Cooper, The Big Black Bear Pup stood by the refrigerator. He was not exactly begging rather looking to get lucky. He is fixed so not that type of lucky. 

I went into the fridge to get some carrots for the broccoli soup simmering in the crack pot. Little did I know, the bag of baby carrots had a hole. 

As I took the carrots out, a few carrots fell to the earth with one actually hitting Cooper atop his head.

To him it was carrots falling from the sky. He will probably cherish that spot in front of the refrigerator for weeks. 

Things happen in the course of weeks and days and most of it is clutter and much ado about nothing. Little tangents lead us nowhere. Seemingly, little things happen all the time. They will set off repercussions that will affect everything that comes after and there are little chance interactions that are epic and life altering. People and paths are interconnected. The little bit of fuel we all use today may alter weather patterns that we cannot fathom at the time. Alternatively, maybe it is happenstance. We are all little atoms that collide and form molecules and then life altering changes. However, for the most part most of what we do is trivial and random. It is religion of sorts. It is a religion where the end game is not the mission. Rather it is whom we affect along the way.

It was a Friday evening and I just finished my work week at my finance job out in Maryland. I relaxed on an empty Metro train through the District of Columbia and looked forward to going for a run. It was a balmy spring day and the cherry blossoms were a harbinger of the warm season ahead. Spring was magical in Washington, DC. It usually never crept up rather it sprung on you unexpectedly.

I took the bus from the Pentagon to our house in Arlington and walked the final pleasant blocks back to the house. I stopped and talked to two neighbor kids who were sitting quietly on the front porch. I knew these kids were not of legal drinking age as the young man who lived there was in his first year at the local community college. He was a sweet kid who was usually quick with a smile. When he smiled it was infectious. I remember him being more serious than I was at that age. They were at his Dad’s house and it was not my place to pass judgment. Arlington was full on bungalows built years ago as summer homes for lawmakers in DC. It was the oldest house on the block ; the house was painted sky blue.

We were close with all the neighbors on that block in Arlington. It was a close-knit community. That is except for this house. We got along great with the kids however the father was a spot of bother. Jim was a simple man and he was usually pleasant to talk to. However he was a loud proponent of the NRA and it rubbed most people the wrong way. Still we all supported Jim. He was a single father and we included him in cookouts and backyard gatherings and he always showed up with an assortment of Budweiser.
His son and a friend I did not know where sitting on the porch and greeted me warmly. I asked them what they were up to for the evening. They indicated they were hanging out on the porch and drinking beer. These were noble aspirations given the circumstances.
Our house was a minute walk away. With little hesitation I walked in the front door and was greeted by our Beagle Lucy. We were planning a trip to Germany so I practiced my German on the Beagle. She understood my inflection.
Möchten Sie einen Lauf machen?
We headed out the door a few minutes later. I noticed the sky had turned darker and the air felt like rain. The boys on the porch yelled to us to have a nice run. I only planned on running forty-five minutes that day. It was a very easy run mostly taking in the sweet aromatics of spring. Per my usual, it was a looped course that took us through 4-Mile Run. Lucy liked to play in the water in this nice little park.
One bad habit I have, when I am out running, is that when I hear fire sirens during a run, I do a mental checklist of ‘Did I unplug the Iron’ or something similar. It always leaves me a bit unsettled. With approximately a mile left, in this particularly quiet run, I noticed a buzz of police activity in the area. The scream of sirens unsettled me to the core. To be fair, South Arlington had more than its fair share of police activity. However, this was highly unusual. Lucy and I hurried our way home through the last mile.
I turned the corner on our street taking the same familiar route I had taken from the bus stop ninety minutes previous. I could feel the activity from blocks away. There in front of the house where the boys had been drinking beer sat three police cars with flashing lights ablaze. I put Lucy in our house and slowly walked back to the house where the boys once sat. I walked right past the policemen and approached the now eerie looking sky-blue house. Before I reached the front door, our neighbors Sharon and Armando greeted me. They nodded their heads and said nothing for good long time. It could have been five seconds it could have been five minutes. The silence hung in the air.

One of the policemen at the house pulled me aside and started asking me questions. I simply relayed the story about the brief conversation I had before I went for my run.
The officer told me that things did not look good. Apparently after I left for the run, the boys had “broken into” their father’s gun cabinet. Jim’s son had been playing with the gun and it accidentally fired into the body of his friend.
I asked if the boy was going to be okay. The officer simply said No. He may have been dead at the time. I really do not know. They wheeled the body out five minutes later as all the neighbors on 21st Street stood together silently. There were no words to say.
The police told us this was an accidental shooting and there were not going to be any charges in the case unless they received other information. They interviewed Jim’s son and he could hardly form a sentence. I am not sure if they interviewed Jim.
What do you do as a neighborhood after an incident such as this? We did what we always did and we tried to help each other out. The usual instinct is to run and hide from an incident such as this. What we did as a community was, we did our best to keep Jim’s son calm. We all brought a little something over to eat so he would have a little community and assure him it was not his fault. In retrospect it wasn’t. That is something I believe we all reflect on to this day.
There was a common thought going through all of our minds. What it must be like for the father on the other end of the line receiving the news that his son was no longer part of this world.
The last memory of that night was when Jim’s father came into the room. We all more or less asked him the same questions.
“Jim how can we help?”
He replied, “Do you know how to get blood stains out of carpet?”
That is the last thing I remember. I reflect often on many of the unanswered questions of that night. I know we all do.

Tick tick tick of a clock
bang bang of the wind
       off the ocean
and then an incessant 
         roar
constant ocean roar 
       I am here
in your presence
Quiet
tick tick tick
and there’s the
Ocean

Opal walked down Broadway hoping for a break in the persistent rain. These assholes driving by, splashing water and telling her poor people need to get a job. It was only a few weeks ago she may have uttered the same thing. That is if her damn worthless piece of unfit spit was with her. She was really glad to be rid of him. She secretly wished him dead, but hopefully she did not kill him.

Just yesterday, he was at the top of his angry game. She asked for a burrito from the busy food cart on the corner.

“Where do you think I am going to get that type of money? ” He yelled as she scurried across the street. A car soon after slowly passed between her and Vlad.

The street now unexpectedly silent, she yelled back to him.

“You held up a mini mart yesterday. That’s where you are going to get the money.”

“Damn If I told you once, I have told you a hundred times they don’t keep cash in that there damn safe of those mini marts.”

“Why did you hold up a damn Mini Mart?” She asked as he angrily paraded across Main as the rain increased in intensity.

“I got me self some cigarettes in the deal. You don’t need no damn burrito anyways. You getting yourself chunky”

“Who cares about my weight.? I can lose the weigh if I want. You are always going to be stupid.”

The next she knew she was looking out through a swollen left eye, while strangers looked at her like she had been knocked out. It looked like a scene from those boxing matches her Pop watched when she was little. That Tyson guy was smart like her old man, which neither of them were.

That was yesterday and it felt like a long time ago.

She could have go on home with that idiot. That choice was taken away from her once she found herself the victim of anger, stupidity and violence. Last night she slept at the shelter and to be quite honest it was one of the best nights sleep she’s had in a long time.

This morning she woke and much to her credit she enjoyed a hearty warm breakfast. It tasted damn good. The eggs were runny and the toast was on the dry side. Still it was the most delicious meal she had in a long time. She felt enough unsure of herself that she did not stay around and talk to those who lingered after breakfast. There was a gentleman there named Cabot and she rather enjoyed his company. He was a bear of a man yet he seemed gentle enough. They talked over a steaming cup of tea and then parted ways mid morning. She felt somewhat alive again. She was tired and beaten down until she woke up this morning. Today, She felt less tired and beaten down.

However that was only temporary, she has not yet have figured out life with out that fucking idiot she’s been hanging with. So she went back to the same routine she knew and that being hanging out on the dirty old streets. They did not feel as dirty today after she had been showered. It felt rather good and still she had a certain edginess.

She noticed todays light rain had a certain solidity to it as the temperatures hovered right around freezing. She walked around the downtown for an hour or so, occasionally saying hello to those she barely know. It was there that she came across the group of tents she lived in two nights previous. She enjoyed taking in the brutal morning, having spent the night outside the elements and she loved the smell of smoke in the air.

However this was a different smell as the smoke was acrid and burnt the eyes and nose. The smoke was tinted with creosote accented by either lighter fluid or gasoline. This was the shanty where she defiantly assumed Vlad slept. She walked quickly past the encampment hoping to avoid a confrontation. She felt happy, euphoric in a relative sense as she headed down town toward the waterfront. Why she headed to the waterfront was a paradox of sorts as she generally detested the new wine shops and swanky restaurants where a nice respite for those on street, once existed. She yearned to walk by the river. Watching the river soothed her.

Her walk by the waterfront was rather non eventful. She liked the fact that she blended in. The stigma of, the woman behind the beer can shopping cart, didn’t seem to follow her. She strolled through the waterfront without raising sneers of contempt. It was liberating, yet there was a certain melancholy attached that lingered in the back of her mind. The little money she had wouldn’t buy her much and she had a warm meal waiting back at the shelter if she so chose.

Opal marched back to the shelter as a steady snow emerged from the slowly sinking sky, She receded into a bit of melancholy that matched the lowering of the clouds. She resented vehemently, Vlad and the anger and abuse he directed toward her. Today felt like as she imagined somebody would feel on their first day out of prison.

She walked past the blue shanty that was Vlad’s and once again she could smell what she assumed to be gasoline. That idiot always had some gasoline in case he was lucky enough to steal a car. He must have fallen asleep, as by the smell of things, there was gasoline seeping out of his encampment. She bent down slowly to make sure this was gas and not a spilled bottle of the hooch.

She couldn’t be sure which it was. She took a match from her pocket so she could get a better perspective. She mindlessly tossed the match onto the liquid and hurried on her way.