thanksgiving dinner

Little Man told him that there would be a pretty good meal at the old St. Albert’s Church on Middlestrand, so he headed that way, figuring he would stop by, in a block or two, and get Silent Joe, take him along. Silent Joe, whose real name was Rick, lived in the back of an abandoned garage a few blocks north, on Churchill. Churchill used to be a handsome, tree-lined arcadia; now, it was a ghost of its past, or worse. Nothing much remained – a garage, here, a duplex, there; old, rusting cars; an abandoned corner store across from a deserted diner across from a boarded-up barber shop. The stop sign at the end of the street was pock-marked and twisted and marked with graffiti, and, almost perfectly, indecipherably so. He hopes Silent Joe isn’t dead. He always worries about that. Silent Joe dead would put a damper on Thanksgiving dinner.