Trigger Finger (2 page)

“Why’s that?”
 
He asked.
 
“Why is the double Hero of the Month in a shrink’s office, as you put
it?”

“My wife wants me
here,” I answered.
 
“Tom Spicer wants me
here.
 
I’m having nightmares, so I’m not
sleeping right, so I’m keeping my wife awake and showing my ass at work.
 
I’ve told opposing counsel in at least two
different cases to eat shit—not figuratively, I actually told them to eat shit
and then I hung up on them—and I said the same thing to a client last week. And
you don’t tell clients to eat shit.
 
You
say you disagree with their assessment, you can say you’re sorry they feel that
way, but you don’t tell them to go eat shit.
 
Especially when you charge what Carwood, Allison charges.
 
Fortunately for me, my client reported me to
Tom Spicer.
 
She could have reported me
to the Bar.”

“So why do you
think the double Hero of the Month experience nightmares and personality issues
over an action the rest of the world views as praiseworthy?”

I thought for a
moment.

“Stage fright,” I
said.

“Stage fright?”

“Stage fright,” I
said again.
 
“Tomorrow night, I’m going
to be talking about this with somebody else.
 
On the radio.”
   

 
3.

Ages before the
shooting, I learned that I suffered from Toothpaste Syndrome.
 
I discovered this over the summer between
sixth and seventh grades, when Bobby and I enrolled in an aikido class through
the parks and recreation department in Catawba County.
 
The teacher, a short, powerfully-built
retired Marine named Henry Burton—we called him “Sensei”—taught me about it my
first day in the class.

“Toothpaste
Syndrome occurs when the shit hits the fan and you forget everything you’ve
been taught,” Sensei said.
 
“The squeeze
comes on and all your knowledge, all your training, squirts right out the top
of your head.
 
Like a tube of
toothpaste.”

I remember
standing there in slack jawed shock.
 
Not
just because an authority figure had said a word like “shit,” but because while
Toothpaste Syndrome had afflicted me my entire life, only then did I learn that
there existed a name for it.
 
And what a
perfect name!
 
What a clever, humorous
yet stunningly
accurate
way to
describe what had happened in every crisis situation I had ever
experienced!
 
Or at least what I thought
of then as a crisis situation.
 
Throughout my life I had suffered from a noticeable inability to rise to
the occasion.
 
Fights and snarky remarks
from fellow students, white trash or black trash bumping into me at the mall
and glaring at me with disrespect instead of apologizing—my brain always
responded to an adrenaline dump by shutting down.
 
I could pull my hand off a hot stove but I
couldn’t launch a smart comeback, lacking as I did the quick wit that came so
easily to everyone else.
 
My zingers
typically arrived hours later, on the bus or in bed or in the shower, when the
instant danger had subsided and I’d had time to think.
 
I always knew what to do, what to say, hours
later.
 
When the heat came on, though, I
forgot my lines.

And now Sensei
gave me a name for it:
Toothpaste
Syndrome
.
 
I suffered from a
syndrome
, not a personality defect.
 
Not a character defect.
 
A
syndrome.
 
Which, according to Sensei, I could control
with
ki
breathing.
 
This consisted of deep, controlled breaths
where you filled your lungs to capacity and released the air in a slow
exhalation that left your body relaxed and energized.
 
Concentrate on the air, he said.
 
Focus on air, focus on breath, and as the
body relaxes so does the mind.
 
The
toothpaste remains in the tube.

Sitting before the
microphone on a soundstage twenty-two years later, I tried to engage in
ki
breathing.
 
As soon as I stepped into the room and saw
the lights and microphones and headphones and the coffee cups and the
computers, I suddenly understood that in a matter of minutes a powerful
transmitter would broadcast my every stutter, stumble and mistake to thousands
of listeners.
 
Not just in Alamance County, but as far as the AM waves would
reach.

“Ever been on the
air before?”

Billy Horton, the
host of AM 1110’s Alamance Talks, sat in one of the chairs before a single
desktop computer.
 
He looked exactly as
Tom Spicer had described him; fat and old. He had a head of messy gray hair
shot through with white.
 
His body
overflowed the edges of the chair, drooping towards the ground like the wax of
a melting candle in the same way as the lower half of his face hung below his
chin.
 
Some of his hair had migrated from
his head to other places, and remnants of it grew in his ears and his
nose.
 
He’s fat and old,
Tom had said.
And
he’s a son of a bitch.
 
If you want to
punch him in the face at some point during the program, do it.
 
I’ll post your bail
.

During Tom’s
unsuccessful run as the Democratic candidate for the state Senate in 2010,
Billy had run a segment every weekday evening called Stupid Things Tom Spicer
Says, culled from Tom’s statements to the press and the myriad closing arguments
he’d made in Superior Court over the years.
 
During the run, Billy came to be known in our office as The Fat
Satan.
 
Consequently, when I entered the
studio, I walked in expecting horns and a tail, or at least a forked
tongue.
 
I found none of that.

“No,” I said.
 
This came out unsteadily, which alarmed
me.
 
The program hadn’t even started yet,
and I had already mangled the simplest word in the English language.
 
What would happen when I had to say my name?

“It ain’t no big
thing,” Billy said with a chuckle.
 
“Most
of the time, hardly anybody’s out there.
 
My wife don’t even listen no more.”

Not true in my
case.
 
I could count on Allie tuning in,
and Abby, too.
 
Abby’s friends and their
parents.
 
Everybody at the firm.
 
Every lawyer who knew me.
 
All of my clients, past and present.
 
Every man and woman in broadcast range who
had ever worried about a home invasion but read in the newspaper that Kevin
Swanson had foiled one.
 
Six months
later, the community still basked in the warmth of one of those rare occasions
when the good guys had won.
 
And they
would all listen tonight.

“We’re on in
thirty seconds,” said the engineer, a young intern from one of the Greensboro colleges.
 
Unlike his boss, he was rail-thin and boasted
a head of shaggy, Beatle-esque brown hair.
 
Billy had introduced him as Dylan, or maybe William.
 
I hadn’t really been paying attention, so his
name had sailed in and out through the same ears as his college.

“Remember what I
told you,” said Craig Montero from a seat in the corner.
 
He had insisted on coming to supervise me, he
said.
 
To make sure I behaved
myself.
 
“Try to imagine what a
well-adjusted family man in his mid-thirties would say and channel him.
 
You say anything crazy, I’m cutting you off.”

“Just be yourself
and don’t say any cuss words,” Billy added.
 
“You’ll do fine.”

“Back on in ten,”
said Dylan or William.

Everyone fell
silent.
 
Billy cleared his throat.

“Five…four…three…two…one.”

And I went live.

“Welcome back,
ladies and gentlemen, you’re listening to Alamance Talks, the voice of
conservatism in Alamance
County.
 
I am, of course and as always, Billy
Horton.
 
I’m in here tonight with a very
special person, a man who needs no introduction
 
because every one of us knows him, likes him and
wants to be
him—a man whose index finger did more for society in
five seconds than most men do with both hands their entire lives—Kevin
Swanson.
 
Good evening, Kevin.”

I opened my
mouth.
 
A tumbleweed fell out, but
recognizable English words followed it.
 
“Good evening, Billy.”

“Now, just in case
there’s somebody out there who spent the last six months in a coma, Kevin here
is a lawyer from Burlington, but in February of this year, Kevin used a
privately-owned firearm—an AK-47, am I correct?”

I nodded.
 
Then, remembering nobody could see this on
the radio, I said, “Yes.”

I looked to Craig
for approval.
 
His features unreadable,
he nodded once.

“Kevin used an
AK-47, people—a weapon your liberal opposition thinks common folk shouldn’t
have—to defend his home against two criminal punks who came over from Durham to make trouble here in Alamance County.
 
Bad move, guys, bad, bad move.
 
Kevin, if you could…tell us what happened.”

I swallowed.
 
Billy looked at me expectantly.
 
Craig looked at me warily.
 
On the wall, the ON AIR sign glowed bright
orange as the dead air crackled before my lips.

Ki
breath, I remembered.

“Well,” I began in
a voice a good register or two higher than normal. “It started in my
basement.
 
I fell asleep on the couch
watching a Carolina
basketball game.”

“Go Tarheels,”
Billy interjected.

“Yes,” I
said.
 
“Go Heels.”

And I told my
story.
 
I told it without freezing up,
without shaking, without crying—and without boasting.
 
The whole time, Craig watched me like a
parent watching his three-year-old pour milk over cereal, waiting for me to
drop the jug and make a huge mess.
 
But I
didn’t make a huge mess; I got through it, and when I reached the point in the
story where I shot the

(
vermin)

 
(rats)

(snakes)

(roaches)

intruders, I
paused.

Shooting human beings
, Craig had told me
earlier,
is supposed to be difficult no
matter who they are
.
 
I want you to pause a little bit like you’re
having trouble with the memory.
 
Sigh.
 
Pretend it bothers you.

 
“And
then I pulled the trigger,” I said.

“And then you
pulled the trigger,” Billy echoed.

“Yes.
 
And…”

Another
pause.
 
Craig raised his chin as he
stared at me.

And then I stood over their bodies and I
grinned at them and I pulled the trigger again to make sure they were dead, but
I had fired every round in the magazine and so the hammer fell on an empty
chamber, which sucked because I’d really just gotten started.

“…and that’s it,”
I finished.
 
“That’s where it ends.
 
My wife called the police, they came out, and
they took it from there.”

“Wasn’t much to
take after you got done with them, though, was there?”

“No,” I said.
 
“There wasn’t.”

“Kevin, I’d like
to open the phones to our listeners, if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” I said.

“All right,
then.
 
Our first caller is…Randy from Burlington.
 
Randy, good evening.”

I actually did
mind.
 
I’d feared the call-ins the most;
I could prepare myself for an interview with Billy Horton, but I had no idea
what any of these callers would say.
 
They could ask me anything.
 
I’d
have to think on my feet, never my strong suit.
 
Preparation, strategy, planning, yes, yes and yes, but spontaneity?
 
Decisive reaction?
 
No.
 
And no.

Ki
breath.
 
The Mind of No Expectation.

The only people who listen to Billy Horton’s
show,
Craig had assured me
, are
right-wingnuts who are probably going to drool when you talk about shooting these
two guys.
 
Nobody’s going to ask any hard
questions.
 
They’re just going to call in
and tell you how awesome you are.

And Randy from Burlington did just that.

“I just want to
say that…uhh…good shooting.
 
That’s it,
right there, that’s how you do it.
 
Good
friggin’ job.
 
You’re our hero, man!”

The next caller
wanted to praise me, too.
 
As did the
next.
 
And the next.
 
In fact, I didn’t get a single hard question
the whole time, right up until Billy clicked the mouse on his computer and
said, “Looks like we got time for one more caller.
 
Thomas from Mebane, you’re on.”

A moment of
silence.
 
In the corner, Craig
frowned.
 
Billy reached for his mouse,
but then Thomas from Mebane spoke.

“Good evening,
Kevin.”

Devoid of emotion
and accent, the voice possessed a flat quality so different from the other
callers that every red light in my head suddenly blazed to life and I thought,
here it is.
 
Here is where somebody asks me something hard and I screw everything
up.
 
Here is where I come out looking
stupid.

 
“Good
evening, Thomas,” I replied.
 
“Uh…how are
you doing tonight?”

“Great.
 
But I have an observation or two.”

Craig leaned
forward in his chair.
 
Billy looked from
his computer screen to me to the computer again, then back to me.
 
Dylan or William just blinked.

“You killed two
burglars,” said Thomas from Mebane.
 
“Bravo.
 
You must be very proud.”

I cleared my
throat to give my mind time to get unstuck. “I don’t know if
proud
is the right word.”