Green Eyes

-Twenty-Two-

South Side, Chicago, Illinois

Clay Starr-Madison

"Madison! You better not slam that door on the way out!"

"Funny, Sam," Clay says as he walks out of the open-ended area where all of the shopping carts were kept, mashed in on each other.

As a cart boy in a grocery store in South Side, Chicago, he's used to the joking and good-natured harassment of his fellow workers. After all, for many of them, a good sense of humor is all that keeps them out of other things to make life easier.

He waves at one of his friends, smiling tiredly. "See ya tomorrow."

"Already going home? I thought you had another hour on your shift!" The friend—Wilson Brown—claps him on the back, giving a train of shopping carts a shove toward the place they went.

Clay shrugs, offering a grin. "I'm good at sweet-talking my way out of work."

"Ha. More like your daddy called in and wanted you home to watch your sisters."

He shrugs again, sighing. "I'd rather be at home with them, anyway. They don't tell stupid jokes and hit on shoppers for fun."

Wilson laughs. "Fair enough. Get on, then. Tell 'em that Cousin Will said hey."

"Cousin Will. They call you Wilson, just like everyone else." And with a last grin and a wave, he keeps walking, past all of the parked cars, past a few moving ones, until he gets on the street that led home.

It's a four-mile trek back to the apartment his family—adoptive family—is packed into, with its cramped kitchen and rusted fire escape. The upkeep on the place is low, and the necessity for it is high, so the state of the apartment itself is less-than-nice. The bathroom used to be all white, every fixture porcelain and chrome, until the rust and scum set in, and now the tiny room is as stained and blemished as a smoker's lungs. Their main room is tiny, with only a coffee table holding their TV and a couch with the stuffing coming out. That couch is usually Clay's bed since the apartment only has two bedrooms.

He picks up his pace as he gets closer, jogging past old stores, that mechanic shop with the old fellows who always sit out front and smoke, and apartments. Miles of small houses, and more apartments as he gets closer to where he lives, all of them similar shades of tan, gray, and faded shades of other colors.

A few kids are throwing a ball back and forth between themselves, shouting and giggling. They quiet as Clay walks passes, eyeing him warily.

He does his best to look friendly and walks on the other side of the road, considering how uncertain those children are, and how they look the same age as his youngest sister.

They have good reason to be afraid of unfamiliar men, though. This isn't a safe place to grow up, and he hates that his sisters are.

But he never lets himself dwell on this for long. It depresses him.

He climbs up the stairs to the third floor of his apartment building and knocks on door eight, then waits.

His dad opens the door, the front of his work shirt rumpled and his thinning hair disheveled. His almost-forty-year-old face is almost as tired as everything else about him, but his expression relaxes when he lays eyes on Clay.

"Ah, good. I'm taking Julia out and we might bring her brother home to stay tonight, so put your stuff out on the escape. The girls are watching that show, and you'll have to make dinner. Sound doable?" But it isn't a real question. About once a week he calls Clay home from work early and goes out with Clay's step-mom. Her delinquent younger brother generally comes back with them and steals the couch for a night or two.