The Day Bob Greeley Died

by Kimberly A Bettes

  As he approached the house, he yelled out to them to stop, but they didn’t seem to hear him. If they did, they ignored him. He yelled again, but still got no response. This time, he wasn’t sure they heard him at all. The group was loud and only getting louder. It was nearly impossible for him to hear his own voice when he yelled, so he wasn’t certain that they heard him. Yet he had to get their attention somehow.

  Reluctantly, Bruce withdrew the pistol from his waistband. He didn’t want to, but he saw no other way to calm these people down and gain control of the situation.

  The pistol was heavy in his hand, but familiar all the same. It had saved his life several times in the war, and with any luck it would save a life here today.

  Aiming at the sky, Bruce fired off a round. The sudden report tore through the day around them, silencing and shocking the crowd. They stopped pounding their fists on the house and turned to him.

  “What are you doing?” Miriam asked. “Are you crazy?”

  “Am I crazy? You people are the ones who are crazy. Look at yourselves! You’re out of control. Every one of you. You’re all acting like an angry mob.”

  “We are angry,” shouted Maude.

  “Okay. That’s fine. Be angry. But this isn’t the way to handle it. This isn’t going to solve anything. You all need to calm down and talk this out.”

  “We have talked it out. There’s nothing else to talk about until he comes out of the house,” Henry said.

  “Then wait for him to come out. Don’t go beating on the house like a pack of wild animals. That’s no way to act. If there is a child in there, you’ve probably scared her half to death.”

  “You’re right. She probably is scared to death. But it isn’t because of us. It’s because she’s trapped inside with a monster,” Maude yelled. The crowd yelled in agreement with her.

  Bruce sensed he was losing their attention. “Hey,” he yelled. “If you’re so sure of what’s happening in there, why don’t you call the police? Let them handle it. That’s their job.”

  “We don’t have time for them to decide to show up,” said Sara.

  “Yeah. Besides, he’ll just talk his way out of it. Guys like him always do,” Henry agreed.

  Bruce looked at each one of them and wondered what happened to civility. The preacher was there, pounding on the house every bit as hard as the next person. Wasn’t he supposed to be better than that? Shouldn’t he be more level-headed?

  And the preacher’s wife stood beside him, squeezing her temples. The gunshot had probably hurt her head, but just a minute earlier she had been pounding on the side of the house alongside the rest of them. Bruce felt little sympathy for her at the moment.

  Yet out of all the people standing before him, the person he was the most disappointed in was Miriam. How could she act in such a manner? Had she learned nothing from him about seeing both sides of a story? About gathering all the facts before going off half cocked and acting irrationally? It certainly seemed that she had not.

  “You all don’t even know what’s going on. You think you do. You’ve got yourselves all worked up, probably over nothing.”

  “If it’s nothing, why hasn’t Bob come out yet? If he’s innocent and there’s nothing going on, why is he hiding in the house like a coward?” Miriam asked, punching the last word and aiming it at the house.

  This got the group of angry citizens all riled up again. As their attention turned back to the house, Bruce took a step closer. He took another and another until he was able to reach out and touch Miriam on the shoulder. “Hey,” he shouted to make sure she heard him.

  Before he could say anything else, he felt a tug on his arm and realized that someone had taken the gun from his hand. He spun around to confront the person who had taken it, which turned out to be Henry.

  Bruce was prepared to fight Henry in order to get the gun back, but as he took a step toward him, a woman screamed. Bruce whirled around to find a small, round face peering out the window. Big blue eyes looked out at the crowd standing on the lawn, the stick of a lollipop protruding from her mouth.

  “She looks so scared,” cried Emma, her palms pressed to her cheeks.

  “Pitiful,” said Maude.

  “Do something,” shouted Miriam.

  Quickly, the face in the window disappeared and the little girl was cut off from view by the curtains which were drawn tightly, probably by Bob. That short glimpse of her was enough to get the group worked into a frenzy. They shouted and beat on the side of the house, more fervently than before. The men banged on the clapboard siding with their fists while the women slapped at the windows with open palms.

  Chaos erupted as Bruce tried to keep everyone calm. He had lost sight of Henry in the confusion. He spread his arms wide and pleaded with the people he thought he knew. He begged them to be reasonable, to calm down and do things the right way. But he was ignored.

  Suddenly the front door swung open and Bob Greeley emerged from the house looking every bit as angry as the mob on the lawn.

  “What the hell are you people doing out here?” he demanded.

  “The question is what the hell you’re doing in there,” replied Leroy.

  Bob looked at him but walked away, down the steps and onto the lawn where he stood face to face with the angry group. “Seriously, what is all this? You’ve got that girl in there scared out of her mind.”

  “We know what you’re doing with her,” shouted Miriam.

  “Yeah, and we want you to stop,” Maude said.

  “It’s not right what you’re doing,” said Frank.

  “What I’m doing? What am I doing that’s so wrong?”

  “You know what you’re doing,” Miriam said with fire in her voice. “I know what you’re doing. We all know what you’re doing. And I also know what you do to Grace.” She stepped closer to Bob and lowered her voice. “You make me sick.”

  “Is that so?” Bob asked, looking down into Miriam’s face.

  With cheeks as red as a ripe tomato, Miriam angrily replied, “That’s so.”

  “Me too,” agreed the other women in the group.

  “I don’t know what the hell you people are talking about, but you need to go home. Go bother somebody else.” Bob turned and started up the steps, intending to go back inside the house. But the group of angry people on the lawn wasn’t about to allow that to happen. One person in particular was determined to make sure Bob Greeley never went in that house again.

  Chapter 21

  The gunshot rang out, making Bruce Lawson’s ears ring and causing his head to spin. He turned toward the sound, hoping against hope to find that Henry had fired the gun into the air in an attempt to bring order to the madness, just as Bruce had done minutes earlier. Instead, he saw Henry standing with his arm outstretched and the pistol aimed.

  Immediately, Bruce looked in the direction that the pistol was pointing, terrified of what he would find. He expected to see Bob Greeley sprawled on the ground, blood pouring from a bullet wound. He breathed a sigh of relief when he saw that Henry had missed his intended target.

  Bob Greeley had fallen to the steps where he sat, shocked. Moments earlier, Bob’s face had been nearly as red as Miriam’s, thanks to the intense heat of the day. Now, after having been shot at, he’d turned pallid.

  Bruce watched as Bob realized that he hadn’t been hit, though if Henry had been a better shot, he would’ve been. The man hadn’t fired a warning shot as Bruce had hoped. He had clearly intended to shoot Bob. The look of terror on Bob’s face turned to anger as he looked up at Henry and asked, “What’s wrong with you? What the hell are you doing?”

  “What needs to be done,” Henry replied with fierce determination.

  “You people are crazy. Get the hell out of here,” Bob demanded. “Now!”

  “We’re not going anywhere until this is resolved,” Frank said calmly.

  “It’s as resolved as it’s gonna get, old man. At least until I press charges against this idiot for trying to shoot me.” Bob
nodded his head toward Henry, casting him a fiery glare as he did.

  Speechless, Bruce watched in dismay, overcome with guilt and regret as the scene played out before him. He suddenly wished he hadn’t brought the gun. Perhaps things would’ve been worked out without any violence. Maybe everyone would’ve come to their senses and went home without an incident. Of course he didn’t believe that. He was almost certain that there would’ve been some sort of violence with or without the gun, yet he still felt responsible because it was his gun. He had brought it here with honest and good intentions, but the exact opposite was happening. And it was his fault.

  Bruce reached his arm out and stepped toward Bob, who still sat on the steps trying to calm down. His chest rose and fell rapidly, causing Bruce to worry that if this kept on, he may very well suffer a heat stroke or have a heart attack.

  “What are you doing?” Henry shouted to Bruce.

  Bruce kept his hand out for Bob to take as he turned his head and looked at Henry, who stood with the pistol still aimed at Bob.

  “I’m taking him home.”

  “He’s not going anywhere.”

  “Yes he is. If you people aren’t going to come to your senses and leave, then I’m taking Bob home.”

  “We’re not done with him yet,” said Leroy. “We have to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I think you’ve got as close to the bottom as you’re going to get,” Bruce snapped at him. He dropped his outstretched arm and spoke to the crowd. “You people may not realize this, but you’ve just tried to shoot a man. That’s a crime. And if you would’ve hit him,” he said turning to Henry, “It would’ve been murder.”

  “We were justified,” said Miriam.

  Bruce stepped over to her in disbelief. “How can you say that? How can you think this way? You’re my wife, Miriam. I’ve slept beside you in bed every night for years. We’ve discussed everything, and I’ve always thought you to be a rational woman when it all boils down. Sure, you make snap judgments, but I never thought you’d do something like this.” He paused and thought before he said the words that hurt him to say. “It’s like I’ve never known you at all.”

  “You know me, Bruce. What you don’t know is what this filthy pig has been doing in there.” She spoke with venom in her voice as she pointed to Bob. “You don’t know what he does to that girl.”

  “Neither do you,” Bruce shouted. It was the first time he’d ever raised his voice to his wife, and it killed him to do it now, especially in front of so many people. He didn’t want to embarrass her, but he felt that the time for manners and subtleties was over now, here in the midst of what had become no more than a gang of angry people.

  “That’s not true, Bruce,” said Gerald. In his best Sunday sermon voice, he continued. “We’ve discussed this matter at length and we’ve weighed all the evidence. We didn’t just grab the first idea that came along. We discussed it. We talked about all the possibilities, explored every avenue. There was no other explanation for his actions. Facts don’t lie.”

  “But you don’t have any facts,” said Bruce as he walked toward Gerald and stopped, just over a foot away from him. He looked him straight in the eyes. “What you have is not facts. What you have are assumptions. Gossip and rumors.”

  “You don’t know what we have,” Maude said snidely with a wave of her hand. She then wiped the sweat from her face with a handkerchief, once white but now covered in makeup.

  Bruce whirled around to face her. “Oh I know what you have. It’s the same thing you always have. Your mouth.”

  Maude gasped, and Ollie stepped forward. Before he had a chance to say a word in his wife’s defense, Bruce continued.

  “You love to talk about everybody else. Things you’ve seen. Things you’ve heard. Half the time, they’re not true. The other half, they’re only partly true. But that doesn’t stop you from running around and spreading your lies like they’re the truth.”

  “How dare you speak to my wife that way,” Ollie said sternly.

  “Well, Ollie, maybe if you would talk to her this way more often, I wouldn’t have to. Maybe if you would tell her to keep her nose out of everyone else’s business, a man wouldn’t have narrowly escaped being killed just now. But you don’t. You let her run all over town spreading her gossip, allowing her to fill everyone’s heads with garbage and getting them all worked up and agitated. Now look. A man was nearly shot.”

  The crowd was silent for a minute before Miriam said, “It’s not her fault.”

  Walking back to his wife, Bruce asked, “Oh it’s not, huh? Whose fault is it then?”

  “It’s Bob’s fault.”

  “So you’re saying it’s Bob Greeley’s fault that a group of angry people are yelling at him and beating on the side of the house?”

  Miriam nodded.

  “It’s Bob Greeley’s fault that Henry tried to shoot him?”

  Miriam nodded again. “Yes. If he was at home, with his wife, where he should be, none of this would’ve happened.”

  Bruce grabbed his head in frustration and disbelief. “Miriam, how could think this way? Do you hear yourself?”

  “I’m right.” To show that there would be no changing her mind, she crossed her arms over her chest defiantly. Sweat dripped from her chin, falling to her folded arms, but she didn’t seem to notice.

  “No, you’re not. And even if you are right, even if Bob is doing something wrong, it’s none of your business. Don’t you understand that? Who made you the judge, the jury, and the executioner? Who put you in charge of Bob Greeley’s life? Who gave you the authority or the power to oversee the man or his actions and to punish him as you see fit?” Bruce looked around the crowd. No one replied, so he asked, “Who?”

  Gerald stepped forward and began, “The Lord—”

  “Stop.” Bruce held his hand up, palm facing Gerald. “I don’t want to hear it, Gerald. I don’t think you’re in any position right now to be talking about God.”

  “I most certainly am. I’m a preacher. I vowed to uphold His word and live for Him.”

  “Did you also vow to kill an innocent man? To stand by and watch as he’s persecuted for something you can’t even prove he did?”

  “You don’t know that he’s innocent.”

  “And you don’t know that he’s not.”

  For now, Gerald fell silent.

  Still in shock that the people he knew so well, people he considered his friends, could behave in such a manner, Bruce fought to make them see reason. His mind raced to find another approach, another way to make them understand that they were wrong. He had only one idea so he went with it.

  Ignoring the trails of sweat that ran down his back and sides, Bruce tried the only other thing he knew to do. “How would any one of you feel if you were going about your life and suddenly a crowd of angry people showed up on your lawn, beating on your house and demanding that you come outside? When you do go out, they pounce on you, accusing you of atrocious acts and demanding answers from you. Next thing you know, they’re shooting at you. And instead of the gunfire making them come to their senses, the crowd stands around, still accusing you of whatever they’ve convinced themselves that you’re guilty of. What would you do?”

  He felt good. He felt that his speech might have sunk into their heads. They all seemed to be considering what he said, rolling his words around in their minds and thinking of what they would do if they were in Bob’s shoes. He was sure that this had done it. This had talked the sense into them that they were lacking.

  But then Miriam spoke and he knew they were beyond hope, beyond all logic and reason.

  With an icy stare, she looked at Bruce and said, “I would confess and face my punishment.”

  As Bruce buried his face in his hands and shook his head in disbelief, as the tears came to his eyes and dripped onto his palms, he heard their feet crunching across the dead grass and dirt as they walked past him.

  He wondered how such a thing could happen. What had turned regular peop
le, good people by all accounts, into a collective beast?

  How could a preacher, a man sworn to uphold the word of God, stand idly by as a man was fired upon? Not only stand by, but also try to rationalize it as acceptable.

  How could Bob Greeley’s friend and boss stand by and do nothing as a group of people pointed their fingers at him, labeling him and accusing him of horrendous acts? How could a man that had not only worked side by side with Bob for years, but had also spent a lot of time fishing and drinking with him socially turn on him in the blink of an eye, all because of something someone thought they knew?

  How could the mayor of Sweetwater, a man who was supposed to care about the good of the town, the good of the people, be included in such a crowd? How could he not try to use the proper channels to get to the truth? How could his first instinct not have been to alert the authorities, either to the alleged acts of Bob Greeley or to the actions of the crowd?

  And the women. How could people created to nurture and love turn into such violent beasts? They were supposed to be the more level-headed of the human species, the reasonable ones. And yet here they stood, defending their actions as a man dodged a bullet.

  The fact that Bruce’s wife was among them shredded his heart. He broke down, sobbing into his hands, not caring if anyone saw. He was sure that no one was looking at him anyway. They were all behind him now, shouting at Bob Greeley. Surrounding him like a pride of lions would surround a cape buffalo. Much like the lions, it wouldn’t be long until they pounced.

  As the voices rose up, creating a cacophony of insults and accusations, the sky darkened, thunder boomed, and raindrops began to fall.

  Chapter 22

  Bruce was oblivious to what went on behind him. For several minutes, he was lost in the sadness of the situation, overwhelmed by both the matter at hand and the flood of emotions that overcame him. There were decisions to be made now, decisions he thought he’d never have to make. He thought when he vowed to love Miriam until death took him, there would be nothing else to decide. But now his life with her as he knew it was over. She was a different person, an irrational person who judged people based on hearsay and then acted on those judgments. How could he go on with her now? How could he continue to live with her, to love her and raise their children with her when he knew how she really was?