The Short and Tragic Life of Robert Peace is a biography of Peace, an African-American kid who grew up in Newark, New Jersey, sucking on ketchup packets from Burger King because he couldn’t afford French fries. He went on to study molecular biophysics and biochemistry at Yale. Then at 30, he was killed in a drug-related shooting. Hobbs was Peace’s roommate at Yale, one of his biggest admirers and most careful observers.
Polls show that three quarters of whites don’t have any black friends. It’s a topic that’s not often discussed. Interracial friendships can be complicated.
Hobbs grew up in Pennsylvania in a house with two Labradors and a pool in the backyard. When he first tries to become friends with his Peace, his new, randomly assigned roommate, he fumbles. He says, “To the extent that I could, I tried to intimate how well-qualified I was to be his pal, dropping small hints as to my comfort-level among urban black males.” Their friendship “coalesced slowly, very slowly, from there,” despite Hobbs’ posturing. Even though this portrayal is uncomfortable, it’s honest. Hobbs shows how the distance between him and Peace wasn’t easy to traverse, and how they only became friends because they both made an effort, and were willing to meet each other halfway.
While becoming friends with Peace was a little awkward for Hobbs, the first few months at Yale must have been devastatingly lonely for Peace. Hobbs describes how when the class of 2002 congregated for the first time, Peace “stood on the fringe, wearing baggy jeans, Timberland boots… smoking a cigarette, his back turned to us. The classmates who hadn’t met him yet clearly figured him to be a dining hall worker or part of the maintenance staff.” By graduation, Peace finds his place. As it turns out, he does end up working in the dining hall, but he also works in a lab at Yale Medical School, gets tapped by a secret society, and becomes the person that his friends come to for advice.
Reading the first half of the book, I felt like I was watching Peace grow up, like when you watch plants sprout in those sped-up biology videos they show you in school. Hobbs doesn’t just tell us about the ketchup packets – he also describes how Peace told his friends they were actually good for him because they restored his sodium balance after workouts. Hobbs writes about the weekly study groups Peace organized to help his friends with their homework. You know that Peace is going to do well and it feels good to watch.
After Peace graduates from Yale, everything slows down – maybe in part because Peace’s life becomes harder to narrate. He goes from being a teacher, to investing in failed real estate ventures, to working for an airline until he gets fired for failing to follow proper procedure when closing the plane’s cargo bay doors. Eventually, he devotes most of his time to making designer marijuana in his friend’s basement. Hobbs says, “He had created something, and his work was bringing in money, and that dynamic gave him pride.” Peace couldn’t find this dynamic anywhere else, both because of the ways in which he sabotaged himself, and because the cards were so stacked against him.
At Peace’s funeral, his friends promise to start a memorial fund in his name. The fund never happens – not many donors want to give in the name of a drug dealer.
Sometimes to make sense of things, one can’t help but simplify them. Hobbs does the opposite. He examines Peace’s life from every angle. He describes how at the end of phone calls with his mom, Peace would say, “All right, Ma, you’re my heart,” how he cracked his knuckles and the pop-pop-pop made those around him wince, his need to always “be the man,” his surprisingly high-pitched laugh. Hobbs’ account of Peace’s life is almost like a pointillist painting: he lingers over every detail, and thereby as if by magic, creates the larger picture.
One of the last times that Hobbs speaks to Peace is about five years after graduation. “Why can’t you speak up? … You sound like a mouse,” Peace tells him. Hobbs is living in L.A., copyediting self-published self-help books to pay the rent. Peace is back in Newark, working in the luggage department of an airline, using his free miles to travel the world but uncertain of where he really wants to be. Neither of them mentions how scared they feel about their futures. “As far as either of us knew at the end of these calls, we were both all good, and always had been,” says Hobbs. But in The Short and Tragic Life, Hobbs does speak up, and he finds the words – some of them clumsy and some of them perfect – for the parts of life that make most people fall silent.
