To Be Bobby Lokey

by Michael Moorhead

When we were in junior high school, all of us admired and feared and wanted to be just like Bobby Lokey. We first met him, or rather saw him, that day in September when we entered the halls of the old junior high for the first time. Our mothers had dropped us off around the corner from the school, for who among us wanted to be seen in the presence of his mother, and we were walking up the wide steps of the front walk when THERE HE WAS. He was leaning against the wall and the arm of Kay Sanders with his Levi's slung low and his white T-shirt stretched tight across his skinny shoulders and a bright red comb sticking out of his worn rear pocket. He was whispering something into Kay's ear which made her giggle, and we could hear her telling Bobby to "...quit it or someone will hear you" as we shuffled past and into the building.

We moved from class to class to class that day like an obedient herd of sheep and didn't see Bobby Lokey again until we got to sixth period, football orientation in the gym. As we hurried through the doors to our seats on the right side of the bleachers, we tried to be as inconspicuous as possible. The eighth and ninth graders were slouching against the mats and bleachers across from us, and we didn't want any of them noticing us. If they had, they might've singled us out for attention which meant instant humiliation. Last year we heard they grabbed Jerry Womack as he came to the gym that first day, and before the coaches could rescue him they had stripped him and tossed his pants up over the rafters behind the basketball goal.

But when we got to the gym, we saw him over by the water fountain surrounded, as we came to discover he always was, by a bunch of eighth and ninth grade boys. As seventh graders, we didn't dare join the group, though we wanted to. We clambered up on the bleachers and looked over toward the Lokey group, hoping to overhear a juicy word or two.

"Hey, Lokey, get your butt over here. You think we're all here for your benefit?"

Coach Grady's entrance startled us to attention, but Bobby Lokey took his time before strolling over to join the rest of the eighth graders. I guess making All League last season on both offense and defense gave him the courage to take all the time he wanted before doing the coaches' wishes. What guts! We didn't even know much about him yet, and Bobby Lokey was already the hero of every seventh grade boy in that gym.

"O.K., you dead beats, so you little shits think you wanna play football, huh? Well, this ain't gonna be no church picnic this season. You eighth graders, so you won League last year; big deal. And you ninth graders, are you finally gonna win a game before you get outta here and move on to Coach Snodgrass next season? I doubt it. And I never seen any pansies anywhere like you seventh graders. Do your mommies know you're out here? I'm sure not crazy 'bout working with such a wimpy-looking group. Anyways, Coach Morgan's got the ninth graders again, Coach Eliot the eighth graders. Coach, good luck. Lokey's your problem now. And I've got a few thousand things to tell my babies, so let's get busy."

We sorta heard Coach Grady's insulting opening remarks; mostly though we were watching Bobby Lokey, lounging against the bleachers in an open, wonderful display of contempt for Coach Grady, for all attempts at authority, and for everyone in the room. We didn't see Bobby Lokey much of the rest of that afternoon, filled as it was with the managers issuing us practice gear, showing us our lockers, and giving us dozens of forms to take home and have signed and brought back before we would be allowed to suit out even once. But as we drifted out of the old fieldhouse locker room, he was all any of us could talk about. "...and didja see how all the coaches looked at him?"

"I bet they can stand it 'cause he's so good."

"You reckon he'll play both ways this year? I heard they're gonna try to let most of us just play one way. I hope I get to play corner. I'd sure rather hit somebody than get hit."

"Bet Lokey'll go both ways. All League at halfback and at corner! Boy, he must be something else."

"Didja see how he was rubbin' up against Sanders this morning! Duke Johnson, you remember the 'leventh grader who lives across the alley from me; he's been trying to go with her all summer, and she won't even look at him. And Lokey's only an eighth grader!"

But he wasn't just an eighth grader. He was blonde and cocky and fast and All League. He was Bobby Lokey.

As our first autumn of junior high sped by, we got busy with six classes in six separate parts of the building with six different mean teachers, and we sorta forgot about Bobby Lokey, but not really. All of us were envious of him; we didn't use words like envious, but we had all the feelings we would later associate with such a word. He had it made! He was a good athlete, actually the best athlete any of us had ever seen. Though small and almost frail looking, Lokey was a natural runner and defender. When he would get the ball on offense, things happened. He had a knack of making people miss their tackles, grabbing for air and cussing on their way to the ground, and even when he would get tackled, he never got hurt. He just had a way of twisting and sliding which meant no one ever got a solid shot at him. And on defense, he was a genius. Any pass thrown in his direction was his; he could anticipate and move to the ball better than any receiver. But his football talents weren't the only reason we envied Bobby Lokey. We wanted to be him because he was COOL.

One Thursday, sometime in October, he did the coolest thing. Bobby Lokey had Mr. Vines for math (his room was over on the south hall, just down from the cafeteria), and he had the class fourth period which meant he had it close to lunch time. In fact, we learned later as the story began passing around the school, he had math during A and C periods and lunched during B period. Twenty-five minutes for lunch is not enough, but B lunch is the worst of all. Most teachers hated to lose a second of their time and usually let classes out for B lunch a minute or two or three late. And so everyone with a B lunch had to run like hell for the cafeteria to get in line and get their trays filled and eat and get back to class for C period. And that was what happened that day to Bobby Lokey. Mr. Vines was going on and on about some theorem in algebra and kept his class four extra minutes. When he did let them out to eat, Lokey was out the back door first, sprinting down the hall at full speed. To hear those who saw the run and then the crash, Bobby Lokey had never on the football field flown with such sweet abandon as he was flying that day down south hall. Until Mrs. Thompson turned the corner. Bobby Lokey and Mrs. Sadabelle Thompson joined bodies from the thigh to the breast as he hurtled down the hall and she moseyed around the corner, and they met just outside Mr. Powell's geometry classroom. She lay there for thirty minutes out cold, but Bobby Lokey never missed a stride as he barely beat Coach Carroll to the head of the line. All of us who had B lunch and had walked or shuffled real fast toward the cafeteria had to walk past Mrs. Thompson's outstretched body to get to our food. We wondered why she was there, but she looked so peaceful and at ease that none of us thought to see if she needed help or tried to get her up against a wall and out of the flow of traffic. We just figured, if we thought at all, that teachers were weird anyway and that she must have a good reason to be flat on her back out of the hall. One hundred and fifty pounds overweight at two hundred and sixty-five pounds, Mrs. Thompson was a funny sight that day, lying helpless and still. By the time we got to football practice, Bobby Lokey's reputation had swelled to, I guess the term we would use now is mythic proportions, but then we would have said, out of sight. And the funny thing is Bobby Lokey never said a word about his feat, or at least we never heard him.

He was so cool that the three or four or fifteen most beautiful girls in school all wanted to go steady with him, and did, all at the same time. Most of us were still a little or a lot scared of girls. We liked to look at them and maybe talk to them about school or teachers or homework, but none of us ever actually WENT WITH a girl even though we might sit in a group near one Sunday night at church or call one on the phone to ask about some assignment in English class. Except when he was with the guys at practice or during games, Bobby Lokey was always with some girl, or several of them. Usually we would see him with one in the halls between classes. She would always be giggling at something he had said; she would be touching his arm or rubbing his neck, and Bobby Lokey would just be standing there, near her, looking so cool that any one of us would have sold his grandmother to find out how he did it, how he seemed to draw girls and recognition and praise like a magnet drew new nails, without even trying.

He made All League again in football as an eighth grader, both on offense and defense, and the eighth grade team won the championship just as it had the year before when Bobby Lokey was a seventh grader. The ninth graders were really bad again--they won only a couple of games--and we surprised everyone by finishing in second place. The winter months moved by slowly; it was cold and windy most days, and we didn't see much of Bobby Lokey until somewhere toward the end of the spring semester. Most of us were getting eager to finish the school year and get started on baseball practice. We had gathered a couple of times to throw the ball around, but Coach wasn't going to join us until school let out. It was just about the time baseball practice started that we saw Bobby Lokey again, some of us for the last time. We didn't know what had happened to him or where he had been since football season ended. Since he didn't play basketball or run track, even though Coach Grady begged him to anchor the relay teams and run the hurdles, our only glimpses of Bobby Lokey were scattered sightings in the halls at school. A time or two we thought we saw him in the back seat of Bobby Don's old Chevy convertible with his arm around Kay Sanders or Marty Foster, but none of us was sure. And when Jeff came rushing up to us that afternoon at the practice field and told us Bobby Lokey was dead, we didn't believe him.

"I ain't lying, you guys. Lokey and Bobby Don and a couple of girls from Westwood...they're all dead. Mr. Winston's got the bodies in one of his fixup rooms right now."

We were stunned. Aside from a great grandmother or two, most of us hadn't been around much death, and we didn't know what to say to Jeff's horrible, unreal news, and we sure didn't know what we were supposed to feel. So we just got on our bikes and went home. The next few days were a blur as we tried to sort out the events of that terrible night and figure out what it all meant. As best we could discover from sharing what each of us knew, what we overheard adults whispering to each other and what Coach Grady was willing to tell us, Lokey and Bobby Don and the girls had been drag racing some guys from Westwood who had a new Impala--red, loaded and fast. Bobby Don's old Chevy had missed the curve out on Meadows Road, and they'd hit the concrete pillar head on. We didn't know much more than this, but it was enough for us. None of our families knew Lokey's or Bobby Don's folks, and we didn't even know the girls' names so we didn't go to the funerals. The day of the services some of us sort of drifted together up at the junior high practice field; I guess we felt drawn there somehow. Maybe we didn't want to be alone just then, or we wanted for the truth not to be true. We began to share Bobby Lokey stories: the time he made Ben get up and move that day in study hall because the desk in the corner by the window was Lokey's; the time he got in the fight at the drive-in and beat up three guys from Parkhill; the time he swallowed the plug of chew in shop class and never even got sick; the time he scored four touchdowns against Parkhill, all on pass
interceptions; the time, the time...

We must have talked and remembered for hours 'cause it was getting dark as we headed home. Bobby Lokey...none of us really knew him, but all of us for the last year had wanted to be him...until now.

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