14th Street Mercy

Somewhere down 14th street, a bottle shattered, but the man kept walking. He ignored the rattling screech of the Green Line train overhead and pushed through the biting wind.

The flickering streetlights made it hard to see the patches of black ice exploding beneath his boots. The store’s neon sign buzzed “OPEN,” flashing like blue lights in the rearview. The bell chimed as he stepped inside.

The man saw the boy the moment he walked into the store, small-shouldered, gripping a loaf of bread too tightly as the clerk loomed over him like a warden.

“You thief,” the clerk spat, his heavily-accented voice a dagger slicing through the air. The hum of barely-working freezers radiated throughout the store, a soundtrack to the man’s rage.

The boy didn’t flinch, but his dark knuckles nearly whitened. Without a second thought, the man stepped between them.

“How much?” he asked, pulling out his wallet. It was a thin, frayed thing ripped at the seams. The clerk looked him up and down, his eyes resting too long on the man’s patchy jacket.

“A dollar fifty,” the clerk said.

The man peeled off two of the four dollars. Sucking his teeth, the clerk snatched the cash.

“What? You his father or something?” the clerk asked. He slapped two quarters on the counter.

“Am I your father?” The man said, his lips a straight line, his eyes on the boy. The kid stuttered, as he shook his head. Turning back to the clerk, the man said, “Or something.” He jerked his head towards the counter. The boy’s fingers hovered over the coins. A breath. Then he scraped them up, one by one, like each one might burn him.

The clerk’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing, just watched the quarters disappear into the boy’s palm.

“He’s still thief,” the clerk said finally, his accent even thicker now with indignation.

The man turned to the boy. “Work for what you need,” he said.

The boy nodded, eyes wide. He lifted his chin up, even with a quivering lip.

“You can’t save them all, you know,” the clerk said.

The man gestured for the boy to be on his way. With one silent nod, the boy pushed through the doors without looking back.

“Maybe I can’t save them all, but I might’ve saved that one. That’s enough,” the man said, watching the boy vanish into the 14th Street shadows, the bread clutched to his chest like a promise.

The man looked over the shoulder of the clerk, taking in the random assortment of items. He counted his cash and gave a final glance to where the boy had stood just moments before. With that, he marched back into the biting wind, the neon sign’s flickering light fading as the darkness engulfed him.

©️2025 by Jermaine Reed, MFA