Trigger Finger

by Bell, Jackson Spencer

  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?”

  My eyes widened. “Uh, no.”

  A proud smile. “You want to hear about it?”

  Proud? Proud of getting mugged? Why would anyone smile proudly after announcing they got mugged last night? “You’re damn right I want to hear about it!”

  On the table, a half-empty pitcher of Budweiser stood beside a fully empty sibling. I leaned forward to hear better over the Linkin Park piece playing on the jukebox. Bobby’s face glowed red from his time in the sun.

  “So I’m tired,” he said, still grinning, “been running around in the woods all day, sweating my balls off. Not getting enough to drink, water discipline. Finish up the march, and I’m like, take me to the river. I’m gonna stick my head in and suck it dry.”

  He paused to stare at the bouncer who had just walked by, slowing as he eyeballed us with absolutely no attempt to conceal it. Bobby wore a golf shirt neatly tucked into his khakis, but his haircut screamed “jarhead.” I, fresh off the barber’s chair only yesterday, realized that I’d cut my own hair so short that I probably looked like a Marine, too. One bouncer had probably said to another, there’s two Marines in here. Keep an eye on them, lest they raise Hell.

  The bouncer thought I was a Marine just like Bobby. This idea, as much as the titanic amount of beer I had consumed in a relatively short period of time, brought an excited flush to my face. I stared back at the bouncer and thought, what are you looking at, asshole?

  The bouncer moved on.

  “What’s his problem?” I muttered.

  “I know, right?” Bobby snorted. “Punkass. Anyway, where was I?”

  “You were going to stick your head in the river and suck it dry.”

  “Right. Okay, so I pound all this water, then I get me a Gatorade for the ride home to Wilmington. I don’t even hit the back gate before my dick’s, like, Bobby, I gotta piss. I say, hold it. Dick says, okay, Bobby, I’ll hold it, but you have to move that ass. So I get through the back gate, and I’m on Highway 172, and my dick pipes up again. Bobby, he says, find a gas station or something. And I’m like, goddamn, we’re on 172, there’s nothing out here. Dick says, look, man, you skipped your salt tablet, I’ve got no sodium backing me up, you need to find a gas station or someplace where I can let go of all this water. I say, chill. I figure I can make it to Holly Ridge. My eyeballs will be floating by that point, but I’ll make it.

  “So anyway, by the time I hit Highway 17, not only are my eyeballs floating, but it’s leaking out my ears. I’m sweating piss. My dick says, change of plans, here, Devil Dog, pull over. I’m like, you can’t be serious, someone could see me, and my dick replies, find cover. You got thirty seconds, then you’re wetting your pants. Seriously, man, I have never had to take a leak so bad in my life. And there’s nowhere for me to go. I’m in BFE.”

  Bobby chuckled, shaking his head.

  “But I have to do something, you know? So there’s this abandoned gas station there on the right not long after you turn onto 17 South. It’s pretty dark by now, not as dark as I’d have liked, but this place is abandoned and has no lights. Windows and doors all boarded up, gas pumps gone, weeds as tall as you are shooting up through cracks in the concrete. There’s an old algae-covered boat on a trailer that’s been parked there ever since I got stationed at Lejeune, next to a broken-down old Buick packed to the gills with some redneck hoarder’s shit. Other than that, nothing, nobody. So I pull the Mustang right up alongside and hop out. I waddle around behind the building. I whip out my dick. I start to piss all over this wall.”

  The lead singer from Linkin Park had tried so hard and come so far, but in the end, it didn’t even matter. I could have cared less; I listened with rapt attention.

  “And I mean piss. It’s the deluge, man, it’s like, yo, Noah, hurry up and get the zebras on the Ark, you know what I’m saying? I piss, I piss and I piss some more. And as I’m pissing, I hear this engine approaching.”

  He poured himself another beer. His powerful forearm flexed as he filled his glass. His hands shook not at all.

  “I hear brakes, I hear the rpms drop, and I’m like shit, somebody’s stopping. Sheriffs? Highway Patrol? Some shitbag that wants to jack my rims and my radio? I finish up as fast as I can, shake it off, zip it up. Trot around the building. I see the car, and I’m like, awww, fuck.

  “It ain’t the sheriffs. It ain’t Highway Patrol. It’s one of those mid-eighties Cadillacs with the tinted windows and those stupid wheels with the thin tires and humungous shiny rims. Gangsta-mobile, you know what I’m saying?”

  I nodded.

  “Guys that drive cars like that? They don’t stop to help motorists. They don’t stop to help anybody. So I double-time back to the Mustang just as the Caddy comes to a stop behind me. Passenger door opens, this guy gets out and says hey, stickman, where you going? I ignore him and jump in the car. I crank the motor. But my starter’s beginning to wear out, right, so it doesn’t catch until Homeboy shows up at my open window and sticks a gun in my face. He says, ‘Break yourself, motherfucker!’

  “I’m like, ‘Easy, buddy.’ He waggles the gun and hollers, ‘I ain’t your buddy, cracker, break yourself! Cash, checks, credit cards!’ Then he adds, ‘And cigarettes!’”

  “And you can tell, now, that this guy is on something. He doesn’t know what he’s doing. He’s got that gun right there against my head, maybe two inches from my temple, he has actually stuck his hand and gun inside my car. One twitch of that finger, and I’m dead. No more Bobby Swanson.

  “Homeboy screams, ‘Wallet, motherfucker!’

  “I’ve got my hands in the air, you know, palms open, one on either side of my head. I’m like, ‘Easy, man, I’ll get you my wallet, okay? It’s under my seat. I’m gonna drop my right hand and reach under there to get it. You cool?’

  “Homeboy’s shaking. He’s like, ‘Get that fuckin’ wallet, bitch!’

  “So real slowly, I reach down under the seat. I don’t have any wallet under my seat, now. That shit was in my right hip pocket. What I’ve got under my seat is my Glock. I grab it, then I shoot my left hand out and pin Homeboy’s gun hand to the steering wheel. Then I pop out the Glock, and BAM! BAM! BAM!”

  He turned to one side to show me how he did it. Holding an imaginary gun in his right hand, he twitched his trigger finger three times.

  “Homeboy lets go of his gun and falls backwards onto the highway. I crank the Mustang and peel a wheel. Whip around in a circle. Meanwhile, Homeboy’s shitbag friends saw the flashes and they’re getting out of the Cadillac. So I unload as I drive by. BAM BAM BAM! BAM BAM BAM! BAM BAM BAM!”

  His trigger finger contracted repeatedly, the hand moving from side to side to show the shot pattern.

  “These shitbags are diving for cover, hitting the deck, diving back into the Caddy; there’s one there in the back seat, waving his arms around like he’s in church and just got the Holy Spirit. I knew I couldn’t get away with actually bagging any of these guys, but I wanted to keep th
eir heads down, you know what I’m saying? I shot the rest of the magazine over their heads. Then I hauled ass up 17 to Jacksonville and called 911 from the nearest pay phone.”

  “What happened with the guy? The one you shot?”

  “No idea. Cops found the blood on the road, but no car. But listen, there’s a point to this.”

  He leaned forward.

  “I could have given the guy my wallet, okay? Maybe he wouldn’t have shot me. Maybe everything would have been okay. But maybe not, because this world is full of shitbags. A man that’s asshole enough to rob another man on the side of the road would do about anything.”

  His eyes burned with intensity.

  “It’s a fucked-up world out there,” he said. “Nice guys don’t finish last; they don’t finish at all. You remember that shit.”

  I frowned. “Why are you saying that?”

  “Fuck why,” he said. “Just remember it. Don’t ever forget how many fucked-up people exist in this world. They outnumber us. We have to stay frosty. You know what I’m saying?”

  My head bobbed like one of those stupid plastic dolls you see on people’s desks sometimes. Bobbleheads; empty lumps of plastic.

  “It’s important for you to hear this,” he said. He took a long drink of beer and set the glass down on the table with a solid thwack. Not hard enough to slosh the remaining beer out of the glass, but close. “And it’s important for you to understand that. How fucked up this world and everybody in it actually is. Because I know how you think.”

  That conversation played again in my head now, ten years later. The lights in Abby’s bedroom and the master glowed on my approach up the winding driveway from 62 South, the tires of the BMW crunching over the dry shreds of autumn color that had fallen and obscured the driveway. Home late yet again—but I hadn’t missed my girls. I could still say goodnight.

  In the garage, I cut off the ignition and got out. We had enjoyed unseasonably warm weather for early October, but the temperature had dropped with the onset of night and my breath came in puffs of steam that vanished in the air as quickly as they materialized. The driver’s door closed with a solid thunk followed only by the ticking sounds of the cooling engine. The exterior lights, streaming in through the Plexiglass windows on the garage door, cast a shadow of my bust over the passenger side fender of Allie’s Explorer and the wall over my tool bench.

  Because I know you, Bobby had said to me. And I know how you think.

  Of course he did. He knew a pussy when he saw one. None of my degrees or Dean’s List awards or job offers changed the fact that had that been me on the side of the road back in 2002, I’d have given the man my wallet. And my keys, and my shoes and anything else he wanted. Because while I’d thought of myself then—all the way up until February of this year, actually—as an optimist, in the modern world “optimist” translated into “pussy.”

  With the bases loaded at the bottom of the ninth and his team down by three, Bobby had stepped up to the plate and took a swing. And it had been a good one. That night in 2002, I came to understand that Bobby was a hard son of a bitch because he’d always been a hard son of a bitch—something inside of him allowed his mind to work the right way in the right situation. I never stopped admiring him for it, because I so wasn’t like that.

  But maybe at least a little bad-assedness is genetic. When my own bases were loaded, I had him as my batting coach. And what happened?

  “I knocked that ball out of the park,” I muttered into the cold air as I made my way to the door that opened to the little mudroom off the kitchen. “Home fucking run.”

  How’s that for a pussy?

  I stood in the silence of my kitchen and stared down the hallway where I had shot the two men. I had done this without hesitation. That same inner power that had guided Bobby’s decisive actions ten years ago had guided mine eight months ago. When you looked underneath the suit and the layer of comfortable fat, you found a cold, hard son of a bitch under there. A man who didn’t give a rat’s ass.

  I thought about getting a beer, but that would just make me have to pee twenty times during the night, so I went upstairs. I changed clothes. I made passionate love to my beautiful wife and I fell asleep with absolutely no trouble at all.

  And just before I drifted off, it occurred to me that I had appeared on the Billy Horton show exactly a month ago. A whole month, and I hadn’t heard from the Bald Man.

  But, of course, nothing good lasts forever.

  13.

  I awoke to a ringing telephone. My hand shot out and grabbed the land line receiver on my nightstand, but the ringing continued and I realized it came from my cell, sitting atop my dresser.

  “Make it stop,” Allie groaned, kicking me weakly.

  Grumbling, I swung my legs out and stood up. I staggered over to the dresser and snatched the phone. “Hello?”

  Nothing on the other end but the distant hum of what sounded like a car engine and a radio—the tinny music sounded familiar, but it sounded so far off I couldn’t identify the tune or the artist. Above all this, the sound of somebody breathing into the phone. Not the heavy, sexual breathing of a prank caller, but the easy respiration of someone who simply doesn’t want to talk.

  “Hello?” I said louder.

  Still no answer. I moved to hang up, but then the caller spoke.

  “Forget about me?”

  That voice; I knew the voice. I’d heard it before.

  The caller. The Bald Man.

  “Who is this?” I asked. Across the room, Allie sat up.

  “You did forget me. I leave you alone for a couple of weeks and you forget all about me.”

  My head swam for a moment, and when it stopped, I found my entire bedroom draped in red. I wanted to do the right thing, say the right thing, but Toothpaste Syndrome kicked in and cut both my IQ and vocabulary in half. “Answer me, asshole! Who are you? What’s wrong with you? Why are you making prank calls at three in the goddamned morning? What kind of loser does that?”

  “What kind of loser lies to the world?”

  Alarmed, Allie asked, “Who is it?”

  I waved my hand to bat her question away. My irritation had stoked now into full-blown fury. Lights flashed all over the control panel in my head, the needles of every gauge jammed hard into the red zone. “You’re crazy!”

  “Ooh,” he said in mock terror. “I’d better be careful. I wouldn’t want the Hero of the Month to hose me down with his assault rifle.”

  “I don’t need a gun to take your chickenshit ass down.”

  “Mmm. Big talk from the world’s biggest coward.”

  “So says the little bitch on the phone who talks mad shit but won’t tell me who he is and blocks his number!”

  “Kevin?” Allie wrapped her arms around her knees. “Who are you talking to?”

  “You know what I think?” I continued. “I think you are bald. You’re in your early forties, and you’ve got kind of a beer gut. Even if you don’t drink beer.”

  I had his attention. The Bald Man didn’t speak.

  The thrill of seizing control shot through the muscles in my core and almost made me shake. When I got done shining the spotlight on his soul, he would probably hang up and kill himself. Good riddance.

  “Doughy, fleshy, lower-class features. You’re ugly. And you’re single. You don’t do anything particularly well and you never have. You’re disabled or laid off from some low-end, dead-end kind of job. You may or may not be looking for another one, but you’re a loser, and it’s tough for losers in this economy. So you spend your days on your ass. In either an old single-wide trailer where you’re constantly late on the rent or a one-bedroom apartment with the Burlington Housing Authority. You watch action movies and you play role-playing games with other losers over the internet. And you’re pissed at me because you want to be me, but you know what? You can’t be me. Because you’re a loser.”

  Silence from the other end. That was good, but honestly, I wanted to hear the secondary explosions
from my torpedo strike. But when the Bald Man spoke again, he spoke in the same amused tone he had used earlier. And I realized that I’d hit nothing.

  “You really have no idea, do you?”

  “You blocked your number and you won’t tell me your name. No, motherfucker, I don’t.”

  “You are the loser, Kevin. You are the little bitch. Not me. You’re the Bitch of the World. You don’t know who I am. But I’m going to show you what you are. I’m going to show everyone what you are. And when you find out…”

  He laughed.

  “Oh my God, Kevin, it’s going to be precious. Just wait. Watch and see what’s going to happen. Watch and see.”

  “Game on, bitch! Bring it!”

  “I will.”

  And with that, he hung up.

  “Answer me, Kevin! Who was that?”

  I set the phone back down on the bureau. I picked it back up again and cut it off.

  With my wife’s eyes upon me, I felt just a little embarrassed. The specifics of what I’d just said escaped me at the moment, because one of the features of toothpaste syndrome is that you can’t remember everything you did or said, but you can remember enough to understand that you came off as a royal dumbass. In my case, I’d let the enemy reduce me to a pile of barking, cursing carbon-based garbage. The only saving grace was that tonight, this hadn’t happened on the radio.

  I’d been angry, but my anger faded. Embarrassment stepped forward to take its place, but even that didn’t hang around for long. Another emotion shouldered its way in, and I recognized this one right away: fear.