Summer's End

by Joel A. Sutherland

  The gravity of the situation washed over Jacob like a cold wave. He and Ichiro pulled Hannah off Sebastien and stopped her from pummelling him. She didn’t resist. She’d made her point, but the damage was done.

  Sebastien rolled onto his side, fetal position, and coughed. His coach helped him up off the ground while the Tigers’ coach looked gravely at Hannah.

  The umpire tried to keep his voice from rising, but he was clearly flustered. “Go home, Hannah,” he said. “You’re automatically suspended from the next game.”

  “That’s not fair!” Hannah protested. “Sebastien was going to—”

  “It doesn’t matter one bit what Sebastien was or wasn’t about to do,” he interrupted, “because he didn’t do it. You’re the only player who fought. The rules state that’s an automatic one-game suspension, and the league will review what happened to determine if you should be suspended longer or removed from the league altogether. Now, leave the field immediately.” He pointed to the parking lot.

  With pinched lips and fire in her eyes, Hannah stormed off the field. She threw her glove to the ground, scooped it back up and biked away alone.

  “She’s mad,” Ichiro said.

  “No kidding,” Jacob said. He scanned the field, the bleachers and the surrounding area for Hayden. His bike, Jacob noticed, was gone. He’d snuck off in the commotion of the one-sided fight and Hannah’s ejection.

  Jacob didn’t blame Hayden for leaving without waiting for anyone else. If Jacob had been struck out by his sister and then saved from a fight by her, he’d probably want to disappear too. For a day or two, at least. Maybe a month.

  Maybe a summer.

  * * *

  Speed and wind. Jacob smiled. He closed his eyes for a moment and enjoyed the sun bathing his face and the air blowing past. It was so freeing coasting down a steep hill, his wheels spinning wildly without pedalling. He became one with his bike, his hands melded with the rubber handles, his blood pumping with each revolution of the tires, his heart ringing like a bell. He forgot about the baseball game and the fight that ended it. He forgot about the twins, each likely upset for very different reasons.

  He even forgot about the things — whatever they were — in the basement of Summer’s End.

  Ichiro coasted behind him, the rainbow-coloured Spokey Dokeys on his wheels clicking and clacking like fireworks. When Ichiro bought them at a garage sale, Jacob had told him that Spokey Dokeys were for little kids. Ichiro didn’t care. He did his own thing. It was, Jacob felt, one of his best qualities. Jacob almost wanted to buy some Spokey Dokeys of his own.

  They made a sharp left turn onto Main Street and biked through town, zigzagging around parked cars and summer tourists. People sitting at patio tables watched them pass. A small white dog yipped and chased them for a block before its owner caught up and leashed it. Luckily they didn’t pass Colton’s mother.

  Near the edge of town the boys approached East Road Convenience, an old two-storey building with wood-slat walls painted lime green. It was the only place in town to buy a comic book, a pack of baseball cards and a bagful of candy in one stop.

  “Hey, let’s pull in here,” Ichiro said. “Do you want some ice cream? Or a drink?”

  Jacob’s cheeks flushed. He patted his baseball uniform’s pants pockets to show they were empty. “I left my wallet at home.”

  “Don’t worry,” Ichiro said, pulling out his wallet. “I’ll pay.”

  “Thanks, man!”

  A bell dinged when they opened the door. The old man who worked there emerged from a backroom and walked through a narrow aisle packed with junk food, making his way slowly to the front counter. He was tall, lanky and wore his shoulder-length grey hair in a ponytail. Perched on his bony nose was a pair of large tinted glasses. Jacob had never seen anyone else working the cash. Jacob and his friends called him The Willow, but never to the old man’s face.

  “How many times I tell you kids not to come in here with cleats on?” The Willow asked, gum smacking in his mouth between every other word. His tone was more resigned than angry. He sounded tired. He always sounded tired. “You’re gonna damage my floors.”

  “Sorry,” Jacob said, with an apologetic shrug. Neither he nor Ichiro took off their cleats. The Willow waved his hand and grunted as he half sat, half leaned on the stool behind the counter.

  The boys wandered the aisles, passing the bins of bulk candy and racks filled with comic books. Jacob lingered there for a moment and studied the cover of an X-Men comic. Professor X sat in the foreground with his head slumped, while Wolverine, Cyclops, Storm and a few other mutant superheroes stood with bowed heads in the shadows behind their leader. A caption screamed “DEATH … TO THE X-MEN!” He flipped through the pages, put it back on the rack, and then joined Ichiro at the fridge. Ichiro grabbed a bottle of cream soda. Jacob picked orange pop.

  Ichiro stopped in front of a chest freezer, slid its glass door open and reached inside. He pulled out two ice-cream bars. “You want one?”

  Jacob shook his head. “Nah. Just the drink is fine.”

  Ichiro tossed one of the ice creams back into the freezer. He paid — The Willow handed over his change without any further remarks — and they stepped outside.

  “Huh,” Ichiro said, studying the change in his hand.

  “What’s up?”

  “I think The Willow shortchanged me. Wait here. I’ll be right back.”

  East Road Convenience, with an unpaved dirt parking lot and exterior walls that had only ever been cleaned by the rain, was no building to lean against. Jacob walked his bike to the street and let it fall on the grass beside the sidewalk. He sat on the curb. He didn’t need to wait long before Ichiro exited the store and joined him.

  Ichiro unwrapped his ice-cream bar and Jacob took a drink of orange pop. It fizzed on his tongue and burned the back of his throat in the best possible way.

  “How are you feeling?” Ichiro asked.

  Jacob glanced sideways at his friend. “I’m fine.”

  “Just fine?”

  With a furrowed brow, Jacob nodded. Ichiro was up to something, he just couldn’t guess what.

  Ichiro smiled. “The sun is shining, you’re sipping orange pop, you’ve got the latest Uncanny X-Men to look forward to reading and you’re telling me you’re just fine?”

  Jacob laughed. “I don’t have the latest—”

  Ichiro reached behind his back and pulled an X-Men comic out from under his shirt. He handed it to Jacob. “I saw you eyeing it in the store so I got it when I went back inside.”

  “Wait. Was the whole ‘The Willow shortchanged me’ thing just an act?”

  Ichiro shrugged and smiled.

  “Wow. You shouldn’t have.”

  “I’m not giving it to you, if that’s what you’re thinking. I want it back, but you can read it first.”

  “Thank you.” Jacob didn’t know what else to say. It was a small gesture of friendship, but it meant a lot to Jacob, more than Ichiro could have known.

  A warm breeze fluttered the comic’s pages. The boys watched cars drive past and birds fly overhead. The idle chatter of some grown-ups drifted toward them from The Wet Whistle, a pub with a lively patio that shared the parking lot with East Road Convenience.

  Ichiro spoke first. “How long do you think Hannah will be suspended?”

  “I don’t know. She didn’t hit Sebastien, so maybe the league will go easy on her.” Jacob wondered what the twins were doing at that moment. They were probably in their rooms, silently stewing. Jacob took another sip of pop.

  Ichiro licked the final smear of ice cream off the bar’s wooden stick and tossed it in the dirt next to an ant mound. Ants swarmed the stick immediately. “I wonder what their dad’s going to say to Hannah when he finds out.”

  Jacob watched the ants climb over one another in a frenzy, their tiny antennae and mandibles quivering. He didn’t like talking about Hayden and Hannah’s home life, so he held his tongue. If you can’t say anything positive, his
mother was fond of telling him, don’t say anything at all.

  “Their father gives me a bad vibe,” Ichiro continued. “Every time I go there it feels more like a prison than a home. If he was my father, I think I’d rather have no father at all.”

  The words stung Jacob. He set his pop bottle down on the street and closed his eyes. “Trust me, having any kind of dad is better than having none.” But even as he said it, he wondered if it was true. Would he rather have Hayden’s father than no father?

  “Sorry, Jacob, I didn’t mean—”

  He held up his hand and forced a smile. “Don’t worry about it. I know.”

  Ichiro nodded. “So, are we going to talk about Summer’s End?”

  The question came so far out of left field that Jacob knew Ichiro must have been dying to ask it all day.

  “Whatever we heard race through the main floor and down the basement stairs freaked the heck out of me,” Ichiro said, without waiting for Jacob to answer his question. “But the crazy thing is I kind of want to go back. Is that nuts?”

  Jacob shook his head. “No, that’s not nuts. I do too.”

  Ichiro exhaled loudly, as if he’d been holding his breath, and pulled his knees to his chest.

  “I can’t stop thinking about the place,” Jacob continued. “That’s why my game was off today. The sounds we heard — the laughter and footsteps and screams — they’re playing in an endless loop in my head along with that lullaby we heard coming from the phonograph. How did it start playing on its own?”

  Ichiro shrugged. “Maybe … I dunno, maybe the bunny hopped against it or something.”

  “You really believe that?”

  Ichiro shook his head. “No.”

  “Whatever’s going on, I have this feeling, like a sixth sense, that there’s something we’re meant to do there.”

  Ichiro nodded. “Me too. It’s like a scab I can’t resist picking.”

  “Gross.”

  “Yeah, but also apt,” Ichiro said.

  “Well, we shouldn’t go back blindly. We need to find out everything and anything we can about the Stockwells and their house first.” Jacob took out his phone and opened a browser. Ichiro did the same. They typed varying combinations of key search words:

  “Valeton”

  “Sepequoi Lake”

  “Doctor Stockwell”

  “Summer’s End”

  “You getting anything?” Ichiro asked.

  Jacob shook his head. “No. Lists of Muskoka doctors, but no Stockwell. A Valeton tourism site that encourages people to spend their summer vacation here. Some company that makes music gear. A bunch of books, movies and games named Summer’s End. A sad little Wikipedia entry for the town of Valeton. Nothing else, really.”

  “Me too.”

  “Let’s go home and call it a night,” Jacob said, as he stood, tucked the X-Men comic book under the waist of his pants and swung a leg over his bike. He checked the time on his phone — it was getting late and his mother would have dinner on the table soon. “We can meet downtown tomorrow. I know a place where we might be able to find obscure local history like this.”

  “Oh yeah? Where?”

  “Where else? The library.”

  SIX

  July 17

  Specks of sunlit dust danced above rows of bookshelves. The library was old — the building had originally been the town’s first general store and trading post — but it was also huge. An extension had been built on the west wing, and the librarians seemed grimly determined to pack as many books into the library as was physically possible. The shelving had been arranged in a zigzagging, haphazard fashion that created a spider’s web of hidden spaces and dead ends. Only three or four people were ever working at a time, and most of the librarians were happy to leave Jacob alone. It was his favourite place in town to get lost for a few hours. The seclusion the library offered was so absolute that he often wondered how long it would take for his body to be discovered should some tragedy befall him — a stack of books falling and pinning him to the ground, for example. Maybe hours. Maybe days.

  Most of the time, Jacob read comics and old paperback novels — fantasy, sci-fi and horror — on a bench in a bay window on the second floor. But he and Ichiro had come on a mission.

  The library was mostly empty. A couple of high-school students who worked there chatted idly in the Careers section, ignoring the carts of books they were supposed to be shelving and failing to see the irony in the area they had selected to waste some time. An old man napped in a soft chair in a dark corner, his snores mixing with the strands of music playing through his headset. How he had fallen asleep with the volume turned up so high, Jacob couldn’t guess. A young mother with a baby in her arms chased after three-year-old twins who were whacking each other with books. And a group of ten-year-olds crowded around the reference desk, digging through a treasure chest filled with dollar store prizes, while the man who worked there made some personal recommendations.

  “If I were you,” he said in a mild English accent, “I would dig a little deeper. I believe you’ll find some Pokémon cards and Monster High tattoos stashed down there.”

  The kids squealed with delight when they found something worth getting excited about and happily moved on.

  “Jacob,” the man said jovially, when he saw the boys waiting in line. “Good to see you again.”

  “Good to see you too, Rio.”

  “Sorry about the wait. Those kids were claiming some prizes for the summer reading club. It’s a mad house in here. Simply mad.”

  The old man in the corner snored so loudly he woke himself up, but then he rubbed his nose, smacked his lips three times and promptly fell back asleep.

  Ichiro looked over his shoulder at the old man and back to Rio. “Yeah. This place is a zoo.”

  “I’m sorry, I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  “This is my friend Ichiro,” Jacob said.

  “And do you have a library card, Jacob’s friend Ichiro?”

  Ichiro glanced at Jacob for direction. Jacob shrugged. “Um, no?” Ichiro said.

  “Security!” Rio shouted.

  Jacob jumped. The old man sputtered awake and looked from side to side wildly. Ichiro looked panicked. “What?” he said. “Am I seriously in trouble?”

  “No, of course not.” Rio laughed. “I just wanted an excuse to wake up Frank over there. His snoring has been driving me nuts for the better part of an hour.”

  “You crazy loon,” Frank shouted across the floor.

  “Go back to sleep, Frank. I’ll wake you when it’s time to close up and go home.”

  Frank waved his hand and muttered something incomprehensible, then closed his eyes. He was snoring again within seconds.

  It had taken Ichiro a bit of time to fully understand what had just happened, but once he realized that he wasn’t going to be kicked out of the library for not having a card he chuckled a little. “Good one. You got me.”

  “I got Frank too,” Rio said, with a mischievous grin. “You have to find a little fun wherever you can. So, how can I help you two gentlemen?”

  “We’re hoping you might have some old copies of the Valeton Voice,” Jacob said.

  “But of course,” Rio said dramatically, as if he thought of his desk as his personal stage. “What sort of a library would we be if we didn’t collect and store our very own town’s history?”

  “Not a very good one, I’m guessing,” Ichiro said.

  “Right you are, Ichiro. Right you are.” Rio peered at Jacob from across the reference desk. “I must say, this is a change. You haven’t outgrown superheroes already, have you?” He was one of the few librarians who had bothered to learn Jacob’s name — they had a shared interest in comics.

  Familiar with the library’s schedule and aware that Rio would be working, Jacob knew this would be the perfect day for the task at hand. He expected Rio to question him a little, but also buy just about anything he’d say, so Jacob had come prepared with an answer. “Of
course not. It’s for a summer school project.” He hooked a thumb at Ichiro. “We were paired up and told to find a newspaper article in the Valeton Voice from the early 1900s, and then present it to the class with some observations about the time period.”

  “Summer school?” Rio said, surprised. “I didn’t think you’d need to retake any classes, Jacob.”

  “I don’t,” Jacob lied easily. “I’m working ahead for extra credit.”

  “Me too,” Ichiro added with a smile. “We’re smart.”

  Rio stood and walked out from behind the desk, leading the boys through the library. “Ah. I see. Well, I’m relieved to hear you’re not done with comics. The stats from all your checkouts is one of the main reasons I can justify keeping them in the collection, and it took me too many years to convince the board we should have them in the first place.” They entered the local history room, a small and cozy room with a fireplace, a leather chair, a microfilm reader and one computer. A metal filing cabinet was shoved into a corner, and the shelves were crammed with books on the Muskoka region and binders of council meeting notes and other assorted items of local interest. On the wall above the computer hung a large framed photograph of the Queen. There didn’t seem to be much order to the room’s contents, but Rio knew it like the back of his hand. He unlocked the bottom drawer of the filing cabinet and asked, “Do you know what year you need to search?”

  Jacob nodded. “We were assigned 1906.” It was the year James and Tresa were married, and as good a place as any that Jacob could think to start.

  “I’ve got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

  “Um, the good news?”

  “The Valeton Voice published its first paper in 1903. If your teacher had assigned you a year earlier than that, you wouldn’t have been able to complete the assignment. But you’re in luck — you get to do your homework!”

  “Yay,” Ichiro said, trying his best to sell his delivery.

  “And the bad news?” Jacob asked.

  “I’ve been spending the past few summers digitizing the collection, scanning every page of every newspaper and putting them online so they’re easily searchable, even from home. But I’m going back in time, and I’ve only made it to 1955. So you’re going to have to scan through reels of microfilm.” Rio ran his fingers along a row of small boxes that sat in the drawer. “1903, 1904, 1905 … here we go … 1906.” He pulled out four boxes, each one labelled with the year and a three-month range. He opened the box labelled 1906, Jan. to Mar., unpacked a reel of film and wound it into the reader.