Benny

by

Lori D’Angelo

I set out to tell a story in which no one dies, but life wouldn’t let me. I was okay with the deaths of the old people though because such things were to be expected.

But not with Benny’s. Benny’s death threw me for a loop. A kind way to say it was that Benny was disabled. But most people weren’t that kind.

Benny was one of those transients who hung out near the green space downtown. The use of the green space was hotly debated. Those with nice suburban homes where they already had grass didn’t want the less fortunate who lived in places without grass to have access to the greenspace.

When Benny was killed, some locals tried to pin the crime on Terry. Because she saw things that no one else did, it was easy to convince people that she did things that almost no one else did. But let’s be real, because of her mental health issues she made an easy scapegoat. John John, a pug-faced man who owned three gyms in town, joked that she probably wouldn’t mind the time in jail because it beat where she lived now.

John John’s joke was meant with uncomfortable laughter. No one wanted to offend those with money and power.

But fortunately for Terry, the war veteran police chief Biff Kolowski, didn’t believe in framing the innocent and unpopular just to keep the solve rate high.

I didn’t see the body, but I heard about it. I was working the closing shift at the sub shop that day, and they found the body in the morning.

The word most people used to describe the scene was bloody.

It made me sad to hear about it. Though he was disabled, Benny was friendly, and he greeted people by name.

“Hey, Mikey,” he usually said and gave me a high five when I walked by on my way to making overpriced subs for the day workers. (Usually I worked day shift, and it was a lucky accident that I didn’t that day.)

In fact, Bernice, my coworker at the Sandwich Shop who had to be in at five a.m. to open was the one who found the body.

“Sprawled out like a snow angel,” she said. “Only instead of white, he was covered in red.”

It turned out that Benny was killed out by some bored kids who thought it would be fun to beat up the guy they called the r word. One of them, who swore he had only watched, broke down and spit out the truth to his indignant grandma who beat him black and blue.

Even though I didn’t see Benny anymore, I did and for years. Nearly every time I walked past that spot, I saw him. It was enough to make me switch jobs. But even that didn’t stop the ugliness from lingering inside me like a stain that tainted how I viewed the world.

Bio:

Lori D’Angelo is a grant recipient from the Elizabeth George Foundation and an alumna of the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley. Recent work has appeared in Anti-Heroin Chic, BULL, Bullshit Lit, Chaotic Merge, Ellipsis Zine, Idle Ink, Litmora, North Dakota Quarterly, Rejection Letters, and Voidspace. Find her on Twitter and Bluesky @sclly21 or Instagram and Threads at lori.dangelo1. She lives in Virginia with her family.