Dave Cullen: Columbine

Mr. D had one major objective on Friday; Eric Harris had at least two. Mr. D wanted to impress on his kids the importance of wise choices. He wanted everyone back alive on Monday. Eric wanted ammo and a date for prom night.

Eric and Dylan planned to be dead shortly after the weekend, but Friday night they had a little work to do: one last shift at Blackjack. The job had funded most of Eric’s bomb production, weapons acquisition, and napalm experiments. Blackjack paid a little better than minimum: $6.50 an hour for Dylan, $7.65 to Eric, who had seniority. Eric believed he could do better. “Once I graduate, I think I’m gonna quit, too,” Eric told a friend who’d quit the week before. “But not now. When I graduate I’m going to get a job that’s better for my future.” He was lying. He had no intention of graduating.

Eric had no plans, which seemed odd for a kid with so much potential. He was a gifted student taking a pass on college. No career plans, no discernible goals. It was driving his parents crazy.

Dylan had a bright future. He was heading to college, of course. He was going to be a computer engineer. Several schools had accepted him, and he and his dad had just driven down to Tucson on a four-day trip. He’d picked out a dorm room. He liked the desert. The decision was final; his mom was going to mail his deposit to the University of Arizona on Monday.

Eric had appeased his dad for the last few weeks by responding to a Marine recruiter. He had no interest, but it made a nice cover. Eric’s dad, Wayne, had been a decorated air force test pilot; he’d retired as a major after twenty-three years.

For the moment, Blackjack was a pretty good gig—decent money and lots of social opportunities. Chris and Nate and Zack and a mess of their other buddies had worked there. And Eric was alert for hotties. He had been working this one chick for months now. Susan worked as a part-time receptionist at the Great Clips in the same strip mall, so she was always having to pick up the pizza orders for the stylists. Eric saw her at school, too, usually when he was smoking. He addressed her by name there—she wasn’t sure how he’d gotten ahold of it—and came by the store now and then to chat her up. She seemed to like him. Eric could not abide embarrassment, so he had been checking with her friends to gauge his prospects. Yeah, she liked him. Business was slow Friday night because of a late spring snowstorm, so they had time to chat when she picked up her order. He asked her for her number. She gave it.

Susan was looking good and Eric’s new boss had an announcement, too. Kirgis had sold the store six weeks ago, and things were changing. The new owner fired some of the staff. Eric and Dylan were keepers, but the roof was closed: no more brewskis and bottle rockets. Eric, however, had made a great impression. Kirgis had trusted Eric enough to leave him in charge frequently, but on Friday, the new owner promoted him. Four days before his massacre, Eric made shift manager. He seemed pleased.

Both boys asked for advances that night. Eric wanted $200, Dylan $120, against hours they had already worked. The new owner paid them in cash.

After work, they headed to Belleview Lanes. Friday night was Rock’n’ Bowl, a big weekly social event. Sixteen kids usually showed up—some from the Blackjack circle, some from outside. They jammed into four adjacent lanes and tracked all the scores on the overhead monitors. Eric and Dylan played every Friday night. They weren’t great bowlers—Dylan averaged 115, Eric 108—but they sure had fun doing it. They took bowling as a gym class, too. Dylan hated mornings, but Monday through Wednesday he drove to Belleview in the dark. Class started at 6:00 A.M., and they were rarely late, almost never absent. And they still couldn’t wait for Friday night: same venue, but no adult supervision. They could get a little crazier. Eric was into all this German shit lately: Nietzsche, Freud, Hitler, German industrial bands like KMFDM and Rammstein, German-language T-shirts. Sometimes he’d punctuate his high fives with “Sieg Heil” or “Heil Hitler.” Reports conflict about whether or not Dylan followed his lead. Dylan’s friend Robyn Anderson, the girl who had asked him to the prom, usually picked them up at Blackjack and drove them to the alley. But this week, she was still in Washington with her church group.

They went home early that night—Eric had a phone engagement. He called Susan after nine, as promised, but got her mother. The mom thought Eric seemed very nice, until she told him Susan was sleeping at a friend’s house. Eric got mad. How odd, the mom thought, that Eric would get so angry so quickly, just because Susan was out. Rejection was Eric’s weak spot, especially by females. He wouldn’t quite pull a Klebold, but the veil came down, and his anger spilled out. It was just infuriating. He had a long list of betrayals, an actual “Shit List” on his computer of despicable young girls. Susan did not make the list. Her mom offered Eric her pager number, and he pounded out a message.

Susan called back, and Eric was suddenly nice again. They talked about school, computers, and kids who had knifed Eric in the back. Eric went on and on about one kid who had betrayed him. They chatted for half an hour, and Eric finally asked her about Saturday night. Was she busy? No. Great. He would call her early in the afternoon. Finally! Prom night. He had a date!

On Friday nights, Coach Sanders could usually be found in the Columbine Lounge: an ass-kicking strip-mall honky-tonk with the feel of an Allman Brothers club gig in Macon in the 1970s. All ages piled in—mostly rednecks, but blacks and Latinos mixed easily, punkers and skate rats, too. Everybody got along. Biker dudes with gleaming scalps and ponytails chatted up elderly women in floral cardigans. Most nights included an open-mike period, where you could watch an aging drunk strum “Stairway to Heaven,” segue into the Gilligan’s Island theme, and forget the words. The bartenders covered the pool tables with plywood sheets when the band started, converting it all into banquet space. A stack of amplifiers and a mixing board marked off the virtual stage, spotlit by aluminum-clamp lights affixed to the ceiling tile frames. A narrow strip of carpet served as the dance floor. Mostly, it was filled with fortyish women in Dorothy Hamill wedge cuts. They tried to drag their men out there but seldom got many takers. Dave Sanders was the exception. He loved to glide across the carpet. He was partial to the Electric Slide. He was something to see. The grace that propelled him down the basketball court thirty years ago had stuck with him. He played point guard. He was good.

Coach Sanders outclassed most of the clientele, but he didn’t think in class terms. He cared about friendliness, honest effort, and sincerity. The Lounge had those in abundance. And Dave liked to kick back and have fun. He had a hearty laugh, and got a lot of use of it at the Lounge.

When Coach Sanders arrived in 1974, he personified the community. He’d grown up in Veedersburg, Indiana, a quiet rural community much like the Jefferson County he found right out of college. Twenty-five years later, it was not such a snug fit. The Lounge sat just a few blocks south of the high school, and in the early days it was brimming with faculty after school or practice. They mixed with former students and parents and siblings of the current ones. Half the town rolled through the Lounge in a given week. The newer teachers didn’t approve of that behavior, and they didn’t fit in at the Lounge anyway. Neither did the wave of upscale suburbanites who began flooding into Jeffco in the late 1970s, overwhelming Columbine’s student body. New Columbine went for fern bars and Bennigan’s, or private parties in their split-level “ranch homes” and cathedral-ceilinged McMansions. Cassie Bernall’s family was New Columbine, as were the Harrises and the Klebolds. Mr. D arrived as Old, but evolved with the majority to New. Old Columbine remained, outnumbered but unfazed by the new arrivals. Many older families lived in actual ranch houses built half a century earlier on the small horse ranches occupying most of the area when the high school was constructed.