Playing Jacks

xi. Life's a Race, part 3

The old trailer where Uncle Buck lives smells faintly musty.  Clothes- clean or dirty- are draped everywhere.  Dishes litter every flat surface.

“Uncle Buck, this is a pigsty!” Sophie fusses and automatically begins to pick up the offensive clutter.

“Never you mind about an old bachelor’s mess,” Buck grumbles, pushing Sophie towards the back. “You just get on back there and get prettied up . . .” His voice fades behind a closed door.  Even when he reappears, he doesn’t demand Jacks’ attention.  He hurries into his kitchen and immediately begins to rattle and bang with more gusto than a toddler playing drums on the old kitchen kettle. 

Jacks isn’t complaining.  He’s got to think.  Finding a secluded corner, Jacks tosses musty clothes away from a recliner and settles in to wring his hands.  This vacillation between two such distinctly different choices is nearly as unnerving as the choice itself.  What’s wrong with him? 

Yes, he admits it.  He’s addicted.  Especially in these last few days, it’s gotten so that he doesn’t feel right unless she’s nearby, preferably with some part of her body- hand, hip, or shoulder- cupped in his hand.  His lusts have turned into a monster and, like any addiction, he’s nearly ready to sell his soul for the next hit.

But it’s just an addiction.  It’s just lust.  God help him remember the short span of life he’s known this woman.  It’s impossible to attribute more to the emotions.  He refuses to believe the fairytales that promise impossible emotions and rigid devotion after chance meetings. 

Priorities.

What is lust compared to life?  Not simply the intake and release of breath, day-after-monotonous day but a life with sustenance and family and the give-and-take of something richer than his lonely days have offered. 

What is lust compared to that?

And she has what it takes to claim that life.

His heart wrenches violently, threatening to dislodge itself and leave him vacant- the death throes of his addiction wrestling with his convictions. 

The conviction wins.  Snapping open his phone, Jacks makes the call.  “I’ve got who you want.  She’s got evidence, names, phone numbers and a cipher that will hang all the top guys . .. “

The casserole decimated and the story told, ‘Uncle’ Buck leans his elbows onto the cluttered table.  Under the bristled, grey beard, his mouth is flattened with discontent.

“So that’s the plan?” He asks, sounding unconvinced.

Sophie nods, looking nervous.  Jacks simply mutters, “That’s what she says.”

Buck levers himself up from his table, the wood groaning its complaints, and paces away. “I don’t like it Soapy.  You go to the authorities.  Go to this Callan fella.  If you’ve done wrong, you face up to it, girl.  That’s how you were raised.  Face up to it, like an adult.  You make it right.”

“Uncle Buck, you don’t understand.  If I go to the FBI, they’ll not only lock me up, the family will send someone after me and kill me there.  I can’t go to them.  It’s my death sentence.”

Jacks leans back in his chair and crosses his arms over his chest, his expression brooding.   Uncle Buck looks between them- his best friend’s daughter gazing up at him with pleading, brown eyes and her stoic male friend- before turning for the door.  It’s not his place to chide the woman any further.  She’s not his daughter- but the man who stood in that role has been gone for nearly six months.  He can’t be here to guide his wayward child.  And adult or no, that’s what she is right now.  She’s a lost child, grappling to find her way back to the right path, where she was raised.