Prometheus by Jacob Perkins
I needed a cup of coffee, or two cups of coffee or three cups of coffee, on one of those gray February days. I needed it to get myself into proper shape. To somehow make it through the afternoon and to the night. I went looking for it at the same place where I usually found it. Almost always did find it.
And I did find it.
A small downtown coffee shop. Brick walls and furniture tacks.
Standing at the counter, I also found that I had no money in my wallet. Only handwritten notes and business cards from used book shops in other states that I kept so that I could use them for bookmarks later.
I walked out into the rain. Not worried about getting wet. It was the rain that is light. Rain that sits on the top of your hair but doesn’t get your head wet. In it I walked to the bank on the corner. There was an ATM there that I could use.
So that I would be able to pay my way through the afternoon and into the night.
Where it was more comfortable.
I used the machine and took the money. Left the bank and began to walk back from where I came. There was a pack of cigarettes in my pocket. I had been looking forward to the walk back because of those cigarettes. Because of smoking one of those cigarettes. I pulled one out. Tap, tapped it on my knuckle and let in hang from my lip as I crossed the street. Pulled out a brass lighter. A lighter I had taken from my father’s night stand years ago. He had owned it for a long time. Since 1987. The date was stamped on the bottom. But he didn’t smoke. Never smoked.
So, I did.
I flicked the lighter once. Flicked the lighter twice. Three, four times. Only sparks. Sparks every time and no flame. Not once. There was no flame in it. No fluid in it. Only sparks. I cursed my luck because I had been looking forward to that cigarette the whole way to the bank.
Now that I couldn’t smoke it, I didn’t know what to do with myself.
Now that I couldn’t smoke it, I was lost.
My days were a series of cigarettes smoked and pages read and cups of coffee drank. And it was always hard to fall asleep on the days that ended one cigarette short.
A man walking out of a nearby alley must have seen the unlit cigarette. The lost lip it was hanging off of. He walked towards me. Continued to walk towards me as he crossed the street. I thought nothing of it. We were both pedestrians. And on some of those gray February days pedestrians passed each other on the street. Sometimes nodding at each other to acknowledge the existence of another pilgrim like themselves.
Or there might be no nodding, no acknowledgement. Only the pretense that they are the only one trying to get somewhere. The only one on their way to someplace.
But there was no pretense to this man. And as we neared each other he reached his hand into the pocket of his wool shirt and pulled out a blank matchbook. Holding it out to me in a wordless offering of fire.
Of pantheists smoking in the dirty street.
I needed that cigarette lit, and I took the matchbook. Struck a match. Watched it burn out before it even reached my cigarette. The man’s gray and yellow-spotted beard twitched slightly and he grumbled something I didn’t quite hear.
Taking the matchbook back, he struck a second match. Let it burn for a moment. Cupping it between his hands. His hands that were both world-worn and world-torn. From boxcars and shipwrecks, maybe. And his nails a little long and a little yellow. Making me wonder if he had come out of some surrounding wild that I had not found, yet. Had not heard the sound of in the distance, yet.
And, as he was Prometheus himself, he cupped the small flame that he had just created in those hands. And I bowed before him. Touching my cigarette to the fire and inhaling through all of that tobacco.
Inhaling some kind of salvation and nicotine.
I thanked him and asked, “Do you need a cigarette?”
He nodded.
He did.
So, I pulled another one out of my pack and gave it to him. Watched him hide the end of it somewhere in his beard, between his lips. He mumbled a thank you. We nodded to each other and walked on in our separate directions. Whichever ones we happened to be going in.
Him to give light somewhere.
Me to find light somewhere.
Both of us smoking the same kind of cigarette.
Lit with the same kind of match.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Biography: Jacob Perkins is a 20 year-old writer with Rust Belt roots. He has been spending most of his time away from the rust, though, continually travelling across the country via Amtrak train, Greyhound bus, or the Subaru Outback that he now calls home. For more on Jacob, you can contact him at jperk93@gmail.com.
