The Last Days of Summer (13 page)

Uncle Jasper nods slowly, like he's chewing something over, his head's shadow rocking separate from the slow back and forth of his rocker's shadow. ‘I appreciate all you doin' for me.'

Silence between them as both rockers rock. Squeak and creak and groan, the floorboards. Crickets out of tune.

‘There ain't no trouble comin'.' He adds, ‘Not on my account.'

‘You sure of that?'

‘Ain't no need for trouble.'

‘That don't stop it comin'.'

Joanne's knees ache where her weight falls on them, pressing them into the wooden floor. She wants to move. To stand up. But she dares not. Carefully she lets out her held breath. Draws another. Rattling in her lungs.

‘I saw it, too,' he says.

‘Saw what?'

‘What I'm guessin' musta been Eddie's pickup. Down the country road, comin' up from town.'

Mom turns to look at him, the movement one quick snap that startles Joanne and nearly makes her jump, but she catches her scream before it sounds, forces it back down inside her and holds her body still.

‘You coulda told me sooner.'

‘Weren't no need to mention it.' He pauses. ‘Nothin' happened.'

‘You sure it was him?'

‘Reckon it musta been. Thought it at the time.'

Mom nods. Turns back out to face the darkness of the prairie. ‘It ain't easy,' she says, ‘havin' you back. Reminds me of Bobby more than I'd have guessed. Makes me think.'

Uncle Jasper rocks in silence, profile unreadable, shadows further deepening the contours of his face.

‘You know,' Mom says, ‘I never thought he'd leave me. I never once saw that comin'. Does that mark me a fool?'

A hiccup in the cricket song that softens the darkness of the night.

‘Why'd he go?'

Mom snorts. No humour in the sound. Not even a trace of laughter. ‘Folks never looked at him the same after. Don't take no genius to figure that one out.'

‘They thought he … ?'

‘Him leavin' didn't help none either. I'd say most folks still think he played his part. Run away from the shame of it. But he weren't shamed. Never had no reason.'

‘Just why did he leave, then?' Voice barely a whisper.

‘Couldn't take it no more. The whispers. The glances. Shit, Jasper, if I'd been him I'da up 'n' left, too. Can't find it in me to hold that bit against him.'

Cricket song the only sound. Joanne forgets to breathe. She's never heard Mom talk about Daddy like this. Wonders if Katie has. If Katie knows all this.

‘I shouldn't have gone back to the garage like that.'

‘You were a fool to.'

‘I never thought they –'

‘Exactly.' She cuts him off. ‘You never thought.' Then, more softly, ‘Why'd you do it, Jasper?' Words shaky and thin as prayer.

His rocker stops.

Joanne can't breathe. Her stomach feels all tight and knotted. A pause that seems to last for ever. At length, he says, ‘Don't ask me that. Don't ever ask me to talk 'bout her.' Words barely a whisper. Cracked and strained.

‘You owe me that much. You owe me some sort of explanation.' Tension thick in Mom's voice. Tone taut and strained.

‘We've gone a long way now past sorry.' A coldness to his voice. Rocker held still.

‘Sorry ain't got fuck to do with it. You can't just pretend like you done nothin' wrong.' Mom's voice rising, angry.

‘You think that's what I'm doin'? You reckon I don't think back on that day and pray to God for what I done?'

‘Damned if I know. But sure as hell it ain't God's forgiveness you should be seekin'.'

‘Whose forgiveness do you want me askin'?' he says, ‘
Yours? Hers? Eddie's?
What God done to you that He ain't done to all of us? When did you lose your faith?' His voice rising now too, creeping close to angry. Fire in his tone.

‘It ain't lost. It's gone. It was gone when they found her like that. Gone when they locked you up. Gone when they called Bobby in 'n' asked him all those questions. It left when I saw them pictures 'n' all that blood, and damn you to hell, Jasper Curtis, if you ever speak to me of faith.' A pause that seems to last for hours. Air suddenly too thick to breathe. The fire of Mom's words still burns in the air. ‘Rose always deserved better than you.' Mom's voice a cold snarl. Hard and sharp and cutting.

A sound escapes him she has never heard before. Not quite a growl. Not quite a moan. The rocker skids as he stands up, knocking back so that it hits the wall with a loud, solid thud. ‘That bitch got what she deserved,' he snarls, voice completely changed. Wild and fierce. And it scares Joanne, and her fists clench and she feels a tiny snap right in her palm. Looks down. The July fly. She'd forgotten she still held it. Had forgotten to cradle rather than clutch it. Scarcely breathing, she unclenches her hand, uncurling each finger back till it stretches into an open palm. The exoskeleton's fragile husk has shattered in her palm. Crushed into a million tiny fragments impossible to mend. Only the head remains intact, face distorted and partially caved in. For a moment she forgets she's hiding, and a tiny moan escapes her. The sound a weeping willow might make before bending down beneath the weight of the wind's harsh breath.

Uncle Jasper turns to the door. ‘You hear that?' Still fire in his tone. His footsteps come closer as he crosses the porch. The sound of Mom's breath catches and releases again, and the gentle scrape of Mom's rocker pushes back as Mom rises.

Joanne does not wait. Jumps right up and turns and runs fast as she can up the stairs and up the hall again. Slams Katie's door shut behind her, and it shakes the frame. She shuts off the light and jumps under the quilt real fast, and closes her eyes real tight, like maybe she's been up there, sleeping, all this time. Heart racing. Beating. Slamming in her chest. Breaths short and shallow. Like her heart might break a rib. Reminds her of waiting all those years back in that closet to be found. Except this
time she prays it is Katie who comes and finds her huddled there, frightened and alone. Still thirsty.

Her ears strain, but only silence meets them. Not even the call of a coyote. Or the ringing of the hour on the grandfather clock. No footsteps on the stairs.

In her clenched fist, Joanne still clutches the shattered exoskeleton of the July fly. One million pieces crushed as sand. When sleep eventually finds her, her hand does not release it, rather grips it more tightly, crushing the already ruined husk into tiny chipped bits of shell and dust.

Ear pressed to the wood of her daughters' bedroom door, Lizzie can't quite say why she didn't run after Joanne straight away. She wanted to, but somehow her feet stayed stuck. Right there, useless, at the ends of her legs. And then there'd been Jasper too, his rage, to deal with. Too many buried wounds newly bruised. When she eventually did climb the stairs, they felt too steep, the hallway too narrow. Too dark. Like everything was closing in on her, the whole house caving in, too warm, trying to suffocate her. She could feel Bobby's absence from the photos on the wall in a way that she normally did not. Newly raw and burning. She did not need light to see he was not there. And even now, ear pressed to the door of her girls' room, Lizzie can feel the lack of him, an ache inside her loneliness, drawn tight around her. Only silence meets her prying ear.
Joanne must be asleep by now
. Carefully, she twists the knob. Opens the door slowly, just a crack, before the point where the hinges squeak.

This was her room once.

Waning moonlight casts deep shadows through the
room. Teddy bears and dolls and photographs transformed at this hour. Strange, silent witnesses. One of Joanne's feet has fought free of the sheet and hangs off the side of the bed. From her shallow breathing, Lizzie can see her daughter sleeps. She watches her a moment. Joanne's eyelids flutter, as though seeing in a dream. Slowly, Lizzie pulls the door shut. Holds the latch so it won't click.

Still careful to be quiet, she opens her own door and slips into her room. Changes quickly in the darkness and slips into her empty bed, the sheets cool against the uncovered bits of her skin. It is a long while till she falls asleep. Eyes trying to make sense of the shadows on the ceiling. She counts sheep for a while to numb her mind. Recounts them to be certain. Switches to stars for a while. She wonders where he is, and if he's sleeping too. Wonders, not for the first time that night, if he ever misses her. Their girls.

She knows inside her, Bobby's never coming home. She knew it that morning so long ago when she drank that coffee alone, his lips gone from hers already, never to return.

When sleep finds her, Lizzie dreams Joanne is a baby again. A little delicate thing. That, no matter what, won't cry.

She wakes before the rooster's called, dream still fresh in her mind. She lies in bed in the half-light till the sun's fully risen and day forces her out of bed.

The drive into town is silent. Sun fully risen and already burning hot despite the early hour. Lizzie and the girls
squeeze into the pickup's cab, Lizzie's brow furrowing as she concentrates behind the wheel, squinting in the too-bright sunlight. Katie sits leaning out of the open window, hair tied back, fallen golden strands tickling her forehead, nose, lips. Sandwiched between her mother and sister, restless and squirming and sweaty, Doe Eyes' face is blank as she stares out of the window. Emotionless. Twisting round to look at her through the cab's back window, Jasper cannot read her thoughts. Her mood. Nor does he try or care to. Not then. He does not regret frightening her. Does not really care how much she may have overheard. He is not watching his family on this drive.

He sits in the pickup's truck bed, back against the cab, legs stretched out long before him as the sun and wind chap his lips, dry his tanning skin. Feels good to feel the day like that. The fresh air and sun upon him. Lizzie took the back roads when she'd picked him up from Texaco the other morning, bypassing town. It feels good to watch his boyhood homeland now flash by. Most of the drive looks as he remembers.
Maybe not so much changed, really, after all
. Whitewashed homesteads, few and far between, dot the open prairie. Long drives twist up from the road to curve before each doorstep. Rusted-out pickups and old sedans clog people's driveways, car hoods often left popped open, oil spills staining the ground. Occasional Mexican hats and Indian blankets, now both grown past their peak, still bloom wild in the open fields. Little specks of colour among a sea of dried-out brown. Like he remembers from springs and summers long past.
Must be nice
, Jasper thinks,
to just grow free like that
.

There are longhorns grazing in some fields they pass;
in others, horses. Corn grows dried out and shoulder high as they turn off the country road onto the busier freeway that cuts through town. Just like it had ten years ago. Even the elementary he attended hasn't changed at all since the day he left it, save for a few trailers set up on cinder blocks serving as extensions out the back. But closer to town there are more stop lights than he recalls, and Jasper notices the Taylors' tyre swing no longer hangs from that oak halfway up their drive, and some mailboxes seem freshly painted brighter colours, not the greys and blacks and deep reds of his childhood. Pastel colours, rather, pretty and bright. And closer still to town there are houses he does not recall, a small apartment complex just off Main Street that was not there before. Brown bricks, grey doors, two storeys. Flimsy tin awning covering single-occupancy parking spots. Dark windows with plastic blinds, not curtains. Reminds him of a prison with its doors all in a row, reminds him of her place all those years back, and he is forced to look away. Just for a moment. To look down. At the rusty bed of the truck on which he sits. He does not look up again until he feels the pickup's engine idle and halt. He does not see the stares he gets as they cross Elm and First. The old lady pointing to her friend. He does not know the wind has blown his uncut hair in a way only describable as ‘wild'. He has yet to put much thought into the idea of familiar faces.

Lizzie slams the door as she gets out of the truck. Pauses to find and hold his gaze, her hand still on the door handle. ‘You ready for this?' No smile on her lips.

He forces a grin as he swings down onto the pavement. ‘Ready as I'll ever be.'

And then she smiles. He didn't expect that. It warms him up inside. Catches him off guard. Makes his smile creep towards genuine. And he likes that feeling on his lips, thrilling and strange and nice. He likes how his face melts there before her. There was seldom occasion to smile in prison.

The night before, Jasper had sat for a long time looking at the stars. Out on the front porch, in the rocker, though, he'd sat still, unmoving. The sound of his rocker creaking on the weather-worn floorboards at that hour had been too great for him. He needed silence. He needed a great dark void of nothingness to sit still inside. Not to hide in. Not really. Just a place no thoughts could enter. He hadn't meant to scare the girl. Hadn't even known she was there. It had surprised him when Lizzie didn't run after her daughter straight off, though.
Nosy little bitch
. He had thought that maybe Lizzie was the kind of mother who would do that. The kind who might have held her daughter and rocked her back and forth. But there had been no comfort in Lizzie's eyes as, cold, they'd turned upon him. ‘What do you want?' she'd asked him. Voice scarcely above a whisper. ‘What the hell do you want from us?'

He could have stayed angry with her if she'd gone after the girl straight away. His rage could have fed and grown. Festered inside him. He knows that feeling well. But she'd stripped him of that when she'd whispered. Like the whole world stilled and calmed. He hadn't even realized he'd been halfway through the door till then. Didn't even know full well his intentions. The hall dark before him. The door upstairs already slammed, and footsteps fallen
silent.
What the hell do you want from us?
she'd asked. He had walked slowly back to the rocking chair upon which he'd sat before. Perched on the edge to hold it solid. Looked out beyond the shadowed garden to the deeper darkness of the open prairie. ‘I didn't mean to scare her none.' His voice too loud.