80-PROOF SNOWDRIFT

Eddy gently pushed Rita’s head, bundled up in a parka hood, off his shoulder. Determined that she continued sleeping, he used the Plexiglass behind the bench as a replacement for his shoulder. He kissed her hair-matted forehead and left the bus shelter.

Eddy rubbed his gloved hands together, his fingers showing through the worn tips. Flesh peeked through conjoining holes in his long johns and jeans. As his sneakers were separating from their soles, the peacoat wrapped tightly around his chest was the only solid piece of clothing protecting him from the February cold.

“Damn mornings in B-more,” he grumbled, walking into the flurry-ladened wind sweeping across Fayette. The sidewalks and parking lot of Highland Plaza were clear, but piles of grey snow lined the curbs. A colorfully bundled up Ethiopian woman at Abai Deli was rolling up the metal gate. Eddy slipped over to an unkempt row of bushes at the side of Barney’s Dollar Thrift Shop to pee. He pressed his hand to the wall and turned his back to the street so any casual observer might think he was just there to admire the century-old brickwork.

As he was zipping up his fly, Eddy pondered the possibilities of a green Pontiac turning into the parking lot in front of Jang’s Chinese Cuisine. A man wearing a plaid coat and Elmer Fudd hunting cap struggled out of the driver side door.

“Good morning, sir. I hate to bother you…”

“Then don’t.”

“Sir, just need fifty-five cents for a cup a coffee.”

Fifty-five cents was Eddy’s go-to request. A pittance that sounded specific, legitimate. And if someone were so willing to charity, they would round that up to three quarters or a dollar.

The man turned towards Jang’s as Eddy muttered “fat fuck.” He turned around to assess the possibilities of an older woman coming out of Kim’s Laundry. She was precariously balancing a plastic basket filled with folded linens in one arm and a bag of laundry products in the other. A poorly folded comforter was slipping from under her arm. Snow began whitening the parking lot.

“Ma’am can I help you with that?”

“No thanks.”

With a quick step that startled the woman, Eddy grabbed the descending comforter. He threw it over his shoulder and then tugged the basket away from her.

“Almost lost it ma’am.”

“Guess I did. Alright, my car’s over there.”

Eddy waltzed over to the car identified by the woman’s head nod. He kept up a steady flow of comments about the weather as the woman searched her pocketbook for keys. Eddy pushed the trunk open with his elbow. He securely arranged the woman’s linens and closed the trunk with an affirming tap.

“Sure glad I was there to help.”

The woman pulled out a knit change purse and handed Eddy a dollar and some change. She took in his tattered appearance and decided to hand him an additional dollar.

“Thank you, ma’am, and god bless.”

Eddy was suddenly energized by the flurries kissing his face.

“Eddy-weddy, you gonna buy me a coffee?”

“Shit Rita, ain’t even got enough for me. You just woke up and already you want somethin’.”

Rita wrapped her arms around Eddy’s elbow.

“Why you so mean to yur Mexican queen?”

“Should a’ never told you that one – and then you tell me you ain’t even Mexican but Peruvian. Alright Rita, see if Jang will sell us a cup.”

Eddy handed over his recently acquired wealth and rooted around in his coat pocket for an additional pile of dimes and nickels. He again wondered what her age was as she skipped away. Rita changed it every time he pressed her, but by her varying accounts it was somewhere between 25 and 40. In her current giddiness, she seemed more like 14, especially if a person didn’t focus on her weathered face. To Eddy she radiated possibilities, unhindered by her grime-faded parka and layered sweatpants.

Eddy sized up his current prospects. The only vehicle left in the parking lot, a primer-colored van, had Frank’s Heating and Air Conditioning stenciled on the side. Last week, the guys in company overalls had stood around pushing him from side to side before throwing a crumpled dollar bill to the ground. He wasn’t up for the humiliation today, especially with Rita here. The only other cars in sight were across the street at Capt’n Frank’s Fish n’ Chips, and Eddy wasn’t about to negotiate Highland Avenue and the waist-high snow drifts.

Rita soon returned and repeated Jang’s reply, indulgently mimicking his Korean accent through her own non-Baltimorean inflections. “Ain’t got no coffee fo’ you. You go out now. You keep business ‘way from Jang’s. You tell Eddy get job.”

“Guess he’s in a bad mood.”

“But I ain’t, funny bunny. Let’s do sompin’ special today.”

“Damn, like what?”

“Get us some money an’ get a dreenk at Jeffery’s.”

“Yeah, get us some money. Just like that, I’ll get us some money – you’re a real piece. And you ain’t satisfied with just no drink, you gonna want to get your blast on.”

“Got a cousin in Brooklyn. Could go visit her.”

“That’s a long trudge in this snow. Why don’t you go over to Royal Fresh, get a coffee. I’ll do some curb walkin’. We’ll meet back here ‘round noon. Sound good?”

Rita raised her heels and closed her eyes. She puckered her lips to look like a fish and lured Eddy in for a quick kiss.

“And stay right until I get back!” Eddy yelled as she ran away towards Fayette. The Royal Fresh was across the street and behind two rows of gas pumps. Eddy watched her scurry away, wondering if he shouldn’t just go down Highland and keep walking. But life was good, just now. This day touched his soul with possibilities. This was the beginning of something that might just last.

A mile westward, he took up his shift at the mouth of Jones Falls, a highway that fed the city with an army of commuters every morning. His luck was unbreakable today. Larry and Barton hadn’t taken up their spots yet and the squeegee kids were at some other intersection.

Eddy never used a cardboard marker sign. His secret weapon was a street cast look of desperation and his Jesus-Saves cup from the Milton Episcopal Community Kitchen.

He felt the joy of the quarters and dollars that sporadically landed in his cup. The memory of Rita’s fish kiss this morning gave him a glow that staved off the humiliations of the disdainful shouts from the cars and trucks stopping for the light: lazy fucking bum, get a goddamn job, shithead, eat my dick if you’re so hungry, Jesus will provide.

He used half his bounty to give himself a midmorning boost: a half pint of Thunderbird from Pulaski’s Patriotic Liquors. Just as his buzz was percolating, Eddy’s world ripped open. A formation of motorcycles: leather jackets, tattoos, thick beards and the smell of gasoline and cologne – Here you go bro, the next drinks on me. The chrome roar quickly faded leaving him holding a 100-dollar bill.

He stared at Benjamin Franklins’ face for a moment, waiting for him to impart words of wisdom. The green and black numbers and intricately woven borders hypnotized him until a well-honed paranoia replaced his astonishment. Eddy pushed the bill deep into his peacoat pocket. He scanned the surrounding street corners for green-eyed street comrades or ornery teenagers. He felt the sharp rush of urgency.

…

“We only take twenties or less,” repeated the exasperated woman behind a set of bars and cloudy bullet glass at Pulaski’s. She pointed downward towards the cardboard sign that had the same information written in red magic marker.

“Come on, Lydia. You know me. Just want to buy some good whiskey for my girl.”

“Yeah, I know you, Eddy. ‘Spite that, or ‘cause that, hell no.”

“Can’t count on friends no more,” Eddy grumbled, kicking the flaking drywall of the counter.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck, just need a break!” he shouted, continuing to kick dents into the façade. Each crack, each dent, somehow felt wholesome.

“I’ll call the police, mother fucker!” Lydia shouted.

A fifth kick had expelled enough of Eddy’s anger into the antagonistic counter to restore his sense of purpose.

“To hell with all of you, every one of you cheap bastards!” he yelled, swinging the door to Fayette open and closed. The customer bell joined his protest. The pain of an infected molar returned with the ringing. Eddy made it to the next block and shoved a handful of curb snow inside his mouth.

“Fuck, fuck, damn it all to hell,” he chanted when he looked back and saw Lydia in front of the liquor store. An attentive cop looked in the direction of her outstretched finger.

“Stop there, sir. Stop there!”

Eddy usually didn’t mind a night in jail. Warmth and a free meal, and he’d be out before the shakes got too bad. But Rita was waiting for him. Their bond was only three-days old and shoestring thin. Rita was having a bad trip when she wandered into the Highland bus stop. She had refused to go to the hospital, so he stayed with her through the night. By morning, they were a pair.

Eddy knew the police wouldn’t pull their guns for his liquor store antics. They might, as part of the apprehension, give him a few bruises and perhaps a cracked rib to remember them by. Knowledge gained by experience.

“I’m coming, Rita.” Eddy promised as he scurried on top of a dumpster by the Dunbar High School fence.

A pain shot through his left heel up to his knee. It was that leg thing he kept meaning to look into. An old childhood injury, perhaps a bone spur. Perhaps Arthritis, gangrene, bone worms, or terminal cancer depending on his state of mind. But he didn’t have time for states of mind right now.

Eddy dropped his body on a sagging piece of chain link that was separating from the post. He fell onto the basketball court.

“What the fuck, mother fucker!” shouted a lanky teenager he fell into. His friends laughed.

“That counts, Dante. You lost the shot.”

“I’m going to kill this freakin’ bum.”

Eddy ran towards the school’s brick castle façade. A catapulted basketball hit him in the back of his head, sending him to the frozen ground beyond the court. He struggled against the ice like a bug-sprayed spider. Acid laughter. He was up and again running. He imagined a legion of demons in pursuit as he reached the narrow walkway of an abandoned rowhome on Monfort.

Rita was a melting idea. Eddy pushed his face into the blue glow of the snow. He endured the increasing sting of the frost until his body’s dumb reflexes pulled him up.

After twenty minutes of furtive glances from one of Baltimore’s hidden pockets, Eddy made his way to Patterson Park. Down the hill from the looming 19th century pagoda was the giant bust of Conradin Kreutzer. Everyone thought it must be Beethoven, but Eddy, always ready to impress, had memorized the composer’s name on the faded inscription.

Peach Rose, an anemic girl wrapped up in a blanket, sat on a bench next to Kreutzer. She nodded up and down to what must have been angelic music syphoned through the ear buds under her hoodie.

Rita had introduced her to Eddy when she bought her treats. The girl’s name bothered Eddy. A fruit and a flower, two named smushed together. PeachRose pulled her hoody back and her buds out to reveal a shaved head on one side and blond, shoulder length hair on the other.

“Hey, I know you, came with Rita that one time. What you need, Hon?”

An old woman’s eyes in a teenager’s face stared through him.

“Thing is, trying to get change for this.”

Eddy uncurled the $100 bill as if it were pornography.

“Do I look like some kinda’ bank?”

“Can I buy a baggie and get change?”

“Is Franklin smoking a big fat blunt on it? What’s wrong with it?”

“Nothing. Just…”

Before Eddy could say another word, PeachRose yelled, “Baddie Bear!”

A large man lumbered towards the bench. Where he had been hiding his massive presence eluded Eddy, but his name fit the profile. He was a bearded Viking dressed like a lumberjack with a plaid hunting coat and Ravens’ snow cap.

“Problem, PR?”

“Opey here wants change for a Franklin.”

“We ain’t some kinda’ bank.”

“Told him that.”

“Let me see it.”

Eddy thought about running. This just didn’t seem right. But how could he return to Rita with nothing but a useless piece of paper. She would think he was a Bum, worthless. With a blast in hand and a pint of good Whiskey, well, he would return to her as a triumphant hero.

“Yeah, sure.” Eddy let him snatch it from his incredulous hand.

“Two bags and twenty change,” Baddie Bear proclaimed with the confidence of a downtown financial adviser.

“Hey, Rita only paid fifteen a bag, and I only want one.”

“Yeah, that was Rita. Two bags and twenty change,” he repeated, with a deeply threatening calm in his voice.

Eddy didn’t know if the interaction left him ahead or behind the game as he entered Patty’s Liquors on Eastern. $19.99 for a premium pint of Charm City Rye. He pridefully pointed to it on the shelf behind the attendant. It was something a street drunk would never ask for, especially if a bottle of cut-rate Fleischmann’s was anywhere nearby. He imagined the spark in Rita’s eyes as he opened his coat and presented her with a night of high-class chemical dreams. Of course, he would watch her, make sure she didn’t overdo things.

The snow was coming down hard as he cut through Milton. For the first time today, Eddy felt winter’s chill. He took to the street to avoid the dangers of un-shoveled sidewalks. The curb piles were up to his waist and growing. The plow wall at Fayette was an epic frozen climb. Eddy’s foot slipped at the top, and he came tumbling down onto Fayette. A city plow truck slid to a stop mere inches in front of him. He thanked the spark shooting tire chains for his life and the unbroken whiskey bottle in his pocket.

The driver shouted obscenities out the window.

“Do your fucking job, Mother Fucker, these roads suck!” Eddy returned as he vaulted the opposing snow drift and slid onto the Fayette sidewalk. He was almost back. He could smell Rita’s strawberry spiked perfume and feel her chin on his chest.

Approaching the Highland Plaza, Eddy was punched in the gut by fate’s cold fist. The same fist that had taken his job, his marriage, his sobriety. Every time he thought he could dodge it, roll with the punch, it landed solid.

The red and blue flashing of police lights obscured a clear view of the bus stop. As he walked nearer, he could make out the yellow murder tape. Teddy, Geezer Brown, and now Rita. He didn’t make it back in time. She must have over did it while waiting for him. Another failure.

“Hey Eddy!”

He turned around to see Burta, an old woman wrapped in an army blanket in front of Barney’s pee bushes. Eddy lumbered through the knee-high snow without heart.

“You look a mess. You been crying? Did you know the boy that was shot, or something?”

“Boy…shot?”

“Yeah, some young hustler. Scary stuff you ask me. Could have been any one a’ us. Oh yeah, you know that Mexican girl you been hanging with?”

“Peruvian…”

“Sure, Proov’un. Anyway, she gave me this to give you.”

The woman handed Eddy a paper coffee cup.

“What’m I supposed to do with this?”

“Maybe fill it with coffee. Free refills at Jang’s. No, just kiddin’, ain’t no such thing as free refills.”

Laughing, Burta took the parking lot snow wall with more agility that an old woman had a right to. Eddy started to crumple the cup, ready to throw it, when he noticed the black marker writing. One side had “God Bless.” The other had a message.

Cousin in Brooklyn. Told you bout her. Has basement for us to hang. Corner a Orchard an 6th. Muchos Besos.

Eddy had two blasts for his girl and a bottle of fine whiskey. He had the promise of a basement. Sure, Brooklyn Baltimore was on the other side of the harbor, and it was a near impossible journey in this snow. But Eddy was again feeling the kiss of possibilities.

“You’re a real piece,” Eddy said as he turned around. He couldn’t see the downtown buildings through the falling snow. One step at a time, and in no time, Rita would be his again.

BIO: Thomas R. Long is a writer living in Baltimore. He has been published in Fleas of the Dog, Everyday Fiction, and The Horror Zine. He sustains himself on local beer and his wife’s Madrileña cooking.

Follow on Social

Literary Garage: Storytelling with grit, heart, and no off-ramp.

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Connect

Follow us on Substack for updates and news

Special Features Editor and Warrior God: Michael Downing