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Trig
1
March, and the weather’s miserable.
The Straight Circle meets in the basement of the Buell Street Methodist Church every weekday from four to five PM. It’s technically a Narcotics Anonymous meeting, but plenty of alcoholics also attend; Straight Circle is usually packed. It’s calendar spring, has been for almost a week, but in Buckeye City—sometimes known as the Second Mistake on the Lake, Cleveland being the first—actual spring comes late. When the meeting lets out, a fine drizzle is hanging in the air. By nightfall it will thicken and turn to sleet.
Two or three dozen attendees gather near the butt can by the entrance and light up, because freebasing nicotine is one of two addictions left to them, and after an hour in the basement they need that hit. Others, the majority, turn right and head for The Flame, a coffee shop a block down. Coffee is the other addiction they can still indulge.
One man is stopped by Reverend Mike, who also attends this meeting and many others on a regular basis; the Rev is a recovering opioid addict. In meetings (he attends two or three every day, weekends included) he introduces himself by saying, “I love God, but otherwise I’m just another fiend.” This always gets nods and murmurs of approval, although some oldtimers find him a bit tiresome. They call him Big Book Mike for his habit of quoting (verbatim) long passages from the AA handbook.
Now the Rev gives the man a soul shake. “Not used to seeing you around these parts, Trig. You must live upstate.”
Trig doesn’t but doesn’t say so. He has his reasons for going to meetings out of the city where recognition is unlikely, but today was an emergency: hit a meeting or drink, and after taking the first drink, all choices would be gone. He knows this from personal experience.
Mike puts a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “In your share, Trig, you sounded upset.”
Trig is a childhood nickname. It’s how he introduces himself at the start of meetings. Even at out-of-town AA and NA, he rarely speaks other than that initial identification. In tag-team meetings he mostly says, “I just want to listen today,” but this afternoon he raised his hand.
“I’m Trig, and I’m an alcoholic.”
“Hi, Trig,” the group responded. They were in the basement instead of the church, but there’s still that revival meeting call-and-response. Straight Circle is, in fact, the Church of the Crashed and Burned.
“I just want to say that I’m pretty shaken up today. I don’t want to say any more, but I had to share that much. That’s all I’ve got.”
There were murmurs ofThanks, TrigandHang in thereandKeep coming back.
Now Trig tells the Rev he’s upset because he found out he lost someone he knew. The Rev asks for more details—pries for them, actually—but all Trig will say is that the person he’s mourning died in lockup.
“I’ll pray for him,” the Rev says.
“Thanks, Mike.”
Trig starts away, but not toward The Flame; he walks three blocks and climbs the steps to the public library. He needs to sit and think about the man who died on Saturday. Who was murdered on Saturday. Was shanked on Saturday, in a prison shower.
He finds a vacant chair in the Periodicals Room and picks up a copy of the local paper, just to have something to hold. He opens it to a page-four story about a lost dog recovered by Jerome Robinson of the Finders Keepers Agency. There’s a picture of a smiling and handsomeyoung Black man with his arm around some kind of big dog, maybe a Labrador Retriever. The headline is one word:FOUND!
Trig stares through it, thinking.
His real name was in this same paper three years ago, but no one has made the connection between that man and the one who attends out-of-town recovery meetings. Why would they, even if there had also been a picture of him (which there wasn’t)? That man had a slightly graying beard and wore contacts. This version is clean-shaven, wears glasses, and looks younger (quitting the booze will do that). He likes the idea of being someone new. It also weighs on him. That is the paradox he lives with. That, and thinking about his father, which he does more and more frequently these days.
Let it go, he thinks.Forget it.
That is on March 24th. Forgetting lasts just thirteen days.
2
On April 6th, Trig sits in the same Periodicals Room chair, staring at the feature story in today’s Sunday paper. The headline doesn’t just speak, it shouts.BUCKEYE BRANDON: MURDERED PRISON INMATE MAY HAVE BEEN INNOCENT!Trig has read the feature, and listened to Buckeye Brandon’s podcast three times. It was the self-proclaimed “outlaw of the airwaves” who broke the story, and according to Buckeye, there was no “may have been” about it. Is the story true? Trig thinks that, given the source, it must be.
What you’re thinking of doing is crazy, he tells himself. Which is true.
If you do it, you can never go back, he tells himself. That’s also true.
Once you start, you must keep on, he tells himself, and that’s truest of all. His father’s mantra:You have to push through to the bitter end. No flinching, no turning away.
And… what would it be like? What would it be like forhimto do such things?
He needs to consider some more. Not just to get clarity on what he’s thinking of doing, but to put a space of time between what hefound out courtesy of Buckeye Brandon (also this feature article) and the acts—thehorrors—he may commit, so no one will make the connection.