The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  Heard you’re getting out. Reckon you should come on home.

  There’s a bed for you if you need it.

  Not even her name at the end, but he knows her hand. Reckons the letter is more than she could have done. Might be more than he deserves.

  The Greyhound slows as it pulls into the station, brakes squeaking. He is the only one to exit, though the bus is far from full, few folks in Houston having boarded, and even fewer still now heading further west. Stepping past the driver, Jasper nods to the other man. ‘Thank you,’ he says, and even to himself his voice sounds out of practice. He steps down onto the pavement and watches the bus pull away, easing itself back into the rushing flow. He watches it go till it becomes a tiny silver speck.

  He had fretted for a time over the welcome party that might be waiting for him. Had wondered how many hostile faces might come to see him home, but fear had never dictated Jasper’s life and he does not intend to let it now. Many restless nights in the penitentiary he had pondered if his first free steps back home might be his last, but Jasper has promised himself he will step off the bus fighting, if that’s what freedom requires, and he feels no different now. He scans the near-empty service station. The only welcome he had not imagined was the one with no one there to greet him at all.

  He’d written her back the date, time, place. Never doubted that Lizzie would come. A tiny part of him now almost wishes she won’t. Maybe it’s enough just to stand here feeling the warm sun on his face, humid air thick around him. At the same time, if he’s honest with himself, Jasper knows he’s well past ready to go home.

  It’s an old gas station, not one of the fancy well-lit new ones, like closer to Huntsville, Houston or Dallas. Out here folks don’t care so much about what’s shiny and new. Or else the world just don’t care so much about making out here seem shiny and new ’cause who really comes all the way out here anyway? This station’s been here long as Jasper can remember. Looks just like he remembers too – old-style rusted pumps, diesel and unleaded the only options. Just two pumps. Texaco sign hangs off its post a bit crooked. No cover over the pumps. No credit cards accepted. Rust everywhere rust can rust. Just a tiny shop down the back with windows that look like they always need washing even right after they’ve been washed, a couple old pickups parked in front of it.

  The bell rings as the door opens. Two loud chimes and then a softer one as the bell settles again, gently rocking on the handle. A red string ties it there. That sound, so familiar, and Jasper pauses in the doorway, savouring the comfort of it, as his eyes adjust to the dark interior of the shop. Momentarily blind from all that sunshine. Blinks to clear the eyes. Lets the door slam softly with another jingle behind him. They’ve got air-conditioning. That’s new.

  The boy behind the counter looks up when Jasper enters. Boy. That’s all he is, really. Some high-school kid. Blond and tanned and clean. Skin still soft, like a baby’s. Bit of baby fat still clinging to chubby, almost feminine cheeks, baby-boy face swallowed by his ten-gallon hat. The effect borders on comical – a child playing dress-up, not a hero of the west. That boy wouldn’t last five hours in Huntsville. Jasper doesn’t recognize him, but he nods to him anyhow, wondering who the boy’s folks might be, thinking back on the blurry children’s faces of Sunday mornings ten years back, but no face comes into focus and Jasper reckons he must never have troubled himself back then with noting what wasn’t of concern to him.

  Jasper passes the shelves of candies, potato chips, beef jerky hung up in long red plastic packets, passes the household essentials – toilet paper, paper towels, soap, shampoo. The car essentials – oil, air pump, windshield-wiper fluid, air fresheners shaped like leaves with names like ‘Maple’, ‘Forest’, ‘Garden’, ‘Pine’. He picks up ‘Garden’. Thinks of the roses by Mama’s front porch. The primroses unfurling come dusk. Bluebonnets in early spring, and Indian paintbrushes blood-red. Breathes deep. His memories don’t smell a thing like ‘Garden’.

  He puts it back and walks on. Pauses a moment by the magazine rack. Can feel the boy’s eyes on him, drilling into his back. People. US Weekly. Last month’s Cosmopolitan. Last month’s Playboy, the slut’s boobs concealed by the magazine’s plastic wrapper. All you see is hungry eyes begging for cock, lips moist and parted. Whore. A redhead. Different. He likes that. Just those eyes peeking at him is almost enough. Almost. Another nudie mag, all bound up in plastic, too. Time magazine, but who wants to pick that up? One copy of the Reader’s Digest that looks like it’s been sitting there a while, pages all crinkly and browned as though soda got spilled on them and then the magazine dried out. The National Enquirer claims to have found the world’s fattest baby, and something about the model’s smile on the cover of Southern Living reminds him of his mama back when he was small. He doesn’t look at the newspaper headlines. Doesn’t want to see what might be there.

  Eyes back to that hungry redhead, and he thirsts for her, and she thirsts for him, and he thinks about buying the magazine just to pass the time, to see what constellations might lie within, but he can feel the boy’s eyes still on him, judging him, so he doesn’t even pick it up. Grabs a Coke from the fridge instead.

  ‘Fifty-nine cents.’

  Jasper hands over the ten-dollar bill. He doesn’t like being in the shop. It’s stuffy. Too small. Dark. Reminds him of rooms just left never again to be entered. And yet it’s familiar. It’s nice to feel that familiarity. He looks out at the sunshine still baking the pavement, cooking the rust, then back to the boy and tries out a smile. ‘You know,’ he says, ‘I used to work here when I was ’bout your age.’

  ‘That so?’

  ‘Yep.’ He glances out of the window again. So much sunshine. Eyes back to the boy. He hesitates. Cold cans of beer snuck out the back. Long days spent over magazines and staring down I-10 imagining the distant life he’d lead. ‘Mo still running the place?’

  ‘I reckon.’ Something hostile in the boy’s eyes. He places the change on the counter.

  Jasper hesitates another moment before scooping it up. ‘Don’t suppose Mo’s here?’

  ‘Don’t suppose he is.’

  Jasper nods. Hands deep in his front pockets, he glances out at all that sunshine and back into the darkness of the shop. ‘Any work going at the minute?’

  The boy leans against the cigarette counter behind him. Arms crossed over his still skinny chest. Hasn’t filled out in the shoulders yet, and his red Texaco T-shirt hangs off his frame. Desperately needs to lose that baby fat before he’ll be anything remotely like a man. The boy looks Jasper up and down with cold eyes. Blue as ice under all that blond hair, under that ridiculous ten-gallon hat. Jasper seldom wore hats. The boy’s eyes flick from the newspaper rack to below the register and back again. Unless it’s moved in the last twenty years, Jasper knows Mo’s old Remington bolt action’s kept there. Shot plenty of beer cans and a few squirrels with it back in the day. The boy’s eyes meet Jasper’s. ‘I reckon there ain’t much of any work round these parts.’

  He’s sitting on the kerb when she pulls up. Right out in the sunlight where the heat is roasting. Empty Coke bottle beside him. A slight flush in his cheeks. Lizzie didn’t intend to be late. Or maybe the bus was early. No traffic and all that. But she couldn’t have tolerated the thought of being early and waiting for him either. For a moment, pulling up, Lizzie wants to turn around. Back the pickup right out of the station. He might not have seen her yet. Drive till she’s right back home in her own driveway, no Jasper to think about or worry about or be a sister to. For a moment she imagines growing up without him. Running alone through drying clothesline sheets. Lying alone under the stars, taking her own finger to map them out. Sitting alone with Mama and Daddy at the supper table. He used to make faces at her when they weren’t looking and she had to swallow her giggles to keep them from being found out. Once she couldn’t and Daddy’s belt had come out fast, and that welt on her legs took weeks to heal. But that’s how it always was, her laughing and getting in trouble for it, and Jaspe
r’s eyes clouding over as Daddy hit her. Sometimes it was worth it. The laughter. Those funny faces breaking the solemn silence of the dinner table.

  She pulls the pickup close. Cuts the engine. Bits of grey in his mousy hair. Lines on his face she doesn’t remember. But it’s Jasper. Or some aged form of Jasper, a shadow of himself that is no shadow, stranger, darker, her brother and not her brother, and Jasper all the same. You sure you know who you’re lettin’ into your home? The reverend’s voice on repeat all morning.

  She doesn’t get out of the truck. He walks over slow. Taking his time with each step. Not like he’s scared. Not like he doesn’t want to reach her. Just carefully, as though each step changes his life, and it does in a way, she reckons. And, anyway, Jasper was never one to rush. He stops beside the pickup, gazes at her through the rolled-down window.

  She leans across to open his door even though he could have reached right in the window himself. The hum of insects from the tall grasses beside the ditch vibrates the summer heat. And I-10 has its own wave sounds as cars speed below. He looks at her a long time through that rolled-down window, both of them saying nothing, sun reddening his neck and ears, heat moistening their skin. At length he nods, the most thanks she’s likely to get from him, she reckons, and he reaches for the handle.

  The floorboards creak under his footsteps. Rocking the same way the wood of the house rocks in bad storms, except now it’s just the floorboards, each step rocking each board – a childhood sound. He closes his eyes. Stands still a moment, listening to the house sounds that create home. Pots and pans and a faucet down in the kitchen. A door that opens to close again, a young girl’s voice calling, ‘I’m home.’ Curtains rustle as July heat blows warm breezes through the muggy rooms. Humid even inside. He used to tiptoe across these same boards, tiny socked feet sliding if he wasn’t careful. And then, when he was a bit older, he used to slide on purpose, gliding over the creaks, skidding down the hall till Mama’d catch him and make him still. End of the hall. He’s not a man to tiptoe, and it’s been a long time now since he chose to slide. He pushes open the door to his boyhood room.

  No trace of him inside.

  No football trophies. Baseball trophies. No school photographs. No old concert tickets. A whole childhood so long preserved now erased. Just a lone twin bed, chair, desk with a lamp. Not one poster or picture on the walls. Just a clock that never was his and it’s ticking rather loudly. The hall was empty of him, too, the whole length of the stairs. He noticed that coming in. Baby photos of Lizzie in her stroller, smiling. On a blanket, smiling. Cake all over her face, smiling, pictures of Mama and Daddy growing up, and married, and getting old, pictures of Lizzie and her girls, but not one of him. And, oddly, not a one of Bobby, neither. He wonders if it was her that done it or Mama before she passed. Wonders what Bobby must’ve done to earn that same treatment. He crosses the room and sits on the bed and thinks about his cell in Huntsville. Then he starts to think back further to before, to dark curls and tan lines and big dark eyes. Stops himself. He doesn’t allow himself to think about that. His face hardens, then twists. How dare those bitches erase me? He rises and smashes his fist into the wall. The impact shakes it but he doesn’t notice. A low moan escapes him, something more beast than man, and he holds his now throbbing fist to his chest, rocking back and forth, back and forth, feeling his bones like creaking floorboards. This isn’t what home should feel like. This isn’t what home should feel like …

  A sound makes him turn. A girl in the doorway. Barefoot and brown. Still more child than woman, though the woman’s creeping in. Eyes like a doe’s widening. But the girl doesn’t run. Doesn’t turn like a doe would. Just stares, frozen in the doorway. God, she looks like Lizzie.

  He pushes that rage back down. Suffocates it in his gut, like he long ago learned was sometimes best in prison. Tries to smile at the child. Face twisting human again, twisting, he hopes, kind.

  She looks at him as though sizing him up. Head to toe, not quite trusting. Not quite not. He finds the directness of her gaze unsettling.

  ‘You’re my uncle Jasper.’

  More statement than question but he answers anyway, aware of his pulse throbbing. ‘That’s right.’

  She seems to hesitate. He doesn’t know what to say. When was the last time he saw a little girl? Shared a cell with Melvin Douglas for a while. Melvin was real fond of little girls.

  ‘I’m Joanne.’

  He nods.

  ‘Mom says supper’s ready.’

  He nods again. The girl still lingers in the door frame. Doesn’t seem right to leave her standing there so he invites her in. But what does he have to say to a little girl? Melvin told him he used to give them candy. Little sweets shaped like hearts that said things like ‘Cutie Pie’ and ‘Sweetheart’ on them. Tiny pastel shades of spring, colours, Melvin said, little girls like. And Melvin used to touch their hair. Comb it with his fingers. And he said after, always after, he’d lay them on the front porch like they were sleeping, bag of ‘Be Mine’ candy hearts clutched to their chest like a bouquet of flowers, so that when their mommy and daddy realized they were missing they’d find them laid out all pretty, returned home intact. Or, well, almost intact. Jasper doesn’t have any candy, and there’s nothing pastel or cute in this whitewashed room. And, anyway, this little girl’s creeping into woman.

  ‘This was mine.’ She inches forward, stepping through the door frame. He can feel the closeness of her. She smells like cut grass.

  ‘Well, it was mine once, too.’

  ‘She made me move my stuff out.’

  ‘Seems she moved mine, too.’ Silence between them. ‘Where you sleepin’ now?’

  ‘Mom says they shouldn’t have let you out.’ One bare toe is scratching the other bare ankle. Her legs burned brown as prairie grass. No, browner. The colour his legs once were, back when he used to tiptoe. Tiny hairs bleached blonde-white catch what little lamplight there is. She looks at him with big blue eyes, and he notices traces of Bobby in her, too. Lizzie mostly, but Bobby round the eyes.

  ‘She might be right.’

  ‘When you leave, can I have my room back?’

  He laughs then. Can’t help but laugh. Throws his head back to let the sound out better. When was the last time he laughed? And Doe Eyes is still standing there, watching. Like it’s her business. More of Bobby in her than he first guessed. ‘Where’s your daddy at?’ His voice rougher than intended, but the child doesn’t start, just keeps on staring with her big eyes, now widened even more with slight surprise.

  ‘Didn’t Mom tell you?’

  He looks around the stark room. The bare desk. The pictureless walls. He thinks about funny faces that used to make Lizzie laugh, about her stubborn silence in the truck earlier that afternoon, which chilled him despite the baking sun and thick humidity. Whole drive home and not one word between them till they were up the porch steps, Jasper’s hand reaching out to open the screen door. She caught it then, by the wrist, and Lizzie’s grip was stronger than he would have guessed. ‘You listen here,’ she had said, her voice weathered in ways he did not remember, face lined by hardships he did not truly wish to learn of. ‘You listen good. This here is my house now. And my family. My girls. And you so much as set one toe out of line, Jasper Curtis, ’n’ I’ll make them years in Huntsville look close enough to Heaven.’

  Pots and pans down in the kitchen. ‘Joanne! Jasper!’ Lizzie’s voice, strained. He meets the girl’s quizzical gaze, the echo of their names still fading. Looks into those blue doe eyes. ‘I suspect there’s a lot your mama don’t tell me.’

  Downstairs, right now, Lizzie regrets having sent her up to get him. ‘Fetch your uncle down to supper,’ she’d said. Matter-of-fact, like it was the most natural thing in the world. Fetch your uncle down to supper. Moment the words left her lips, Lizzie felt uneasy. Wanted to suck them back in but it was too late. What the hell was she doing, acting like they were just a normal family fixing to have a normal supper?

  Hearing
her mother’s command, Joanne’s eyes had widened. ‘He’s here?’

  ‘Told you he was comin’, didn’t I?’

  ‘Yeah, but …’

  Never you mind, hon, I’ll fetch him myself. The words rose within her but remained unspoken. Lizzie had made up her mind when she wrote Jasper that letter months back. She wouldn’t have them all living under the same roof in fear. No matter what. What kind of life would that be? Too late to take words back now. She’d cut her daughter short instead. ‘You set that table for four, you hear? Then fetch your uncle.’

  But now Joanne is gone, and every bone in Lizzie’s body wants to call the child back. Almost does but holds it in. Bites her tongue. The taste of blood fills her mouth, and when she swallows, it’s blood not saliva that goes down. Outside, streaks of pink and gold mar the day’s clear blue. Evening breezes struggle to cool. It’s just Jasper, she tells herself. Jasper come on home. But still the painful heart-lock, gut-lock, like Joanne’s first day of school, or Katie’s first night off at a slumber party. And worse somehow. Still the lingering taste of blood oozing from Lizzie’s tongue.

  The cutlery’s stopped clinking in the dining room, and Lizzie’s ears strain for footsteps on the stairs. A loud thud from above. Footsteps creaking, pausing, resuming, then stopping, and the stop is even worse. Voices loud enough to hear the murmur but too soft to make out words.

  ‘She’ll be fine,’ she tells the mash, ears straining as she stirs in the milk, butter, sour cream. The potatoes are fluffy, smooth as icing, but for once Lizzie isn’t even aware of her wrist tiring from the mashing. She releases a breath she did not realize was held. Reaches for the salt. Doesn’t notice the top’s not on right. Swears under her breath as a small white mountain pours down. ‘The mash’s near ruined,’ she hisses, and the sound of her own voice in the quiet kitchen surprises her.

  Then Jasper’s laugh erupts. At least, it must be him, but it’s no sound Lizzie remembers. Jasper always had a deep laugh. Throaty. Even when he was a boy. The kind of laugh that catches you off guard and tickles you and warms you up and makes you chuckle, too. Infectious. But that is not this sound.