The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  Not today, though. The novelty clock on Devon’s wall said she had about half an hour before they were going to meet up. Whatever her brain was up to, her body wanted as much Eric as it could stand…they were both seventeen and willing to try anything; it couldn’t possibly get better. And he was her boyfriend, and she wanted to be with him. It was cool, walking with him to get coffee, smoking together, listening to music in his basement…touching him, letting him touch her. The feeling of calm closeness that almost always came after the sex, too, the feeling that everything—fucking everything—was going to work out, that was like a drug, that was bliss. Why would she run away from that?

  She picked up the notebook again, reread, considered adding more detail—the man at the fire, for instance. She got the impression he was young, but that was more a guess than anything else. He was so close to the flames that his shirt was actually hot, and the front of his hair was frizzled away from the heat; she could feel these things, although she couldn’t see him, physically, only the fire. The man wasn’t really thinking anything, just feeling how beautiful and consuming the fire was, watching it devour, watching it birth smoke and sparks, watching the night light up…

  Her power, her gift, as John had called it, was big and getting bigger. She could even trace the evolution, kind of: her first experiences had been more like movies, only as they’d progressed, she’d started to be there, first as part of the scenery—when Brian Glover raped that poor woman, at the fairgrounds—then as, like, a participant. Or, rather, the participant, inside the person experiencing the situation. Maybe she would have more waking visions like the one she’d had about Lisa Meyer, or Devon, maybe the circumstances had to be just right, she had to get high first or something, she didn’t know. When she wasn’t with Eric, she spent most of her time online—Devon hadn’t taken his computer, thank God; he’d said his cousin had a laptop he could use—continuing to look up aspects of psychic ability (new favorite word: clairsentience; new favorite concept: mirror neurons) and case histories. She’d even taken the Zener card test, the one where she had to guess the symbol, and scored totally average. Which had actually been a little disappointing. What she’d been seeing, in her dreams—when she tried to describe it, it sounded like mind-reading, but that was an oversimplification; it was mind-inhabiting. She’d have thought she’d ace a card test, for Christ’s sake. And maybe having that particular talent would let her see something technically useful for a change, names or addresses, dates, possible reasons for why this was happening, all these people feeling and acting so differently…why hadn’t she known about the cannibal fest at Le Poisson, or that Mr. Billings was going to go home and kill his wife before he killed himself? What other disasters wasn’t she seeing?

  She looked at her list of dream imagery. The gunfight, the big fire…the mom and baby. Plenty of potential for death and disaster, if any of it was real. But for as specifically as she experienced each image—the woman crouching in the bushes, worrying that she was about to pee herself as weapons cracked impossibly loudly, people screamed, and she held her purse like they would take it from her when they pried it from her cold, dead fingers—their meanings were as vague and untraceable as…well, dreams. What lady? Where? When? The scared kid in the hall of mirrors, that had to be at the carnival that came each August; they had a fun house…but easily thousands of kids went through there. It was in Isley for a full week, a magnet attraction for a half dozen port towns. The lights were out; there seemed to be no one else around—maybe it was closed and the kid had sneaked in. Or maybe there was a power outage. He thought someone was following him, but maybe it was his kid brother or a buddy, sneaking up to scare him.

  You don’t think so, though. No. The things she felt were strong and mostly unpleasant, and John had told her that she needed to start trusting her instincts, and she thought that the boy in the fun house was in trouble.

  She’d talked to Bob last night; he’d said that John had gotten someone from the state to come in and take soil and water samples. Amanda felt fairly certain that they’d find nothing. She didn’t know why she thought that, she just did…and she was starting to think that what was happening was, like, a destiny thing, that there was nothing any of them could do about any of it, and she didn’t know why she thought that, either.

  And it’s not true, she told herself. Devon was safe. Wasn’t he?

  Feelings without reasons, random affirmations out of nowhere based on nothing, on air. Bob and John had been compiling stats, making lists, trying to work out a time line; John wanted to go to the police before the end of the week. Amanda already knew that the cops wouldn’t even entertain the notion. “Officer, sometime in June things started to change…and they’re still changing!” Uncanny, not so much. Even with a stack of bizarre incidents to back up their theory, there was no commonality, there was no reason they could point to, to explain the changes in Port Isley.

  “He’s here,” Amanda said aloud, surprising herself a little. That night at Pam’s party, a million years ago…she’d thought, he’s here, and she’d started crying because she was already totally freaking on the Lisa Meyer thing, and she’d been confused…but what had her stoned brain been trying to tell her? Was there some significance? She hadn’t even thought about it since telling Devon, a day or so after…

  She turned a page in the notebook, wrote the two words down at the top of the page, underlined them. He’s here…tapped her pen on the innocuous words…jotted beneath them, influence = man?

  She tried to follow the thought but got nothing; she had no sense that she was having some brilliant insight; maybe, maybe not. She looked at the clock again, a ticking black cat with eyes and a tail that moved from side to side, and decided that she wanted to clean up a little before meeting Eric. A wipe-down, some deodorant, mouthwash. She closed the notebook and dropped the pen on top of it. She didn’t know if anything would come of the effort she was making to keep track of what she saw—but it felt good to be involved, to be actively participating in her life. Since that first time, that first terrible vision, she’d wished for nothing more than for things to go back to the way they were, before…and now…

  Now I want to keep it, she thought, looking into the mirror over Devon’s toothpaste-spattered sink, looking into herself as she worked her fingers through her hair. How many people had the opportunity to really do something, to make a difference? She didn’t know what to expect anymore, everything was different because she was different, and that was as liberating as it was frightening as it was exciting.

  She smiled at herself, liking the light in her eyes. She’d always hoped she might be special, that she would be, and now it was true.

  A few days after Tommy got back, Jeff came over early, like nine in the morning, and asked if he wanted to go inner tubing down at the old piers with some of the other kids. Tommy immediately agreed. Mom was being weird, which he had pretty much expected—Aunt Karen getting hurt and all; Tommy felt a little weird himself. Dad had told him before he left that his aunt had been attacked and assaulted; his mother had said the same thing, used the same words. It sounded better than beat up and raped, he figured, but he understood what had happened. He felt bad for her.

  What he hadn’t expected was to come home from his entirely boring visit with Dad and Vanessa to find his mother all excited and happy about John Hanover, the geeky doctor they’d met at the picnic who was over every night. They tried to hide it. The doctor showed up at midnight and was gone by like, seven, but Tommy wasn’t as clueless as they obviously thought.

  He swallowed a sudden foul taste, thinking of the muffled sounds he’d heard just last night. Disgusting. The guests were all gone; Aunt Karen practically never came out of her room, and Mom was flitting around like a schoolgirl, all smiles and blushes…which was even extra weird, because since he’d come back, she’d been all over him asking him about his feelings, asking if he felt different about anything, when she was the one who was obviously different. She was too…h
appy wasn’t the right word; he liked to think that happy wouldn’t bother him…

  Stupid, maybe, he thought, walking next to Jeff, listening to the slap of their sneakers going down the hill, cool rubber on warming asphalt. By trying to hide the affair, she was lying to him, and that made him feel…it made him feel like punishing her by not thinking nice things about her. Even the guilt that accompanied the thought was fleeting. She was acting stupid. She barely knew the guy.

  The sun was still mild, but he could already feel it revving up to be another scorcher. In addition to not asking anyone’s permission to leave—his mother hadn’t been up; she’d been sleeping in a lot just lately, so he’d left a note on the kitchen table—he hadn’t put on any sunblock. He hadn’t forgotten, he just hadn’t done it, and feeling the warming sun on the back of his neck, he felt a kind of nervous satisfaction that he couldn’t explain.

  I’ll tell her I forgot because I was so tired, he thought. I’ll tell her that I couldn’t sleep, because of all the fucking NOISE.

  It only took about ten minutes to walk down the hill, and unhappy thoughts about his mother kept him mostly distracted from Jeff’s random comments about the town, about the kids, school, and this and that. There were a lot of people out and about, more as they neared the bottom of the hill—summer people, Jeff informed him with a sneer—brightly dressed, carrying to-go coffee cups, wearing sandals and expensive shades. Tommy liked not being grouped in with the tourists, although technically, he supposed he was a summer person, since they’d leave at the end of the season. Back to that little apartment without a yard and seventh grade at a school where he would be the new kid, where his mom would be the new teacher. All of which would suck, but he guessed that would be the end of ol’ Doctor John; at least there was that. The idea of some stranger kissing and touching and, and fucking his mother…gross. It made him want to throw up.

  As the two boys got closer to the old pier, the crowd thinned dramatically. They headed east along Water and were quickly past the nicer eateries and shops, past the historical buildings and the town’s trio of small parking lots, all crammed with expensive cars. As picturesque as Port Isley’s main thoroughfare was, twenty minutes straight along the water down the exhaust-stinking road and the view became a gas station, a warehouse, and the run-down Seaside Motel with a gravel parking lot. There was a kid at the motel, standing in the shade of the front office, smoking a cigarette.

  “Hey, that’s Trevor,” Jeff said, perking up as they got closer. “His uncle works there. Trevor!”

  Trevor shot them a cool, disinterested look, exhaling smoke. He was tall and skinny and looked a little older, maybe fifteen. Tommy had seen him before, hanging around at Kehoe Park right after that girl had been killed, but they hadn’t spoken. Trevor had a mean smile, curved and smirking. He’d been the kid who’d come up with the idea to ride bikes over the place where they’d found the body. Tommy had met guys like him—not many, thank God, and he’d never had to hang out with any of them—and was pretty sure that Trevor probably laughed whenever someone got hurt and talked shit about people that weren’t around. It was written all over him.

  “Is he coming?” Tommy asked quickly, his voice low. They were still approaching Trevor, who didn’t move to meet them. Jeff shrugged, his attention fixed on the older kid.

  “Hey,” Jeff said again, and Trevor finally gave him a nod.

  “We’re going tubing,” Jeff said. “You wanna come?”

  Trevor deliberately looked them up and down, then took a drag. “Tubing on what?”

  “Ah, Mike T. and Jeremy are meeting us down there; they’re bringing their stuff,” Jeff said. “You got a smoke?”

  Trevor ignored him. “You the new kid?” he asked, looking at Tommy hard. Like he thought he was Clint Eastwood and Tommy was a street punk.

  Tommy held his ground and his silence, only nodding. He instinctively knew that whatever he said, Trevor would find a way to use it to make him look dumb.

  “Your aunt runs Big Blue, doesn’t she?” Trevor asked. From the way his eyes sparkled, he already knew the answer.

  “Yeah,” Tommy said, waiting for the inevitable. Wondering if it was going to bother him.

  “She got raped, right?” He shook his head in mock disparagement, stealing looks at Tommy’s face. “Got fucked by practically the whole football team…cops arrested ’em and everything…that’s rough, man, that totally sucks.”

  Tommy wasn’t as big as Trevor, but he was tall for his age, and sturdy. And his dad had taught him how to throw a punch last summer. In spite of his suddenly hammering heart, the fearful knowledge that he’d never been in an actual fight, not once, he decided immediately that he wasn’t going to put up with any shit.

  That’s how bullies work, his father had said, after Scott Morgan had threatened to beat him up at his old school last year, when his parents were still together. They’ll try to intimidate you. But if you stand up to them right away, let ’em know you won’t put up with their bullshit, they’ll back off, look for an easier target. His father had been on his second beer after dinner or he wouldn’t have cursed like that in front of him, which made the advice all the more valued, all the more credible. Tommy had never had cause to apply the principle—Scott Morgan had been expelled for fighting some other kid, not a week later—but had always wondered if he would, when the appropriate occasion arose. If he’d have the balls.

  “Yeah,” he said, through an actual flash of red brought on by speaking, and the abrupt rage spoke for him, the words spilling out of his mouth without his thinking them first. “She got hurt; that’s right. Did you feel a need to discuss it? Because I really don’t want to.”

  His heart was still thumping overtime, but he welcomed the rush of adrenaline, the feeling that maybe it would be good to fight, to curl his fingers in and wrap his thumb around them and drive it into this mean kid’s narrow face…and maybe Trevor saw it, because he dropped his gaze first, dropping the subject of Aunt Karen along with it. He looked back at Jeff, like Tommy was now beneath his interest.

  “Any girls coming?” he asked Jeff.

  “Mike’s sister, probably,” Jeff said. “If she does, she’ll bring some of her friends.”

  Trevor scowled and dropped his butt on the ground. He let it burn. “Isn’t his sister, like, ten?”

  “Kylie’s eleven,” Jeff said. “And I think some of her friends are older. Hey, maybe Jenny Todd will show up with the Luther kids. Kylie’s friends with Valerie Luther, right?”

  Why are you trying to impress this guy? Tommy thought, looking between the two older boys. Trevor was an asshole. He didn’t want to spend the day hanging out with an asshole.

  “Huh,” Trevor said. “Nothing better to do in this loserfuck town, I guess.”

  They started walking again, Trevor promptly falling behind, trailing after as he lit another cigarette. Jeff seemed pleased that the older boy was coming with them. Tommy didn’t like it, but with the weird, powerful anger leaking out of him, the first hesitant feelings of pride welling up—it worked! I did it, and it worked!—he felt like he could handle himself.

  Another five minutes walking, past an abandoned cannery, down a short, steep hill next to an ancient parking lot to a strip of dirty, gravelly sand. Jeff talked the whole way, trying to sound cool, cursing more than he had before Trevor had joined them. The beach was small and smelled kind of rotten. There was a much nicer beach down below the lighthouse, where the summer people went to tan and picnic; the sand there was fine and clean, meticulously maintained. Aunt Karen had taken them down there a few weeks ago; over lunch, she’d said that the beach was fortified by community tax dollars, the sand actually towed up from farther south down the coast each year to replace what winter always took. Tommy found the idea fascinating, that they’d been sitting on a beach that would mostly be gone come November. That night he’d had a bad dream that he was standing on a tiny shelf of rock at the base of a high cliff with the deep ocean lapping at his ankles an
d nowhere to go, and waves were starting to rise out in front of him, vast, towering waves…he remembered the dream because he’d woken in a burst of terror as the first freezing wave had been about to crash over him, and then he had lain there in the dark for a minute, feeling nightmare echoes. The waves had been scary, but the other fear was deeper, harder to name—it was just the water; the dark, cold, powerful blue had stretched out in front of him like eternity, so big that it could hide anything, anything at all…

  Here, where the ferries had once docked—before the service had been moved to Port Angeles twenty years back, Jeff had told him on the way down the hill—the dark, glass-strewn rocks were littered with cans and bottles and assorted bits of trash. And there was the pier, massive and old, chipped concrete and gray wood extending out over the water, supported by rows of greased piles. The smell worsened and defined, became an oily, fishy kind of rotten, but Tommy didn’t really notice it after a minute or two. There were a bunch of other kids down by the piles on the rough sand, standing amid a collection of inner tubes and bright plastic beach toys, buckets, rafts, and a couple of beach balls. There were two guys around his age. As they got closer, Tommy could see that there were three girls there too, and one little kid, a boy, maybe five or so. There was also a much older girl, built like a woman from a sports magazine. She wore shades and a striped swimsuit top and a piece of gauzy light fabric wrapped around her hips.