45 pages 1 hour read

Morgan Talty

Night of the Living Rez

Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2022

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“The Blessing Tobacco”Chapter Summaries & Analyses

“The Blessing Tobacco” Summary

David visits with his grandmother, who, due to dementia, has mistaken him for her own brother, Robbie. The grandmother gives David a cigarette and David, deciding that he will play along with his grandmother’s delusion, takes the cigarette. When he finishes one, she insists he takes another, and so on until he becomes sick. As he runs from her house, looking for a place to vomit, she accuses him of having stolen from the family’s blessing tobacco.

David returns home and Paige, who has moved back in with their mother and now works in a pawnshop, finds him looking ill. She gives him some ginger ale and argues with their mother about how much she can expect to receive from the pawnshop for some silver jewelry. After their conversation, David’s mother tells him that he didn’t refill the wood box at his grandmother’s house and needs to go back to do that. David does this, and his grandmother makes him dinner.

David returns home late that night and finds his mother and Paige fighting. Paige claims that their mother embarrassed her at work, and their mother claims that Paige should have offered her more money for the silver jewelry.