A Plague Year

Looking for money? Drugs? Both? This went on for at least five minutes, five unbearably long minutes. I could hear Dad’s voice in my ear, whispering, “Shhh.”

My face was turned toward the back of the store. Just by focusing my eyes, I could see Bobby. He was lying on the floor, ten feet away. A round red spot was visible on the right side of his back. He had been shot at close range. Was he dead?

No! I could see his hand moving. It was punching buttons on his phone. I thought, No, Bobby, please. Do not make a sound.

The robber in the office continued to break things and crash around. The rifleman grunted at him impatiently, angrily, desperately. Finally, the robber emerged with a trash bag bulging with small boxes. I knew what they were by their size and shape—boxes of cold capsules.

The rifleman pulled the bore away from my neck. He pivoted and, without looking at us again, took off running for the door. The robber with the bag followed him.

I took a few seconds to get my breathing under control—in and out, in and out.

Dad eased me off of him slowly, whispering, “Stay here, Tom.” He army-crawled over to Bobby; then he called back to me, “He’s alive.”

I whispered back, “I know. I saw him dialing his phone.”

Suddenly a blinding flash of light filled the entranceway. I rose up as high as I dared and looked. I could see a police car. It was facing the store dead-on, just ten yards out, with its search beam aimed at the entrance. As my eyes adjusted, I could see two officers crouched behind the opened car doors. Each was aiming a pistol at a robber.

The officer on my right screamed, “Drop it! Both of you! Drop what you are carrying!”

The robber with the black bag dropped it and raised his hands up in surrender.

The other one, though, made another decision, a fatal one. He let loose a rifle blast that shattered the police car’s searchlight. Then he took off running for the tow truck.

Both officers leveled their weapons, sighted, and opened fire at him. Their first shots missed the robber, but they hit the propane cage. I could hear their bullets strike the outside wall of the store. Then I heard two loud booms, one right after the other, as two tanks of propane exploded and started to burn.

The officers sighted again, aiming lower. This time, they found their mark. Bullets ripped into the body of the rifleman. He fell to the ground, immobile, just beneath that silver hook.

The officer on my right raised his pistol and stood. He approached the remaining robber, shouting, “Get on your knees! Keep your hands where I can see them!”

The robber obeyed.

The other officer stood and approached his man, too, with his pistol still trained on him, but that officer didn’t say anything.

There was nothing to say. Because the other robber was dead. The officer stared down at the body for a long moment. As he did, the outside wall suddenly shook with another loud boom, and then another, and then a whole series of explosions. The propane tanks, at least fifty of them, burst open and flamed upward into the sky.

I dared to stand all the way up. To my left, I saw Dad kneeling next to Bobby, putting pressure on his bullet wound. To my right, I saw a Ford Explorer screech to a halt near the entrance. Mrs. Smalls, dressed in her white uniform, jumped out of the car and ran in. She looked at me and shouted, “Bobby! Where’s Bobby?”

I pointed at Dad. “Over there!”

“Is he alive?”

Dad himself answered, “Yes! Yes, he is.” As Mrs. Smalls hurried past me, Dad added, “He’s the one who called nine one one.”

Mrs. Smalls bent over Bobby and set to work checking his vital signs.

I turned back to watch as three more police cars, two ambulances, and a fire truck raced into the parking lot.

The propane tanks were still burning wildly, scorching the outside wall of the store, casting an unholy light on it all—on the police, on the paramedics, and on the two robbers—the one still kneeling near the entranceway, and the one lying dead near the truck.

No one told me to stay where I was, so I walked to the door and stepped outside. I saw two paramedics reach the rifleman’s body, check for a pulse, and find none. I was just a few feet away when one of them grabbed the ski mask and pulled it back, revealing his face.

I knew him.

I think I knew him from the very beginning—when he was sweating and grunting and pushing me around.

It was Rick Dorfman.

He had stuck a rifle bore in my neck. He had shot Bobby for no reason. Now he was dead.

I turned back to the second robber. The police officer had just pulled his ski mask up and off. And I knew him, too. There, kneeling on the asphalt, blinking in the firelight, with a half-amused expression on his face, was Reg the Veg.

Reg Malloy. And I was surprised. Despite everything, I was surprised.

I stood there for a long time, looking between Dorfman and Reg, as the awful, bloody scene ran its course. I watched Bobby and his mom leave in the first ambulance. Then I watched the body of Rick Dorfman leave in the second. Then Reg Malloy left in the back of a police car. He was staring straight ahead.

The firefighters were still training their hoses on the propane cage when Dad walked out. He and I spent about an hour answering questions for the police.

Finally, after all the fires were extinguished and all the police cars had left, Dad and I were free to go home. Before we did, though, Dad motioned to me to wait. He muttered, “Give me one minute, Tom.” He walked back inside and soon emerged with a small sheet of butcher paper. He had made a sign, by hand, and now he taped it to the front door. It said CLOSED—DECEMBER 22 AND 23.

On our weary trek out to the van, all he said was, “I need a weekend off. We all do. Believe me, life will go on.”

Monday, December 24, 2001

Life went on.

I thought Mom would be freaked out by the news of what had happened, but she was not. Neither was Lilly. Even though Dad and I had nearly been killed, and Rick Dorfman had been killed, and Bobby had been wounded. I think we’re all just numb to disaster now, in all its forms, in the dark days of a plague year.

The store reopened on Christmas Eve. Things looked pretty normal except for the ugly black burns behind the propane cage. Some employees were angry because they had arrived on Saturday, read the sign, and then had to go home. But they got over that fast when they heard the facts about Bobby, and the break-in, and Reg, and the dead robber. Some customers were angry, too. I guess they had to go across town to Kroger, or to the 7-Eleven. Too bad for them.

Our family had taken a weekend off for the first time in recent memory. Here’s what we did:

On Saturday morning, Dad and I drove out to Good Samaritan Hospital. We met John in the lobby. The first thing he said to Dad was, “We’re really closed all weekend? Corporate gave us permission to close?”

“They did,” Dad assured him.

“On the weekend before Christmas? The whole weekend?”

“Yes.” Dad surprised me by explaining further, though I am not sure what he said was true. “We had no choice. Our store is a crime scene now. The police will let us know when we can reopen.”

That sounded good, and John bought it completely. I guess Dad’s bosses at corporate had, too.