Squares//J. Andrew Briseño

Pops always made this big point about how he’d stayed around and what not, like it was some shit to brag about, staying somewhere. Then Sandy got pregnant. We weren’t ready but we were too old to say that anymore and now she’s right there, the baby looking at me, or she was anyways. I don’t even know why I said it. I’d never smoked before in my life. But all the same, I babbled at her “Daddy’s going out to get a pack of cigarettes. He’ll be right back.”

I can’t say that I knew where I was going but I was pretty sure where I was headed.

The parking lot reminded me of Six Flags when I was a kid—so many cars but so many more spots—a lot that could never feel more than half full. Even before I parked I could see the line. It made me think of the Snake Game on my first phone, with the brown and green screen. You used the four direction keys to guide your snake around, eating dots and avoiding the walls. With every dot you ate, the snake grew longer. When Pops was in the bag, I’d stay in my room and play that game until there was more snake than screen, until there was no way at the end for the snake to avoid eating his own tail.

I walked to the end of the line, did the thing where you stretch up on your tip toe to see further, but the men in my family have never been much for seeing over things.

I’m wondering if the line is moving at all when I get a tap on the shoulder. I turn and see another four men are already behind us. A baker in his floured cotton whites, two schlubs in half-washed t shirts and an executive type in a loose-tie business suit. The baker motions at the suit, say he wants to know if we’re in the right place.

I tap the guy in front of me, really just a kid himself fifteen mayhbe and I ask him, and he asks the guy in front of him. I watch the suit’s question travel in front of me for a while, but then I lose thread. It’s dark of course with those ugly florescent lights that are way louder than they out to be hanging high above everything. We were mostly quiet, which meant everyone heard it any time someone coughed or shuffled their feet or put their hand in their pocket. What ways more a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers? A ton of feathers or a ton of grief.

I wonder what time it is, but my phone is in the car and for whatever it’s worth I don’t want to give up my place in line. And then I see it coming. Then, at the horizon, a twinkle of movement at first, but now for sure—an answer, passing back through the line. It’s rows ahead, and I’m watching it bouncing on my feet and waiting when I get tapped on the back. The baker again. The question again, the same one. I almost tell him that I don’t know yet, but instead I look over his shoulder and can see that the line stretches behind me just as far as it stretches in front of me. It occurs to me that maybe this was never about me in the first place, so I go to tap the kid in front of me.

Except he’s not so much a kid anymore. He’s got to be 20 now, has a jagged tattoo on his neck I didn’t see before. I am about to wonder how long this has all been going on, when he says, “Yes. This is it. This is the place.”

I opened my mouth to repeat the question I’d asked him earlier, but instead I found myself asking if I could go ahead of him in line.

By now the kid could be 25. He’s got a Taco Bell visor and polo on. He shrugs and lets me by.

It goes that way for a while, asking and getting let by. After a while, they just stand aside and nod. I’m not the first one to clip the line. It seems they’ve been waiting for me. Periodically the question riffles through the line one way, the answer riffles back the other. I keep shuffling myself deeper and deeper through the line of men, until finally, a man refuses to move.

The language and the customs of the men I pass have long since become a mystery to me, but words were hardly necessary by now. From here on, the men had been waiting too long to step aside. From here on, it would be a struggle, a fight. So I fought. I could tell you it was hard and certainly it hurt, but the truth was that by now I was ready for anything.

Until I got to the front of the line, and a small wiry man with too much nose and not enouch chin said “I’ve been waiting on you. I knew you’d come. I knew you’d make it.” Then he called be my father’s name, and I laughed because it took me that long to know who it was. “He named me after you, old man.” There was a moment of recognition, of understanding, but nothing was said. Absolutely no words at all. I spread my feet and clinched my jaw, ready for more pain. I had made my way past more men than anyone could count. He would be no different.

Then he nodded, and went inside the store. Left me outside with two fists and nothing to hit except the sign that read “Take what you want, you’ve earned it,” then in smaller print “Exit to the left. Then go home.”

I looked through the glass door and saw row of row of glimmering merchandise. Lucky Strikes. Timeless Time. THIS. Carnival. Grant. Country Crowns. Montclair. Wave. Wildhorse. Adam. Eve. Signal. Shield. Montage. Traffic. Camel. Marlboro. Firedance. Silvercloud. NOW. Every brand of cigarettes there ever was or would be. I watched him grab something off the shelf without looking, look back at me, and then leave.

I’m about to follow him, really I am, when I hear a voice I know call a name I didn’t. “Daddy,” she said.

I had wondered for years now who she had become, what color her hair settled on, if she still liked trucks a lot, but I couldn’t bare to look at her right on. She was too bright, too brilliant, all together awesome in the old way.

“Speak, you animal,” she screams at me. “How?”

I open my mouth, but no words, only smoke escapes.

J. Andrew Briseño is a queer Chicanx novelist, short story writer, living and working in Natchitoches, LA.  His first book, Down and Out, was published by Gold Wake Press in 2018.  His work can be found in March Xness, Smokelong Quarterly, and finer bus stops around the American South.  They have 2 dogs, 2 cats, and a daughter named Ramona.