Chapter 4
CHAPTER
FOUR
Edna Clauson limped awkwardly through the door to the sidewalk, turned, and locked it behind her.
The corner convenience store was chock-full of basic groceries, snacks, ice cream, and other small common items people might need.
Rather than go to the bigger shopping centers, many neighborhood people opted to get what they needed here.
Clauson’s had been around for close to sixty years.
Edna and Albert had opened the store together just after they married and had been in business ever since.
Albert passed away a few years ago, leaving Edna to run the place herself.
“I’m getting too old for this, Al,” she groused as she wrestled her fancy seat walker in front of her bulky figure. “I’m almost eighty-five, you know.”
Her habit of talking to her husband had not changed since his death.
Every night for decades, they closed up shop at eight o’clock and walked to their small house a few blocks into the residential part of the neighborhood.
Tonight, she had a lot on her mind to tell him.
“Maybe it’s time for me to sell. None of the kids are interested in running the store, and let me tell ya, the neighborhood is going to hell.
Why, just last week, another coffee shop got vandalized, just like Bill and Madge’s place.
Someone set off a bomb, can you believe that? ”
She grunted in her effort to keep walking up the hill to the row of narrow houses.
Only twenty or so feet from the front of her store and her words came out puffier as her breathing became labored.
She stopped to rest for a moment and kept talking.
“Anyway, I’m getting slower and slower these days.
It’s just so hard to keep up. Ruby told me she wants me to move closer over in Chambersburg.
Says there’s a nice retirement place there I can live where she can keep an eye on me.
I’m thinking about it. I can see the grandkids more often too.
You should see how tall Coral is now. She’s still marching in the band with that trumpet we bought her. I think she wants to—”
A loud boom cracked through the air, drowning out any words she might have said next. Pain radiated through her knees, and she realized she’d fallen onto the unforgiving concrete sidewalk.
“Oh!” she cried as a fireball erupted and shot outward from the store she’d just left. Heat billowed over her, knocking her flat. The walker fell over, spilling her purse and some of its contents.
“Oh no! Oh! Oh no!” Edna tried to roll over, but her legs wouldn’t work right. Her chest tightened, and her breaths shortened even more. “Albert! What’s happening?”
Two figures walked up to her, but she could only see black work boots. “Please! Oh, please, can you help me?”
One of them stooped and plucked her purse from the ground. Edna watched helplessly as the figure went through her wallet and stole her cash and credit cards. She whimpered as she struggled for air. “Please. You can take it all. Just please, help me!”
The pain stabbed through her chest like a hot knife and spread from her jaw to her left arm. She couldn’t get any air into her lungs.
One of the boots reared back, and Edna thought for a moment that the person meant to kick her.
With those heavy steel toes, one strike could kill her.
She closed her eyes and waited for the deadly blow.
Instead, the boot shoved her over hard, and she cried out as she scraped the skin from her elbows on the rough pavement.
A man cursed at her, “Fucking dried-up cunt!”
A moment later, she heard them walking away. She cracked open her lids to see both sets of feet heading up the sidewalk, leaving her there.
Thank God, they didn’t kill me, Albert was her last thought before she passed out.