By Colson Ganthier II
Most people hate the smell of cigarettes. I mean, who can blame them for getting nauseous from inhaling gaseous cancer? Sure, I hate the smell too, but every time someone lights a cig near me I breathe in a little harder. I’ve come to savor every particle of burnt tar in my nose. Not for the scent, but for the place the scent takes me. The person it takes me to.
I have always been told that the first thing you lose when you miss someone is the sound of his voice. You could have heard it a million times, but as time goes on it becomes a distant memory until it is not a memory at all. You pray that you have a recording, so that little clip can help your mind revive every word he ever said to you. Cigarettes are my recording. They give me his voice back when nothing else can. So I inhale them every chance I can even if it takes some time off my life expectancy.
When I was younger I wasn’t a daddy’s boy or a momma’s boy, I was a rare grandpa’s boy, if those are even rare anymore. I had nothing against my parents; my grandpa simply loved me so much more, and who was I not to reciprocate. The thing I remember the most was his grey coat. It was nothing special, barely even a decent coat, but it was where he kept his cigs. It reeked of cigarettes, but it never smelled bad to me. His grey jacket attracted me the same way that some people enjoy the smell of gasoline. Looking back, I must’ve been conditioned to be fond of the smell.
He always took me wherever I wanted to go. Even when he didn’t, the place he ended up taking me was the place that I wanted to stay until the sun set. He always kept me until the sun started to set. He said that the sun beginning to set was how he knew it was close to my bedtime, but I honestly thought it was because he was too embarrassed to admit how tired he was. When I think about it now, it was probably the longest he could go without smoking. Since he never smoked in front of me the addiction probably got to him after a few hours. The fix most likely ate him up the whole car ride home, yet he still never lit one in my presence. Scared to curse me with the same addiction he had placed on himself and his sons.
The sunset was a clock built by the hand of God to give him an excuse to take me home. Except there was one day we got to watch the sunset, only once.
One day we were in our homeland, Haiti. I believe it was the summer, but every warm day was summer to me back then, and every day was warm in Haiti. It was “summer in the country” for me, and all I could do was have fun. We were in my father’s hometown of Leyogàn/Leogane, or as my grandpa called it, “lion’s den.” Just as well, he called me Ti Lyon, a little lion. He never fancied himself a lion, though. He was a tiger.
I remember the summer heat blurring the days into a dream. There was one day in my mind that stood above the rest, singular and cut away from that dream. I had been drinking from a glass coke bottle on the porch. When I finished the drink, I was still thirsty. I asked for a coconut from a nearby tree and he looked at me, “Anything for you, Ti Lyon.” He called one of his men to get a coconut for me and the man pulled out his pistol. I remember my grandpa being so mad that a pistol was pulled in front of me. He asked another man to climb and retrieve it with a machete. The man sliced the coconut open, and to my dismay it didn’t have much water in it. I didn’t want to drink from a bad coconut. Knowing I was spoiled, he told me that he would take me somewhere where all the coconuts and fruit were perfect. He called for someone to drive us.
I don’t know where we drove to because I haven’t been there since, but I remember how the sun turned to honey. The sun glazed the sky so perfectly that it seemed like a memory, even while it was happening. The man who drove us stayed by the car. My grandpa took me down to watch the sunset by the sea. I had forgotten about the fruit during the car ride and was more focused on the holy sweetness of light produced on the horizons. We played checkers even though I had no idea what I was doing. And something came over me. I asked him about the gun, “Grandpa, why did you get mad about the man pulling out his gun? Everyone has guns. I’ve seen them before.”
He responded to me in our mother tongue, “If you use a gun to get something as simple as a fruit, you’ll use it for any obstacle.”
“Any popsicle?”
“No,” he chuckled, “any obstacle. You know, something in your way or something bad.”
I looked at him with wide eyes filled with confusion and unanswered questions. “Well, then, how do you deal with something bad if you don’t have a gun?”
“With my voice. When I speak, people listen to me. When I stop, they stop. When I say ‘do,’ it’s already done.”
“So you use your voice and people listen? Just like Mufasa? Just like a roar?”
He finally looked up at me. He chuckled under his breath. “Oui. But Ti Lyon, you are the lion. I am the tiger. I still roar too. A roar is a good way to get people to listen without your claws. Lion or tiger.”
“So why are you a tiger and I am a lion? Why can’t I be a tiger too?”
“Time for me to ask you a question. Who is the king of the jungle?”
“The lion is the king of the jungle.”
“And so, if the tiger is stronger should he bow to the lion?”
“I don’t know.”
He looked at me with his smile fading from what it once was. “I don’t know either. I do know that the lion is the king and the tiger is not. Lion is stronger because he gathers his strength from everyone else. He needs them and they need him, they all need each other. The tiger needs nobody. The tiger is lonely and only has the power to show for it. He is unsatisfied.”
“So if you are a tiger, why do you have so many people that surround you?”
“I am a tiger among lions. They follow me because they fear my claws, not because they honor my mane.”
“Well maybe if you gave them jolly ranchers, maybe they wouldn’t be scared of you.”
He laughed and grabbed his gut. I was one hundred percent serious, but he couldn’t help but be amused. He was present, but the way his eyes lingered it was like he was remembering something that had yet to come. “One day you will have people who follow you. Not because you are a tiger who must bear his fangs, but because you are a respectable lion. They will honor your mane and listen to your roar. They will trust you to lead them. Even then you will always be my little lion.”
I don’t remember the rest of that day, except how the summer glaze covered me. The only day and the last day I would see the sunset with him. Cigarettes killed him, but they were the only things that kept him alive in my mind. The only things that bring me back to that honey-glazed day.
