The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  Jasper went over to where the hurt rabbit had fallen. He’d shot it in its haunches, and it was bleeding too bad to hop away. He picked it up and held it real tender to his chest and called her over to him. Its blood ran onto him, down his shirt and leg. She was scared. ‘Come look, Lizzie,’ he’d said, and he’d bent down real low so she could see it better. She reached out and touched its soft fur. It trembled under her touch. Its eyes so filled with fear. ‘Now watch,’ he’d said, ‘and I’ll take his coat off for you.’

  He held it in his arms the whole while. Even as he got his knife out. Even as he carved into it, skinning it alive. She screamed when she saw what he was doing. And there were tears on Roy’s cheeks as he begged Jasper to stop. It was that memory that came back to Lizzie when she had first heard what, years later, he had done. It was that memory more than anything that had assured her of his guilt. She loved her brother, he had always been good to her, but that day out on the prairie, she had seen the darkness in his soul, and she knew him capable of relishing the pain caused to another.

  She has tried and tried over the years since to remember what might have happened earlier on that day. Had Daddy maybe beaten him? Had Jasper been bullied in the schoolyard? But, no, to her recollection, it had been a normal day. Till poor Mr Rabbit had shed his coat. She couldn’t stop crying after that. The whole way home, walking through the tall prairie grasses. And Jasper had promised her he’d never do that again. Had picked her a bouquet of wild flowers. ‘I’m sorry, sis,’ he’d said. ‘I thought you’d find it funny.’

  She had sat through one day of Jasper’s trial. All those years later and now so many years ago. Mama had refused to go. Had said she didn’t want to see her son in ‘that light’. But it had seemed to Lizzie that one of them ought to be there, so she had gone. Alone. Reporters had swarmed around her on the courthouse steps, the flashes of their cameras still exploding in her eyes even once she’d stepped inside. Experts had been brought in that day to discuss Jasper’s mental health and a lot of big words had been thrown around that Lizzie had not heard before. Then they’d called him a psychopath. And that word she did know. And she understood then what Mama had meant about not wanting to see Jasper in ‘that light’.

  It is those memories that come back to her now, her hands caked in earth, as she tries to repair the lifeless plants crushed all around her. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and Lizzie quickly raises her hand to brush it aside, dirt smearing across her face as she does so.

  ‘Mama must be rollin’ over in her grave.’

  She looks up. Jasper leans against the porch railing. The swelling on his face has gone down a bit, but the purple bruises have turned black, the skin between them a discoloured yellow-green. ‘Jesus, Jasper,’ she shakes her head, ‘I never seen you look more handsome.’

  He snorts, the corners of his lips nearly quivering up into a crooked smile.

  She sits back, her feet tucked beneath her, and shades the sun from her eyes. ‘What you gonna do?’ she asks him.

  ‘ ’Bout what?’

  ‘ ’Bout last night.’

  He shrugs. ‘Ain’t much I can do, I reckon.’

  ‘They’ll be back, you know,’ she says quietly, her voice like stone.

  He looks out beyond the garden to the open prairie. ‘Yeah,’ he says, ‘I know.’

  ‘And what do we do then?’

  ‘I didn’t want no trouble, Lizzie.’

  ‘It’s a bit late for that now.’

  He nods. Says nothing.

  She lets out a long breath she hadn’t realized she’d held. Her eyes search his. ‘I don’t know what to do, Jasper. I don’t know where to go from here that don’t end up back in trouble.’

  He walks down the porch steps and across the lawn to kneel beside her in what’s left of their mother’s ruined garden. Carefully he takes the rose bush held in Lizzie’s hands and coaxes its bent stems back as upright as he can. Thorns cut his bare hands, but he ignores them. ‘I spent my whole life crushing beauty,’ he says softly, so softly she has to strain to hear him. ‘It’d be nice to watch things grow awhile.’

  ‘I wish they’d let us,’ she says softly.

  He looks back at the house a long moment. ‘So do I.’

  Sunlight filters through the trees to chequer the earth with shadow, dark opposing light, leaves overlapping, creating deeper, darker shadows. No grass grows beneath the trees, just smooth, dry earth littered slightly with fallen leaves and pine cones and the odd beer can left behind to rust. A thin layer of fallen pine needles carpets the rough rocks along the creek bank. The creek is just a trickle, really, not deep enough in this drought for swimming, but Joanne wades out into its shallows anyway, giggling as the cool water flows over her bare feet. He smiles, watching her face relax as she giggles and splashes. Her sister sits on a rock along the bank, feet dangling down so that her toes just skim the water. When he was a boy, he remembers that boulder at nearly water level. They used to lie on their bellies on that same rock, used to watch dragonflies as they hovered above the water, dipping and rising, eating all the mosquitoes. There used to be rainbows caught in their iridescent wings when the light fell down just right. There must have been more rain, he thinks, those summers. They used to climb into the trees and drop down into the water when it was deep enough.

  He is surprised in a way that he is here. Just his two nieces and him. No one else, far as the eye can see. No homesteads or newly built houses. Not even a car to hear passing up on the country road. He likes the still of it, this place, likes the sound of the wind whispering through the large grove of pines, talking softly through the leaves of the tall oak trees. The only trees for miles, really, lie along this creek. He likes the gurgle of the water as it flows past them, even if the water is so low. For the first time since his release he feels a different sort of freedom, like now, finally, he is truly unwatched. Well, he almost feels that way. He doesn’t take kindly to Katie’s wariness around him. The way she’s always watching him, as bad as a prison guard. He can feel her eyes boring into him even when he looks away. It makes his skin itch.

  It had been Lizzie’s idea, him going with the girls. Katie had come downstairs late morning, her hair and face all done up already, a bounce in her step he didn’t see the occasion for. ‘Mom, I’m takin’ Jo swimmin’,’ she’d said.

  Her mother had regarded her a long moment. ‘All righ’,’ she’d said. ‘You go on ’n’ take her, then. But your uncle’s comin’ with you.’

  He had looked over from his coffee. Face still a deformed swollen mask, coloured the colour of ‘bruise’. Katie’s eyes had darkened as they’d passed over him.

  ‘Mom –’ she’d hissed.

  ‘You wanna go out?’ Her mother cut her off. ‘Your uncle’s goin’ with you.’

  ‘What’d I do,’ he’d asked quietly, as they were leaving, ‘to deserve this great honour?’

  ‘Keep them safe,’ was all his sister had whispered, and there’d been fear deep within her eyes.

  Now he sits upon the earth close to the creek bank. Slowly, he takes one shoe off and then the other. He places them to his side, lined up beside each other, as though waiting to be stepped into. He rolls one sock off, then the other. Wipes the fluff from between his toes, then places each sock crumpled up inside each shoe. His feet are pale. His toenails are a bit too long and jagged. He dips each foot into the fresh creek water and lets each settle there, right down on the bottom. The last bits of sock fluff separate from his skin and float up to the surface. The water’s a little deeper than it at first seemed – it comes just under his knees and soaks the bottom of his jeans, which won’t roll up any higher. The rocks beneath his feet feel mossy and slimy. He closes his eyes and feels the filtered sunlight fall upon his face. He wiggles his toes, the water cool around them. It feels like freedom to him, and his bruised and broken face twists into its own version of a smile.

  ‘Uncle Jasper?’

  His eyes open. She is beside him somehow. Standin
g over him. He hadn’t heard her approach. Quiet as a doe too … He squints to better see her face.

  ‘You promised me something last night.’ There is a shyness to her. A nervousness when she looks at him full on.

  He nods. ‘I must look a monster to you,’ he says, his voice like gravel, his jaw still twisted slightly on his face, the cheek around it tight and swollen.

  Her eyes take him in and widen doing so. Her nose wrinkles. Then relaxes. ‘Kind of,’ she whispers, as a smile eases her nervousness away in tiny fractions.

  He sets his hands palm down on the earth behind him and leans back a little, letting his shoulders hunch. Letting his crooked grin grow. He studies her.

  ‘You promised me,’ she whispers again, softly. Her eyes implore his, search his, and the hardness inside him melts just a little.

  ‘I did,’ he says.

  Across the creek from them, Katie leans forward, eyes dark with mistrust, her red toenails skimming the water as she swings her long, tanned legs. They distract him, tease him. Any other man just out of Huntsville, he tells himself, would have found a way to touch those legs by now.

  ‘Will you tell me?’ Joanne softly asks.

  ‘Tell you what?’ Katie raises her voice to let it travel.

  Joanne twists one toe down into the soft sand of the creek bank. ‘You promised me too, Katie,’ she says, turning to her sister. ‘You said you’d tell me one day what he done.’

  ‘Yeah, one day, not now!’ Katie rises, swinging her legs up from the water to stand tall on the rock, towering above them on the opposite side of the bank. Tiny bits of spray fall from her feet and ankles. ‘Don’t you tell her,’ she says, her focus shifting to him, her index finger pointing at him. She sounds, he thinks, just like her mother. He does not take kindly to her tone.

  ‘Uncle Jasper,’ Joanne whispers, ‘tell me why you went to prison.’

  ‘Please,’ Katie sounds desperate now, almost pleading, ‘don’t.’

  The sisters’ eyes meet and hold. He watches them as they stare at each other. Both brown as dried-out prairie grass, browner even, maybe. Both gold as the open fields at sunset, when the sun’s gold rays cast down and touch the land. The older – so tall, so beautiful, so tempting to a man. And the younger … not grown into her beauty yet, but to him even more captivating. A precious, delicate thing. A thing to protect. It’s been a long while since Jasper felt the need to protect anyone save himself. Nearly as long since he had a friend. He’d rather Joanne never knew all the mistakes he’s made, but a promise is a promise, Jasper tells himself. And he’d rather he told her than somebody else.

  ‘I hurt a woman,’ he says softly. ‘I hurt a woman real bad.’

  A chickadee flies down from one of the oaks and hops as it pecks at the ground. Both girls turn back to him. Everything gone quiet except the gurgle of the stream. Katie runs a hand through her golden hair, pushing it back from her face. Her lips form a tight, thin line. Her scowl already judges him. But then again, he thinks, she already knows my story.

  Curiosity and excitement glow in Joanne’s eyes. ‘Eddie Saunders’ sister?’

  His eyes narrow, more against the light behind her than from the words she’s said, though hearing the Saunders name always smarts him just a little. ‘You know more than you let on.’

  She sits on the earth beside him, cross-legged. Smiles slightly. ‘I’ve just been guessin’ mostly.’

  A grimace tickles the corners of his swollen lips up before they fall back down. The locked doors in his mind he’s guarded so long creak open. The memories spill out. He closes his eyes against the pain. He takes his time, choosing each word with care, knowing what he has to say but not sure just how to phrase it. ‘Her name is Rose,’ he says at last, voice barely above a murmur. ‘She was my sweetheart for a while. Back when we was young.’ A tired smile plays with his lips again. ‘I bet you didn’t know that bit.’

  She shakes her head, eyes still wide upon him.

  ‘Please,’ Katie whispers, so soft he almost doesn’t hear her, ‘just leave it at that.’

  ‘I think I might have loved her,’ he says gently, ignoring the older girl, ‘as much as I was able. I never really been the lovin’ kind. Always found it hard to figure out just what love’s about.’ He can see her still so clearly. Rose. How she was back then. So full of life. Like she was light in a world made up of darkness. He clears his throat. He can almost smell her. Even now. Like she’s there hiding behind one of the trees. ‘She didn’t love me none.’ His voice hardens slightly. ‘I don’t think she loved anybody.’

  ‘What happened?’ Joanne whispers.

  ‘She started … well, she started seein’ other people, I guess you could say. A whole lot of other people, and even though I still liked her plenty, she didn’t like me none.’

  Tiny tadpoles gather in the water that stills around Jasper’s legs. He watches them in silence, not sure what words to say. How can I soften my sins? He clears his throat. ‘She moved away for a while. After high school. Went down to Corpus Christi for about five years. Nearly six. Came back,’ he looks down at his hands pressed into the earth beside him, ‘ ’cause her mother was sick or somethin’, I can’t quite right recall. But anyway, she came on back, and she still didn’t want nothin’ to do with me.’ He snorts. ‘She sure didn’t mind other fellas, though. Didn’t mind datin’ them one bit.’ He spits a wad of phlegm into the water.

  ‘Jasper, stop!’ Katie is still standing tall on the opposite bank, hands on her hips as she shouts. ‘If you tell her one more word I swear to God I’ll –’

  ‘You’ll what?’ he snaps. ‘Send that boyfriend of yours back to teach me another lesson?’

  Katie’s face goes pale. Like the sunshine’s been knocked out of her. ‘I didn’t … he didn’t mean –’ She stops. Fumbles to find her words. Her eyes lower, then rise to battle his. He likes the nervous tremble in her throat before she yells at him. ‘I’m telling you, stop! Don’t say another word! You can’t tell her –’

  The rage swells up inside him. Boils and bubbles.

  ‘Can’t I?’ Jasper says. ‘Who the fuck are you to tell me what I can’t do?’

  For ten long years they had told him when to eat, when to sleep, when he could walk the yard, shower, piss. But Katie is no prison guard. This grove is not a cell. He rises to his feet. ‘You think you can control me?’ Jasper shouts. ‘You think you can tell me what to do? What to say? I’m warning you, bitch,’ his tone lowers, ‘I’m warning you now.’

  Only the water makes sound. Even the wind has gone quiet. He has frightened her. He can see that. He’s frightened both of them. The snarl still stuck to his face. Joanne’s eyes are so wide upon him. Not a doe any more. Not quite. Like headlights, he thinks, with the high beams left on. He tries to calm himself a little. To push the anger down, but the rage and the memories he’s blocked so long are fighting to be free.

  Katie turns her head, jaw quivering, braver than he would have guessed. ‘Joanne, come on, we’re going.’ She gestures for her sister to join her the other side of the creek.

  Slowly Joanne stands, but does not step forward. She shakes her head. ‘I want to know, Katie,’ she says softly. ‘Please, let him tell me. You promised too.’

  ‘He’s a freak!’ Katie shouts. ‘Don’t even talk to him!’

  Something inside Jasper snaps. He throws his head back and laughs. Dark sour laughter that cuts short as abruptly as it sounded. His focus is on Katie still when he looks back down. ‘I don’t need your permission,’ he growls. ‘You don’t want to hear my story? Block your fuckin’ ears.’

  ‘You’ve said enough!’

  ‘I’ve only just begun, sweetheart.’ His words cut through the stillness of the afternoon, the anger in him rising. ‘You don’t know half of all I’ve yet to tell.’ His fist pounds hard on the earth beside him. ‘So where should I start? Huh? What do you wanna hear first? All the good bits? Or should I start at the beginning, save the best for last?’

  T
here is a hiss to his words as he speaks them, fire in his tone.

  ‘You see, once upon a fuckin’ time, sweetheart, Rose was workin’ at this supermarket. So I slit her tyres that night so she wouldn’t be able to drive home. I was waitin’ when Rose got off work to offer her a lift. Did you know that? Or do you want me to skip to the best parts now? Like how I pretended I’d just happened to be the last customer in there gettin’ some shoppin’. Ain’t that somethin’? Except I didn’t take her home. No, I bet you know that. I didn’t buy no shoppin’ neither.’ He shakes his head. ‘Just a stick of gum.’ A smile flirts with his swollen lips but does not linger. ‘I had it all planned out, you see.’

  That dark night looms again before him. He sees her get in his truck again. Remembers how good it felt when she closed the door and he clicked the locks all down. How good it felt as they pulled away from the lights of the town and down the dark country road. She hadn’t been nervous yet. Not at that stage. The smell of her had filled his pickup. Coconut and strawberries. That’s what she’d smelt like. And she’d been wearing this mauve colour of lipstick. It had tasted like chalk when he’d finally forced himself on her. Had smelt like the chemicals it was made of.

  Katie sinks down till her knees touch the rock she’s still perched on. The little trickle of water that fills the stream somehow seems wider than before. Insects hover above the creek’s surface, buzzing as they dip and rise. ‘Please,’ Katie whispers once again, but he can see the fight easing out of her. And it feels good to have won, to have overpowered her even if it feels so odd to talk about it. Odd to tell someone just what he done. He’s never just out and said it before. Not like this.

  That first night when the police had brought him in to question, Jasper hadn’t talked about it as he’d waited in their holding cell. Nor had he spoken of it when Sheriff Adams had cuffed him to the table in the small interrogation room that doubled as the sheriff’s office. ‘What happened, son?’ Adams had asked.