Three Lives of Jury - Chapter 30
Life, the afterlife and a town called Jury. A 40-year saga of love, jealousy and murder.
Three Lives of Jury - table of contents
Bonus material:
The Underworld Vents - table of contents.
The campsite and RV park grew into a hectic maze for the uninitiated. Shutterstock photo
Chapter 30
Lucy instantly recognized Whit and couldn’t keep down her smile. She would have known him in the dark. Broad-face cut into sharp angles, wide nose, eyes perpetually scanning, urgent. He aged exactly like she imagined.
And Frank, oh God, Frank. Look at that little chalky turd.
She slowed her gait, to study them, to erase the stupid grin from her face.
Whit spotted Lucy from a long way off. Her walk gave her away, the swagger. Plus, she pulled along in her wake an entourage of three soakers wearing bathing caps and towels, one of them clicking pictures with her phone.
Her hair was cut short now, over her ears, and was more yellow-brown than the white it had been before. And her glasses were missing.
Lucy, meanwhile, found it impossible to read Whit. Did he even recognize her? He stayed stone-faced and closed off.
At the last second, he broke into a crooked smile and Lucy’s breath rushed out of her. She felt her ears and the back of her neck warm.
Here we go, Whit. Whit gave himself a pep talk, tried to sort out how he would handle this first meeting in 20-some years. Smile too much, appear too eager, and she’ll take him for needy. Nobody wants to be seen as needy. But he didn’t want to come off as a cold fish either. Fuck, I don’t know, he thought.
The coming together came out more fluidly than either of them imagined. They hugged for a long time. Then, when they pulled back, Whit went for the joke.
“Lucy, I’m delighted you could join us,” he said in his best restaurant maitre d’ voice and instantly felt stupid.
“Heh,” Lucy looked him in the eye and laughed. She stood back, extended her hand and as they formally shook hands she said, mocking him, “Dr. Livingstone, I presume?”
Whit laughed at the old joke. They used it for a brief time when they ran into one another in unexpected places. He slapped his forehead and threw his arms up in embarrassment. “Excuse me. I left my brain in my other pants.”
Frank rushed in, draped himself over Lucy’s shoulders and they patted one another on the back for several seconds before pulling away.
“Smooth little set-up you got here, Lucy,” Frank said. “Nice, very nice. I knew you’d find a way to put those magic powers of yours to use.”
He smiled in approval as he pointed at the RVs around them and waved toward the tenting site and then toward the hot springs. “You’ve got quite the following.”
“Meh, they’re not all here for me,” she said.
“You’re too modest.” Frank leaned in close to her and whispered loudly. “It’s like a fucking cult around here. And I mean that in the best possible way.”
If Frank sounded impressed, it was only half of what he was feeling. Everybody was staring at them, at Lucy, and he wanted that.
She’s a fucking rock star, he thought. Seeing this was definitely worth the trip.
Weeks earlier, he had pieced together news stories, vlogs and travel videos trying to learn Lucy’s talent for drawing people in. Why do the pilgrims keep coming? What’s her carrot?
Why do the pilgrims keep coming? What’s her carrot?
For one, she’s attractive and Frank understood that attractive people with a morsel of talent have an easier time than ugly people with a buffet. It also helped that Lucy was a bona fide kook herself. Her spooky weirdness gave her street cred and Frank accepted that people were suckers for paranormal shit.
Well, I don’t need that ghost bullshit. I have my own shit, he thought.
Still, it’s impressive. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anyway, not anymore,” he said out loud.
“What doesn’t matter, Frank? Lucy bent over to get a better look into Frank’s eyes. “I think I lost you there. What doesn’t matter anymore?”
“Oh, ummm, right.” Frank was startled back to reality. “Sorry, I’m mumbling. I’m feeling a little weak. I better eat something.” He rummaged through his backpack, found a cookie and started eating.
Lucy shot him a concerned look. Frank waved her away, signalling he was fine and she should leave him to his cookie.
It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t, Frank repeated to himself. It’s not why I’m here.
Frank was here to settle his quarrel with the future. He wanted to see what Lucy saw. He’d been told his entire life he wouldn’t grow as old as most people and that left a yawning void where his prospects ought to be. If he was not destined for a long, fulfilling life, what then? The unknown terrified him, even as he grew more tired every single day.
Lucy shifted her attention away from Frank and spoke to Whit.
“What are you guys doing here? You just pop in without a warning? Don’t get me wrong, it’s great to see you, but I never took you for a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kind of guy.”
“I wish I could take credit, but it was Frank’s idea,” Whit said.
“We came out to see the famous oracle, Lucy of Klootland, delivering psychic healing to the masses,” Frank said.
Whit cringed at Frank’s comments. He didn’t like kooks. He felt uncomfortable around them because they were unpredictable and there were more kooks around here than blades of grass.
It was clear to him Lucy wasn’t taking advantage of people. Government regulators had investigated Lucy and the lodge years ago. Police investigated Lucy for fraud too, but she was cleared. The reports noted that Lucy barely got involved in any financial transactions. Whit had dug through some background before he agreed to make the trip.
But this was more grand than the images he’d seen online. The entire area was like a huge shrine dedicated to Lucy. She’d pulled it off.
He turned in a circle with arms wide. “All of this.” He met her eyes. “All these people are here for you.” He turned his back and scanned the hills.
Lucy smiled. Same old Whit, says all the right things while looking at something else. “I still can’t believe you’re here, after all this time,” she said.
“Want the big tour?”
“Lead on,” Whit replied.
Lucy guided them through the hot springs, explaining the pool temperatures, the water’s mineral makeup and the healing properties. People whispered as they passed. Whit and Lucy walked ahead, stopping for Frank when he couldn’t keep up.
They strode through the mobile home park and climbed aboard a golf cart, which was generally left at the trail head for client use. Lucy drove, banging and clattering her passengers as they moved down the footpath to Lucy’s cabin. Frank especially, riding in the rear-facing back seat, came close several times to being thrown out.
They bounced into the yard, the ground levelled and Lucy stepped hard on the accelerator, then cranked the steering wheel and skidded to a stop next to the stairs leading up to the deck of her cabin.
Lucy watched a thin, bearded young man of about 20 hang a hemp shirt on a clothesline. He was shirtless, the shirt in his hands excepted, and tanned more than was healthy. He wore a dirty white Gilligan hat and matted hair fell out from beneath.
A few more people, seven or eight, Lucy guessed, lounged on the grass sharing a joint. They were here to be society’s outcasts, part of an amorphous youth underground, which nobody could agree on who the members were, where they held their meetings or what the rules of membership were.
Lucy pursed her lips. She would allow them to stay overnight and talk to them later, maybe share a joint and give them an experience to take home.
Tents stood near a make-shift camp kitchen with a line of three deep sinks and two picnic tables beneath an aluminium roof. About 20 steps away, there were two porta-potties.
On the other side of the cabin, a trickle of naked and towel-wrapped people crept out from a small path that led down a short bank to a place where visitors bathed in the river.
Next to the path a large awning spread open with two massage tables beneath it.
“This is Sue,” Lucy introduced them. “She takes bookings for me, makes appointments, does massages, and unclutters my life. She is the life preserver that keeps my head above water.”
Whit and Frank remembered Sue from the information kiosk at the lodge, a small, fit woman with Asian features.
Whit offered a formal handshake.
Frank followed with a more forceful shake. “Juniper-Sue, isn’t that the name you used at the lodge?”
“It’s hyphenated,” she said, “but most people call me Sue.”
“What, your father and mother couldn’t agree on a name?”
Sue flushed, lifted her chin and stared nails back at Frank.
“Just use the name you like. I don’t care.”
Oops. Frank realized he’d stepped into a minefield. “Sorry, poor joke. Ain’t I just the fucking asshole.”
“It’s fine,” Sue replied curtly, making it obvious that it was far from fine.
To Lucy she said, “I’ve got a lot of messages looking for meetings. How do you want to handle them?”
“Argh, I can’t now.” Lucy combed her hands through her hair. “Not with this shit going on. The lawyers from the View of Eden Church are hovering, waiting to pick me off. They probably have spies watching everything. They got a court order telling me to cease and desist until the situation is straightened out. I’ve been told I’m not to profit from the hot springs, or any people or activities connected with it, until the issue is sorted.”
She looked at Whit and Frank. “Can you believe it? I’m prohibited from conducting business on my own property.”
Sue nodded. “OK, so, what do you want me to do?”
“We’ll do what we always do, Sue.” She stared into Sue’s eyes. “Fuck ‘em. I’m open for business. Contrary to what the lodge lawyers say, my lawyer said I need to keep up appearances and keep everything the same as before.” She smiled, “text me the appointment times, mornings only though please.”
She led Whit and Frank inside the cabin, with its scuffed hardwood floors and greenish walls. A bookcase stood with its back to one wall of the living room, a TV squatted under the window and a red sofa hunched beneath a pass-through opening to the kitchen.
They walked through an arched doorway into the kitchen and sat around the table.
They talked about nothing for a while; weather, stupid people, politics, war and the art of battle (Frank’s choice), and trips they’d taken.
“How are your parents, Whit? I loved Wanda and Matt. They were always so decent to me. I wish we had stayed in touch, but….” Her voice trailed off.
She rose from the table and pulled three giant cans of lemonade from the fridge and waved them at Frank and Whit.
“Interested?” She displayed the label for them, hamming it up like a model on a TV game show. “Genuine Frontier Lemonade” it was called and in small letters at the bottom of the front it read, “Served at the Lucy Kloot Healing Waters mineral baths and hot springs; Frontier, B.C.”
“Wow, not bad,” Whit said.
“Holy shit, you’re famous,” said Frank.
“Well,” Whit said, “she’s lemonade famous anyway.”
“Fuck you, smart guy.” Lucy set the bottles onto the table. “I have to get my endorsements while I can. My lawyers have advised me to brand everything I touch out here. It’ll make it harder for them to steal.”
“We heard about your legal troubles. It’s awful that they can take everything away after you’ve put in all this work. How is it looking? Maybe there’s a chance of a decent mediated settlement?” Whit asked.
“I’m not interested in a mediated settlement. Why should I? I intend to win this.”
“Good for you. I wasn’t suggesting you should bargain for less than you deserve, but I’ve read making your case might get difficult,” Whit said.
Lucy slouched in her chair and kicked the table legs. “I might take a hit,” she acknowledged finally, “but the incompetent lawyers who set me up with the development plans and let me sell all that shit without a proper title search are going to be on the hook for a lot. That’s what my new lawyer tells me.”
“Fucking sucks.” Frank moved his chair closer to her and patted her shoulder. “What can I do? What can we do?” He pointed to himself and Whit. “We’re here now. Whatever you need, just say the word, right Whit?”
Whit glanced from Lucy to Frank. Jesus, Frank, he thought. His offer came across more like a clumsy pass than a kind-hearted gesture.
Lucy dealt Frank a side-eye look under a raised eyebrow.
“Steady on, big boy. I’ve got this. I’ve been dealing with other people’s shit ever since I put on my first bra. It’s under control.”
“Is it though?” Frank whispered.
“Fuck Frank.” Lucy shoved him away, using both arms. “You sure haven’t changed. Enough with the hard sell, OK?”
Her push almost knocked Frank off his chair, but he clung to the table and steadied himself. He blushed and weakly laughed. “Heh-heh, heh-heh. Sorry, I know you got this.”
Lucy felt guilty and hugged him. “I appreciate the gesture, Frank. But let’s not talk about that anymore.”
They popped open their lemonade cans.
“I saved the ones with alcohol for later,” Lucy said and tipped hers back.
They reminisced and after a while moved outside to sit in the breeze on the front part of the deck.
Whit and Frank were eager to hear more about Lucy’s life.
“It’s funny how it worked out this way,” she told them. “I never planned it but it’s like the saying in that movie: build it and they will come. I guess I tapped into something people needed.”
“That’s an understatement.” Frank sipped at his can.
“I can’t explain it. It could have been anybody, really.”
“I think you’re being modest, Lucy.” Whit sat a short distance away on a porch swing, his back to the yard, while Frank and Lucy sat against the wall of the cabin, a small battered wooden end table between them.
“You’ve always had a feel for the supernatural, the dead things, or ghosts, or spirits, or whatever you call them. I never believed in it, I admit it,” Whit held his hand over his heart as if swearing an oath. “But I always knew you felt a powerful pull and I figured if you believed in it, there must be something there.”
Frank interjected: “I never doubted it for a second. You got the power and you got the sex appeal to make it happen.”
Lucy resisted the urge to roll her eyes. Frank was being horribly obvious with his come-ons.
“Otherwise,” she continued, “I never married or had children, but I was in two long relationships both lasted about two years, until they turned into idiots. Why do all men turn into needy attention whores the day you let them move in with you, present company excluded.”
“I know exactly what you mean,” Frank said. “I never married either. No woman can handle me.”
Lucy and Whit laughed.
“Imma needin’ a real drink after that,” Whit said.
“Coming up.” Lucy dashed inside, returning a few seconds later carrying a couple of hard lemonades with alcohol. Whit nodded his approval. She showed it to Frank, who shook his head no.
“Medications. I have to stay away from alcohol,” he said, and continued the previous conversation as though it had never stopped. “I’ve been in relationships, plenty of them,” he smiled to show he was in on the joke of mocking himself. “But women are always trying to change me and when they do, I waggle my ass at them on the way out the door.” He slapped the back of jeans, howling.
Then Whit told his story. He left Jury for Vancouver, where he signed up for nursing college, quit and registered for pre-med. Then he quit that after a brief spell and switched back to nursing school, got a certificate.
He hooked up with his ex-wife at his nursing school graduation when his classmates mingled with a class of graduating accountants partying in the hotel banquet room next door.
“Child Number One happened that night. Child Number Two came two years later,” Whit joked.
“I’m sorry, Whit,” Lucy said, when he told her about France. “You want me to put the pox on her?”
Whit laughed, “Please, have at it.”
“What are you going to do now?” she asked.
“The lawyers are working on it.”
“But what are you doing? You can’t just leave it with lawyers and expect anything to happen. That’ll take 10 years. Wrap your arms around the problem and take charge. People make their own fortune. That’s a fact. I see it every day. Too many people just sit around waiting for good luck to strike.”
After an hour, they agreed that destiny might be real, but only for those that tease it along. Then a loosened-up Whit and a stone-sober Frank returned to their rooms at the lodge.
Back at his room, Frank rustled this equipment from his bag, threw it onto the table in the corner and paced. He expected to feel better about getting the old gang back together, but he was frustrated. Lucy wasn’t close to warming up to him. Whit didn’t appear to like him either, but he didn’t care about that so much.
He thought he’d find Lucy more needy. He imagined the lawsuit would have rendered her more ready to be comforted by old friends. He should have guessed that wouldn’t be the case, though. That wasn’t Lucy, even going way back.
He considered his next move. Maybe he should leave.
That fucking Whit though, he thought. He’s always in front of me, getting the jump just when I’m about to say something.
He shook out three pills from three vials and cracked open a bottle of water. He swallowed the pills, shot himself with his bronchial dilater inhaler and washed his face with a warm, wet facecloth. He had sweated and sweated and sweated today until he felt nothing more could ooze out.
Am I jealous of Whit? he wondered, although he wasn’t sure why he would be. What does it matter to me what either of them do?
He turned on a hot shower and climbed in, allowing the steam to loosen his chest and slowly he felt his body uncoil, the springs in his chest and back relaxed.
He replayed the day in his mind as his body unwound. OK, he admitted, getting pushed into the background wasn’t actually Whit’s fault. Whit was being Whit, chatting amicably, moving around in his able-bodied way, oblivious to the attention Lucy gave him.
That pissed him off too; the fact that Whit didn’t seem to even notice Lucy’s subtle touching of his arm, her hand coming to rest on his back.
Frank let the water stream over his head, let the steam work into his lungs. What did he expect? He hadn’t seen Lucy for years. They sure as hell weren’t going to fall into bed together. What had happened all those years ago on that one drunken night was just a one-night fling both of them barely remembered. Although, he admitted, he wouldn’t turn Lucy down if she asked him to go again.
He shook his head. That’ll never happen. Despite nearing 40 years old, Whit and Lucy made him feel like a misfit kid again.
Frank flipped the lever, turning off the shower but only after accidentally jolting himself with a blast of icy cold.
He dried himself, pulled on a T-shirt and sweatpants and slipped into the oscillation vest. It fit similar to a life jacket, with an air hose attached to a generator that sat on the table next to a chair. He started the device and it began to pump air into the vest and pulse to clear his airways of phlegm. After six minutes, it beeped, a signal for Frank to pause the machine and he coughed to clear out the mucus the vest had loosened. For the second cycle, he increased the pressure, and then increased it more for a third cycle. It took about 20 minutes.
He eventually turned off the machine and sat in the chair next to the window. He was at ground level, with sliding glass doors that opened up onto a small patio, hidden from view from the outside sidewalk and parking lot by the lodge’s façade.
He sighed. The initial excitement about coming here gone. He was wasting his time. Maybe it would have gone differently if he hadn’t brought Whit.
But he needed Whit because, honestly, he didn’t know how to face Lucy alone. What reason could he have supplied her for coming? What would he and Lucy have to talk about if Whit wasn’t along? No, he was right to ask Whit. Three was easier than two.
He thought about the night he and Lucy hooked up and her hasty departure a few weeks later and he suddenly realized she must have told Whit about it, and they had a fight. It was obvious. That was why she left so suddenly in the middle of the trial. Lucy told him about her fling with Frank and he blew up at her.
Bah, fuck them both, he thought. He hasn’t needed them for 20 years, why should he need them now?
He checked his watch. He was starved. It was seven o’clock and he always ate by now. He was supposed to meet Whit soon and they’d told Lucy they would go back down the hill in Whit’s car to stay at Lucy’s cabin. They’d agreed it was a better arrangement because Lucy wasn’t welcome around the lodge.
He packed his clothes in a duffel bag, packed his medications in an insulated cooler bag, put his oscillation vest into its kit and placed his full-size cooler full of food and water by the door.
Then he went to the front desk and extended his stay at the lodge. It was smart to keep a back-up plan.
Frank returned to his room and threw a few clothes into a red backpack. He counted out a few pills from his large duffle bag, a few granola bars and trail mix and placed them in the red backpack too and put it away in the closet, so it was out of sight when Whit appeared to help carry his stuff. All ready. He sent the text.
Finally, Whit smacked his hands on knees and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. Finally, the message came and Frank was ready. Hallelujah, I could have had that fucking nap by now, he thought.
He had been questioning if Frank was going to cancel their plans to stay at Lucy’s cabin, but at last, the message arrived: Ready. I’ve got some extra stuff to take. Can you come and give me a hand?
Guess he was coming after all. Whit liked the idea of heading down to Lucy’s place without Frank, but he guessed that was off the table now. He didn’t dislike Frank. Frank was OK, if a little annoying. But did he always have to push?
Whit looked around the room, double checking for forgotten items, grabbed his duffel bag and backpack and headed out. He’d load his stuff in the car first, then help Frank.
that's some really great writing, the characters come alive, Lucy and Whit are sharp and vivid, Frank too.