EIGHTEEN: THE NUMEROUS HEINOUS CRIMES OF CECIL BENSON THE EIGHTH

WE’RE IN SEVENTH GRADE and we’re in the Chicago History Museum for a field trip about industrialization, which is a topic neither one of us can even remotely pretend to give the faintest shit about. Our class is big enough and the museum is hectic enough that we take the first opportunity that presents itself to slip away and explore on our own.

That first opportunity, it turns out, is down a mock turn-of-the-twentieth-century street, complete with a cobblestone road, gas lamps, and old-fashioned pickup trucks loaded up with wooden barrels.

We’re just looking for any kind of way to split off from our school group, but when we realize we’re in a gangster exhibit called “Booze and Bullets” that comes with a content warning, Charlie goes, “Fuck yes, we’re going learn about whiskey and machine guns.”

We walk down the road, passing glassed-in displays of crime-scene photos and artifacts.

I’m checking out one about Dillinger, his stark, blown-up mug shot staring out at the steady trickle of passersby. There’s a picture of his death mask, as well as a handkerchief that was dipped in his blood after he was shot down behind the Biograph Theater. “We should go check out the theater where they shot Dillinger, dude,” I say, reading an old news clipping. Charlie doesn’t answer, even though I’m aware of him in my peripheral vision. “Hey, you hear me?”

But Charlie’s looking at a murderer’s exhibit. I walk up behind him and see a huge picture of a man named Cecil Benson the Eighth being led out of his house by two expressionless cops. Benson’s in a white T-shirt with suspenders hanging in loops at his side, and there are spots of blood on his face and clothes. He’s a mess, but I know Charlie’s looking at the feet in the background, sticking out of the doorway, the body mostly in the house. The articles list Benson’s crimes, murder included.

The picture we’re looking at was taken the night he killed his cousin.

He starts when he sees me, then says, “Let’s get the fuck out of here,” without much tone or emotion. So we do, and we don’t talk about Cecil Benson the Eighth or any of his heinous crimes, but nobody outside of Charlie’s other half would have heard the waver in his voice when we left, or noticed how much eye contact he didn’t make the rest of the day.