The Brisket I Smoked For Dads Hall

Dad in the doorway

They brought Dad out at nine.

An aide named Marcus walked beside his wheelchair, a big young guy with gentle hands, and Kim came behind with a blanket for his lap even though it was warming up. I turned around from the smoker and there was my father, and I watched his face to see which day it was.

He looked at the smoker first. Not at me. At the smoker, at the thin blue smoke coming off the stack, and his nose went up a little, the way a man’s does when he walks into his own kitchen.

Then he looked at me.

“Shane,” he said.

My knees about went. He had not said my name right the last two visits.

“Hey, Dad.”

“You’re cooking.” He said it like it was the most ordinary thing in the world, like I had just come in from the yard. “What have you got.”

“Two packers. Hickory. Low and slow, the way you showed me.”

He reached out his hand and I took it. His hand was cold and light, all tendon now, but it closed on mine with a little of the old grip.

“Fat side up,” he said.

“Fat side up.”

“Good boy.” He looked at the smoker a long moment. “Your mother used to say the smell of it would wake the dead.”

I did not correct him on which mother. It did not matter. I pulled one of the heavy chairs over so he could sit by the firebox, where he liked to be, close enough to feel the heat, and he sat there with his blanket and watched the smoke and was, for a while, completely himself.