fury up to the sky. When I awoke the next morning, the flames were gone, leaving charred earth. 

For months, smoke and ash coated our nostrils and clung to our clothes and hair. Every day Grandpa sat outside the smokehouse facing the empty blackened field. Often, he had a knife in his hand as he carved figures out of wood or made twine. He did not look at the forest behind him as each oak tree teetered and fell with a whoosh and a crash. He did not look as the stumps were ripped from the earth. 

Mother told me to stay away from the men building the road but sometimes I hid in the thickets and watched them. I watched their muscles ripple below their yellowed sleeves rolled up to their shoulders. I smelled exposed earth and their sweat on the breeze. I memorized the jagged edges of their curse words, turning each over on my tongue when I was alone. They laughed and said the old man had lost his marbles and would be dead by next winter.

Grandpa ignored them and watched the empty field. 

Deep within the black soil, dormant seeds had felt the heat from the fire and awoke from their slumber and began to germinate. One day, I stopped watching the men and sat with Grandpa as bright green saplings poked up through the blackened soil. He chuckled and the soft wispy smoke of his cigarette circled our heads.

The oaks now have their own saplings and Grandpa is buried in the blackened earth beneath. I sit by his grave in the forest he gave me, by an interstate, with memories that sift and mix around in my head like smoke. 

About the author

Amethyst Loscocco is a writer, editor, and science nerd. Her short and flash stories have appeared in Quail Bell Magazine, Every Day Fiction, Sirens Call Publications, and elsewhere. She lives in Oakland, California, with her husband and two dancing German Shepherds. You can find Amethyst and her published work via her website: amethystloscocco.com or on Twitter @amethystwrites. 

About the Illustration

The illustration is a photograph taken by Russ Reed from a plane flown by Warren Boggess, ca. 1968. Oakland, CA.