Wholly Smokes Read online

  They tell you don’t smoke, but that’s just jive

  They don’t wanna let you just be alive Just B, just B, just B, Just B, just be, just B. A. live STREET LIFE!

  Dad say, Don’t you smoke, son, cuz

  you 2 young It bad fo’ you, it bad fo’ yo lung And we don’t wanna let you have no fun

  Bring me that ashtray and shut yo face But Dad’s blowin’ smoke and he’s a

  disgrace To the whole human race Dis, dis, dis, disgrace, Dis, dis, dis, disgrace, to the whole human race.

  STREET LIFE!

  Teacher say, Don’t smoke on the schoo’ proppity

  Drive by, smoke her, hippity hoppity She puffin’ away on the playground herself

  She only worried about my healf

  It legal fo’ them, why not fo’ me?

  It legal, it legal, it legal

  It legal, it legal, it legal fo’ them, why not fo’ me?

  STREET LIFE!

  DWIGHT (suddenly draws his cut-lass, leaps up on the conference table, and begins a wild dance. His sea boots kick over coffee carafes, he stomps on papers, he writhes and screams and whirls the cutlass overhead): Yes, yes, I’m the scourge. I’m the scourge. I’m the scourge of the goddamn Caribbean!

  (Grabs a woman and hauls her up on the table. They struggle. Dwight’s “white bandanna” comes off. It turns out to be not a bandanna at all, but a bandage. Its removal reveals a shaved head bearing a large scar.)

  BOARD MEMBER: Stop him, someone! And for God’s sake, turn off that camera.

  In secret, Dwight Badcock had been undergoing surgery for a massive brain tumor. He was now taken away again to the hospital, for more surgery. Was the tumor producedby grandfather Horace, painting the infant Dwight’s little head with tobacco tar? We may never know for sure. In any case, Dwight was no longer head of the company.

  The Final Days

  Dust in Badcock

  Dwight was succeeded by his son, Dustin Badcock, an anti-tobacco activist. He was able to stop all cigarette advertising aimed at children, especially the infamous Operation Puff Love. He vowed that he would close the tobacco side of the business entirely, and concentrate on food. The shareholders threatened lawsuits to stop him. Dustin soon found that he had…

  a tiger by the tail. If I stay in charge, I am guilty myself of producing the very poisons I’ve always fought against. If I resign, or they force me out with a lawsuit, GST will become even bigger and better at poisoning Americans. Somehow I’ve got to find an acceptable way to shut it all down. Maybe all these state and federal health lawsuits will help… or maybe new federal regulations…

  Yet his final rescue came neither from state nor federal government, but from an unexpected quarter.

  In January, 2009, an out-of-work factory worker named Delmar Birtwhistle, of Soybean Station, Nebraska, was smoking as he drove his pickup on an icy country road. When he attempted to remove the cigarette from his mouth after a puff, it stuck to his lip, and Mr. Birtwhistle pulled the hot coal off the end. It fell into his lap. While pawing frantically at it, Mr. Birtwhistle managed to run his pickup off the road. He was fortunate in that he ran off on a driveway. He was unfortunate in that the driveway led him straight through the glass front of a fast-food restaurant. Moreover, the restaurant happened to be filled with handicapped children.

  Though no children were actually hurt, many were said to be traumatized by the crash. Their guardians sued GST; the restaurant sued GST, and even Mr. Birtwhistle sued GST.

  The essence of Delmar Birtwhistle’s case was that his whole life had been plagued by tobacco. His mother had smoked heavily during pregnancy. His parents hadboth chain-smoked all during his childhood, saturating his little lungs with second-handsmoke. His only childhood toys were ashtrays, lighters, pipe-cleaners, and Christmas cartons of cigarettes. When they went shopping, his parents would lock him in a smoke-filled car with the windows rolled up (This fact gave rise to the new legal concept of “third-hand smoke.”)

  At school, his teachers and all of the older kids smoked incessantly. He held out for a time, but finally Little Delmar, just seven years old, inhaled his first Hit. Soon he was up to three packs a day, a habit he maintained for life.

  When Delmar reached adolescence, he was able to support his habit only by crime. He began by breaking into vending machines, and moved on to gas station holdups. In prison, where cigarettes were precious currency, his habit forced him to smoke up a fortune.

  After prison, Delmar tried going straight. He married Thelma Harris, a woman who workedin the Hits factory. She too was addicted. They filled their house with thick smoke and with Hits smoking memorabilia – lighters, ashtrays, placards, neon signs. Delmar tried to get a job at the Hits factory himself, but there was the problem of his prison record. It was hard to find work anywhere – those companies who hired excons usually had no-smoking policies.

  When he saw his little son playing with ashtrays and lighters, Delmar realized his own life had been ruined by GST, and now they were about to ruin his son’s life too. Distraught and suicidal, Delmar jumped in his pickup and went for a drive in the country. He lit a Hit to soothe his jangled nerves. Because of its “defective construction,” the cigarette stuck to his lip. The hot coal fell into his lap, “burning him severely” says the lawsuit, “in a tender area.”

  “My client’s entire life has been corrupted and devastated by GST. Its shadow lay over him from before his birth until the day of his terrible accident. Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we ask only that GST, at long last, begin to pay for this wanton destruction!” The plaintiffs asked for punitive damages of 130 billion dollars.

  As the scent of money spread in the water, GST was soon surrounded by the circling fins of many more lawyers. There developed a class action suit for all persons injured by smoking-related accidents, including not only car accidents, but several light plane crashes, a forest fire, many hotel fires, and a bizarre incident somehow involving a breast implant.

  Buried under an avalanche of lawsuits, GST filed for bankruptcy in October 2011. An American era had ended.

  The End

  Chronology

  1614 Henry Badcock abducts Pocahontas.

  1665 Enoch and Erasmus Badcock inherit plantations.

  1666 Erasmus Badcock starts Great Fire of London.

  1776 Samuel Badcock’s tobacco starts American War of Independence.

  1862 Tristram Badcock dies in Civil War.

  1865 Jezreel Badcock meets Scarlotta, gets an address in Gettysburg.

  1878 Fillmore Badcock invents the baseball card.

  1885 Fillmore Badcock’s death by tobacco gin (Cleveland).

  1898 Adair Badcock dies in Cuba.

  1898 Blessington Badcock dies in Cuba.

  1917 Augustus Badcock invents Lady Fantasy.

  1937 LeRoy Badcock takes passage on the Hindenburg.

  1937 Augustus Badcock chokes to death on Cairo Cut Plug. Horace (“Boomer”) Badcock takes power.

  1941 Horace Badcock invents Hits cigarettes, becomes two-star general.

  1952 Horace Badcock paints cigarette tar on his grandson’s head.

  1952 Elwood (“Woody”) Badcock begins medical commercials.

  1961 Woody Badcock creates exploding cigar for Castro.

  1975 Dwight Badcock takes over, introduces menthol cigarettes.

  1990s Dwight Badcock starts Operation Puff Love.

  1998 Death of Dwight Badcock. Dustin Badcock takes power.

  2009 Delmar Birtwhistle’s accident.

  2011 The end of GST.

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  Also by John Sladek

  Novels
/>   The Reproductive System (1968) (aka Mechasm)

  The Muller-Fokker Effect (1970)

  Roderick (1980)

  Roderick At Random (1983)

  Tik-Tok (1983)

  Bugs (1989)

  Wholly Smokes

  Collections

  The Steam-Driven Boy (1970)

  Keep The Giraffe Burning (1977)

  Alien Accounts (1982)

  The Lunatics Of Terra (1984)

  Maps: The Uncollected John Sladek (2001)

  John Sladek (1937 – 2000)

  John Sladek was born in Iowa in 1937 but moved to the UK in 1966, where he became involved with the British New Wave movement, centred on Michael Moorcock’s groundbreaking New Worlds magazine. Sladek began writing SF with ‘The Happy Breed’, which appeared in Harlan Ellison’s seminal anthology Dangerous Visions in 1967, and is now recognized as one of SF’s most brilliant satirists. His novels and short story collections include The Muller Fokker Effect, Roderick and Tik Tok, for which he won a BSFA Award. He returned to the United States in 1986, and died there in March 2000.

  Copyright

  A Gollancz eBook

  Copyright © The Estate of John Sladek 2003

  All rights reserved.

  The right of John Sladek to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by Gollancz

  The Orion Publishing Group Ltd

  Orion House

  5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane

  London, WC2H 9EA

  An Hachette UK Company

  A CIP catalogue record for this book

  is available from the British Library.

  ISBN 978 0 575 11067 0

  All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  www.orionbooks.co.uk