Chapter 6 Benji
The blood takes three washes to come out of my hair.
I’m watching dirty water circle the drain and thinking about how blood doesn’t wash off the way you think it will.
In movies the shower scene is dramatic, the water turning red, the symbolic cleansing.
In real life it’s just standing under weak water pressure scrubbing matted hair with cheap shampoo while the water runs a brownish pink that doesn’t look like anything from a movie.
I’m still finding blood in places I didn’t know it could reach. Behind my ears. In the creases of my elbows where his body pressed against mine when he fell backward onto me. On one of my eyebrows, dried and flaking when I touch it.
The biohazard bag is sitting on the kitchen floor where I dropped it when I walked in.
Inside that bag are the white jeans, the silk shirt, the rings I pulled off my shaking fingers, all of it soaked in his blood and sealed up tight.
The nurse wanted to throw my clothes in the trash, but I held onto that bag. Now I want it gone.
After getting out of the shower, I pick up the bag.
I take out my rings and put them into a container in my suitcase.
It feels wrong to wash his blood off them.
I carry the bag outside and leave it on the landing.
The night air hits my wet skin and I shiver even with the muggy heat. In the morning, I’ll throw it away.
I go back inside to the bathroom. The face looking back from the mirror is someone I don’t know. Not because of the bruise already going purple on my cheekbone or the butterfly strips on my lip. Those are just signs of physical damage that I understand. I’ve been beat up before.
What I don’t recognize is behind my eyes, a dullness that wasn’t there hours ago when I stood in this same spot, put on eyeliner and told the mirror I was stunning.
I’m sure as fuck not stunning now.
The boy who used to stand in front of his mother’s bathroom mirror, practicing smiles until he found the one that hid the sadness, is standing here now without a single smile left.
I change into shorts and a T-shirt and lie on the bed.
The AC is making that loud grinding noise that never stops.
The sheets smell like fabric softener and the pillow is flat enough that the mattress pushes through it.
I don’t sleep. My brain won’t let me. The night just keeps replaying itself behind my eyes.
Sheila leaning toward me, her hand on the bar.
Those boys have been drinking since three o’clock.
Let me call you a cab. On me.
Benji. I’m asking you one more time.
She tried to give me three exits.
Three times she tried to save me from myself while I sat on that stool, smiled and stayed. Because I chose pride and this time someone else paid for it.
I pick up my phone and text Dante.
Benji: I’m home. I’m okay. He’s alive. Spinal cord injury. They’re planning to transfer him to Tallahassee once he’s stable enough.
Dante responds immediately.
Dante: Spinal cord???
Benji: They don’t know if it’s permanent. There’s swelling. They won’t know until it goes down.
Dante: OMG. Benji.
Benji: It’s bad. I know.
Dante: You need to try to sleep.
Benji: There’s no way.
Dante: Are you even going to try?
Benji: No.
Dante: I didn’t think so. Call me first thing in the morning. I’m still willing to come get you. Just say the word.
I put the phone on the nightstand and close my eyes. It doesn’t help. Every time I close them his blue eyes are right there, glancing at me over his shoulder a split-second before he stepped between me and the gun.
Eventually, the dark outside the window turns pink with sunrise. I sit up carefully, groaning from the pain in my ribs. My brain finally produces a useful thought. The detective. The young cop who brought me to the ER said a detective would reach out for my statement, but he never got my number.
There’s a detective somewhere in this town trying to build a case against four men for assault and the shooting of an officer. The primary victim and eyewitness is me, and nobody knows my phone number or where I’m staying.
I should go give my statement. It’s the one useful thing I can do right now.
I get dressed, call a rideshare to take me to pick up my car, and drive to the Bay County Sheriff’s Office.
It’s a tan building off the highway with a flat roof, an American flag and a lot full of cruisers.
I park and sit there for a minute, looking at the building where Mickey probably goes to work every day, wondering if he’ll ever walk through those doors again.
I take a breath and go inside. The lobby is government-clean. Fluorescent lights, tile floor, a counter with a deputy behind it who is on the phone. He holds up one finger. I wait. When he hangs up, he looks at me and his eyes do a quick scan of my bruised face, the butterfly strips, the split lip.
“Can I help you?” he asks.
“I need to give a statement. About last night. The shooting at Big Tex’s Roadhouse. I was there. I’m the one Officer Weaver was protecting when he was shot.”
The deputy’s face changes. Not a lot, just a tightening around the eyes and a straightening of the spine. In a building full of cops, the morning after one of their own took a bullet, the words “Officer Weaver” carry weight.
“Hold on,” he says. He picks up the phone and dials an extension. Talks low and hangs up. “Detective Morrison is handling the case. She’ll be right out. Have a seat.”
I sit in a plastic chair against the wall.
There’s a bulletin board with safety flyers and a photo of the department softball team.
I scan the faces and the names below. Third row, second from the left.
Blonde hair, blue eyes, handsome face. Mickey Weaver.
Younger, grinning, wearing a softball jersey that says BCSO SLUGGERS, his arm slung around the shoulder of another guy. He looks happy and carefree.
A door opens and a woman steps out. Late thirties, dark hair pulled back, blazer over a blouse, gun on her hip. She has the slow walk of someone who conducts interviews for a living.
“Benjamin Bennett?”
“Yes.”
“Detective Rosa Morrison. We’ve been trying to find a way to reach you. Come on back.”
I follow her through a door, past a break room where two deputies are standing with coffee.
Their conversation stops when I walk by.
They don’t say anything but their eyes track my face and I can tell they’re connecting it to the story.
They know I’m the guy Mickey stepped in front of.
Every cop in this building knows what Mickey did.
The interview room is small, a table and two chairs and a recorder. Detective Morrison sits across from me. She opens a folder, clicks the recorder on, says the date and time, my full legal name, which she asks me to spell, and then she says the four words I’ve been dreading.
“Tell me what happened.”
I tell her all of it. From the stool at the bar to the table of Dixie Cruisers.
Sheila’s three warnings that I ignored, the hallway, the grammar joke, the fist, the floor, the boots and the spit on the back of my neck.
I tell her about Tex coming around the corner.
About Mickey arriving through the door behind him.
About the young one with his hand drifting toward his jacket and Mickey stepping between me and the gun.
And then the sound of it going off through the fabric and the weight of his body slamming backward into mine.
I tell it chronological and detailed, keeping my voice as even as I can manage.
I don’t cry because I know if I start, I won’t stop.
I describe what I saw and what I heard. I keep my voice calm because I’m in a building full of people who care about the man I got shot, and the very least I can do is give them a clean statement.
Morrison listens and takes notes. She asks follow-up questions. Where was I standing when the first punch landed? Which direction did I fall? Could I see the gun before it fired? How many seconds between Mickey entering the hallway and the shot?
I answer the best I can. I give her everything because these details are the only thing I have to give. When it’s over, she clicks the recorder off and closes the folder.
“Thank you,” she says. “That’s a thorough statement. It’ll help.”
“Will they all be charged?”
“All four are in custody. The one with the gun is looking at attempted murder of a law enforcement officer. The other three are looking at aggravated assault, possible hate crime enhancement. The state attorney’s office is already involved.”
Hate crime enhancement.
Because they called me a faggot before they kicked me. Because the word was the reason and the word makes it worse under Florida law. My bruised ribs and split lip are evidence of a hate crime.
“How is he?” I ask, hoping she’ll let something slip. “Officer Weaver. How is he doing?”
Morrison’s face shifts. She knows him.
“He’s stable. They transferred him to Tallahassee Memorial this morning, to the spinal unit there. They’ve got the best team in the region for this type of injury.”
He’s already gone.
“The spinal unit?” I repeat.
“It’s the right move.” She pauses. “Is there anything else you need from us?”
I need someone to tell me he’s going to walk again. I need someone to tell me that he’s going to stand up out of that bed, put his uniform on and go back to work and live the life he was supposed to live before I sat on a barstool and ruined it.
“No,” I say. “Thank you, Detective.”
She walks me out. In the lobby, the deputy behind the counter nods at me.
I drive back to the condo. I open my laptop and try to work on the wedding.
I answer the florist email, call the caterer and confirm the menu because I have to keep working to pay my bills.
I had a career and a life that existed before the shooting and will have to exist after it, whatever “after it” turns out to mean.