Love, Zac

by Reid Forgrave

  They walked in the open field. Zac’s tennis shoes got soaked and covered in mud. He didn’t seem to mind. Myles Easter noticed a hollow look in his son’s eyes: distant, empty, a pair of dark holes in a disconnected countenance that didn’t resemble his Zac. The Easter men found a raccoon hiding in a hole near a fence. One of the dogs was trying to get it. Zac walked up and shot the raccoon. He displayed no emotion. To Myles Sr., this expressionless young man didn’t seem one bit like his middle son. It awakened the father to a realization.

  “When we were walking in the field,” Myles Sr. said, “I thought, Maybe there’s more to this.”

  It was a chilly day in November 2015. Friday the 13th, of all days. Cloudy, of course. Ali had been gone for nearly three months. Early that morning, Zac texted her while she slept: “I’m sorry you fell in love with a guy with a ducked up brain.” At some point after sending that text to Ali, Zac started drinking from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s in his childhood bedroom. His mother had found empty bottles of liquor whenever she came in to clean his room: “Zac, did you drink all this?” she’d asked. So he’d started to hide the bottles from her.

  Now, Big Red was swerving around the wide suburban boulevards of West Des Moines late that morning, with Zac at the wheel. He was shit-faced. He knew Ali was in class. Shortly before 10:00 a.m., he texted her while driving: “Can you call me when you get out of class? I’m in hot water right now and idk what to do.”

  A couple of nights before, on Wednesday, Zac and Ali had gotten into a fight. Zac had said some mean things; she told him she needed a couple of days of not talking to him. It wasn’t breaking up, not exactly, but for both of them, it kind of felt like it. For four hours that night, they didn’t text each other. Then, a text from Zac popped up on Ali’s phone: “Is it just me or does this seem kind of dumb? Lol” Then, another text from Zac, apologizing again: “Look you probably still hate me and I don’t blame you. One bit. I won’t lie to you and I’m not bs’ing you and just trying to get your attention. I’m not sure I’m doing well physically because weird things are happening my body.” He texted her again: “Sounds crazy I know, but if there’s one person I want to make things right with its you. I’m sorry for everything. There’s no simple way of saying it and it doesn’t even sound sincere like this. But some day I hope you find it in your heart to forgive.”

  Ali wrote a terse response: “Whats wrong” Followed by: “And I don’t hate you. I hope your body is feeling better.”

  Zac didn’t reply until the next morning, on Thursday: “Sorry I passed out last night, it was weird my heart was like off beat and my head was like having a seizure. Idk. It was fucked up and I couldn’t move. It sounds a little dramatic now, but I felt I was dying or something haha that’s why I texted you . . . Sorry though!!”

  Another text from Zac: “Could you talk to me tonight? I don’t want to guilt trip you and stuff. But your the only one who knows me and I really need someone to talk to.”

  Ali: Yeah we can talk later tonight. What time were you thinking?

  Zac: Idc I’m free all day/night.

  Zac, two hours later: Well shit, I forgot I had to do a family thing tonight until later. Don’t worry about it. (Ali was still mad at him from their fight. But she knew he needed her. They worked out a time to talk.)

  Zac: Well I guess do you even want to talk? Lol idk I don’t want to make you upset or mess with your feelings.

  Ali: “You wont be—I won’t let you lol I told you I’d be therr for you so just choose a time dudeeeeeeeee

  He chose 10:00 p.m. Then, he texted her again: “Yeah but you don’t have to worry about [it.]”

  Ali: Zac stop. I told you we could talk.

  Zac: Well you make me feel like it’s a hassle or that it’s a burden lol

  Ali: What have I said that makes you feel like that

  Zac: You haven’t said it, but your texts and the way they are presented to me just kind of make me feel that way.

  Ali was frustrated. Her boyfriend’s mood was all over the place. She tried not to let her frustration show: “If it was a hassle I wouldn’t have said yes so don’t worry about that.”

  It was a little after 10:00 p.m. Zac didn’t pick up when she called. She texted him again: “Hellllllooo Zachary? Lol just call me when you want to talk.”

  He didn’t pick up. He didn’t pick up all night. Ali was worried, but his mood had been like a Ping-Pong ball for months. She assumed he’d passed out.

  The next morning, on Friday, November 13, a text from Zac popped up on Ali’s phone at 5:40 a.m.: “Sorry about last night.”

  Ali: “What happened to ya?”

  No response. Ali didn’t know it, but around that time is when Zac started drinking. He was hearing voices inside his head.

  Ali texted him again at 9:32 a.m. “Look I meant it when I said I wanted a few days to myself to clear my head but I also meant it when I said I’d always be there for you, even during that time. If you need to talk then we will talk you just gotta let me know when. I’m done with class at noon, so if you still need me we can talk then or later on—up to you.”

  Ali didn’t know it at the time, but Zac was driving drunk around West Des Moines.

  “Yes I still need to talk,” Zac texted. “Can you call me when you get out of class? I’m in hot water right now and idk what to do”

  As soon as she got out of class and saw Zac’s text, Ali called him. He was slurring his words, crying, talking about having lost all hope, apologizing for being a fuckup. Ali was scared, but she talked him down, like she always did. She convinced him to stop at a gas station to get him off the road. He hung up on her. He got a Gatorade.

  “Do not leave,” Ali texted him at 11:27 a.m.

  She coaxed him into a nearby Jimmy John’s to sober up.

  She texted him again: “I’m not trying to be mean or make you feel like shit but I’m worried about you and have already lost my best friend to drunk driving. I’m not gonna be ok if I lose you too so just think of that.”

  They talked. She soothed him. She could hear his voice calm down. She texted him: “Idk if I did, but I hope I helped.” He texted her back. She could feel the guilt and the shame through his words: “You did well babe. I’m sorry”

  Back at home, in his bedroom, next to the Muhammad Ali poster that read: Impossible Is Nothing, his laptop was open to a thirty-nine-page Microsoft Word document titled “Concussions: My Silent Struggle.” He’d created the document five months earlier. “My last wishes,” it began. The final revision was made that day, November 13, 2015.

  Then came a strange request from Zac. He asked what Ali’s email address was. He already knew her email address—they’d emailed each other how many times over the years?—but she texted it to him anyway.

  Zac: You found another guy yet?

  Ali: Of course not Zac

  Zac: K

  Ali: I’m serious. Have you found another girl?

  Zac: No

  Ali: Why are you mad

  Zac: I’m not. Your single do as you please

  Ali: Zac I’m well aware. But I have no desire to be with anyone.

  Zac: Ok

  Zac promised he wouldn’t drive. Ali went into a meeting about a law class. At some point later in the afternoon, Zac texted her: “I’m home now. Don’t worry about it lol thanks for the help though!”

  Ali: Zac. You promised you weren’t gonna drive.

  Zac: Ok sorry Alison. For everything. Idk what’s happening to me, but I’m sorry I brought you into it.

  Ali: Don’t be sorry you brought me into it. I told you I’d always be there for you. I just want you to get better.

  Zac: Idk if there is better for ppl like me.

  Ali: There is. You just need a little extra reminding

  Zac: I love you so much it’s stupid. I’m sorry you fell in love with a guy with a ducked up brain.

  Ali: You can’t choose who you fall in love with. You just fall in love.

  Zac: Like I said befo
re. If anything happens to be just by a chance of luck. Tell my family everything.

  This sounded ominous. It was getting close to evening in Iowa. Zac grabbed the .40-caliber pistol he’d given his dad for Father’s Day, got in Big Red, and pulled out of his parents’ driveway. He drove up the hill and then down to the intersection, and he turned left onto the pavement. A couple of miles down the road, he took a right into Lake Ahquabi State Park. He’d had so many great memories at this lake. This would not be one of them.

  Zac opened the Facebook app on his phone. He typed out a post: “Dear friends and family, If your reading this than God bless the times we’ve had together. Please forgive me. I’m taking the selfish road out. Only God understands what I’ve been through. No good times will be forgotten and I will always watch over you. Please if anything remember me by the person I am not by my actions. I will always watch over you! Please, please, don’t take the easy way out like me. Fist pumps for Jesus and fist pumps for me. Party on wayne!!;)”

  This wasn’t just ominous; this was a very public suicide note. All around Indianola and Des Moines, friends and family saw Zac’s post and panicked. Where is Zac? Zac’s phone started buzzing, buzzing, buzzing. He didn’t pick up. Ali called again and again. No reply. Nobody knew where he was. At 5:36 p.m., his first college roommate, Jake Powers, texted him: “Hey what’re you up to bud?” No reply. The sun had dipped over the horizon on the other side of the Y-shaped lake. Leaves lay in heaps on the fringe of the woods. The gusty November winds died down as the sun sank, but there was still a chill in the air. Zac took out his phone and snapped a picture of the lake. He posted it to Snapchat, ignoring the frantic phone calls that were pouring into his phone. God bless America, he captioned the photo.

  Ali called again.

  Finally, Zac picked up. There was terror in his voice.

  “I can’t do this,” he told her. “It’s never going to get better.”

  A friend noticed the setting of Zac’s Snapchat photo: Lake Ahquabi, just down the road from his family’s house. Ali tried to soothe him: “Listen to the sound of my voice. Listen to the sound of my voice.”

  “I’m losing my mind,” he cried into the phone. “This is it for me!” A police cruiser came speeding down the winding hill toward the lake, followed by another. “Ali, did you send these cops here?” Then, Zac’s phone cut out.

  Zac pointed the pistol at the darkened sky and fired a warning shot. Moments later, Myles Easter Sr. sped down the hill in his pickup. Men do not sit around and wait for life to happen to them; men get up and fix things. And Myles Easter knew he was needed to fix his son, right then. He jumped out of the truck and peered through the window of his son’s car. He saw an empty six-pack of Coors Light, an empty bottle of Captain Morgan, and a pill bottle.

  Floodlights illuminated Zac. He walked down the pier toward a wooden fishing hut out on the water. Zac’s phone died. He didn’t get the frantic and garbled text message Ali sent him at 6:12 p.m.: “Baby its my Winslow jist talk to me. I need to know you’re okay..”

  “Put your gun down!” the deputies shouted.

  “Nope!” Zac yelled with an anguished laugh. “Not gonna do that!”

  “Fuck it,” Myles said to himself. “I can’t let this happen. If he shoots me, he shoots me.”

  Zac’s father sprinted past the sheriff’s deputies and onto the pier.

  “Dad, stop!”

  “Zac, I’m coming,” Myles said. “Put your gun down.”

  “Dad!” Zac shouted again. “Dad, stop!”

  Zac disappeared into the fishing hut with his gun.

  The door slammed shut behind him.

  Seconds later his father reached the door. He opened it. He saw a sad, sick look on his son’s face.

  “Dad, I’m in trouble,” Zac said quietly.

  Myles Easter Sr. spoke gently. “I don’t know what’s going on, but we’ll get this figured out. But we gotta get through this part right now. We’re in deep shit. We can’t make it any worse.”

  Zac handed over his gun. Slowly, his dad opened the door of the fishing hut. They walked up the pier to dry land, where deputies surrounded Zac and eased his wrists into handcuffs. An ambulance drove Zac to Des Moines, where he would be checked into Iowa Lutheran Hospital’s psychiatric unit.

  In Cleveland, Ali was still panicking. For sixty-two minutes, she had no idea if Zac was dead or alive. His final words to her before his phone died had sounded so flat, so final.

  Finally, a text popped up on her phone. It was Zac’s older brother: “They got him.” Zac had been saved from himself.

  Nine

  The End

  Email from Ali Epperson to Zac’s older brother, Myles II, the day after his suicide attempt:

  From: Alison Epperson

  Date: Sat, Nov 14, 2015 at 1:20 PM

  Subject: Zac history

  To: Myles Easter

  Hey—so I’m trying to remember and word all of it, but he’s told me a lot so if I’m leaving anything out I’ll try to pass it along as I remember (and I apologize for the random order of this e-mail. I’m just writing as it comes to me) . . .

  Okay, so Zac first told me about all of the medical stuff this summer when I got home from school. He explained that all of it stemmed from all of the concussions he got in HS and that the consequences/symptoms were exacerbated because he never properly dealt with them and kept playing through them, etc. . . .

  He also had these little brain spasms frequently. He described them as mini mini seizures. They’d last 1-5 seconds but would be a shooting intense pain in his head and he felt like he couldn’t move during those seconds.

  Like I said, he’s talked to a bunch of doctors and therapists and he never felt like he was getting a real answer or any kind of consensus. Some of the possible things he was suffering from that he talked to doctors about was borderline bipolar disorder, borderline schizophrenia, and borderline personality disorder. (BPD was a big one for him that we talked about a lot) . . .

  One thing that happened occasionally is he would get an overwhelmingly feeling of sadness or an off mood feeling that would come on suddenly and last a few hours without any explanation. One of the weekends he came to visit me, he came because he started having one of these episodes and wanted to get away from everyone at home. That’s also the first weekend he skipped drill because the episode was that bad. He had another one on the drive here and then he had one while he was here . . .

  It’s true he had been drinking most nights. The past week and a half he’d been trying to push me away without saying that all of this was behind it until the past couple days when he all but admitted it. Wednesday night he texted me saying that he wasn’t doing well and that his body felt physically off. He described it as his heart was off beat and he felt like he was having a mini seizure and couldn’t move.

  Yesterday he texted me during class and told me he really needed to talk and asked if I could call him after class. I got out of class an hour later and called him and he was drunk driving around WDM. I made him pull over and go get food at jimmy johns and wait there for awhile . . . I got him calmed down and we just talked about how he was gonna be able to beat all of this he just needed to stay committed to fighting it and getting help and needed to remember to call me or his therapist or one of you all when he woke up in the mood he did yesterday. He was still upset but a lot more positive about it all.

  Probably another 45 minutes went by and then he headed home. I called him again after that and he said he was at home and was feeling a little better and that he was just gonna try to sleep for a couple hours.

  Maybe two hours later I got a snap from him at lake aquabi and then maybe an hour or hour and a half I saw the status and called him.

  When I called him he was bawling and just kept apologizing and saying he loved me but that he wasn’t himself and that he was going crazy, etc etc. He also mentioned hearing voices again.

  He hung up and then when I
got him on the phone again he was still crying. However, during this time he still knew he was talking to me and was aware of what was going on. He knew the cops were there, etc. I got him to calm down very briefly and just listen to my voice but then he got flustered again when he saw the cops get closer. Then he accused me of helping the cops, but then he went back to apologizing and said he already texted all of you and that he wanted his brain donated to concussion research. He hung [up]. I got him on the phone one last time for only about 30 seconds and he was still really upset. After that he stopped answering and then his phone just went straight to voicemail.

  I know there’s a lot more and I’m trying to remember and piece it all together, but I’m emotionally exhausted after last night so it’s hard to remember. I’ll keep sending you things as I remember.

  On the morning of Monday, November 16, 2015, less than seventy-two hours after he had pointed his .40-caliber pistol at the evening sky at Lake Ahquabi State Park and fired, Zac was sitting across the table from his mother at the IHOP next to a Walmart Supercenter on Des Moines’s south side. He had, in his words, “manipulated my way out of a hospital in three days.”

  Zac texted Ali: “Hi, keep it a secret from everyone else please but they just released me from the looney bin lol I’m sorry for everything I had a like really bad episode Friday like all day”

  Ali was worried sick. She’d known Zac had been in the psychiatric unit, but he hadn’t called her; the phone was a community line, and he was embarrassed to call his girlfriend in front of other patients. His mom was on edge, too. Brenda is a fixer, the type of person who exhausts herself to make life easier for the people around her. Growing up as the fourth out of five children, she was always the peacemaker, the one trying to make things right. Now, as a mother, she’d been trying to save her middle son for months. Days before, she’d nearly lost him.