The Summer Country

by James A. Hetley

  The light went from red to green to red again while they snuggled. A cop cruised by, slowing down before deciding they didn't look like a threat to public decency. Too cold for that.

  They hugged and snuggled some more. Then she sobered and forced herself back to the subject at hand. She'd better get it all out in the open.

  "David, Maureen's crazy. Dad's a drunken wife-beater. Mom's a religious freak: if she hadn't gotten married I think she'd be a nun. I'm what you'd call an 'experienced woman.' You up to handling all that?"

  "I don't have to live with the rest of the mob." He nuzzled her ear, again. "And I enjoy your experience. You're like Adam with his guitar: you don't get that far without some damn good teachers and a hell of a lot of practice."

  "Stop that! Your hands are too cold!"

  The hands stopped. They retreated. They left a tingling sensation on her butt, and she didn't bother to refasten the popped snap of her jeans. Hip-huggers, they wouldn't fall off unless she asked them to. Which she probably would, but not until she'd walked another few blocks.

  A hot shower for two would warm up those hands quite nicely.

  She loved those strong musician's hands with the dancing fingers. Sometimes she felt jealous of his guitar strings. If he moved in, she could get him to play love-songs at three A.M. and then proceed to the logical conclusion.

  Yeah. He could play love-songs at three A.M. with Maureen in the next bedroom.

  She followed that thought to its logical conclusion and smiled up at him. "Maureen's got to go."

  David blinked. "Just kick her out, like that?"

  She pulled him across the intersection as if she was going to serve papers on her sister tonight. It was time to get this nonsense over with. Make a clean break.

  "Lover, she's a leech. A twenty-eight-year-old dependent child, tantrums and all. If she can't put up with you moving in, she can haul her ass back to Mommy's apron strings. I'm not licensed to run a group home for the mentally ill."

  David reclaimed his hand, then kicked at a lump of snow. He didn't look happy.

  "Jo, I can find an apartment of my own, a place we can be private. Living with the band, that's kind of weird, anyway. Some kind of mystic brotherhood bullshit. Thought we'd practice more that way, build 'rapport,' fuse into one soul with five pairs of hands. All we needed was a magic well and the harp of Brian Boru to make it work. Let her stay."

  "Screw it, David. I'm not Christian enough to be my sister's keeper. It's not just you. This has been wearing at me for years now, my own Chinese Water Torture. 'Watch out for little Maureen, dear, keep her out of trouble.' 'You're older, it's your responsibility, dear.' 'This wouldn't have happened if you'd been more adult, dear.' Screw it!"

  David shook his head. "I'm going to hate myself for this, come morning. I can't let you kick Maureen out for me. I'd feel like one of those damned seal-hunters, clubbing little loveable white babies for their fur. She's got that same helpless look in her eyes."

  "Helpless, bullshit! That little twit carries a gun everywhere she goes!"

  David stopped short and stared at her. "A gun?"

  "Frigging .38 Special. Sleeps with it, takes it to the john with her, even packs it with her swimsuit when we go out to the lake."

  "Jeezum."

  "You want to know what she thinks about men, watch her shooting silhouettes. She gets this look on her face like she's some kind of executioner. Scares the bejayzus out of me."

  David rubbed his eyes. "What do you mean, how she thinks about men? Targets are kinda unisex, aren't they?"

  "I saw her flat-out shred the crotch of a target--five shots, speed reload, five more shots. I could have put my fist right through the hole."

  His hands dropped, instinctively covering the target area. "Christ! You keep talking like that, babe, you'll have me sleeping alone tonight. Maybe I need to take some time to think over that little question of yours. Yes, your crazy sister bothers me."

  Jo blinked back tears. The weather they'd been having, she'd freeze her frigging eyelids shut. Even salt-water would freeze, get it cold enough. Things were getting awfully cold around here, all of a sudden. She re-snapped her jeans.

  They trudged on through the snow, heads down and walled off in their own separate worlds. Jo felt like a yo-yo, up and down in the passion department. Even off-stage, little Mo sure knew how to kill a party. Or maybe it was hormones.

  David took her hand, kissing the back of her glove with a courtly bow like some Renaissance poet. The yo-yo headed up again, spinning madly.

  The streetlights picked up a tender smile. "You redheaded witch, it'll take more than that to break your spell. What do you know about that Brian character she was with tonight? Maybe we can patch things up between them, get him to whirl Maureen off into Never-Never Land. God knows, he's built like a knight in shining armor."

  Jo shrugged, got her throat working. "Voice on the phone." She probably sounded like a crow, trying to talk after crying.

  She swallowed and went on. "Never even saw him until we met at The Cave. Seems polite enough, good looking if you like the type. I kind of . . . maneuvered . . . him into being there, to take the heat off us. Never expected her to blow up all over the place."

  Maureen, she remembered, Maureen frothing at the mouth. Dumb-faced blonde hunk of muscle jerking back in shock. The "R" word and instant rage. Genuine surprise.

  Memories.

  Damn.

  A curly blonde, blue-eyed boy built like a brick shithouse. Did that ring any bells? Anyone she'd known?

  Oh, hell!

  Jo staggered over to another telephone pole and leaned against it, her head spinning. Shit, shit, shit, shit, shit! All her blood seemed to nose-dive to her feet, abandoning her brain to run on fumes. All it could come up with was a flickering montage of a red-eyed, red-haired child cowering in a corner, mixed in with flashes of Jo's first hormone-racked expedition into the wondrous Land of Sex.

  Buddy Johnson.

  Fucking ghosts from the fucking past. Brian looked a hell of a lot like Buddy Johnson. That was the missing link.

  David gripped her shoulders, held her up by both shoulders. It was a good thing he did. Otherwise she'd be sitting in the snow with a strip of phone-pole splinters up her ass.

  Memories cascaded over each other: times she'd come home to find Buddy already there, times Maureen had moved funny, looked funny. Bruises Jo had seen when they were getting ready for bed at night, bruises she'd blamed on Dad. Maureen white-faced in the john off their room with blood on the toilet paper, years before she'd had her first period. She'd said she'd scratched herself. Things that never connected before.

  "Jo, snap out of it! I had no idea watching out for her was that big a strain. We'll get you some help, move her into a group home, something . . . ."

  "David, don't pile anything more on that Maureen guilt-trip. I've got enough on my conscience, already."

  "Conscience?" He twirled her like a puppet until he was staring down into her eyes. "How in hell can Maureen be a load on your conscience? You program her brain when she was a baby, peel back her scalp before the soft-spot closed and punch in the codes for some particular breed of mental bug?"

  Those eyes. She really didn't want to tell him some things and look into those eyes while he thought about them. The far side of the street looked awfully interesting, right now.

  "Not the schizophrenia, not all the paranoia, not talking with the trees. Her thing about men, especially men with a certain kind of hair, a certain build. That Brian she was with tonight, that look. Blonde apes."

  "So what's that got to do with you?"

  "You saw what happened, heard what happened. She accused him of raping her. Typical spaced-out Maureen. Things just finally clicked. I used to go with a boy who looked like that. He could be oh-so-nice or he could be mean--real mean, a walking ad for a women's shelter. Sure cured me of my Electra Complex damn fast, comparing him with Daddy. I . . . I think my first boyfriend raped my sister."

&
nbsp; "And that makes you guilty?"

  "I didn't protect her. I never even thought about that horny bastard alone with a ten-year-old kid. Too full of myself, fourteen and just found out why boys and girls were different. He raped her. I flat-ass know he did. And I set it up."

  All those years and the little twit never told! And then another memory surfaced--her and Maureen whispering in a corner of the yard, and Maureen promising never to tell anyone about Jo and Buddy . . . .

  The tears dried up, lost in the static-crackly air and leaving a scratchy feeling around her eyes. Funny how finding a key to Maureen defused the tension between her and David. Her focus changed from sad to mad. It was time to sort things out, rant and rave and throw things around a bit. Try some confrontation therapy.

  She grabbed David's hand and hauled him along, stumbling over frozen ruts and tracks. She was not going to lose him to the family's skeleton in the closet. It had happened too damn many times . . . .

  She wanted David. She wanted him permanently.

  "Jo . . ."

  He pulled back. She just latched down harder.

  "Jo, what the hell are you doing?"

  "We're going to have a talk, you and me and little Mo. She's going into therapy again before she screws up my life any further. Either that, or I move out and leave her with the bills!"

  "Uh . . . okay. Look, Jo, slack off on the wrist. I'd like to be able to play again tomorrow. You've got strong hands, woman!"

  She stared down at her fingers clamped around his wrist. It felt like she was drawing power out of the ground and feeding it to a ball of fire on the end of her arm. She gritted her teeth and forced herself to relax. Her grip creaked loud enough to hear, and strength flowed out of the muscles, leaving them limp. David peeled her hand off and shook blood back into his fingers.

  "Sorry."

  "Jo, you looked like some kind of witch. Your hair stood up and your eyes glowed like a cat and the world kind of turned sideways. You like to crushed my wrist. You're not big enough for that!"

  "Momma cat defending her kittens. Lover, if I have any magic, I'm going to spend it holding on to you. I've never felt like this about a man before, and I'm not about to let you go. Maureen can sleep in a snow-bank, grab a blanket down at The Shelter, or curl up in the back of her rusty Tonka Toy. She comes between you and me, she's history."

  David bounced along in her wake as if he trailed on a leash. Jo blinked against the pounding in her temples and tried to ease whatever she was doing. She wanted him with everything intact.

  She felt a psychic tug when he stopped. What the hell was this magic thing, anyway?

  "Jo . . . that gun. I'm not joking around. Maureen with a gun scares the living shit out of me."

  She turned back, suddenly aware they stood on her front steps. It seemed like they'd covered two blocks in two seconds.

  Jo stabbed a finger down-slope, toward the river. "That gun's going for a swim, first chance I get. If she's asleep when we go in, we take it and heave it and tell her if she tries to get another, the police chief is going to get a call with some names and addresses he might want to contact. You're not the only one. My psycho sister ain't got no business owning a gun."

  Jo turned and headed up the steps again. The ice looked like somebody had dumped coffee all over it, dark stains in the blue glow of the mercury vapor yard-light. She had to watch her step all winter, what with the dogs and all.

  Her glove stuck to the doorknob, wet wool on cold metal. And then inside she peeled it off and got some kind of gunk on her fingers. It was red under the hall light.

  David ran a finger over the railing of the stairs and held it up for her. Red, again.

  Blood.

  "Somebody got hurt," he said. "Fall on the ice, most likely. You get cold enough, you don't notice it. When I was working construction one winter, about twenty below, I smashed my thumb and didn't even know it until I took a break in the warming shed. Blood like you wouldn't believe. Ruined a pair of gloves."

  "Construction? You, working construction?"

  He grinned at her. "Hey, even guitar players will work if they get hungry enough."

  "Be careful of those hands, lover. I've got uses for them."

  She climbed stairs, thinking more about Maureen and David than about which of her neighbors caught his finger in a door. It wasn't her problem. Sorting out things with her sister, was.

  "Jo . . ."

  She looked closer. The smears by the doorbell button were red and sticky. She looked down. Dark drops glistened on the floor, leading to a puddle smeared towards the door and across the threshold. Her brain slowed down.

  About a tea-cup's worth of puddle.

  Blood.

  Maureen. That man . . . Brian.

  Who looked so much like Buddy Johnson. Who knew where Maureen lived, who'd walked her home last night. Who left The Cave within minutes of his fight with Maureen, who easily could have gotten here before she did, who could have waited outside for her or called her and tricked her back outside. Who could have been just a little pissed at the things she said, the things she did.

  Jo shivered.

  Brian, who looked so much like the older Buddy when the pro trainers pumped him full of steroids and he damned near went to prison for pounding the shit out of a guy in a bar . . . .

  David stepped in front of her. "Jo, give me your keys."

  The door stuck like it always did, jerky across the humped floor. Then Jo saw more blood--blood on the floor tile, blood on the white porcelain of the refrigerator, blood on paper towels wadded up on the table. She saw a man slumped in the corner between the refrigerator and the wall, head in his bloody hands, blood on his shirt, blood in his hair.

  His curly blonde hair.

  Jo froze. She knew she should scream. She knew she should rouse the neighbors, call the cops. Instead, she growled deep in her throat like a feral cat.

  She remembered, with a sudden flash, that she'd ended up hating Buddy Johnson--that sex between them had become war rather than love. Cops weren't good enough, personal enough; cops wouldn't allow her to tear this scumbag apart with her bare hands.

  "You bastard, you've killed her!"

  She flung herself past David, raging to claw the man's eyes out, sink her teeth into his throat, stomp his head until it popped like an overripe tomato and spilled his brains all over the floor. Her mind and sight and hands focused on a single thing.

  Vengeance for Maureen. Vengeance for her baby sister.

  Something grabbed her arm and spun her. A fist flashed at her face, a fist backed by red hair and a snarl.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maureen's glare nailed David to the wall.

  He felt like a frog that she planned to dissect, pinned to the wax bottom of the tray and spread out belly-up waiting for the scalpel. Alive.

  Jo groaned and stirred, blood trickling from her lip, and David knew he should go to her, defend her, comfort her, help her up. The air smelled bitter with electricity. He couldn't move.

  Insane.

  Maureen was insane. It had just been a word, before. Here in the blood-spattered kitchen with a man's body slumped against the cabinets and a gun lying on the table, the words grew substance.

  Psychotic. Demented. Deranged. Homicidal maniac.

  Stone-ass crazy.

  She had murdered that man. She was going to murder Jo.

  And then the corpse moved. The corpse shoved itself up to sit against the wall and cradled its arm in its lap and groaned. The corpse wore undershorts and undershirt, not what a corpse should be wearing if it had forced its way into an apartment and gotten shot. Other clothing lay in a sodden heap in one corner, leaking a thin trail of red.

  David's eyes finally passed details on to his brain. A long slash gouged across the man's left arm. Black thread ran up it in a ragged line of stitches. A bowl of red water sat on the floor. Little white boxes with red crosses on them lay scattered around. Gauze rolls and gauze pads and flesh-colored tape mixed among b
ottles, peroxide and iodine.

  The static died and he smelled a doctor's office, antiseptic and blood and freshly opened bandages. She hadn't killed him. She was patching him up. The poor bastard had gotten himself into a hell of a mess.

  Maureen grabbed a lump of white and threw it at David. His fingers told him it was a roll of paper towels.

  "Don't just stand there like a fucking idiot! Take some water and clean up that crap out in the stairwell."

  Whatever pinned him against the wall vanished. David stumbled over to the sink, rattled a saucepan under the faucet, and splashed water in it. He still couldn't go to Jo. Maureen's aura forbade it.

  He felt like he'd walked into a coven of witches. First Jo damn near pulped his wrist with her tiny hands, then Maureen knocked Jo clear across the kitchen with one off-balance punch. Neither woman weighed more than a hundred, in winter clothes and sopping wet. What the hell was with these Pierce women?

  Maureen told him to clean up, he went to clean up. No choice. Maybe Jo would wake up enough to battle her sister for his soul.

  Blood and water and sodden red paper towels--it seemed like he wiped up enough blood for a minor war. A puddle of blood affects the eyes differently than a puddle of water, connects to different nerves, works deep on the brain stem. And the damned stuff spreads around like thick paint. One drop will smear to cover a whole floor-tile.

  It still was what Maureen or Jo would call a fucking mess, no doubt about it. Sometimes you could tell they were sisters from a typed transcript. Fucking this, goddamn that, assorted obscenities and blasphemies as add-on adjectives and adverbs at a rate of two per sentence.

  His mother had always said that the casual use of profanity indicated a poverty of intellect. Someone with half a brain could come up with sharper and more compelling words that wouldn't blush a Baptist preacher. And besides, the way they used foul language, it lost all effect. It faded into background noise after the first ten minutes.

  Speaking of brains . . . where was his? He stared down at the saucepan full of thin spaghetti sauce and the wad of crimson paper towels. He was mopping up blood on the stairs while Maureen played EMT.