Trigger Warning: This story contains violence against a dog. In short, it’s a tough read.
When I was a child, I often worried over my busy thoughts, and how those thoughts could never seem to keep up with the complicated world around me. “Oh, that’s no cause to worry,” my grandma assured me. “Life gives a person a lot to think about.” I have always found comfort in Grandma’s wise words, especially when I’ve seen that complicated world reflected in the eyes of others.
I was going to university full-time, and in the summer months I worked wherever I could in order to ease the burden of my student loans. One year I was lucky enough to land a summer job stocking shelves at night at Lowrey’s Market, a huge supermarket that was only a block away from my basement suite.
Jimmy Boone was one of the guys on the night crew. These were the guys who bought loads of lotto tickets and dreamed about winning a fortune. Jimmy was a lanky, skinny character, a good six feet tall, with lots of blond hair and a freewheeling attitude that set him apart from the more solemn guys on the crew. He was a full-time employee and he’d worked nights for a few years running. This meant that he was up all night and slept during the day, but his face was always flushed and ruddy-cheeked, as if he had just stepped out of the sunshine. He looked like a landlocked surfer-dude. I didn’t have much in common with Jimmy, but once he found out I wanted to go to law school he rarely left me alone.
“I want to tell everyone I know a university guy!” he would proclaim with a big smile. I had recently read a biography about the life and times of King George IV, a notorious brandy drinker in his early years. Jimmy and I had been talking about how people liked to drink alcohol, even kings and queens in the old days. I told Jimmy about the title “Prince Regent” and how this was a designation that had been given to George IV when his father was still alive but was too out of it to do anything useful. Jimmy got a kick out of the story and he picked up on the name. Whenever he saw me arrive at work, he would always exclaim, “Here comes the Prince Regent!”
I had never had anyone refer to me by such an exalted title, and I began to think that all the worry and all the sweating over the books might not be such a bad thing after all.
Jimmy Boone was a couple of years older than me, but he reminded me of those kids in the movies who suddenly find themselves trapped inside the body of an adult and then spend the rest of the movie trying to act like a grown-up. In these silly comedies, the only ones who don’t seem to be fooled are the other children. Jimmy was an impromptu kind of guy, always joking around and bursting at the seams with kid-energy. He had the agility of an acrobat. He would tell a joke and then emphasize the punchline with a series of crazy backflips down the aisle until he reached the far end of the store. “Anything for a yuck!” he would yell out as we all cracked up. “I have no shame!”
There seemed to be a darker side to
