The Last Days of Summer (40 page)

She'd wanted to go with Jasper. Two are surely always better than one. But she knew he was right when he said it was him they were after. This wasn't her battle to fight.
And yet
, she wonders, gazing out at the darkness,
when is my battle if not now?
It was the mother in her, she reckons, that tossed him the gun. That made her stay behind. She has two daughters. Even her tortured soul won't let her forget that love, those bonds. She trusted her brother to bring Joanne home just as she knew herself that Katie would need tending. Yes, reprimanding, but tending also. No matter how angry, deep in her heart Lizzie knows she is not capable of hating her daughter. But now, waiting for him to bring her baby home, Lizzie wishes she had gone with Jasper. She worries he might need her help.

When Jasper had sped out of their drive, the pickup's tyres squealing as he had sharply cut onto the country road, Lizzie had turned to Katie, still crumpled on the grass, holding her smarting cheek. ‘I hope you realize,' she'd said, ‘just how stupid you've been.'

Katie did not look up to her, nor did she answer back. She crawled to Josh and lifted his head into her lap. Sobbing, she screamed, ‘He killed him! He killed him! He killed him!' Her tears fell down onto Josh, onto the parched earth, like rain.

It had taken a pail of water to wake Josh and to silence her daughter's screams. Josh had sat up, dazed, dripping wet, and Katie had flung her arms around him, and started sobbing all over again. Lizzie didn't have the heart to say much to them. Didn't have the energy. ‘If they kill Joanne,' she'd said quietly, ‘that blood's on both your hands.'

‘Mom! They said they ain't gonna hurt her –'

‘Believe their lies all you want. If anything happens to her, I've lost two daughters tonight.' And then she had turned and walked back into the house.

A part of her wishes she could hate Katie. But a mother can never truly hate her child.
It's my fault
, she thinks.
I should have left here with their father all those years ago.
An owl calls far out across the prairie, its hoot blown to her on the gentle breeze. She rises and paces, then sits down again. It feels like time has paused and locked her still inside it.

Katie sobs into her pillow, choking on her tears. Mascara runs from her long lashes to smudge the fabric dark. The pillow smells like Joanne. The sticky, sweaty, cut-grass smell that seems to follow wherever her kid sister goes. The whole bed reeks of her. And that only makes it worse. Katie never thought they'd hurt Joanne. Not really. She realizes now, choking on her own sobs, that maybe trusting them was a bit naive. But she'd just wanted Josh to
love her, to realize she wasn't tainted by her uncle's sins. She'd wanted finally to win his father's approval, too, so that maybe when Josh went off to college next year he wouldn't replace her with some preppy sorority girl, and Josh and his dad had promised her Eddie'd just take Joanne for a little drive was all. Just to lure her uncle out. That was how they'd described it. ‘All you gotta do is lie,' they'd said. ‘Just say you don't know where your sister's at.' And it hadn't
really
been a lie. Or so she'd told herself. She didn't know where her sister was at, didn't know just
where
they would take her.

Katie had tried to leave with Josh when he'd finally come to. He'd been angry when he'd woken up, angrier than she'd ever seen him. He'd pushed her off him and gotten to his feet. Even in the darkness she could already make out the bright shiner swelling round his eye from where her uncle'd punched him. A little blood dripped down from Josh's nose and stained his lips bright red.

‘Baby, you're hurt,' she'd said, and had reached out to him.

But he'd just pushed her off.

‘Josh!' she'd cried, her voice newly shrill as she'd followed him across the ruined garden. ‘I'm goin' with you.'

‘Like hell you are.' He hadn't even looked back. Trampled flowers all around them further pushed into the earth by their hurried feet.

‘Baby, what's wrong? Please don't be like that!'

‘Stay here and rot with your kin,' was all he'd said. And he'd kept on walking.

His pride was hurt, she could see that. But his words had hurt her, too. Had cut her deep. ‘Don't say that.' Her
voice had lowered, whisper soft. ‘Josh, I'm scared,' she'd said. ‘He hit me too. I don't wanna be here when he gets back.'

The pickup door had slammed in her face. He'd looked out of his open window at her. ‘I don't need all this drama,' he'd said. ‘For fuck's sake, your mom pulled a gun on me!'

‘She wasn't gonna shoot you, Josh, I swear!'

He shook his head. ‘When you see your family's true colours, you give me a call.'

She'd stood there a long while till his taillights had faded away. Like far-off stars covered by cloud. But those lights she had known would not blink back into view.

It had been her mother's face that had made Katie realize she'd done wrong. Had been the cold look in her mother's eyes as she'd spoken of losing both daughters. About blood on both their hands. That had spooked Josh too. She could see it in his eyes when her mother said it, but he was a proud young man. He always had been. That was part of what Katie'd always loved about him. His confidence. His pride. And he'd been stripped of that honour when her uncle had knocked him down so easily, when her mother had woken him up with that cool pail of water.

Now, crying into her pillow, the smell of her sister thick upon it, a part of Katie wishes her mother would come to her room to find her. To comfort. She knows her mother's too mad for that, but she can't help listening for footsteps on the stairs all the same. Nothing makes sense any more to Katie. She can't understand why Mr Ryan and Eddie would want to hurt Joanne. Why they would have lied to her. She can't understand why Josh won't just
love her. How so much could have changed since last night in his arms.
When Joanne comes back
, Katie tells herself,
I'm gonna paint her nails whatever colour she wants. And if she wants I'll even let her braid my hair.

She sits next to her uncle in the pickup, the leather of its seats cool against the bare backs of her legs. She watches as the dry, flat desert country they'd crossed into eases back to the familiar stretches of tall prairie grass that extend far as the eye can see. It spreads like an ocean around them, grasses blowing in the breeze, like waves breaking on some dark sea. It seems to her the country road cuts through the prairie like a path of light, lit up by the truck's high beams as they speed forward. Joanne doesn't remember ever going quite so fast. The world seems to spin as it goes by. The sky is light enough that nearly all the stars have faded, but it is still too dark to see much beyond the glow cast by the truck's high beams. A shadow world still full of horrors, but easing slowly light.

They don't speak. She doesn't know what to say to him. A part of her still fears her uncle. A part of her wants nothing but the safety of his strong arms around her. She needs water, and her mouth feels dry. Like all the saliva's been used up. Like how it feels when she's licked a lollipop too long without a sip of water, and her whole mouth's gone dry inside.

Except there's nothing sweet about the taste that lingers on her tongue.

She can feel his eyes upon her from time to time. And she tries to stop shaking when she does. But even though the night's not cold, Joanne can't hold still. Can't keep
from trembling. The sweet, sickly stench of blood fills the truck even with the windows rolled down. It makes her want to vomit.

She closes her eyes to block out all the blood, to stop herself staring at the cuts and bruises on her dirty arms and legs. To stop herself getting dizzy as the still dark world speeds by. But when she shuts her eyes, Eddie's dying face comes back to her, his eyes wide, his throat slit, bubbles of blood popping in his open mouth. She turns to the side and vomits. Brown liquid bile. The truck swerves as her uncle asks her if she's all right. When she straightens, she nods once and looks out of the window again. Uncle Jasper is pale beside her, like maybe he might throw up, too.

When she sees her mother's home loom up out of the dark fields, like a doll house all lit up, still far off across the prairie, a small cry escapes Joanne. Not quite a gasp. Not quite a sigh. Her uncle turns to her for a long moment as he speeds forward, down the straight flat country road, the house growing ever bigger, ever closer. She can feel his eyes upon her, though still she does not turn. ‘I told you, Doe Eyes,' he says quietly, ‘I'd get you home.'

Her voice catches in her throat and silence remains her only sound.

As they pull up the drive, her mother stands on the porch, one hand over her mouth. The light behind her makes her look all shadow. A shadow woman risen up to greet them. Joanne wonders if her mother will be mad at her for taking off like that. For staying gone so long. Uncle Jasper slides from the driver's seat and comes round to Joanne's side. She wants to open the door for
him, but her hands won't stop trembling, and she can't get herself to move in time. He opens the door and the sound makes her jump. He lifts her into his arms. As though she weighs nothing. And yet he staggers as he starts to walk, stumbling as he crosses the ruined garden. Her mother screams and falls to her knees, then rights herself and runs to them.

‘Get the door!' Uncle Jasper growls, as he staggers another step forward slowly ascending the porch steps one careful step by one careful step. She can feel her own weight in his arms, can feel herself slowly sliding, slipping out of his embrace.

She's never seen her mother so pale before. Can remember seeing her openly cry just once before. The day that Grandma died when they'd come home from school and Mom had sat them down and told them Grandma was upstairs sleeping and would not wake again.

The blood oozing from Uncle Jasper's side feels warm against Joanne. Once through the door he passes her to her mother, slumping against the frame. A shriek comes from upstairs and Katie hurtles towards them, flying down the stairs two at a time, but she stops short halfway down, her eyes widening at the sight of so much blood. Joanne wants to tell her sister that she's OK, it's not her blood, but the words stay stuck inside her. She wants to ask ‘Where were you?' Wants to say, ‘I needed you.' But her mouth is still too dry.

‘What the hell did you do?' Katie asks, and her eyes shift past Joanne to rest on Uncle Jasper.

‘Katie, go draw some water.' Mom's voice sounds oddly high-pitched through her falling tears.

Katie hesitates. Her eyes are red from crying.

‘Now!' No messing in Mom's tone.

Katie runs back up the stairs and Joanne hears the bathroom door open and the tap in the bath turn on. Joanne wants to tell her mother, too, that it's OK, she's all right, it's not her blood, but the words keep catching in her throat. Like she's forgotten how to speak.
Maybe, if I had some water, I could talk again.

Halfway up the stairs, now in her mother's arms, half carried, half stumbling along, Joanne looks back over her mother's shoulder to her uncle, slumped in the doorway, barely held upright by its open frame. His T-shirt looks nearly tie-dyed, splattered by so many various shades of red. His swollen, bruised face looks newly raw and angry. His skin is a bit too pale. There are small cuts along his arms, his neck. Shards of tiny metal stuck in his skin. Where his gut was shot, the grey fabric of his Coca-Cola T-shirt has been stained so dark it almost seems he has black blood. Drips fall down from his side onto the floor into a tiny red pool. There is a sadness in his eyes unlike any she has seen before.

In that moment, she is no longer scared of him. Her words catch in her throat, but she finds her voice again. ‘Thank you,' she croaks, throat dry and sore.

A broken smile spreads across his broken face. But it does not frighten her. Not like it would have only half a day before. In that moment there is no monster, just a tired, injured man, who saved her, now bleeding on the floor.

‘Thank you,' she says again, her voice growing stronger.

His smile spreads as he watches her be carried up the
stairs. He nods to her. A simple incline of his head, the movement so slow it seems to take great effort. But when she's round the corner and through the bathroom door already being lowered fully clothed into the waiting bath, she thinks she hears him call out after her, ‘For you, anything,' but the water's loud as it spills from the faucet, and she can't be certain if she wished his words or if he spoke them for her.

He leans against the porch railing, sitting at the top of the steps, his feet resting on the one below, and he watches as streaks of pink stretch like fingers across the pre-dawn sky. It seems to him a miracle that he sat on this same porch just last night and watched that same sun set. He wonders when next he might get to watch the sun rise.

‘You need a hospital.'

He hadn't known she stood there. But it doesn't bother him. On this night, of all, he's glad of the company. ‘I'd like to sit here, long as I am able.'

She crosses the porch and sits beside him on the step. ‘You'll die if that's not treated.'

A slow smile softens his disfigured face. ‘They won't let me die, sis. I'll have the best doctors in the county patchin' me back up. Just you wait. Folks round here'll have too much fun fryin' me to let me die like this.'

She turns away from him, hiding her face, and he follows her gaze, scanning the dark prairie that stretches out before them. Last night's crickets and July flies have fallen silent, but it's too early still for birds. ‘They'll be comin' for you, then.' More statement than question, really. She doesn't meet his eyes.

He smiles. ‘Sooner rather than later, I'd expect.'