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A Tuesday Afternoon in the Fall

Bill Tope

When I was just seven I met the person
who was to become my best friend. We
had struck up a ready friendship on a
Tuesday afternoon one fall, which was
our first day of class in the second grade.

Walking home from school that first day
we were both surprised that we lived
just four houses apart; my family had
only that week moved into our new
home. just in time for the new school
year.

We took quick advantage of our
proximity and became virtually insep-
arable: sleepovers, sandlot football
with the other kids in the neighbor-
hood, trips to the park and sights of
interest with our respective families.

He was easily twice my size and was
overweight to boot, but always game
for the next challenge. He was smart
and funny and daring and strong. My
friend, however, had secrets.

One of his secrets was an abusive step-
mother, who would beat him savagely
with a thick leather belt. Seemingly for
no offense at all. I was guilty of some
of the same misdemeanors as he, but
my parents never punished me so
unmercifully. His dad, however, was a
teddy bear.

As time wore on, the evil stepmother
slipped from the picture and his dad,
left alone, took out the frustrations of
loneliness on my best friend. He didn’t
use a belt, however: he used his fists and
his feet.

While I stayed in the States and attended
college he wound up in Viet Nam, came
home two years later addicted to smack.
That’s why I went into the Army, he once
confided, to get easy access to drugs.
After a great deal of struggle he
overcame his addictions.

He stayed married to the same woman
for more than 40 years and the couple had
four children, three boys and one girl.
I often wondered if their father had
larded his children with the same kind of
abuse that was levied on him during his
childhood. They say that abusive behavior
is inheritable, either by means of a bad
gene through faulty acculturation. I never
really did ever really find out.

But all four children predeceased their
parents, through tragic circumstances:
automobile wrecks; hunting accidents;
one son was shot to death by his
estranged wife.

Like his children, my friend met an
untimely and violent end. Faced with
terminal lung cancer—he had begun
smoking at only nine—he put a
loaded 10 gauge shotgun under his
chin and pulled the trigger. It’s
perhaps not significant that I lost my
best friend on a Tuesday afternoon in
the fall.

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