CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
NOVEMBER 23, 1982
Daytime never felt too far away in the city. Bright lights buzzing atop lamp posts, and spilling off of tall buildings and out of the headlights of suffocating traffic made it so the night could never feel too dark. The sun had long set by the time William Barclay stepped out of the front door of his apartment building and into the chilly late autumn night, but he wasn’t left in the shadows. Will buttoned up his jacket, scratched his beard, and stepped out into the glowing yellows, oranges, and reds of a night in the city, as he ventured out to the corner store.
Will — by all accounts — was a good man. When he was young he was a good son, someone who took care of his mom when his dad had too much to drink and got a little rough. He was a good brother who set an example for his younger sisters to follow. He was a good soldier when his country needed him, even if he was fighting for a war he didn’t believe in. The only time he had ever left Chicago was when Uncle Sam shipped him off to Vietnam to put together trucks that took his friends off to get killed. Will Barclay was a good worker, boss, friend, and husband, but now he had to figure out how to be more. Now, Will had to figure out how to be something new. It was time for him to learn how to be a good father.
Being a new father was something that took a lot of getting used to, but Will knew he was up to the challenge. Andrew Barclay was only two weeks old, but already Will knew that there wasn’t a goddamn thing he wouldn’t do for that kid. His wedding day had always been the highlight of Will’s life, the one special moment he could take for himself, but the day Andy was born Will found that these moments didn’t have to be one offs. That baby filled Will and his wife Karen with so much joy and love they didn’t know what to do with it. The sleepless nights, the normal worries that came along with being a new parent, none of that mattered. Their son was everything.
HONK-HONK!
“Hey! Watch where you’re goin’, pal!” a driver yelled out of his window with an accompanying hand gesture as Will jaywalked in front of his Ford Pinto.
Will waved apologetically back at the driver and hustled across the street the rest of the way. He dug his hands into his pockets to keep them from getting cold and made it to the corner store where he stepped out of the artificial light of Chicago’s night into the blinding, artificial fluorescent light of the convenience store.
“Hey, William, how’s it going, man!”
“Hey, Samuel,” Will smiled and nodded toward the Haitian man who worked behind the counter.
“Long time no see, my friend.”
“Yeah… yeah, life’s been crazy,”
Will walked down one of the long aisles, eyes glancing left and right for what he was looking for, but he soon realized he had gone the wrong way. He doubled back, plucking some chips from a rack on his way, and then worked his way over to the back freezer display where he found the ice cream. Karen didn’t have any cravings all throughout her pregnancy but now that the baby was here she had been craving up a storm. Tonight, her cravings came in the form of Double Chocolate Chip Ice Cream. She had been a champ through all of this, and there was nothing Will wouldn’t do to make sure the mother of his child was happy. She felt bad sending him out so late, but he promised her that he would always make sure she had everything she needed. She sent him out to get a carton. He picked up two.
Stacking the ice cream, Will set the chips down on top of the stack and was coming back around for the counter, but he stopped when something caught his eye. There was a pile of chachkies sitting on a rack to his left. Most of it was dumb — useless trash — but among the nonsense was a tiny stuffed bear, white with little black eyes, and it wore a blue Cubs hat on its head. It was the perfect size to set in a crib. He thought for a minute, trying to figure out if he had enough cash on hand to cover it. He put the chips down and picked up the little bear.
“Wanna add the usual?” Samuel asked as Will set his stuff down on the counter.
Will nodded. Samuel dipped back to get a pack of cigarettes and Will gave the little black and white cat sitting on the counter a scratch behind the ear, “Hey, Brigitte. Good girl.” Samuel came back around and set the cigarettes down beside the stuffed bear. “It’s not gonna be my usual anymore though,” Will told him. He held up the cigarettes. “This is my last pack. I’m quitting.”
“Good for you,” Samuel said cheerily, almost as if he was just playing along and didn’t believe it.
“Karen had the baby,” Will beamed. “I gotta start being a good influence now.”
“Congratulations, man, boy or girl?”
“I was praying for a girl,” he shrugged, “but I think Karen might’ve been praying harder. We got a son. Andrew, little Andy. Two weeks old.”
“That’s beautiful, man, really beautiful. A future Cubs fan in the making.” Samuel gestured to the bear before packing it away in a plastic bag with the rest of Will’s purchases.
Will nodded and paid in cash “Have a good night, Sam.”
“You too, William, you too, and best of luck with fatherhood, man. Give my love to Karen.”
The night felt colder, even though it had only been a few minutes since Will had last been out there. The wind picked up and it nipped at him a little. He hustled, eager to get home to his family — his wife and child — but also wanting to get warm again. He looked both ways and crossed the street on an angle, cutting through the reds, and oranges, and yellows, of the night, expecting to make the two blocks between the corner store and his apartment in no time at all.
When Will reached the other side of the street he dug through the plastic bag in his hands and fished out the pack of cigarettes he bought. He wasn’t joking when he told Samuel that it was his last. His vice had one last hurrah before it went away for good. Will was a man who gave up drinking at twenty-two, after seeing how it shriveled and morphed his old man. He walked into a bar, ordered one last beer, and enjoyed the hell out of it, but hadn’t touched the stuff since. It was going to be the same way with the smokes. He was doing it for himself, for his future, for his kid, and that made the hard stuff easy.
Will tucked the cigarettes into the pocket of his jacket and carried the rest in the bag. He was a block away now, almost home, when the skin on the back of his neck prickled up. He didn’t know what it was or what it meant, but he felt off — strange. Things felt, dangerous. He stopped, as if acting on some sort of instinct, and he noticed that things were kind of dark. Will was at the lip of an alley, where shadows spilled out, in one of the few small pockets where the stretching glow of streetlights, business signs, and the rest of the light pollution of a city didn’t reach, and it was cold in the dark.
A soft whimpering cry leaked out of the shadowy alley. Will had to squint into the darkness to make out the shape of a small person standing just out of visual range with their back to him. It was a woman, maybe, but it was hard to tell. They were just standing there, crying to themselves, alone.
“You okay?” Will called out to the stranger. It was the sort of man he was.
The person in the shadows didn’t respond, but the crying continued. Will was a half dozen yards away, maybe, and he just stood there. He wanted to help a stranger who looked like they were in need, that was who he was, but he didn’t know how to help this person. He wasn’t sure if he could. He was seconds away from starting on back down the street, seconds from heading home to his wife and son — to his life — when the person in the alley turned around.
There was a flash. There was a bang. There was a biting pain in the lower left side of Will’s abdomen.
Will reached for the pocket where he had tucked away his last pack of cigarettes. He put pressure on a fiery pain that hadn’t been there a second ago, and when he lifted his hand again it came back red and slick with blood. His eyes were wide. His heartbeat was somehow steady. The person down the alley stared at him, tears in their eyes, and he could see the smoking six-shooter still aimed in his direction.
“Please…”
BANG-BANG-BANGBANGBANG
The plastic bag filled with Karen’s ice cream and Andy’s bear dropped to the concrete as five more bullets ripped Will apart. Lead bullets tore into his chest, gut, shoulder and throat, and he stepped back into the artificial light of the city. He stumbled off the curb, into the street and managed to hear the car horn but not see the car itself. He was hit on the side and the world flipped over, though his vision was already blurry and stained with blood from where his head hit the windshield of the car that struck him. He flipped and rolled across a pot hole in the street. Everything was sounds, and shapes, and smells, but nothing made sense. He choked on the fumes coming out of the tailpipe of the car that hit him, and his body shook a little as he lay face down in the street. People were scattering, rushing in a panic — voices, noise, voices — it was all blood, chaos, and nonsense to a dying man.
“Karen,” he choked out, spitting out blood. “Andy…”
Shadows moved above him, people coming to see if he was okay. He wasn’t.
William Barclay choked on blood, but when his dying eyes looked up, he could see something cutting through the shadowy shapes of the onlookers and washing out the artificial lights of the city with a bright, sunny white light that made everything else melt away. There was a person in that light, swooping down from above, drifting on big and beautiful wings.
The last thing he smelled was cigar smoke and rum before the light took him away to become an angel.
