The thing is, me and Judge had never gotten along, and here’s why. He always saw things in black-and-white, which is maybe what judges are supposed to do. Me, I saw things how they really are: not black-and-white but a hundred shades in between.
I walked outside and stood on the porch. Didn’t want him in the house, which, frankly, was worse than the yard, Lincoln being a bit of a hoarder. But like I said, I was working on it, honest to God. “Judge.”
“Kenny.”
“What can I do for you?”
Judge stood there in the afternoon sun in his black suit and shiny shoes that probably cost more than two weeks’ worth of groceries for regular people. He was wearing sunglasses and he tipped his head down just a little to show me his gray eyes. “Well, Kenny. I suspect you know why I’m here.”
“Someone pressing charges?”
Judge shook his head and used his toe to nudge at a witch ball that had rolled off its stand and lay beside the walkway. “No, nobody’s pressing charges, at least not yet. Good people in this town, Kenny. You can be grateful for that. They see you as a hero. At least they did, before yesterday. But.”
He paused there, and I thought, I bet this was something they taught you in law school: to pause at the right time. To make people wait so that what you said next had more heft to it.
“You pulled a gun at a diner, Kenny. On a Saturday. There were children, old folks, babies. People are scared, and they should be. They’re worried about what might happen next time.”
“It won’t happen again.”
“You can’t be sure of that, son. You know that as much as I do.”
It made me mad, him calling me “son,” like we were friends, like he cared, because he didn’t. The midday sun beat down hard, and I sort of liked the idea of him standing there roasting in his black suit. I was hot in my old T-shirt and shorts and no shoes, so I was sure he was uncomfortable. But I’d grown used to the heat, the way it could take it out of you—that’s one good thing that had happened over there—so I just stood there and didn’t say anything, thinking about how hot he probably was.
Judge pulled a fancy handkerchief from inside his coat and blotted his forehead. “People are saying maybe it’d be good for you to take some time away,” he said. “Talk to someone. Professionals.”
“People?”
“Like I said, Kenny, folks are willing to forgive you for what happened, but they want to know it won’t happen again. That you’re getting help.”
“You mean like at a hospital. For crazy people.”
“There’s a VA hospital up in Bridgeport. I’ve already made a call, and I can take you there myself. You pack up a little bag, we can go right now.”
And Judge could take credit for solving everything, for helping the poor wounded warrior. He’d tell everyone how he came out to the house and talked me into going, talked me off the ledge. How brave, people would say. Oh Judge, you could’ve been killed, who knows what might’ve happened. Judge, who didn’t know the first thing about war or what it took from you, because he was well connected and had dodged the draft for Vietnam. While Lincoln’s husband, Uncle Bill, was squatting in a ditch, earning his own nightmares about burning villages and little children with skin on fire, Judge was sitting in a college library somewhere, learning about the Constitution. No, sir. Judge wasn’t taking me anywhere.
I shook my head. “Don’t think so, Judge.”
He took off his sunglasses and wiped his brow with the sleeve of his black suit. Judge with his changeable gray eyes that could go from sad and sympathetic to mean and disapproving in a matter of seconds. Right now the eyes were kind, but that was probably fake. Something else he’d picked up in law school, probably, an ability to change his face like that. “This is a mistake, son. And what I worry is that someone’s gonna get hurt.”
A breeze picked up and the wind chimes on the porch began to clang and sing, two different sets, one made of colorful glass and the other made of tubes of bamboo, two different tunes, dissonant. I was done talking to Judge, but I didn’t mind letting him stand there in the heat, so I pretended maybe I was thinking it over. I rubbed my thumb along a piece of paint that was peeling up from the railing. And finally, after he’d taken his jacket off and loosened his tie, I shook my head. “Can’t do it.”
“Well, I’m sorry it has to come to this, Kenny, but you need help and you’re refusing to get it. Like your aunt in that way, I suppose. Apple don’t fall far.”