That One Cigarette — Ch1

Screenwriter Stu Krieger launches first novel

As I get ready to launch my book with Publishizer, which you can check out here, I’d like to share a few sample chapters with you to hopefully pique your interest. The pre-order campaign for the novel will begin August 1 and I’d love for you to be one of my early subscribers.

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It was his favorite piece of furniture, his prized possession, the very first thing he owned that made him feel like a full-fledged adult. A 1960 Philco Predicta with a blonde wood cabinet and hi-fi speakers flanking the gleaming twenty-one inch picture tube. “The Townhouse model,” the salesman down at the local Beckman Brothers called it. Ed Callahan loved that TV. It was tangible proof that, in the league of life, he might not finish in the cellar after all.

Each morning, Ed’s cue to start his morning ritual was the sound of his wife Bonnie clicking that television awake as she made her way into the kitchen to fix breakfast for their two kids. The calming voice of “Today” show anchorman Hugh Downs told Ed it was time to get his backside in gear.

The Philco was the focal point of the couple’s living room. It faced the sagging plaid couch they’d inherited from Bonnie’s mother, but it was close enough to the kitchen to allow Bonnie to listen to Hugh and newsman Frank Blair as she slapped together peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and poured bowls of sugary cereal.

On this particular morning, already behind schedule because his bum knee had begged him to remain in bed five minutes longer, Ed quickly buttoned his short-sleeve white shirt and grabbed a fresh pack of unfiltered Camels off his dresser. Ripping open the cellophane, he pulled out a cigarette, sparked it with a sizzling match and hustled out of the bedroom, buckling the skinny black belt that held up his neatly pressed khaki slacks.

Sailing into the kitchen, Ed found Bonnie setting a plate of toast, glistening with melting butter, down in front of their children. Seven-year-old Kenny, with his hair slicked back and his orange and white striped shirt tucked into cream-colored pants, was mesmerized by the liquid in his cereal bowl.

“Look, Daddy, my Trix turned the milk all pink. Ain’t that cool?”

“Isn’t, honey,” Bonnie corrected, “the proper word is isn’t.”

Ed dipped his chin to acknowledge his son, snatched a wedge of toast from the pile and exhaled a long plume of smoke.

“Oh my stars, Ed, do you have to smoke at the breakfast table? You know it’s not good for you; I been tryin’ to tell you that for ages,” Bonnie declared. “And now it says so right here in Time magazine.”

Before Ed could respond, Bonnie plucked the latest issue, folded to a specific page, off the counter and moved toward her husband. The article in question had one paragraph neatly underlined in red ink. Ever the thwarted schoolteacher, if Bonnie had a point to make, she was going to come at you armed with indisputable facts.

“Meeting at the National Library of Medicine on the campus National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, Surgeon General Luther L. Perry and his committee have been compiling evidence since late last year to support recent findings that there is an indisputable link between chronic cigarette smoking and an alarming increase in lung cancer-related deaths,” Bonnie read.

“Are you gonna die, Daddy?” asked ten year old Libby, her voice laced with a tremble of terror.

Bonnie jumped in. “No, sugar cube, Daddy is not going to die because he’s going to stop smoking right this very day. Aren’tcha, Ed?”

“Sure thing. Or at least very, very soon.” Ed grabbed a ceramic mug from the cabinet above the sink, filling it with steaming coffee from the percolator on the stove.

“I’m serious,” Bonnie persisted.

“Me, too. Tell you what,” patting the pack of Camels in his shirt pocket, Ed continued, “I’ll finish this here pack and when it’s gone, I’m done. For good.”

Bonnie, her face a sunburst of gratitude, rushed at her husband and threw her arms around his neck, asking if Ed really meant it.

“You betcha. What’s the point of any of it if I won’t be here to see my grandbabies?”

She gave him a passionate kiss that made her daughter blush; Kenny crinkled his nose and snorted, “Parents kissing? Sick’ning!”

Breaking their embrace, Bonnie looked to her son with a giggle. “You should be glad we love each other. It’ll only make life easier for you.”

Ed downed his coffee while Bonnie cleared the breakfast dishes, prodding the children to collect books and jackets.

On the television in the background, Frank Blair was reporting on an erupting dispute between the Congo and the Soviet Union. Hardly paying attention, one thought skipped fleetingly across Ed Callahan’s mind.

What the heck is the Congo?

Bonnie gave her husband a peck on the cheek and handed him the sack lunch she grabbed from the refrigerator before escorting the kids out the front door. They shouted goodbyes to Ed while Kenny struggled into his cardigan, having trouble finding the second sleeve drooping off his shoulder. A moment before he disappeared, Kenny reminded his dad that Ed had promised they’d work on the boy’s Pinewood Derby car that evening.

Reveling in his momentary solitude, Ed took a last luxurious drag on his cigarette, and then stabbed it out in the Alamo-shaped ashtray beside the toaster.

“Morning, Oak!”

Ed glanced up to see his mother-in-law Marsha shuffling into the kitchen in a pink-and-white checked housecoat. The large pink rollers in her salt-and-pepper hair and the puffiness encircling her eyes told Ed she’d just woken up. “Oak” was her personal nickname for him. She’d first bestowed it upon him when he and Bonnie started dating during Ed’s last year of high school. Bonnie had once off-handedly told her mother that what she loved most about Ed was his solid, steady dependability and Marsha had quipped, “Like having your very own oak tree.” She’d held onto that affectionate appellation ever since.

“Can you believe Thanksgiving is a week from today?” Marsha asked. “If time flew any faster, I’d swear the world had sprouted wings. Just you wait and see; we’ll blink and it’ll be 1964.”

One thing Ed had learned in the five years since the then-newly-widowed Marsha had moved in with them was that, once she was off and running, he didn’t really need to respond. Marsha would happily carry the conversation by herself. She grabbed a mug, filled it with coffee and continued:

“Big surprise: Louis and his family are too busy to come down. I talked to him last night. Long distance. He says he’s swamped at the office and Ellen has something going on with that Ladies Auxiliary of hers — although I must admit, what those ladies do is beyond me. Plus, apparently, Tommy has a football game day after. Can that be right? Who plays high school football on Thanksgiving weekend?”

Ed remarked that many schools did; Marsha instantly espoused her disapproval.

“If you ask me, it’s a sin, pure and simple. Holidays are for families. But, in any case, I thank the Good Lord I have y’all to be with or I’d be out on the street like a hobo woman. Heaven forbid.”

Nodding, Ed set his coffee mug in the sink and grabbed his car keys off the pegboard beside the back door. He gave Marsha a quick wave, instructing her to have a good day. Lost in thought, Marsha drifted to the Formica table and settled into one of the chrome chairs with its candy apple red plastic seat.

Ed backed his car out of the driveway staring at the flaking paint on their two-bedroom ranch house on Jimmydee Drive. The lawn needed mowing and the flowerbeds needed weeding but there were never enough hours in a day. Rolling down his window as he turned onto South Story Road, the distinct smell in the air carried Ed back to earlier autumn days when he used to walk a similar route to school.

Growing up seven or eight miles away in suburban Dallas, he’d always planned on being a fireman. Until he shattered two bones in his left leg getting tackled by a sophomore grizzly bear from Waco in the Homecoming game his senior year. The damn leg never did heal right, despite three surgeries his parents could ill afford. The army didn’t want him and the fire academy couldn’t take him because he simply didn’t have the stamina the job required. Lugging heavy equipment up steep stairwells during his tryout caused Ed’s right knee to buckle repeatedly. During one test, he had to drop fifteen yards of hose to keep from tumbling down a twelve-foot ladder when he lost his balance, right near the top. And that was the end of his dream.

His father didn’t make enough money as the manager of their local Piggly Wiggly to send Ed to college and, besides, he had no idea what he would have studied. He and school never had been a great fit. He was bright enough but much more focused on girls and football than on civics and mathematics. The only kind of social studies Ed was interested in was learning how to convince Bonnie Lee Bismark to go out with him.

After high school, Ed worked as a delivery boy for his uncle’s pizza parlor and then, after six or seven months, got promoted to manager. He somehow saved enough to buy Bonnie a tiny diamond ring and asked her to marry him on his twenty-first birthday. Five weeks after their small wedding at his father’s Elks Lodge, Bonnie told Ed she was pregnant. Libby was born in early ’53 and Kenny came along three years later. They knew they couldn’t stay in their tiny one bedroom apartment but, even with Bonnie working the evening shift at Skillern’s Drug Store four nights a week, they couldn’t foresee any way they’d ever be able to afford a house. Ed was working for a company that filled book orders for schools statewide. After eighteen months, he’d worked his way up to Assistant Warehouse Manager but he was still only making $2.75 an hour.

And then Bonnie’s father dropped dead.

Poor bastard was only fifty-four years old. A massive heart attack knocked him to the showroom floor at Patio World — right as he was about to close a sale on a six-piece white wicker ensemble with cobalt blue cushions.

Marsha dove into a spiraling state of panic. She had no marketable skills, had never worked outside the home and Lloyd had somehow forgotten to keep up with his life insurance payments. The only thing the new widow owned was her compact house on Bowman Street but she was terrified of living there alone.

That was how Ed and Bonnie came to buy their house. Marsha sold her place, gave a healthy chunk of the profit to her daughter and son-in-law as their down payment, and took up residence with them. It meant she’d have to share a bedroom with her grandkids but Marsha truly didn’t mind. She knew she could handle almost anything as long as she didn’t have to navigate life on her own. Despite Marsha’s repeated declarations that she was ruining their lives, Ed and Bonnie did all they could to reassure her she was a welcome and helpful presence in their home.

Now they’d been in the house nearly five years, the kids were happy at the local elementary school and life was flowing right along. Kenny was a Cub Scout. Libby took tap dancing lessons at the Community Center. One of their many beloved rituals was to be bathed and in their pajamas by eight o’clock on Thursday nights to watch “The Flintstones” before Marsha hustled them off to bed while Bonnie was at work.

Thinking about Bonnie, Ed felt an electric tingle in his crotch. They’d been together since high school, married for more than eleven years, but he still felt great pride, not to mention a modicum of awe, in the fact that she was his wife. Sometimes when they were having a quiet night at home, he’d look up to find her mending the kids’ socks or cutting coupons from the Times-Herald, her dirty-blonde ponytail held in place by her favorite plastic Scotty-dog hairclip, and he’d wonder what it was she saw in him.

She’s so dang pretty and sweet and well, let’s not kid ourselves, I’m just downright goofy looking. Tall enough, I suppose…never did let myself get fat — that’s a plus — but I got ears like radar dishes and my front teeth are slightly bucked. Even after I shave, I’m still scruffy as sandpaper. She’s gotta know she could’a done so much better’n me. Hell, I only hope she never figgers it out.

Many times at work, when the other guys would gripe about their wives’ spending habits or whining about how they practically had to beg to get sex, Ed would feel nothing but gratitude. Bonnie truly was his best friend but he didn’t dare say that out loud. The last thing he needed was to have his buddies at the book depository calling him a soft-hearted homo.

***

Back at the house, Bonnie and her mother sat at the kitchen table, each having one last cup of coffee before they had to get a move on. Bonnie had to be at her job by 2:00 that afternoon and would work until eight. Marsha would be there to greet the kids’ school bus and make dinner for the family. Bonnie would grab a plate of leftovers when she got home around 8:30, always in time to kiss her children goodnight.

Before getting ready for work, Bonnie had several loads of laundry to do. Marsha was meeting a girlfriend for lunch. She would stop by the market on her way home and pick up a fresh head of lettuce so she could throw together a salad to go along with the pot roast defrosting in the Pyrex pan on the counter.

“Talked to your brother last night,” Marsha began.

“Let me guess: they’re not coming down for Thanksgiving.”

“Bingo,” said Marsha, touching her index finger to the tip of her nose. “’Course I’m disappointed. He makes three bucks more than God, he’s banked more vacation days than Queen Elizabeth, but heaven forbid we should ever be his priority.” Bonnie offered that maybe they’d come down for Christmas. “Nope,” Marsha retorted. “They’re goin’ to her family. After they get back from Aruba. Must be nice, I tell ya, must be nice.”

“We’ll have a wonderful Thanksgiving, in any case,” Bonnie declared, “Ed’s folks are coming, plus we invited Nate and Lucy.”

Marsha asked if Nate was still planning on marrying ‘that woman’ and Bonnie told her it was happening on New Year’s Eve; Nate had asked Ed to be his best man. “Well, if Ed’s truly his best buddy, he’ll warn poor Nate that that girl will bring him nothing but heartache. Don’t he notice the way she’s on him, every single minute of every day?”

“Mother, Nate needs a girl like that.”

“Honey, trust me: nobody needs a girl like that. She’s got more opinions than the Oracle of Delphi. And she never knows when to keep them to herself. Sure she’s awful purty, bless her heart, but purty only gets you so far.”

Filling the sink with hot water and a squirt of Joy, Bonnie busied herself doing the breakfast dishes as Marsha glanced at the morning paper. “President’s coming to town tomorrow,” she announced. “Jackie, too. Talk about purty! That gal has more style than Grace Kelly and Oleg Cassini combined.”

***

Gliding along the Stemmons Freeway in his ’56 Ford Fairlane, Ed fumbled to pull a Camel from his shirt pocket, punched the dashboard lighter and waited for the cylinder to heat up. Sticking the cigarette between his lips, he heard the lighter’s familiar pop and plucked it out. With its neat concentric circles glowing a deep orange, Ed pressed the filament to the end of what Bonnie sneeringly referred to as his ‘coffin nail;’ he reveled in a protracted inhale. The instant he sucked the smoke deep into his lungs, he felt that euphoric rush the nicotine never failed to deliver.

I know it’s a filthy habit and it is probably killing me — and, yeah, I promised Bonnie I’d finish this pack and stop — but it sure as hell ain’t gonna be easy. Smoking since I was sixteen; in point of fact, I love it: the ritual, the comfort — the fact that it gives me something to do with my hands. Gotta say, smoking makes me feel like more of a man. Taking that last deep drag, flicking away the butt, grinding it under my boot heel. But heck, a promise is a promise, so I at least have to give it the good old college try — soon as I finish this pack.

Ed recalled the first cigarette he’d ever had, with his best buddy Nate when they were fourteen years old. It was Christmas break, their sophomore year in high school. Nate had stolen a pair of Marlboros from the cigarette box his parents kept on their living room end table. The night was real cold, especially for Dallas. They were out in the woods up on the hill behind Nate’s house, wearing the identical denim jackets they’d bought together at the J.C. Penny’s downtown, every button buttoned, collars upturned. Nate was taller than Ed and always ten to fifteen pounds heavier, but most folks took them for brothers.

Ed had swiped two cans of Budweiser from his parents’ refrigerator and he and Nate were going to drink the beers, smoke the cigarettes and swear like a couple of bad-ass good ole’ boys while they laughed about Francie Hermann’s huge tits.

Of course, they choked on the smoke and grimaced when ingesting the beer but when they reminisced about it later, they declared that it was one of the coolest nights of their lives. From then on, they were eternally bonded: two East Dallas rebels in search of a cause.

Jesus. Nate’s finally getting married. Came close that one time; to that girl from Jersey…what was her name? Joy. There’s some irony for ya. It was full speed ahead ’til his parents found out she was a Jew. End of story. It was two whole years before he even had the stomach to ask another woman out.

Nate’s current fiancé, Lucy Wallace, was a genuine southern belle. Born in Memphis, raised in Louisville, she attended two years of junior college in Atlanta. She moved to Dallas to work as a buyer at Dillard’s and met Nate at a “Ladies Drink Free” night at Rusty’s Saloon.

What I don’t get is how a woman like Lucy will live with a slob like Nate.

Ed and Bonnie agreed Lucy was a bit rigid, often acting more like Nate’s mother than his girlfriend, but they also believed that no one except a take-charge woman would ever get Nate Stokesberry to the altar.

The thing that made Ed most uneasy about Nate marrying Lucy was that she had a creepy collection of porcelain dolls. There was something about their painted faces and antique frilly gowns that made Ed start to sweat every time he had to be in Lucy’s apartment. He actually had nightmares about those dolls: he’d be left alone in their front room while Nate and Lucy were fixing drinks and the playthings would come to life. Ed would hear their hideous cackles as their eyes flashed with evil intent. He’d wake up with his heart about to explode like an over-cranked Jack-in-the-Box.

What if Lucy moves those damn things into the house they’re buyin’ together? Maybe I’ll wait ’til she’s out one night and smash ’em to smithereens with a baseball bat. Don’t she know how scary they are? I mean, what’s a grown woman need with a pack of creepy dolls?

Ed sucked so intently on his cigarette his head nearly imploded. When he exhaled, it felt like the smoke was rising all the way up from his groin. He swiped uncomfortably at his armpits, feeling the prickly sting of perspiration that erupted whenever he thought about Lucy’s malevolent doll mob.

Realizing he was about to miss his off-ramp, Ed swerved across two lanes and exited the freeway. Driving through the streets of downtown Dallas, heading for the book depository parking lot, he heard an unsettling scraping behind him. He tilted down the rearview mirror, trying to catch a glimpse of the noise’s source.

Goll darn it! Tailpipe’s dragging again? Hope the sparks don’t set nothing on fire. That wire I had rigged up must’a busted when I swerved to catch the ramp.

Eying his watch, Ed knew he had no time to deal with it. It was 7:52, it was a five-minute walk from the parking lot to his building and he couldn’t afford to be late. His boss Roy Truly was a decent guy, and he genuinely seemed to like Ed, but with nineteen warehouse men to manage, Roy liked to keep everything running shipshape.

When Ed pulled into his regular parking spot, parallel to the chain link fence at the lot’s south end, he saw his coworker Junior Jarman arriving in his Chevrolet station wagon. He parked in the spot right next to Ed. Ed snatched his sack lunch off the passenger seat and hopped out. “Morning, Junior. How they hanging?”

“Tight and to the right, just the way I like ‘em.”

Both men chuckled. Junior was clutching a black metal lunch bucket with a union decal on the butt end. That thing had more miles on it than a ’51 Dodge.

Junior had been working at the book depository, on and off, for years. For a while he left and went to work at Parkland Hospital; Ed was never quite sure what it was that sent Junior back to the warehouse. He and Ed never socialized outside of the job, but they were friendly enough at work. Usually, once or twice a week, they ate together in the second floor lunchroom or met in the domino room on the first floor to play a quick game of bones as they gobbled their sandwiches and guzzled Dr. Peppers.

Leaving the parking lot, the two men walked along Munger Street, then gingerly crossed several sets of railroad tracks. Ed made a point of stopping to look around any unmoving boxcars to ensure that an oncoming train wouldn’t cream them.

“See the morning paper?” Junior asked. “President’s motorcade is gonna pass right on by tomorrow, just after noon. If we time it right, we’re like to get a look at him on lunch break. ‘Course, I ain’t been too crazy about the man since he nearly got us into World War III over that showdown with the Rooskeys –”

“The Cuban Missile thing? Heck, Junior, he only did what needed to be done. Otherwise, that maniac Khrushchev would’ve bombed us back to Kingdom Come. Wait, you sure the parade’s goin’ by us?”

“Yup, the map was right there in the paper. It’s one helluva procession: Johnson, Governor Connally…Mrs. Kennedy, too, I do believe. Going from Main to Houston, then straight down Elm on the way to some fancy V.I.P. luncheon out at the Trade Mart. Must be nice…flying around on private jets, riding in limousines, having folks turn out to cheer ya jest for showing up.”

“It all looks like a giant pain-in-the-butt, if you want my opinion,” Ed said. “Can’t fart without it turning into front page news.”

Minutes later, Ed and Junior moved past the loading dock and slipped through the rear door of the Texas School Book Depository, coming in off Houston Street.

Heading for the basement stairs, Ed spied Roy Truly hustling across the plywood planks lining the first floor. Ed offered him a ‘good morning’ and a chipper wave. Spying Ed and Junior, Roy replied with a nod and a grin.

Ed stuck his lunch in his basement locker and hung up his corduroy coat. Junior was at his own cupboard a few feet down. Closing his locker door, Ed turned and nearly collided with a skinny, pale fellow he knew only as Lee. He was seven or eight years younger than Ed, had been working at the depository for a little more than a month. He always seemed to move without making a sound.

“Sorry,” Ed said as he sidestepped the newcomer.

Lee nodded but remained eerily silent. Ed could see the yellow stains in the armpits of Lee’s once-white Fruit-of-the-Loom T-shirt that was now the color of an exhausted Brillo pad. Lee swiftly moved up the steps and disappeared.

Turning toward Junior, Ed shook his head and chuckled. “Jeez, even on our crummy salary, you’d think the kid could spring for a clean T-shirt.”

##

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