The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  She’s going to find Katie. That’s what’s in her head as she starts down the road. She needs somebody to talk to. A million questions twist round inside her, and she needs help to sort them out. She needs someone to make sense of all she’s feeling. Joanne doesn’t know where her sister is, but she can guess. And she figures if she can make it into town someone will point her to Josh’s house. It might be a long walk, but Joanne reckons she’s able.

  She doesn’t think of how Mom might freak finding her not at home. Just puts one foot before the other and keeps on going down the country road.

  Not even mid-morning yet, but already the sun is hot on the back of her neck. Hot on the tops of her arms. She’d known Uncle Jasper must have done something real bad for everyone to hate him so. And she knows herself that what he did was wrong, even though she has trouble wrapping her mind around it fully. She still sees him like that hurt dog they couldn’t save, the one that’d been run over. It had hurt real bad when that dog died, even though it had never been theirs, even though it hadn’t been them who’d run it over. They’d found it lying by the side of this very road. Mom had pulled over and they’d all gotten out. Its fur was wet with blood. Joanne had cried the second she’d seen it. She’d thought maybe they could keep it, if it just survived the night. But in the morning the un-fallen tears in Mom’s eyes had told her before she’d even had to ask. Uncle Jasper reminds her of that dog. It seems to her that no one loves him. That he’s been left alone to suffer. She can’t help but still think of him as in need of a friend. And yet Joanne knows wrong from right. And a part of her thinks her uncle just might have killed those other women.

  She doesn’t want to think about it, and it’s all that fills her mind.

  Wind rustles the tall dried prairie grasses that grow tall in the fields all around her. No clouds pass to block the sun. She’s so lost in thought she doesn’t hear the pickup till it’s right behind her. Driving real slow. Too slow. It pulls up beside her.

  Eddie Saunders grins through the rolled-down window. ‘Where you goin’, sweetheart?’ The sun reflects off his pearly whites.

  Her heartbeat quickens. ‘Nowhere.’ She walks a little faster.

  The truck rolls on slowly, still there right beside her.

  ‘You’re goin’ awfully fast for a girl that’s goin’ nowhere.’ He chuckles.

  She scowls. Says nothing. Keeps on going, one foot, then the other. She wishes he’d just keep on going too.

  ‘You want a lift somewhere?’ He’s smiling still. Another man sits beside Eddie in the truck. Joanne vaguely recognizes him, but does not know him. He is not smiling, his profile to her, face masked in shadow.

  She shakes her head. ‘No, thank you.’ And keeps walking, eyes focused ahead.

  ‘Awww come on,’ Eddie coos, ‘it’ll take you all day to get to town the pace you’re goin’. Let me give you a lift is all. It’s the least I can do after causin’ that scene up at yours the other night. I just drove by there ’n’ had a chat to your mama. Told her I was sorry. It was a miscommunication is all.’

  Joanne’s brow furrows. She’s not sure she believes him. ‘Mom told me not to talk to you.’

  He laughs. ‘That so? Shucks, Ben,’ he turns to the man beside him, ‘you hear that?’

  She wishes he’d just drive away. But he doesn’t.

  ‘You know,’ Eddie says, leaning out the window, ‘I used to know your daddy real well.’

  Joanne is curious despite her better judgement. ‘You did?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’ Eddie grins. ‘He ’n’ I got a ton of history.’

  She wonders why her mother never told her that. Or Uncle Jasper. Or Katie. She wonders if Katie even knows. She stops walking. Turns to face him. ‘Were you friends?’

  He smiles. ‘Somethin’ like that.’

  She turns away from him, and walks three more steps, then turns back, his truck still driving slow beside her. ‘Do you know where Josh lives?’ she asks. Josh and his daddy took part in Jasper’s beating. She’s not sure she trusts them any more. But Eddie must know where they live. And she needs Katie. Needs her now.

  For a split second, Eddie looks surprised, then a slow grin eases his features friendly once again. ‘Course I know!’ he says. ‘I go way back with the Ryans. That where you’re headed?’

  She’s uncertain if she should trust him. ‘Do you know if my sister’s there?’

  ‘Well …’ he says, weighing each word as he says it ‘… I can’t be certain, but I’m headed that way myself.’ He shrugs as if it’s nothing to him. ‘I could drop you by there if you wanted.’

  She pauses, unsure, the sun so hot upon her. Town seems so very far away. Let alone however much further it might be to Josh’s house from there. Her feet are starting to hurt. ‘You’re sure you just spoke to my mom?’ she asks.

  ‘Oh, yeah. Course I did. Had to apologize for the other night.’

  ‘And …’ Joanne hesitates ‘… she forgave you?’

  ‘Why don’ you get in the truck ’n’ I’ll fill you in on the way?’

  It seems so nice that he’s gonna level with her like that. So different than the adults she’s used to. ‘OK,’ she says, and she smiles cautiously, not really sure if she should smile at the man before her.

  ‘Get on in,’ Eddie says, still grinning. He gestures for her to walk round the front of the truck to get in on the pickup’s far side.

  The other man steps out to open the door for her so she can get in. Ben. That’s what Eddie’d called him. She holds out her hand to him, standing in the open doorway of the truck. ‘Nice to meet you, Ben.’

  There’s a smirk to his smile she doesn’t quite trust, but he still takes her hand. ‘Nice to meet you too, sweetheart.’ He spits a big wad of tobacco onto the road. ‘Real nice to meet you too.’ He releases her hand. Joanne watches as the concrete quickly dries his wad of spit.

  ‘Come on in outta that heat,’ Eddie calls, patting the seat beside him. ‘I got the a/c on high.’

  She smiles shyly, looking forward to the cool air. ‘All righ’,’ she says, and she climbs into Eddie’s truck and sits right there beside him.

  It is afternoon before the old truck pulls into the driveway, its engine sharply cutting off. Lizzie is washing the dishes from the lunch she and Jasper just shared. Sandwiches, nothing too fancy. They used up the last scraps from the brisket she’d cooked the other day. So it’s only really the two plates that need washing, and a couple knives, and the roasting tin the rest of the brisket had sat in. It’s the tin that she’s washing when the truck finally pulls up the drive, her arms elbow deep in greasy, soapy water turned brown from the leftover meat juices. She shuts the tap off. Lets the roasting tin slip under the soapy water till it is submerged. Grabs a dish towel and quickly dries her hands. Her girls know better than to take off without asking. In her mind, all morning, Lizzie’s been scolding them. If they think they’re gettin’ lunch, they’ve got another thing comin’ …

  The door opens, then shuts. ‘Mom?’ Hesitation in the tone. ‘I’m home.’

  Lizzie steps from the kitchen out into the hall, still drying her hands on the towel. ‘It’s about damn time! What are you girls tryin’ to do? Give me a heart attack? I wake up ’n’ find y’all gone, no note, no nothing. What if I’d needed the truck this morning, huh? No. Not one word out of you, young lady. You’re grounded. Both of you.’ She looks round. No sign of Joanne. ‘You get your sister in here. ’N’ remind her, she ain’t too old yet for a spankin’.’ Lizzie turns to walk back into the kitchen.

  ‘Mom …’

  She turns sharply. Snaps, ‘What?’

  Confusion furrows Katie’s brow. ‘Jo ain’t with me, Mom. She ain’t been with me, neither.’

  Lizzie feels her own brow crease. ‘Well, where is she, then?’

  ‘I … I don’ know. I haven’t seen her since yesterday.’

  ‘Since yesterday? Where the hell have you been, young lady? I swear to God, if I find out you spent the night at th
at Ryan boy’s –’

  Katie cuts her off. ‘I did, Mom. I …’ Her voice cracks. ‘I just had to get away for a little while.’

  ‘And you went to him? After what he ’n’ his father took part in the other night? After the way they beat your uncle to a pulp? An unarmed man to boot. After they ruined your grandma’s garden, you go runnin’ to him?’

  ‘Not everyone in this family confides in criminals.’

  Lizzie is down the hall in two long strides. She slaps her daughter on the left cheek. Harder than she’d meant. She can feel the sting in her palm. Can feel it still smart after. ‘You dirty little slut,’ she hisses, ‘off chasing boys when you should have been minding your sister.’ She points her finger at her daughter’s chest. ‘No daughter of mine stays out all night like a no-good tramp.’

  Katie’s hand automatically goes to her cheek and stays there. Lizzie knows the slap must have hurt the girl, but Katie is careful not to show it. She lowers her hand from her cheek. Her tanned skin glows bright red. ‘What kind of mother are you,’ she says real quiet, ‘that one of your girls stays out all night ’n’ the other wanders off missin’ ’n’ you don’t even notice?’

  Her words cut Lizzie to the core. More hurtful than any blow. ‘Don’t you talk back to me,’ she stammers. ‘Don’t you ever talk back to me. I’ll ground you the whole summer. Just you watch. Just go ahead ’n’ push me to it.’

  Silence between them. Neither backing down. The voice from the stairs startles Lizzie. She wonders just how long he’s stood there.

  ‘I ain’t aimin’ to interrupt,’ he says coolly, ‘but am I right in understandin’ neither of you know where Joanne’s at?’

  Lizzie looks to Katie, then back up to her brother. He leans against the banister with an almost relaxed ease. Long ago, they used to slide down that banister, their laughter enough cushion back then for the hard drop at the stairs’ end. ‘Yes,’ she says, the fire in her suddenly all spent.

  Jasper looks from mother to daughter and back again. ‘Is it normal,’ he asks quietly, ‘her goin’ off like this?’

  ‘No.’ Lizzie sighs. ‘She ain’t never took off without tellin’ me before.’

  Silence stretches between them. Around them. Jasper’s voice is gravelly when finally he speaks. ‘Should we be concerned?’

  Lizzie looks to Katie. So beautiful, even when she’s mad. How did I help make something so goddamn pretty? She regrets slapping her daughter. Wishes she could take that back. But what’s done is done, and Lizzie long ago learned that hard truth.

  ‘She’s probably just out playing, Mom.’ There’s anger still in Katie’s tone. A glare in her eyes near kin to hate. ‘You overreact to everything.’

  ‘Go to your room.’ Lizzie manages somehow to keep her voice from shaking.

  Katie opens her mouth to object. Shuts it. Anger gleams in her eyes.

  ‘Now,’ Lizzie says, and points upstairs.

  Jasper steps aside to let Katie pass. She is almost by him when he catches her wrist at the last moment, twisting her round to face him. Katie cries out, startled. ‘Are you sure,’ he says, real quiet, pulling her closer to him, ‘you don’t know where your sister’s at?’ His bruised, swollen face twists, more beast than man.

  ‘Jasper!’ Warning in Lizzie’s tone.

  He looks to his sister.

  ‘Let go of me!’ Katie pulls her wrist free and bolts up the stairs. Seconds later her door slams.

  There is a darkness to Jasper’s eyes Lizzie has grown to recognize, but still she holds his gaze. ‘I don’t trust that girl,’ he says.

  She looks at him a long moment. It seems so dark inside on such a brilliant day. Especially in the hall and on the stairs where no windows let direct sunlight in. ‘Don’t touch my daughter, Jasper,’ she says quietly. ‘Don’t you lay one hand on her. If Joanne’s run off awhile, no doubt it’s from what you told her. Look in the mirror if you wanna start layin’ blame.’ She walks into the kitchen to finish washing up. It is a long while till she hears him walk back up the stairs.

  Pink streaks the sky, reaching long bright fingers through the quickly falling dark of night. The last orange glow of the sun can just be seen sinking into the horizon, but even that light, too, will soon have vanished. What few evening primroses have not been trampled have opened up full bloom. Birds sing each other lullabies from nearby shrubs, as they tuck into their nests. He’s had a bad feeling all day. A restlessness in his soul that tells him things aren’t right. Trouble’s come calling, and trouble’s here to stay. He can feel it in his bones. And it unsettles him. It feels like he’s changing inside. He feels wilder than he has these last long years. His blood thick inside him, pumping.

  ‘Should we call the police?’ His sister’s aged just since afternoon.

  He snorts. ‘What good the police ever done this family?’ His eyes still scan the horizon, half hoping to see a dirty-blonde girl with big round eyes opening the gate. It’s been a long, long while since Jasper felt worry. And it sickens him inside.

  She doesn’t sit in the rocker beside him. Stays in the doorway instead, leaning against the frame. Door open behind her. Moths and June bugs slip past her in their quest for artificial light.

  ‘Do you think she’s all righ’?’ Lizzie is ghostly white.

  He knows he should comfort her. That she is looking to him now for just that. But his own concern won’t let him be the brother she is after. A part of him knows what must be coming. A part of him has always been able to guess the worst correctly. ‘If she was all righ’,’ he says roughly, ‘I reckon she’d be home by now.’

  He turns away from his sister so as not to watch the tears well in her eyes.

  Far off across the prairie, high beams break the newly fallen darkness. They watch with bated breath as the lights move closer. Like ghost lights in a swamp, he muses, that he’d long ago heard a Creole in prison talk of. Swamp gases that give off their own glow. That’s how the man had described them. Except these lights move with purpose down the country road, coming ever closer.

  Silently, Lizzie slips inside. A moment later she is back beside him, Daddy’s old Hungerford semi-automatic held before her in both hands. Her stance is wide. Braced for the worst, he reckons.

  The pickup parks on the road. The engine cuts off, so that crickets and July flies create the only sound.

  ‘You got a lot of nerve comin’ here.’ No warmth in Lizzie’s tone.

  Josh looks nervous as he pauses by their gate. He’s come alone. ‘Ma’am, I don’ mean no disrespect.’ He holds up his hands to show that he’s unarmed.

  Lizzie steps forward from the deep shadows of the porch, rifle still held before her though the barrel not yet levelled or aimed upon him. ‘You’re not welcome here.’ No softness in her tone. ‘I’m sorry it’s come to this, but actions have consequences ’n’ it’s ’bout time you learned that. I don’ want you callin’ round to see my daughter no more.’

  He pauses for a second by the gate, uncertain. Then a slow grin spreads across Josh’s face. He brings his hands down slowly, unlatches the gate and steps into the ruined garden, scattered, crushed flowers all around his feet.

  Lizzie fixes the rifle on him. ‘Not another step.’

  Jasper leans forward, but does not rise. He could break that boy like a stick if he wanted. He could tie him up and cut him and let him bleed out slowly. But he is just a boy. Just a lemming diving off a cliff. Were I him, Jasper muses, I doubt I would have done much different.

  Josh’s hands are up again, palms held out and open. ‘I ain’t here to stir up shit,’ he calls. ‘I got a message is all.’

  Jasper does rise then, and steps from the shadows of the porch. He leans against the porch railing out into the open night. ‘Who from?’

  ‘Eddie.’

  Jasper spits a large wad of phlegm onto the grass. ‘What’s he want?’

  Josh lowers his hands. He looks real nervous. Scared, even. Like maybe he would have preferred not delivering this particu
lar message. ‘He got Joanne.’ Pause. ‘He says you’ll know where.’

  A groan escapes Jasper he did not know was in him. A haunted sound.

  ‘You sick son of a bitch!’ Lizzie steps forward, rifle focused at Josh’s head. Even in the darkness, Jasper can see the boy’s face drop all colour. He backs up slowly, hands held high.

  ‘Mama! No!’ Her scream pierces the darkness, shattering the still of the just fallen night. The screen door slams behind her as she hurtles through it and down the steps to fling herself in front of Josh. Her mother’s rifle still stays fixed upon them. ‘Don’t hurt him, Mama! Please!’

  ‘Get back inside, Katie. Now.’ No messing in Lizzie’s tone.

  ‘Mom! No! You can’t hurt him! Promise me you won’t hurt him!’ Katie’s voice is shrill, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  ‘He took your sister!’ Lizzie screams. ‘Those bastards took your sister!’

  Feathers ruffle in a nearby shrub as birds wake from their sleep.

  ‘No! Mama!’ Katie raises her arm up, palm out, as if to hold her mother off, as if to shield. ‘It’s OK, Mom! It’s ain’t Josh’s fault! They promised they won’ hurt her!’

  Silence falls.

  The rifle barrel dips but does not lower. ‘What?’ Confusion deepens the wrinkle across Lizzie’s brow. ‘You knew ’bout this?’

  ‘They said they wouldn’t hurt her, Mom,’ Katie whines. ‘They just wanted to get Jasper out of the house is all.’ She’s sobbing. ‘I swear, Mom, they said they wouldn’t hurt her. They promised me!’

  Jasper has heard enough. In one swift motion he swings over the porch railing and lands lightly on the ground. Fingers of pain shoot up his leg and knee while others curve around his ribs. He bites his lip, anger pushing him on through his pain. He doesn’t run but crosses the garden as quickly as if he had, ignoring his pain with each step. He slaps Katie hard across her face. Hard as he is able. A small cry escapes her as she falls to the ground, holding her cheek. Josh steps back, eyes wide with shock. As he sees Jasper’s attention turn to him, he steps forward and swings for the older man. Jasper sidesteps the blow easily, then hits the boy twice, once to break his nose, the next to knock him cold. He turns to where Katie lies crumpled, crushed roses and buttercups and black-eyed susans all around her. It felt good hitting them, letting that anger out. She looks up at him with frightened eyes, and he’d be lying if he said he didn’t like it. If it didn’t turn him on just a little. His blood pumps through him, wild, thick, like it hasn’t in so many long years. ‘Because I love your mother,’ he hisses, ‘I’ll let her deal with you.’