Outside the doctor’s with his expiration date in hand, he turns it over once, twice, then stuffs it in his back pocket and sits down on the curb. Heat rises off the asphalt. It shouldn’t be this hot today. He tugs at his shirt collar. It’s only April. He takes the paper out of his pocket and looks it over again to make sure he read the prognosis right. He did. And it’s already April. His palms moisten the paper. He crinkles it up and puts it back in his pocket. The sun is bright and heavy and hurting his eyes. Someone passing by stoops down and asks if he’s okay and he says he’s fine, it’s just hot out. A plastic water bottle slips into his hands. He mumbles thank you and he drinks it quick, too quick, sucks it down until the bottle is empty and folded in on itself. He puts his lips around it and blows and it pops back into shape but the creases remain. It’s not too hot out anymore. It’s only April.

When he’s ready he gets up and goes to his car. He blasts the air conditioning. The car begins to beep at him to put his seatbelt on.

After a bit he pulls off to a mini-mart and pushes inside to the note of door chimes. At the counter a heavyset woman is drinking an energy drink. She glances at him. He says hello and then gets close to squint at the racks behind her and asks for his favorite tin of mint longcut. He has to guide her hand. Down a little, down one more row, one more row, now to the left two, left one more, back one more, that one please. She sips her energy drink and rings him up.

“More expensive than I remember it being,” he says.

“It’s the tobacco tax,” she says.

“I don’t reckon I ever in my life spent more than three bucks on a tin.”

“It’s the tobacco tax,” she says.

He fishes through his wallet and he has more than enough in cash. He hands it all to her and takes the tin and says keep the change.

“Really?”

“Just keep it as a tip.”

“I…thanks.”

He leaves with his tin, running his thumbnail along the ridge. In the car he opens it and sniffs it and it smells just the same as before. Mint cancer. He packs a thick, moist wad in his old spot on the left side of his mouth and uses his tongue to press it in tight. It stings. His gums sing. He leans his head back against the seat and stays in the parking lot with his eyes closed, the air conditioning cool on his skin and the mint tobacco cool in his mouth. Saliva builds up. He uncaps the water bottle and spits in it and watches a brown glob slide slow down the inside.

Then he starts rolling again. The radio is tuned to country rock. He merges onto the interstate and packs the tobacco tighter with his tongue and sucks to press it against his gums. He spits periodically. Brown, bubbly, muddy saliva collects in the bottle. Held up to the sunlight it glows amber. The interstate dips and the downslope adds speed. Fifteen, twenty miles over. The car is still beeping about a seatbelt so he turns the radio louder and he keeps on rolling and keeps on spitting. Brown and mucky with a sweetish smell. Original. Longcut. Warning, this product can cause mouth cancer. But there’s no future here for mouth cancer, just downslopes and dip and radio rock.

He comes down one last slope and feathers the brakes to take a curve away from the interstate, and then he’s on soft, slow roads back home. When he pulls into his gravel driveway he kills the car engine and sits and again uses his tongue to pack the tobacco tight against his gums. There’s still flavor in it. He spits and then caps the bottle and puts it in his pocket, and he reaches to grab a construction safety vest from the back and shrugs it on, then rubs his hands on the underside of his boots and gets his palms rough and dirtied with a false day’s work. The sun is at the right spot in the sky. He goes inside. His wife is there in the kitchen, doing dishes, pretty in her paisley blue apron, pretty as the day they met, pretty as the day she made him quit. He swallows and his spit burns his throat.

“Hey,” he says.

She turns to him and smiles. “How was work?”

“Long.”

Her smile drops. “What’s in your mouth?”

“Nothing,” he says. He guts another dollop of stinging spit.

“Is that tobacco?” she asks.

“Yeah. Sorry.”

She drops a dish back in the sink. “Don’t start again. Please don’t start again, Tom. It’ll kill you. It’ll rot your gums. Please please please don’t.”

He sits down at the kitchen table and looks out the window, squinting at the sun.

“Please, Tom. It’ll rot your gums and kill you. You said you’d never ever again. You said you’d be healthy so we’d grow old together.”

“Yeah.”

“You said you reckoned I’ll look pretty with white hair and you’re fixin’ to be alive and healthy to see it.”

He spits into the bottle and swishes it around. “I’d like that,” he says. “I would.”

“Spit the foul stuff out then!”

He bows his head. “Sorry.”

“Spit it out!”

He spits it out. It thumps into the bottle.

“God, Tom,” she says, and starts crying. She doesn’t look as pretty when she’s crying. “Throw the rest of that stuff out.”

“I will,” he says. He gets up and wraps her in a hug. “Don’t cry. There ain’t anything to cry about.”