Never Ending Struggle

Carrying a backpack, walking home from school, Eon took his normal route, passing a church sign that read, “Let God fight the battle for you.” Ironically, there was a man slumped over on the side of the church, injecting a needle into his arm, fading in and out of reality. After turning a corner, there was a small apartment complex with chipped yellow paint where a group of teenage boys stood in front in a circle. “What’s up, little man?” one of them said, with a cigarette in his hand. “Hey, what’s up, y’all,” Eon replied from the other side of the street near a rusted fence, which enclosed an abandoned brick building with boarded windows. Still, palm trees waved in the wind near a neighborhood grocery store where another group of men stood in front. A flickering neon sign on its bright green paint made it an impossible target to miss. Nearby, a group of kids raced down the street on bicycles, laughing. As usual, across the street, two old men sat on a porch in rocking chairs, drinking liquor. One of them said, “Hey, what’s going on, little man? You keep doing the right thing, you hear?” “Hey, Mr. Arlington. Yes, sir, I will.” “Good to still see a young boy with manners these days . . . unlike the rest of these young boys out here. It’s not like back in our day, they don’t got no morals, no character, don’t even know what being a man is,” Mr. Arlington mumbled to his friend, who briefly took a sip from a red cup. Momentarily, Eon entered the store, pulling out a grocery list. At the counter, a cashier, who was fortified by bulletproof glass, slid change to a young girl who carried a baby in her arms and held the hand of her other son. “C’mon, this don’t make no sense. Why everything so expensive in here? Prices getting higher every damn day!” a man hollered, pointing his finger at the cashier. With his backpack weighing him down, Eon struggled, gathering a long list of food for the week. Shortly, four men entered the store, wearing jewelry and sunglasses; one of them pulled out a large wad of hundred-dollar bills wrapped in a rubber band, telling the cashier, “Let me get a pack of Newports, five of them grape cigars right there, and how ’bout you let me buy you for the rest of the day? C’mon, let’s go right now, how much you think you’re worth? Shit . . . I’ll buy a bitch like a bottle of water.” “No ingles, papi . . . no speak ingles,” she replied, blushing before getting his order. Next, Eon placed his groceries on the counter as the four men left, opening the grocery store’s door, when the floor began to vibrate from a thunderstorm of bullets that crashed into the store. Three of the men were ripped apart by flying shells, with glass shattering in the background and the clerk screaming. Wounded, one of the victims still shot back while lying on the floor before getting up, running out, and shooting at a black van, which fled around the corner. Back in the store, the clerk still ducked with her hands behind her ears in shock. Across the counter, Eon lay lifeless in a pool of blood, with his intestines spilling out and half of his head split open as his eyeball dangled like a slinky. *** One week later, thirteen-year-old Chris Barker and fourteen-year-old Jay Milton carried backpacks, walking past a memorial in front of the store where Eon was killed. Two blocks up, there was another memorial for a teenager who was shot, standing on the corner a couple of nights ago. Near a car with a busted-out window, an old woman pushed a shopping cart full of junk, which a skinny stray dog followed. As they turned the corner, a group of men sat in a front yard, barbecuing and playing dominos. “Man, I hope everything works out right tonight . . . Nobody better pussy out, ’cause I’m getting paid. School ’bout to let out, and we going to be doing it big like movie stars all summer . . . getting laid everywhere, all on the beach, in the club, in the middle of the street, I don’t care,” Chris said before lighting a cigarette. “Man, we’ve been over this a thousand times. All we have to do is stick to the plan, but me, I’m stacking all my money, talking ’bout saving all of it, and then I’ma keep doing it till I get millions and can get out of here one day,” Jay replied as they crossed the street, going into a bright blue apartment building with a group of men standing in a circle in front of it. One of them briefly shook hands with a woman who walked up, sliding her a bag of coke as she slid him a hundred-dollar bill. “Why you always talking about leaving the hood?” Chris asked while they walked up steps, bypassing two women arguing in a stairwell. “Don’t get me wrong, I love my side of town, but I got a little brother and sister to think about. With my granddad in the condition he’s in, we’ve only got a matter of time before we’re on our own,” Jay said, knocking on a door. “See, that’s you . . . Me, I’ma be here till the day I die, I’m keeping it real,” Chris said when Alvin answered the door. He was a seventeen-year-old who went to school with Jay and Chris. It seemed like he lived by himself with his mother always at work, so that’s where their crew forever hung out. Inside, they went into Alvin’s room, which was covered with posters, where Ron, another seventeen-year-old who was a dropout, played PlayStation. A shotgun lay on Alvin’s nightstand, which held a stereo that blasted loud music. A picture of the four of them on South Beach sat on his dresser next to two pistols. “All right, let me turn this down and let’s get to business,” Alvin said, cutting off his stereo and lighting a cigarette. “Everything’s still a go. We got the van and we’ve went over the scenario a million times, it won’t be a problem,” Ron said, pressing Pause on a video game and pouring a drink. “It’s not like we’ve never did a job before, it’s just we’ve never did this type a job,” Jay said, leaning against the dresser, playing with a shotgun. “With high-end money comes high-end risk. Look, we’re done doing petty shit, our days of nickel and diming are over . . . It’s time we step up to the big leagues, and that’s that. Now if we’re going to do it, we’re going to do it big, and that’s how it is from now on,” Alvin said before blowing smoke and ashing his cigarette.