The Last Days of Summer (17 page)

For a moment Joanne does not think her sister is going to answer her. The sun has lowered in the sky just enough to start to cool. Deep shadows stretch from the house out across the lawn, past the garden, reaching for the road.

‘I talk to him fine.'

Joanne swings her legs round to face her sister full on. Crosses her legs before her like an Indian. ‘Nuh-uh. You never say nothin' to 'im. Don't you like 'im?'

‘I don't have to like 'im none.' Her voice gone whisper soft.

‘But …'

‘He ain't our daddy, Joanne. He ain't no replacement for 'im neither. Don't you confuse that.'

Anger in her sister's tone she had not expected. Joanne lets her mouth fall shut. Looks down at the floorboards, cracked and lined with age and wear. ‘I know that.' Her turn to whisper now. Cross.

‘Joanne?'

She raises her eyes.

‘Uncle Jasper ain't what you think he is, OK? He ain't our friend. He ain't here to be our friend. He's been away a long time for a reason. You understand?'

‘Then what's he supposed to be?' Joanne shifts her weight quickly, pulling her feet beneath her so she can sit up on her knees. Her words are more defiant than she'd meant them to be. She looks at her own unpolished nails,
cuticles overgrown, bits of mud where none should be. She wishes she had her sister's pretty nails. She wonders if maybe Katie will paint hers for her. Doubts it. She picks at a loose flake of paint on the railing beside her. ‘Everybody needs a friend,' she says quietly, voice barely a whisper.

‘Not everyone.' The firmness of her sister's tone makes her glance over. Katie's eyes are hard, her jaw too. She looks a bit like Mom.

A cloud blocks the lowering sun and casts the whole prairie momentarily into shadow. Chickadees chirp themselves silent. Crickets sound. The wind shifts, and the clouds pass. The sun burns down again, still hot, even as the evening cools. Pink stains the horizon. Uncle Jasper's hand appears on the pickup's hood, fingers black with oil and grease. The engine sputters and starts. His hand disappears again.

‘Katie, who's Rose?'

She feels rather than sees her sister freeze. ‘Who told you that name?'

‘I overheard Mom and Uncle Jasper talking last night.'

A pause. Then, ‘What'd they say?'

Joanne likes knowing something her sister doesn't. She sits up straighter, taller. It feels good to be the one with knowledge. To hold her sister's attention. ‘Mom told Uncle Jasper he'd never deserved Rose. Or something like that. And then he got real angry.'

Katie is quiet a moment. ‘Don't you ever ask Uncle Jasper about that name. You hear me, Lady?' Worry in her tone.

Joanne turns to face her. Their eyes lock and hold. A
crow calls and falls silent. From further afield another answers, cry carried by the wind. There is fear in Katie's eyes. Wild and open and raw. And Joanne doesn't know what to say. Her tongue won't work any more. It scares her a little to see Katie afraid.

‘Promise me.'

Katie's voice is still taut with strain, but Joanne's tongue won't work. She struggles to find the words. The wrong ones slip out. ‘Who is she?' Voice barely a whisper it's so soft.

Katie pauses. ‘Eddie Saunders' baby sister.'

The click of metal hitting gravel startles them both and makes them jump. Joanne giggles nervously. Down the driveway, Uncle Jasper curses loudly as he stoops to pick up a fallen wrench. Joanne turns back to Katie and holds her sister's gaze. No longer afraid, though she can't name what's caused the change, she asks, ‘What happened to her?'

Katie puts a finger to her lips. Joanne wants to object, but the look on Katie's face keeps her silent. Katie jerks her head down the drive, indicating Uncle Jasper. She places her finger over her lips again. Squirming to hold her questions in, Joanne looks out past the garden across the prairie to where the horizon touches the gold of earth with sky. The evening primroses have just begun to bloom. Soon Mom will turn the porch light on.

‘Katie?'

‘Yeah?'

Her heart pounds in her chest. She feels she's so close to knowing now … ‘Did Uncle Jasper make Daddy leave?'

‘Nobody
made
Daddy leave. He chose to.' Katie's voice is hard, the same end-of-conversation tone Mom sometimes uses. Joanne wonders if when she's older she'll be able to speak like that too, if she'll learn to stop questions with just her tone. Or a look. She pulls her knees into her chest and hugs them. Shifts so that her back leans against the porch railing. Katie dips the brush into the polish. Wipes the sides of it on the nozzle of the bottle as she pulls it free. Brush to nails again. Delicate strokes. The chemical smell of the paint sticks to the still warm breeze.

Joanne's mind is racing. She can't believe Katie actually told her who Rose was! She never imagined her sister might actually answer her. Excited, she leans forward slightly, voice a strained whisper. ‘He scared Esther Reynolds earlier. In the shop.'

‘With that laugh of his? Yeah, I know, gives me the creeps too.'

Joanne shakes her head, happy to be in control of the conversation again, happy to know something her sister doesn't. ‘No, after you and Mom left, when I went back in to get him. He grabbed Esther by the face so that her cheeks pushed together and her lips popped out like this.'

Katie looks sharply up. ‘No way.'

Joanne nods. ‘I swear it's true! He pushed her cheeks together 'n' I thought for sure she was gonna cry, but she didn', and then he released her 'n' I took 'is hand and he spoke real nice to her, like nothin' ever happened.'

‘Did he hurt her?'

Joanne tilts her head, thinking. ‘Ummm, dunno. Don't think so.' Her brow creases. ‘But she looked real scared.'

‘Did you tell Mom?'

‘No.'

‘You gonna?'

Pause. ‘I don't know. I hadn't thought.'

‘There's a lot of folks round here don't want Uncle Jasper back. You know that, right?'

‘That why she wouldn't sell to 'im in the shop?'

Katie's turn to pause. ‘Yeah, that's why.'

‘Will every shop be like that? Why don't they want 'im back?'

Katie smiles. ‘You ask too many questions.'

Joanne lets out her breath, frustrated. ‘Are you
ever
gonna tell me what he did? I know you know, don't you? Katie,
please
tell me! I have to know!' Excited now, her voice spirals almost shrill.

‘Sssssh!' Katie puts her finger to her lips and glances down the drive towards Uncle Jasper. ‘Keep your voice down, idiot!'

Joanne crosses her arms over her chest, brow furrowed in a pout. ‘Are – you – ever – gonna – tell – me?' she mouths, exaggerating each word to the extreme.

Katie's face breaks into a smile, and it's as if the sun sits high in the sky again. She looks out over the prairie, and for a second Joanne doesn't think her sister will answer her. She just sits there, smiling. When she finally speaks, her voice is calm, all fear washed from it, musical and sweet. Joanne wishes she sounded like that, pretty. ‘One day I'll tell you, kiddo, OK? I promise that. You deserve to know.' A seriousness beneath her sister's smile. Katie dips the brush back into the polish and screws the lid tight. ‘There!' She holds out her feet before her, hovering in the air. ‘What do you think?' Red toes flash and wiggle
in the fading sunlight. The colour of Mom's roses that line the drive. No, deeper, darker, more like blood.

‘You'll really tell me one day?'

Their eyes meet. Katie smiles. ‘Course I will, Lady. Just don't hold your breath.' And she winks.

And Joanne can't help but smile.

He knows the girls are talking about him. It wouldn't take a genius to put two and two together either, what with how they keep their voices real low and how every time he glances up one or the other is glancing over at him. It makes his blood boil, just a little, seeing them judge him like that.
Who made them jury?
But at the same time Jasper can't blame them either. When he first came to Huntsville, there were rumours, too, whispers and glances. Men who had to be defied. Others, respects paid to. He had had his fair share of scrapes, in the beginning that is, when his pride had still held power over him. He had beaten one man till all his teeth came out, face an unrecognizable fleshy blood pool, mouth a bowl of blood with bits of bone stewing in it. Must have been teeth at one time, those bits of bone, but they sure weren't when he saw them swimming there before him, the boy coughing so that the blood in his mouth seemed to boil. He couldn't remember the kid's name now. That's all he'd been, a kid, really. Jasper himself barely much older. It had won him respect, though. It had stopped the others talking. Yes, of course there'd been solitary confinement to survive, the odd smack off the guards for misbehaving thereafter. But he'd come out of solitary a changed man. Head on his shoulders again, rage safely bottled down
deep inside. Guards couldn't fault him once for bad behaviour. Not after that. He cannot recall that boy's name now, and he feels a bit guilty for that. Feels like he should somehow remember. Like maybe he owes the boy that much wherever he may be. Truth is, though, Jasper realizes, as he bends over the pickup's greasy engine, he can't even remember the boy's face. Before the fight, that is. He remembers the bloody mask too well. The crunch of the jaw as the teeth splintered beneath his fist. As they crumbled and splintered again.

It was 1969 the last time he worked on an engine like this. Feels good to work with his hands again. He could almost be back in the shop with Bobby, working side by side, except Bobby would have had the radio cranked up loud, and there would have been no setting sun warm upon his neck. Feels good to feel the day again. He'd missed that. More than he'd realized. Being kept inside all that time.

He hadn't expected that off Esther earlier. It makes him wonder how Roy sees him, these days. How the rest of folks see him. ‘I am what I am,' he mumbles to himself. It felt good touching Esther like that. Even though it was just her face. Even though she'd grown so fat. Felt good to touch a woman's face. Felt good to see her start to respect him again as they were leaving. He would never hurt her, he tells himself, not really. He'd never disrespect Roy like that for one thing. There was a time they'd been joined at the hip, he and Roy. Another lifetime ago. Before the trouble started.

His hand slips and Jasper drops the wrench he holds. It clatters itself silent on the pavement of the drive. Too
loud in the still evening. The girls silence and glance over. He can feel their eyes upon him. He doesn't like feeling watched. Especially now that he's free.
How
, Jasper wonders,
do I win the respect of two young girls?
He surprises himself with the thought. Is surprised to find he cares what they think of him. Especially the younger one. He'd like her not to judge him. Inside, something tells him fighting isn't the way to stop the girls talking. Not this time. Not ever. Not in this free-man's prison known as life.

He stoops and picks up the wrench. Cusses. Walks back to the pickup and buries his head under the hood. Elbow deep in grease, he tries to focus on the task at hand. Inhales the grease and oil. The gasoline. He pictures himself living again those years that he wasted, imagines an existence where life is as simple as a hard day's work. He could have had a good life, he reckons. Those could have been a great ten years. Yes, if things had just been different.

He doesn't know how long she's been standing there. He hadn't noticed when the hum of the girls' voices fell silent. But the crickets are fully singing now, and purple chases the streaks of pink that spread across the darkening sky. Behind her, he can see her older sister still sitting up on the front porch, leaning back in one rocker while her feet rest on the arm of the other, legs out long. Waiting for her toes to dry. Unknowingly sexy. Teasingly so. Or maybe she does know, he thinks, maybe women always know just how much they tempt. He takes a rag and tries to wipe the oil off his hands, though it doesn't seem to do much good. Fingers still stained dark, dark
beneath his nails, dark in the contoured lines that cross his palms.

She watches him. One bare foot wraps around her other leg to scratch behind her calf. No polish on her nails. He likes that. The rawness of it
.
The immaturity. Her eyes question his. A slight hesitation, then she steps forward to look under the hood beside him. ‘Did you fix it?'

‘Just 'bout.'

‘What was wrong with it?'

‘Fan weren't turnin' right.'

‘Was it hard to fix?'

‘Not if that's it fixed now. If it acts up again, well, that's another story.'

‘How do you know if it's fixed?'

He hesitates. ‘Have to turn the engine on. Let it run a while. Listen to how the motor sounds. Watch how that belt there turns.'

‘Oh.' She leans away from the engine so that her weight rests on her heels. Arms out long before her, hips pulling back. Fingers still clutching the frame of the hood as she leans away.

It's nearly too dark now to see the nuts and bolts of the engine clearly. He finishes wiping his hands. Sets the cloth down. Falters. Uncertain. Out of practice how to speak to little girls. How to speak to any girls, really. But then again, he never was that practised. His voice catches in his throat, deepening his tone. ‘I'm sorry if I frightened you. Last night. Or there earlier. In town. That wasn't my intention.'

Her head turns faster than a blink. Eyes wide upon
him, taking him in. ‘That's OK. I wasn't scared. Not really. Or … well, last night I was, but not earlier.'

He nods, staring into the dark engine. ‘Why'd you come in after me?'

Doe Eyes straightens, twisting side to side as she thinks. At length she shrugs. ‘Everyone needs a friend.'