The Last Days of Summer (31 page)

She tries to smile then, but it doesn't feel right on her face somehow. Like maybe she's outgrown it. ‘Uncle Jasper …' she says uncertainly ‘… why don't anybody like you here?'

‘I promised your mother I wouldn't tell you.'

Joanne glances to her mother's back, bent over the sink, rinsing the blood-soaked cloth. ‘That's a stupid promise,' she whispers, still watching her mother.

His broken lips struggle to smile again, but his jaw is still twisted the wrong way. ‘I'm startin' to think that myself,' he murmurs, a sadness deep set behind his puffy eyes.

‘Joanne, you stop pestering your uncle, now, you hear?' Mom's tone sounds more stressed than truly cross. She leans over Jasper, tilts his head back towards her and wipes his bloodied, swollen brow with the damp cloth. ‘You need stitches.' Her hand is shaking slightly as she pulls the cloth away to rinse it out again.

‘I'll live.'

A truck engine pulls up the drive and cuts off. Mom crosses the room in two quick paces and pulls the curtain back to glance out the window. Her Hungerford semi-automatic stands upright beside her, propped against the sink. Joanne stares at it, as though seeing it for the first time, though she has known of this gun's existence since long before Grandma died. It is kept behind the grandfather clock. She has known her whole life not to go near it, not to touch it, that ‘guns are not toys'. A single tear runs down her cheek and she wipes it away with the back of her hand. ‘Mom,' she whispers hoarsely, ‘are they back?'

Her mother lets the curtain fall into place. ‘No, sweet,' her voice softens, ‘it's just your sister home.'

The front door opens and closes. Footsteps carefully come up the hall, one foot after the other as though testing if it's safe. ‘Mom? Joanne?' Katie softly calls. ‘You there?'

‘In here!' Joanne's voice shakes.

Her mother crosses to the icebox, pulls out a bag of frozen peas and hands it to her uncle. ‘Hold this to your face,' she says. ‘It'll bring the swelling down a bit, though I reckon your jaw's dislocated.'

He spits blood into the basin beside him. It floats a second on top of the water before swirling down and
staining the liquid red. Katie stands still in the kitchen doorway, her mouth hanging open, just like in a cartoon, Joanne thinks. When Bugs Bunny sees something unexpected his jaw drops right down to the floor. ‘Hi, Katie,' she whispers.

Her sister says nothing. She stands in the doorway staring at Uncle Jasper. The smell of grease and coffee spills off her to fill the room, overpowering the sweet stench of Uncle Jasper's sweat, the muskier smell of his drying blood. He turns to her slowly, lowering the bag of peas from his deformed, swollen face. Joanne watches as her sister's eyes widen.

‘Take a good look, sweetheart,' he says, ‘I'm finally as ugly on the outside as the in.' And he laughs then. Or tries to laugh. Blood gets caught in his throat and he has to spit it out again. He holds his ribs with his arm, as though it's sore to breathe.

‘Go upstairs, girls, both of you.' Mom's tone is firm. ‘There ain't no more to see here.'

It is a long time before Lizzie's hands stop shaking. She tried her best to control them in front of Joanne while she tended Jasper's wounds. She tried her best to keep them still after, as she tidied the kitchen, washed her brother's blood off the counters, dumped it down the drain. But her hands shook the whole way through. They shook as she wrung his blood from the damp cloths. They shook as they rubbed disinfectant on his cuts. They even shook when she'd opened up the icebox and pulled out the peas. A part of her had wondered if maybe she was meant to shake. If shaking was her way from here on out. But a part
of her knew as well that when she'd aimed her rifle barrel at Eddie Saunders' head her hands had not once trembled.

She had guessed that trouble might come knocking, though had not expected it to call so soon. Nor had she anticipated the gang that accompanied Eddie Saunders. She had hoped most folks would just leave what happened in the past behind them. She realizes now that she was wrong to think people might have forgotten, to think that he might ever be forgiven. Not here. She's not even fully sure she's forgiven him herself. Or if she even wants to.

She does not turn her light on when eventually she goes upstairs to her room to rest. Though exhaustion sends aches through her limbs, she feels anything but sleepy. She does not bother changing nightshirts. Is unaware that his blood stains the one she wears. She crosses the room in darkness, holding her daddy's rifle tight enough that she can feel the blood draining from her knuckles. She sits down on her bed. The same bed she and Bobby shared for a while.
Before Eddie done what he done to him and Bobby run off …
She lets hate fill her. Pictures Bobby's swollen face all those years back. The cigarette burns still hot on his flesh. She pictures her brother's twisted jaw, the angry purple flesh swelling around his cuts. His eyes barely able to open. And her whole body starts shaking. Convulsing. Not just her hands any more, but everything. Her legs quiver and tremble where she sits. Her spine shudders as though chilled. Her jaw is shaking. Her hands … her hands. She looks down at her hands and so much hate spills into her. So much anger and malice and rage. Like all the emotion from the last
ten years locked up and held dormant inside her has suddenly gushed out. ‘I should have shot him dead,' she says, out loud, to the empty room around her, and suddenly her hands go still. She holds them out before her, just able to decipher their outlines in the darkness of the room. Still. Not a single tremor runs through them. Not a single tremble passes over her. Slowly, she lowers her hands to her sides. She pulls the sheets back and slips into bed under them, grabbing the Hungerford as she does so, slipping it into the bed beside her. Slowly her body curls around it, entwining with the rifle as if it were some long-lost lover. Sobs shake her body till even her anger has left her, and she lies immobile, unfeeling, waiting for sleep to find her, the Hungerford held close to her, cradled like an infant in her arms.

The knock on his door is so light he almost does not hear it. It is the second knock, louder this time, though still softened by uncertainty, that wakes him from his reverie. He had been thinking about prison when the first knock came. He had been remembering the naked women drawn above his bunk. Thinking back on them, on their seduction and allure, calms him just a little from time to time. The same way for some that thinking back on a summer sweetheart might soften their heart. They were with him a long while, those girls, after all. His perfect ceiling sky. And he misses them. He misses gazing upon them. He wonders who now sleeps in his old bunk. Who jerks off to those beauties that for a time were his and only his. He is not turned on, remembering their beauty.
That surprises him.
In a different life I may never have met them
, he thinks. And then he hears the knock.

‘Come in.' His voice sounds rough in the darkness, even to his ears. His jaw feels stiff to move. Like his mouth is full when it isn't.

Slowly, the door creaks open, and she steps inside.

He doesn't know what to say to her. At first. Her big eyes fix on him. It seems to him inappropriate somehow for a little girl to be in his room at this late hour, yet somehow he finds he doesn't mind so much, a part of him glad to see her standing there. It would be nice not to be alone, he thinks. On this night he could use the company. It's been a long while since a girl entered his room at night, though, a long, long while indeed. Longer still since a woman has.

‘What do you want?' His voice is rougher than he meant it. He can't quite control his jaw the way he'd like to. It hurts when he opens his mouth too wide. His ribs hurt when he breathes. Even the shallow breaths.

She hesitates in the doorway, as though surveying the room. As though waiting for some further invitation. One toe on one foot scratches the shin on her opposite leg. Her hair surrounds her head in slept-in tangles. ‘Can I come in?' she whispers, rubbing one eye with a fist.

He grunts as answer, so she closes the door behind her and crosses the room quickly to sit at the foot of his bed. She pulls her knees into her, and her big eyes peer over them at him.
She's got skinny legs, even for a kid
, he thinks. Tiny goosebumps mark her flesh, though to him the
night feels warm. He sits up. The wall behind him feels cool against his bare back. He feels self-conscious suddenly of the fact he wears no shirt. For a moment he hates her for making him feel that way, but he lets the moment pass. He lets that anger leave him.

‘Are you OK?' she whispers.

He doesn't try to smile. He doesn't want to scare her. He saw his reflection earlier on his way up the stairs, and he knows he's far from pretty. ‘I'll be fine,' he says.

‘Does it hurt real bad?'

He pauses. ‘A bit.'

‘I'm sorry.'

‘It ain't your fault.'

She reaches down and picks at one of her toes. Looks back up at him with those big doe eyes. ‘Uncle Jasper?'

‘Yeah?'

‘Why did those men beat you up?'

Out on the prairie a screech owl calls and falls silent, and he wonders what it is hunting, rabbit or mouse or even a possum maybe. Her eyes stay fixed on him. She looks so like her mother. He fidgets with the corner of the sheet, smoothing the cotton between his fingers. then lets it fall back onto the bed beside him. ‘It's like I told you before, they want me gone.'

‘Why?'

‘I did some things a long time ago. Things you ain't supposed to do. Things that have made me unwelcome.'

‘Is that why you went to prison? Because of those things?'

He is silent a long moment. ‘Yes.'

She folds her legs beneath her and sits up a little straighter. ‘What did you do?' Her eyes so wide upon
him. So innocent. It seems to him sometimes that all he does is take the beauty from the world. He does not want to take that wonder from her, to be the one to take her trust away.

He shakes his head. ‘Your mama don't want me to tell you. I think you know that much.'

‘I'm not a baby,' she says crossly, ‘I'll be twelve soon.'

He hates to see her pout. He hadn't realized till just then how fond of the child he's grown. ‘I ain't sayin' you're a baby,' he whispers hoarsely to the darkness, her face just barely visible to him. ‘I see the woman you're becoming. I see her every day. But I don't want to be the one to force you into her.'

Her brow furrows, pulling darkness to her. ‘It's not fair. Everyone knows what you did but me.' She looks down, cross, pouting. ‘I thought we were friends,' she says, so soft he nearly has to guess the words she speaks.

He lets her words hang between them a long while. The screech owl calls again, closer, and then only silence sounds. He thinks of the men who beat him that night. Of Eddie with all his vengeful rage. Of Roy and his betrayal. He thinks of Katie's young fella, and wonders if he would have acted differently when he was that age, had a gang gotten him all riled up. He reckons he, too, would have come along for the beating in a different world, where things had been different, and he hadn't been the one set to be beaten. ‘All right,' he says. ‘I'll tell you.' His words surprise him, but it's too late now, he reckons, and he doesn't try to take them back.

‘Are you really gonna tell me?' She forgets to whisper she's so excited.

He puts a finger to his lips and smiles then. Or tries to, his swollen face contorting with the effort. ‘I reckon you got a right to know. Don't make me change my mind.'

She leans forward, long legs crossed there at the foot of his bed. ‘What'd you do?' she whispers, wide eyes locked upon him.

He hesitates. ‘Not now, kiddo.' He watches even in the darkness as her face falls. ‘I promise I will tell you. But I need to rest this swollen jaw. You come to me real soon 'n' I'll tell you what I done.'

The sky has started to lighten, but is not bright yet. Only the first birds are stirring, calling their morning songs.

Her doe eyes search his. ‘You promise?'

‘Ain't that what I said?'

‘Pinkie promise?' She holds out her little finger.

He looks at it as though it is an object foreign to any he has seen before. Slowly he raises his own hand. What little light there is catches and reflects off her dirty gold mane and the tiny blonde hairs that line her arms and legs.
That's all she is really
, he thinks,
arms and legs, and tiny golden hairs
, and to him, in that moment, she is perfect. He does not want her to grow up. For a moment he wishes she could for ever stay caught in this divine limbo, not a woman yet, not quite a little girl, as innocent as now. But he knows that is not possible. He can feel time's passing, can see the woman she'll grow into even now as she beholds his wounds. Even now, as she extends her little finger towards him. He could see it earlier, too, behind her fear. The woman taking over. Little girls don't see
violence and keep their innocence, he thinks. Little girls don't have murderous gangs wake them up at night and stay little very long.

Slowly, he takes her pinkie in his. ‘I promise.'

She smiles then, springs up, leans over him and kisses him on his forehead, right where his mother used to when she'd tuck him in. All those years ago. He's not sure he's ever been kissed by a little girl like that before. At least, not since he's been grown. Her lips feel soft and cool against his angry swollen flesh. And then she's gone, just like that, so fast he's nearly left wondering if he dreamed her. If he dreamed that a little girl could care for him. Could ask him if he's OK. He never would have thought something so good could show care for him. Not after the choices he's made, not after all he's done. He shakes his head to clear it. It doesn't matter, though, he tells himself, not really. When he tells her what he did, she'll look at him just like her sister does, just like everyone he passes seems to as of late. That he does feel sad for. ‘What's fair is fair,' he says out loud, and he pulls the sheet up to his chin and lies with his back to the window, willing his tired soul to sleep.