Miles Walker

Miles Walker stirred in his wooden rocking chair. Early morning sunlight streamed through the snow covered square windows directly into Miles' wrinkled face. He blinked several times, unfolded his gnarled hands from his belly, and sat up to squint at the ancient clock above the sink. It was 6:47 am.

Miles' face resembled that of a vulnerable aged lion. He had crinkled dark eyes, tufts of white hair for eyebrows, a small round patch of reseeding hair on top of his shinny balding head, and a scruffy chin gray with stubble. His chest looked as though it had once been thick and strong like a football players, but seemed to have deflated with age, replaced instead with a layer of fat. The gray night shirt that covered his muscular arms barley covered the tip of his belly when he stood up, and his callused feet looked like a hobbits.

Miles Walker hobbled over towards the kitchen stove to bring a pot of water to boil. Miles had fought for England, and believed that every solider should start his day with a strong cup of tea. Unlike his deceased wife who always added copious amounts of sugar to the tea, Mile believed in a pinch of whiskey for "spunk." He called it only a pinch, but through the years, the "pinch" had steadily grown to empty a whiskey bottle a week. Out of his small ice box, Miles pulled three slices of thick wheat bread, a stick of butter, and a large glass jar of golden marmalade. Two of the slices he placed in his toaster and one he broke into pieces for Ted.

Ted was a pigeon. Maybe because he owned the Food Mart or maybe because their was a slight problem with cockroaches in his tiny attic, the pigeon populations used the church and his roof as transportation hubs. In addition to the spacious roosting spots, the dumpsters behind his shop served as a decent feeding ground between the cockroach colonies and left over garbage. Ted however, liked his slice of bread every morning fed to him out the center of the three square windows. Onlookers often joked with one another that Miles ran a "fly-through" for his pigeons.

After he said good morning to Ted and vigorously washed his hands and face in bathroom's tiled sink, Miles pulled a collared checkered shirt over his white undershirt and brown suspenders. His khaki pants were very worn and frayed in places, but his brown leather shoes were so regularly polished, thanks to six years of his drill Sargent's cacophony of early morning tirades, that it was hard to find a cleaner pair at the manufacturer.

The wooden door creaked shut as Miles eased his way out onto small square landing above the staircase leading down to the street. He reached a hand to the inside of his patched coat pocket and pulled out a heavy iron key which he inserted into the old fashion lock. The heavy bolt slide into place with a resounding click, cuing his descent down the rickety stair case. As he stepped out onto the concrete side walk, he breathed in the stench of the leaking sewer pipe across the street. Peeved that the City had failed to fix it for the ninth day in a row, he turned to unlock Food Mart and stepped over the threshold.