The Summer Man

by S. D. Perry

  “I didn’t say that,” Amanda said. She lowered her coffee mug, looking alarmed. “I can’t. I mean, I’m getting these impressions, but nothing specific, I told you. No way I can track him.”

  “We shouldn’t assume anything yet,” John said. “This is a lot of information, a lot to consider.”

  Bob felt a surge of frustration with both of them. He poured the eggs into an overheated skillet, the crackle loud enough to kill the conversation for a second or two. These things Amanda kept seeing, that she was sure were going to happen if no one intervened—how long did they have? There were officially missing children, at least two boys. A building had already burned down, and not the one Amanda thought she was seeing, which suggested a budding arsonist in their midst, no joke in an old, dry town like Port Isley, swept by constant winds. No joke anywhere. The traveling carnival was due to open on Friday, which meant they’d be pulling into town in the next day or two, presumably with their hall of mirrors in tow. Amanda had heard gunfire and screams, she’d seen a possible infanticide, a probable killer—why couldn’t she get any names or times? Why didn’t she recognize anyone? He’d been digging, hard, and true, Mo’s story had provided a possible picture, that was a lucky break, but he was sure they were finally getting somewhere, and John’s initial reaction was, naturally, to stop and think things over. Amanda’s was to backpedal.

  Yeah, well, yours was to drink, he reminded himself, and kept his mouth shut. He served up the eggs, and they went to their respective silences as they ate, both of them clearing their plates with enthusiasm. Bob felt like he had an appetite for the first time in a week. Amanda started to talk about Eric, saying that she thought she should call her mother, to warn her—then looked at John sharply. Considering that she’d answered his thought about scrambled eggs, Bob had it figured before she spoke.

  “Oh,” she muttered, her face flushing. “I’m sorry. She’s got issues.”

  “You don’t have anything to apologize for,” John said, glancing in slight amazement at Bob.

  “She’s getting stronger, too,” Bob said, and John nodded.

  “She’s right here,” Amanda said. “And she knows.”

  She took a sip of her coffee, her expression turning bleak. “Don’t ask me why I think this, I don’t know, but I keep thinking that it’s all going to be over before we even know anything has happened.”

  “What is?” Bob asked.

  She shook her head, her wise eyes in her child’s face troubled. “Everything.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Jeff called early on Tuesday afternoon, and Tommy’s mother called him down to the kitchen. Tommy picked up the phone to hear an open dare in Jeff’s voice. The carnival had come, they were setting up even now, and people would be going up starting tonight—when did Tommy want to go?

  Tommy had worked everything out a hundred ways since Jeff had first mentioned the carnival, and his heart started thumping, loudly, but he was ready. He jumped before he could think twice.

  “Cool, I saw the ad for that,” Tommy said, then hesitated. As though Jeff were asking him something.

  “What the fuck?” Jeff snapped. “You deaf?”

  Tommy glanced at his mother, obviously lingering near the sink. “I’ll have to ask.”

  He didn’t quite cover the mouthpiece. “Can I stay over at Jeff’s? He got a new game.”

  His mother smiled, but she was frowning, too. “So you’d be staying in?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the game?”

  He’d thought of that, too. She didn’t like war games or the hardcore vice stuff, but she didn’t care about anything she considered age appropriate.

  “One of those band ones, with guitars,” he said. “Rockstar Reality.”

  Her brow smoothed. Maybe she was thinking about the free time she’d have for fucking John Hanover, which she was still doing in spite of his very obvious feelings on the matter. He refused to talk to her about it, furious that she didn’t know what to do. She was his mother; she was supposed to do what was best for him.

  “Sure, I don’t see why not.”

  Tommy turned his back to her, sure she’d catch the anger or the lie in his face if she looked. He thought he was getting better at hiding things, but she’d been watching him so closely lately, he didn’t want to risk this triumph of deception. “Yeah,” he said. “I can stay over.”

  Jeff wasn’t a total idiot. “Gotcha. Go log, I’ll be there in a minute.”

  “Yeah, OK.” Tommy hung up and started immediately for the stairs, through the open arch next to the refrigerator.

  “Hey, hang on a second.”

  Shit. He turned back, making himself look irritated. “Jeff’s sending me some stuff. Important stuff.”

  “That can wait,” she said. “You’re about to go hang out with him until midnight, aren’t you?” She was wearing sweats and a T-shirt and looked frumpy as she leaned against the sink, her hair tied back in a straggling tail. “I need to ask you something.”

  Why don’t you ask, then, he thought. He hated feeling like she made plans to talk to him, like he was going to freak out or something if she didn’t plan. He felt unprepared. Worried. He’d been on the computer a lot, and not playing Warcraft…

  “What?”

  “Do you want to leave here?”

  He wasn’t expecting that. “What? Why?”

  “I’m concerned…I’m worried that it’s not safe anymore,” she said. “Those poor boys, disappearing. And what happened at the beach that day.”

  She shook her head, her expression strange, twisted. “Maybe it was never safe. I’m just…I…”

  She gave him her most loving, pleading, motherly look. “I love you, Tommy. You’re my baby. If anything ever happened to you, I don’t know what I’d do.”

  He couldn’t tolerate that. “I’m not a baby.”

  “No, of course not,” she said. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  “What about Aunt Karen?”

  “I don’t know, honey. I guess I’d ask her to come with us.”

  “To where? To our new apartment?” It was tiny. He heard the sneer in his voice and felt slightly out of control. “What about Doctor John?”

  “I—I don’t know.” She faltered, turning those pleading eyes at him again, which made him feel seriously pissed. What right did she have to make him feel so guilty? She was the one having sex; she was the one who’d dragged them to this stupid, dangerous place and taken up with a stranger. No wonder they got divorced. She wasn’t supposed to ask him for anything.

  “Whatever,” he said, and his heart was pounding even louder than when he’d lied about his reason for going to Jeff’s, hot in his ears, he was leaving, turning away from her and going up the stairs, amazed that he was walking away from her, that he was angry enough to do it. That she was letting him.

  Jeff was waiting for him when he sat down.

  Smooth mufu.

  what about u?

  If Jeff didn’t have a plan, Tommy would be able to back out. He wanted to go, but he was afraid of getting caught, he was afraid something would go wrong.

  Momll be out til midnite at least. Come over 6. we raid cabnet 1st, go up, b home by 11.

  Tommy hesitated, felt a scramble of butterflies in his gut, of excitement, of daring, of fear, then sealed his fate with two letters: ok.

  Jeff’s mother was just leaving when Tommy came over. She was dressed in too-tight clothes and wore too much makeup. Jeff’s stepdad was a trucker, out of town for weeks at a time, and Jeff had mentioned a couple of times that she liked to go out with her girlfriends and drink too much, that she’d been doing it a lot this summer. She made Jeff promise to lock the doors and actually patted Tommy on the head while he was putting his stuff down, giving him a clear view of her cleavage. Jeff was obviously embarrassed, practically pushing her out of the house, and when the door had closed behind her he shook his head.

  “She better watch it,” he said, cryptically, a
nd led Tommy straight to the kitchen. Everything was green—the counters, the linoleum—and there was kind of a garbagey smell, like coffee grounds and garlic and frying. Big Blue was way nicer than Jeff’s house, but Jeff’s had better stuff to eat: Twinkies and frozen pizzas, white bread, shit like that. Jeff opened the fridge and took out two sodas, some store brand. Generic lemon-lime.

  “Did you eat dinner?” Jeff asked.

  “Not really…”

  “Good. Me either. You get more drunk if you don’t eat first.”

  Jeff listened for a minute, cocking his head toward the door, then heaved himself onto the counter, onto his knees. From the cabinet high over the stove he pulled down a bottle of something, handing it down to Tommy, then climbed down holding another.

  Tommy looked at his, a bottle half full of what looked like water but was, of course, vodka.

  “You mix it with something, you can’t even taste it,” Jeff said. He held up the other bottle, a small, rounded one labeled Peppermint Schnapps, mostly full. “This one’s clear, too. I figure we take some out and add water back so they look the same.”

  Tommy nodded. That seemed reasonable. He watched as Jeff pulled down two water glasses and poured out alcohol from both bottles—only half-filling each glass—then carefully funneled water from the tap back into each bottle before returning them to the cabinet.

  Tommy had no idea how to mix a drink, so he followed Jeff’s lead, pouring some of the soda into the glass Jeff handed him.

  “Here’s to Jenny Todd,” Jeff said, holding up his foaming glass.

  “Gotta drink to that.” He tapped his noxious-smelling concoction to Jeff’s.

  Both boys drank, one big gulp each—and Tommy was immediately a hair away from throwing up, the thick, minty soda like fire going down his throat, like the worst cough syrup ever. He grabbed for the half-empty soda can and upended it, letting the carbonation wash the terrible mint out of his mouth. It was a close thing for a minute as the taste lingered.

  Jeff made a tremendously funny face, his teeth bared, his eyelids fluttering. “Yahh,” he said loudly. For a second, he looked like he was going to throw up too, but then shook it off.

  “Definitely more soda,” he said, his voice strange and raspy.

  “And ice,” Tommy said.

  They doctored the drinks, Tommy already feeling a kind of heavy heat in his stomach and in his knees, like he’d drunk nighttime cold medicine. As bad as the taste was, the second swallow wasn’t as god-awful as the first…his throat was going numb, maybe. Jeff was saying something about something at school, and Tommy tried to listen, but he was getting more and more preoccupied with what his body was doing.

  “You feeling it?” Jeff asked. He wore a big, dopey smile.

  Tommy nodded, his head rolling heavily on his neck. He felt good. A little off balance.

  They drank more and carried their drinks to Jeff’s room and watched YouTube movies for a while, this one of a guy getting hit in the nuts over and over again, and they both laughed for a long time. Maybe it was the alcohol, but Tommy felt really good about Jeff, like they had a lot in common. They watched a bunch of stuff, but somehow Tommy didn’t realize that time was passing until Jeff said they could probably head up, it’d be dark soon. Magically, two hours had passed.

  Jeff grabbed a flashlight, and Tommy went to pee, and totally peed on the ring in Jeff’s bathroom, then used like half a roll of toilet paper to wipe it off. He felt clumsy and strange, but he liked the feeling, liked that everything in his mind was a funny joke, that Jeff was his best friend and they were doing something exciting.

  They stopped in the kitchen long enough to finish their drinks and for Jeff to carefully rinse the glasses and put them away—a complicated activity that Tommy could only watch, swaying, like his body was listening to music that he couldn’t hear—then headed outside into a hot, late day, the sunset brilliant orange and pink down on the bay.

  “You’re walking funny,” Jeff said, as they started up the hill, through long shadows lying across the street. There were cars and people around, but not many and Tommy didn’t really notice, working too hard to not walk funny, and he saw that Jeff was practically tripping over his toes, his own walk a kind of controlled fall. Their shadows staggered in front of them, monstrously distorted.

  “Not as funny as you,” he said, and they both cracked up, leaning on each other for a moment. Tommy was glad it was getting dark; they probably looked drunk—he was pretty sure he was, anyway—and he thought that if he saw Jenny Todd tonight he might have to kiss her. Being drunk was awesome; he felt like he could say or do anything he wanted.

  They staggered onward, Jeff telling some story about some guy, Tommy wishing they had more to drink—he was thirsty, and he didn’t want to lose the wonderful drunkenness—and neither of them noticed the man in the little blue car who drove past them three separate times on their way to the fairgrounds, a man with sandy, receding hair and a careful consideration in his gaze as he watched them through the gathering dark.

  John continued to have a backlog of calls and clients, but it was official: as many people were canceling as showing up. He’d spent a free hour before lunch considering what Bob had found about Jenkin’s Creek, refining his interpretation of what was happening in Port Isley. The woman who’d written the letters to Bob’s friend, who’d called it a summer of evolution…he’d looked through his recent case notes and felt that her case affirmed what he’d already been thinking.

  His three o’clock had canceled, and he had spent most of the hour trying to get someone at the police station to confirm that Eric’s assault had been pursued, that someone had been to speak with Eric’s father, but he’d been put on hold both times he’d called, the first time for nearly fifteen minutes, then been disconnected. An agitated woman finally took his number on try number three, but no one had called back. He’d considered walking over to the station but doubted he’d do much better, not before his four o’clock. No one answered the phone at the Hess household. Amanda had insisted that she didn’t want to leave town, but he was starting to think he should push harder. If Eric was dangerous—and it seemed he was leapfrogging over the lengthy stalker build-up, going straight for the scary stuff—and the cops weren’t going to be available, it would be best for her to get away from him. John couldn’t see sending her away alone, she wasn’t legally an adult, but she wasn’t a child, either; he couldn’t see making her leave if she didn’t want to go, and he wasn’t about to kick her out; she’d had enough of that for one lifetime. And in truth, they needed her. For whatever good had been done, was still being done, people had died, and Amanda believed there would be more; considering her ability to sense the cause of everything, to pick up “his” feelings, she might actually be instrumental in stopping further bloodshed.

  He still hadn’t settled on any clear course of action when Sarah called, late in the day. Tommy was spending the night at a friend’s and would he care to join her for dinner…John hated asking Bob to stay again, but the idea of a whole night with her, especially with their future so uncertain…he spent the drive home trying to think of the best way to ask. He would have begged if Bob had declined, or taken Sid Shupe up on his offer to have Amanda over to his house, but Bob said he was happy to stay; he’d spent most of the day fact-checking on Jenkin’s Creek, on the phone or at the computer, and said that Amanda had stayed inside and read or watched TV, except for excursions to the garage to smoke cigarettes. They’d already made a plan to order in Chinese, barricade the doors, and watch movies, Amanda’s choice. Amanda wandered into the kitchen while they were talking and made a few jokes about making Bob sit through a zombie movie marathon, but she was distant, all wry surface, as she’d been since her revelation about the influence being a man, just after Eric’s attack the day before. She didn’t want to talk about Eric, her dreams, her tenuous connection with the summer man, her mother…she had an amazing talent for making her face an expressionless mask when John tried to lead
their conversation anywhere she didn’t want it to go.

  John brought up the idea that she leave town again, and she promptly changed the subject, pointing out that as of today, the carnival was at the fairgrounds. She had an idea that they could find some way to close the fun house down. Bob was as enthused about the idea as she was, and they promptly fell to planning. John left them to it, heading upstairs to pack a few toiletries.

  He waved good-bye to Amanda and Bob on his way out, reminding them that he had his cell; they barely glanced up from their perusal of the delivery menu for Uncle Chan’s, only open in the summer.

  The sun was setting as he drove to Big Blue, the streets deserted compared to only the day before. He’d heard from his final client of the day, and again on the radio on his way home from work: the alleged child-snatcher, a Port Isley local with an apparent history of exposing himself to children, had been apprehended in Oregon. The media had packed up and run after him. John shook the thought before it took hold. The idea of some sick man working his will on a child, an innocent, creating such horrific emotional damage, assuming the child was even lucky enough to be found alive…it made him feel cold with disgust, with horror and rage. If the guy had been caught in Port Isley, he would have faced a lynching. One John felt he would gladly attend…

  But all this was only thinking, only his day before this moment, as he parked around the corner from the Victorian and walked back, feeling the stir of excitement in his belly, of anticipation as he jogged up the front steps, as he knocked and waited.

  She opened the door and reality shifted, became the brightest and clearest it had been all day. Here was his life, her smile an open book, an invitation, a promise, and the fog he’d lived through from the last time until now was gone. He was complete.

  It appeared that Amanda was serious about the zombie marathon. John had a setup so his television could show movies off the net, and Amanda’s first pick was the remake of Dawn of the Dead. Having seen the original in the theater, Bob didn’t expect to be impressed, but the movie was actually pretty good. If incredibly gruesome.