Saving Jack. Chapters Two and Three.

2

It was a ridiculously hot day in September. A Thursday, full of July humidity, and in the middle of a late summer drought. The grass in the backyard crunched underfoot as Jack mowed the lawn, clouds of dust billowing behind him. The grass didn’t need cutting, really, but the fresh lines left by the mower and the temporary removal of the first fallen leaves of autumn always made Jack feel better. So, on a whim, and after a late lunch, he’d decided to cut the brown grass of his lawn on the hottest day of any September on record in Richmond, Virginia. But, it had been the 97 degree heat that had given him the idea. Maybe if he hadn’t been so determined to cut the grass, things would have been different. In a vivid recurring dream, Jack would push the lawnmower up and down his yard, smelling the dust and gasoline, beads of sweat trickling down his back. Then he would see Evelyn calling to him from the top step of the deck, her hands cupped around her mouth, . . . and the dream would end.

“Jack, what on earth are you doing, mowing the grass in this heat??” She was always furious at him for this sort of thing. Why was he so determined to do the dumbest things to his body? It was reckless, and part of her was convinced he pushed his luck with this sort of asshattery just to prove to himself that he was still invincible. So, she would yell at him, try to talk sense to him, then beg him to stop whatever idiotic thing he was doing. Eventually he would stop, but only to remind her that she worried too much.

“I’ve got an idea. Let’s pack a bag and head up to Mitchell’s cabin for the weekend. It’s ten degrees cooler in the mountains.” During the 30 years they’d been married, Jack had been famous for planning spontaneous getaways: according to Evelyn, one of his most endearing qualities. She always hesitated at his initial suggestions, then warmed to them and almost always gave in. 

“How come Mitchell isn’t up there? It’s his place, after all.”

“He can never get Tricia to go for some reason. She’s such a diva. God, I’m glad I married you instead of her! Whatdoyasay?”

It had been decided, just like that. Evelyn had actually surprised him with her quick yes. He scrambled to call Mitchell and ensure the place was really vacant. Jack remembered thinking as he waited for Mitchell to pick up the phone, If it were my place and it was this hot, I’d be up there. 

“Hey buddy, it’s Jack. You and Tricia using your cabin this week?”

“I wish. Tricia’s got some board meeting with her gardening club, or some such bullshit, and of course couldn’t possibly miss it. I suppose you’ve decided to whisk Evelyn up there and have sex all weekend in my bed!”

“So, is that a yes?”

Mitchell Blaire had the distinction of not only being Jack Rigsby’s business partner but also his best friend. They’d started their brokerage operation 25 years ago after both had worked for someone else long enough to understand that they were congenitally incapable of working for anyone but themselves. They started with nothing and built an enterprise that practically ran itself these days, availing each of them lots of free time and money to plan impulsive trips hither and yon. Unfortunately for Mitchell, Tricia had been an albatross around his neck, never willing to do anything spontaneous. The fact that they were still together was the subject of many a late-night discussion in the Rigsby household. Especially since it was a poorly kept secret that Mitchell had always had a crush on Evelyn. It was only semi-serious, since Mitchell and Jack constantly talked about it, Mitchell having many times admitted to being envious of Jack’s adorable and adventurous wife. He’d always follow his admissions with a playful warning that he better not mistreat Evelyn, or Mitchell would be forced to step in and sweep her off her feet. 

“Sure, Jack,” Mitchell sighed. “Somebody ought to use the cabin, as hot as it is today. You know, it’s always ten degrees cooler up there. Do you need to pick up the key, or do you still have it from last time?”

“Sorry man, you’re right. I’ve still got the keys!”

And that was that. From the germination of the thought to its fruition had taken less than an hour. Within another couple of hours, Jack and Evelyn would back their SUV out of the driveway and head out to Mitchell Blair’s cabin in the Blue Ridge Mountains for a weekend of cooler temperatures and some truly fabulous away sex.

Jack also had dreams about Patricia Blaire, mostly nightmares. Perhaps if Mitchell’s wife had been a less self-absorbed, frigid bitch . . . if she could have torn herself away from her bridge club, or whatever the hell it was, and spent a little time with her husband in the mountains on a historically hot September weekend . . . maybe things would have been different. When Jack dreamed about Tricia, it was always her heavily made-up face being covered with a pillow, and the sound of muffled screams.

 3

Kevin Rigsby’s cell phone vibrated in the cup holder of his car as it crept along in rush-hour traffic. He didn’t need to look at it to know his sister was calling. Liz had taken to calling him at least once a day since the previous September. They were three years apart in age and 450 miles apart in geography, Liz having settled in Philadelphia with her husband David, while Kevin had gone away to college in Lexington, Kentucky and never returned. 

Kevin glanced down at his phone anyway and saw on the screen his favorite picture of his sister, the one of her getting licked in the face by their old dog, Roger. Even though Kevin had always loved Roger the most, the old mutt adored his kid sister. He was always trying to win her over, since he could sense that she was just a little bit afraid of him. Whenever Liz would come into the room, Roger would drop whatever soggy tennis ball or stuffed animal he was chewing to love on Liz. It used to annoy Kevin, but later it became endearing. He held the phone in his hand for a minute, waiting for the call to go to voicemail, but at the last minute decided to take it. 

“Hey, sis.”

“Whatcha doin?”

“Talkin’ to you.”

It was the standard launching point of every phone call between them for nearly ten years. “Whatcha doin? Talkin’ to you” preceded any meaningful conversation, no matter how gravely serious. In a strange way, the silliness of the exchange was comforting.

“So, when was the last time you talked to Dad?” Liz sounded more frantic than usual.

“I don’t know . . . couple of weeks ago.”

“I haven’t been able to reach him since early last week. He’s not picking up his cell, and his away message at the office says he’ll be out of town for awhile. I’m worried, Kevin.”

Kevin listened to his sister’s voice and noticed the familiar anxious lilt at the end of each sentence, a habit she’d picked up during her unfortunate grad school experience in California, where she found herself sharing an apartment with two valley girls. It had mostly disappeared from her voice except during times of great stress, and the past six months had been stressful enough for a lifetime.

“Liz, give him a break. He probably just needs some time to himself. You call Mitchell? He probably knows where he is.”

“He was no help. Claims he has no idea where he went. I get the impression they haven’t talked much lately. That’s another thing that worries me.”

“Well, of course it worries you. Everything worries you.” As soon as the words escaped his lips, Kevin regretted them. Although it was a true statement, he knew it hurt her. She couldn’t help it: worrying was what she did. The daily calls, the cards, the barrage of text messages were regular reminders that he was never far from his sister’s thoughts. When they were little, she worried about everything from getting the chickenpox over Christmas to whether or not squirrels had “feelings.” Now her worrying revolved around much weightier matters, none weightier than the mental health of her father and brother.

“You don’t think I have reason to be?” Now there were tears in her voice. “Our Father doesn’t speak to us, he doesn’t show up at work half the time, and now he’s disappeared altogether . . . and you . . . how much weight have you lost now? 15 pounds? 20 pounds? When’s the last time you’ve actually been on a date, Kevin? And it’s my worrying that’s the problem?”

“You think maybe he went to Loon?” 

Liz fell silent. Then, “Maine? In April?”

“I would if I were him. Why not, Liz? It’s his favorite place in the world, remember?

“It used to be . . . ”

Jack and Evelyn hadn’t bought the place until both of their kids were out of college, but even though both had left Virginia to pursue life elsewhere, neither had missed a single summer at Loon Magic. When they were both in elementary school, the yearly summers in Maine had begun, a different rental and often a different lake each year until the Risgbys had discovered Quantabacook. In the early years they went for a week, a ridiculously long drive up and back for so short a time. But as the years passed and Jack’s business flourished, it became two weeks, then three, and eventually half the summer. Although both Kevin and Liz had taken up teenage rebellion and young adult condescension in due season, neither thought to add “summers in Maine” to the list of their parent’s bourgeois habits to reject. Somehow, it proved too difficult to resist floating around on inner tubes all day, eating lobster rolls for lunch, and watching the Milky Way light up the night sky over a roaring fire. Even as grown adults, the two of them always blocked off a week in July.  

When Liz had introduced her boyfriend David to the lake, he had fallen in love with the place with an intensity that disturbed Jack and Kevin. Was he just sucking up to curry favor with the family, or was the guy genuinely awestruck? It was hard to tell. He had grown up in the Midwest and never spent much time outside of the Great Plains before his time at the University of Virginia, where he met Liz. During their short, intense courtship, in a fit of irrational passion, David had agreed to make the thirteen-hour drive and accompany his beloved on what he’d been led to believe was the vacation of a lifetime. What he didn’t know was that in order to experience this vacation of a lifetime, he first had to survive the death-defying gauntlet of interstates, bridges, toll booths, and filthy rest stops standing between him and Xanadu. It hadn’t taken Liz very long to realize that the object of her fervent desire was simply not up to the task. As soon as they crossed the Delaware Memorial Bridge, she ordered him to pull over to the side of the interstate and let her drive. He offered zero resistance. Having had the shit scared out of him so many times already, he’d actually thought about buying an eight-pack of adult undergarments at the next TravelPlex.

By the time they’d pulled up to the cabin, Liz’s heartthrob was a nervous wreck, exhausted by his girlfriend’s audacious driving style. By way of explanation, Liz stated flatly that she had learned over the years that if you expected to actually make it to Maine, you had to “grip it and rip it.” David had looked across the car at her with a mixture of horror and adulation. “I’m pretty certain you are crazy, but right now . . . I would follow you anywhere!”

But, he had made it to Maine, and as soon as all of the introductions and handshakes were over, he caught his first glimpse of Quantabacook. They led him down the walkway to the floating dock, where five lawn chairs had been arranged in a semicircle. Everyone took a seat . . . except David. He just stood there, gazing at the clear water and the soft rolling hills in the distance with his mouth slightly ajar and what appeared to Jack and Kevin to be tears welling up in his eyes. Later that evening, Kevin had whispered to his Dad, “I’m telling you, if the rest of us hadn’t been on the dock, the boy would have asked her to marry him right on the spot!”

Kevin broke the silence that had fallen between them. “Liz, it’s still his favorite place in the world and always will be. Nothing will ever change that. Even . . . this.”

* * *

Beef jerky. Jack had needed some beef jerky. 

Less than thirty minutes from Mitchell’s cabin, Jack had been overcome with a desire for teriyaki-flavored ropes of meat. Jolly’s Quik Stop happened to appear in the headlights just off route 29 at the exact moment the jerky craving began.

“I’m gonna run into Jolly’s for some jerky. You need anything?” Jack had asked as he drove the Escalade into the dimly-lit parking lot.

Evelyn screwed her face up like she did when confronted with so many of her husband’s culinary choices. “Seriously, Jack? How old are you now, 15? Honestly!”

“Beef jerky has always been underrated by food snobs like you. However, out here in the real world, jerky is HUUUGE!”

Evelyn, face still screwed up in revulsion, couldn’t hide the hint of a smile. Jack noticed and quickly leaned over the massive console of the ridiculously enormous SUV that Evelyn had begged him to buy, kissing her playfully. “Our next kiss will taste like teriyaki!”

As he opened the car door to go inside, Evelyn had called out after him, “Who says there’s going to be a next kiss?” They both were giggling as the door slammed shut with a luxurious thud.

Jack had spent a lot of time since September languishing over every painful detail of the night, torturing himself with all of the loose ends. Cutting the grass, a September heat wave, Tricia Blaire’s lack of spontaneity, the allure of beef jerky—all these seemingly inconsequential, even trivial details now plagued him, haunting his every waking thought and every nightly dream. Why did he have to cut the grass? Why had it been so deathly hot? Why weren’t Mitchell and Tricia using the cabin? Why had he not been able to resist pulling off of the highway to walk into Jolly’s Quik Stop to buy a $6.99 bag of dried meat? How was it that the vessel of his life had been turned so violently by such frivolous rudders? 

Seven months later, as he sat in his favorite recliner at Loon Magic, Jack remembered the consequential events of the night only as a blur of sounds and movements. He did remember the brand of beef jerky he had purchased (Matador), Alan Jackson blaring through the store’s sound system, and the painfully long conversation he’d struck up with the guy behind the counter. In short, everything that didn’t matter, he recalled with crystal clarity. He must have stood at that counter for five minutes complaining to the hapless clerk about the name of the store . . . Why had they decided to intentionally misspell Quick? You’re telling me you’re in such a hurry, you don’t even have time for a c? See, this is how a language ends up being bastardized, and . . .

Then, the front door had burst open, two old men yelling for someone to call 911. A woman had been shot in the parking lot! After that, everything was blurred and disjointed, chopped up images, the sounds and smells of death. He had run outside, following the old men. He had seen a group of people standing around the Escalade, pointing and then averting their eyes. The passenger door was opened, and Evelyn’s cell phone, a jagged crack across the screen, lay on the ground at his feet. Lights began to flicker. The sounds of the gathered crowd became muffled, then excruciatingly loud in waves. He seemed frozen in place, unable to move. His vision blurred. His heart began beating loudly, as if it belonged to someone else. He lifted his eyes from the cracked cell phone to his wife and saw the blood, the bleeding hole in her face. He smelled gunpowder. 

That was all. Everything else Jack Rigsby knew about that night, he had learned from the Virginia State Trooper who arrived on the scene at some point during the madness and pulled Jack out of the cab of the car, where he had draped himself over the dead body of Evelyn Rigsby.