Whispering Rock

Mike looked at a terrified Brie and thought, this is all she needs. Bullshit like this her first time out in the real public. He put a hand over hers. “Stay right here and breathe deeply.” Then he got up and strode purposefully toward the table. Already kitchen staff were peeking out the window in the swinging door to the kitchen.

Mike placed himself between the waiter and manager, directly in front of the offender, and was grateful that he was taller than all of them, younger and more fit than the pissed-off man. He looked into the manager’s eyes and said calmly, “Call the police, please.”

“Thank you, sir. I believe we can handle the situation now.”

“Then if you’ll allow me the use of your phone, I’ll place the call.”

The angry customer tried to shove Mike out of the way and said, “I’m getting the hell out of this shit hole.”

Mike simply straightened, grabbed the wrist of the man’s hand to ward off his shove, blocked his passage and raised the palm of his other hand. He used an authoritative voice to say, “Please sit down, sir. I don’t believe you’ve paid for your meal and drinks.” He was firm but polite. Though Mike was only a couple of inches taller, he was younger and the expression on his face very determined. The man sat. Then Mike looked at the manager and said, “The police, if you please.”

“Here,” said the friend, standing, opening his wallet. “Let me just pay for it and—”

“I’m sorry, sir, but your angry friend is going to settle up with the police now. Throwing glassware, assaulting the management is against the law.” Then he looked over his shoulder, lifted his eyebrows to the manager and gave a nod.

“Call the police,” the manager instructed the waiter, and the young man fled.

Twenty minutes later the local police took the angry client away, still sputtering about his terrible meal. It turned out that his dissatisfaction with his lunch had been met with an offer of a replacement meal or discount from the waiter, but the man had wanted his entire foursome comped, despite protests from his wife and the other couple. It also turned out he was a little drunk and unmanageable. Handcuffs were not necessary, but the police decided it would be best if these visitors were escorted out of town and everyone exited calmly. The little pub returned to its quiet atmosphere.

The manager brought Mike a beer and Brie the wine she’d had with lunch. “With our compliments,” he said, smiling.

“Thank you very much,” Mike said. Then, turning to Brie, he placed a hand softly over hers and said, “God, I’m so sorry that happened, Brie. I hope you’re not too upset.”

Brie’s eyes were actually twinkling. She smiled. “Talk about baptism by fire,” she said.

“Of all the days for that clown to get tanked and cause trouble—”

But Brie answered him with a laugh. “God. For a minute I had all kinds of hysterical fears—and then it was over. The police were called, he was escorted away and it was over. Plus,” she said, lifting her glass, “free drinks.”

Mike’s brows drew together, concern that she’d become hysterical. “I’ll cover the drinks in the tip. I guess you’re not hopelessly traumatized?”

“No.” She laughed again. “I’m reminded. I’ve been up against some scary individuals, but ninety-nine percent of the time, they’re all bluster. They threaten, make a lot of noise, show off and then when they’re picked up by police, they cry.” She leaned across the table. Her voice sank to a whisper. “I’ve been reciting a mantra to myself for weeks—it’s been over ten years since an officer of the court was actually hurt by a defendant, and that ADA was not seriously injured. I’m not fixed, but I’m reminded—what happened to me was very unusual. What happened today was more typical.”

“You deal a lot in percentages, I guess,” he said.

“Ninety-three point five percent of the time,” she answered with a smile.

Every week, like clockwork, Jack received a letter from Ricky, the boy who’d been his shadow for a few wonderful years until joining the Marines immediately following his high school graduation. The letter was always addressed to Jack, opened with “Dear Jack, Preach, Mike and everyone.” It was the best part of his week.

When Jack first came to Virgin River, he bought the cabin because of its size and location, right in the middle of town. It had spacious rooms. He slept in one room while he worked on the other, then shifted his pallet. He was building the bar, not quite knowing if it would work in a town of only six hundred. He added the room upstairs and the apartment behind the kitchen, where he lived until Mel came into his life.

Ricky was a kid from down the street, a gregarious, freckle-faced youngster with a bright smile and the disposition of a friendly puppy. When Jack found out it was just Rick and his elderly grandma, he pulled him in, acting as something of a surrogate older brother or father. He had the privilege of a few years with the boy, watching him grow into a fine young man—strong, decent, brave. Jack taught him to fly-fish, to shoot and hunt. Together they’d gone through some fun times, some heartbreaking times. The day Rick left for the Marine Corps at the tender age of eighteen had been a day of both admiration and grief for Jack. There was a part of him that swelled in pride that Ricky would take on the Corps, and another part that worried, for no one knew better than Jack how challenging, how dangerous it could be.

When the letters came, he would share them with Preacher and Mike, then walk down to Lydie’s house—Rick’s grandmother. They would exchange news, for Rick wrote at least two letters a week during basic training—one to the bar where he had worked since he was fourteen, and one to his grandma. Lydie’s news was always censored, Rick keeping the rougher and tougher parts of his experience from her. But Jack read his letter aloud and Lydie laughed and gasped and shuddered, but loved hearing the unabridged version.

People started showing up at the bar when they heard there’d been a letter. Connie and Ron, the aunt and uncle of Ricky’s teenage girlfriend, always came around, hungry for news. Doc Mullins was as anxious as anyone, as were Mel and Paige. The Carpenters, Bristols, Hope McCrea. Everyone missed Ricky.

“They run us through the rain and mud with a thirty-pound ruck on our backs for miles and miles and miles, screaming and yelling about how we have to pay our dues, get tough—and it makes me want to laugh,” Rick wrote. “I keep thinking, brother, this is nothing. I paid my dues in Virgin River….”

Ricky and his young girlfriend, Liz, had had a baby together six months ago. A baby who hadn’t lived. They were too young, too fragile to be having a baby in the first place; too young and tender for such a tragedy. Being a father himself, Jack had no trouble imagining how the rigors of the Corps could seem like child’s play by comparison.

Jack missed the boy. Missed him as a father misses a son.

Mike stepped up his phone calls to Brie to almost every day and it reminded him of how he’d fallen in love when he was a boy. So much phone time. So many hours given to idle conversation about the day, the activities, the family. They’d occasionally drift into tenuous territory—religion and politics. At one point Mike asked her if she was driving yet and she said, a little bit. Over to her sisters’ houses, once in a while to the store, really quickly. “How are you doing in the car?”

“I don’t have a problem driving. It’s when I get where I’m going that I feel vulnerable. Unsafe. I have a new gun,” she informed him. “To replace the one I lost.”

He was silent a minute. “Uh, Brie. I wouldn’t want your confidence in the car to come from the fact that you plan to shoot the first Good Samaritan who pulls over to help you change a flat.”

“That isn’t exactly what I meant. But …”

“Never mind. I don’t want to know any more.”

She laughed at him. Her laugh seemed to come a little more easily these days, at least with him. “It makes me feel safer, even though it didn’t do me any good before.”

“I was wondering—do you want to have lunch again? Meet me this time? Provided you don’t have far to go and agree to leave the gun at home.”

“Where?” she asked.

“Maybe Santa Rosa,” he suggested. “I’d be happy to come to Sacramento, but it might be good, you driving somewhere that’s not just around the corner.”

“It’s a long way to go for lunch,” she said.

“Practice,” he said. “Expand your boundaries. Get out there.”

“But what’s in it for you?” she asked quietly.

“I thought that was clear,” he said. “There are a hundred reasons I want to help you in recovery, not the least of which is, I like you. And … I’ve been there.”

It worked. Lunch in Santa Rosa at a small Italian restaurant where they had pasta and iced tea and talked and the patrons behaved themselves. He held her hand across the table for a little while.

It was strange to Mike that he’d first become attracted to a feisty, tough character and now, even though most of the time she was soft-spoken and had trouble maintaining eye contact, his feelings toward her hadn’t changed all that much. He would welcome the old Brie back if she could fully recover—but he realized that even if she remained this vulnerable, he was feeling something strong. Something he wasn’t going to be able to let go of easily.

“Where did you tell your dad you were going?” he asked.

“Out to lunch with you,” she said, shrugging. “I made sure he knew which restaurant and when I’d be home. He was thrilled. Of course he wants me to get back into circulation. He has no idea how far I am from that. This is something. Well, it’s not getting back into the world, but it’s lunch with a friend. And that feels good.”

Two weeks later they met in Santa Rosa again, this time at a French restaurant in a vineyard, again small, where Brie could see every patron. And two weeks later, again Santa Rosa. When he first saw her, he wanted to rush to her, grab her up in his arms and hold her for a while, but he always put his hands in his pockets, smiled and nodded hello. By the sixth week and fourth lunch, she hugged him goodbye. “Thanks,” she said. “I think this helps.”

In between lunches, there were the phone calls. When they talked, he was constantly reminded of the spunky, smart-ass woman he’d fallen for. But he was faced with an uncertain woman; her confidence had been shattered. Yet in her core, this was the same woman—honest, humorous, brave.

Mike was faced with a first-time challenge. He was gentle with her, and kind—not difficult for him, because if anything he was a gentleman. But he had to work at making it seem he wasn’t worried about her; that he held no pity for her, when in fact there was nothing quite as hard as knowing a woman he admired so profoundly, cared for so deeply, had been brutalized in such a way. He couldn’t have her add his pain to her agenda—her recovery was difficult enough. It wasn’t easy to keep his concern from showing in his eyes, his smile. She needed strength now, not weakness. He would not be the weakness in her life.

Neither of them ever mentioned Jack in their conversations, except when Brie talked about the family, about growing up, how she’d missed him after he’d left for the Marines. So far Jack had not mentioned the phone calls or lunches.

Summer was growing old. Mel and Jack had been back from Sacramento since June and the summer had been fraught with tension for Mel. Her fifteen-year-old patient was very much on her mind, as she had not returned to the clinic to be tested for STDs. She had two pregnant women in her care, not to mention the other patients who wandered into Doc Mullins’s little clinic.

And her husband had not touched her in weeks.