The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace Read Online Free PDF Page B

coming.”
    It was okay, Jackie told herself in spite of all the ragging she’d endured for spoiling the boy herself. It was okay because there was no denying, or interfering with, the degree to which the son worshipped the father, a kind of worship she hadn’t anticipated. Skeet wasn’t the type to understand an infant or toddler; he didn’t possess the physical and emotionalpatience required by the very young. As such, the rhythm of Rob’s first four years had been mother heavy, with Skeet present to a degree slightly beyond what might be expected. But all of a sudden, to Skeet, the child became a human being who could process situations, who formed opinions about people, who had muscles growing beneath the skin of his chest and back and arms. He looked like his father, too, with the overhang of his brow giving his eyes a hard, caged expression even at rest.
    Whenever his father was due to pick him up, Rob waited in the parlor just to the right of the front door. Jackie didn’t let him peer out of the glass, which was always shrouded by three layers of curtains to preclude even a sliver of visibility from the street. All the windows on Chapman Street were treated like this to prevent any canvassing by potential burglars; the crack addicts who squatted in the abandoned apartments on Chapman and Center would take anything. But the moment Skeet’s Volvo choked around the corner and his footsteps shook the front porch, Rob stood, beamed, and his breaths grew short with anticipation. When his father appeared in the doorframe, Rob would run and drive his shoulders into the powerful man’s thighs. Then Skeet would bend over and grab the boy’s legs and somersault him upward until Rob was over his shoulders, arms around his neck, and the boy would piggyback on his father upstairs. Then they’d work the punching bag for a half hour, and Skeet would take him out around town. When Jackie got her son back in the evenings—always before nightfall, a steadfast rule—Rob would be talking about the four or five people they’d gone to visit. He gave little in the way of details, not because he couldn’t remember but because he seemed to relish these adventures, these characters, shared only with his father. The boy kept them close to the vest, the hours he spent with other men.

    O NE WEEKDAY MORNING in the spring of his first school year, Rob wouldn’t get out of bed. He moaned about an aching stomach. He had no temperature, so Jackie was skeptical. But she was also tired and latefor work, so she made sure Frances would be around to watch him.
    As Jackie opened the front door to leave, she heard him call. Reluctantly, she went upstairs.
    â€œWhat?” she asked. “You want soup?”
    â€œYour son’s sick and you’re going to work?” he asked, the question an accusation.
    â€œI don’t get personal days.”
    â€œWhatever,” he mumbled and turned away from her.
    She stayed home. As the day progressed, he began writhing and crying, the hardness cultivated under his father’s watch slowly crumbling beneath the physical pain. Though Frances told her she was making a fuss over a faker and thus encouraging these manipulations, Jackie took him to the hospital in the late afternoon. After three hours in the ER waiting room—standard, even though she was employed there—she finally harassed their way into an examination room.
    His appendix was swelling fast. Late that night, it was removed. The doctor said it could have ruptured at any moment, and Jackie might have saved her son’s life that day by not doubting him.

    J ACKIE KNEW S KEET better than he knew himself. And so she knew that no matter how authentically he presented himself as the tough guy—acidly cutting down the concept of private school, instructing the boy on dirty lyrics and dirtier fistfight tricks, driving Rob around East Orange while giving coded shout-outs to