An excerpt from Summer of '85: A Novel by Richard Fellinger
This is the first chapter from Summer of ‘85, an upcoming novel by former Epiphany contributor, Richard Fellinger. Summer of ‘85 will be published in June by TouchPoint Press.
ONE
I hear about the shooting while driving home from the office. I’m tuned to a country station, and after a ditty by a guy singing lovingly about his truck, the DJ comes on and promises traffic and weather, but first she has breaking news. In her bumpkin voice, she says, “News out of Philly isn’t good, not at all. It seems there’s been a shooting in Center City, at least a dozen possible victims. It’s being described as an active shooter scene at a hoagie shop. We’ll have more as we get more information, but now, the traffic….”
I get home and click on CNN, toss my jacket on a chair in the corner. Wolf Blitzer is doing a voice-over as a helicopter camera pans an entire city block at dusk, red police lights swirling. It’s hard to see much in detail, except police cars parked at odd angles, the heads and shoulders of cops and ambulance workers rushing around. The chyron at the bottom of the screen reads, “BREAKING: A DOZEN REPORTED KILLED IN PHILLY MASS SHOOTING.”
As I settle into the couch, with a mushy pillow propped behind my back, our three-legged terrier hops up on my lap and licks at my hands. His name is Wimpy, born without a left front leg, but that doesn’t stop him from bouncing up on the furniture. We found him as a puppy three years ago at a local rescue, and though Stacey had her heart set on a chocolate lab, I saw the three-legged pup and talked her into adopting him. I realize he wants his dinner right now, but he’ll have to wait. I want to hear what Wolf has to say.
Details are still sketchy, Wolf says, but the scene is a hoagie shop called Billy G’s. My wife and I have been there before, only once, during a weekend getaway to the art museum a few years back. The place is famous for its Italian pork, and while the Center City shop is the flagship, chains have popped up across the region, from Atlantic City to Harrisburg. The shooting started at the dinner hour.
It’s unclear who the shooter is, Wolf says, or whether he’s still alive or on the scene. An unarmed Middle Eastern man was seen running from the block immediately after the shooting, but his connection to the shooting, if any, is unknown. An eyewitness from a bakery across the street saw one masked shooter carrying an assault-style rifle inside the hoagie shop, but police have not yet confirmed it.
We live in Harrisburg, where I’m editorial page editor for the local newspaper, The Telegraph. We’re two hours west of Philly, close enough that we might expect some local connections to the story, maybe even a local victim. I log onto my phone and check our site, which links to a one-sentence news flash from the Associated Press. It says nothing I don’t already know but promises updates soon. I text our editor-in-chief, Norm Baker, asking, “Need anything from me?” A few minutes later I get a reply: “Not now. Just sent two reporters to Philly. Start thinking about follow-up editorials.”
As dusk turns to dark, CNN is still showing the street scene from above, and even less is discernible now, mostly just whirling red lights. Wolf hands the coverage to Erin Burnett, who then hands off to Anderson Cooper. Anderson interviews a former FBI guy, a retired police commissioner, and the author of a book on mass shootings. They discuss police tactics, ruminate on whether the shooter is still at large or might be holding hostages, and speculate about the possibility of terrorism, but nobody really knows anything. Then Anderson interrupts the author, urgency in his voice, and says there’s word the shooter is down, apparently killed himself in the back kitchen of Billy G’s. Police believe there’s only one shooter, but they still want to question the Middle Eastern guy. The chyron changes to, “BREAKING: PHILLY MASS SHOOTER FOUND DEAD IN APPARENT SUICIDE.”
Then comes news of a reaction from the President. He tweets, “Sending thoughts and prayers to the victims and families in the Philly shooting. Law enforcement is on the scene, doing a FANTASTIC job!”
There was a time when I would have been on the way to that bloody scene. Back when I was younger, a cops reporter. That was before I was promoted to assistant city editor, then city editor, then editorial page editor, a nine-to-five job that I secured five years ago. Now I’m stuck in the first grips of middle age, married with no kids, sitting only with our dog in our quiet twin home in uptown Harrisburg, watching the scene unfold from my tan Crate & Barrel couch, my favorite soft pillow cushioning my back, my only duty to think about follow-up editorials. And feed the dog.
So finally, I feed the dog, let him out to pee. Meanwhile, I warm up a leftover plate of lasagna.
Stacey comes home, keys dangling in her hand, and sees that I’m tuned to the coverage, plate in my lap. Wimpy hobbles across the room and paws at her knees, tail wagging giddily. “Can you believe this?” Stacey says. She’s a campaign pro, working this year for a Republican attorney general candidate, so she often comes home late. She eases into the couch beside me, still wearing her jacket, still holding her keys. We gawk at the screen together for a moment, shake our heads in disbelief.
“It happened at Billy G’s,” I say. “Do you remember going there for lunch?”
“Of course,” she says, and there’s wistfulness in her voice, as if it reminds her of a different, better time.
I sleep fitfully, wake up early the next morning, make coffee and open my laptop at the kitchen counter. By now, we have details—The Telegraph’s Web site has a full story from the two reporters Norm sent to Philly. Eleven people dead, plus the shooter. Eight more hospitalized, and three are critical. No cops injured. All nineteen victims were patrons or employees of Billy G’s, but police are still notifying victims’ families and have not yet released any names.
The shooter is identified as Bernard Lazzarro, twenty-six years old, who was recently fired from his job as a cook at Billy G’s. No word yet on why he was fired. He lived with his mother in Southwest Philly. He toted one AR-15 semi-automatic rifle and a 9-mm semi-automatic pistol. No word yet on how he obtained the guns.
I lug my thermal mug of coffee into the newspaper office, mulling another editorial on gun control. I also have to give careful consideration to when to run it. File it for the next day’s paper, or wait a day or two? There’s good reason to wait, especially in conservative Central Pennsylvania, where I’m a bit of an outlier. In a region full of farmers, hunters, and evangelicals, my politics are center-left. My readers often call me a dyed-in-the-wool liberal, and some even call me a socialist. So I don’t want to be accused of politicizing another gun tragedy before the tears are dry. Besides, I need job security—I’m at that age where it’s prudent to plan for retirement, which is why I recently upped my 401K contribution to ten percent of my salary. Whenever possible, I’m conflict avoidant, and I’m okay with that. I’ve seen enough of the world, and I know my place.
So I’m inclined to wait.
Late morning, Norm comes by my desk. He’s a spindly guy with mussy gray-blonde hair and John Lennon glasses—looks more like a history professor than a newspaper guy. But in fact he’s a newspaper lifer who’s well-liked in the newsroom, even though he’s often steamrolled by the number-crunching publisher. Yet during years of declining ad revenues and staff cutbacks, Norm has held the newsroom together pretty well.
“How’s your thing, Dan?” he asks. He’s referring to a suspicious lesion on my back, which my doctor removed a few days ago.
“Good—it was benign,” I say.
“Glad to hear it,” he says. “I have to go in next week for a colonoscopy. Not looking forward to it.”
“I understand,” I say.
“So what are you thinking for editorials?”
“Something respectful for tomorrow,” I say. “Something about the need for the community to come together. The next day, another call for gun control. I want to wait a day on that so we’re not accused of pushing an agenda before the smoke even clears.”
“Sounds good,” he says agreeably. He’s an agreeable guy.
After he leaves, I play a few games of computer solitaire. I lose most of them.
Eventually, I open a new Word document and start drafting the next day’s editorial, checking the wire every now and then for updates about the shooting. More details trickle in as the day crawls along. Lazzarro’s car, an old Chevy Malibu, is found in a parking garage down the street from Billy G’s with more guns in the trunk. His Facebook photo circulates on the wires. He’s small-shouldered and baby-faced, and in the photo he’s wearing a gray T-shirt and holding a handgun across his chest. He’s a white guy, and on his Facebook profile, under political views, he lists “Confederate.” His mother is refusing to talk to reporters, but investigators say she’s cooperating with them. Police also say the Middle Eastern guy seen running from the scene had no connection to the shooting.
Almost half the victims are identified, but none are from the Harrisburg area. They’re from the city or its inner suburbs such as Cherry Hill and Conshohocken. At Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, one critical victim is upgraded to stable.
In the newsroom, Norm instructs our two reporters in Philly to file one more story with all the latest details and then drive back to Harrisburg. We’ll run Associated Press follow-ups after that.
My editorial for the next day begins with the obvious: Once again, a community has been ravaged by gun violence, this one fairly close to home. It segues into a passage about remembering the victims, then one about the need for the community to come together to heal. It finishes with a plea to government officials at all levels to work together to end gun violence, but it’s vague enough that it shouldn’t offend anyone. All in all, I must admit, it doesn’t say much.
At the afternoon editor’s meeting, when I lay out my editorial plans for the next couple of days, there are yes nods all around the table. Even Marcia Barber keeps her trap shut. As managing editor, number-two at the paper behind Norm, Marcia is our most outspoken Second Amendment Sister. She’s a stout woman with stringy hair who lives south of town on a hillside in York County, and her husband is an avid hunter and Civil War reenactor. Maybe I’ve silenced her today by proposing to wait a day until pushing the gun-control button, or maybe, as a reenactor’s wife, she’s embarrassed by the revelation that there are murderous kooks out there still claiming an allegiance to confederate politics.
Late afternoon, more details. Lazzarro, who had no criminal record, bought all of his guns legally. He was fired from Billy G’s a week ago for repeatedly making insensitive racial remarks on the job, and had been warned previously. He wore a long black jacket as he mowed down his victims, and likely concealed the AR-15 under the jacket as he marched from the parking garage to the hoagie shop. He donned a black ski mask outside the door. His neighbors describe him as a quiet guy who rarely ventured outside, except to shovel in snowstorms or take out the trash.
I file my editorial and head home to feed the dog.
I’m back on the couch, Wimpy in my lap, sipping a scotch, when Stacey comes home. Unlike last night, when we were both stunned by the initial news of a mass shooting two hours away, she’s in a scrappy mood.
“So I suppose you’ll be running another gun control editorial tomorrow,” she says, hanging her jacket on the coat rack in the corner. “No reason to wait for the blood to dry, right?”
“Actually, we’re going to let it dry,” I say, stroking the dog’s back. “For a day, at least.”
“Wow, and you call that editorial restraint?”
I like this side of her, always have. My wife is no Second Amendment Sister, but she’s a loyal and feisty Republican. I’m a lifelong Democrat—or Dumbocrat, as she likes to call me—and when we first met ten years ago, we found ourselves bantering like this all the time. So our relationship immediately had a James Carville-Mary Matalin quality to it, or at least the flirtier version, Joe Scarborough-Mika Brzezinski. Stacey’s five years younger than me, but she’s as smart as she looks with her tortoiseshell glasses, bob-styled brown hair and cuddle-with-me face. Unfortunately, we don’t jest as much as we used to. Or cuddle. Time has straddled our marriage with all the usual little problems.
“Plus,” I say in my best deadpan voice, “another gun control editorial means less work for me. All I have to do is cut and paste the one from the last shooting, and call it a day. I don’t think anyone will even notice.”
“Ha, ha,” she says mockingly. She plops onto the opposite end of the couch and puts her feet up on our Origami coffee table. After a minute, she pulls out her phone and fingers it.
On CNN, Anderson Cooper is about to cut to commercial, but first he asks his viewers to watch a video collage of the names and photos of the victims. I sip my scotch, sorta paying attention as names and faces fade on and off the screen against a soundtrack of soft piano music.
The last name and face stun me.
Cara Cassaday.
Curly reddish hair, green eyes, dimpled cheeks, light freckles. There are age lines in her skin, but she’s still beautiful.
“My God!” I lunge off the couch, spilling scotch on my pants, sending the dog tumbling to the floor.
“What is it?” Stacey asks.
“I dated her,” I confess, pointing at the screen. I’m too jolted, too unnerved to say anything but the simple truth. “One summer, years ago.”
Cara’s face fades to black, then a Hyundai ad.
Richard Fellinger is an award-winning author, former journalist, and writing fellow at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He's the author of the novel Made To Break Your Heart (Open Books, 2017) and They Hover Over Us (Snake Nation Press, 2012), winner of the Serena McDonald Kennedy Award. His first chapter of Summer of '85 won the Novel Excerpt Contest at Seven Hills Review. He lives with his wife and son in Harrisburg, PA.
