Trigger Finger (27 page)

He looked away
from me again.

“Where am I?”
 
I cried.
 
“Doc?
 
Can you please explain this
to me, because I don’t…”

“I’m not a doctor,
Kevin,” he said.
 
He looked at me with
sad compassion, and it sickened me because I didn’t want anybody looking at me
like that.
 
Ever.

“I never said I
was a doctor, okay?
 
We’re in your
doctor’s office, yes; he’s allowed us to use it so that we can get away from
all the hooting and hollering out there. I’m a prosecutor.
 
Dr. Koenig is your psychologist here at
Magnolia Plantation.
 
My name is Daniel
Wheeler.
 
I’m the Assistant District
Attorney working on your family’s case.”

“What kind of case
is it?
 
It’s a…a
rape
case?”

He shook his head.

“Not just that,”
he said.
 
“Rape and double murder.”
 

44.

He said: Bobby is
dead, too.
 
Dead for several years now,
the victim of a roadside bomb in Iraq.
 
He said: your wife is dead, your daughter is
dead, your brother is dead.
 
Kate, she’s
still alive.
 
She’s your legal guardian.

But Bobby couldn’t
have been dead, because he came to see me that night.
 
I lay in the bed, drugged, and saw him
standing by my window.
 
He must have
entered through that same window, because they told me that I stayed now in a
lockdown ward—like Brandon Cross, and his roommate Kenny.

Guess where?
 
Ta
daaaa!
 
Magnolia Plantation.

“They want me to
testify,” I said.

Bobby
snorted.
 
“Yeah, I guess they would.”

“And I can’t.”

“Yes, you can.”

“No, Bobby, I’m
telling you, I can’t.
 
It doesn’t seem
real to me, everything they’re saying, but I think that if I have to get up
there and say all this shit that it’s going to become very real very quickly
and…”

“You know why I
really joined the Marines?”
 
He
interrupted.

I fell silent.

“I joined,” he
said, “because the recruiter said it was hard as shit.
 
Said out of all the services, Marine Corps
basic training is the hardest.
 
Some
dudes can’t make it in the Marines.
 
Might make it other places, but not there.
 
Because the Marines are hard.”

He smiled out the
window.
 
I wondered what could possibly
make anybody smile in a world like this, but then I understood that the things
he saw didn’t exist on the other side of the glass.
 
They existed somewhere else entirely.

“Greatest thing
about finishing Basic,” he said, “wasn’t the uniform or the benefits or the
chance to shoot machine guns and throw grenades.
 
Wasn’t even the right to walk around knowing
I was a Marine, saying I was a Marine, being a Marine.
 
The greatest thing was knowing that I could
do absolutely anything in this world.
 
Because I could.
 
I said, I made
it through Parris Island.
 
They didn’t wash me out.
 
They didn’t run me off.
 
And now I can do anything.
 
Impossible doesn’t exist anymore.
 
Not for me.
 
This world bends to my will.
 
This
world does what I tell it to do.”

I opened my
mouth.
 
I said: “I’m not a Marine.”

“But you’re a
Swanson,” he said.
 
“And you could have
been a Marine.
 
You’re a hard son of a
bitch, Kevin.
 
Impossible doesn’t exist
for you either.
 
You can do
anything.
 
You hear what I’m saying?
 
Anything
.”

He looked back at
me, still smiling.

“A lot of guys
washed out,” he continued.
 
“I almost
did.
 
There was this one point, when I’m
down on my face doing pushups with fire ants running all over my goddamned
hands and arms, but I don’t even feel them biting me because my chest is
cramping up.
 
There’s this drill
instructor standing right over me screaming about what a pussy I am and I
think, he’s right.
 
I’m not cut out for
this.
 
I’m never going to make it in the
Marine Corps, I should just quit right now.
 
I can’t handle it.
 
This is my
reality.
 
This is who I am.”

“So what
happened?”
 
I asked.
 
“Apparently you made it.”

The smile
broadened.

“That D.I. called
me a pussy one too many times,” he said.
 
“And my reality changed.
 
I said,
fuck this.
 
I’m not washing out.
 
Every last one of you motherfuckers can kiss
my ass.
 
Because I’m going to do this
thing.”

He looked out the
window again, his smile fading.
 
He
looked thoughtful now, older.

“You can change
your reality, Kevin,” he said.
 
“You can
be anything you want to be.
 
You’ve just
got to tell everyone and everything around you to kiss your ass, because you
don’t accept this.
 
When it all comes
down, you make your own rules.”

45.

“We’ve got this in
the bag,” Dr. Koenig said on the way back to Magnolia Plantation after I’d
given my testimony.
 
I understood he
wasn’t Dr. Koenig, but I’d tried out Daniel Wheeler and it just didn’t seem to
fit.
 
So he remained, in my mind, a psychotherapist.
 
“You did great.
 
I’m in awe of you.
 
Bobby would have been very, very proud.”

I took a drug
called clonazepam, which allowed me to testify.
 
By the time we made it back to the car afterwards, I’d forgotten almost
all of it.
 
I took that as a blessing.
 
The drug, an abnormally large dose for today,
dragged clouds across my ability to feel.
 
Eventually, it would stop working and I would need something that only
came in needles.
 
For now, though, I
could walk and speak like anyone else.

I rode with my
head resting against the window glass, but at the last stoplight before
Magnolia Plantation, a question occurred to me, and I asked it of Dr. Koenig.

“Where was I?”

“Pardon?”

“I guess I went to
the hospital after the cops or whoever found me down in the basement.
 
Where did I go after that?
 
Did I go straight to the booby hatch or
what?”

The light turned
green.
 
He began to drive.

But he didn’t
answer.

“Well?”

A slight shake of
the head, a pursing of the lips.

“No,” he said.

“No, I didn’t go
straight to the booby hatch?”

“No.”

“Okay…so where was
I?
 
Did I go home?”

“I don’t know,” he
said.

“What do you mean,
you don’t know?”

He slowed down to
pull into the circular driveway.
 
“I
mean, I don’t know,” he said.
 
“Nobody
does.
 
That’s one thing that’s really
never been resolved in this case.
 
You
weren’t released from the hospital; you just left.
 
And six months ago, we found you wandering on
the road…”

“In Glen Raven,” I
said.
 
“On Highway 87.”

Just like Brandon
Cross.

“Yes.”

He paused,
breathing through his nose.
 
I recognized
a
ki
breath as he brought the car to
a stop.

“You had leaves
all over what remained of your clothes,” he said.
 
“You had apparently just emerged from the
woods.
 
But as far as where you were
before that…”

He trailed off
into a shrug.

“…is anybody’s
guess.
 
When you figure it out, give me a
call. Because I’d really like to know.”
 

I woke up in my
room late that night; exactly when, I couldn’t say.
 
I enjoyed a private room roughly the size of
the one in which I had lived in Hinton-James Hall my first year at Carolina, only this one
didn’t smell like sweat and gym socks.
 
No cinderblocks, either, just smooth, white drywall.
 
And air conditioning.
 
When I opened my eyes, I found myself face-up
to the ceiling, staring at a solitary vent that blew cool air across my face.

The room was
sparsely furnished, with only a wardrobe, a nightstand and a single chair
accompanying the twin bed in which I lay.
 
The doorknob was of the heavy industrial variety; I doubted it would
open.
 
The staff remained concerned about
the possibility that I might disappear again, Dr. Koenig had told me—hence the
lockdown.
 
I had started out in a lower
security wing, but I had gotten out.
 
They always found me, eventually, sitting on that bench in the
courtyard.
 
But sometimes it took them
awhile, and they didn’t want to go through that every week, so I would remain
in lockdown for the foreseeable future.

My room must have
been easy to access from the outside, though, because when I rolled over on my
side, I found Allie sitting in the chair.
 
I sat straight up.

“What are you
doing here?”

“Good evening to
you, too.”

“What…what are you
doing here?”

She grinned.
 
She wore blue jeans and a simple purple
blouse beneath a black jacket.
 
Her hair
was full and healthy.
 
She didn’t look
dead.

How did she get in here?
 
Visiting hours are over and I’m in lockdown,
so how did she get in here?

“Aren’t you glad
to see me?”

“Uh, yeah, but…”

“But what?”

“But you’re dead.”

She pursed her
lips.
 
She looked up at the ceiling.

“You’re dead,” I
said again.
 
“I’m deluded.”

“Funny,” she said,
“I don’t feel dead.”

“But Dr. Koenig…”

“Dr. Koenig is the
worst quack in the State of North
Carolina,” she said.
 
“He’s bad.
 
Very bad.
 
I am going to kill Tom Spicer for that
referral.
 
Seriously.”

I swung my legs
off the edge of the bed, frowning.
 
My
feet touched the hardwood floor.
 
I felt
its cool solidity.
 
Allie reached out and
took my hands; hers were warm.
 
Real.

“But I testified,”
I said.
 
“I remember…”

“You don’t
remember a thing,” she interrupted me.
 
“You remember what you were told by your quack of a shrink.
 
You can listen to him, or you can listen to
me.
 
I want you to listen to me, Kevin,
but you need to listen very closely.”

Ki
breath.

I listened.

“There was no
trial.
 
There was no rape.
 
There was no murder.
 
Nobody’s dead except for Leon Pinnix and
Trayshaun Ramseur.
 
They’re dead because
you killed them.”

I blinked.
 
She reached into the cavernous maw of a purse
she produced from underneath the chair.
 
She pulled out another copy of
Southern
Rifleman
.
 
My issue.

“Read it,” she
said.
 
“Read your story in the Hero of
the Month column.
 
Go on.”

I took the
magazine in my hands.
 
The slick, glossy
cover was in perfect condition save the deformation wrought by Allie doubling
it over to fit in her purse.
 
I flipped
to the back.
 
I flipped on the lamp
beside my bed and stared at the words.
 
I
read them exactly as they appeared.

“Kevin Swanson, an
attorney with the law firm of Carwood, Allison, Spicer and York, P.A., in Burlington, North
Carolina, successfully defended his home when Leon
Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur gained entry through an unlocked window in the
basement.”

Allie smiled.
 
The lamp hadn’t changed her appearance
any.
 
Still there.
 
Still real.

“Pinnix and
Ramseur attacked Mr. Swanson, who had been watching a basketball game in his
basement man-cave, by striking him over the head with a softball bat before
leaving him for dead and proceeding upstairs.”

I stopped reading.

“See?”
 
She said.
 
“You did it.
 
You’re a double Hero
of the Month.”

I stared at the
words on the page.
 
I closed the magazine
and rolled it into a tube.
 
I looked at
the end table upon which the lamp sat and squinted at the grain of the
wood.
 
No telltale black line around the
table’s edges; this appeared to be solid wood.

“What is all
this?”
 
I asked.

“You suffered a
nervous breakdown,” she said.
 
“You got
hit on the head, and that didn’t help any, but it wasn’t a very good
whack.
 
You’ve been deteriorating ever
since this happened, and you suffered a nervous breakdown because you couldn’t
get over how narrowly we escaped the exact fate that Dr. Koenig managed to
convince you was the truth.
 
And I
understand that.
 
It was a close call.”

“Why would Dr.
Koenig want to do that?”

“A form of
aversion therapy,” she replied.
 
“So he
said.
 
You were terrified of what could
have happened, so he thought it would be a good idea to take you through
it.
 
And show you that you could survive
it.
 
Let these fears run their course, he
said, so that Kevin can put them away.
 
I
went along with it because you seemed like such a wreck.
 
I wish I hadn’t.”

I looked down at
her hands.
 
They were soft,
delicate.
 
Like her face.

“It sounds so
elaborate,” I said.
 
“I mean…I
did
testify, which means this is…”

She rose suddenly,
and I stopped mid-sentence.
 
We locked
eyes and remained that way for a long moment.
 
I saw no fear in her eyes, but I knew she saw it in mine.
 
Dark waves rose and fell within me, a deep
and black seascape where nothing stayed level and a person could dive forever
and never reach bottom.
 
I thought of the
Bald Man, and I thought of golems, and I thought that maybe he wasn’t the only
one who could conjure things.

But I said none of
this.
 

“It’s over,” she
said.
 
“I’m taking you home.”

“Now?”

 
“You’re not in prison.
 
You’re not under an involuntary commitment.”

“Bobby’s not
dead?”
 
I asked.
 
“Wasn’t killed in the war like Koenig said?”

She laughed.
 
The sound washed over me like a warm shower
in the middle of January.

“Very much alive,”
she said.
 
“And he’s at the house with
Kate.
 
I told them I was bringing you
home tonight, and they wanted to be there.
 
Bobby bought a case of beer.
 
It’s
probably half gone by now, but if we hurry you might still get one or two.”

“Abby?”

“Right now, she’s
at home sleeping,” Allie said.
 
“Unless
she’s gotten up and gotten on her phone again.”

My head, still
heavy from whatever drugs they’d given me, felt heavy.
 
A basketball perched atop a drinking straw;
my neck felt weak from the weight of it.
 
I let my eyes wander around the room and they came to rest upon the
nightstand beside my bed.
 
It looked like
oak or walnut or some other heavily grained type of wood, but the moonlight
reflected off a flat, smooth surface.
 
Veneer
, I thought.
 
It’s
not real oak, or walnut.
 
It’s basically
a big sticker some Chinese guy slapped over a hunk of particle board.
 
The furniture equivalent of a Chicken
McNugget.
 

I opened my mouth
to comment on this, but Allie held up a finger.
 
“Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t say what
you were about to say,” she said.
 
“You’re going to need to be careful about the questions you ask from now
on.
 
Places you look.
 
Don’t pick at things anymore, Kevin.
 
When you get to a good place, there comes a
time to stop asking questions.
 
To just
accept what’s in front of you and
enjoy
it
.
 
Because if you don’t want to
enjoy it, honey, I can go away.
 
You
don’t have to come with me.”

She studied me and
cocked her head to one side.

“Do you want to
come with me, Kevin?
 
Or do you want to
stay here and wake up in a morning in a world where pretty much everyone you
love is dead?”

I looked back at
the nightstand.

And then I hopped
out of bed.
 

“Let’s go,” I
said.

“Hold on.
 
There’s something we need to do first.”

She reached into
her purse again and pulled out an empty Mason jar.
 
She reached in again and pulled out a freezer
bag full of sand.
 
Not for the first time
in my life, I reflected that she probably could have hidden a dead body in that
purse.

“I have a friend
on the Arts Council,” she said, “who practices nontraditional medicine.
 
Holistic healing.
 
Herbs, relaxation techniques, things like
that.”

She set the Mason jar
on the nightstand and unscrewed the lid.
 
It made a metallic click as she set the lid down beside it.

“She suggested
that I have you do this,” she said.
 
“Here, take the bag.”

“Why?”

“Just take the
bag.”

I did.
 
She motioned for me to sit back down and I
did that, too.