linger in bed a while. I closed my eyes, hoping to fall back asleep, only to be shaken a minute later by my mother’s cry.
“Oh no,” was all she said.
I instantly knew that whatever was wrong had something to do with the newspaper she had just opened, and that whatever it was didn’t concern national politics or the Iran hostage crisis, which was in its ninth month. I scrambled out of bed and opened my door, afraid to learn what had happened, but curious. When I got to the living room I saw my mother crying. She turned away, hardly able to look at me.
“What happened?” I asked, as my stomach tightened, clenching around an abdominal hernia I’d had since infancy. My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel its beat, throbbing throughout my body. Before she could answer, a ringing sensation began in my ears, as if my body was somehow trying to prevent me from hearing the reply to my question.
She looked up, her eyes welling with tears, and delivered the news.
“Bobby Bell is dead.”
I heard her but somehow the words failed to register. It simply made no sense that Bobby, with whom I’d been friends since preschool at TSU, could be dead. It wasn’t conceivable that Bobby, the twelve-year-old who had coined that word, “douche ’n’ push,” to describe the middle school theatre teacher’s car, could be gone.
Bobby was one of the people I’d liked best all through school. We’d become close friends by fourth grade, and by sixth we were constantly to be found in class, the halls, or the lunchroom playing “pencil break” or “thump,” the latter of which was a typically absurd boy game, in which you’d coil back your middle finger in the crook of your hand and then flick it forward into your opponent’s clenched fist over and again until one player conceded the match due to pain. Bobby had these wonderfully fat knuckles, which made an almost drum-like noise when you’d thump them. And while the fleshiness of his hand probably provided extra protection to him, it also protected the thumper, since hitting a bony knuckle by accident when aiming instead for the meat below could be painful. How could this child, my thump rival, be dead?
In fact I was so sure it wasn’t the same Bobby that I immediately asked about another Bobby Bell we knew, who was a few years older than me, and a local Little League legend.
“You mean Fruit?” I asked, that being the nickname of the other Bobby Bell.
“No Tim, Bobby, your Bobby,” she said.
“How?” was all I could think to ask, still completely unwilling to get my head around the loss. The answer would be even harder to accept.
“He was killed last night at his dad’s store. Somebody shot him,” she explained.
And that’s when I knew it was real. It made sense, however horrifying. Bobby often helped his dad at one or the other of his father’s stores: convenience markets that also sold some of the most incredible barbecue in town. Bob Bell’s Market on Twelfth Avenue had not been held up even once in the eight previous years since its opening. Not once. But on that muggy July evening in 1980, part of the busy Fourth of July weekend, it would be. And although Bobby had done everything the robber had asked—stuffing money in a bag quickly even as he cried the frightened tears that any child would shed, looking down the barrel of a gun poised mere feet from his face—he was shot in the head anyway, at point blank range, and died in front of his father. As he fled the store, the shooter, Cecil Johnson—later identified by Bob Sr. and other witnesses—shot and killed two other men in a taxi outside.
Angry and confused I spun around and shoved my fist into the wall. Luckily, right before my hand met plaster I had started to ease up on the punch so that when contact was finally made it wouldn’t hurt so much. I was so numb that I couldn’t cry, and I would stay that way for days, weeks, months, even years. In fact the first time I think I ever
“Oh no,” was all she said.
I instantly knew that whatever was wrong had something to do with the newspaper she had just opened, and that whatever it was didn’t concern national politics or the Iran hostage crisis, which was in its ninth month. I scrambled out of bed and opened my door, afraid to learn what had happened, but curious. When I got to the living room I saw my mother crying. She turned away, hardly able to look at me.
“What happened?” I asked, as my stomach tightened, clenching around an abdominal hernia I’d had since infancy. My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel its beat, throbbing throughout my body. Before she could answer, a ringing sensation began in my ears, as if my body was somehow trying to prevent me from hearing the reply to my question.
She looked up, her eyes welling with tears, and delivered the news.
“Bobby Bell is dead.”
I heard her but somehow the words failed to register. It simply made no sense that Bobby, with whom I’d been friends since preschool at TSU, could be dead. It wasn’t conceivable that Bobby, the twelve-year-old who had coined that word, “douche ’n’ push,” to describe the middle school theatre teacher’s car, could be gone.
Bobby was one of the people I’d liked best all through school. We’d become close friends by fourth grade, and by sixth we were constantly to be found in class, the halls, or the lunchroom playing “pencil break” or “thump,” the latter of which was a typically absurd boy game, in which you’d coil back your middle finger in the crook of your hand and then flick it forward into your opponent’s clenched fist over and again until one player conceded the match due to pain. Bobby had these wonderfully fat knuckles, which made an almost drum-like noise when you’d thump them. And while the fleshiness of his hand probably provided extra protection to him, it also protected the thumper, since hitting a bony knuckle by accident when aiming instead for the meat below could be painful. How could this child, my thump rival, be dead?
In fact I was so sure it wasn’t the same Bobby that I immediately asked about another Bobby Bell we knew, who was a few years older than me, and a local Little League legend.
“You mean Fruit?” I asked, that being the nickname of the other Bobby Bell.
“No Tim, Bobby, your Bobby,” she said.
“How?” was all I could think to ask, still completely unwilling to get my head around the loss. The answer would be even harder to accept.
“He was killed last night at his dad’s store. Somebody shot him,” she explained.
And that’s when I knew it was real. It made sense, however horrifying. Bobby often helped his dad at one or the other of his father’s stores: convenience markets that also sold some of the most incredible barbecue in town. Bob Bell’s Market on Twelfth Avenue had not been held up even once in the eight previous years since its opening. Not once. But on that muggy July evening in 1980, part of the busy Fourth of July weekend, it would be. And although Bobby had done everything the robber had asked—stuffing money in a bag quickly even as he cried the frightened tears that any child would shed, looking down the barrel of a gun poised mere feet from his face—he was shot in the head anyway, at point blank range, and died in front of his father. As he fled the store, the shooter, Cecil Johnson—later identified by Bob Sr. and other witnesses—shot and killed two other men in a taxi outside.
Angry and confused I spun around and shoved my fist into the wall. Luckily, right before my hand met plaster I had started to ease up on the punch so that when contact was finally made it wouldn’t hurt so much. I was so numb that I couldn’t cry, and I would stay that way for days, weeks, months, even years. In fact the first time I think I ever
Similar Books
