Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

Game on, bitch , Bobby said.

I licked my lips. My right hand tightened on the rifle’s pistol grip, my left on the barrel. My eyes narrowed.

“All right, motherfucker,” I said. “Bring it.”

He didn’t come.

“So,” Dr. Koenig said at the start of our next session. “Is it all over? Did you have your big showdown with the Bald Man?”

I had just seen him yesterday, but he wanted to see me again today. I didn’t ask why; it really didn’t matter.

And, honestly, given everything going on, I needed this extra session. The Bald Man hadn’t shown up last night, but I had woken up on the couch in the basement with my fully-loaded AK-47 clutched across my chest like some kind of fucked-up teddy bear. I woke up that way because I carried the rifle everywhere I went in the house. Right now, I had it in the trunk of my car. So, if my therapist wanted me to come in for a few extra sessions, I felt it entirely appropriate.

“He didn’t show up,” I muttered.

“Your gut feeling was wrong.”

“No,” I said. “Just premature. I didn’t say I knew when it would be; just that it would be soon.”

“Ah.”

I scowled at that— ah, like I’d just lied to him. I reminded myself that I had told this man I believed I hadn’t ever killed a single human being, but rather golems conjured by the Devil personified. I had to understand that I’d given him just cause for skepticism.

“Allie and Abby still in Pennsylvania?”

“Yes. It’s a long drive. Not exactly a place you go overnight and then come back.”

“You told me yesterday that you sent her and Abby there to get them away from the Bald Man,” he said. “Why didn’t you just send them down to Jacksonville to stay with Bobby and Kate?”

“Bobby works,” I answered. “Kate works. They’re gone all day. Besides, Bobby’s my brother, not Allie’s. It made more sense to send her to her family’s house.”

He pursed his lips and nodded once, like he’d known I would say that. It irritated me.

“If you don’t mind me asking, Doc,” I said next, “what’s up?”

“Why don’t we give her a call? Let’s call her right now and conference her in.”

“It’s two in the afternoon. I’m sure she has things going on.”

He shrugged his narrow shoulders. “So? Big deal. Give her a call.”

“I left my phone at the office.”

“Use mine.” He reached into his briefcase and pulled out an iPhone just like Abby’s.

“That’s no good,” I said. “Her cell reception sucks at her parents’ house.”

“Call the land line.”

“I don’t know it. It’s in my phone.”

“You don’t know your in-laws’ home phone number?” He asked. “You’re married to this woman for fifteen years and you don’t know her parents’ number?”

“Like I said,” I told him, keeping a lid on my patience. “It’s in my phone. People don’t dial numbers anymore, Doc. You program a number into your phone and push a button when you want to call it. I don’t know Abby’s number off the top of my head, either. All that’s in my phone. If that’s really chapping your ass, I’ll try to remember the phone next time, okay?”

He leaned forward and rested his face in his hands.

“Listen,” I said, “things have changed here. Something’s going down.”

He looked up, although he didn’t sit up. His face was drawn, old and tired.

“Last night I went out on my porch with my rifle and I said come on, you bald-headed fuck. Bring it, bitch, game on. I’m not running from you, I’m not sliding out of this. You bring it, because I’m here. Let’s see what you got, you punk-ass, bald-ass motherfucker.”

He winced at all the profanity, but I felt no embarrassment. I was, I realized, channeling Bobby. And that was okay; Bobby was one hard son of a bitch.

Like me. The whole time I’d sat in here, I hadn’t removed my issue of Southern Rifleman from my briefcase; I hadn’t, if fact, removed it all day. The time for security blankets had passed.

“And what makes you think he’s coming tonight, given that he failed to appear the night before?”

I breathed in through my nose. Ki breath.

“I’m going to unlock all the doors and windows,” I said. “And I’m going to let myself fall asleep.”

That night, I sat at my kitchen table with the AK-47 laying in front of me, and I screwed around with my phone. I talked to my father-in-law, each of us doing little more than blowing hot air. Everything’s fine, everything’s great, hope you’re getting along okay. That kind of shit. There came a long, awkward pause when I asked to speak to Allie. Just when I thought the connection had interrupted, he told me she wasn’t in.

“Where is she?”

Another awkward pause. Then he said, “Kevin… you know… I couldn’t tell you. Because I don’t know. I don’t know where she is. I don’t think anybody really does.”

I could have asked him why he didn’t know, but I already knew. She’s thirty-six years old, he would say. I don’t keep tabs on her anymore, even when she’s staying with us. Speaking of her staying with us, what’s this bullshit about bald devils popping in from alternate worlds?

Of course our conversation was awkward. Had Allie told him the truth, it made me sound crazy. If she’d hedged—she’d told me she would make up a story about just needing to get away for awhile—it would have sounded like we were having marital problems, severe enough to pull Abby out of school just a month before it let out. So I’d either gone crazy or made his daughter miserable enough to have to leave me. Either way, this wasn’t a guy to lean on right now.

So instead of asking to speak to my daughter, I just asked him to let Allie know I’d called. Then I texted Abby.

U doing okay?

She didn’t answer me right away. I held the phone and stared at it for two solid minutes before I got a response.

Im OK. U?

Great. Where is Mom?

Pause. I remembered that she could conduct multiple text message conversations at the same time. Maybe she could work as an air traffic controller when she grew up.

Out with high school friends.

Before I could text a response, she asked me:

When can we come home?

That made my stomach ache.

Soon, I responded.

WTF is going on? Why did we have to leave?

Instead of chiding her for the WTF, I closed my eyes and shook my head. How to answer that one?

It’s not safe,I finally replied. But Ill make it safe for U.

I want to come home.

U will, I typed. Really soon.

ILY.

I love U too.

There came nothing after that. I didn’t know if she’d fallen asleep or become so engrossed in some dialog with one of her text-crazy friends that she simply forgot about me. Either way, she was safe. And that was good enough for me.

I picked up the AK-47 and trudged down into the basement to turn on ESPN and hopefully fall asleep in front of the television. But before I did, I walked around and unlocked every door and window on the ground floor.

Game on, I thought as I descended the stairs.

Game on, Bobby repeated.

In 1989, Ruby the Redneck Palm Reader told Bobby not to join the Army. The Soviet Union still existed then, hunkered down there behind the Iron Curtain with all of its tanks and missiles and men with red stars on their helmets; perhaps Ruby saw war. And perhaps not. Either way, she said stay out of the Army, and when 1990 rolled around and the time came for all young men of Bobby’s cohort to decide what they would do when high school ended, Bobby enlisted in the Marines.