BE RIGHT BACK
BY JOHN J. KLOBNAK
©2025
Jim French pulled into the driveway, his home in one of the tonier parts of town. He’d bought it after getting promoted to Executive Vice President six months earlier. The Federal-style brick and stone house was set back about a hundred feet from the street and he knew he’d have to park in the driveway; his three-car garage was still full of boxes from their recent move and his wife’s massive new SUV took up almost two slots. It was a raw December night and he’d made a quick stop at the grocery store for a few items his wife requested after a pick-up at the dry cleaner. He grabbed the grocery bags, his briefcase and the dry cleaning, (he put three hangers in his mouth, hoping to carry it all in one trip — what his wife called a lazy man’s load) and entered through the kitchen door.
“Did you get the cleaning?” his wife said from the laundry room.
“Yep, got it. And the stuff from the grocery store.” He set the bags on the island in the middle of the kitchen and started to walk to his library to drop his brief case on his desk, figuring he’d be up for hours finishing the report he was giving at the board meeting the next day.”
“Well, crap.” Jim muttered to himself, realizing he’d forgotten something in the car. He decided he wouldn’t bother with his coat, or even his shoes which he’d taken off upon entering the house. (His wife had instituted that rule after the move, and considering what he’d paid for the terrazzo floor, he didn’t argue). It was just out to the car and back inside — thirty seconds tops — he could make it in his socks
“Forgot something in the car,” he yelled to his wife. “Be right back.”
“When French pulled into his driveway, Lawrence Tooms was a half-a-block away. He’d witnessed the turn, saw an expensive car, and a lone occupant exit from it, and decided he’d pick up his pace. He was cold, hungry, and probably ten miles from his home in the inner city. He couldn’t be sure about the distance … he’d never been in the area before. Earlier in the day he and DeAndre Watson from his neighborhood had jacked a car. It was old, but it didn’t matter they only needed it for about an hour. They’d driven it around until DeAndre — who’d taken Drivers-Ed on a car chase video game — claimed a tree jumped right out in front of him. After the crash, they took off running, got separated, and now Lawrence was trying to figure out how to get back home without so much as thirty-seven cents in his pocket. When Lawrence saw Jim French, alone in an expensive sedan, he thought it would be easy pickings. He touched the knife in his coat pocket, ginned up some adolescent courage and started on a trot toward the French driveway.
Unfortunately, the driver was faster getting out and into is home than Lawrence had expected. A quick check revealed the key hadn’t been left in the car. Lazy people often did that. This guy was obviously not lazy. Probably why he was living in this mansion. Studying the car’s interior, Tooms couldn’t even see where the key went. Disappointed and a bit frustrated, he was starting back down the driveway when he heard the door open again. He turned and saw the driver, this time in his shirt sleeves and socks. He clicked something in his hand and Tooms could hear doors unlocking on the car.
Jim French approached the car on a trot, opened the driver’s door and leaned inside, stretching, keeping one foot on the frigid driveway. Lawrence Tooms moved quickly, silently, got behind French and grabbed his shoulder, saying, “Give me the keys and you won’t get hurt.”
Jim French almost peed his pants. It was dark. Muted interior lights gave him only a view of the interior of the car. He tried to jerk away, but his assailant said, “I got a knife and I ain’t ‘fraid to stick you. Gimme them keys.”
Over his shoulder, French, nervous, voice-shaking, said, “Take it easy, buddy. You can have it. It’s insured. Just calm down, please. This car doesn’t use keys, it has an electronic key fob. It’s in the console. Let’s be calm … I’m getting it for you.”
“No tricks, now, and hurry. I got a knife by your throat.” Hell’s a key fob, he thought to himself.
Lawrence Tooms’ heart was beating a mile a minute. He was freezing cold. He could see his breath, but the vapor leaving his mouth seemed to be barely moving. Everything had gone into slow-motion as Jim French started to turn to face him. He saw a pasty white dude, about fifty. Five o’clock shadow. Pudgy. He saw the golf clubs in the back seat and figured golf must not really keep a man in very good shape. Course he wouldn’t know as he’d never actually met anyone who played golf or would admit it if they did. Was the man nervous or just cold? He was shaking like a leaf. Lawrence didn’t know and didn’t care; he just wanted that car.
Get JohnJKlobnak’s stories in your inbox
Join Medium for free to get updates from this writer.
Then his entire day came back to him … slowly … in super-slow motion.
Starting in the morning. He was still in bed when he decided it was too cold to go to school. The housing projects he lived in weren’t good for much, but the radiator heat worked like a sauna … when it worked at all. He knew if he went to school that old lady teaching math would be yelling at him and everybody else about why they homework wasn’t done on time. The old bat had been drumming long division into the class for the past two weeks. What he care about how many this go into that? She think I gonna be a rocket scientist, or what? Work for NASA? He be working for some letters but they be NFL, not NASA. He had no time for math. He already had his career path selected and the only math he cared about was the number on the round he be drafted on that show on ESPN. A few more hours sleep, that’s what he decided he needed. Later, his momma yelled when she figured out he hadn’t left. He yelled back claiming she didn’t have anything for breakfast in the house, and he stormed out and down to the corner where some of his buddies were mapping out the day while sharing a blunt.
Lawrence remembered something that looked like a flash when that car pulled up to the corner where he was standing with friends. He was confused as there hadn’t been a flash when the local gang boss pulled up to the curb, but he saw it, like he was floating over the corner, he saw it, and he saw him and his friend leaning inside the driver’s window of the tricked-out Mercedes SUV and agreeing to pick up a package from a guy at a by-the-hour motel out by the airport. There’d be a hundred-fifty each when they showed up at boss’ crib with the package. What was in it? They had no idea and didn’t care. They were juveniles and there could be a nuclear bomb and the worst that would happen would be probation. The drug lord hadn’t told them how to get out there, but it was a good bet he didn’t think Lawrence would be calling UBER. So, with a few hours to kill before the pickup, the two rolled a drunk who hadn’t made it home yet after a long night and took the eight dollars he had in his shirt pocket to the liquor store and bought a couple of large Slim-Jims and went back outside and huddled in the entry way of a shuttered men’s clothing store to get out of the biting wind.
Lawrence flashed back to the KIA Sportage sitting around the corner and how his buddy pulled a USB cord out of one pocket of his coat and a large screwdriver out of the other and within a minute they were in the micro-SUV and rolling … it being the eighth KIA they’d stolen using the now famous Tik-Tok method of car theft. He could see it so clearly. It was identical to the way it happened except for that object. He couldn’t make it out. But it, whatever it was, was superimposed over the memory. Like it’d been green-screened and inserted on the memory that was playing in his head. Moving slow, but it was there.
He saw something approaching him, stared at it, and couldn’t place it. Couldn’t understand what it could be, something in the air, moving in slow motion, heading toward him. He shook his head to get a clearer picture and remembered being in the car when they realized they didn’t know how to get to the airport and how they started driving around aimlessly looking for the motel. He pictured DeAndre getting all pissed off … and could see something heading right at him then, too. Was that how it was? Had that thing been there? Maybe that is what distracted DeAndre. Same when he recalled the crash. They were both okay, he had a headache, DeAndre had a bloody nose, but they laughed it off and left the vehicle’s steaming engine in somebody’s front yard and ran like hell. That same object … that thing in front of him, moving toward him … had it been there? In the stolen car? When they crashed. He couldn’t remember but it was there now.
Maybe, he thought, he had a concussion from the wreck. Was he seeing things? He still wasn’t sure what it was, but the thing was still moving across his field of vision. Was it in his mind. That thing … suspended in front of him, still moving toward him. Slowly. A concussion? Is that what it was?
He had no idea what a concussion was, but they had them in football a lot. Lawrence Tooms figured he’d be in the NFL in a few years, forgetting the fact that he’d been kicked off the team at his high school for missing too many days of school. His current situation? Temporary. Lawrence Tooms saw everything as temporary. Sure, he’d do a couple years of college, two maybe, then he’d sign a big contract. Cash a big check. He was that good. Everybody said so.
He was cold and it was getting colder … is that why everything seemed frozen? Frozen still. Like time had stopped. How come this fool didn’t just give him that thing? That fob or whatever he called it. Give him that thing and he’d be gone, driving off in a luxury sedan. Maybe he’d keep the car a for a few hours. Show it off around the hood. Okay, the man was turning around now … finally. Come on. I’m cold.
Then for some reason he remembered a few minutes earlier walking down some rich street way out west, lost, getting a little panicked. It was dark. Why didn’t rich people have streetlights? They had lights in their yards. Lights on bushes and trees. Otherwise, it was pitch black. He remembered walking up the driveway, telling some fool, this fool finally turning around, to give him the damn keys. What did he hear? Was there a flash? What was that damn thing, that slow-motion thing right in front of him … heading toward him … it was getting clearer finally … spinning, tiny and pointed … and headed his way.
Life is funny. When we get ahead of ourselves, when we make critical judgments that turn out to be critical errors, time can slow down. That’s when time will generously provide us with an unhurried appraisal of a snap decision. Some say when you are near death your whole life flashes in front of you. Lawrence didn’t get his whole, short life. He only got a day’s worth.
That’s what time was providing Lawrence Tooms.
When that blurry, spinning, pointed something entered his chest, it exited taking part of his heart muscle with it. When his knees buckled, and he felt like he’d been hit in the chest with a sledgehammer … when his final thought registered in his mind right before the lights went out … he got it as slow motion stopped and real time snapped back into action.
While Lawrence’s mind was slow-walking the events of the day, Jim French was trying to understand what had just happened in the blink of an eye. He opened the car door, reached in and seconds later there was a dead body bleeding all over his brick driveway. He told the cops, “I just don’t know … it happened so fast.”
What Lawrence Tooms didn’t realize was what Jim French had forgotten in his car that night was a Smith and Wesson .45 semi-automatic pistol.
Lawrence Tooms, still new to a life of crime had violated the first rule of thuggery. Most everybody knew it. It was articulated again that night by a heavyset detective who stood shivering with his hands shoved in his pockets, stamping his feet to keep warm while surveying the crime scene and waiting for the meat wagon. He said with a wise chuckle, “never bring a knife to a gunfight.” His partner, who was kneeling next to the body had heard it before. Many times. Lawrence Tooms never had.
