The Last Days of Summer

by Vanessa Ronan

  ‘No.’

  ‘Is he …’ the reverend hesitates ‘… all right?’

  She snorts. ‘Depends on your definition of “all right”, I guess.’ She pauses. ‘They beat him pretty bad, but he’ll live.’ A sparrowhawk flies over them, casting its shadow long over the prairie, and they both turn and watch it for a time. ‘I think they would have killed him,’ she says quietly, ‘had I not come out.’

  He nods. ‘I think they would have, too.’

  Fire rises in her once again, so quick to flare, these days. ‘What do you want from me, Reverend? Why are you here?’

  ‘I came to make sure you were all right. You ’n’ them girls of yours. It was nice seein’ y’all come to church like that. I’m sure your mother was smilin’.’

  ‘Yeah, well.’ Lizzie nudges a crushed rose with her foot, then looks out to the open prairie. ‘She sure ain’t smilin’ now.’

  The shade from the house stretches its long shadow towards them, but it is not late enough yet for them to be sheltered and the sun feels hot on the top of Lizzie’s head, like her whole scalp might catch fire with all the anger that boils up and rests inside her.

  ‘I can’t help but feel,’ he says quietly, ‘you blame me somehow for some part of this.’ He holds out his hands to stop her. ‘No, don’t object. But the truth is, Lizzie, I’m here ’cause I’m worried ’bout you ’n’ them girls. I’m afraid there’s revenge in Eddie’s heart. ’N’ revenge don’t stop at much.’

  She is quiet a long moment. A starling calls out from a nearby shrub before falling silent. A cloud passes by the sun, but is not dense enough to fully mute its light. ‘I don’t blame you, Reverend,’ she says. ‘I know we dug our own graves. I know chances are we’re diggin’ ’em still. Might have helped us some small bit, though, had you urged folks to be a bit more forgivin’. Way I see it, forgiveness is just what we gotta do to try to move on past this. I didn’t used to see things like that, I’ll admit. There’s a lot in my life I been bitter towards. A lot of hurt I clung to. I’m startin’ to think lately, though, maybe we all would have been a whole lot better off had we just begun forgivin’ a long, long time ago.’

  The reverend opens his mouth then closes it. He sighs. ‘I don’t believe you’ve forgiven him.’

  She smiles. A sad smile that does not reach her eyes. ‘That’s the problem, Reverend. This town don’t know forgiveness. I ain’t no grand exception.’

  He smiles, too, a sadness of his own darkening its shine. ‘None of you deserved what he put you through.’

  She shrugs. ‘It ain’t about deservin’.’

  ‘Tell him to leave, Elizabeth. Tell him to go. Him stayin’ won’t bring no good to you ’n’ to them girls.’

  ‘He got nowhere to go, Reverend. I told you that before. ’N’ anyhow, Mama would never have cast him out.’

  He surveys the scattered flowers all crushed and spread around them. ‘Really is a shame,’ he says, ‘about this garden. Them roses was the finest I think I ever seen.’

  She lets the stillness settle around them. Bees buzz in and around the fallen flowers, gathering what pollen they can, the hum of them composing their own symphony.

  He shuffles his feet on the gravel drive, the heels of his boots digging into the ground. ‘If there’s anything I can do –’

  ‘No, Reverend. There ain’t nothin’ you can do for us. Not now. I’m not sure there ever was. Facts remain, ’n’ not one of us can forgive Jasper, ’n’ not one of us can keep trouble from keepin’ on comin’.’

  ‘This ain’t just about forgiveness, Lizzie.’

  She looks at him a long moment. ‘No,’ she says, ‘maybe not. But it got somethin’ to do with it, all the same.’

  ‘You trust him?’ he asks. ‘You trust him round your child?’

  She smiles. Sadness shining in her eyes. ‘That’s the one thing as of late that I got faith in, Reverend. He loves that girl, as much as he is able.’

  ‘And Katie? It ain’t right a teenage girl bein’ so close to a man like that. Whole town’s sayin’ it.’

  ‘Why don’t you leave my daughters out of this?’ No softness in Lizzie’s tone, no space for argument.

  He opens his mouth to speak, then shuts it. Nods once. Puts his hat back on and dips it slightly to her. He turns to go, then stops, his hand on the pickup door handle. He turns back to her. ‘You know,’ he says quietly, ‘he’ll never find welcome here.’

  ‘Yes,’ she says, ‘I know.’

  Katie slows the pickup to a stop in front of their house, up on the country road. She does not pull down their drive. She does not cut the engine. Looking straight ahead, she says, ‘Y’all best get on out here. Tell Mom I won’ be home too late.’

  ‘Where you goin’?’

  ‘None of your business!’ As soon as the words leave her lips, she wishes she’d spoken them less harshly.

  Tears well in Joanne’s eyes, but do not fall. She turns to slide down the seat and out of the passenger door. Jasper has risen and exited the vehicle already. He stands on the shoulder, feet half on the grass, holding the door open for her.

  ‘Jo?’

  Her sister turns.

  Katie is suddenly uncertain what to say. Nothing seems quite adequate. Nothing seems enough. ‘Be careful, OK?’ she says. ‘Everything’s gonna be OK.’ Tears gather in her own eyes.

  ‘Nothing’s OK, Katie.’ Joanne pushes past their uncle and starts up the path, the garden still in ruins despite what must have been her mom’s best efforts to patch it up.

  Katie wants to call after her, but she doesn’t. She’s not quite sure what stops her. Maybe it is because nothing does seem right any more, nothing does seem good. Maybe the kid’s right, she thinks, maybe things won’t be OK.

  Jasper closes the truck door and leans in the open window. It strikes her as almost comical the way the open window frames him, like he’s living in a picture frame, his bruised disfigured face the last picture on earth any sane person would frame. She can still feel his fingers around her wrist, jabbing into her flesh. The cuts his nails dug into her skin still smart. But there is nothing, she thinks, comical about this man. Not even bruised there, framed in her car-door window.

  He smiles, his twisted jaw further distorting his features. ‘You just remember,’ he says real quiet, ‘that little talk we had.’ His fingers drum on the inside of the window, right where the glass rolls up. He nods to her once, then turns to make his own way across their ravaged garden.

  She watches him a moment. The slight limp in his left leg he did not have before last night. Nor that slight laceration at the back of his scalp. Even from behind it is obvious just how badly he was beaten. ‘I had no part in that,’ she says out loud. No one close enough still to hear her. ‘It ain’t fair,’ she murmurs, ‘him layin’ that blame on me.’ She eases her foot back down onto the gas and the truck pulls forward, back out onto the country road.

  Disgust sours Katie’s insides. She hates the growing part of her that is jealous of her sister. Jealous of the tender way he looks at her. Almost like a father might. He looks at Katie with dark eyes full of hate and hunger. The hunger that no food can fill, the kind she’s seen darken many truckers’ faces when she’s been working late. It makes her uncomfortable, the way Jasper looks at her. He doesn’t like her much, she reckons, and yet, there is a part of him that likes her plenty. She can see that more clearly now than ever, his fingerprints still marking her. In some ways, though, she reckons, she can only blame herself for him not warming to her. She never wanted him to move in with them. She never wanted her friends to look at her funny. She never wanted to be the weird kid living with the rapist. She knows how everyone talks. Knows it will just get worse, too, when school’s back.

  Katie is not used to not being liked. She doesn’t like her uncle – in fact, she thinks she might hate him, just a little, and yet she feels the pressing need deep inside her for him to like her. It confuses her. Enrages her. What makes Joanne so special? I don’t nee
d that man’s approval, she tells herself, and yet, inside, she feels the sting of him finding her lacking. She needs him to like her. She needs the whole world to like her. Will this hurt my chances for Prom Queen next spring? Katie is not used to a world that looks on her unkindly. She is not used to being second best. Especially not to her little sister. And if having a rapist as an uncle and a freak for a sister costs her that Prom Queen crown, Katie swears to God she’ll make them both sorry. They had better not ruin my senior year …

  Josh lives far out the other side of town, but it feels to her like she’s there in only minutes, her mind’s sped up so fast. She pulls off the main road and down the Ryans’ drive. Pecan trees overlap above her, all the way up to the house – Josh’s mother’s pride and joy. Sunlight filters through their leaves to confetti the road with light. Their driveway is paved, not gravel, the whole half-mile from the country road right up to their door. Katie cuts her engine at the top of the drive, pulling over just to the side. Before her, the Ryans’ home looms, two-storey, made of stone mostly, green shutters over the windows. It isn’t like any other house in town. Like any other house she’s ever seen. Josh’s daddy is an oil man. His wealth shows in his home.

  Both doors to their four-car garage are open, and music drifts from inside. Some slow-paced country song she’s not quite sure she’s heard before. She pauses just outside the garage. ‘Josh?’ she calls.

  His head pops out from behind the open hood of his pickup. She smiles. She knew she’d find him here. She’s teased him before that that truck is his second girlfriend. ‘Hey, baby!’ He grins. He grabs a cloth, wipes the grease off his hands and walks out to her, squinting in the sunshine. ‘You could have called. I didn’ know you was comin’. I would’ve cleaned up or somethin’.’ He puts his arms around her and kisses her lightly, and she settles into his embrace, resting her head on his chest.

  She closes her eyes. ‘You know Mom never lets me use the phone.’ He smells like sweat and oil and his father’s aftershave.

  ‘Are you OK, baby?’ He lifts her face to his.

  She can’t hold them in any more. The tears. She buries her face in his chest, clinging to the sweaty, stinky fabric of his T-shirt. She wishes she could stay that way for ever, his arms around her, his smell around her, everything OK. But he pulls her from him, eyes searching her face. ‘Did somethin’ happen?’ Worry creases his brow.

  She nods. Her throat’s gone tight from crying.

  ‘What happened, baby? Did he hurt you?’ Worry quickly turns to anger in Josh’s voice.

  She holds up her wrist, watches as it takes a moment for her injury to register in his eyes. He takes it in both his hands and gently turns it over.

  ‘That son of a bitch,’ he hisses. ‘I’ll go kill him now.’

  ‘Josh! No!’ she gasps through her tears. Hiccups shake her chest.

  ‘What do you mean, no? He hurt you, Katie! Look at that! What did I tell you? What if next time it’s worse?’

  ‘There ain’t gonna be a next time.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? How you figure that?’ She can see the anger pulsing through his veins. Oddly, it makes her feel a little better somehow to see him so upset. Makes her feel cared for. Like she does have value after all.

  ‘He said,’ she gasps, still crying, ‘I gotta start treatin’ him more like family, that’s all.’

  ‘He threatened you?’

  ‘No! Yeah. I don’ know. Maybe.’ Tears roll down her cheeks. Warm. Sticky. Drying as they fall, the sun’s so hot on her skin.

  He pulls her to him again, her face pressed into his smelly T-shirt, tight against his chest. One hand is around her back. The other smooths down her hair. ‘It’s OK,’ he whispers. ‘I’ve got you now. Tell me everything.’

  And so she tells him. She tells him about how she came home last night and saw what they’d done to Jasper’s face. She tells him about Mama spending all day trying to fix a garden that’s beyond repair, about taking Joanne to the creek and Mom sending Jasper along with them. Half her words get muffled in his chest, and some he asks her to repeat. She tells him what Jasper told Joanne. By the time she gets to the part where Jasper grabs her, her tears have nearly stopped, though their salty trails still stain her cheeks sticky. She can feel the stick of them when Josh kisses her and she tries to smile up at him, to assure him she’s all right.

  ‘I think he blames me,’ she says, ‘for what y’all done to him. I think he reckons I could have stopped it.’

  From the pecan trees, a bobwhite calls his name and falls silent. Chickadees answer before the harsher cackle of a crow drowns out all other birdsong. The day is hot still, though evening’s early shadows have started to stretch across the lawn. A cloud passes over the sun, momentarily muting its heat.

  Josh bites his lower lip. ‘You know I’m gonna have to tell my father.’

  She looks at the bruises now starting to purple around her wrist. Looks at the tiny curved cuts left from his broken nails. ‘What’s he gonna do?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ Josh is silent a moment. ‘Eddie’ll think of somethin’. Don’t you worry, though, baby.’ He strokes her hair again, holding her close to him. ‘I’ve got you now ’n’ I ain’t lettin’ go.’

  She pulls away from him to look up at his face. ‘You promise?’

  His eyes search hers. ‘I promise.’

  Lizzie sits hunched over, mending a pile of washing. She gasps from time to time as her needle goes through the thin fabric of the sheets, pricking her fingertips. Life’s hardships weather her face, more worry lines than laugh lines etched within her skin. She smiles when she sees him watching her. A self-conscious sort of smile, that almost brings the youth back to her face, but fails. ‘My hands ain’t what they used to be.’ Her cheeks blush slightly. ‘That gardenin’ took it right out of me. I usually ain’t this careless with the needle.’

  He nods. Says nothing. Leans against the door frame like it’s all that’s left in this world to hold him up. And it is, in some ways, he reckons. The electric lamp on the end table beside Lizzie glows with a muted yellow light. Outside the night is dark. The sky is filled with stars.

  ‘No porch tonight?’ he asks quietly. His voice sounds thick and smooth, even to his own ears. It surprises him. It’s been a long while since it held those tones. Sounds like honey to him on this warm night.

  She smiles. The sad smile again that he is growing used to. ‘I couldn’t bear lookin’ any longer at what they done to Mama’s garden.’

  He remembers back when her smile was a happy thing. A long, long time ago.

  She glances up from her needlework. ‘You can sit in here awhile,’ she says, ‘if you’re so inclined.’

  He had been waiting, he realizes now, for an invitation to join her. He sits in the easy chair opposite hers, both positioned close to the fireplace. The air coming down the chimney feels humid, muggy, even at this late hour. Looking at the clean hearth, he reckons it’s been a good long while since any fires burned.

  ‘I told her,’ he says. ‘I told her what I done.’

  The needle stops halfway through the fabric. Her voice goes cold. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘Upstairs, I reckon.’

  ‘When did you tell her?’

  ‘This afternoon, down at the creek.’

  Lizzie lets out a long breath. ‘Jesus, Jasper, no wonder she was so quiet all night! Why did you tell her? What were you thinking? She’s just a child!’ Lizzie’s voice rises, climbing up towards shrill.

  He ducks his head. ‘She got a right to know,’ he mumbles meekly. ‘She’s part of this, too, you know.’

  ‘How the hell is my little girl a part of this?’ Her voice echoes off the walls.

  ‘We’re all a part of it, Lizzie,’ he murmurs. ‘There ain’t no turnin’ back or I’d have turned back long ago. They came here to kill me last night. She got a right to know what I done, what I’m like.’ The lamp beside Lizzie lets out a constant low hum. Very softly, he whispers, ‘I don’t know what I’ll
do if she starts hatin’ me.’

  His sister says nothing, her lips a tight line, her brow deeply furrowed. The carpet beneath their feet is threadbare in patches. He remembers when Mama brought that rug home new. It was off-white back then, not grey. And the couches too. He remembers when he was a boy and he’d helped Mama rip the plastic right off them, delivered to the door brand new. She had sat on them with the church ladies. Had served them coffee. Sometimes they had played bridge. And Daddy had sat in this very same chair come home from a hard day out in the fields. He’d take his boots off right there by that hearth, mud falling down to the floor. Mud falling onto Mama’s clean carpet. No wonder, Jasper muses, the carpet’s now gone grey.

  ‘I been thinkin’ a lot lately,’ he says, ‘ ’bout that July fly all them years back. The one that landed on me.’ She looks up from her mending. She’s angry with him, he knows, but he can’t stop talking. It feels to him he’s meant to say this for a while, but it seems only now that he can get the words out right. ‘I been thinkin’,’ he continues, ‘ ’bout how they shed their skin. How they sleep for thirteen years. That’s a long time,’ he says quietly, ‘to wait to live a single summer.’

  Down the hall, the grandfather clock calls out the half-hour. Outside, wind must be blowing, as the porch chimes sound. He listens for a moment to the music they create, the clock and chimes together. There is something peaceful about that sound. And about the quiet that follows.

  It’s early when Joanne rises. The sun has been up long enough to heat the day already, though the house around her still looms dark and quiet. Katie didn’t come home last night. Waking without her sister there beside her leaves Joanne unsettled. Mom will kill her if she finds out. She dresses as quietly as she can. Makes the bed neat as she’s able. It’s not as tidy as Katie makes it, but maybe, if they’re lucky, Joanne figures, Mom won’t notice the difference with so much else on her mind. Joanne is careful not to squeak the door knob or to click the latch as she slips out of their room. She tiptoes down the hall, passing over the floorboards that she knows will creak. She takes her time opening the front door. Is careful not to let the screen slam shut behind her. She glances back at the house only once, pausing at the top of their drive. All the windows look dark still. The house, garden so torn up before it, looks like it could be abandoned. For the first time Joanne remembers, it doesn’t look like home.