The Murder Of Bob Sheldon

Robert Sheldon's Death

The night had turned cold sometime around 1 AM, but by now my body was pulsing with the warm flow of whiskey, and the cold didn't phase me. I could sense that Randy was growing a little uneasy with my drunkenness. Something in his eyes, the concern in them as they flickered over me, gave it away. Alcohol warped me in strange ways, and Randy knew it.

Sometime later, as I was reaching to crack open another bottle, I felt his rough hand clamp down around my wrist. "Bob, I think that's enough," he said, voice low enough not to be heard by the others.

I grunted and jerked my arm from his grasp. "I'll decide what's enough," I muttered, popping off my bottle tab with my thumb and lifting it to my lips for a swig. Out of the corner of my eye I caught Randy shaking his head a little, his dark eyes glazed in disappointment. Part of me swelled at that. Hardly anyone showed visible disappointment in me. Except her. Except for Cherry Valance.

Her name rolled across my mind like a spiked tire, leaving dark, angry gaps in my thought process. She'd ditched out on me for greaser guys.

Remembrance set fire to my thoughts, while my blood ran cold. I glanced at the bottle in my hand, still over half full of the murky brown liquid that held the key to forgetting, and to indifference. Enough of it, and tonight's stab in the heart would be no more than a fading bruise.

Feeling Randy's eyes on me, I took another hearty swig of my drink, wondering to myself, ""What's the worst it could do?"

Soon enough, I'd know.

An hour passed, and the night grew colder, and our laughter grew harsher, and our minds grew number. It seemed the alcohol we had was infinite, and under the light of the sad moon we became drunk. By now even Randy had had a few bottles, and was no longer scorching me beneath his solemn gaze. Tod, the youngest of us, and also maybe the least drunk that night, was sitting across from me, lighting up a cigarette. He had never cared much for alcohol, after he'd seen it turn his dad into the kind of monster that beats his wife and children, but he never spoke against our drinking and I liked that about him.

I was watching Tod blow smoke rings when Jonah spoke up.

"Aye, Bob, ain't those two the greasy boys from earlier?"

My eyes followed the direction he was pointing, where two slim, slouchy-looking characters were slinking their way out of a back alley. There was something in my mind that clicked at the sight of them, and whether it was my remaining resentment, or the alcohol, something compelled me to spring to my feet, and snap my arm back, shattering the bottle in my hand against a lamp post.

Randy was still watching the two boys' silhouettes as they disappeared around the corner. He was angry too. I knew he was; he had to be. "Let's jump 'em." I blinked real fast a couple of times, wondering why I said that. I didn't remember wanting to say it - didn't even remember rolling the words across my tongue and pushing them past my lips.

"Yeah," Jonah agreed, breaking his own bottle against the curb in imitation of me. "Yeah, let's jump the greasers." Tod stubbed his cigarette out against the asphalt and flicked it away from him, shrugging his knobby shoulders. He was the smallest of us, as well as the youngest, but I'd seen him fight. He'd handle himself fine.

David curled his lips away from his teeth and spat out a wad of chewing tobacco, and I assumed that his silence meant he was in too. Just Randy was left. He locked eyes with me for a moment, and I knew there was something there that he wanted me to see, some message he wanted to reach me. I didn't know what it was, and I didn't care. "Are you in, Ran?" I asked.

He dropped his gaze to the sidewalk in defeat, and I knew he wouldn't dare back out of the fight. He couldn't, unless he wanted to make a fool of himself. When Randy finally looked up again, his eyes had changed. They weren't angry, but they weren't not-angry either, and I wish I'd looked into them a little longer, because I felt sure that halfway angry glint meant something. But I stopped looking the moment I heard him say, "I guess I'm in."