Beginnings - The Elwood Dead End

The rain fell in waves across the dirty streets, washing the surface filth and decay into the overflowing sewers. Abandoned and condemned, the apartment buildings at the end of Elwood Avenue, named after the late Mayor Durwin C. Elwood, rose into the soggy night sky like tombstones. Elwood Avenue ended abruptly ten feet beyond the last empty building. A forty foot high cement wall, covered in the colors and images of street youth expression, hid the Fourteenth Street off ramp to the freeway, effectively cutting off any through traffic and creating the Elwood dead end.

Lightning cracked, exposing the choked and cluttered alleyways like a beam from a flash light. The doors of the condemned building, once sealed shut, now swung back and forth on rusty hinges, whining and moaning, as the wind and storm played catch.

Edward McClure, or “Eddie” to his regulars, owned a tiny grocery store on the corner of Elwood and Mathis, a block from the freeway and the Elwood dead end. Eddie stood five feet six inches tall and weighed Three hundred and forty one pounds on a good day. He rarely moved from behind the coffee stained checkout counter, which ran along the front window facing Mathis Boulevard. He gave orders and directed traffic from where he sat by swinging and pointing two pudgy fingers, holding a frayed cigar which looked like it had been stopped on.

With three to four days growth across his swollen and greasy jowls and neck, Eddie sat and watched life pass through the hazy, foggy windows of his store. He wore a yellowed tank top, stretched tightly across a bulging, hairy stomach which permanently creased where it rested across the inner edge of the counter. The tank top sat untucked but without reaching the top of Eddie’s stained and weathered blue jeans, which rode low across his hips and covered little in the back where they sat perched atop of a creaky metal bar stool behind the counter.

Eddie leaned back from the counter, against a rack of adult magazines, and ran his left hand through the few remaining strands of greasy hair that spread across the top of his head. He reached for the remote control, nestled in a basket of credit card receipts, flipped on the TV to the late eleven o’clock news and turned up the volume. The store had been empty since early evening and he was bored.