The Last Days of Summer (2 page)

‘He ain't just some man, Reverend. This is Jasper we're talkin' 'bout.'

‘Is it, Elizabeth? When was the last time you seen him? You been down to Huntsville holding his hand? Christ almighty, his own mother didn't dare go down there!'

Cold eyes meet his. Lizzie is not smiling. ‘When was the last time
you
went down to Huntsville, Reverend? When did
you
ever go there to see if Jasper was all right? I may not be no perfect sister after all he's done, I may have been no perfect sister before, but don't you go preachin' to me when you done gone 'n' turned your back, too.'

His mouth opens to object.

‘No, you hear me out, Reverend – this house here is as much his as mine. By law it's half his. We both done grown up in these rooms, and damned if I'm gonna turn him from the only home he ever known.'

‘Elizabeth …'

Quiet enough to hear the clock tick. That mockingbird still calling from out in the prairie somewhere. Clock just there tick-tocking.

‘When does he arrive?'

‘Round noon.'

‘You pickin' him up from the bus stop?'

‘Reckon someone's got to.'

He nods. Sips his coffee. ‘You sure you know who you're lettin' into your home?'

She thinks about Jasper's child face all them years back, distorted in that cicada scream. She thinks of mapping constellations and ice cubes in summer darkness. Remembers that cicada shell. ‘Reckon I don't know at all.'

He nods again. ‘Any chance to change your mind?'

‘I'll walk you to the door.'

She watches from the top of the porch steps as he crosses the lawn back towards his pickup. So red in all the burned-brown grass, so red against the gravel and the pavement. He's put on weight since last she seen him, his jeans and belt cutting the gut into a forced hour-glass. His hair, maybe, is greyer, too. She hadn't noticed before just how brown the prairie had grown. They could really use rain soon.
Maybe the flowers are blessed.

‘Reverend.'

He turns, hand just reaching for the pickup's door handle.

Pleading in her voice, her eyes: ‘Where else he gonna go?'

As the Greyhound pulls off of I-10 up the exit ramp, Jasper feels his first moment of panic. It's hard to breathe. Then it passes, and he's left with the flutters in his gut, heavier than butterflies, more like caterpillars crawling back into their cocoons. He thinks about the feel of prairie grass burned by the sun. Imagines his hands against it, running through it, like combing out a woman's dry, tangled hair. The sting of the grass against him. This calms him a little.

When they first let him out and he walked from Huntsville's high electric gates onto the waiting bus, his pulse was even, steady. He didn't turn to look back at the penitentiary one last time. Just stared out of the window, waiting for whatever was left of life to take him away. He didn't feel panicky on I-45 either, looking out at all that forest and rolling hills. It was around Houston when the trees turned to prairie, far as the eye could see,
tumbleweed drifting, that traffic on I-10 seemed to blur round him. He didn't remember buses going so fast.

He is wearing the same clothes as the day they locked him up. Jeans. Grey T-shirt with the Coca-Cola slogan on it. Nikes. He never wore boots much. There was a ten-dollar bill in his pocket. A packet of chewing-gum that he tossed away, spearmint. This is all he has with him now – the clothes on his back. He's surprised at how well they still fit him. ‘Got to keep your wits 'n' fists about you in prison.' That's what he told himself those first days that turned to months that turned to years. And the letter. He has the letter too, folded and refolded in his jeans pocket. The only letter she wrote in all those years.

Heard you're getting out. Reckon you should come on home.

There's a bed for you if you need it.

Not even her name at the end, but he knows her hand. Reckons the letter is more than she could have done. Might be more than he deserves.

The Greyhound slows as it pulls into the station, brakes squeaking. He is the only one to exit, though the bus is far from full, few folks in Houston having boarded, and even fewer still now heading further west. Stepping past the driver, Jasper nods to the other man. ‘Thank you,' he says, and even to himself his voice sounds out of practice. He steps down onto the pavement and watches the bus pull away, easing itself back into the rushing flow. He watches it go till it becomes a tiny silver speck.

He had fretted for a time over the welcome party that might be waiting for him. Had wondered how many
hostile faces might come to see him home, but fear had never dictated Jasper's life and he does not intend to let it now. Many restless nights in the penitentiary he had pondered if his first free steps back home might be his last, but Jasper has promised himself he will step off the bus fighting, if that's what freedom requires, and he feels no different now. He scans the near-empty service station. The only welcome he had not imagined was the one with no one there to greet him at all.

He'd written her back the date, time, place. Never doubted that Lizzie would come. A tiny part of him now almost wishes she won't. Maybe it's enough just to stand here feeling the warm sun on his face, humid air thick around him. At the same time, if he's honest with himself, Jasper knows he's well past ready to go home.

It's an old gas station, not one of the fancy well-lit new ones, like closer to Huntsville, Houston or Dallas. Out here folks don't care so much about what's shiny and new. Or else the world just don't care so much about making out here seem shiny and new 'cause who really comes all the way out here anyway? This station's been here long as Jasper can remember. Looks just like he remembers too – old-style rusted pumps, diesel and unleaded the only options. Just two pumps. Texaco sign hangs off its post a bit crooked. No cover over the pumps. No credit cards accepted. Rust everywhere rust can rust. Just a tiny shop down the back with windows that look like they always need washing even right after they've been washed, a couple old pickups parked in front of it.

The bell rings as the door opens. Two loud chimes and then a softer one as the bell settles again, gently rocking
on the handle. A red string ties it there. That sound, so familiar, and Jasper pauses in the doorway, savouring the comfort of it, as his eyes adjust to the dark interior of the shop. Momentarily blind from all that sunshine. Blinks to clear the eyes. Lets the door slam softly with another jingle behind him. They've got air-conditioning. That's new.

The boy behind the counter looks up when Jasper enters. Boy. That's all he is, really. Some high-school kid. Blond and tanned and clean. Skin still soft, like a baby's. Bit of baby fat still clinging to chubby, almost feminine cheeks, baby-boy face swallowed by his ten-gallon hat. The effect borders on comical – a child playing dress-up, not a hero of the west.
That boy wouldn't last five hours in Huntsville.
Jasper doesn't recognize him, but he nods to him anyhow, wondering who the boy's folks might be, thinking back on the blurry children's faces of Sunday mornings ten years back, but no face comes into focus and Jasper reckons he must never have troubled himself back then with noting what wasn't of concern to him.

Jasper passes the shelves of candies, potato chips, beef jerky hung up in long red plastic packets, passes the household essentials – toilet paper, paper towels, soap, shampoo. The car essentials – oil, air pump, windshield-wiper fluid, air fresheners shaped like leaves with names like ‘Maple', ‘Forest', ‘Garden', ‘Pine'. He picks up ‘Garden'. Thinks of the roses by Mama's front porch. The primroses unfurling come dusk. Bluebonnets in early spring, and Indian paintbrushes blood-red. Breathes deep. His memories don't smell a thing like ‘Garden'.

He puts it back and walks on. Pauses a moment by the
magazine rack. Can feel the boy's eyes on him, drilling into his back.
People.
US Weekly.
Last month's
Cosmopolitan.
Last month's
Playboy
, the slut's boobs concealed by the magazine's plastic wrapper. All you see is hungry eyes begging for cock, lips moist and parted. Whore. A redhead. Different. He likes that. Just those eyes peeking at him is almost enough. Almost. Another nudie mag, all bound up in plastic, too.
Time
magazine, but who wants to pick that up? One copy of the
Reader's Digest
that looks like it's been sitting there a while, pages all crinkly and browned as though soda got spilled on them and then the magazine dried out. The
National Enquirer
claims to have found the world's fattest baby, and something about the model's smile on the cover of
Southern Living
reminds him of his mama back when he was small. He doesn't look at the newspaper headlines. Doesn't want to see what might be there.

Eyes back to that hungry redhead, and he thirsts for her, and she thirsts for him, and he thinks about buying the magazine just to pass the time, to see what constellations might lie within, but he can feel the boy's eyes still on him, judging him, so he doesn't even pick it up. Grabs a Coke from the fridge instead.

‘Fifty-nine cents.'

Jasper hands over the ten-dollar bill. He doesn't like being in the shop. It's stuffy. Too small. Dark. Reminds him of rooms just left never again to be entered. And yet it's familiar. It's nice to feel that familiarity. He looks out at the sunshine still baking the pavement, cooking the rust, then back to the boy and tries out a smile. ‘You know,' he says, ‘I used to work here when I was 'bout your age.'

‘That so?'

‘Yep.' He glances out of the window again. So
much
sunshine. Eyes back to the boy. He hesitates.
Cold cans of beer snuck out the back. Long days spent over magazines and staring down I-10 imagining the distant life he'd lead.
‘Mo still running the place?'

‘I reckon.' Something hostile in the boy's eyes. He places the change on the counter.

Jasper hesitates another moment before scooping it up. ‘Don't suppose Mo's here?'

‘Don't suppose he is.'

Jasper nods. Hands deep in his front pockets, he glances out at all that sunshine and back into the darkness of the shop. ‘Any work going at the minute?'

The boy leans against the cigarette counter behind him. Arms crossed over his still skinny chest. Hasn't filled out in the shoulders yet, and his red Texaco T-shirt hangs off his frame. Desperately needs to lose that baby fat before he'll be anything remotely like a man. The boy looks Jasper up and down with cold eyes. Blue as ice under all that blond hair, under that ridiculous ten-gallon hat. Jasper seldom wore hats. The boy's eyes flick from the newspaper rack to below the register and back again. Unless it's moved in the last twenty years, Jasper knows Mo's old Remington bolt action's kept there. Shot plenty of beer cans and a few squirrels with it back in the day. The boy's eyes meet Jasper's. ‘I reckon there ain't much of any work round these parts.'

He's sitting on the kerb when she pulls up. Right out in the sunlight where the heat is roasting. Empty Coke
bottle beside him. A slight flush in his cheeks. Lizzie didn't intend to be late. Or maybe the bus was early. No traffic and all that. But she couldn't have tolerated the thought of being early and waiting for him either. For a moment, pulling up, Lizzie wants to turn around. Back the pickup right out of the station. He might not have seen her yet. Drive till she's right back home in her own driveway, no Jasper to think about or worry about or be a sister to. For a moment she imagines growing up without him. Running alone through drying clothesline sheets. Lying alone under the stars, taking her own finger to map them out. Sitting alone with Mama and Daddy at the supper table. He used to make faces at her when they weren't looking and she had to swallow her giggles to keep them from being found out. Once she couldn't and Daddy's belt had come out fast, and that welt on her legs took weeks to heal. But that's how it always was, her laughing and getting in trouble for it, and Jasper's eyes clouding over as Daddy hit her. Sometimes it was worth it. The laughter. Those funny faces breaking the solemn silence of the dinner table.

She pulls the pickup close. Cuts the engine. Bits of grey in his mousy hair. Lines on his face she doesn't remember. But it's Jasper. Or some aged form of Jasper, a shadow of himself that is no shadow, stranger, darker, her brother and not her brother, and Jasper all the same.
You sure you know who you're lettin' into your home?
The reverend's voice on repeat all morning.

She doesn't get out of the truck. He walks over slow. Taking his time with each step. Not like he's scared. Not like he doesn't want to reach her. Just carefully, as though
each step changes his life, and it does in a way, she reckons. And, anyway, Jasper was never one to rush. He stops beside the pickup, gazes at her through the rolled-down window.

She leans across to open his door even though he could have reached right in the window himself. The hum of insects from the tall grasses beside the ditch vibrates the summer heat. And I-10 has its own wave sounds as cars speed below. He looks at her a long time through that rolled-down window, both of them saying nothing, sun reddening his neck and ears, heat moistening their skin. At length he nods, the most thanks she's likely to get from him, she reckons, and he reaches for the handle.

The floorboards creak under his footsteps. Rocking the same way the wood of the house rocks in bad storms, except now it's just the floorboards, each step rocking each board – a childhood sound. He closes his eyes. Stands still a moment, listening to the house sounds that create home. Pots and pans and a faucet down in the kitchen. A door that opens to close again, a young girl's voice calling, ‘I'm home.' Curtains rustle as July heat blows warm breezes through the muggy rooms. Humid even inside. He used to tiptoe across these same boards, tiny socked feet sliding if he wasn't careful. And then, when he was a bit older, he used to slide on purpose, gliding over the creaks, skidding down the hall till Mama'd catch him and make him still. End of the hall. He's not a man to tiptoe, and it's been a long time now since he chose to slide. He pushes open the door to his boyhood room.