Learning A Few Things About Myself

I have lost track of the days, the month of March having slipped into a timeless warp, one day indistinguishable from the next, the workweek and the weekend having been melded together. The only reliable, and for me significant marker, has been the hours that the markets are open and the hours when they are not. So, at 4:00 in the morning Wall Street sleeps. Maybe that’s why I gravitate to this hour.

Like all of you, I have learned a few things about myself during this extraordinary time, some good and some bad. I’ve discovered that I’m a lot moodier than I thought. There are many days when I wake up imbued with great optimism, itching for a fight, ready to battle this thing. But other days I have to fight the temptation to curl up in a ball in the corner. Luckily I am able to overcome that defeatist inclination quickly, there being no future in surrender. 

I have learned how much I crave order and routine, now that it has been taken from me. For three weeks now I have been denied admission to American Family Fitness, thus ending a nearly 17 year run of three workouts a week at that reliable institution. I cannot tell you how much I miss it.

My office has been transformed from one of the most comforting, familiar places in my life to a place of great heaviness. It’s hard to explain, this heaviness. When I am there I feel a weight descending. Normally my office is where great foolishness and mayhem happens, most of it courtesy of my childish pranks and incessant trash talk. Consequently, it's great fun to be there. My colleagues are exceptional people, very much like a family. March has changed the dynamic, made it a place of great seriousness. A sober realism has come to visit. There isn’t an ounce of panic in the place, but anxious concern is palpable. Its heavy and at times suffocating...an inescapable gravity.

I have been disabused of the naive assumption that in my 62 years I had built a secure life impenetrable by the vicissitudes of life. I had started to take on the conceit that I had somehow shielded myself and my family from most of the dangers of life by my commitment to industry and ingenuity. It turns out that there were more than a few weaknesses in Fortress Dunnevant. While I am far less vulnerable than most, I am not safe. None of us are safe.

I have also learned how important other people are to my well being and happiness. I suppose this isn’t a new realization, but it has become much clearer over the past thirty days. My children, my wife, my brother and sisters, my small group from church, my closest friends, my clients, all of the people who have populated my life are suddenly so dear. I find myself suddenly so much more solicitous of my neighbors, so much more aware of the man across the way from me at the gas pump, or the lady behind the cash register at the drug store, even the anonymous customer service voice in Des Moines. How are they holding up, I find myself asking...not as polite small talk but because I sincerely want to know. Is there anything I can do to help, I wonder? In a raging sea of bad outcomes, this is a great blessing. Humanity, empathy and compassion are making a comeback. 

I have also relearned something I’ve always known. I picked the right woman. I come home every day to her. She is always here, busy doing something useful and practical, reassuring me that this will eventually blow over, reminding me...sometimes against overwhelming evidence...that I am a good man and that she is proud of me. Her steadfast love redeems the day.

She is right. This storm will blow over. We will come out the other side. When we do, hopefully we will be better people than the ones who stumbled into the COVID-19 battle full of pride and arrogance.

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.

Saving Jack. Chapter One

Jack Rigsby’s pickup truck bumped and rocked as he navigated the dirt fire lane that meandered for over a mile through the Maine woods to his lake house. The path was peppered with cavernous holes and trenches that could only be safely negotiated at idling speed. Each year he vowed to put new gravel down, but each year something would happen to distract him, so it remained a slow mile. It was his first time up since last fall when he had closed the house up for the season. The winter had been unusually cold and snowy, even for Maine, and his caretaker, a local busybody whose only qualifications for the job had been possession of a working snowmobile and lots of time on his hands, had called Jack several times over the winter to inform him all about the vicissitudes of New England winters.

“Yes, Bobby, I’m aware that it’s cold up there and there’s lots of snow,” Jack would answer. “That’s why I hired you. You really don’t have to call me every time there’s a storm. We’ve gone over this a hundred times.”

“This last storm brought some trees down on the path, I imagine,” continued Bobby, undeterred. “Suppose I’ll go up in the morning.”

“You do that.” 

Jack had learned over the years that the only way to end any conversation with his caretaker was simply to hang up. Despite years of trying, it seemed impossible to hurt the man’s feelings. 

Now, as Jack made the year’s maiden drive to the lake, he found no evidence of any cleared trees, no fresh piles of chopped wood, no evidence that he even had a caretaker. But each year, in spite of little proof that he ever actually showed up, Jack had retained Bobby Landry’s services. It was mostly out of guilt. Part of the price of owning a lake house in Maine was participation in the great caretaker scam, whereby wealthy people from away employed the unemployable local jackleg who needed to supplement his fraudulent disability claim check with a reliable side hustle. Who better to hustle than some rich guy from Virginia who was only in town for a couple of months every summer? 

However unreliable and unskilled Bobby might have been as a caretaker, he made up for it with his insider’s knowledge of every property owner on the lake. If anyone on Quantabacook had suffered a financial setback, gone through a divorce, or had a kid in rehab, Bobby could be relied upon to keep Jack fully informed. It was part of the reason that he hadn’t told Bobby of his plans to open the house up in April this year. Jack Rigsby wasn’t in the mood for salacious gossip. Not this year. He preferred to slip in unnoticed while it was still cold and the smell of snow hung in the air.

As the truck trudged up the last hill before the long sweeping curve down to the house, Jack felt his heart beating quicker, the odd tingle of expectation rising in his chest. Every year it was the same. He turned to Evelyn and gave her a smile. 

“Gets us every time, Evie.”

It had been Evelyn Rigsby who had begged him to buy the place. Jack enjoyed the lake, was fond of Maine. Evelyn was enchanted. There was no place on earth where she was more beautiful, thought Jack as he watched the tears well in her eyes, her hand raised to her lips. The truck came to a stop by the front gate, right alongside Bobby Landry’s F-150.

“Isn’t that Bobby’s truck?” Evelyn asked with a bemused smile.

“You can’t keep a secret from that man.” 

Jack got out of the truck slowly, his back tight and his hamstrings aching from two days of driving. Stretching to his full six feet, he felt all of his 60 years. He noticed some lumber in the back of Bobby’s truck and then heard hammering echoing from the deck side of the 70-year-old A-frame cottage he’d bought during a whirlwind weekend ten summers earlier. That summer, thanks to a tip from a neighbor’s omniscient caretaker, he and Evelyn had learned that Beatrice Deveraux was grieving her husband’s death and entertaining the idea of selling the lakehouse that had been in her family since its construction in the late 1940s.

“My kids have all moved away and can’t afford to pay the taxes on the place,” she had explained to Jack and Evelyn, sitting expectantly at her kitchen table. “And even if they could, they couldn’t be bothered to drive up all the way from Tennessee.”

Evelyn had always loved the Deveraux place because it sat so close to the water’s edge. She would kayak past it in the morning and see Mrs. Deveraux reading her newspaper under the umbrella on the deck. The only words that had ever passed between them for ten years had been Evelyn’s “beautiful morning, Mrs. Deveraux!” and her curt reply: “maunnin.” But now, on this afternoon, Jack and Evelyn listened patiently while Beatrice Deveraux heaped full-throated scorn on her worthless children. Instead of negotiating a sales price for the cottage, she seemed more interested in describing the depths of ingratitude into which her spawn had descended. As she rambled on about the sinful distractions ensnaring her children in the Volunteer State, Jack glanced across the table and noticed the glow of delight in his wife’s eyes. While Jack was tallying up week after week of work and expense, Evelyn was imagining how beautiful this place would be after just a few creative graces. The large family room looked out at the lake through a wall of windows. The two upstairs bedrooms were only semi-private and oddly shaped by the steep pitch of the roof. But there was plenty of room for a bathroom to be added somehow—she was convinced of it! And the master bedroom just off the kitchen on the main level of the house was begging for a French door and a little imagination. 

Jack, only half listening to Mrs. Deveraux’s travails, decided at that moment that his days as a renter were over. He could never say no to her, to those glistening eyes. When Mrs. Deveraux finally threw out a number, Jack added $10,000 to it to clinch the deal. A handshake served as the contract, and in less than a month, he’d delivered the purchase price in a green leather briefcase to Mrs. Deveraux.

Now, he walked down the stone sidewalk around the side of the house and spotted Bobby Landry actually doing some caretaker work, replacing a couple of rotting deck boards. Bobby didn’t look up from his work but greeted Jack with, “Hope you packed some wharm clothes. Callin’ for snow latah . . . ”

“What are you doing here, Bobby?” 

Jack was genuinely curious why he should find his caretaker caretaking on this chilly April day, when all the evidence of the past ten years would argue against such a coincidence. 

“You chose this day, of all days, to replace a couple of boards on the deck . . . the very day that I come all the way from Virginia to open my house in April for the first time ever? I give up. How did you know I would arrive today?”

Bobby looked up from his work for the first time to inform Jack that he just happened to notice on his “regular rounds” that a few rotted boards needed replacing, so he figured he would swing by and get it done before the spring snowstorm hit. 

Jack interrupted: “Let me guess, you called my office to tell me about the spring snowstorm, heard my away message, then put two and two together and decided to make sure I caught you in the act of actually doing some work . . .”

“Mr. Rigsby, you’re about the smahhtest homeowner on this entire lake. That’s what I tell everyone who asks me who my smahhtest homeowner is . . . Jack Rigsby, hands down!”

“If I’m so smart, how come I have you as my caretaker?”

“And funny, too . . . I tell them that you’re the funniest, too!”

Bobby soon lost interest in deck repairs and launched into his annual fishing expedition of probing questions about the Rigsby’s year, all the better to keep his other lake clients abreast of news from Virginia. Jack always played along, viewing it as part of Bobby’s odd charm, but this year he had a feeling that his patience would be tested.

“So, Mr. Rigsby, why exactly did you decide to open up Loon Magic in April?”

After the briefcase of cash had been delivered, Evelyn’s first order of business had been to pick a name for her new summer home. Jack provided zero input, reasoning that the person in charge of naming the place should be the person moved to tears at the closing. Even though it had taken her over a month to decide on Loon Magic, Jack had always known that Loon would wind up in the winning name, for it was this majestic bird with its mournful call that had always filled Evelyn’s heart to overflowing. On summer mornings, she loved to kayak into the lifting fog and wait for a loon to elegantly break through the water near her boat. There they would both sit, staring at each other, not a single ripple stirring the glassy void between them. Evelyn would speak softly, Good morning, friend. The bird would throw its head back and let out a plaintive song. After a few minutes, the loon would slip silkily under the surface and be gone. It was, in fact, magical. The name was perfect.

Jack was already irritated. “I suppose I needed to get away a little earlier this year than usual. Should I have asked your permission first?” 

“Are you kidding?” Bobby laughed. “I’m as happy as can be to see you, Mr. Rigsby. It’s just that you usually wait until June, after Ms. Evelyn is done with school.”

“Yes. Well, my wife is not teaching school any longer. Thirty years was enough. I hope that her decision to retire meets with your approval, Bobby. Now, if you don’t mind, we have a lot of unpacking to do.”

“But I only have a few more adjustments here and I’ll be out of your way.”

“No, Bobby. Leave it be. Just a couple boards remain, and I am perfectly capable of replacing them myself. Now, thanks for everything, but we will check in with you later.”

“Sure, Mr. Rigsby. You tell Ms. Evelyn that I said hello, okay? And . . . we will have our ‘state of the cottage’ meeting later, then?”

“I certainly will, Bobby . . . and yes, I wouldn’t miss a ‘state of the cottage’ meeting if my very life depended on it. I’ll call you . . .”

As soon as the sound of Bobby’s truck disappeared into the thickness of the woods, Jack opened the deck’s French doors and walked through the bedroom into the kitchen, where he found Evelyn in the living room, removing a dusty sheet from his favorite recliner.

“You better try it out . . . make sure Bobby hasn’t been sitting in it all winter watching football . . .” Evelyn smiled.

It was the same suggestion she made every year, an old, well-worn joke which never failed to make him smile. Jack stood in the kitchen and watched her glide gracefully among the sheets and whirling dust. This was why he opened Loon Magic in April: to be alone with her, free from distraction and the increasing judgment of his two adult children, who could never begin to understand what it felt like to carry around this crushing weight. He would always love them, but he needed some separation. They would just have to get used to it, this new normal. It was a diminished life, . . . but it was the only life he had left.

Another Day in Paradise

Woke up at 3:00 with a start from an anonymous dream. As my head cleared I heard the steady roar of the rain. Made my way downstairs, rain coming down in buckets, a dreary 43 degrees out. Perfect. Weather straight out of central casting, my 60 hours of freedom over. I stood at the back door and watched the downpour. Maybe everyone would stay at home today, never turn on their televisions, refuse to take in more bad news. Maybe they won’t call today, I think, knowing that they will. They always do on Mondays. Its always worse after a weekend of breathless, caterwauling from the Barbie and Ken dolls that fill American television screens with the latest dispatches from the apocalypse. The latest news this morning is the failure of the Democrats and Republicans to agree on a relief plan. The collapse of weekend talks is supposed to be a horrible thing. Maybe. Maybe not. But oh, they will call alright.

I will tell them what I know of our strange new unknowable world. They will ask me what they should do and I will answer based on my education, training and experience. It is all I can do. I will tell them what I believe is true. I will council patience and calm. I will ask them not to act out of fear, but it is hard to hear, harder to do. Then the phone will ring and I will do it again. In between I will scan the universe of information at my disposal, trying to make sense of conflicting sentiment. I will sort through the latest data looking for both confirmation and contradiction. I cannot give in to stubborn rigidity at a time like this. I have to be willing to change horses even in the middle of so turbulent a stream. If the weathermen are right, the heavy rain will submit to a driving drizzle by afternoon.

I will come home for lunch. My house is only a mile and a half from my office. I will make myself some lunch and eat it while listening to Colin Cowherd on I-Heart radio. He’s a sports talk show host and I have found it mildly amusing listening to a sports talk show host do his job when there are no sports happening anywhere. He still finds things to yak about for three hours everyday. He’s a professional.

After lunch, I go upstairs and sit in my recliner and worry about my kids for a while. I put some music on in the background and try to rest my mind and body for thirty minutes, an hour if I’m lucky. Then, I will go back to the office and start returning calls and making a few of my own. There will be new headlines to decipher. The markets will take turns skyrocketing and swooning over rumors. When the bell finally rings at 4 o’clock I will do my best to either ponder the remarkable rally or survey the damage from another relentless sell-off. My resolve will have been tested, my faith challenged, my nerves rattled. Then I will make the quick drive home, get the mail out of the mailbox, go inside and immediately wash my hands while singing Penny Lane is in my ears and in my eyes, there beneath the blue suburban skies.

I will check in with my friend who has endured the exact same day as I have...while recovering from nine months of cancer and recent  major surgery. We will commiserate, exchanging war stories, understanding completely what the weight of responsibility feels like during this crisis. At some point, I will attempt to lighten the burden by cracking jokes. Sometimes they make her laugh. Other times they fall to the ground and burst into a million pieces.

Incredible...

With the Coronavirus dominating this space for the past couple of weeks I haven’t talked about how my friend is doing. I still talk with her every morning, still tell her stupid jokes, still try to keep her spirits up. Imagine for a moment how you would be handling this Coronavirus thing if you were weakened by cancer, recovering from a painful and invasive surgery, and worried sick about your hundreds of clients losing money in the stock market? Yeah...I can’t even...

So, a few days ago, she was understandably distraught. She has good days and bad ones like the rest of us, but her bad days are made so much worse by her weakened condition both physically and emotionally. She was telling me how she was feeling and she used a certain phrase that I had never heard from her. It’s sentiment startled me, alarming me like nothing she had ever said. So, as is my unfortunate tendency, I unleashed a stern rebuke:

“Listen to me carefully...YOU WILL NOT GET SICK AGAIN. I mean it. This may slow down your recovery, but you are not going backward over one stupid bear market caused by one lousy virus. I will not stand for it. Do you understand me? You have endured too much, conquered too much ground to turn back. I have had quite enough of cancer and so have you...so I don’t want to hear you say that ever again. Ok?? I don’t mean to be ugly about it...but I don’t want to hear that type of negativity from you. If you speak that way you open the door for it. You need to speak positive thoughts into your life. That’s what I have been doing for you for nine months now and for the most part you have been amazingly positive. Negative words and thoughts lead to negative outcomes.”

I immediately felt guilty for the tone of the remarks and apologized. She thanked me for my honesty and said she needed to hear it.

Fast forward to yesterday after the end of another brutal week of losses on Wall Street. It was around 5:00 in the afternoon and I was really down. This time it was my turn to let loose with a string of negative comments. Throughout this past month I have stayed relentlessly positive, not to offer false confidence to my clients but because its how I actually feel, what I actually believe in my heart—that this is a temporary setback and we will all recover and that recovery will be both swift and eventually—complete. But I’m also a human being and as such I am susceptible to despair. Yesterday was a low point and I couldn’t hide it from my perceptive friend. Her response to my negativity was breathtaking:

“I think sometimes someone needs to cheer the cheerleaders. You’ve been strong through all of this and I know the Lord will see us through. Our Lord knows what we are going through and for me its my third storm in 2 and a half years. Do you know what the Bible says to do when we face trials?...PRAISE him in ALL circumstances! Start praising God that he’s working all things out for good! I know its hard to do but I have to tell you I did it when I thought I was going to lose my daughter, I did it on days when the chemo was peeling the skin off my hands, I did it on the days when I was so sick and humiliated by the cancer I couldn’t even move. But, the Lord needs to know that you trust him no matter what. You and I and your clients know that we have no control over what has happened. So, put on some praise music and praise God through the storm! PS...I’m not fussing at you, I’m just telling you like it is. You can do this Doug! I’m an old fashioned woman and I believe the Bible. The mountaintop experiences are for our joy, but the valleys are for our maturing.”

That this woman who has endured such a grueling ordeal could say such things to me was astonishing. But her words steadied me. After all, if she can keep the faith, if she can find joy amidst this nightmare...we all can.

Ready For A Fight?

I’ve come a long way in a month.

There are a whole host of factors that contribute to the establishment of a world view. Education, training and experience are certainly three of them. Then there are the more subtle factors like personality, family, religion, how much and what you read etc..For me, all of these influences have produced a deeply ingrained suspicion of not only government but authority in general. To my parent’s eternal frustration I was the kid who questioned everything. I refused to accept their word for things, very seldom gave anyone in authority over me the benefit of the doubt. Gatekeepers of information were especially suspect. For me, Journalists weren’t people who reported on events but rather ideologues who pushed an agenda. Government officials weren’t civic minded public servants, but feather-bedding bureaucrats interested in nothing quite so much as self preservation and power. Enter the Coronavirus.

My initial reaction to COVID-19 news was annoyance. Here we go again, another media created frenzy...we’re all gonna die unless we revoke the Bill of Rights and give the federal government more power!! Then my instinctive biases took over...what the hell, it’s the stinkin’ FLU for crying out loud. where’s the fire??

My world view has benefited me in ways great and small. A healthy mistrust of government has proven throughout human history to be a quite rational and justified suspicion. Questioning authority has produced many of the most beneficial advances in human history. However, at times it can be an impediment to receiving and processing the truth. Since the early days of this crisis, I have voraciously consumed a wide variety of news from every source imaginable. As time has passed I have forsaken most news organizations entirely in favor of scientific and medical organizations. What I read there is much more boring, far less sensationalized, free from grandstanding and the competition for eyeballs and ratings. By doing so, my understanding of events, while not foolproof or by any means complete, has changed dramatically. I no longer dismiss the reality of what we are facing. The Coronavirus is a substantial threat to our country. The deaths that it will bring will be significant, the damage it will do to our economy and our own personal fortunes is considerable. 

But, there is a reason why I have not given myself over to despair. It’s another result of that world view thing. Here’s what I know about the world in general and America specifically. Human beings are a resilient bunch, and Americans are the most energetically inventive and creative people in the world. We have thousands of brilliant people working heroic amounts of hours trying to beat this thing back. Scientists, doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs are grinding away trying to get a grasp on it, figure it out and find a way to overcome it. They will. That’s what I’ve learned about my country in 62 years. We are an unholy mess during peace time, a nation of feuding tribes who spend most of the time at each other’s throats. But when existential threats appear, the ranks close quickly. Our collective attention gets focused on the threat and not on each other. And that’s when magical things start happening.

When the histories of the Coronavirus are written it’s going to be about that woman in the lab in Maryland who figured out X, and that guy from Detroit who did that amazing and gutsy thing that turned the tide. It’s going to be about the nurses and teachers, the garbage men and cops, the truck drivers, the pharmacists, the shelf-stockers. We will look back and marvel at the work done by churches and food banks, and the thousands of community organizations who held life together.  We will be amazed at the thousand kindnesses that passed between strangers. What the doomsayers predicted would destroy us is going to be remembered as perhaps one of our finest hours.

So, yes. I’m still suspicious of authority. I still distrust government. But I have chosen to put some of that aside in favor of being part of the solution...and part of the solution is using this blog to remind all of you of who we are. We are Americans...stubborn, self-obsessed and petty most of the time...but ferocious and heroic when cornered. We will beat this thing. We will win this fight. 

Count on it.

Counting Our Blessings

The Coronavirus has swiftly and dramatically altered daily life in America. An awful lot of wealth has been, at least temporarily, wiped out. People are growing more fearful by the day. However, not everything associated with this crisis is...bad. The answer to the eternal question, is the glass half empty or half full, depends on one’s perspective. To that end, I have compiled a short list of positives associated with this mess. Let’s all count our blessings for a moment:

- We have gone weeks now with practically no news about the Presidential campaigns.

- The U.S. Senate took a vote yesterday on a huge Coronavirus relief package and it passed 90-8. We haven’t seen this level of bi-partisan cooperation since the 100-0 vote to make Mother’s Day a thing.

- Traffic on West Broad Street in Short Pump is finally manageable. But in fairness, that’s because most of the cars are in the drive thru at Chick-fil-A.

- Bernie Sanders can shut down his campaign secure in the knowledge that there are far fewer billionaires in America now than when he started.

- If we get to the point where everyone 70 and older must shelter in place, would the last one leaving the Capital building turn out the lights?

- Sports gambling losses in America have plummeted.

- Hot Yoga classes have been cancelled throughout the Country, raising the cumulative IQ of the nation by ten points.

- The Meme business is booming.

- Gasoline has gotten cheap.

- Peloton owners have become even more smug and obnoxious than normal, proving that literally anything is possible.

- We are all about to discover the truth of our Lord and Savior’s words from the Gospel of Luke that, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

- This will be remembered as the Golden Age of Dogs.