Night of the Living Rez

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2022

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“Smokes Last”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“Smokes Last” Summary

David, now living with just his mother and Frick because Paige is in rehab, goes out with his friends Tyson and JP. The three play a game called “battle,” the nature of which provides clear evidence of Violence as an Expression of Masculinity. The boys hunt and beat each other with rocks and sticks until two have submitted and one is left the victor. During the game, JP beats Tyson with a stick, and Tyson attempts to throw a stick at JP, who ducks it. The stick hits David in the face, giving him a deep gash between his eye and his nose.

When David returns home, he’s careful to keep the wound from his mother. She insists he call his father, with whom he argues about child support and alimony payments. His father agrees to wire a $100 in David’s name, so David goes out to collect it. On the way, he meets up with Tyson, and the two pass a bar. Some white men outside the bar ask for cigarettes, and when the boys refuse to give them any the man calls them “Greedy fucking Indians” (155). The boys retaliate by throwing rocks at the man; the rocks break the bar’s windows. The boys flee, eventually escaping the men who try to pursue them.

The next day, David’s mother notices his healing wound. She’s distressed by the violence of the games that David and his friends play. She receives a phone call from Paige, and David overhears her admit to Paige that she knows that David has been stealing his cigarettes. The fact that his mother has realized this disturbs David, and he reflects, “Mom had this way to make you want to die” (164). He leaves home to hang out with Tyson and JP; they fill JP in on what happened by the bar. When David returns home that night, he sees that there’s a newspaper article about the vandalism, but in the article’s version of the incident it was the boys who’d approached the white men about the cigarettes and who had grown irate when refused. David notices that his mother has left him a pack of cigarettes on his dresser with the note “Make them last” (169).

“Smokes Last” Analysis

Of all the collection’s stories, “Smokes Last” deals the most directly with anti-Indigenous racism. This story examines how direct expressions of racism impact Indigenous men emotionally and psychologically. The story’s exploration of racism, though, goes deeper still. The newspaper clipping that David’s mother leaves for him claims that the boys approached the bar’s patrons asking for money, and that the patrons refused them, leading to violence. This reframing of the truth speaks to how white-dominated institutions create and disseminate false narratives that protect white communities while endangering and vilifying Indigenous populations. David’s reaction to this racism is complex; he says, “I laughed, but I was angry too” (168), before cutting the story out of the newspaper and keeping it but burning the rest of the newspaper. This reaction speaks to an emotional response more complex than simple outrage. David holds on to this racism, internalizing it and literally carrying it with him through his life.

“Smokes Last” also touches on the dangers of inheritance. Cigarettes are ubiquitous in David’s world but are most readily available to him by stealing them from his mother. His mother is distraught at the realization that David is taking her cigarettes. David is in the process of inheriting her addiction—an addiction that will eventually impact her health, as seen in the later stories. His mother’s decision to give him her cigarettes demonstrates a resignation to the idea that the inheritance of trauma, harmful coping mechanisms, and even addiction is inevitable—something to be mitigated rather than prevented.