The Last Days of Summer (32 page)

It is strange, Lizzie thinks, how long it takes to grow life, and yet how quickly it can be destroyed. She kneels in her mother's garden, hands caked with earth, salvaging what plants she can. Most of the primroses down by the front gate are still intact but the bushes closer to the porch are completely destroyed, as are all the daffodils that lined the path. Large tyre tracks criss-cross the garden, their treads cutting deep into the flowerbeds. The rose bushes
that lined the drive, the ones the reverend had only just praised her for, her mother's pride and joy, now lie in ruins, roses and rose petals spread like confetti across the drive and lawn. Lizzie is glad her mother did not live to see her garden so destroyed. ‘I'm sorry, Mama,' she whispers to the earth, as she uproots the crushed marigolds and tries to restore the tiny patch of tiger lilies now bent parallel to and pressed into the earth.

There was blood on the grass by the porch steps. Lizzie had stared at it a long while when she'd come down that morning. She'd dumped a pail of water over it, but it hadn't seemed to make a difference. She didn't want her girls to come down and see the blood there on the ground outside their home. Jasper's blood. She didn't want them to have that memory. If she could have, she would have erased the memory of last night altogether. She tore the blades of grass up with her hands instead till a patch of bare earth spread before her. The grass roots had cut into her palms. Now the bald patch of ground between garden and porch stands out more even than the blood had. But she can't remove its memory. She can't get the blood out of her mind.

The first time Jasper ever hurt anybody, he couldn't have been much older than ten. Daddy'd given him the old Hungerford to learn how to hunt, and Lizzie'd tagged along one day with him and Roy, following them far out past her daddy's land and into the open prairie that stretched on beyond. Of course she'd known they were going hunting. She was young, not dumb. She'd seen her daddy come home with piles of rabbits tied up by their feet, ready to be skinned for Mama's stew pot. She'd been
raised on a farm her whole life – Lizzie had never been overly sentimental towards animals, even as a child. That was the way on a farm. That was the way she'd learned. But there was something about the way Jasper had killed that rabbit the day she'd tagged along that had stayed with her for many years after, had haunted her for a while, and then, when he was in jail, she had found that her mind often wandered back to that crisp autumn day when they were children still. The first day he'd ever truly scared her.

‘You wanna see how a rabbit takes his clothes off?' he'd said to her, teasing.

‘Rabbits don't wear clothes, Jasper,' she had said, sure her older brother was somehow tricking her.

‘Yes, they do,' he'd said, grinning. ‘I'll show you.' And he'd shot the next rabbit they saw. Except he didn't shoot to kill. She understood that now, looking back, but then she'd thought he'd missed by accident.

‘Jasper, Jasper! He's hurt!' she'd cried.

Roy had been real agitated. Like maybe he'd known already. ‘Don't, Jasper,' he'd said. But she had not known yet what was coming. She was too little still back then and had not understood.

Jasper went over to where the hurt rabbit had fallen. He'd shot it in its haunches, and it was bleeding too bad to hop away. He picked it up and held it real tender to his chest and called her over to him. Its blood ran onto him, down his shirt and leg. She was scared. ‘Come look, Lizzie,' he'd said, and he'd bent down real low so she could see it better. She reached out and touched its soft fur. It trembled under her touch. Its eyes so filled
with fear. ‘Now watch,' he'd said, ‘and I'll take his coat off for you.'

He held it in his arms the whole while. Even as he got his knife out. Even as he carved into it, skinning it alive. She screamed when she saw what he was doing. And there were tears on Roy's cheeks as he begged Jasper to stop. It was that memory that came back to Lizzie when she had first heard what, years later, he had done. It was that memory more than anything that had assured her of his guilt. She loved her brother, he had always been good to her, but that day out on the prairie, she had seen the darkness in his soul, and she knew him capable of relishing the pain caused to another.

She has tried and tried over the years since to remember what might have happened earlier on that day. Had Daddy maybe beaten him? Had Jasper been bullied in the schoolyard? But, no, to her recollection, it had been a normal day. Till poor Mr Rabbit had shed his coat. She couldn't stop crying after that. The whole way home, walking through the tall prairie grasses. And Jasper had promised her he'd never do that again. Had picked her a bouquet of wild flowers. ‘I'm sorry, sis,' he'd said. ‘I thought you'd find it funny.'

She had sat through one day of Jasper's trial. All those years later and now so many years ago. Mama had refused to go. Had said she didn't want to see her son in ‘that light'. But it had seemed to Lizzie that one of them ought to be there, so she had gone. Alone. Reporters had swarmed around her on the courthouse steps, the flashes of their cameras still exploding in her eyes even once she'd stepped inside. Experts had been brought in
that day to discuss Jasper's mental health and a lot of big words had been thrown around that Lizzie had not heard before. Then they'd called him a psychopath. And that word she did know. And she understood then what Mama had meant about not wanting to see Jasper in ‘that light'.

It is those memories that come back to her now, her hands caked in earth, as she tries to repair the lifeless plants crushed all around her. A single tear rolls down her cheek, and Lizzie quickly raises her hand to brush it aside, dirt smearing across her face as she does so.

‘Mama must be rollin' over in her grave.'

She looks up. Jasper leans against the porch railing. The swelling on his face has gone down a bit, but the purple bruises have turned black, the skin between them a discoloured yellow-green. ‘Jesus, Jasper,' she shakes her head, ‘I never seen you look more handsome.'

He snorts, the corners of his lips nearly quivering up into a crooked smile.

She sits back, her feet tucked beneath her, and shades the sun from her eyes. ‘What you gonna do?' she asks him.

‘ 'Bout what?'

‘ 'Bout last night.'

He shrugs. ‘Ain't much I can do, I reckon.'

‘They'll be back, you know,' she says quietly, her voice like stone.

He looks out beyond the garden to the open prairie. ‘Yeah,' he says, ‘I know.'

‘And what do we do then?'

‘I didn't want no trouble, Lizzie.'

‘It's a bit late for that now.'

He nods. Says nothing.

She lets out a long breath she hadn't realized she'd held. Her eyes search his. ‘I don't know what to do, Jasper. I don't know where to go from here that don't end up back in trouble.'

He walks down the porch steps and across the lawn to kneel beside her in what's left of their mother's ruined garden. Carefully he takes the rose bush held in Lizzie's hands and coaxes its bent stems back as upright as he can. Thorns cut his bare hands, but he ignores them. ‘I spent my whole life crushing beauty,' he says softly, so softly she has to strain to hear him. ‘It'd be nice to watch things grow awhile.'

‘I wish they'd let us,' she says softly.

He looks back at the house a long moment. ‘So do I.'

Sunlight filters through the trees to chequer the earth with shadow, dark opposing light, leaves overlapping, creating deeper, darker shadows. No grass grows beneath the trees, just smooth, dry earth littered slightly with fallen leaves and pine cones and the odd beer can left behind to rust. A thin layer of fallen pine needles carpets the rough rocks along the creek bank. The creek is just a trickle, really, not deep enough in this drought for swimming, but Joanne wades out into its shallows anyway, giggling as the cool water flows over her bare feet. He smiles, watching her face relax as she giggles and splashes. Her sister sits on a rock along the bank, feet dangling down so that her toes just skim the water. When he was a boy, he remembers that boulder at nearly water level. They used
to lie on their bellies on that same rock, used to watch dragonflies as they hovered above the water, dipping and rising, eating all the mosquitoes. There used to be rainbows caught in their iridescent wings when the light fell down just right. There must have been more rain, he thinks, those summers. They used to climb into the trees and drop down into the water when it was deep enough.

He is surprised in a way that he is here. Just his two nieces and him. No one else, far as the eye can see. No homesteads or newly built houses. Not even a car to hear passing up on the country road. He likes the still of it, this place, likes the sound of the wind whispering through the large grove of pines, talking softly through the leaves of the tall oak trees. The only trees for miles, really, lie along this creek. He likes the gurgle of the water as it flows past them, even if the water is so low. For the first time since his release he feels a different sort of freedom, like now, finally, he is truly unwatched. Well, he almost feels that way. He doesn't take kindly to Katie's wariness around him. The way she's always watching him, as bad as a prison guard. He can feel her eyes boring into him even when he looks away. It makes his skin itch.

It had been Lizzie's idea, him going with the girls. Katie had come downstairs late morning, her hair and face all done up already, a bounce in her step he didn't see the occasion for. ‘Mom, I'm takin' Jo swimmin',' she'd said.

Her mother had regarded her a long moment. ‘All righ',' she'd said. ‘You go on 'n' take her, then. But your uncle's comin' with you.'

He had looked over from his coffee. Face still a
deformed swollen mask, coloured the colour of ‘bruise'. Katie's eyes had darkened as they'd passed over him.

‘Mom –' she'd hissed.

‘You wanna go out?' Her mother cut her off. ‘Your uncle's goin' with you.'

‘What'd I do,' he'd asked quietly, as they were leaving, ‘to deserve this great honour?'

‘Keep them safe,' was all his sister had whispered, and there'd been fear deep within her eyes.

Now he sits upon the earth close to the creek bank. Slowly, he takes one shoe off and then the other. He places them to his side, lined up beside each other, as though waiting to be stepped into. He rolls one sock off, then the other. Wipes the fluff from between his toes, then places each sock crumpled up inside each shoe. His feet are pale. His toenails are a bit too long and jagged. He dips each foot into the fresh creek water and lets each settle there, right down on the bottom. The last bits of sock fluff separate from his skin and float up to the surface. The water's a little deeper than it at first seemed – it comes just under his knees and soaks the bottom of his jeans, which won't roll up any higher. The rocks beneath his feet feel mossy and slimy. He closes his eyes and feels the filtered sunlight fall upon his face. He wiggles his toes, the water cool around them. It feels like freedom to him, and his bruised and broken face twists into its own version of a smile.

‘Uncle Jasper?'

His eyes open. She is beside him somehow. Standing over him. He hadn't heard her approach.
Quiet as a doe too …
He squints to better see her face.

‘You promised me something last night.' There is a
shyness to her. A nervousness when she looks at him full on.

He nods. ‘I must look a monster to you,' he says, his voice like gravel, his jaw still twisted slightly on his face, the cheek around it tight and swollen.

Her eyes take him in and widen doing so. Her nose wrinkles. Then relaxes. ‘Kind of,' she whispers, as a smile eases her nervousness away in tiny fractions.

He sets his hands palm down on the earth behind him and leans back a little, letting his shoulders hunch. Letting his crooked grin grow. He studies her.

‘You promised me,' she whispers again, softly. Her eyes implore his, search his, and the hardness inside him melts just a little.

‘I did,' he says.

Across the creek from them, Katie leans forward, eyes dark with mistrust, her red toenails skimming the water as she swings her long, tanned legs. They distract him, tease him. Any other man just out of Huntsville, he tells himself, would have found a way to touch those legs by now.

‘Will you tell me?' Joanne softly asks.

‘Tell you what?' Katie raises her voice to let it travel.

Joanne twists one toe down into the soft sand of the creek bank. ‘You promised me too, Katie,' she says, turning to her sister. ‘You said you'd tell me one day what he done.'

‘Yeah, one day, not now!' Katie rises, swinging her legs up from the water to stand tall on the rock, towering above them on the opposite side of the bank. Tiny bits of spray fall from her feet and ankles. ‘Don't you tell her,' she says, her focus shifting to him, her index finger pointing
at him. She sounds, he thinks, just like her mother. He does not take kindly to her tone.

‘Uncle Jasper,' Joanne whispers, ‘tell me why you went to prison.'

‘Please,' Katie sounds desperate now, almost pleading, ‘don't.'

The sisters' eyes meet and hold. He watches them as they stare at each other. Both brown as dried-out prairie grass, browner even, maybe. Both gold as the open fields at sunset, when the sun's gold rays cast down and touch the land. The older – so tall, so beautiful, so tempting to a man. And the younger … not grown into her beauty yet, but to him even more captivating. A precious, delicate thing. A thing to protect. It's been a long while since Jasper felt the need to protect anyone save himself. Nearly as long since he had a friend. He'd rather Joanne never knew all the mistakes he's made, but a promise is a promise, Jasper tells himself. And he'd rather he told her than somebody else.