Adelaide rolled her cart down the block, made a left, and entered the ten square-mile card-board-box maze known as Skid Row. Tired from trudging around the city, she looked forward to kicking off her shoes. Los Angeles skyscrapers loomed just beyond the neighborhood, but businessmen stayed where they belonged.

Singing ‘Moon River’ in a breathy voice, Adeleaide pushed her extra-heavy load around another corner to reach her own alley.  She and her friends were among the ten percent of L.A. County’s 80,000 homeless who had college educations.

“Damn Addy! Watch what you’re doing, will you? You just rolled over Minty-Fresh’s water dish.” Isaac grumbled.

Sorry, Isaac. It’s this box. Where’s Minty? I can’t see where I’m going and I don’t want ;to hit him.”

“He’s safely out of your way. I’ve got him back here behind my bed.”

Isaac was devoted to his pet and took good care of him. It was easier for him to do this since the dog died, of course.

Adelaide looked past Isaac’s lounging body and saw the Nike shoebox that held the dog’s ashes. They’d had a solemn cremation for him last winter and everyone in the alley missed the old Lab, bad breath and all. Well, Winona didn’t. But she had a dog phobia. Winona also feared yellow, spiders, gutter drains, and Volkswagon Beetles.

“So what you got, Addy?” asked Sam. “What’s in that big box? Are you gonna give me some?” Sam, a Viet Nam vet, shared guard duty with Hal and Blue Sue, who were also Vets, but from the Gulf War. "Shaky" Sam leaned against a streetlight armed with a baseball bat.  Other street people bullied Adelaide and her friends, considering them weaklings and snobs.

“I don’t know what I’ve got. This hippie type unloaded it from the trunk of his car and left it on the sidewalk when he went into a building. I figured he didn’t care about it, and it fit in my new grocery cart, so I took it. It’s a nice box, but it’s heavy.”

Adelaide, sixty-two but strong, had only lived on the streets for a couple of years. She was in the city shopping two years ago when a junkie knocked her out with a rock and took everything but her clothes. Isaac and his dog found her and led her, incoherent and sick, and bleeding, to their alley. When her head cleared, she realized she liked being “missing.” Her husband had sent her to the hospital the last time he beat her, and her only son died in Afghanistan.  She felt oddly safe in the quiet alley among these eccentric people who lived from day to day, hand to mouth. Anyway something was wrong with her brain and she lost time every now and then. Hating the idea of depending on a program for battered wives, she'd decided to stay with the homeless and hide in plain sight.

Isaac heaved himself to his feet and helped Adelaide get the two foot square box out of her crowded cart.

“Louis, bring that knife of yours over here”, he yelled. “That is if you can still walk this late in the day.”

“I can walk damn it. I’m shtill shober.” Louis, a physicist, and the worst drunk in the alley, zig-zagged over to Adelaide and Isaac.  He greeted Adelaide with a love-sick smile.

Hands trembling, Louis slit the tape and opened the box.  Carrie, Alfred, and Ebbie joined the little group peering into the carton.

“Bubble wrap!  Yes! Bubble, bubble wrap, do da dap, holy crap, a snap to tap on bubble wrap. For Carrie?” asked the young woman. No one expected much from Carrie, who was generally thought to be autistic. Everyone knew that she'd as likely kick a person in the stomach as make up a rhyme for them, so most people stayed out of range of her short, sturdy legs. She’d made it through college as a special ed student, but when she graduated the system misplaced her, She’d found her own way to survive.

“Yeah, sure, Carrie. Have yourself a party. I don't know why whoever packed this even used bubble wrap-they didn’t need it,” said Adelaide.

Sam left his post to loom over the shoulders of the group peering into the box, holding his bat at the ready.

“Jeshus,” said Lou.

“They’re brand new,” said Isaac.

“There’s enough of them for everyone. NO GRABBING!” Adelaide, a former school teacher, used her Voice. They all paid attention, and backed off. “Right. Now I’ll pass out a book to each of you. Then we’ll see what’s left. Maybe some of the characters in the next alley will want to trade for them.”

“Yeah, and maybe I’ll stay at the Beverly Hilton tonight,” said Blue Sue.

Adelaide passed out paperback books, kept one for herself, and assigned the Vets the task of keeping an eye on the rest of them until they’d decided what to do.

By the light of candles, streetlights, and in one or two cases, flashlights, the denizens of Smart Alley read their clean, sweet smelling, entertaining, thought-provoking, nostalgia-producing, forever-to-be-cherished copies of “Emerging Voices,” a collection of short stories by a group of excellent, if mostly unknown, writers.

Nonnie Augustine

November 2, 2005