Summer Sons

by Lee Mandelo

  Sheets rustled; the bed frame creaked.

  “Just get up here,” Sam said.

  Andrew blinked into the black space under the bed. He sat up. Sam had turned onto his side to face the far wall. The mattress was at least queen-sized—and he was allowed this one thing, he thought, after the fucking nightmare and the dead deer. He missed sleeping beside a warm, breathing body. Andrew tossed the pillow into its proper spot and laid stiffly on the cool twist of sheets, tucking his lacerated feet and calves under them as unobtrusively as possible. Sam sighed. Andrew breathed to his rhythm.

  He woke up alone the next morning in an empty house and wore his borrowed shorts home to Capitol, unsettled by the fleeting, sleep-muddled recollection of Sam’s knees pressed into the backs of his own, alive and sweat-damp. Underneath, the stirring whisper of further, further, you’re getting there. Riley was standing in the kitchen cooking eggs when he opened the porch door and Andrew paused, feeling inexplicably naked in borrowed clothes that he knew Riley would recognize. His soiled jeans dangled from a plastic bag looped around his wrist. The ring was still in the pocket, in the professor’s fancy paper packet. Riley glanced over at him, started to speak, then did a filmic double-take before shutting his mouth.

  “Slept there, it was too late to get back,” Andrew said, not addressing the fact that he’d been with Sam in the first place. If he didn’t, he figured Riley wouldn’t.

  “Sure,” Riley said, awkward. “Uh, how come you left after talking to Troth?”

  “She gave me back Eddie’s ring, and brought up all that stuff about his research, their families. Couldn’t get a word in edgewise,” he admitted.

  “Overwhelming, huh,” Riley said as he turned the burner off and scooped his scrambled eggs onto a plate.

  Andrew sat at the table. The stag and the mud and the bones hadn’t quite dispersed under the strong summer light. Riley plopped down across from him and tapped the tines of his fork on his plate a couple of times, chewing his bottom lip. Andrew raised an eyebrow.

  “Okay, so, I got curious,” Riley blurted out. “And I’m sorry, I know, but I went and dug out his notes in your room? I figured you were going through it so I’d help out. You didn’t miss the field notes—they’re not there. I can show you?”

  Andrew let the whiplash range of emotions wash over him, from anger to exposure to reluctant interest; then he said, “Show me.”

  Riley dashed up the stairs, leaving his eggs unattended. Andrew stole a bite with his fingers, then snagged the bag of shredded cheese from the counter to snack out of. On his return, Riley thumped the stack of journals and pages onto the glass tabletop—looking eager to present his research. With a flourish he spread them out.

  “This is all personal stuff—like, his journaling and planning and thinking, but not the ethnographic stuff like demographic data and transcriptions and shit. I remember seeing his field notebook; it was like, this grey Moleskine. If this is everything you found, there’s a ton of shit missing,” Riley said. “Have you checked his carrel?”

  “I didn’t know he had one to check,” he replied.

  “Well, shit.”

  The men stared at each other for a long moment.

  “It’s under both our names, but I haven’t gone back since. He kept the spare key upstairs,” Riley said. “It’s reserved all through the semester.”

  “Then let’s go see,” Andrew said.

  “Let me change,” Riley said, cramming two bites of eggs into his mouth before jogging upstairs again.

  Andrew bounced his leg, waiting. His phone had a text from West, asking him what had happened with Troth at the party, and he responded she returned one of Eddie’s rings to me and ambushed me about his research, I had to go after that. West’s typing bubble popped up, disappeared, popped up again. Riley returned before the message arrived, twirling keys around his finger and wearing a grey Henley, the bright butter-yellow of his sneakers offsetting black jeans. His glasses narrowed the lines of his face. Andrew was struck again at the chameleon effect of his roommate: one minute a grubby punk with an ugly, fast car, the next a svelte young academic. The contradiction made his skin crawl with sympathy. He had to fit in somehow.

  “This might be nothing,” Riley said, as if to convince himself.

  They drove the short distance to campus in tense silence, and a feral energy pushed their pace striding across the weekend-emptied quad, dotted with a bare handful of students appreciating the weather. The carrels were located in the central library, up a few flights of well-trodden stairs. Overhead fluorescents hummed ominously across the rows of cubicle-esque box offices. Riley strode through the first row, took a turn, and cut across two more before he stopped in front of number 32. Andrew unclipped the small brass key and fit it into the petite lock, scarred from decades of clumsy student handling. It turned with an audible click.

  Riley said, “I can go first, if you want.”

  “Wait out here,” Andrew said.

  He turned the knob and the door sagged into his grip, worn on its hinges. He let it swing open. The high walls of the carrel and the wan track lighting overhead turned the compact space into a chiaroscuro relief. He flicked on the lamps, one for each corner, and braced his hands on the solitary chair tucked under the desktop. The carrel had two long, pale wooden desks with drawers at one end, joined at the far corner in an L-shape.

  Books, as he’d expected, scattered the far desk: historical survey texts, local journals, a lone mismatched graphic novel with an envelope sticking out of it as a bookmark. Two more composition books, flat and pristine, were tucked into the top corner. Andrew sat in the chair, laid his hands on the working desktop, and thought where the fuck are these notes?

  “Riley,” he said.

  The other man peered around the edge of the door, a briefly disembodied head and one shoulder. “Sup?”

  “What’s missing?”

  Riley pulled the door shut behind him as he crammed into the small space. The light flashed on his glasses as he turned his head to inspect the full range of the carrel. He said, “Check the drawers.”

  Andrew pulled out the bottom drawer and found a package of granola bars, unopened. The middle contained nothing but a binder clip and a pen, while the top offered a spiral-bound purple notebook, battered and dog-eared, but it had Riley’s handwriting on the cover. The chair spun when he kicked the floor to face the other man again, empty-handed. Riley stood near his knees, leaning against the other desktop in the confined space. Neither spoke, but Riley’s face had gone a hectic scarlet, scar standing out in silvery relief across his cheek and nose.

  Andrew’s hands clenched and unclenched on his knees. He’d almost expected to find Eddie’s phone, his notes, a neat trail that said met with a crazy old man in the woods, here’s his address, he tells good stories. Clean answers to an impossible situation. The disappointment outweighed his understanding that the lack of material was also significant.

  “Andrew,” Riley started, sounding on edge already.

  He wasn’t ready to be interrogated while his brain continued to spin its emotional gears, so he pointed to the bridge of his own nose at the same spot Riley’s scar was and asked, “Where’d that come from again?”

  “Someone hit me and I fell on some glass,” he said, undeterred by the redirection. “Andrew, there’s nothing here.”

  “Sam take care of that person for you?”

  “There’s nowhere else his notes should be,” Riley said, doggedly having the conversation Andrew wasn’t participating in.

  “I’ll ask Troth first thing on Monday, it doesn’t … mean shit yet. Not yet,” he said.

  Riley shook his head. Andrew stood, curving his chest and hips to avoid contact in the one-person room.

  “West said she wanted me to follow up with her, and she was talking about his research at the party, before she gave me the ring. She definitely wants me to keep working on it. The notes might be with her, might be somewhere else. Don’t get your hopes up.”<
br />
  He was reminding himself as much as telling Riley, who nodded.

  Next to the door, pinned to the cloth wall from top to desk, were a set of eight-year-old newspaper articles, some clipped, some printed, some scanned. Local Boys Found After 72-Hour Search, read one headline paired with a black-and-white photograph of two skinny-limbed kids in cargo shorts and sneakers posing for a camera. The picture had been taken at his twelfth birthday. Eddie had pushed him into the swimming pool with his flip-phone still in his pocket an hour later and they’d had a muddy fistfight in the yard. The other headlines weren’t much different. He shoved his hands in his pockets to keep from tearing it all down.

  18

  Andrew lowered himself into the same cracked vinyl chair in front of Troth’s desk from his last visit. The professor had left a note on the tiny square whiteboard hanging on her door: Be back shortly! As he waited, implications spooled out inside his head one after another, unforgiving like a corpse under hospital lighting, like how he’d seen Eddie in the identification photographs. Men who had violent squabbles over cocaine shot each other; someone desperate to cover up an overdose would pose a body, maybe. In neither of those scenarios would the perpetrator tie someone up, slit their wrists, and drive their corpse to a scenic location for a dog-walker to find. Nothing qualified him to investigate an actual murder, but if he took his handful of suspicions and bad dreams to a cop they’d pity-laugh him out of the room.

  Something drastic was missing—maybe in the field notes, maybe in the phone. He didn’t know what it would mean if Troth had the notes—it might mean nothing at all. But without access to the fieldwork he’d have to retrace Eddie’s steps himself, and she could help with that better than anyone.

  From the foyer Dr. Troth said, “Andrew, I’m glad you could make it.”

  “I’m sorry it’s taken a while,” he said as she entered the office.

  He crossed one ankle over the other, attempting to loosen his posture to an approximation of normal. Professor Troth lowered herself into her utilitarian chair. She rested her wrists on the edge of the desk, fine-boned fingers interlocked, to regard him. Overhead vents kicked on with a muffled roar, and a burst of chilly air rattled the papers scattered over her blotter.

  Andrew said, “Thanks for returning the ring.”

  “I couldn’t have kept it, but you’re welcome regardless,” she said.

  Here goes nothing, he thought, then said, “I read through some of Eddie’s notes and stuff he left around the house, and you’re right—it was, uh, interesting. How’d he present it to you?”

  “Well, his general focus as I understood it was on folklore unique to the region: urban legends, ghost stories, that sort of thing. His study was comparative, and focused on placing local traditions within the broader context of Appalachian-South cultural studies.”

  While she spoke, she reached into the purse on the far corner of the desk. The same sort of brass keys he had on his belt loop cluttered her key ring. She thumbed one loop out of the clump and unlocked her top desk drawer. It slid free with a quiet hiss and she lifted a hook-ended manila folder from the hanging rack. The plastic tab at the top said Fulton in blue spidery script. She laid it flat and pushed it toward him. Andrew flipped the folder open, glancing at the tidy stack of printed pages.

  She continued, “First is the mentoring file I’d been keeping, followed by Edward’s own notes, in particular the sketches he’d been constructing of early Fulton history. I had intended to assist him with archival research from my own family library, before he passed.”

  “And you said you were hoping I’d take it up?” Andrew prompted.

  Troth nodded, tucking her hair behind her ears studiously. “The project is unique, truly. Edward was able to speak with a … type of person whom I don’t have access to or rapport with. But I encouraged him to pursue his unorthodox avenues of investigation—his reach revealed fresh information on stories I thought I’d known inside and out. I suppose old money talking to and about itself isn’t nearly as interesting; significant facts are easily missed that way. I’d almost abandoned hope on continuing to pursue the avenues he opened up—until your arrival.”

  Andrew said, “I thought you said he mentioned I’d be coming here?”

  “He had, but after his passing, you didn’t reach out to confirm your enrollment with the department, or answer our correspondence. So your arrival came as a surprise,” she admitted. “My husband also found Edward’s methodology fascinating, but aside from difficulties accessing Edward’s sources, it felt disrespectful for us to pursue further without him. And then, as I said, you arrived—which refreshed my interest.”

  “Opened the door again, huh. Can I look?” he asked with a gesture to the folder.

  “Be my guest,” she said.

  Andrew slid the file onto his lap and read through the first few pages of her notes: Edward has laid out a frame that balances academic inquiry into folklore with field research to trace the origins of stories, both familial and commonplace, that will allow him a unique ethnographic perspective on his subject. Several pages further in, she continued: the first set of interviews conducted in the field were inconclusive, but Edward seems nonplussed, eager to continue, and perhaps enamored with the process itself.

  “The material will certainly be publishable,” she continued. “And more importantly, the original contribution to the field would have quite an impact. I act as advisor for several students in every cohort, but I don’t often see work that catches my interest so thoroughly. Assisting your efforts, if you choose to pick up his project midstream, is a personal priority for me. Your first publication could come as a co-authored piece, with my assistance on the material.”

  Her motives slid into place, filling the logistical gap he’d been struggling with. It made no sense for something high-concept like loyalty to the Fulton legacy to drive her persistence when she’d known Eddie for less than six months. The opportunity to co-opt a student’s labor to boost her own profile did—how neatly and smoothly she’d proposed he do the work and she take the credit. He gnawed his lip for a moment, glanced up at her from the notes, and prodded to confirm, “Not an entirely altruistic motive, then, bringing me on board?”

  Her gallant smile had a playful edge, conspiratorial. She leaned onto her elbows and said, “No, you’re right, my interest comes as much from personal desire as altruism alone. I hope that doesn’t come across as ghoulish? Believe me, I was fond of Edward, and I truly do think that his work is worth the effort of preservation. I wasn’t expecting to get a second opportunity.”

  “Publish or perish, huh,” he said.

  “Exactly that. I’m willing to admit, between the two of us here, that Edward’s passing left me stuck on a professional level as well as a personal one,” she said. “I wasn’t able to fruitfully pick up where he left off, but he’d mentioned your interest and qualifications. And you also have access to his estate, correct?”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, distracted as he thumbed through the notes in the folder.

  The pages were in Eddie’s handwriting on loose-leaf paper with neat marginal annotations in her script. The first sheet read, James Fulton settled the land that would become the estate in 1806 without incident or conflict. Found a family Bible that cuts out around 1910 when people stopped recording names in it, but the lineage is clear from the first guy to the last (aka, me). Eddie’s small aside was jarring, as if he were performing for the reader. Andrew frowned and shuffled through the pages—there were only around twenty-five.

  “Do you have more than this, somewhere else in your files?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?” she responded.

  The notes she’d handed him were spartan, bland compared to the personal journals. Andrew sat the folder on the desk. Troth’s interest might be ghoulish, but her angle on the whole mess was academic, oblique to his ultimate goal. It was an angle to exploit nonetheless.

  “The field notes for his interviews are missing,” And
rew said.

  Troth tilted her head and said, “I don’t have those, unfortunately. He provided me summaries where appropriate, not his originals or transcriptions.”

  “No, I mean they’re just gone. I’ve dug through everything at home, in his car, and in his carrel. Everyone has mentioned them, but they’re nowhere to be found.”

  After two beats of strained silence, with her blank stare pinning him to his stiff seat, Troth crossed the office to close the door. The air conditioner cut off. Andrew drummed his fingertips on the chair arm, watching her as she paused. Her grip rested loose on the door handle, and she cocked her head at him with a considering flat frown.

  “And you’ve looked everywhere, you’re sure?” she repeated.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  “He did a full semester’s worth of interviews; there should be at minimum one full notebook. We discussed the interviews in a general sense, and he referenced from them in our meetings, but the originals and the audio recordings should be with his other materials.”

  Andrew spread his hands in a gesture of supplication and said, “I was assuming, or maybe hoping, you’d have them.”

  The fine wrinkles at the corner of Troth’s mouth lent a severity to her expression. He wouldn’t have wanted that intensity turned on him in a course; he doubted she ever had trouble with boisterous underclassmen. All his leads pointed in the direction of those field excursions, alongside Sam or otherwise; the absent phone with its likely collection of audio recordings and the written notes both were too closely joined to the hallucinatory vision of the corpse posed under the oak tree. Troth clicked across the tile floor in her sensible heels to pull the second guest chair over to his elbow and sit.

  “Here.” She flipped the folder open once again between the two of them. Andrew shifted in his seat to face her. “While I don’t have the interviews themselves, my notes reference a handful of them in greater detail.”