The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  She’s chugging milk from her glass. ‘For what?’ She wipes her lips with the back of her hand.

  He smiles. Can’t help but smile. ‘For this,’ he whispers, ‘for being my friend.’

  He would not have thought it possible, but somehow her face glows brighter. She looks so like her mother in that moment, he muses, and yet so different too, a creature all her own. Awkward and breathtaking, somehow, all at once.

  She grins. ‘Do you wanna play Go Fish?’ Long shadows flicker and shift.

  The warmth in his gut spreads. ‘You’ll have to remind me how. It’s been a long time since I played.’

  Katie cuts the engine as she pulls to the top of their drive. Muted light flickers from behind drawn curtains. Usually at this late hour the house looms dark and silent. She pauses on the front porch, key in the door, and again in the hallway she freezes, staring at the light that spills from the crack under the living-room door. For a moment she wonders if maybe Mom is sitting up, or maybe a lamp was accidentally left on. She stops with her hand on the door knob, not sure if she wants to enter. What if it’s him in there? Laughter on the other side. Carefully, Katie opens the door.

  Two silhouettes sit hunched, dark shadows within a glowing yellow makeshift tent. The kind of tent that she and Joanne used to build together. The kind her daddy made for her when she was very small. It takes Katie back to those nights spent alone with her father before Joanne was born, to the card games and board games they’d stay up late and play. For a second she is confused, not sure what she is looking at, not sure how this cherished memory could be so brought to life. Then from under the sheet Uncle Jasper’s voice asks, ‘You got any Jacks?’ and Joanne’s shadow sits up taller as she smugly giggles, ‘Go fish.’

  Katie’s heart tightens and twists. Anger gnaws at her gut, twisting her insides sour. How dare Joanne recreate this memory with him?

  ‘What the hell are y’all doin’?’ Katie’s voice cracks the stillness of the night.

  Inside the tent both shadows freeze. Then, giggling, Joanne pops her head out of the flap. ‘Katie! You’re home! Come play with us!’

  Katie switches on the overhead, flooding the room with light.

  Stiffly, slowly, Jasper crawls from the tent to stand blinking with his head slightly bowed. No shirt on. His hair a slept-in mess. Joanne scrambles to her feet all smiles, her T-shirt nightgown hanging down just above her knees. ‘Mom’ll kill you when I tell her you stayed up this late.’

  The smile drops from Joanne’s lips. ‘Katie, no, please don’t …’

  ‘Get upstairs. Now.’

  Joanne’s lip pouts. ‘You’re not my mom, you can’t tell me what to do.’

  ‘I swear to God,’ Katie whispers hoarsely, ‘you get upstairs to bed or I’ll make you more than sorry.’

  Joanne opens her mouth to protest again, but it is Jasper who speaks. ‘Listen to your sister, Doe Eyes,’ he says gently. ‘We can play some other time.’

  Joanne’s mouth closes, then opens again only to close once more. She turns to their uncle. ‘You promise?’

  Jasper nods.

  Joanne hugs him round the waist, real tight. His eyes close as her arms slip around him, then open as, hesitantly, he lowers his arms to hug her back. Over Joanne’s head Katie and Jasper’s eyes meet. She does not like to hold his gaze. Nor does she like the tenderness with which he regards her sister. It makes her uncomfortable. As does his nickname for her: Doe Eyes. Another stab in Katie’s gut she does not quite understand. She never should have shared those memories of their father with her sister. They were not Joanne’s to take.

  Joanne releases their uncle, murmuring, ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Goodnight.’ His eyes follow her out of the room.

  Katie does not feel comfortable alone with their uncle. Though half a room away, he feels too close. She doesn’t understand how her sister can hug him. How she can act like he’s her dad. Katie folds her arms across her chest more for comfort than against a chill. She struggles to find the words she wants to say. ‘Joanne’s just a kid,’ she spits out finally.

  Jasper says nothing. Just stands there staring at her, fort still aglow behind him. For a moment Katie wonders if she should stay another moment, should say something else. She thinks about how Joanne accused her of never speaking to their uncle. She opens her mouth to speak, to tell him to leave her sister alone. No words come out, just air. She thinks of Eddie at church that morning. Of his kind smile when he asked for her help. Angry, hurt still, Katie runs out of the room and up the stairs after her sister.

  It is some time till Jasper stirs. He can still feel her arms tight around him. The pressure of her face against his stomach. Her small hands around his back. It’s been a long while since anyone hugged him. A long, long while indeed. And he wants to savour the feeling. To replay it in his head. A part of him fears that once he moves the moment will be over, lost and gone for ever, distant as a dream. He had always shied away from hugs, even before prison, but standing in the too-bright sitting room in the dead of night reliving the innocence of her embrace, it seems to Jasper there is no purer feeling, no greater peace on earth.

  He hadn’t expected the parole office to be in a strip mall. Not that Jasper had spent much time pondering just where the office would be. In fact, he’d scarcely thought on it at all in the days since his release, but sandwiched between a nail salon and a Tex Mex restaurant was the last location he would have imagined.

  It seemed to Jasper as they raced along the freeway that the whole country was newly dotted with strip malls and fast-food joints. He didn’t remember it being like that before. Or cars driving so fast. Or there being so many cars on the road for that matter. They must have gone that fast before, he knows, the cars that is, but prison had had its own pace, and he nearly felt dizzy among the speeding chaos of I-10. He was glad when Lizzie had exited the highway. He felt he could breathe better somehow on the feeder with open fields around them once again.

  Now, seated in the stuffy room across from his assigned parole officer, Jasper wishes intensely that someone somewhere in the office would open a window to let a bit of air in. ‘The goddamned a/c is broke,’ were the first words his parole officer had said to him. And the man hadn’t been kidding. Sweat runs thick down Jasper’s forehead, stinging as it reaches his eyes. He can feel his shirt dampening at the armpits and around the collar. He can feel that dampness spreading. Lizzie’d insisted he look ‘presentable’ that morning. She had even ironed one of his new shirts for him, but now his hair is damp with sweat, and Jasper feels about as far from presentable as he reckons he can get.

  The receptionist out the front, when he first entered the building, looked like an ex-con herself. She had her hair done up all big and curly in a style he was unfamiliar with. Her blouse hugged her every curve. It seemed a bit too tight for that sort of job. A bit too low-cut. But she wasn’t particularly pretty, and Jasper reckoned it was the averageness of her face that let her get away with dressing like that. She had a bit of a snaggletooth that further stole her beauty when she smiled, but even when her mouth was shut she looked nothing short of common. He liked her hair, though, all big and frizzy. He liked the shape of her under that blouse. Even if her tits didn’t seem extra firm or perky.

  She’d barely glanced at him when he’d come in. ‘You Yancey’s ten thirty?’ she’d asked, not bothering to look up from the fashion magazine she was gazing at.

  ‘Yes, ma’am.’ He had glanced at the scrap of paper clutched in his hand. ‘I’m here for Yancey James Sutton.’

  She had looked up then. Had held his gaze, head cocked to the side, regarding him the way a cocker spaniel might. ‘How many years you do?’ she’d asked. Her eyes had weighed him up but somehow had lacked true judgement. Like maybe she didn’t already know his story, didn’t know just who he was.

  He had tried to smile, but it felt unnatural, like his skin somehow had gone too tight. ‘Long enough, I reckon.’ His eyes had drifted down again to the fa
bric stretched across her breasts.

  She had flashed her snaggletooth. ‘I’ll take you right on back, then.’ And he’d followed her down the hall.

  Now, sweating, his parole officer, Yancey Sutton, across the desk studying him, Jasper wonders what her name might be. That receptionist’s. He ponders asking her on his way out. Just her name, that is. He wonders if he could maybe one day have a woman – one not too pretty – like that. One used to scarred men who might not care about his history. But inside he knows that certain things in this life are not to be.

  Yancey sits quietly behind his desk, regarding Jasper. His hands clasp together just under his chin. His elbows rest on his swivel chair’s arms. He leans back, shifts his weight and crosses his arms over his chest as he reclines. ‘Sorry ’bout the heat,’ he says. ‘Goddamned window won’ even open.’ He gestures towards the tiny rectangular box of light that serves as the room’s only window. More a skylight, really, than anything. A clock on the desk ticks to keep time. Back out in Reception, the phone rings. ‘I’ll do us both a favour and cut the bullshit,’ Yancey says, leaning forward. ‘Even without this file, I know who you are, you hear? And I know jus’ what you done.’ His fingers tap a closed file there on the desk before him.

  Down the hall, the phone rings a second time. A third. Jasper holds his tongue. He lets his eyes wander to the calendar on the back wall. Some photograph of a longhorn waist high in a field of Indian paintbrushes, the Texas flag blowing in the background.

  Yancey’s eyes narrow, as though he’s summing up the man before him. ‘I’m gonna level with you,’ he says. ‘You ’n’ I can sit here week after week disliking each other all you want, but fact is if you want to keep your freedom you’ll keep me buttered up.’ He smiles. His teeth are stained yellow from years of chewing tobacco. His lips have the purple swell of a man who’s long liked his drink. ‘You understand me, son?’

  ‘I understand you.’ Jasper’s voice is low but firm. He can hear the sweet call of the receptionist’s voice as she answers the phone way off down that hall. He turns his focus back to Yancey. It’s been a long while since anyone not a clergyman referred to him as ‘son’.

  Yancey is nodding. ‘Good,’ he says, and nods again. He’s an older man, not too far off retirement, silver-haired with a gut that stretches and pulls the fabric round the buttons on his shirt. His cowboy boots are snakeskin with a bit more of a heel than is common for most men. He is not a tall man, though he does not quite seem short enough to warrant the extra heel. Perhaps because of the confidence with which he holds himself. Sweat runs down his brow, his cheeks, the side of his double chin. ‘So here’s the deal,’ Yancey says, smiling once again. ‘We can work together ’n’ keep things real sweet between us, or if you act up, I can make a phone call real easy, any time I want, and that’s you gone. You hear?’

  Sweat runs from Jasper’s chin down the front of his neck. He wipes it with the back of his hand, then wipes his hand on his jeans. ‘I hear you.’

  ‘Good,’ Yancey says, and nods again. He takes out a folder from a drawer and lets it fall onto the desk before him. Right on top of the other, thicker, folder already there. ‘I’m familiar with your case, Mr Curtis. Been lookin’ over it all mornin’. But, shit!’ He grins. ‘There’s few folks this side of the Rio Grande that ain’t familiar with your case, now, are there?’ Yancey chuckles to himself real soft and low, as though letting Jasper in on some private joke. Automatically, Jasper bristles. ‘Now I ain’t gonna be your new buddy,’ Yancey continues. ‘I got enough friends of my own. And I ain’t here to hold your hand as you get used to the big bad world once again. If you don’ assimilate back into society, that’s on you.’ He fidgets with a pencil before he lets it fall onto the folder before him. ‘Half the boys I see go straight back into the penitentiary.’ He pauses, as though to let his words have impact. Lets out a long breath and shakes his head slightly. Then his expression changes and he leans forward with a playfulness he had lacked before. ‘There’s just one thing, in your case,’ Yancey smiles, malice playing at the corner of his lips, ‘that don’ add up to me.’ He leans back in his chair, and slowly places one foot and then the other up on the desk before them.

  Jasper regards him without expression, watching the sweat patches on the other man’s shirt spread.

  ‘See, it just don’ make sense to me,’ Yancey continues, ‘why the hell they let you out.’ He laughs then, long and loud, pleased with his own wit.

  Jasper smiles. Unamused. A cold, hard smile that does not soften his features. ‘Are you my parole officer, sir,’ he says quietly, ‘or my next jury?’

  A slow grin breaks across Yancey’s face. ‘All right, son, all right.’ He nods. Real. Slow. ‘You want to play your hand all close to your chest like that, you go on right ahead. I won’t stop ya.’ The men regard each other in silence. Yancey’s desk is covered with discarded scraps of paper. Bills, official court documents, police reports, all mixed together. Piles of folders stand like tiny columns around the room. Papers stacked high. Yancey flicks open the folder before him and lifts out a stack of papers. He taps it against his desktop to even the pages out, then sets it down before him. He reaches into his drawer again and pulls out a pair of reading glasses. He pauses a moment, holding Jasper’s gaze, then puts the glasses on and picks up the stack of papers. ‘Let’s see now …’ he says, scanning the sheet. ‘Where are we? … Yes. All right. You livin’ back home, that right?’

  Jasper watches the man before him coolly. ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Your folks’ place, is it?’ Yancey marks notes on the paper held before him. Jasper cannot see what words he writes.

  ‘My sister’s now.’

  Yancey glances over the stack of papers. He flips through a couple of documents and lets the pages fall into a pile. ‘Where’re your folks at?’

  ‘Dead.’

  ‘All right …’ He makes a mark on a page. ‘You plan on stayin’ there awhile?’

  ‘I got nowhere else to go.’

  ‘You payin’ rent there?’

  Jasper hesitates. ‘At the moment, no.’ Then, louder, ‘That land’s half mine.’ More defensive than he’d intended.

  Yancey looks over his glasses at him. The lenses on them have fogged up from the heat. He takes them off carefully and wipes them on his shirt to dry them, but it’s so hot his shirt is moist with sweat, and the fabric only streaks the glasses, does not fully dry them. He looks to the files and papers before him. ‘You finish high school?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘State requires you to work. With the conditions of your parole. And you’re not to leave the state, and not to leave the country neither.’ He pauses. ‘You lazy, boy?’

  Jasper shakes his head. ‘I never had any problem with workin’.’

  Yancey snorts, as though what Jasper’s just said amuses him. Jasper feels his blood go cold, despite the muggy heat that fills the room. He’d like to show Yancey just what he’s capable of, just what he can do. He’d like to work the other man’s face into a nice dark shade of purple. It’s been a long while since anyone laughed at Jasper. Been even longer since anyone got away with it. Jasper cracks his knuckles. Reminds himself that he’s all done with trouble.

  ‘Before prison, you were –’ Yancey flicks back another page.

  ‘I was a mechanic, sir,’ Jasper cuts him off. Can’t quite keep the sneer from his tone.

  Yancey leans back in his chair. He’s not laughing now. But he’s not quite respectful neither. Slowly he nods. ‘A mechanic,’ he murmurs. He glances down to the stack of papers before him. ‘Are you aware,’ he says, ‘of the whereabouts of Ms Saunders?’

  Jasper recoils from the surprise of her name. Anger fills him and he has to shove it down to keep himself from leaning over that desk and grabbing the man behind it. He swallows, struggling to keep control. ‘I reckon I could find her, if I was so inclined.’

  Yancey slowly removes his glasses and sits up straight. ‘Do you intend to fin
d her, Mr Curtis?’

  ‘Can I ask you a question … sir?’ The words spill out of Jasper before he can stop them. His lips curl as the words leave them, the disdain in his voice unmissable.

  Yancey nods, slowly placing his glasses on his desk. ‘Shoot.’

  ‘Are you trying to be my friend here, or my next girlfriend? ’Cause it seems to me for jus’ meetin’ we’re gettin’ awful cosy.’

  A slow grin spreads across Yancey’s face. ‘Damn, boy!’ He claps his hands together. Once. Twice. ‘That just made my day. Got ourselves a firecracker!’ he calls down the hall. Then his tone shifts. Eyes narrow. ‘Now, you listen here and you listen good, you smart alecky motherfucker. I control your life. You wanna piss? I tell you where to do it. You understand me, boy? You ain’t free till you’re free of me.’

  Jasper bites the inside of his lip till he tastes blood. Something about the feel of his teeth locked into his flesh calms him just a little. The clock ticks. Out in Reception the phone rings and is answered, and her voice sounds sweet again.

  ‘Now,’ Yancey says, reclining once more, ‘you need a job, don’ you? Conditions of your parole … Let’s see what I’ve got here for a fine convict like yourself, shall we?’ He grins. The playful, malicious glint returns to his eyes. ‘Yes, sir,’ he says, ‘we’ve got a bright future for you right here. Must be your lucky day. There’s a chicken factory a bit short on staff. It’s halfway to San Antonio, but I’m sure you won’ mind the drive.’ Yancey looks down, marking quickly on a form.

  ‘A chicken farm?’ Jasper cannot mask his surprise.

  ‘That’s what I said.’

  ‘What kind of work is it?’

  Yancey looks up and holds his gaze. ‘Honest work. That’s what kind.’