Smoke & Stack

The road south shimmers like a ribbon of heat, bleeding off the highway in waves thick as syrup. Elijah drives with both hands on the wheel, jaw tight, eyes forward. He hasn’t said much since they crossed the Tennessee line. Elias doesn’t ask. Smoke always gets quiet when they near home, like the land itself presses against his ribs.

Elias leans back with one boot on the dashboard and the other tapping restless against the floorboard. He strikes a match on his thumb and lights a cigarette, exhaling through his teeth. "Where we goin' first?" The words come out bitten against the wind in their open top automobile.

"Town," Elijah says, without looking. "Need to see what’s changed."

"You think much did?" Elias' voice carries his doubt with it. After Chicago, the constant hustle and bustle, the perpetual need to move that comes with bootlegging, rum running, and enforcing alike, the mere idea of Clarksdale changing seems out of place. It hadn’t during the Great War, after all.

Elijah's eyes flick over to him in a glance before settling back on the road, leaving that as answer enough. Elijah's thoughts are always half a world away; he spends a little bit of each waking hour still haunting the Marne, remembering a French boy his age trying to trade his father's watch for chocolate rations, remembering mustard gas hanging like judgment in the trees. Coming back to Mississippi felt like walking backward into silence.

Clarksdale unfolds slow—hot and cracked and humming. Jim Crow still rules with invisible signs and visible stares, but the afternoon sun has those lines blurring with heat as folks mill about. On one side of the tracks, the streets are lined with clapboard stores, porches shaded with rusting fans, paint flaking like old memories. The other side holds broad sidewalks, glass-front stores, clean stoops that smell like ammonia. But even here, the edges fray. The Chows still run their stores on both sides, still play both sides. And the twins, who once belonged nowhere, slide in like they never left.

They park just past the corner of the first buildings leading into town, across from Bo Chow’s place. The grocer's windows are open to catch what breeze there is, and the smell of fresh melon and rice hangs in the air.

Elijah's eyes scan across the horizon on a constant lookout for unfriendly faces while Elias whistles low. "God damn," he murmurs to himself as he stubs the cigarette out against the heel of his boot. "This here looks about the same, rest of it feels smaller."

Elijah rolls his eyes, huffing. "You just got bigger," he says, patting Stack on the stomach as he opens the automobile's door and steps down.

Out of the automobile, twin pairs of shoulders roll, boots thudding soft against the dirt road. Elijah scans the sidewalk instinctively, a habit picked up somewhere between the war and the Chicago Outfit. The segregation rankles, crawling under his skin even where a few bold folks blur the lines.

But then, ahead—something cuts through the wash of heat. Elijah doesn’t breathe, his hand stretches out to stop his brother. "Look."

A thief, fast, fingers too nimble and gait too straight to any kind of innocent. The thief breezes past a red-faced white man, drunk, on the post office stoop and, with a flick of a wrist, relieves him of his wallet.

Elias follows his gaze, eyes latching on. He's seen better pickpockets, both of them have, but stateside they exist only in Chicago backstreets and on those few, rare trips to New York. (European pickpockets were playing a different game entirely.) Still, eyes follow the youth down the road—the pair watch for tells and find none. The little thief doesn't run, doesn't hide, just keeps moving unbothered and graceful down Clarksdale's main street. Eventually, their eyes follow the thief as they duck under a laundry line, and push through the swinging screen door of Bo Chow’s, on the colored side of the street.

Recognition dawns and Elias whistles low, "God damn," he says again—this time a very different kind of appraising.

Together they follow. Inside, the store is quiet, cool, and smells of ginger and dust. Shelves lean with canned goods, pickled eggs, and stacks of sugar—only new editions in the time they've been gone are the addition of little rows of tin cans. Lisa Chow glances up from behind the counter, eyes narrowing at the sight of the twins. She doesn't speak to them, just nods her head and goes back to what she's doing, not bothering to pretend they aren't trouble.

Together, the twins watch as their sibling opens the wallet, thumbing through stolen bills like they're treasure half tucked away behind a shelf. To keen eyes, it looks practiced, like it's been done a hundred eyes before.

Elijah's jaw works silently before he speaks, shaking his head and asking for strength. "You always steal from white men in broad daylight?" he asks.

Elias, meanwhile, chases away the deep ache of sentiment with curiousity, ever the pragmatist. A grin slips onto his features, easy as could be. "How much did you score, firefly?"