Excerpt
Chapter 1
On the east side of the city behind the industrial complex, the homeless people congregated. Some of the taller buildings blocked the winter blasts of cold air and the crates provided the shelter they needed to survive. All of the inhabitants of the complex closed by 6 p.m. and the security systems were activated at that point in time. There was very little, if any, traffic in these areas during the evening hours. This was one of the attractions that allowed the residents of the shelters to live virtually unrestrained. The early residents had named the line of dwellings Industrial City and that title had stuck. One of the first inhabitants of these makeshift houses was a man in his early fifties known only as Foster Grant to the population there. His actual birth given name was as much as a mystery to him as he was to the fellow dwellers there. The name he answered to was given to him by one of the early dwellers years back. The story going around from one of those founding fathers was that he had come across an expensive pair of sunglasses in a hard-shelled case around the corner from that deli on 5th and Wyndmeer. He started wearing them and was never seen without them and someone started calling him by the name of the maker of that brand of popular sunglasses. He never answered to any other name after that so it stuck. Now everyone just knew him by that name. In the early days after his change to this lifestyle, he had selected a crate that almost cancelled his reservation. He was moving around in his cramped quarters when his arm raked across the sharp point of a protruding nail. Blood began to decorate the inside walls of the crate. If not for the presence of mind of a nearby dweller who applied pressure to the elbow, he would have died before they could get him to the clinic a couple blocks away. He would have departed this world earlier that he would have liked to. He received emergency medical treatment and was released later that day. He was reminded of this of this close call by the long winding scar halfway up his right arm that circled around so that it resembled a hook. Every time he saw this he thought of that book Peter Pan he recollected from somewhere in his memory. Maybe he had read it at one time. He could not be sure of that. It was funny how a persons mind could bring up things like that at the most inopportune times. In the back of his mind deep in a dark closet, he remembered a dog named Demetrious. Beyond those vague recollections, his mind would not provide any data that would reveal any clues as to who he was, or where he came from. He knew from experience he hated the cold and definitely could stand the heat much better that the harsh winter winds. Some of the dwellers lived in the settlement part time. In the winter many of them moved to the southern and southwestern states to escape the harsh cold winter winds, then came back north in March and April. By the first of May, most of these shelters were once again inhabited. One day, early in June, Foster Grant had a visitor. He was a man similar in build and description to the man he was visiting, with one exception. He wore a long sleeved dress shirt and slacks where as Foster was wearing a faded sleeveless T-shirt and shorts, preferable in the 80 degree temperatures of that time period. The man sitting in the makeshift crate chair in the spacious foyer of Foster’s dwelling opened a dark black briefcase and took out some papers. Witnesses saw they engaged in a discussion that lasted approximately 15 minutes. The unusual visitor showed Foster the papers and waited while his host spent some time reading the papers in his weather beaten hands. After a few minutes, he accepted a pen from the visitor, signed one of the pages, and then handed them back to the man. The man put them in a folder then placed the signed papers back in the briefcase and closed it. Under normal circumstances, this eventful meeting would have been invisible to the eyes and ears of people close by. This was not, however deemed normal, so the event was captured in the minds of several nearby dwellers. As was the usual custom, this was as far as it got and they adhered to the code of it was not their business. It was a case of mutual respect of the settlement’s inhabitants. A couple of times certain dwellers had violated this code and they found themselves expelled from the community.
Chapter 2
The article in question appeared in the early edition of the Daily Register on April 1st, 2006. Like a lot of similar announcements, it would go virtually unnoticed by the majority of the readers foolish enough to have bought a copy of the paper in the first place. Anyone with any common sense would have purchased a copy of the Tribune. The articles were more concise and well written. They actually hired people that knew what they were doing. The articles that found their way into the Register were the ones that no one else wanted to print. It was as if there was a billboard somewhere that read: Send me your unwanted stories, your trash, your articles of no value, whatsoever, and we will print them. Perhaps they should have changed the name to the Negative Register. Be that as it was, being totally fair, the man glancing over the paper had gotten some of his cases from this very paper in the past. When he managed to find a copy every so often in the trash can that was conveniently situated in the streets below, he scanned over it. He had only to read an article and he remembered it for life. The prospect of having a catchall type of memory was either a blessing or a curse depending on how one perceived it, or how much sleep he or she had gotten the previous evening. A person has to be able to cover both sides of the street, after all, when being philosophical. Doesn’t one? There is probably a law governing that covers that somewhere. If not, maybe then one will be written soon.
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