Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

The old woman chewed her popcorn. A pigeon lit on the sidewalk at her feet and she stared at it for several seconds before tossing it one white piece. The bird gobbled it whole.

“I get appointed to represent these people, and ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re out to lunch. They have no idea what’s going on.”

I paused, watching her and thinking.

“Once upon a time, I felt sorry for them,” I remarked.

“And now?”

“Now I’m jealous.”

I turned away from the window and walked to the suede sofa where I’d unburdened myself and gotten nowhere. Dr. Koenig took his customary seat. He reached into his briefcase and out came that legal pad, the one where he scribbled notes that he wouldn’t share with me, notes that ostensibly helped him reach a care plan that he wouldn’t share with me, either. I’d grown tired of not sleeping, but I’d grown tired of this, too, this talking. I was sick of talking.

I was sick of everything.

“You’re jealous of Alzheimer’s patients?”

I sighed and shook my head. You couldn’t say anything around a shrink. They’d take it and twist it, and before you knew it, they’d have you strapped into a straitjacket. “It’s just an expression.”

He looked down at his pad again. There came a long pause, as if he had to think hard about how to approach a difficult task.

Then he asked, “Have you talked to Allie about coming in to speak with me?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“A number of reasons. Main one being, I disagree with your little theory.”

“My ‘little’ theory?”

“That I could have laid unconscious for longer than I think—that Pinnix and Ramseur had their way with my wife, my daughter or both and I nailed them on their way out. I mean, don’t get me wrong; it’s an interesting point. And a valid one—the timing is one of the miracles that night. But I talked to them about it. Allie and Abby. It didn’t happen.”

“Do you think that if someone’s willing to go to the lengths necessary to block something out that they’re just going to tell you yes, this terrible thing actually did happen to me?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “No, Doc, I don’t. But I do think that there’d be some kind of cue when you confronted them about it. If a woman gets held down and raped in her own bed, aside from the obvious physical evidence that would exist immediately after the act, there would be… this thing in her mind that she’d have to cover up. I think that if Allie or Abby had been attacked that night in any way, I’d have seen it. The coverup, I mean.”

He studied me in silence, digesting what I’d said. He made a note on his pad and remarked, “Some people are very good liars.”

“Abby’s never been a very good liar. And Allie, well—I’ve known her for eighteen years. I’ve got eighteen years of baseline behavior, and I’m telling you, the only thing that’s changed is she’s into sex again.”

Another glance down at the pad. Due to the angle, I couldn’t see what he’d been writing on it and it occurred to me that it could be anything. I wondered if Dr. Koenig was doodling.

“So you don’t believe there’s a possibility that something else happened there that you’re just not aware of,” he said.

“No,” I replied. “I’ve considered it, I’ve given it a lot of thought and since I see absolutely no evidence to support it, I’m going to go ahead and discard it as a workable theory.”

“Fine. But why haven’t you brought your wife in to see me? I told you I wanted to meet her. She’s not here.”

“She’s not here because I didn’t bring her. I didn’t mention it to her.”

“Why?”

I shrugged and took a deep breath. Not a ki breath—this was just your ordinary, everyday sigh.

“This is kind of a… I don’t know… a weird process. Psychotherapy, I mean. Me coming in here, baring my soul to you. I’m supposed to confess and confront my insecurities. Lay out my fears. I will never look less like a hero than I do in here with you. If it’s all right with you, I’d like to avoid looking like a pussy in front of my wife. Bobby agrees with me.”

That seemed to catch his attention. “You consulted with Bobby about this.”

“I did.” I gave a half-smile. Outside, the old woman had disappeared. All traces of human misery and tragic endings had vanished, leaving behind only the concrete bench and the full, green trees. “Women, he pointed out, want a strong man. Especially women who came within inches of getting raped and probably killed—they don’t want to see you in a shrink’s office, crying about your feelings. They may act all supportive, but what they really want is for you to handle it and go on.”

“This is Bobby’s opinion.”

“It’s mine, too. I’m going to tell you something else; Bobby thinks that what I need to do is go ahead and find this Bald Man who called into the radio show and get in his face. I tend to agree with him there, too, by the way.”

“I see.”

“See what? What is there to see?”

“Bobby,” he said. “He was in your head that night, you said. Coaching you on.”

“He was.” Forearms resting on my knees, I laced my hands. Thinking about Bobby’s running commentary that night made my trigger finger start to twitch.

“Bobby’s your big brother. And he’s a Marine. You look up to him.”

“I do. I actually don’t think I’d have made it that night without him.”

Dr. Koenig nodded again, like all of this confirmed another theory he’d hatched beneath that shiny dome of a scalp. He tapped his pen on his pad and the notes I couldn’t see. I let him think through whatever he had to think through.

Then he said, “I think we need to talk about Bobby.”

I can understand why Dr. Koenig wanted to know more about my brother. What better way to map someone’s internal programming than to examine the people he admired? A man’s heroes offer you a glimpse of that which sets him apart from the frogs and mosquitoes in his backyard. They show you not only who he is, but who he wants to be. Who, given the right circumstances, he may just become.

Bobby hit every life obstacle before I did, so our childhood was a story of him confronting demons, breaking their limbs and tossing them aside while I followed behind and gave their prone bodies a kick or two before moving on. He installed my values. With my father gone all the time and my mother drunk all the time, where else would I get them but television and Bobby? Being older, he also stood taller and ran faster. He snagged a beautiful girlfriend who turned into a beautiful wife, he joined the Marine Corps and he took up arms for his country even though wealthy parents would have paid his way into any lucrative, cushy career he chose. How could I not look up to this guy?

But external indicia of superhumanity win only so much admiration. And growing up in a big house on a golf course limit a boy’s opportunities to show inner strength and determination. Other than my mom lying around drunk, Bobby didn’t have a whole lot of adversity to confront. So while I always looked up to him, I didn’t really begin to appreciate him as a hard son of a bitch until we both reached adulthood. And although I understood that he possessed a certain bad-assedness just by virtue of joining the Marines, I didn’t realize how deep that ran before he got mugged.

We’d grabbed a booth in the corner at Raw Bar in Wrightsville Beach in the last days of July, 2002 after I had just finished taking the bar exam in Raleigh. Bobby’s treat: beer, which I needed then, badly. There came a pause after the second or third pitcher when the conversation lulled, and we both fell silent amidst the cacophony of clinking glasses, laughing drunks and blasting rock n’roll. His eyes drifted over the stumbling college kids and sandblown beach bums, and then he said, “Did I mention I got mugged last night?”