Apple Of His Eye

I had never seen anything like it and hope never to again.
It is one of those deep images you intentionally repress, but like a body refusing to be buried in a watery grave with anonymity, it bubbles to the surface. Sometimes the image is whole, sometimes it is brief. The blink of an eye. An eye not there.

I was sent to a very small town in Eastern Washington.
Eastern Washington reminds me of the dry, desert expanses of America's Southwest with less in the natural wonders department.

I headed east from Seattle, over the Cascades, stopped at Leavenworth, past Quincy, then Moses Lake. If I kept going long enough I would have made it all the way to Spokane, the biggest city in Washington, east of the Cascades. But that was not my destination.

I can not tell you the name of the remote farm town I was sent on this case.
I can not tell you the the date it happened, or who it happened to.
However, everything I write now is public record. Though I suspect the only ones who could find any identifying info based on this post will be the inhabitants of that small town... because most of them were glued to the police scanner that night.

In many remote, rural American communities, when the sun goes down and the work is done, the police scanner provides as much, if not more, entertainment than television.

It was in one of these towns I met the attorney's client, we'll call him "Jack". Jack was 32 years old and had a four year old son that was the apple of his eyes until a police officer shot out one of those eyes. The left one.

I had my camera focused on that hole in his face after the bandages were removed. Jack sat patiently as I zoomed in and out of the shattered orbit spotted with globs of green goo and bones and things I could not comprehend.

Usually detachment is something I can turn on and off like a switch when I photograph wounds, or scenes, the injured, the maimed. But I did not have the years under my investigative belt then that I have now. And I had never seen anything like it before, never have since. I felt my stomach turn.

The bullet went through his eye and out the back of his his head, taking some brain with it. The missing brain explained Mike's new persona. He was a walking zombie who could still carry on a limited conversation.

Once a vibrant, handsome, man from a big family, Mike spoke slowly and was more child than man. The right side of his body was limp. He lived in a wheelchair by day, in the bed by night in a nursing home where I met him.

I was brought to him by his sister, brother and mother. Before I met him, I spent the morning at their farm getting stories and statements.

Here's what went down:

Jack lived in a house on farmland his family owned. He was a single father. His wife divorced him after he sustained a brain injury after a drunken night out with the guys and a fall to the concrete.
The police put him the drunk tank the night of the fall. He didn't see a doctor until he was released the next day.
The brain hit affected his memory. He didn't recall the brawl and believed it was the police who hurt him. In his altered mind, the police became the enemy.

Jack's behavior changed. He experienced mood swings. His wife took custody of their son and moved in with her family. Jack saw his son weekends. Weekdays he would work the family land. At night, he would sit alone in his little farm house, drink, listen to the police scanner and occasionally call his mother, a widow, who lived in the bigger house acres away, which was also on family land.

Jack had a crush on a attractive woman down the road he knew since elementary school. Her husband was recently killed in a car wreck.
Jack would drunk dial her every now and then, occasionally Jack would stop by. She said he was harmless, just annoying at times.
There was also Deputy in town who had a crush on the same woman.

So one night, Jack drunk, called his crush, she chatted with him briefly and politely. He kept calling her back and she kept saying "Goodbye Jack".

The same night of the drunk dialing, the Deputy stopped by this widow's house to "see if she was all right". She chatted with him a while, mentioned that Jack had been calling him all night. The Deputy said, "I'll go talk to Jack". She said, "No it's late, the calls stopped, leave it be."

That would have been the best path. Instead, the Deputy chose another.
It was around 11:00 pm, police scanner prime time.
In the dark, the Deputy drove the farm road to Jack's house. He parked his car in front of Jack's front door, left his vehicle lights, had the beam pointed right at the front wondow. Then grabbed grabbed some kind of megaphone and said, "Come out Jack. Now!"

Jack saw the car, Deputy, the lights, and panicked. He called his mother and said, "The police are coming to get to me."
His Mother called the police station and told them about Jack's brain injury and how he is afraid of the police.
Signals got crossed.
Inside the house, Jack peered at the police through his front window curtains.
Then he turned around, picked up his shotgun, walked out the back door and fired it into the air twice.
The Deputy heard but did not see the gunfire because he was at the front of the house.
He radioed for assist.
Another police car arrived.
Jack put the shotgun down, and got in his pick-up, also behind the house. He always left the keys in the front seat. He took off driving in circles around the farm fields.
At one point, the Deputy said, Jack aimed his car at him and the Deputy, feeling his life was in danger, shot Jack. Dead on, through windshield, then the eye.
Jack's head slumped forward on the steering wheel.
Over the radio, one officers called for ambulance as Jack's vehicle ultimately stopped.
They also reported the shooting over the radio to the scanners, overheard by Jack's mom and other family members and friends throughout his rural community. The family knew the police and ambulance were gathering at Jack's.

The Deputies approached Jack's vehicle, saw his head slumped over, saw brain matter leaking out.
Then one Deputy got back on the radio and canceled the aid car.
Jack's mother's heart sank. She told me she knew this meant her son was dead.

Jack's sister raced to the scene at the same time as her brother. They didn't know about about the shooting, the ambulance being called, then canceled.

When they arrived on the scene, they saw their brother's truck, stopped dead. Police were around it, they looked grim. Jack's sister ran out of her truck towards Jack's.
The Deputy who shot Jack told the family to stay put. There was nothing more to be done, he said. Jack was dead.

Jack's sister screamed "NO!" while Jack's brother contemplated his next move.
As Jack's brother stared at the truck, he saw a hand emerge from left window.
An arm moved up and down.
"He's alive!" Jack's brother screamed as he raced to the truck.

Meantime, an officer got on the radio and the whole town heard him say "Send the ambulance back"

Seventeen minutes passed before the ambulance arrived on scene.

I was there because attorneys in Seattle believed those 17 minutes... the gap created when the ambulance was cancelled... and then called back, caused further damage to Jack's poor brain.

The case had proceeded to a civil suit. It was Jack v. the Deputies and I was Jack's investigator, photographing the hole in Jack's face that used to be his eye.

It was 3 weeks after the shooting when I met him. My camera was focused on the still raw oozing wound that had been unwrapped by the nurses for my visit. I just finished photographing him in his wheelchair, with his leg and arm braces. braces. He did not recall the shooting, did not recall the Deputies. Did not recall anything. He was there and not there.

My parting shot of the day was that eye.
I remember, while photographing the inside of it, thinking of a quote I learned so many moons ago.
"The eyes are the mirror of the soul."
There was no eye in that head, just jagged, raw bone and a gruesome rainbow of green, red and cloudy white.
And Jack's souls reflected through that hole was black.

All anyone could hope for now was a civil settlement that would pay medical bills. There was also pain and suffering judgement....of which there was no shortage in this equation.
Jack's son lost his father.
Jack's family lost a son, brother.
And the lady up the street who talked to the deputy that night, lost it altogether when she felt she triggered the events of the evening. She went on a drinking binge on the one year anniversary of the shooting and crashed her car into a light pole. She was killed instantly.

Some stories have no happy endings.
The biggest settlement in the world couldn't buy a happy ending for this one.
There are only lessons.
And if we learn something from life's hardest ones, then all is never lost.