The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  ‘Been years now since anyone went missing.’ Ray flicks ash from his cigarette into the fire.

  Eric takes a long swig of his beer. Locks eyes with Katie for a moment across the rising flames. Looks away. His ten-gallon hat rests on his knee now. Absently his fingers trace its brim.

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s ’cause he was locked up, ain’t it?’

  She wishes Josh would just stop speaking.

  ‘What about Rose?’ It’s Eric who’s asked. His hat rests on his head again and his eyes look up from under the ten-gallon’s low brim to hold hers.

  Silence round the campfire.

  ‘What about her?’ Her throat’s so dry she can barely squeeze the words out. She doesn’t want to be here. Doesn’t want to have this conversation.

  ‘Anybody told her he’s back?’ Katie’s eyes hold Eric’s. She says nothing. Doesn’t know how to answer him.

  ‘Eddie knows.’ Josh snorts. ‘And he’s gonna know a whole lot more too once I tell him ’n’ my pops what Jasper said tonight.’

  She tears her eyes from Eric, looks up to Josh, eyes pleading. ‘Don’t stir shit up, Josh, don’ make it worse for us.’

  ‘Ssssh, baby, I ain’t stirrin’ nothin’.’ He comes round the back of the campfire and sits down on the boulder beside her. Puts his arm round her and pulls her close to him. ‘I’m just lookin’ out for you is all,’ he whispers, and she can feel his breath on her cheek, in her ear. She lets her head lean into him, her eyes close. He takes the tequila bottle from her. Chugs a long swig, his head tilted back, the worm creeping closer, closer, to his parted lips. But he doesn’t drink it. Pulls the bottle down right before it touches his lips. Passes it on. Worm still floating there, unnatural in the liquid. Dead or alive doesn’t really matter, she reckons, watching as the bottle’s passed and drunk and passed again, worm seeming to swim and dive in the golden liquid as the bottle’s tilted and righted again and again. One way or another, she thinks, watching, its own life has passed, and if it is living, surely this ain’t the life it chose.

  It’s late when the knock comes, but Lizzie is not sleeping. She’s in bed, sheets pulled across her, pillows fluffed up behind her back, just sitting there, staring at the shadows. The moon is just a tiny sliver in the sky, and it casts no light into her room. The knock doesn’t scare her – her heart doesn’t even pass up one beat – but she hadn’t expected it either. She knows already who will be on the other side of that door when it opens. Her daughters do not knock like that. She pauses before she whispers, ‘Come in,’ her voice unpractised at this late hour, throat tight and dry.

  The knob jiggles as it is turned, hinges groaning. ‘Did I wake you?’ His voice husky, grainy, in the darkness. She cannot see his face, just the dark outline of him in the doorway, the even darker hallway looming behind him. She thinks of nights they spent whispering as children, telling secrets. Remembers that night before her wedding day, how he’d knocked on her bedroom door all those years back, pissed drunk, straight home from Bobby and the boys, the smell of drink oozing off his skin, out of his pores. Stale on his breath. He had come into her room that night smiling ear to ear, same way he had on prom night his junior year when he’d first told Lizzie he was in love. And, of course, the next day she’d told everyone who’d listen just how smitten Jasper was. He and Rose would never have been right for each other, though. Even if so much had been different. And her and Bobby? Well, that night before their wedding day, Jasper’d told her, pissed drunk, stumbling into her room, ‘I envy you, sis. He makes you real happy. You hold on to that happiness,’ he’d said, swaying as he spoke, words slurring. ‘You ride that happiness straight out of here.’ And she’d thought back then she could.

  ‘It all right if I come in?’

  She pulls the sheets tighter round her, even though the room is warm. Window’s open, but still the air hangs heavy. ‘Yeah, you can come in.’

  He leaves the doorway and crosses the room and sits down at the foot of her bed. His eyes go over her for what feels like too long, and she doesn’t like it. She pulls the sheets right up to her chin, the moisture on her skin sticking to and catching the fabric. ‘You all right?’ she says, her voice unsteady.

  Jasper sits hunched, looking down into his hands, clasped on his lap before him. ‘I couldn’t sleep.’

  ‘Oh.’ What does he want her to do? Read him a bedtime story? ‘I wasn’t sleepin’ yet neither.’

  His face turns to her. Her eyes have adjusted enough to the shadows of the room that she can just make out his features. ‘What was keepin’ you up?’

  She sighs. ‘Hard to quiet the mind sometimes.’

  He nods. ‘I know that feeling.’

  ‘Is it …’ she hesitates over the words, searching for the right ones ‘… hard being back?’

  For a moment Lizzie thinks he might not answer. He looks back down to his clasped hands. ‘Sometimes it’s hard just being.’ Voice a husky whisper.

  She’s felt that these past years herself. ‘I’m sorry, Jasper,’ she says at length.

  Confusion creases his brow. ‘What for?’

  Her turn to look down. ‘For everything. I’m sorry if we ever done wrong by you. If we made you how you are.’

  His body tenses, then relaxes as he slowly shakes his head. ‘It ain’t you, Lizzie, who done wrong.’ His face is pinched, twisted with emotions she can’t even begin to identify.

  ‘You know what they still say about you, don’t you?’ She raises her eyes to his.

  ‘I can guess.’

  She nods. Wants to say more. Leaves it at that.

  ‘Lizzie?’ he asks at length, voice rough in the silence of the room, the deeper, darker silence of the prairie around them.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘You believe me, right, when I say I’m done with trouble?’

  She is silent a moment. Lets out a long breath. ‘Yeah, I believe you, Jasper, it ain’t that.’

  ‘What then?’ His voice surprisingly soft.

  ‘I got this gut feelin’ trouble ain’t even close to done with you.’

  He laughs then softly. That brother laugh she’s missed. ‘Shit,’ he says, grinning in the darkness. ‘Guess I’m screwed then, ain’t I?’

  She moves over on the bed so he can lean back against the headboard with her. Seems strange sitting there like that, so little space between them. She keeps the sheets wrapped tight around her. It’s been a long time since a man sat on her bed. Even if he is her brother. Feels strange somehow. Wrong. Like that ice cube all those years ago that he’d run up her leg.

  His voice startles her, breaks her thoughts up. ‘Lizzie …’ his whisper soft ‘… have you ever tried to find him?’

  She can see their dark outlines just barely reflected in Mama’s old vanity, two dark shadows sitting side by side, not touching, but close, her feet out long before her, his still rooted to the floor, body slightly twisted to one side. She doesn’t have to ask him who he means. ‘No, I ain’t never tried to find ’im, Jasper. I thought on it a time or two, but I just don’t have the heart.’

  ‘How come?’

  She snorts. ‘He’da come on home by now if he’d wanted to. He ain’t comin’ back, Jasper. No sane man would come back here.’

  He laughs, and she realizes what she’s said. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it like that.’

  His voice, still soft in the darkness, plays with her. ‘Yes, you did.’

  The buzz of insects outside merges to form a single low hum. ‘You heard from him since he left?’ Something comforting about the deep gravel tones in Jasper’s voice at this late hour.

  She closes her eyes. ‘I ain’t heard one word.’

  ‘And the girls?’

  ‘What ’bout ’em?’

  ‘Ain’t right him not bein’ a father to them.’

  ‘Right got nothin’ to do with it.’

  ‘Why’d he go, Lizzie? Really.’

  She sighs. ‘He just couldn’t cut it no more, Jasper. Folks round here weren�
�t too kind to us after what you done. He had it worst too, I guess, what with you ’n’ him grown so close back then.’ She pauses. ‘He didn’t love us enough to stay. Not me, not them girls of ours neither. That’s what it all boils down to. And how do I tell them that? I’ve asked myself a million times on a million sleepless nights why we wasn’t enough for him, but I still ain’t got no answer. That’s the million-dollar question, ain’t it? Why couldn’t he have loved us enough to stay? But wishin’ don’t change the truth none. And there was a lot of rumours back then goin’ round after you was locked up. A lot of rumours.’

  She can feel his frown more than see it. Can feel the heat of his body still uncomfortably close beside her on the bed.

  ‘What kind of rumours?’

  His voice so low that even next to him she can barely hear it.

  ‘Surely you know.’

  His head shakes, face lost in shadow.

  She sighs. ‘Folks thought maybe he’d had somethin’ to do with what you done. They seemed to think maybe Bobby’d …’ Her voice falters. Steadies. ‘Didn’t help none neither, you going back to the garage like that, all covered in blood. Shit, Jasper, what the hell were you thinkin’ going there?’

  His voice harder than before. ‘I didn’t know where else to go.’

  ‘There was nowhere you could go, Jasper. Nowhere you’da been welcome. I know that.’ She snorts. ‘Shit, there ain’t nowhere to go when you done what you did. You could have had the decency to leave us out of it, though. Ain’t a day that goes past I don’t wish you’d picked a different door to knock on that night.’ It’s been years since Lizzie’s talked about why Bobby left. About what happened to him all that time ago. Her mother had been the only one she’d ever told, and the rage is in Lizzie still, deep inside, locked tightly to her heart as it has been these past long years. She had thought that when she finally spoke about it again all those years of rage would release, but as she talks she just feels numb inside. Chilled, despite the humid night.

  Aloud, she says, ‘Seems like just yesterday sometimes, the police coming in the garage like that and finding the two of you. Is it strange that I’ve pictured it? I see it like I was there, even though I wasn’t.’ She tastes salt. A tear runs down her cheek and seeps into the valley of her mouth. She wipes its track with the back of her hand, drying her face. Feels the numbness spreading inside her, thinning into pain.

  ‘Eddie Saunders ’n’ his crew didn’t make it easy for Bobby neither after you was locked up. They was convinced he must have helped you with what you done.’ Her voice cracks. ‘They went down to the garage one night when he was just ’bout closin’ up. Roughed him up real bad thinkin’ they could get him to confess. But Bobby, he didn’t have nothin’ to confess to.’

  She sees again his battered face when finally she’d found him. One of his canine teeth had been crushed, broken shards of tooth stuck in his gums and lips. His left eye was so swollen black it would neither open nor shut. It just sat there disfigured on his face, not quite seeing, not fully not. She’d never seen skin that purple before. Like the skin itself was angry and about to tear off and combust itself to explode. They had tied him to the wheel of a Chevy he’d been fixing. That was what he’d told her. There were cigarette burns on his hands. His stomach. His neck. ‘I begged him to go to the police after,’ she says. ‘Or the hospital at least, but Bobby wouldn’t have it.’ Her voice catches in her throat and she has to draw a deep breath to clear it. ‘It weren’t too long after that night that he left. Still had the bruises on him to prove their wrongdoing, but he left anyway. Bobby wasn’t cut out for the world you left us in. He couldn’t handle the sideways looks, the whispers behind hands. Sometimes I think you got off easy, goin’ to Huntsville like that. We was the ones left here in your mess.’

  Jasper’s voice is low. ‘I never meant to bring no trouble on you ’n’ Bobby.’ He’s looking away from her, across the room and out of the open window into the pre-dawn darkness beyond.

  ‘See, that’s the problem, Jasper,’ she says softly. ‘You never mean to cause the trouble, but trouble always finds you.’

  ‘You blame me for him leaving.’ A statement, not a question. Not the first time he’s said it.

  ‘Yeah, that’s right.’ Her voice is rough in the darkness, unpolished. ‘I blame you. I blame your stupidity. I blame your stupid lust. And your pride and that goddamned ego of yours. You ain’t right in the head, Jasper Curtis. I’m sorry to say it all blunt like that, but if that’s not the God honest truth, it’s the only excuse I can make for you.’

  His voice is harder than before. She’d expected him to bristle. ‘I don’t need your sympathy.’ Words almost a snarl.

  ‘Good, ’cause you ain’t gettin’ it.’ She keeps her tone level. Draws the sheet tighter still around her. No stars can be seen through the window. A barn owl breaks the stillness of the night, calling as it hunts.

  ‘What if I told you Bobby had helped me?’ His voice, ice on this warm night, chills the room around her.

  ‘You’d be crueller than I’d counted on.’

  He chuckles, weighing her words. They sit in silence for a long while, shoulders not quite touching, but still close enough to feel the heat radiate off each other’s skin. She wonders how long he’ll stay there. Wonders what he’s thinking. Wants to ask him, but finds her voice has left her. She keeps seeing Bobby’s face all those years back after Eddie Saunders and his lot had finished with him. Another tear rolls down her cheek and she does not raise her hand to wipe it. Tastes the salt instead.

  At length Jasper rises. Stretches by the bed beside her, and he seems so tall there standing above her as he leans from side to side. He rolls his shoulders back. Looks up to the ceiling, then back down to her. ‘I’d best let you get some sleep.’

  She nods. He crosses the room in four short strides. Opens the door. Reminds her somehow of that morning when Bobby left, the way he, too, paused with his hand on that door knob. ‘Jasper!’ The sound of her voice surprises her. She had not known she meant to speak, but the words spill out before she can stop them. ‘He didn’t help you, though, did he?’

  He freezes in the open doorway, hand still on the knob. He fidgets with the knob looking down at his feet. Raises his eyes to hers. ‘No, Lizzie, he didn’t help me. What I done I done alone.’ He nods then to her. Just the once. Starts to leave, then pauses once again. Turns back to her. ‘I been cravin’ chocolate ice cream somethin’ awful,’ he says. ‘I don’t suppose there’d be a chance of getting some one day real soon?’ Like a child there, asking.

  She forces a smile, not sure how to take his request. ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘And, Lizzie?’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Will you drive me to church tomorrow?’

  She pauses. ‘Your mind made up on goin’?’

  ‘It’s set.’

  She studies his frame there in the shadows. The muscles that stretch his T-shirt tight across his arms and chest. Not a young frame any more, but a fit one nonetheless. He doesn’t stand quite as straight as he used to, shoulders a bit more slouched. Deep-set lines crease his features even in shadow. She pictures him in church alone. The whole town there around him. Shudders. ‘Reckon I might as well go on in with you, then.’

  He nods. ‘I’d be obliged.’ And shuts the door behind him.

  The church looks just like how Jasper remembers it. Prairie stretching flat around it, like a big open sea. Prairie grass blows to and fro like crashing golden-brown waves. Pickup trucks and a few sedans are parked haphazardly on the fields, scattered in front of the church, like boats newly docked in harbour before a coming storm. No real parking lot. Just the open field. Even that hasn’t changed. In fact, it seems to Jasper that nothing about the church has changed one bit in all the years since his childhood. Same perfect whitewashed exterior. Same big oak doors left open wide. Same reverend in those doors smiling, shaking hands. Same people mostly, older, more tired maybe, still filing in through tha
t still-open door. He likes the familiarity of it. Dandelions and daisies and tiny yellow buttercups dot the field that serves as parking lot, grass uncut but kept short by the steady flow of Sunday traffic. A few Texas bluebells dot the open prairie, tiny stains of blue among the dried-grass brown.

  Lizzie stalls the engine still pulled up on the main road. She doesn’t drive down the well-worn dirt path that leads onto the field in front of the church. She waits instead. Her brow is deeply furrowed, ageing her. In a different world, in a life less hard, Jasper thinks, she would look pretty. This is not that world. Not that life. He is sorry for the depth of that wrinkle. Can’t help but feel he partly put it there. And he is sorry, too, about Bobby, about what Eddie Saunders and his crew must have put him through. He notices a bit of grey just off Lizzie’s temple he hadn’t seen before. He looks back out across the field. To the small cemetery half hidden behind the chapel. Says, ‘Is that where Mama’s buried?’ eyes never leaving that hallowed ground.

  ‘Yeah, she’s there.’ Lizzie’s foot finds the gas and the pickup lurches forward onto the dirt path. She parks at the end of the field, close to the road as she can. For a moment he wonders if she’s changed her mind. If she’ll just leave him here after all. He hadn’t expected her to come to church. Not after Reverend Gordon’s last visit. Not after her callous words about God. But she’d woken up that morning with a fire in her, cooking pancakes like they absolved all sin, fussing at him and Joanne to wash their faces. She’d snapped at Katie to wear a longer skirt. Had braided Joanne’s hair so tight Joanne had started crying, saying it hurt her scalp. Jasper knew his sister was staying busy to keep herself calm. He could see the worry in her just barely held at bay.

  Now, sitting in the truck, she turns to him. Joanne and Katie sit sandwiched tight between them, Joanne on her sister’s lap. Jasper can barely see Lizzie over her two girls, but he can hear her just fine, her tone calloused hard as she looks out of the window, away from him, out to the church beyond. ‘Just what exactly are you hopin’ to have happen here?’ she says, not even masking the disdain in her tone. ‘You expectin’ a warm welcome?’