Chapter 1: Nicknames

July 1994

It’s funny how people get nicknames.

Some are obvious. Take my brothers. John David is known as Jack, and Robert Joseph is known as Bobbie Joe. The only other choice for him is Robbie. Names like that will usually stick with you for life.

Some nicknames are based on something obvious about you. Maybe you’re known as Red because of your red hair, or you’re known as Curly because of your curly hair, or you’re Shorty because, well, you’re short. Sometimes these names don’t work out so well. Curly might grow up to be a cue ball by the time he’s middle-aged and Shorty might end up six-foot-five. Still, for the most part, nicknames are usually harmless.

Mine didn’t turn out like that. My name is Graham Wendell Reaper. Again, it’s harmless as far as names go. I asked my parents about my name when I was a kid. I got into a little trouble once, but not because of my nickname, or maybe because of a possible nickname. I must have been about eight or so.

We were in the living room, me, Jack, and Dad, while Mom was in the kitchen right around the corner working on dinner. I don’t know where Bobbie Joe was, but he was only three at the time, so he might have been in jail. That was what we called the penned-in portion of the family room, where Bobbie Joe couldn’t get into too much trouble. “Where’d my name come from?” I asked.

“Hmmm?” commented my father, putting down the newspaper.

“My name, Graham Wendell Reaper. Why’d I get named that?”

“Oh. You’re named after your grandfathers.”

“Huh?” I asked. I only knew my grandparents as Grandma and Grandpa and Nana and Papa. I supposed they had names, but it never really occurred to me before.

“My father is named John Graham Reaper and your mother’s father...”

“Papa?” Dad’s parents were Grandpa and Grandma. Papa and Nana were Mom’s parents.

He nodded. “Yes, Papa’s name is Everett Wendell Simmons. So, we took their middle names and gave them to you.”

I thought about that a second. “Okay. And Jack is named after you?” Dad nodded. I knew my father’s name was Jack because that was what Mom called him. Sometimes she called him other things, especially if they were arguing. They didn’t do that often, but Mom could get a temper. “How come he’s not Jack Junior?”

Jack, my brother Jack, looked up at this. “Because we don’t have the same name,” explained my father. “My full name is John Henry Reaper and Jack’s is John David Reaper. You can’t be a junior without having the same name.”

“Oh.” It sounded like there were a lot of rules about names.

Jack asked, “So who was David?” He was six.

“My brother, your Uncle Dave.”

“Oh.” Jack shrugged his shoulders and went back to playing his video game.

“Who was Bobbie Joe named after?” I asked.

Dad grunted and said, “The mailman.”

At that a wet dishcloth came flying in from the kitchen and caught Dad in the face. “I heard that!” said Mom.

He snorted and tossed the dishcloth to me. “Give that back to your mother and ask her about Bobbie Joe.”

Weird! I went out to the kitchen and Mom loudly said, “Your father thinks he’s funny!” Dad made a grunt from the living room and Jack giggled. Mom looked down at me. “Bobbie Joe is named after my brothers, your Uncle Bob and Uncle Joe.”

“Oh.”

“Now, wash up for dinner and set the table.”

Jack tried to give me a nickname after that. He knew my middle name was Wendell, so he called me ‘Wendy’ one night right before dinner. I popped him in the nose, which got him to crying, and then Dad tanned my hide. When Jack laughed at that, he got his bottom walloped as well. We both missed supper that night. Afterwards Jack was smart enough to not try calling me a girl’s name.

So that’s where our names came from, but it doesn’t explain my nickname. That occurred a few months later, in the summer. That was when Bobbie Joe went into the hospital. I don’t think Jack understood, since he was seven, but I had turned nine in March. See, Bobbie Joe was deaf, sort of, or at least he didn’t hear very well. He almost never talked, and what he said you couldn’t understand. At the beginning of June, Dad took off a few days of work to stay home with Jack and me, and Mom took Bobbie Joe to the hospital. Dad said he had to get tubes in his ears so he could hear better. He came home the next day.

The first thing I did was to look close at him, since I didn’t see anything hanging out of his ears! “Where’s the tubes?” I asked. I was expecting something like an inner tube, but maybe that was too big. Maybe it was more like the macaroni we had glued on stuff in second grade and covered with glitter.

Mom laughed and smiled. She seemed pretty happy. “You can’t see them. They’re inside his ears. They are very small.”

“Oh.”

I knew something was different, though. Bobbie Joe was looking at everybody as they spoke and began to talk to us, not that I could understand what he was saying. Still, if you talked to him, he would say something. Mom kept hugging him and kissing him for a few days. I also remember Dad commenting, “Christ, Maureen! Now you’ll never get him to shut up!” Mom laughed at that, too.

Bobbie Joe seemed determined to make up for the last three years by never stopping talking. Unfortunately, he didn’t speak all that well. Mom assured us that as he got more practice, he would be more understandable, and began taking him to a speech therapist. He did get better, too, a lot better. Still, he was the one who gave me my nickname, simply because he couldn’t pronounce my name. He just couldn’t figure out Graham and called me ‘Grim’. I tried correcting him all summer, but he was hopeless. By the time he was able to pronounce my name, the nickname had stuck. I was now known as Grim Reaper to everyone. It was a few more years before I understood why all the grownups who heard this gave me funny looks the first time.

In the summer of 1994, I was in between third and fourth grade at Matucket Plains Elementary School. Matucket was in the middle of Matucket County in Georgia and was pretty much all of Matucket County. As counties go, it wasn’t very big, and was mostly Matucket and East Matucket, and some surrounding places. I looked it up on a map and we were west of Atlanta, in between Haralson and Carroll Counties, near Alabama. I-20 was the main east-west road and ran right through the middle of Matucket. Running north and south was State Route 389. It was a neat place, but kind of quiet. I told my parents once I wanted to live somewhere more exciting, and they laughed and said Matucket was exciting enough, thank you.

I was doing what I normally did that summer, which was goofing off with my friends and trying to keep my parents from figuring out what I was up to. We lived in a development called Pine Glens, and when my buddies and I weren’t building or rebuilding our tree fort behind the Jenkins place, we were down by Taney’s Creek skipping stones and chasing frogs. We also used to go up to the school and play catch on the baseball diamond. If you left the house early enough, you might be able to skip out on any chores before your parents figured it out.

Sometimes that didn’t work out so well. I skipped out on taking the garbage out to the road and we got skipped over by the garbage truck, and I got grounded for a week, to ‘remind’ me to take it out the next week. Since I couldn’t leave the property (and Mom was home taking care of Bobbie Joe, so I couldn’t sneak out) I ended up throwing a tennis ball against the end of the house and catching it with my baseball glove. Our house was red brick, and Dad allowed us to draw a circle on it with chalk. You got it in the circle, it was a strike. The return was a bit iffy at times, since sometimes the tennis ball would hit in the mortar groove between the bricks and head off anywhere else. Our pointer, Duke, was with me, sleeping on the side of the lawn and occasionally waking up to growl at birds and squirrels. He was good about chasing after the ball if it went off on a wild tangent, but not so good about giving it back, and it was always wet and soggy when he did. You learned to play with several spare tennis balls.

“Hi! What’s your name?” I heard from behind me.

I stopped my windup and turned around. It was a small girl, maybe my age or younger, and she was riding a bike on the sidewalk. “I’m Graham. Who are you?” She was wearing the standard Georgia summer uniform of shorts, t-shirt, and sneakers, just like me.

“I’m Kelly. We just moved here. Whatcha’ doing?”

Wow, were girls dumb, or what? “I’m practicing my pitching. I’m going to be a pitcher for the Braves someday. Watch!” I turned back to the wall and went into my windup. I missed the circle, but only by an inch or so. The ball bounced back, and I didn’t catch it, but I still got my glove on it and it fell to the ground at my feet. I grabbed it before Duke could get to it.

“You missed,” she told me.

“Yeah? Watch this!” I turned back to the wall and did a really elaborate windup, looking at both first and third bases, twisting all around and kicking my left leg up before rocketing the ball towards home plate. I really had some pepper on the ball that time and I nailed it right in the center of the circle! Yes! That would show her!