Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

I should have broken down in tears. But instead, I found myself angry. Irritation at the inconvenience he’d caused me back at work didn’t figure into it; I looked at him cuffed to the bed, and I thought, how could you let it get to this? Obviously, he could have done something to prevent it. This had to be his fault somehow. There had to have been steps he could have taken to prevent himself from descending into this, and yet clearly, he’d screwed up.

He opened his eyes, turned his head to stare at me, then closed them again. For a moment, I thought he didn’t recognize me. But then he said, “Hello, Kevin.”

“You okay?” I asked.

He tried to raise his hands, but the handcuffs stopped them at hip level. “My nose itches.”

Kate reached forward and scratched it for him. He sighed with relief.

“God damn,” he muttered.

“You want to tell us where you got that gun?” I asked.

Kate shot me a look. My father shrugged.

“Well, I guess I got it at a gun store, Einstein. By the way, nice to see you, too. You’ve put on weight.”

I stood beside the bed with my arms crossed over my chest, staring down. Kate stood on the other side, holding one handcuffed hand.

“You could have killed somebody,” I said.

He sighed at this and looked away from me. He shook his head. “I know,” he said.

“Do you?”

“Kevin, be nice,” Kate admonished me.

“It’s okay,” Dad said with another sigh. “Your old man gets you out of bed in the middle of the night to come visit him at the loony bin, it’s irritating, I get it. You’ve got things to see, people to do. Crazy old relatives can be inconvenient.”

I pushed aside the guilt trip. “You know, I don’t think inconvenient is the word here. I think ‘miraculous’ is a better term—I think it’s a miracle that you didn’t kill one of the neighbors. Or Kate.”

He closed his eyes and appeared to engage his own ki breath, even though I knew he had never set foot in an aikido dojo or any other kind of martial arts establishment. Bobby had invited him to come with us, I remembered. But he didn’t have the time. As a surgeon, he couldn’t risk the injury to his fingers and hands that would surely result from hopping around a room in white pajamas.

“Hindsight’s 20/20,” he said, shrugging.

“You understand that maybe you’re not firing on all eight cylinders now?” I asked. “I mean, do you realize that you were shooting at people who weren’t really there? Do you understand what that means?”

“It means I can’t live on my own anymore,” he said softly. “It means you all are going to put me in a home.”

“Are you going to fight us? I mean, you don’t exactly leave us much choice, do you? Pulling stunts like that?”

“I’m crazy,” he said, eyes closed, not looking at me. “I know. Okay? And I screwed up, I realize that. So get off it, okay?”

“I want to know if you really get that or if you’re just saying it so we’ll let our guard down and you can get out there and do it again.”

“Kevin…” Kate groaned.

“Didn’t we have a conversation about this here recently?” I continued, speaking to my father. “Do you remember telling me to kiss your ass, you weren’t going anywhere? You remember calling me a greedy son of a bitch who just wanted to get his hands on your house?”

“Not really. But if I said that, I apologize.”

“So you get it now? You understand that there is no way in Hell you can be allowed to stay out in the world when you pull crap like that?”

He nodded.

“Really? You get that there was nobody there?”

“Completely.” He turned his head to Kate’s side of the bed. Her tired, drawn expression softened.

“Sugar,” he said, “you mind letting me talk to him alone for a minute?”

“As long as you don’t chew him up too badly,” she replied. She looked at me as she said it, and I couldn’t figure out if she meant that for me or for him. But either way, she gave his hand one more squeeze and retreated behind the curtain. I felt the air pressure change as the door to my father’s glass cage opened and closed. No sooner had this happened than his act fell away and his expression changed entirely.

“Listen,” he said firmly.

Taken aback by the sudden shift, I blinked.

“I know what I saw,” he said in a voice as hard as his face. “I’m not crazy. Those people were out there. They figured out how to get the goddamned screens off and they were on their way in. I did what I had to do.”

I swallowed. “Dad…”

“Don’t ‘Dad’ me, just listen!”

I saw his Adam’s apple bob as he swallowed, too. He looked briefly over my shoulder and then back at me.

“I haven’t told her what they look like,” he said with quiet urgency, “because I don’t want to scare her. I haven’t told her the whole story, either. And I haven’t made up my mind yet whether I’m going to tell you. But I need you to promise me that you’re not going to let her go back to that house. Not to stay by herself.”

“Just in case those things that were out to get you come back?”

“No,” he said. “Those things that were out to get her .”

My insides got cold. Silly, because my father was just talking crazily and I should have remembered that, but I felt cold anyway.

He wetted his lips with a tongue that made a brief appearance and withdrew back inside his pinched mouth.

“They’re… not from here,” he continued. “They’re from somewhere else. And they want to take her back with them. I bagged a few of them, but there’s more out there, so I want you to take her back with you. Keep her until Bobby gets back.”

I had no problem with this part of it. Although Allie and I wouldn’t move out to the country for another year at that point, our old house in Burlington had more than enough space to move another adult in with us, especially on a temporary basis. And Allie and Kate got along better than sisters.

“So here’s a deal for you,” he said. “I’ll go into a home without a fuss. But you got to take Kate.”

“Deal.”

“And you got to take the gun.”

Now I scowled. “Excuse me?”

“Go to the Sheriff’s Department and pick it up. Take it home with you. Learn how to use it.”

“I don’t need an assault rifle.”

“Yes you do, for when they come after you. Don’t be a pussy, Kevin. Take the goddamned rifle, learn how to use it and defend your family with it.”

“Can you at least tell me who these guys are?”

My father pursed his lips.

“They’re evil. If you don’t have the gun, they’re going to get Kate. And then they’re going to get you.”

After a quick check of my criminal background, the Sheriff’s Department in Catawba County released the rifle to me upon my promise to never, never ever let my father have it back. Before retrieving it, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a case for it, because it seemed strange to throw a rifle in the trunk of my car and just carry it home that way like it was nothing, like my dad had given me his electric hedge trimmers or his toaster instead of a lethal weapon. I put the key for the lock on the chain with my car keys. Effectively, I announced to myself my intentions of not only taking the gun, but keeping it.

When I carried the rifle out of the Law Enforcement Center—empty, of course, bolt open, the two spent box magazines rattling in each of my side pockets—I opened the trunk and laid it gently atop the egg-carton foam that lined the case. Then I stepped back and stared at the rifle in the light of the morning sun. The matte finish absorbed the light, creating something of a black hole right there in the trunk of my car.