The Last Days of Summer (20 page)

Ray Credinski brought beer, just like he'd promised, and somehow or another Kristen Maylor got her hands on a bottle of tequila her folks had brought back from somewhere across the border, the other side of
Brownsville. There's a worm in the bottom of the bottle that makes the girls shriek. The boys act like they aren't bothered, when truth is there's few among them that truly want to drink that worm.

When Katie and Josh stroll up hand in hand, the whole campfire goes quiet. That awkward silence, like a conversation's just fallen short. Katie can guess what the topic must have been. News travels fast in a small town. And a convict released, anywhere, is pretty big news. A chill finds its way down her spine and she shudders even though the night is warm.

‘Hey, Katie. Josh.' Ray slaps him on the back. ‘ 'Bout time y'all showed up!' He hands them both beers, and Josh pops the tops off them with his teeth, and everyone whoops and hollers. An owl calls from further down the creek bed, its voice echoing off the rocks as it travels away from them, their noise and their fire, bad for its midnight hunting. Emma Golepi gives Katie a swig from the tequila bottle. For a moment she thinks she can see the worm's eyes looking at her through the glass as she drinks, its twisted golden brown body floating there in the liquid before her. Katie wonders what it tastes like, who will end up eating it. The tequila burns her mouth, her throat, and she coughs after the bottle leaves her lips, and everyone laughs.
There is something nice
, Katie thinks,
about laughter shared between friends
.
Nothing nasty in the sound. Not like Uncle Jasper's.
Katie coughs again as the tequila goes down, her face screwing up at the sour aftertaste. She can feel the trail the liquor's left inside her, raw and burning from lip to gut. She takes another swig and feels it follow the same path. Josh grabs the bottle from her and takes a long
swig, then lets out a big whoop, shakes his head, pulls her in and kisses her, and everything tastes like tequila, and everything burns. That good burn. She likes the taste of alcohol on her boyfriend's tongue. The burn of both inside her. Her head is spinning, but she's not drunk, not yet. Voices swirl around her, mixing with the flames of the campfire. For a moment, everything seems good again. Seems normal. She closes her eyes. Feels the heat of the fire on her face. The burn of the tequila still raw inside her. The creek just barely gurgles, it's so low, and she has to strain to hear it. Crickets sound, then silence on its banks. Far off a coyote howls, and she can feel the call inside her, reaching up to that sliver of moon.

‘So what's it like, anyway, living with a madman?'

Katie's eyes pop back open.

‘Ray!' Emma smacks his arm and everyone giggles nervously.

‘Hell, no! I'm serious!' He stands up. Firelight dances across his face. He's not a bad-looking boy. If it weren't for his acne he might even have been handsome. Katie can see why Emma likes him. He takes a long swig from his beer. ‘Ain't nobody I known lived with a madman before 'n' I wanna know what it's like!'

‘Shut up, Ray!' Emma smacks him again. Looks across the fire to Katie, ‘Sorry' etched in her eyes.

‘Yeah, what's it like? What's he like?' Kristen leans forward, dark hair spilling over her shoulder. ‘I bet he's a total creep.'

Josh snorts and stands up too. ‘You can say that again.'

‘No, he isn't!' Katie playfully throws an empty can up at Josh, who towers over her. He dodges it and laughter
ripples through the group, subtle as far-off thunder. Katie's not quite sure why she defended her uncle so quickly there. Like it came automatic. Maybe because of what he said to Josh about if he ever made her shed one single tear … She's not sure. Seems wrong, anyway, how everyone's against him. Seems wrong, yet inside she knows it's justified. She shies away herself.

‘I met 'im the other day in the station when he first got off the bus. Seemed damn creepy to me.' Eric Hayden takes a small swig from his beer. Lets it rest in his hands before him. He absentmindedly pushes his ten-gallon hat up on his head a little to scratch at his forehead. Lets the hat fall back down again, low over his eyes.

‘You actually met him?' Kristen's dark eyes shift to Eric as she swigs the tequila and passes the bottle further on round the circle.

‘Well … sort of. He bought a Coke is all. Asked after a job 'n' I told 'im there was none goin'.'

‘Ewwww, can you imagine just seeing him workin' in a shop somewhere? I'd die!'

‘What's he like, Katie, for real?' Hank this time. Usually the quiet one of the group. His folks farm longhorns west of town. A scar runs down from his nose and across both lips, mauled by a bull back in the fourth grade. He's second cousins with the Reynolds. Everyone's gone quiet, looking at her now, and Katie doesn't like the feeling. She doesn't want to be the centre of attention. Not tonight. Not for this.

She looks down at her red toenails shining in the firelight. Her flip-flops are in Josh's truck. The boulder feels smooth and solid beneath her bare feet. She focuses on
her toes as she speaks. ‘He gives me the creeps a bit, but he's all right, I guess.'

‘Does he talk about prison?' Beth Miller, sitting next to Kristen, leans forward, eager, hungry for gossip.

‘No, he ain't really said one word 'bout it that I heard.'

‘That's a bit weird, isn't it?' Ray takes another sip of beer.

‘He's a hell of a lot more than weird, if you ask me.' Josh swigs the tequila. Passes the bottle on.

‘Does he ever talk 'bout –'

Katie cuts Kristen off: ‘No. None of us talk 'bout it. We can't really. Joanne don't know.'

Silence round the campfire as they all take that in. The wind shifts, rustling the leaves above them.

‘Now that's fucked up.' All eyes turn to Hank. The firelight deepens the dark shadows of his scar. He shrugs. ‘That's how I see it is all.'

‘How can she not know?'

‘Yeah, that's real messed up.'

‘Are you gonna tell her?'

‘What about when school starts?'

Katie's head is spinning. The fire feels too hot. Somehow the tequila's wound up back in her hands, that worm, floating in it, staring up at her. The way it moves inside the liquid, she can't quite make up her mind if it's alive or dead.
It must be dead
, she thinks.

‘Someone needs to go and teach him a lesson, if you ask me. Make sure he ain't gettin' back to his old tricks.' Josh spits a big wad of chewing tobacco, back braced, tall, like he means business. His fists automatically coil and release by his sides.

‘Josh!' Katie tries to say, but he's not listening, and her
throat locks, and all she can manage is a whisper that doesn't even sound like his name. She feels tiny sitting there by the fire. Helpless. She watches as the worm floats across the ripples on the top of the tequila, bottle held loosely in her hand. Firelight turns the liquid gold. She wonders if that's how tiny she'd look, cast upon some ocean. Or if she'd be tinier, some little speck in a world impossibly large.

‘Been years now since anyone went missing.' Ray flicks ash from his cigarette into the fire.

Eric takes a long swig of his beer. Locks eyes with Katie for a moment across the rising flames. Looks away. His ten-gallon hat rests on his knee now. Absently his fingers trace its brim.

‘Yeah, well, that's 'cause he was locked up, ain't it?'

She wishes Josh would just stop speaking.

‘What about Rose?' It's Eric who's asked. His hat rests on his head again and his eyes look up from under the ten-gallon's low brim to hold hers.

Silence round the campfire.

‘What about her?' Her throat's so dry she can barely squeeze the words out. She doesn't want to be here. Doesn't want to have this conversation.

‘Anybody told her he's back?' Katie's eyes hold Eric's. She says nothing. Doesn't know how to answer him.

‘Eddie knows.' Josh snorts. ‘And he's gonna know a whole lot more too once I tell him 'n' my pops what Jasper said tonight.'

She tears her eyes from Eric, looks up to Josh, eyes pleading. ‘Don't stir shit up, Josh, don' make it worse for us.'

‘Ssssh, baby, I ain't stirrin' nothin'.' He comes round the back of the campfire and sits down on the boulder
beside her. Puts his arm round her and pulls her close to him. ‘I'm just lookin' out for you is all,' he whispers, and she can feel his breath on her cheek, in her ear. She lets her head lean into him, her eyes close. He takes the tequila bottle from her. Chugs a long swig, his head tilted back, the worm creeping closer, closer, to his parted lips. But he doesn't drink it. Pulls the bottle down right before it touches his lips. Passes it on. Worm still floating there, unnatural in the liquid.
Dead or alive doesn't really matter
, she reckons, watching as the bottle's passed and drunk and passed again, worm seeming to swim and dive in the golden liquid as the bottle's tilted and righted again and again.
One way or another
, she thinks, watching,
its own life has passed, and if it is living, surely this ain't the life it chose.

It's late when the knock comes, but Lizzie is not sleeping. She's in bed, sheets pulled across her, pillows fluffed up behind her back, just sitting there, staring at the shadows. The moon is just a tiny sliver in the sky, and it casts no light into her room. The knock doesn't scare her – her heart doesn't even pass up one beat – but she hadn't expected it either. She knows already who will be on the other side of that door when it opens. Her daughters do not knock like that. She pauses before she whispers, ‘Come in,' her voice unpractised at this late hour, throat tight and dry.

The knob jiggles as it is turned, hinges groaning. ‘Did I wake you?' His voice husky, grainy, in the darkness. She cannot see his face, just the dark outline of him in the doorway, the even darker hallway looming behind him. She thinks of nights they spent whispering as children,
telling secrets. Remembers that night before her wedding day, how he'd knocked on her bedroom door all those years back, pissed drunk, straight home from Bobby and the boys, the smell of drink oozing off his skin, out of his pores. Stale on his breath. He had come into her room that night smiling ear to ear, same way he had on prom night his junior year when he'd first told Lizzie he was in love. And, of course, the next day she'd told everyone who'd listen just how smitten Jasper was. He and Rose would never have been right for each other, though. Even if so much had been different. And her and Bobby? Well, that night before their wedding day, Jasper'd told her, pissed drunk, stumbling into her room, ‘I envy you, sis. He makes you real happy. You hold on to that happiness,' he'd said, swaying as he spoke, words slurring. ‘You ride that happiness straight out of here.' And she'd thought back then she could.

‘It all right if I come in?'

She pulls the sheets tighter round her, even though the room is warm. Window's open, but still the air hangs heavy. ‘Yeah, you can come in.'

He leaves the doorway and crosses the room and sits down at the foot of her bed. His eyes go over her for what feels like too long, and she doesn't like it. She pulls the sheets right up to her chin, the moisture on her skin sticking to and catching the fabric. ‘You all right?' she says, her voice unsteady.

Jasper sits hunched, looking down into his hands, clasped on his lap before him. ‘I couldn't sleep.'

‘Oh.'
What does he want her to do? Read him a bedtime story?
‘I wasn't sleepin' yet neither.'

His face turns to her. Her eyes have adjusted enough to the shadows of the room that she can just make out his features. ‘What was keepin' you up?'

She sighs. ‘Hard to quiet the mind sometimes.'

He nods. ‘I know that feeling.'

‘Is it …' she hesitates over the words, searching for the right ones ‘… hard being back?'

For a moment Lizzie thinks he might not answer. He looks back down to his clasped hands. ‘Sometimes it's hard just being.' Voice a husky whisper.

She's felt that these past years herself. ‘I'm sorry, Jasper,' she says at length.

Confusion creases his brow. ‘What for?'

Her turn to look down. ‘For everything. I'm sorry if we ever done wrong by you. If we made you how you are.'

His body tenses, then relaxes as he slowly shakes his head. ‘It ain't you, Lizzie, who done wrong.' His face is pinched, twisted with emotions she can't even begin to identify.

‘You know what they still say about you, don't you?' She raises her eyes to his.

‘I can guess.'

She nods. Wants to say more. Leaves it at that.

‘Lizzie?' he asks at length, voice rough in the silence of the room, the deeper, darker silence of the prairie around them.

‘Yeah?'

‘You believe me, right, when I say I'm done with trouble?'

She is silent a moment. Lets out a long breath. ‘Yeah, I believe you, Jasper, it ain't that.'

‘What then?' His voice surprisingly soft.

‘I got this gut feelin' trouble ain't even close to done with you.'

He laughs then softly. That brother laugh she's missed. ‘Shit,' he says, grinning in the darkness. ‘Guess I'm screwed then, ain't I?'

She moves over on the bed so he can lean back against the headboard with her. Seems strange sitting there like that, so little space between them. She keeps the sheets wrapped tight around her. It's been a long time since a man sat on her bed. Even if he is her brother. Feels strange somehow. Wrong. Like that ice cube all those years ago that he'd run up her leg.

His voice startles her, breaks her thoughts up. ‘Lizzie …' his whisper soft ‘… have you ever tried to find him?'