2014/2015
Vol. 10

The Shooting

1983; Pembroke, North Carolina, USA

Bobby Maynor was a young man, age twenty-one, a junior at the University of North Carolina. He lived in a small town in North Carolina called Pembroke. It was deemed a bit sketchy, and dangerous things seemed to happen there regularly.

One Friday night Bobby drove in his old car with his two sisters and a girl from school who needed a ride home. He stopped at the girl’s house and got out of the car to get her luggage. As he did so, a drunk man yelled angrily in the yard of a mobile home amidst a freshly cut cornfield across from the girl’s house. Bobby simply shrugged and grabbed the luggage. This was Pembroke; this kind of thing was normal.

Gunshots pierced the air. Bobby looked up in surprise to see a man in the doorway of the mobile home, a .22 caliber rifle aimed steadily at the stumbling drunkard. Ten shots were fired through the empty field — until the man fell, face down.

Bobby turned to his sisters and groaned, unfazed. “Well, isn’t this great. Now we’re gonna have to go to court.” He found that all three girls had already run away.

Bobby lifted his head to the sound of a little girl crying. She was standing left of the dead man, staring. She looked to be only five, or six at the most. He looked back at the man in the mobile home, who stood silently watching.

“Sir, you mind if I get that little girl?” Bobby said, a bit concerned.

“Sure, son. You get her, an’ I’ll go call the police,” the man answered, walking back into the mobile home, his gun resting on his shoulder.

Bobby took the little girl to his sisters, who had cautiously stuck their heads out of the house. He walked to the dead man, bullet holes stitched across his back. After waiting about forty minutes, with no appearance of the police or an ambulance, Bobby went home, not wanting to make his mother worry.

For the next couple of days Bobby and his family awaited the arrival of the police, for questioning and such legal things. But no one came.

Sunday afternoon not the police, but the dead man’s niece, came to their house. Bobby told her everything that had happened Friday night.

“You know, the weird thing is the police haven’t contacted us at all,” Bobby finished, scratching his head. It seemed a bit odd; this was, after all, murder.

“Not really. That man who killed Uncle — he’s the sheriff’s brother-in-law. I wouldn’t worry about it,” she said, sighing.

Two months later, Bobby Maynor stood once again in the cornfield. There was no mobile home. There were no people. All that remained was a rusty water pipe, sticking out of the bare earth.

Sydney Maynor, daughter of Bobby; North Carolina, USA

This copyrighted story may be copied for limited classroom use or reprinted in an article about The Grannie Annie.

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