Draw First

I cut through the alley leading to Mc Naughts lane, the moon a crescent in the sky as daylight faded, as distant jazz music filled the air.

Missy Mill was waiting for me I wasn't just a client her and me had found each other and tonight I would take her away.

She was a dusky beauty of old New Orleans and loving me came as no burden to her a river boat captains son whose roots went back to Africa and Ireland and wherever else.

Nearing the end of the darkened alley the street was in sight when somebody hit me from the side knocking me against the wall, looked like a hobo to me and a knife appeared.

He weaved it back and forth saying..Give

Me Your Money Or You Die Boy.

I slung my gun and clicked the trigger at his squinted eyes...and misfire.

Then the impossible happened or maybe the inevitable, a sharp pain entered my chest where he drove the knife, and then nothing.

Nothing at all ever again. A beautiful girl to mourn me at my funeral though I had no way of knowing it.

A life gone in the brittle streets of a lost American town.