The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  She’d reached the line of stakes that divided her land from that of Jessup’s—hadn’t she been headed there all along?—and stopped at the first of the wilted orange ribbons, folding her arms tightly, feeling how tired she was. Tired and unable to sleep, because of this man and his repulsive brood. She imagined that there was a palpable difference in the atmosphere between her territory and his, the woods on her side of the line natural and inviting and filled with light; stepping past the boundary stakes as she did now, without really thinking about it, the morning stillness became the watchful silence of a dark and slinking predator, tensing for attack.

  She didn’t continue on, only stood in Jessup’s woods and let herself feel how strongly she’d come to hate him—and as if the gods had been waiting for her to confirm her heart’s truth before guiding her further, she heard the crunch of underbrush from Jessup’s side, heavy steps approaching. She started to back up, feeling a flush of panic at being caught out trespassing…but then stopped and waited. She wanted a confrontation, she realized, had wanted one for a long time, although she hadn’t known it until right this very second. That she was a woman alone on crazy people’s land didn’t occur to her, or not as more than a passing thought. They had trespassed on her land at will, since the very day she and James had purchased it and begun planning their society of artists and artisans. Why should she cower, why should she back away?

  Cole Jessup himself appeared a moment later, dressed in dark-green fatigues with a matching canvas cap and carrying a rifle. She recognized him from his broad shoulders and the choppy salt-and-pepper hair jutting out from beneath the cap. She saw him before he saw her, and planted her feet more firmly, her rage making her strong and solid, an oak before his blustering wind.

  Jessup’s blank face turned in her direction, and he stopped walking, blinking in surprise. Only for a beat, though—and then he raised his weapon and trained it on her. She wasn’t surprised or frightened—only angry, angrier than she’d felt in as long as she could remember. Her body shook with it.

  “Get off my land,” he said, his low voice threaded with venom.

  “Or what?” she asked, and somehow, she was smiling, a grin that felt carved into her face. “You going to shoot me, Mr. Jessup? Kill me, for doing something you do whenever you feel like it?”

  “Get off my land,” he repeated. The gun didn’t waver.

  “And how would you explain it to the police?” Miranda asked. “You going to say you were afraid for your life? Afraid of a woman?”

  She took a step toward him as she spoke, seeing him through a veil of red that pulsed before her eyes. “You going to cut me up, like you did my kitties?”

  “I don’t know nothing about your cats, you crazy hippie bitch,” Jessup muttered, but the way his gaze darted away from hers told her that he was lying. “You’re trespassing. Get the fuck off my land, now.”

  She took another step away from her side. “Know nothing,” she sneered. “‘Don’t know nothing.’ You think I’m afraid of you, you ignorant bastard, ’cause you’re the big man with the gun? Because that doesn’t mean—”

  The rifle thundered, the sound deafening, and Miranda fell backward with a scream, her arms wheeling for balance. She hit the ground, a sharp stick ripping the seat of her pants, punching into the back of her thigh, and for just a second she thought the abrupt pain she felt was from a bullet, that he’d actually shot her. Shocked, her ears ringing, she looked up into Jessup’s cold, grinning face.

  “You should be afraid,” he said, his words barely audible through the clamor in her ears. “You come on my property again, I’ll kill you. That goes for all your faggot friends, too, and any more fucking cats you send over here to shit on my land.”

  His lips curled, his expression one of disgust. “Fucking faggot tree-huggers.” He spat. “Coming out here, acting like your shit don’t stink. Thinking you’re better ’an us. My family’s owned this land for three generations. You don’t tell me anything, I tell you.”

  He was furious and insane; she could see that in his eyes. She didn’t move, barely breathed, and hated him more than ever, for what he’d done, for who he was.

  Jessup held her gaze a beat longer, then turned and walked quickly away, his stride stiff and angry. She couldn’t hear the twigs breaking beneath his boots, but as the deafness subsided, she could hear her own ragged breathing and the pounding of her heart.

  Eric and Amanda and Devon were smoking on the front porch when the old truck pulled up in front of Devon’s house, parking at the curb. An oldster got out, saw them, and started walking toward them, his hand raised in a gesture of greeting.

  “Who’s that?” Eric asked.

  “The reporter,” Amanda said. She stubbed out her smoke and stood up. Devon immediately followed suit, and Eric did the same, trying to recall what she’d said about the reporter. The guy hadn’t believed her story, he remembered that much.

  Eric stepped in front of Devon, taking his place at Amanda’s side—noting Devon’s thwarted expression with some satisfaction.

  The oldster approached with a smile, but he didn’t look happy. His face was watchful behind that slight curve of his lips, and when he stopped in front of them, Eric could see that he was impatient, tense.

  “Devon, Amanda,” he said, nodding, turning his gaze toward Eric. “I’m Bob Sayers,” he said, and stuck out his hand. Eric shook with him.

  “This is Eric Hess,” Amanda said. “He’s a friend of mine.”

  “Did something happen?” Devon asked.

  Sayers nodded. “Yeah,” he said simply.

  “Was it Brian? At the fairgrounds?” Devon asked.

  The reporter let out a deep breath, like he’d been holding it. He nodded. “I talked to the police when I heard about the attack. Local woman named Karen Haley. She owns Big Blue, the Victorian over on Exeter. Three boys raped her behind the fairground bathrooms last night, just after dark.”

  He looked at Amanda, his gaze unsettled. “Like you said.”

  “Oh my God,” Devon said. “No fucking way.”

  “What did you tell the cops?” Amanda asked. Her voice shook a little, and Eric slipped his arm around her, pulling her close. She leaned against him.

  “That I’d heard some kids talking, saying that Brian Glover and a couple of his friends were planning something,” Sayers said. “I don’t think Stan Vincent would have believed anything else. He was…he didn’t seem himself.”

  Devon turned to look at Amanda, his eyes wide. “This—what you saw, this means—what you saw about me, that’s going to come true, too, isn’t it?”

  “Oh, fuck,” Amanda said, and stepped away from Eric, closer to Devon. Eric had to fight an urge to pull her back, his body almost aching from the sudden absence of her. She slid her arm across Devon’s back, and Eric felt a burn of jealousy, the intensity of it totally unexpected.

  “I think we should talk,” Sayers said, looking at Devon and Amanda. “Can I take you out to breakfast? Or lunch, I guess. My treat. All of you,” he added, glancing at Eric.

  “Yeah, OK,” Amanda said, still holding Devon’s hand. “You’re coming?” She looked at Eric.

  “Sure,” he said, and shrugged for effect.

  Amanda took his hand again, walking them to the reporter’s beat-up truck.

  The waitress at the Hilltop Inn seated them in a corner booth and poured them all coffee. The restaurant was nonsmoking, which sucked, but at least they had privacy; breakfast was pretty much over, and the lunch rush hadn’t started yet. Only townies ate at Hilltop; the summer people went to Café Fresco, where they could get free-range egg-white omelets and organic espresso. Hilltop’s décor was generic pancake-house bland and the air conditioner was set too high, but the food was cheap and plentiful.

  “So,” Bob said, as soon as their server disappeared. “Tell me what’s been going on since the picnic.”

  He was looking at Devon, who’d done all the talking when they’d first met, but he only stared
back at the reporter, his eyes kind of unfocused. He looked like he’d been punched in the stomach.

  Amanda had already decided on the ride over not to hold anything back, even the shit she wasn’t sure about. She’d probably come off like a psycho, but if she could keep anyone else from being hurt or killed, it’d be worth it.

  “A bunch of stuff,” she said, and Bob turned his attention to her. “So far, it’s been like three different, uh, categories, I guess. I mean, there are things I see when I’m dreaming, and stuff I see when I’m awake…and then I’ve been feeling some other things. About people. That part seems to kind of tie everything together.”

  “How do you mean?”

  She frowned, not sure how to explain. “I didn’t feel anything at first—I mean, with the Lisa Meyer thing, I saw what happened, but I didn’t feel like Lisa or Mr. Billings. And I didn’t feel like I was getting raped, thank God. But that’s all changing. When I see people in my dreams, now, it’s like I am them, for just a couple of seconds. It’s like, superempathy, I guess. Seeing their future is…” she searched for the word, “…incidental, if that makes any sense. Same when I’m awake.”

  Bob had pulled a pen and a small notebook out of his coat. “Give me some specifics.”

  “Well, I’m going to bite it,” Devon said. His tone was light, casual, but he wasn’t smiling. From the twitch in his jaw, Amanda realized that he was extremely angry. “Beat up and dropped in the bay. How’s that for specific?”

  “Why are you so pissed?” Amanda asked.

  Devon’s expression was one of disbelief. “Are you fucking kidding me? How about, I don’t want to die, is that a reason?”

  The reporter looked back and forth between them, then settled on Amanda. “You saw this?”

  “Yeah. Like a week ago. That was also when I started feeling things about people. Or when I first noticed it, I guess.”

  “Did you feel me being dead?” Devon snapped.

  Eric was trying to hold her hand, and she shook him off, aggravated and deeply stressed. “Jesus, Devon, it’s not my fucking fault!”

  “I know, I know,” he said, staring down into his coffee cup. “I’m just really freaked, OK?” He added a mumbled, “Sorry.”

  Amanda nodded, wishing she could smoke. She was exhausted and wired and fucking homeless. “We’ll figure something out,” she said, although the phrase didn’t really have any meaning; she just had to say something.

  “You saw this while you were awake?” Bob asked.

  “Yeah. I was…I was high, actually. And we were with some people, hanging out, and I started knowing things about them, which was not good. So I took off. When Devon followed me, I saw him…I saw him like that.”

  He jotted something in his notebook, which was weird, like she was suddenly important…which she was, she supposed, if her new “gift” was permanent. How fuckin’ surreal.

  “So, what did you, ah, sense about these other people?”

  She recounted the details as she remembered them, what she’d felt about Greg and Carrie, then all the random shit she’d dreamed. Except for the stuff about Greg Taner doing Cam doggie-style; that was just too embarrassing to say out loud to a senior citizen. Same with how she’d felt having sex with Eric, how she’d kind of gotten into his head. She couldn’t imagine how that kind of information would be useful, anyway. He wrote down Greg’s name, most interested in the part about him enlisting in the military. Presumably because it was something he could actually check on.

  “Oh! And the Lawn King, he’s going to try to kill himself,” Amanda said. “He wants to, anyway.”

  “Lawn King?”

  “That mean old guy, lives in the house on Eleanor. The one with the manicured lawn? Dick, ah…”

  “Dick Calvin,” Bob said, frowning. “You’re sure about that?”

  Amanda shook her head. “I’m not sure of anything. I’m seeing all this fucked-up shit. And my mother kicked me out last night because her numbfuck boyfriend tried to get into my pants, and he spun this fat lie about it, and she sided with him.”

  “I can talk to your mother,” Eric said, practically the first thing he’d said all day. “Tell her what I saw, if you think that’ll help.”

  Jesus, what a terrible idea. “If she doesn’t believe me, no way she’s going to care what you think,” Amanda said.

  “I can be pretty convincing,” Eric said. “I mean, I heard you scream.”

  “No,” she said. “Seriously.”

  “Do you think I should leave town?” Devon asked. “That’ll keep it from happening, right?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe.”

  Devon nodded eagerly. “If I’m not here, I can’t exactly drown in the bay, can I?”

  “Do you think these futures are set, or do you sense that they can be changed?” Bob asked.

  “I don’t know,” Amanda said, too loud, feeling like her head was going to cave in. Everyone wanted an answer, or needed to be reassured, or wanted to know the nature of this thing that had totally come out of nowhere. “What the fuck do I know?”

  Bob set his pen down and took a sip of coffee. Devon looked miserably introspective. Eric tried to hold her hand again, and she let him, feeling somehow both grateful and annoyed by the gesture. The waitress came back, and they all fumbled through the menus, ordering little. Amanda wasn’t hungry at all, but her stomach ached from too much caffeine and not enough food.

  When the server had gone again, Bob looked at her with a speculative expression. “Have you tried to make it happen? One of these flashes?”

  “Like, on purpose?” Amanda scoffed. “I’ve pretty much been hoping it’ll never happen again.”

  “Understandably,” Bob said. “But considering it seems to be getting more…severe, maybe having some sort of control would help.”

  “I don’t think it works like that,” Amanda said. “I think it just happens.”

  “You should try it,” Devon said. “I mean, maybe you can figure out how to stop it, if you know how it works. And you could try to see—you could see if anything has changed.”

  “How should I—I mean, what should I do? I’m not going to smoke any more pot, no way. Last time was…” She thought about the dim, musty dark of the middle school basement, the feelings gathering around her like nightmares. “It was too much.”

  “If marijuana does it, maybe if you just try to relax, that’ll be enough,” Bob said. “Take some deep breaths, close your eyes…don’t focus on anything in particular. See what comes to you.”

  “Right now?” Amanda asked, looking around the mostly empty restaurant. There was a middle-aged couple in a booth on the far wall, and a single, haunted-looking young man at the counter near the front, staring at a cup of coffee, but they were otherwise alone.

  “Sure, why not?” Devon said. His voice held an edge of desperation.

  Amanda let go of Eric’s hand and nodded. “OK,” she said. “Just—don’t all stare at me, OK?”

  She closed her eyes and started to breathe slowly and evenly. She could smell coffee and a greasy sausage smell. She could smell smoke in her clothes. A sound like a knife or fork, scraping a plate, somewhere behind her.

  This is stupid, she thought, and then, They’re totally staring at me. She took a deeper breath, shifted in her seat, trying not to think about being a freak with no home. A moment passed, and her self-consciousness grew into embarrassment, like she was trying to do a magic trick and wasn’t pulling it off…Devon was getting impatient; he wanted to hear that he wasn’t going to die, that she saw him alive and well and—waiting in the park, seeing him duck out from the shadows, a hot fumbling in the dark and telling him that he had to leave town and hoping that Mitch would at least act like he cared

  —he won’t, he doesn’t want to admit that he likes it best blow jobs he ever had—

  She opened her eyes, staring at Devon. “Mitch?”

  Devon’s eyes widened. “What?” he asked, his voice small, breathless. />
  “What did you see?” Bob asked.

  “Mitchell Jessup?” she said, and Devon sat back in his chair, shaking his head slightly. If she’d needed further confirmation—and she didn’t, she understood exactly what was happening—she would have seen it in Devon’s shifting gaze, the nervous lick of lips. Mitchell Jessup was one of Cole Jessup’s fucked-up sons. He lived out in the woods with the other gun nuts. Amanda was not a little shocked; all the Jessups and their survivalist pals were notoriously homophobic. And sexist, and racist, and usually not very clean.

  Gah. She’d felt how it was, from her very brief contact with Devon’s thoughts—sweating and salty and coupled with a kind of brutal, sexual degradation, for both of them.

  “Is that who’s going to…to hurt Devon?” Bob asked.

  “Not unless his dick is bigger than most,” Amanda said, and Devon had the good grace to look embarrassed, at least. Bob finally caught on and dropped his gaze. He took another sip of coffee, then cleared his throat.

  Eric chuckled.

  “So, you can feel things when you try,” Bob said. “That’s good; that could really help.”

  “Help what?” Amanda asked. She was finding it hard to even look in Devon’s direction. “How is knowing people’s personal shit going to help anything?”

  “Honestly, I’m not sure,” Bob said. “But maybe you’ll get feelings from places, too, or we could go somewhere there are a lot of people gathered. You might see something else we could use…”

  He trailed off, fixing her with a steady gaze. She saw the red lines in his eyes and knew he was a drinker, and that he was about to tell her the truth. The awareness made her feel almost giddy, like she was flying in a dream.

  “What it comes down to is, I feel guilty as hell that you came to me when you saw someone getting raped, and I talked you out of taking action,” Bob said. “I thought I was doing a good thing, and I was wrong.”

  “You didn’t know it was going to happen,” Amanda said.

  “That’s true, but I still wish I’d done different.” He sighed. “There’s a lot of insanity going around Port Isley these days, and I have a feeling that things are going to get worse before they get any better. Maybe I’m wrong—I hope I am—but if I’m not, and if you see something else, something we can prevent…” He held up his hands, a why-not gesture.