Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

“Abby,” I said quietly.

She looked up. Although still a child at thirteen, her face already foretold the woman she would become. She’d inherited Allie’s rich brown hair along with the delicate structure of her mouth and cheeks.

“You’re famous,” she said with a wry smile.

I opened the cardstock box in which my McRib sandwich had come. I didn’t feel hungry anymore, but I understood that at this time of day, I was supposed to eat.

“I never wanted to be famous,” I replied. “Just rich.”

“Seriously! You’re, like, a celebrity! The guys at school have put together an Abby’s Dad Is Awesome page on Facebook. Know who the profile picture is?”

“Who?”

“Dirty Harry.” She talked in between bites. To emphasize the Dirty Harry point, she made a gun with her right thumb and index finger and pointed it at me with a Clint Eastwood grimace. Then it disappeared, and she transformed into a thirteen-year-old girl again. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

“Oh. Yeah.” I took a bite. I loved McRib. Allie refused to eat it, claiming that while she didn’t know for sure what they put in it. Personally, I didn’t care. It looked like a rib, it dripped with tangy barbecue sauce and it tasted good. Don’t ask questions; just enjoy.

Barbecue sauce dribbling on my fingers, I set the sandwich down and wiped my hands on a napkin.

“So,” I said. “What do you think?”

“About what?”

“About what I did.”

She put her sandwich down on the wrapper before her. In the space of just a few moments, she’d almost finished it. She cocked her head to one side, looking away and thinking. Like the hair and face, this gesture very much echoed Allie. “I guess…” she started, then paused. She pursed her lips, her brow wrinkling.

I waited.

“I guess it is what it is,” she said. “I mean, what else are you going to do when two guys break into your house? You do what you have to do to survive. When thugs get all up in your house, you either call 911 or you blow them away.”

She shrugged and appeared to think some more.

“I don’t know, I guess I do think it’s kind of cool. You have this boring job, you go to work in a suit every day, but now you’re, like, an action hero.”

From its position in the box, the McRib called to me. Eat me, it said, bleeding barbecue sauce. Eat me now.

“Death is not cool,” I admonished. “No matter who it is that dies.”

She rolled her eyes.

“Human life is precious,” I said. “All of it.”

“I know, Daddy, chill.”

“I’m not happy about what I did,” I continued. I lied, but if she knew how I really felt, she wouldn’t call me “action hero” anymore. She’d realize that her dad was a psychopath, and so I said the things I had to say, because I so badly needed to hide the ugly truth. “I’m not proud of it. I didn’t even want to do it. In fact, if you and your mother hadn’t been home, I’d have gone out through the basement door and run off, because the only reason I did what I did, and I mean the only reason, is to protect you. They could have taken everything else—the TVs, the computer, the jewelry, everything down to the curtains. I’d have let them.”

She blinked at me. I suddenly felt myself laying it on too thick, preaching now instead of just talking, my tongue dripping not barbecue sauce but bullshit. And the look in her eyes—they were green, like my mother’s—made me realize that I was preaching to myself. She wasn’t listening to me; she was observing me.

But I couldn’t stop. “Those guys will never learn from their mistakes, Abby. Not now, not ever. Whatever they could have become, we’ll never know, because they’re dead. We’ll never get a chance to win them back. And I think it’s sick to celebrate that.”

“And I think that’s a bunch of nonsense,” she said.

My eyes widened. My spine straightened and I drew back, as if she’d just reached across the table and slapped me.

“They were going to rape me, Daddy.” Her voice remained level, but cool. “You shot them, though, so they didn’t. You can say all you want, but to me, I think that’s pretty awesome.”

“Do you know what ‘rape’ means?” I asked. My face felt numb.

“It’s when a guy holds you down and sticks his thing in you even though you don’t want him to.”

They got her. They weren’t after Allie at all; they were after her. They went straight into her bedroom while I laid on the floor drooling in the basement.

“Who told you about that?”

“Come on, Dad, I’m thirteen. By the way, they were going to rape Mom, too. Why else would they have come in when we were home? If all they wanted was TVs and computers and whatever, they’d have been better off waiting until everybody left in the morning. The cops even said that.”

Abby folded her arms. She looked away at something I couldn’t see—an idea, maybe, a feeling—and her eyes narrowed.

“So I guess I don’t really understand why you feel so bad about it,” she said. “They were going to rape me, they were going to rape Mom, so why would you ever feel guilty about shooting guys like that? I don’t get it.”

Are you a pussy, Daddy? She hadn’t asked that, but I heard it dancing around in her words. Are you?

Hell, no, I thought.

Then what are you?

I’m one hard son of a bitch.

“What?”

I blinked. “I didn’t say anything.”

“Your lips were moving. Are you even listening to me?”

“Of course I am.”

“Then why were your lips moving?” She demanded.

“They’re not.”

“Yes they are.”

“It doesn’t matter,” I said. “Don’t change the subject. Do you feel like I’m sorry about it?”

“It seems like it,” she replied. The chicken sandwich had vanished. During this discussion of things like rape and killing, she’d eaten the sandwich anyway. The subject matter made that small an impact on her. Suddenly, I envied her very much.

“God will forgive you,” she said. “But you know what? I think if you’d let those guys hurt me and mom even though you had a gun and could have stopped it, He wouldn’t forgive you. I think that would have made Him mad. I think that would have made Him really mad.”

My mouth. I couldn’t eat anymore, McRib or not. “I think you’re right,” I said hollowly.

She gestured at my sandwich. “But He’s not mad. And now you get free food at McDonald’s. Which is cool, because you deserve it.”

I swallowed. A ki breath filled my chest. I didn’t want to ask this next question, but I had to. “What do you remember?” I asked.

“About what?”

“About that night.”

She shrugged and stole one of my French fries. I watched every movement of her face, searching for some sign of the truth.

“A bunch of firecrackers going off, then a bunch of screaming. Mom hauling me out of bed, and I’m still half asleep. I’m all like, what’s going on here, and Mom’s dragging me into the bedroom and calling the police. Aside from that, not much. Why?”

“What happened before that?” I asked.

“Uh… nothing. I was sleeping.”

“The whole time?”

“The whole time. What is this?”

I folded my arms. Ki breath. Time to ask point-blank: “There’s a theory,” I said, “advanced by my therapist. You knew I was going to counseling, right?”

“Uh-huh.”

“My therapist is wondering if maybe I didn’t encounter these two men on their way out of the house instead of on their way in. ”

Her face screwed up with the effort of trying to catch my drift, but then she got it and her eyes widened.