Dunhill Red

It was twilight by the time we got to the train station. I was to catch an overnight train back home that would take approximately eight hours. My friend parked his car on the side of the road, said his goodbyes and off he went. I had about an hour to kill before I had to jump on the train and as I was out of smokes my first point of call was going to be a tobacconist. The train station was surrounded by a small number of timber-clad stores that were built around the station back in the late 1800’s, when this town struck gold. Eventually the gold ran out and today it was nothing more then a town that you pass by in dispositional belief, before you arrive to your port of choice.

There were three open stores within its eleven-store precinct. One was a small corner store, one was a shoe store and one was a brothel. The other eight vacant stores had seemed to be deserted for some time. One, whose sign was surprisingly still hanging strongly displayed, ‘Jack’s Rubies’. This store was situated next to the brothel and I couldn’t help but wonder whether Jack was actually the man who ran the brothel, as well as the one time jewelery store with a name like that. Perhaps not, but sometimes that’s the way Ioju’s mind can work.

I walked into the corner shop to find a middle-aged man with a thick beard going through one of the dirty girly magazines. I walked straight past him to get to the counter and asked for my favourite tobacco to the elderly shopkeeper.
‘Nah, we don’t stock that one’
‘Oh, could I get some Drum then thanks’
‘Got none of that either’
I couldn’t see any packets on the shelf so I was beginning to wonder if he actually did have any tobacco at all. Normally when a proprietor of a store tells you that they are out of something, they normally give you a recommendation for an alternative product, which then, hopefully, produces them a sale. Not this guy. He was just looking at me with dead eyes that have seen too many days without any care in the world. For a brief moment I wondered how a person could get this way and that if I would get that way if I was doing the same monotonous tasks, day in and day out for the majority of my life, which saddened me a little. I needed a smoke more then ever.
‘So, what do you stock then?’
‘Dunhill Red’
‘Uh huh…’
‘That’s it. Just Dunhill Red’.
Just Dunhill Red! He only had one brand… wait not only one brand, one strength from one brand and he still kept on looking at me with those dead eyes of his not looking too perturbed by this incongruous situation. I looked around to the other items on sale in his shop to come to terms with this bizarre circumstance. One item on his dusty shelf amongst the cat food was an old tomato sauce dispenser from the 50’s with the tag line, ‘No Muss, No Fuss, No Cuss’. I looked back at the shopkeeper and noticed his blue name badge for the first time. Jack.

Since I knew that today was my payday, I asked Jack if I could buy his tomato sauce dispenser and a pack of Dunhill Reds. I gave him a twenty-dollar note and told him to keep the change. He seemed delighted at this and thanked me kindly, so much so that he then took out a packet of his own Dunhill Reds and offered me one. He lit his cigarette using a match, which he then shared with me. God only knows how old that cigarette was but along with the benzene, formaldehyde and rat poison that they pack those tailored cigarettes with, it tasted fucking dreadful.

We smoked in silence for a while not really knowing what to say to each other. Normally I would have left as soon as he had lit my cigarette but I wanted to find out if my previous thought about Jack being a brothel owner was true. His dead eyes had found some life ironically whilst having this cigarette and seemed up for a chat. I still didn’t know what to say to him. I had finished half of my smoke before I had the courage to say anything.

‘So Jack, how long have you been in this shop for?’
‘Oh, about, ohhh, let’s see… three… five… twenty one years.’
He nodded in agreement with himself. I was waiting for the old man to continue talking about the good times, the hard times, the war; the old man ramble; but Jack was not a rambler. I figured that I was going to have to work very hard if I was going to find out anything about this old man.
‘What were you doing before that?’
‘Ahh I was the last of the miners before they closed shop here. We were goin’ under and comin’ up with nothin’. Thems suits had enough and went off to Africa… Asia… or somewhere like that. Don’t know. No good with all this geography stuff. Had some cash so I bought this little place. That’s it. I’ll be sixty three in ten days times and I reckon in ten… twenty years time, I’ll still be here selling this stale Dunhill Red smoke to lads like you. Say, what are youse doin’ here in this little town of ours?’
I told him about my train ride home and that this was the closest station from my friend’s house.
‘Hmm, that’s all peoples come here for these days.’
Sensing that this conversation was going in the wrong direction, I thought I’d jolt it by going straight for the jugular. No point in procrastinating the issue more when my train was about to arrive.
‘So I noticed that the only other establishments here are a shoe shop and a parlour.’
I ended that sentence there to see how he would react. He began to laugh.
‘Lad, there are a few necessities in life for men. Two of those happen to be keeping your feet from getting bloodied from the ground and women. Even for a small dying town like ours, both these stores… no establishments, do very well for themselves. Look, how long till your train ride comes? I’m sure if you have fifteen minutes you could walk in for some relief, yeah?’

Ioju needs to clarify one point here to you. I have no opinion about people who frequent these establishments or who work for them. It is the oldest profession in the world so who am I to judge. It did make me wonder why Jack all of the sudden was pushing the towns services. Maybe I was correct after all.

‘I’m OK thank you.’
‘Yeah, sure you are. Look, I hear a quick blowjob is only twenty bucks if your in and out in ten.’
He was smiling at me with the notion that he had been there before, his two gold teeth shinning cunningly. Now I know what I have just told you, that I have no opinions of people who go to places like these, but the thought of this old man either running this place or just frequenting this place disturbed me. For all my inquisitive nature I found myself now not wanting to know anything. I told Jack that I was sure I was OK, left the store and lit another one of those stale cigarettes to put my mind off things. It began to rain lightly.

I walked towards the train station passing the shoe store, which was now closed and the brothel. Two men exited the brothel as I walked by. They were dressed in cheap rags and talking about how they were going to steal a greyhound, from someone called Chris, by using industrial strength pliers on it’s chained collar. If the dog was going to be any trouble at all, they were just going to use the pliers to smash the dogs face in, either way, they were going to get their payback on Chris.

I didn’t want to hear anymore and I needed to get away from this town NOW. I put my iPod on random as an attempt to clear my mind from everything and hopped on the train. Lou Reed’s, ‘Take a Walk on the Wild Side’ started playing and as the train departed slowly, I looked out of the window. I noticed a person in the distance walking in to the parlour, someone familiar. It was Catherine.