7:10 To Detroit

He was afraid to take his shoes off to massage the circulation back into his feet for fear the stiff laces would cut into the frozen flesh on his fingers. Pulling a small box of kitchen matches from his coat pocket, he carefully removed one of the precious sticks.

Standing on the icy sidewalk in front of Jerry’s Groceries with the collar turned up on his peacoat against the cold, Alva Carter removed the silvered paper tab from the pack of Luckies, then tapped one out, struck a kitchen match and lit it. Taking a drag then a sip from his beer, he looked over the collection of announcements tacked to the bulletin board hanging next to the phone booth, and was struck by the banality of his life and of the lives of the people who shared his world.