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“I was an angry young man, you see. Childhood abuse left and right. My mom had more stepfathers than I can remember the names of and most of them liked to talk with their hands.
“So by the time I was sixteen I had what you’d call anger issues. I lashed out a lot, I hurt people, I was an all around unpleasant person to be around. Not only did I never back down from a fight, I sought them out. I spent so much time in the hospital the nurses joked about naming a wing after me.
“Violence was the only friend I had. Hate and anger my only comfort.
“Then my mother died and that kind of snapped me out of this destructive cycle. Gave me something else to focus on. Gave me a little brother to take care of, lest he enter the system. That was not a fate I was prepared to let Jamie suffer. But I couldn’t be his legal guardian if I was spending half my time either hospitalized or in jail for assault.
“So, almost overnight, grief and responsibility accomplished what no amount of ass whipping could, they turned me away from anger, hate, and violence.
“But in the twenty years since, I’ve always thought of myself as a violent guy. A cruel man. A person who was one wrong comment away from beating another man to near death. Someone who solved his problems with violence first and last. Someone with hate and anger as his only, cold, companions.
“It wasn’t anything I thought about ‘out loud’ so to speak, it was just something I knew down to my core. It was a fact of life. Water is wet, the sky is blue, I’m an angry, hateful, violent man. It was just a grim reality.
“And then I found the mouse in my bathtub. I’d killed many mice in my teenage years. We were poor and they were everywhere, so it was nothing for me to crush one’s fragile little skull under my boot. I even enjoyed it a little. So when I found the mouse trapped in my bathtub a couple months ago, his fate was sealed. Poor bastard must have been walking along the edge, trying to get from one counter over to the other counter. Must have smelled something attractive over there, maybe Stacy’s strawberry shampoo, I dunno. But he slipped, fell into the bathtub, and couldn’t scramble his way back out.
“Thus his fate was sealed.
“Except that as I stared down at this frightened, pathetic little rodent ... I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill it. There was absolutely no desire to hurt it. I was shocked. Here I was a violent man who’d done far worse to people and animals ... but now I couldn’t even harm disgusting disease filled vermin that’d violated the second most intimate part of your house, with your bed being the most.
“But I couldn’t talk myself into it. So I scooped him up into a bucket, carried him the two blocks down to the nearest restaurant, and tossed him bucket and all into its dumpster.
“The incident wouldn’t leave my mind.
“I couldn’t kill a mouse. More, I had no desire to kill it. That changed everything about how I thought about myself. I’d changed these past twenty years, somehow without realizing it. I was no longer the violent, hate filled, angry monster I spent my teenage years being.
“Then last week I walked in on my girlfriend Stacy having sex with my best friend Anthony.
“I expected to be furious. The old me would have been. The old me would have been shaking with rage. And violent, of course. But I’d satisfied myself that I was no longer violent. So what shocked me this time was that I felt no anger or hate towards either of them. The whole ten minutes I spent packing my bags while Stacy cried and pleaded with me to talk it out and Anthony begged me blame him and not her I don’t think my heartrate went above 70.
“I was calm, peaceful even. Don’t get me wrong, I was hurt, devastated. And I’ve been severely depressed ever since. But I never got angry. You’d have to have known me back when I was a teenager to appreciate how shocking that was for me.
“It made me realize it’d been years since I’d raised my voice in anger. And I couldn’t remember the last time I hated someone. Truly hated their guts.
“This was unreal to me. Somehow, someway, over the past twenty years everything I thought I knew about myself, everything I believed, had changed. I’m a different person. A better person.
“And I’m not sure how it happened. Or exactly when.”
Jackson finally stopped talking and finished his beer.
Raisin produced a twenty from his wallet and held it up to attract their waitress. “Two more drinks.” He said when she rushed over. Then he regarded Jackson warmly. “Isn’t it obvious? You said it yourself, grief and responsibility. They changed your heart. For the better in this case.”
“But how could I not know?”
“How could you know? Until you faced such a situation, how could you?”
Jackson regarded Raisin, one of his oldest friends, warmly. “So you haven’t noticed a change in me recently? You think I’ve been like this for a long time?”
Their beers came before Raisin could answer. The younger man grinned at Jackson and swallowed half his drink in one gulp. “I think you’re asking the wrong questions, my friend.”
“What questions should I be asking?”
Raisin finished his drink and leaned forward so he could lower his voice. “You have always portrayed yourself to Stacy and Anthony as a violent man, because that is what you believed yourself to be.”
“Yeah, of course.”
“And the day you came home from lunch to catch them was the day of the week you always came home from lunch?”
“Sure, every Tuesday. ... Stacy forgot what day of the week it was.”
“Perhaps. Yes, I’m sure you’re right.”
Raisin sat there, grinning at Jackson, until he finally relented. “What are you implying?”
“I imply nothing, my friend. Merely that two people who had every reason to believe you’d react violently to discovering them were quite ... careless ... in their ‘secret’ betrayal.”
Jackson, lost in thought, said nothing.
“But I have to go. I need to revisit another friend of mine tonight and she’s due to get off her work shift within the half hour.”
“Sure.” Jackson said distantly, barely noticing when Raisin left the table.
***
Jackson had known he was going to be plastered so he’d walked to the bar. So an hour later he began the half mile trek back to his place.
A dark figure was waiting for him at the lamp post next to the sidewalk that bordered the bar parking lot, their identity shielded by the light being directly overheard so as to shroud their face in shadow.
Jackson widened his travel arc so he’d be almost out of reach of the figure when he passed it.
“Jackson?” It was a pitiful, tear filled voice.
Stacy’s voice.
Jackson stopped several feet from her, but was in too much shock to speak.
Stacy stepped out, closer to him and at such an angle that the street lamp illuminated her brutally beaten face. From the looks of it, someone had really worked her over. She was also walking with a hitch that suggested at least one broken rib.
“I know I have no right to ask you this, but I need your help.”
“Looks like you need the police’s help.” His words were harsh but his tone was mild.
As shocked and disgusted as he was, Jackson felt no anger. His heartbeat was a steady 65.
“Three of Anthony’s friends have already said they’ll swear he was with them all night. You know them, Rod, Justin, and Davis. And he used gloves so his hands are clean.”
“Boxing gloves?” Jackson wasn’t trying to be funny, but the image of Anthony lacing up boxing gloves while Stacy just sat there and waited came unbidden to his mind.
“What? No! His winter gloves! Jackson, what’s wrong with you? I know I hurt you, and I’m so sorry for that, but I thought you at least loved me!”
Raisin’s questions were ringing through Jackson’s mind much louder than her pathetic pleas.
“Stacy, just drop it. I know what you’re trying to do and it’s not going to work. I’m not the monster you thought I was. The monster I thought I was. I’m just ... not. Not anymore. So you and Anthony are wasting your time trying to provoke me.”
Jackson walked past her and headed home.
“What are you talking about?!” Stacy called out shrilly.
He kept walking.
“Jackson!”
He kept walking.
“You’re crazy! You know that?!”
Maybe. But he wasn’t wrong about what as going on. Raisin had been right.
Stacy, who hadn’t followed him, began openly and helplessly sobbing.
Jackson ignored it.
Raisin was always right.
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