The Last Days of Summer (6 page)

She struggles to meet his angry eyes. Isn't even sure she believes the words as she speaks them. ‘He's done his time.'

‘He ain't done enough.'

‘That's the law's decision.'

‘You serious?' He laughs. No humour in the sound. ‘Jesus Christ! Do you hear yourself? Do you hear how stupid you sound?'

Katie bristles.

‘He's a ticking bomb waiting to be set off. It's just a matter of time. I swear to God, Katie, someone ought to take it into their own hands and set him straight before any more people start turnin' up missin'.'

‘Don't talk like that!'

‘Like what? I ain't gonna pussyfoot around and pretend he's some saint just 'cause you and your lot's been blinded by y'all's shared blood.'

‘He weren't convicted of all that, Josh. There weren't ever any proof.'

‘That man ain't right in the head, Katie. We don't need no proof of that.'

‘You don't know what you're talking about!'

‘Do you?' Hurt in Josh's eyes she doesn't expect, isn't quite sure she understands. Then softly, his voice almost a whisper, ‘What if he hurts you, Katie? I don't think I could bear it.'

She reaches out, uncertain, and lays her hand to rest on
his shoulder. ‘He ain't gonna hurt me, Josh. He don't seem so dangerous.'

The strain in his eyes frightens her. ‘How do you know?'

The trucker clears his throat. ‘Miss.'

‘Yes?'

‘More coffee, please, 'n' the bill.'

Lizzie watches as the hens gather round Joanne's feet in a swarm of brown feathers. Joanne tries to scatter the feed as far from her feet as possible, but the action makes no difference – seeds still fall down close enough that, standing barefoot out the back, chickens nibble her toes. She dances and prances in place, shrieking as chicken feed scatters around her. Lizzie smiles. It was the same for her when she was young. The occasional hen bite doesn't sting so bad; it's more the apprehension of unexpected nibbles that cause the shrieking. Jasper used to laugh at her when she did the feed. Told her she was ‘chicken dancing'.

Lizzie tears her eyes from her daughter and looks away from the clothesline, pins in mouth, to see Jasper standing in the shadows of the house. It's hard to see his face clearly, but he seems to be smiling. She follows his gaze. He's watching Joanne too. She takes a pin from her mouth and fastens a sock to the line. Starts to secure a shirt. One of Katie's. Jasper turns, as though feeling Lizzie's eyes on him. Stands still a moment facing her. They are close enough that he could easily call out to her, but he stands in silence. Lizzie can't help but wonder what he's thinking.
He looks like a stranger, standing there in the shade, their daddy's old clothes hanging loose off his slender frame. She almost calls to him, but something stops her. Maybe it's the deep shadows crossing his face. Maybe it's his silence. Jasper raises a hand and waves. A smile lights his face, and Lizzie finds her hand automatically raised in response. Clothespins still in mouth, she does not smile back.

Mid-morning. But already the sun sits high, sky marked with scattered dots of cloud. Joanne shrieks again as a hen pecks at her toes, then giggles. Jasper turns back to watch her. That funny smile once again stretches his lips. The house shadow lies cast short across the browning lawn. Him right in its shade.
Must be the only shade for miles.
His pale figure fits there, Lizzie thinks. Summer too brown and blooming for his sallow skin. Too healthy. She wonders how often he saw the sun in there. Wonders now, left unguarded, how quickly his skin might burn.

Lizzie finishes hanging the last bits of the wash. Joanne's socks – one pair pink, one blue, one green. A skirt of Katie's. Brown. Her own floral nightshift. Two towels. Both white. She dumps the clothespins back into the now empty laundry basket, bends and lifts it to rest on her hip, momentarily letting her eyes slip from Jasper's frame. Spray from wet sheets blows against her skin. Evaporates.

His eyes never leave Joanne. Not even as Lizzie comes to stand beside him, though she is sure he heard her approach, is sure he feels her standing there. The closeness of their bodies intensifies the sticky cling of morning heat. But his head does not turn. He does not
acknowledge she exists. At length, as though to no one, he murmurs, ‘I can't remember the last time I heard a child laughing.'

Joanne's chasing the chickens now. Jumping over them. Teasing them with bits of feed. Laughing. ‘She reminds me of you,' he says. Voice soft, but not a whisper. Not quite.

Lizzie follows his gaze. Makes no reply. Watches her daughter. Sees herself. Sees bits of Bobby that she both cherishes and shies away from. Looks back to Jasper's stern profile. Says nothing.

‘It ain't just her looks neither.' Eyes still on the girl. ‘You had that same spark in you.'

A deep breath to steady. ‘I reckon that was a long time ago.'

He looks at her then, his movement drawing her face to his. Eye to eye. Close enough for their breath to touch. Warm, sticky, stale. Dark eyes drilling into her. Searching. A rawness in them that alarms, makes her want to back away. But she doesn't. She hadn't realized how very close she stood to him. When he speaks again, his voice sounds husky, as if it has become part of the deeper shade in which they stand.

‘Has it really been so long?' Husky, husky, shadowed voice.

His gaze contradicts the softness of his tone, his eyes like two spotlights forced and focused upon her. Relentless in their drilling. Their searching. She turns away. Has to. Shifts the basket from her hip to hold it long and low before her stomach. Presses it against her just to feel the reassurance of the pressure. Even the
shade feels too hot. No breeze so close to the house. ‘A lot's changed, Jasper.'

He laughs then. A soft, rumbling chuckle. Her brother's laugh. The one that she remembers. The one that maybe means he's really home. ‘You're telling me?' That softening twinkle in his eyes.

She smiles then. Just a little. Can't help it. A sad smile, playing with the corners of her mouth, teasing them up. An unfamiliar feeling of late. But it doesn't stick. She answers, ‘Am I really so changed?'

The laughter drains from his face, leaving it sallower, tenser than before. He looks at her. The same unflinching gaze. The pause between them grows, suspended, uncomfortable. A breath too long held. He looks down. Away across the lawn. Out over the prairie. Beyond. ‘Sometimes,' he says, ‘I think maybe I'm dreamin'. I think I'm gonna wake up 'n' find things ain't so changed. Then I realize I'm awake. And it's like I've always been awake, and truth is, now I forget how good it used to feel to dream.'

Lizzie makes no reply.

A cloud nearly covers the sun, but fails, beams of light and heat burning right through it. A crow lands on the porch railing with its harsh cackle.

One of the hens pecks Joanne's ankle, and she hollers. Pain and laughter mixed together. Lizzie pulls her eyes away from Jasper. Regrets having come to stand beside him. Buries that regret.
No time for such luxuries.
‘Joanne!' she snaps. ‘You stop messin' now 'n' hurry up 'n' get 'em chickens fed, you hear?' She does not look at her brother again. Turns before even her own voice has faded, walks
up the three back steps and opens the screen door, basket still balanced on her hip. She pauses in the doorway. Jasper has not moved. She cannot see his face or eyes. She opens her mouth to say something. Closes it. Lets the screen door slam shut behind her. Joanne's laughter fades.

Walking along the country road that leads from the house back towards town, Jasper's not fully sure he likes how Lizzie has divided up Daddy's land. The Turners rent and farm the north cornfields now. The Grays rent out the south acres to graze their longhorns. That's how Lizzie scrapes by – those rents and the odd bits of mending she picks up. Not a good living but enough to scrape by. He can see that. Can see the stress of a hard life worn into her weathered skin. She's not the sister he remembers. He respects her for that.

Around the house stretches unused prairie that was there even when Jasper was a boy. He likes that. Likes that she kept it, kept the wildness of it. Wishes all the land had grown wild like that, had never been farmed again.

When Daddy died, Jasper never went back out to work the fields. Didn't feel right out there without him. Worked with Bobby for a couple years instead. A small garage in town. Grease on his hands all day instead of dirt. The hum of motors sparked to life. A part of him wonders if that's why he watched his father die.

Jasper had looked on helpless as the heart attack shook all life from the big man's frame. Daddy's eyes had rolled back in his head till just the whites showed. Mouth moved and twisted as dried lips gasped for breath. Jasper had wondered if perhaps Daddy were praying under all that
pain. Jasper himself said no prayers. Just watched in silence till the tremors no longer spasmed through Daddy's body. He's thought back on that many times. Has often wondered why he didn't pray. Has wondered, if he had, might Daddy have survived?

They were forty-five acres from the house when it happened. Ploughing season. Daddy fell right off the tractor, left arm clutched, face pale. Jasper could have run for help. He's thought over that many times, too. Has asked himself what it means that he didn't. If it means anything at all. Deep inside, Jasper knows nothing could have saved his daddy. When your time is up, it's up. Nothing can save you. A simple fact. Praying, running, screams for help – all useless and he knows it. Jasper watched his father die. Simple as that.

It took only two minutes. Kneeling there, watching his father's lips dry as they gasped for final breaths, Jasper did not shed one single tear. Not then. Not later. Not at the open casket or even back at the house during the after-funeral spread the church ladies had laid out. Mama cried, frail and white and lost in a sea of well-wished condolences. And Lizzie, eyes red with newly dried tears. At the funeral, behind his pulpit, Reverend Gordon had described Daddy as an ‘outstanding citizen', a ‘man of morals'. Stretched truths at best. But Jasper had never been a man to cry. Had never been a man to hold grudges against kin. And he'd never been a man to run for help neither.

He asked that therapist once, the one in Huntsville sent that first year to evaluate his mental health. He asked him what it meant that he watched his father die. That he
didn't run for help. But the therapist had just sat there in his pinstripe suit, peering down through bug-eyed glasses, marking things on a pad Jasper could not read. Eventually Bug Eyes had looked up at him, chewing on his pencil's eraser, and had asked Jasper if his daddy had ever touched him ‘inappropriately', and Jasper had laughed right in his fat face at the stupidity of such a question. His father never touched him. No slap. Or pat. Or hug goodnight. Even when he was young and acted up and Daddy had to put manners in him, it was always Daddy's belt that touched Jasper, never Daddy's hand. They shook hands once that Jasper could remember. High-school graduation. And their eyes had met. And Daddy had said, ‘I guess you're a man now. Reckon you'd best start actin' like one.' Releasing Jasper's hand before the words even faded. It was a firm handshake. A calloused hand.

How dare that asshole therapist insult his daddy's memory? Jasper had answered, ‘How many times did
your
daddy jerk
you
off, Doc? How many times? Did you like it?' and Bug Eyes had sweat real bad and squirmed and sunk down in his chair a little, and that was the last time Bug Eyes tried to assess Jasper's mental health.

Until they'd let him out, that is.

They didn't talk about his daddy that time.

The clock on the whitewashed office wall sounded like a ticking bomb. Though ticking down his doom or freedom, Jasper could not decide. Bug Eyes' pencil rasped and wheezed, like strangled breaths, as it scraped against his notepad. And this time all Bug Eyes wanted to talk about was her.

Jasper could have told him how her cum smelt.
Coconut oil and sweat and saliva and canned salmon all musky and divine tangled in one sour scent. He could have mapped out and drawn the lines that marked her palms. Heart. Head. Life. He could have told him how in the mornings her breath smelt like coffee beans. Dry-roasted. But he didn't. He sat there in silence, steering his mind from her, padlocking the doors that guarded his memories, listening to the clock tick, the pencil rasp. He sat there, not defiant, not insolent. Just there.

A tiny bead of sweat ran down Bug Eyes' brow. He wiped it. A new bead formed. He cleared his throat. ‘Mr Curtis, do you understand that you are due to be released at six a.m. on this upcoming Tuesday, the tenth of July?'

‘Yessir.'

‘You understand that the board of directors of this here institution has granted you release due to good behaviour during time served?'

A small smirk he did not attempt to hide. ‘Yessir.'

‘Is something funny?' The pencil stopped. Lifted off the page. Bug Eyes' bulging eyes bored into him as if they knew him, wanted to know him, to understand.
Typical therapist psycho bullshit.

‘We both know why I'm being let out, Doc.' His voice even. Steady.

A raised eyebrow arched way up high on that shiny bald head. Looked out of place so high with no hair above it. A fuzzy caterpillar climbing with no real place to go. No cocoon. Bug Eyes leaned back in his chair. Another bead of sweat dripped. ‘Oh? And why is that?'

The whir of a ceiling fan replaced the scratch of the pencil. Jasper wondered why he hadn't noticed the fan
before. The shaky sound of its whir. He smiled. ‘Overcrowding. Y'all want my bunk for some new sinner.' He laughed. ‘And I've served my time, Doc. Fact is, no matter how you sugar-coat it, y'all can't keep me here no longer. I reckon this here interview is just 'bout pointless.'