Cigarette In The Snow by Kalvin M. Madsen

First Published in “Hello, Receiver” (2019)

In the jailhouse of a small town in New Mexico, a rugged man named Porter sits in his cell with his eyes locked on the ground. He focuses on his breathing, inhaling with difficulty through his clogged nose and exhaling out his mouth. He strokes the coarse, stubborn hair on his chin, trying to locate a pleasant thought in his head. The cot in the cell is worn out, either by age or use. Even the sheet has holes like many singing mouths in a church choir — though those were most likely from use. The toilet is somewhere between functional and worthless, and the sink only flows in demoralizing drips. Porter feels fortunate that he had not stayed a majority of his sentence here. That honor was left to a town just a few miles east, where the dirt road turns paved, where the idle folk in their petrified ways become scheduling citizens in a sapling craze.

He tugs on his fingers and cracks each one slowly. Outside he hears horses clopping by and men exchanging conversation. Intrigued by an argument he catches through the bars of his cell, he stands up and peers through the barred window that looks out into the street at two gentlemen in some sort of trouble. One of the two limps and falls to the dirt, struggling to stay afoot, appearing intoxicated, and the other hovers with an intent to help. But the drunk pulls a revolver from his holster after falling to the dirt and dry fires the weapon right at the other fellow. “God damn drunk,” the hovering man says as he leaves the scene. Unamused, Porter returns to his cot and lays back with his hands behind his head.

“Porter?” a man calls out from the hallway outside his cell.

“I’m here,” Porter says.

“Well lucky you, pal. I’m the guy who can get you out of here,” the lawyer says. “How’d you like that?”

Porter just laughs.

“Ain’t no one getting me out of here. I’ll always be here.”

The lawyer looks at him through the bars, confused.

“You serious? This is no time to be playing hard to get, friend.”

Porter wipes his nose with the back of his wrist. “You call me pal or friend again, and these bars there won’t keep you safe.”

The lawyer stands silently for a moment, questioning Porter’s hostility.

“Excuse me, sir. But I’m trying to save you here. I like livin’, and I would think you do too, so why don’t you let me help you. You see I’m a lawyer from out in-”

“I know what you are. And don’t preach to me, mister. You ain’t here to save no one. You are here to make money off my sorry ass. But I got bad news for you; I don’t got no money! If you want the filthy shirt off my back, I could give you that, but the trouble is that this is where I got to be. Everywhere I go — I seem to do nothin’ but no good. It seems Diablo himself is touring with me. Maybe the Grim Reaper. Now those are some I can relate to,” he continues. Porter stands up and walks toward the bars. He thinks he sounds tough when he talks this way, though it just leaves folks thinking he’s writing a book about himself. He grips them in his palms, and feels the rust break off and stain his hands.

“Do you even know what I’m in for?”

“Well yes, I read your records,” the lawyer says.

“Well then, how in the hell do you expect to get me out of here? Better yet, why in God’s name would you want me out of here? I’ve been in this zoo but six days and they getting me out by the end of today, and with what I have done, that only means one thing, friend, and that’s that. I’m not seeing tomorrow,” Porter says. “And believe me, we are both better off this way.”

At a loss of words, the lawyer shakes his head and begins to leave. In a defeated low tone, he wishes Porter a good day and walks off. Porter backs away from the bars without expression, washes his hands in the drips of the prison sink, and drops onto the cot.

He tries to think of himself as a child but is unsuccessful. He considers what could be important to him but achieves little. He thinks of a girl he once met in a town that he has since forgotten the name. He met her in a bar. He remembers her being a beautiful girl, one that wouldn’t escape your sight if you tried. He drank his small glass of whiskey and approached after watching her for what felt like hours. He slurred his opening line, and from there, he tumbled until she tried to walk away, but he followed like a hound who follows anyone with a piece of steak. He sniffed her out to a table and sat down across from her. Cupping her hand, he pleaded she give him a chance, but all he did was slur and belch nonsense. He stood up angry, too angry, and yelled something he thought passionate but in retrospect was likely the grunts of a caveman. He stormed off, brushing a large man’s shoulder a bit too hard. The man grabbed him by the shirt, and that’s all he could remember.

Outside his cell, he hears the hyena laugh of the prison guard walking down the cellblock.

“Hey Porter!” he calls out.

Porter sits up and faces him as he appears beyond the bars.

“Heard you ran that lawyer off. Guess you are ‘bout as stupid as you look,” he laughs hard, but Porter stays silent. After a moment, the guard settles and speaks.

“Your lucky day, pal. The sheriff says you get to tell us what you want for your last meal. Nothing too special though, no cooks around here owe you a thing.”

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Another guard joins in.

“I’m not hungry,” Porter says under his breath.

“What’s that buddy? I can’t hear that soft voice of yours,” the guard says.

“I said I ain’t hungry,” Porter speaks louder.

“You really are a sucker huh?” the second guard jokes. “Well if you ain’t eating your time is going to come right quick. You’re going to last ’bout as long as a lit cigarette in the snow.”

Both guards break into laughter. The sheriff comes down the cellblock and shouts at the two guards, driving them away. The sheriff approaches Porter’s cell.

“Hello there,” the sheriff says. He stands fat and round, his belt and holster press tightly into his uniform. His hat hangs behind his head, with the strap holding it around his neck like a noose. His clean-shaven, kind face was still an ugly one.

“Your time is coming, Porter. I don’t expect you to be ready, but there’s no turning this around,” he says, but Porter stays silent, not moving an inch. “Come on, buddy. You don’t got many conversations left. How ‘bout you make the most of your time left?”

Porter stares up at the ceiling, with his hands behind his head. “I don’t have nothing to talk about, sir,” Porter answers.

“Well,” the sheriff says with a sigh, “how about a smoke?” The sheriff moves his hand through the bars, holding a metal case of hand-rolled cigarettes with one propped out. Porter gets up off his cot and retrieves the offering.

“That’s mighty kind of you,” Porter says.

He places the cigarette between his lips and the sheriff lights it. Porter lightly smokes, enjoying every bit he could.

“When I come back, it will be time,” the sheriff says.

Porter and the sheriff connect eyes for a moment, and the sheriff walks away down the cellblock.

With each drag of the cigarette, Porter feels increasingly calm. He finds rapture in the calmness, for he imagined he would be in a panic at a time like this. He saw himself trying to break out, trying to plot a way back to whatever spot he would call home next. Instead, he seemed to succumb to fatalism, realizing this may be his most ideal way to die. A hanging by a lawman is always more attractive than what his enemies might have in mind. So, he feels thankful to die this way. But the more he thought about it, the more the feeling seemed synthetic. He knew in his subconscious that he has to accept his fate or go mad in the coming minutes.

▣◉▣

A family sat on the bench outside the barred window of his cell, talking cheerfully about a diner they had been in. They spoke about the food they ate, and the conversation drifts to the father revealing some sort of present to his daughter. It is a horse. The two children run off somewhere, and the parents stay on the bench, leaning closely into one another. They don’t talk for a moment, but the father brings up that they are here for the execution. The wife debates what to do with the children because she believes they aren’t old enough for such a show. The father says they are, likely because he doesn’t want to figure out what else to do with them. The wife becomes angry, and the father submits. They walk off in search of the kids.

Before long, the sheriff slowly comes into Porter’s sight. Reluctantly, he bows his head to the cell door lock and works his key into it. Porter sucks hard on his cigarette, trying to drag the whole length of it, the way a time-punching cubical jockey quickly finishes their breakfast in order to not be late to work. A cloud of smoke pours out of his nose and mouth. He stands up, disturbing the cloud and breathing the lingering smoke that he just exhaled as the sheriff locks iron handcuffs to each of his wrists. The sheriff pulls him toward the door and the cigarette falls from his mouth to the floor. So he tugs against the sheriff and squashes the life out of it as if it were a bug. The two cackling guards come bounding toward them as the sheriff walks Porter down the cellblock. One of them says, with a smile, “You ready to die, cowboy?”

Porter growls back, “You better wipe the shit-eating grin off your face before…”

The guard’s freight train fist glides into Porter’s jaw, throwing him down to the concrete floor.

“Before what, cowboy? You couldn’t touch me if you tried. Even if you did, I’m still the winner, ya see? Tonight I’m kissing my little boy and my wife to bed. Hell, I’ll make ’em tea. Ain’t no one for you to kiss goodnight. No one making you tea. All you got to kiss is death’s lever out there, sittin’ pretty in that executioner’s hand. All you got to look forward to is a quick death. If it were me out there, I’d put two in those kneecaps of yours before I take your top off.”

The sheriff pushes past the two guards, pulling Porter along with him. The sun hits Porter for the first time in days as he steps onto the dirt road outside the jailhouse. A crowd had formed just down the road, and the sheriff urges Porter forward toward his audience. The guards follow on either side with hunting rifles in their hands. The red-sea crowd parted quietly, allowing a path to the death stage. They step up on a wooden platform in the center of the mass, and one of the guards kicks the back of Porter’s legs, causing him to fall to his knees. In the crowd, he immediately spots the couple and their children he heard earlier from his cell, pushing their way to the front.

The sheriff starts an introduction to the event, reading aloud from a parchment, explaining Porter’s means of punishment exist to dissuade any future criminals. He rambles on about all the crimes in Porter’s wake. His whole life sounded like a kind of natural disaster. As he speaks for some time, Porter looks around at the crowd, at each individual, and tries to make out what they are thinking. He sees how some look angry, and he wonders if they are personally angry with him. Some seem entirely neutral as if they have no emotional attachment to the execution and are there solely for the purpose of the show. Then he sees a woman who looks rather worried. It looks as though she disagrees with the execution. He wonders why she would be there. But soon he stops questioning and begins admiring her. He feels a manufactured connection. She looks at him in the eyes for a moment, and he feels warm, even though her look carries tears. Her dark hair is cut short, and her expression is timid. She is wearing a flat white shirt with long sleeves that puff around her arms but tighten just above her hands. Her skirt curtains to the floor, collecting the dust and dirt of the fluctuating crowd.

Porter imagines standing up, handcuffs falling to the ground; he walks over to the woman. The crowd disperses without question, and they are alone, standing in the middle of the road. He slides his hand under her hair and round the back of her neck to pull her head to his shoulder and dry her tears. She brings her arms under his and holds him until there were no tears left to dry. The two wander down the street without a word spoken, walking for an indefinite amount of time toward nothing in particular. She doesn’t ask him about his past; he doesn’t ask about hers, though she likely has nothing to hide. She takes him home and on the dining table, a warm dinner of steak and mashed potatoes is set, with knives, forks and a tall candle erect between them with a fireplace burning, letting off a warm and pleasant aroma. They eat slowly, smiling at one another and laughing when appropriate. He imagines practicing his manners, something very distant in his memory, trying to impress her. He’d accidentally belch, and she’d laugh, making him feel accepted, but still embarrassed. They would drink wine, and he would finally have someone to kiss goodnight. He’d lay beside her until he was sure she was asleep and then rest his head on the pillow beside hers.

These momentary lovers will forever be strangers, as love at first sight is blinded by a canvas bag pulled over his head.

The cold eyes of the executioner peer through the holes in his black rag mask, looking over the crowd with his hand on the wooden lever. Porter’s last thoughts are of that drunk man who dry-fired at the only man trying to help him. He thinks that maybe he should have taken that lawyer up on his offer.

Kalvin M. Madsen is an award-winning writer and independent publisher based in Pasadena, California. He holds a B.A. in English from UC Santa Barbara and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Low Hanging Fruit Magazine. His has won awards from Line of advance and the National Fantasy Federation for his fiction, and he is currently finalizing a poetry collection titled Reasoning Machine, and his second short fiction collection.

https://kalvinmmadsen.wordpress.com/