Chapter 7: Meeting Jack
Maisie and Jack Rogers lived in the part of town called East End, probably because if you followed the main street of the ‘hood—Pennsylvania Avenue—due east out of town, you’d find yourself in the state of Pennsylvania itself.
East End was a modest neighborhood on the banks of the Ohio River. Some might call it poor, but I knew it had once been thriving, when the steel mill over in the next town was fully operational. Today it was a ghost of its former self, with run-down houses, crooked, weed-sprouting yellow brick sidewalks, and litter blowing along the mostly empty streets like urban tumbleweeds. In front of many of the houses, the hulks of older cars and pickups sat, rusting and dreaming, I guess, of their glory days.
My fortune would not be made here. I pull
