I
Sol didn’t cry, all through the night, but he was very quiet. And the next day, Sunday, when his friends got together and talked about it, he still didn’t say much, even when they found out that Roxanne was actually dead.
Everyone reacted differently. Curtis wanted most to get the details straight. Chad felt bad for Adam: “I wonder what’s going to happen to him,” he said. Lenny cried, a whole lot, and he wasn’t ashamed. And Al was a complete contrast: it was spooky how he just stared blankly into space and at the ground with a cold face. But they were all quiet to some degree.
There wasn’t much else to say. One of their friends was dead, shot in the head by another friend, Adam. Except for Sol, they had all witnessed it. An ambulance rushed her to the hospital, but she took six hours to die, and the fact that she was dead was the news the morning brought.
Around noon they all decided to go out to Adam’s house to see how he was doing. They took Chad’s car. Chad put the key in the ignition and suddenly Black Sabbath blared where it had left off; he reached forward and ejected the tape. “Not today,” he said quietly, smiling. He started the car and they drove back to the scene of their party the night before.
Sol had left early, before the third keg was cracked, but he had known the basic details of the shooting almost as soon as it had happened. He hadn’t been home fifteen minutes when his father, the town pastor, got a midnight call, and when he came home he told Sol, who had stayed up waiting, what had happened.
For the benefit of Sol, before they went up the steps to Adam’s doorway they all stopped together and pointed to the place on the front lawn where Roxanne’s head had fallen. The blood was dried to the color of dirt on the grass. A couple of rains, maybe even the dew, would make it go away.
Inside, Adam sat on the couch in his living room, his eyes red from crying. Two of his cousins were there with him. One of them got up to answer the door, and he immediately ushered everyone into the kitchen and offered them beer. He said the police had come and gone and would be back later; apparently they had been convinced that Adam wasn’t going to go anywhere.
They all went into the next room and sat with Adam. They each made a few lame attempts at encouragement, then Chad got up and turned on the television. A football game was on, and they watched it for a while without talking. When it was halftime, Chad got up again and turned the television off.
“I guess we should go,” he said, but they didn’t stand up right away.
“Thanks for coming out here, guys,” Adam said finally, and they each went over to him and one at a time put a hand on his shoulder.
“We’ll stick with you on this,” they all said, and Sol said it too, but at the same time it hurt for each of them to say this, because they knew that their next stop was to go visit Roxanne’s boyfriend, Bobby, who had been out of town the night before.
The same odd silence was at Bobby’s house, even though Bobby’s position was hardly the same as Adam’s. He offered them all sodas and they watched the rest of the football game, and they all got up to leave after that, saying few words. Sol decided that he would come out here later, alone.
II
“You guys killed her,” she said.
“What are you talking about,” Sol said quietly.
“You had the party, you knew he was playing with guns.”
She was my father’s age, and a friend of his. She had silver-blond hair and a pleasantly trim figure; her skin was smooth and unwrinkled and her smile and the warm humor that accompanied it gave her the appearance of youth. But on this day she did not smile and wasn’t warm, and suddenly and permanently to me she was as old and cold as a cackling, bony-nosed witch. For the first time I noticed the wart on her neck, and it would stand out every time after that. I noticed the way her dishwater gray hair was never combed. Her humor, I began to realize, was full of secret sarcasm and based largely on hate.
It was two days after my friend Adam accidentally killed my friend Roxanne. Al was messing around with a shotgun at a party. He had forgotten to check the chamber, and when he playfully grabbed Roxanne and put the gun to her temple, when he jokingly pulled the trigger, ready to say “bang” in verbal mime, the noise was suddenly real and there was real, red blood, and she really collapsed to the ground in a slow motion you never see in the movies. We were all there to see it, and for a long time it was a very traumatic memory.
III
She rode on a beautiful horse, rode up the hill and across my lawn. Roxanne! She smiled bold and shy, beaming the bold-shy age of thirteen years. Roxanne, 1979: there was a Top 40 hit that year, but she was a different tune. Beyond the pure, but in the days before mature, she was not so grown up as a red light song, and none of us were as old as we pretended.
We used to laugh at her: she had what Matt used to call a “cute duck butt,” and what Jim called a “ski-jump nose.” We drank beer in the dark —she never drank, but she stayed out late with us; she teased us all, and she smoked Salem cigarettes and she swore.
And one day she rode that beautiful horse up the hill of my lawn and smiled, and said, “Hey, Sol, want to go for a ride?” I looked up at her on her big beautiful horse and smiled back, and Sugar took the opportunity to munch on my lawn.
“Ro-o-0-OX! Anne! —that was another tune, by the Police, and Sting sounded like a reggae rooster on the radio. We crowed that song all summer, thinking we liked it before we knew what it was about, knowing only that we too knew a girl named Roxanne. Then we learned, learned to understand every word, and for a while that summer we sang it louder, and then in the fall we didn’t sing it anymore.
She rode Sugar up to me —bold and shy —and asked if I wanted to ride with her. And I smiled, not ready to answer, giving Sugar time to chew the grass. Nights later, in the fall, I’d try to write a better song for her: “Roxanne, sweet thirteen, before she knew the world was mean...” “Those days are over,” I might have added. Nights later, we would turn the radio off.
She smiled bold and shy. Sure, I said. Great, she said, jump on. We rode down the street and into a field, Roxanne and Sugar and I —we broke from a trot to a gallop, and I, sitting in back, clung on to Roxanne, held her near me, felt her
warm and sweaty against me and felt safe in the saddle. We were still closer to pure than mature, and I still remember Sugar munching quietly on the grass. But then we were both well aware of where we were, on this beautiful horse galloping swiftly across the field.
Another tune began playing on the radio, and we turned the volume higher.
One night we all went to a party at Adam’s. His parents weren’t home. We drank beer in the dark, but Roxy still wouldn’t drink. “Ro-o-0-OX! Anne,” squawked Adam. She never did like that song. Adam took out a gun and started playing with it, as if it were a Saturday afternoon and he was shooting at beer cans on fence posts. Wait, said Matt, let me set them up again.
Sugar munched quietly on the grass —a big horse, with a big saddle. Come on, said Roxanne, there’s room for both of us. And I jumped on, fitting snugly into the saddle behind her, and we trotted off my lawn and down the hill, down a country road and across a field.
She lit up a cigarette, while Adam started playing with his shotgun, shooting it into the air. Come on, said Adam, Come on, bitch, or I’ll kill you. He laughed. We drank more beer. She never did like that song. And Adam started fooling around with his shotgun, holding it up to her throat. Wait, said Matt, let me check the chamber.
We used to laugh at her, and she teased us all, and she swore. And she rode on a beautiful horse, up the hill and across the lawn, and she asked if I wanted to go for a ride.
I held her near me. She was warm and sweaty, and I clung to her.
And we turned the radio off.
Adam started playing with his shotgun, pulling the trigger, and the shot went into her head. Wait, said Matt, it was supposed to be empty. Someone called the police, and we turned the radio off.
We had been singing another tune, beyond the pure, before the mature. And Sugar broke to a gallop from a trot.
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