What Dies in Summer

by Tom Wright

  I guess Jazzy had jumped into L.A.’s lap, because now she was peeking up at me over the edge of the table between L.A.’s arms, trembling and making small cooing noises, like maybe the explosion was my doing and she was begging for mercy. You could see the whites of her eyes. I shook my head and put my hands over my ears. I had a problem with loud noises anyway, and this one had started millions of little bells ringing in my head.

  L.A., who was damn sure wide awake now, said, “Is there gonna be a fire?” She had a death grip on her spoon, her knuckles white.

  “I don’t think so, honey,” said Gram. “Not in this much rain.”

  We sat in the semidark for what seemed like a long time, the noise of the rain wrapped around us like a weightless blanket. You never seem to notice how much a house is doing until it stops, and it felt a little strange with nothing running inside. But after a while we began to hear something different out there, not just the rain anymore but something else falling, something solider than water but not as hard as hail. We all looked at each other.

  “I guess we’d better just make sure it didn’t actually hit the house,” said Gram, pushing her cup away. She patted Jazzy’s head and gave L.A. a reassuring smile as she got up, then went over to the window and bent to look out and up at the tree.

  I went and looked too. Outside the window just a few feet away we could see that the big speckled trunk of the sycamore had a steaming rip down its side, with long jagged splinters sticking out and lying around on the ground. And along with the splinters there were also hundreds of fish, little silver ones, all the same size, quivering and flipping on the grass everywhere I looked.

  For once in her life, Gram was speechless.

  “Hey, L.A.,” I yelled. “Look at this!”

  As I said this the lights and the fan on the counter came back on. The toaster was upside down and thoroughly dead, and the stove clock stayed locked on 8:04 from then on, but otherwise the workings of the house seemed to take up again exactly where they’d left off.

  L.A. got up from her chair and put Jazzy down into her box at the end of the counter. She looked out the window next to Gram and me, then ran to the cabinet under the sink and got an empty mayonnaise jar. She banged out the front door about half a second later, and I ran out behind her.

  The fish were everywhere, all over the street, in flower beds, even on the roofs of the cars and houses. The rain had almost stopped, but a few fish were still plopping down from the trees.

  “This is crazy, Biscuit!” said L.A., looking around the yard and up at the sky. “Where’d they come from?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. I tried to imagine how far the fish could fall and still be undamaged like this. L.A. knelt down and touched one that was still twitching on the grass, then sniffed the tip of her finger and licked it. “It’s salty,” she said.

  She began picking up fish from the lawn and dropping them into the jar. When she had five or six, she went to the spigot and filled the jar with water. The fish seemed perfectly normal to me, darting around behind the glass like magnified eyes.

  Gram was standing on the porch holding a dish towel, her mouth open and her eyes blinking as she looked around at all the fish. “Lord, Lord,” she said.

  A blue jay slanted down from a tree overhanging the street, lit on the wet sidewalk and cocked his eye at one of the fish. Then he grabbed it in his beak and flapped back up into the tree. Next door, Mrs. McReady’s cat Beth stuck her head out from under the porch.

  “Pharaoh, let my people go!” Gram said.

  Jazzy looked out from behind her ankles on one side, then the other. The sky was getting lighter by the minute, the clouds beginning to thin and break up. Gram walked across the yard with her arms held out at her sides, laughing and shaking her head. Jazzy followed her closely.

  “Minnows from heaven!” Gram said.

  Several nuns had gathered in front of St. Mary’s and were whispering to each other and crossing themselves, and all along Harlandale people were coming out of their houses, resting their hands on their hips, looking up into the trees and turning their faces to the clearing sky. There was a faint smell of iodine in the air.

  Gram stopped beside L.A. and reached for the jar with a puzzled expression. “Why, I know what these are,” she said. “I saw fish like these out in Carolina when I was a girl. They’re alewives. They come from the sea.” She held the jar up for a better look.

  By this time you could tell there was something wrong with the fish. They seemed to be swimming desperately but barely getting anywhere in the water. As we watched, one of them rotated slowly over onto its back and floated to the top of the jar.

  “Hey,” said L.A. She peered into the jar and shook it once. Another fish floated up, and in a few minutes they were all belly-up at the surface of the water. She reached into the jar to poke at the fish with her finger, but they were dead.

  “They can’t survive in fresh water,” said Gram.

  Jazzy transferred from Gram to L.A., who was taking another turn around the yard. They seemed to be trying to inspect each fish individually.

  I was through examining the blasted sycamore and was looking at Beth as she crouched on the edge of Mrs. McReady’s driveway, eating the small fish. She took each one by the head with her teeth, shook it, growled, then chewed and smacked at it until finally the tail disappeared into her mouth, the whole time watching me with her yellow eyes. As if a million years had disappeared and I was suddenly back in a time where humans didn’t belong.

  Taking another look around, I decided to take all this as a sign. I made up my mind to go over to Mom’s house and tell her about the fishfall, which would give me a chance to find out what she knew about L.A. I went inside and tore off a strip of tinfoil from the box in the cupboard, wrapped two of the fish in it and put them in my pocket.

  I didn’t have a regular driver’s license yet, but that wouldn’t have made any difference. Gram would never have let me take the car for what I was planning to do even if I had had ten licenses.

  Which left my bicycle. I went around to the garage to get it, expecting bad news, since in my experience anytime you took your eyes off a bicycle for ten seconds disintegration set in—tires went flat, spokes came loose, the chain jumped the sprocket or whatever. But it turned out the bike’s tires were hard and everything else about it seemed to be in working order.

  I may even have gotten the demented idea this was my lucky day.

  As I pushed the bike out of the garage under the dripping trees, Gram said, “Where to, dear?”

  “Mom’s,” I said. The blue jay screamed its thin power-saw call.

  L.A. frowned and found a sprig of grass that needed stomping.

  Gram smoothed the front of her dress, looked down at the ground for a second and said, “All right. You be careful crossing Lancaster, James.”

  Last year some kid riding a bicycle, a kid quite a bit younger than me, had somehow managed to get himself torn completely in half by a watermelon truck over there, and now Gram seemed plagued with the notion that I was going to be next. It might have been false confidence on my part, but I had no fear of produce trucks. The trolleys that used to run downtown, with all that blue electricity groaning and snapping from their overhead power arms, seemed more menacing to me.

  But the real problem occupying my mind at the moment was the time. It seemed to me that right now I had a better than even chance of finding Mom at home alone, which was the best-case scenario unless you counted things like Jack going to prison for life or choking on his own tongue, to name just a couple of outcomes that I knew for a fact it did no good to pray for. Mom being there alone would leave open the prospect of having a Coke with her, showing her the fish and telling her the whole story of what had happened. The next best possibility would include both of them being there but with Jack sober and cutting the grass or working in the garage, which would allow me to back away before I was seen. Of course, there were plenty of other ways it could play o
ut, but somehow I managed to steer my thoughts away from those. One more illustration of the difference between being intelligent and being smart.

  As I rounded the corner of Elmore a few cold fat drops were still falling from the trees, and you could see from the leaves and branches in the street and the steam rising off the pavement where the sun struck it that it had rained hard here too, but I didn’t see any more fish. There was almost no traffic and I was making pretty good time, thinking of the fish and dreaming up ways to describe the episode to Mom, when the dog came at me.

  I knew from previous trips through the neighborhood that he was the worst kind, a biter instead of a barker, fairly fast and persistent, staying after you longer than most dogs considered necessary. Just an all-around shit of a dog. He was reddish and funny-looking, like maybe a dachshund-collie mix or something, with semi-floppy ears that he laid back tight when he chased me. Jack, who wasn’t a big guy himself, had heard me talking about the dog one day and with a hard grin said, “Collie and dash hound, huh?” A wink at Mom. “Somebody must of put his daddy up to it.”

  I had the advantage of the grade on this block, and, wanting to build as much speed as possible for the chase itself, I got up on the pedals for leverage as the dog was angling across his yard. He was pumping too, his head driving up and down and his tongue swinging out at the side of his mouth. His hind claws threw up chunks of grass behind him as he ran. When he caught up with me in the middle of the block I put my near foot up on the handlebar and with my off leg tried to keep up a rhythm on the pedal, really punching on the downstroke and trying not to kill my speed by wobbling. I could hear the dog’s claws on the pavement and the sound of his breath beside me, but he was fairly stupid for a bad dog and he did what he always did—kept snapping at the pedal, even though my foot wasn’t there.

  This time it turned out worse than usual for him. The pedal happened to catch him under the chin on an upswing, and I heard a loud clack and a couple of yelps as the dog broke off the chase. I looked back and saw him shake his head and make chewing motions with his lips pulled back as if he had peanut butter in his mouth. Pedaling away, I hooted at him and pumped my fist in the air, full of victory and knowing now what a winning streak I was on.

  9 | Tries

  I WAS STILL replaying the chase in my mind as I coasted around the curve of Alameda and into Mom’s driveway under the old magnolia. The storm must have been a strange one in other ways than being full of fish, because it obviously hadn’t rained here at all.

  The house was painted white now instead of the light yellow it had been when I lived in it, and the windows were framed by new green shutters with curved shapes cut into them. The holly bushes that grew in front and along the side of the house looked the same, and so did the two middle-sized chinaberries in the front yard, but the skinny poplar Mom had planted beside the house the year we moved here seemed quite a bit bigger than I remembered it. At one end of the porch was a wide clay pot planted with dry-looking red geraniums. There was a vacant feeling in the air, but I couldn’t see the garage around the corner toward the back of the house, so I wasn’t sure if anyone was home or not. I leaned the bike against the porch rail and climbed the steps to the front door.

  Knocking twice, I called, “Mom? Hello?” but there was no answer, so I opened the door and stepped inside. I could smell old smoke from Mom’s cigarettes and the little cigars Jack smoked, and fried bacon from earlier that morning.

  The sense of emptiness continued in here, but I didn’t entirely trust it. Houses usually feel different when people are in them, no matter how quiet the people are, but somehow I couldn’t tell about this one anymore. Since Jack had moved in the second year after Dad died and we had moved up to Dallas from Jacksboro, I was a stranger here and the house no longer really made sense to me.

  I looked down the hall toward what used to be my bedroom but was now Jack’s weight room and wondered if any of my stuff was still in there. I visualized the red chili-pepper lamp I’d left on the dresser and my dartboard and the Cowboys poster on the inside of the door. Thinking about this caused a weird feeling in my chest, and I made up my mind that if it turned out there was nobody here I’d go in there and see if there was anything I could salvage. Maybe bust something of Jack’s while I was at it. I called to Mom again but still got no answer.

  I walked on into the kitchen. There were dishes drying in the rack and next to that on the white-tiled counter I saw a glass ashtray with three Kool butts in it. Each one had Mom’s bright red lipstick on the filter and had been stubbed out half smoked. Reasoning back from that, I knew Mom had gotten up first and had a cup of coffee while she read the Morning News. Then she’d have made breakfast and eaten with Jack and after that cleared the table, washed the dishes and had another cup of coffee over the puzzle page before leaving the house. In my mind I could see her setting the ashtray beside the drain rack on her way out the back door, saying, “I’ll wash you when I get back.”

  In the living room I noticed the dark green cloth-bound book with a little brass latch on it lying on the side table next to the old blue easy chair where Mom always sat. Her diary. She was the only person I had ever known who kept one, and she had always been faithful about it. It wasn’t like her to leave it out in the open like this, but there it was. I stood for a while having a silent argument with my conscience, then walked over to pick it up. The house still felt empty. I carried the diary back into the kitchen where the light was better, intending to sit at the table and maybe read the pages dated around the time L.A. showed up on Gram’s porch.

  I had just found the right date and caught a glimpse of the words

  . . . absolutely gave me the creeps . . .

  when there was a loud rap behind me. I flinched like the thief I knew I was and looked around. Of course it was Jack. He must have whacked his can of Schlitz down onto the counter, his trademark move, closing in silently and then making some loud noise to scare the shit out of you. Now he walked around the table and was lowering his butt lightly into a chair across from me, a tense-looking guy with quick movements and a lot of dark hair on his chest and eyes that had a funny jitter in them.

  “The prodigal son,” he said as he leaned back in his chair and looked at me. “Your mama’s not here.”

  “Yes sir,” I said.

  “Grocery shopping or something,” he said, taking a swallow from the can. He reached across to take the diary from my hands, closed it with a snap and dropped it on the table in front of him.

  “Yes sir,” I said again, thinking about Jack’s job repossessing cars and wondering why I couldn’t for chrissake get it straight when he was going to be here and when he wasn’t.

  “Left me here by myself in the peace and quiet,” he said.

  He was wearing only sneakers and track shorts and one of those undershirts without sleeves or a neck, just straps over his shoulders. His armpits were shaved.

  “What brings you over here to our little domicile, Jim? Leah’s mama kick you out too?”

  I realized that the whites of his eyes weren’t really white but light pink, with little veins in them that branched like red lightning. I thought of Caruso’s ears. Jack looked out the window as he tipped the can up and I could hear the thumping sounds in his throat as he swallowed.

  “No sir,” I said, feeling jammed, like the time in Jacksboro when I was four and somebody’s big orange dog had come roaring out at me from behind a hedge. I’d been frozen in my tracks, completely unable to move, which I guess was a good thing because the animal had just stood in front of me barking for a while and then given up and gone away, leaving me stuck there on the sidewalk like a wad of gum.

  “Guess I’ll go on back to Gram’s,” I said, edging toward the door.

  “Naw,” said Jack. “Stick around.” He stood up and took a long last swallow from the beer can, then tossed it into the sink, where it ricocheted around and shot some foam up into the air. I’d seen him do this before, and it wasn’t a good sign.


  “Yes sir,” I said.

  Jack rolled his shoulders and sucked his teeth. “C’mon,” he said, “let’s work out a little.” He motioned me toward the back yard, where he had set up a speed bag outside the toolshed.

  I followed him out the back door, wondering if there was any chance of somebody else showing up. Jack told everybody he’d been a Golden Gloves welterweight, and he watched all the fights on television and explained everything the fighters did wrong. He liked practicing his skills.

  We got to the shed and he brought out two pairs of boxing gloves. “You can have the light ones,” he said.

  As I was pulling on the cracked and faded red gloves, Jack said, “What are you—about as tall as me now? Damn near.” He popped his gloves together. “Looks like you’re gonna have your old man’s shoulders too. We’ll just see what you got.”

  I stood there with my hands at my waist while Jack started to dance around me. Usually he did this for a while before he got serious about throwing punches. But he had his own gloves up and was bobbing and weaving. “Stick and move!” he said, bringing in a left hook to the side of my head that staggered me a little, then skipping away.

  This was not my first boxing lesson with Jack, and I knew there was nothing to gain by not trying to defend myself. I got my hands up and tried to watch his shoulders. I could sometimes slip a shot if I caught his head fake and the slight push of his left shoulder just before he threw the right.

  “Really shoulda gone pro,” he said, bouncing and feinting. “Show all them niggers a thing or two.” He blew out his breath and shook his head.

  I kept my gloves up and watched him. He had a tendency to come in hard after he said something like this, and I wanted to be ready.

  But I wasn’t ready enough. He floated in with a straight right, and I sat down hard. Stinging tears tried to come up in my eyes but as I got up I brushed them away, trying to make it look like I was just swiping at my nose.

  “Make a man out of you yet,” Jack said. “Here, come on in and take your best shot.” He dropped his guard and let his hands hang at his sides, counting on reaction speed to keep from being hit.