What Dies in Summer (13 page)

Gram stood over him. “What exactly happened to you, Jack?”

“Guy bussid m’ buckin teet,” he said. “Swald two ub’m.”

I saw the truth of this; Jack no longer had any teeth at all in the front, a fact that in combination with his overall condition sent a wild surge of joy through me. But that didn’t last,
the pleasure almost immediately turning to constipated guilt. Mom honked into her tissue again and Gram patted her halfheartedly on the shoulder.

“I’m sure he’ll be just fine,” Gram said.

L.A. was still examining Jack. “Can you smell stuff?” she said, checking out both sides of the wrecked nose.

“Duh-uh,” said Jack.

A tired-looking little doctor with spiky blond hair came in the door. “Hello, folks,” he said without looking up from his clipboard.

“Enter young Hippocrates,” said Gram.

The doctor glanced up at Gram with a professional smile. “Are you the family?”

“Some of it,” she said. “Can you tell us about the patient’s condition, Doctor?”

“Well, we have multiple blunt-force traumata here, over most of the head, neck, upper torso and abdomen, but except for the neck apparently no internal injuries worthy of note. In terms of
brain damage, which technically happens anytime someone is knocked out, whatever’s there seems to be minimal in this case. A number of defensive bruises on the forearms. In a couple of places
you can actually see what appear to be knuckle marks. It looks like he got beat up.”

The words
riding whip
appeared in my mind and then vanished without explanation.

“Remarkable,” said Gram. “Are you a Harvard man?”

“A&M,” he said. “But I studied real hard.”

“Ah. Well then, you seem to believe our Jack is going to recover?”

“I think so. There’s some damage to a couple of disks in the neck, which may or may not produce sequelae . . .”

It was clear from Gram’s expression that she understood perfectly well what this meant, which gave me a fantasy of college classes where the students did nothing but sit around and learn
weird words.

The doctor went on, “. . . and he’s lost some dentition, as you can see, along with the broken nose. There may be a little residual laziness of the right eyelid due to superficial
nerve and muscle damage.”

“Sumbidge caw me nod loogin,” said Jack.

“But that seems to be about it,” the doctor said. “We’ll probably discharge him tomorrow. I imagine he’ll want to talk to an orthodontist.”

Mom indignantly piped up, “Rachel was here, and you know what she said? She said, ‘Well, hell, there goes the taffy apples.’ Can you believe that?”

Gram looked at her for a long beat. Her nostrils quivered and she cleared her throat but gave no other sign. Finally she said, “I suppose he was lucky at that. It’s just not much
like our Jack to get into a fight with anyone who could do this to him.”

Behind her L.A. nodded.

“C’mon,” said Mom. “Don’t start up with that.” Her own nose was red and tender-looking by now.

“Well, since you mention it,” the doctor said, “these injuries don’t exactly look like the result of an ordinary fight to me, especially when you take into account the
condition of the patient’s hands. Or maybe we should say noncondition—”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t think he got many licks in.”

“You seem to have a forensic turn of mind,” said Gram, giving him the little lopsided smile she dispensed for dog tricks and clever children.

The doctor looked pleased. “It is an interest of mine,” he said. He glanced at Jack. “The damage we see here is quite a bit in excess of what it would’ve taken to simply
win the fight, but on the other hand it doesn’t look like the guy, who I think was left-handed, by the way, was trying to finish him off either.”

“What do you conclude?”

“I think it may have been a matter of prolonging the action. If I were Sherlock Holmes I might say this was done in a rather clinical fashion, not out of rage. In fact, as bad as this is,
it looks to me as if the other guy could have hurt him a whole lot worse if he’d wanted to.”

“Well,” said Gram. “That is intriguing. You know, Jack is a trained boxer.”

The doctor looked at Jack again. “No, I didn’t know,” he said. “That does add an element of mystery, doesn’t it? In that case you’d have to believe the other
guy was very impressively skilled, though I don’t know what his motives might have been.”

L.A. went back to take another look at Jack’s face. She stood on her tiptoes and seemed to be comparing his eyes.

“Can you blink?” she said.

Jack blinked.

A long narrow nurse in silent shoes came in. The doctor talked up to her for a minute with a slightly annoyed expression, then shook hands with Gram and left. We all stood around watching Jack
as the nurse leaned down and checked his pulse.

This was now a situation of expert routines and there didn’t seem to be anything left for an ordinary person to do or say here. I kept having mental pictures of somebody beating Jack up
and thinking about what it would have taken to accomplish that. I couldn’t make myself believe anyone but a professional fighter could have done it, but that’s where I ran out of
ideas.

“Jack,” said Gram, handing Mom a fresh tissue. “When you go out to repossess a car do you have to notify the police first?”

He nodded. “Esh,” he said.

“Mm,” said Gram, as if that settled the matter for her. “Well then, since it looks like you’ll live, I think the youngsters and I will be on our way. Leah, let me know if
there’s anything I can do.”

“Sure, Mom.” She gave each of us a quick hug.

Now that I’d seen Jack, I wanted the hell out of there. I didn’t like hospitals. The air in them was full of pain, and death skulked around every corner.

On my way out of Jack’s room I ran smack into Shepherd Boy. He said, “Oh!” like somebody who’d never taken a hit before. In fact he felt as soft as a girl.

I couldn’t make sense of seeing him here, but he told us he was on a pastoral visit to see Jack. Then it didn’t make sense in another way because Jack, not being what you’d
call an active member of the congregation, usually just showed up at church for funerals and maybe Easter. A look passed between Jack and Shepherd Boy.

We finished our excuse-me’s and I walked on down the hall. I never knew what this was all about but the next day I did hear Gram mention some shared literary tastes Jack and Shepherd Boy
seemed to have, whatever that meant.

As we turned the corner at the end of the hall I glanced back at Mom in the doorway of Jack’s room, knowing she’d stay here at the hospital with him until he was discharged. He
always had to have her nearby if he was sick or hurt, that being one of the reasons she didn’t have a job. This was in addition to his suspiciousness—like if he got the idea she’d
been talking to some other man, for example, or wasn’t telling him the truth about something—which would mean he’d beat her up. As a matter of fact, trying to help Mom during one
of these fights had been pretty much my last act before getting sent to Gram’s. Afterward Mom told everybody she ran into a cabinet door, and said I’d fallen off my bicycle.

Thinking of this reminded me somehow of Hubert, who kept a notebook that he drew pictures of skulls and snakes in. I didn’t know if there was any connection between the two facts, but he
also drank beer or even hard liquor anytime he could get it. Even his music was edgy, full of rough chords and growling vocals, nothing like what you heard on the radio. For a second, for no
apparent reason, I visualized him huddled over forbidden books with Jack and Shepherd Boy in some poorly lit, undefined place of shame.

“Now, James, I want you to drive us home,” said Gram when we were outside. “And I want you to get us there safely and unfrightened.” She slid into the passenger’s
seat, set her purse on her lap and gripped it with both hands.

L.A. piled into the back and assumed her heckling position, elbows on the back of the front seat. “Scare me if you can,” she said.

I started the Roadmaster, backed out and headed for the house by way of Hampton. It was an uneventful trip except for one moron in a white Chevy with chewed-up fenders who ran a stop sign and
almost hit us, scaring the hell out of Gram and me.

“Lord-love-a-fool!” Gram shouted, giving the floorboard a mighty stomp. “Curse and blast!” She glared at me as if I were to blame. “Now, you see there,
James?”

“I knew he was gonna do that,” said L.A.

I looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Why didn’t you say so?”

“How else are you gonna learn?” Then she put her lips against my ear to keep Gram from hearing and whispered sweetly, “You dumb shit.”

We turned into the driveway and saw Diana sitting on the porch steps, her hair tousled up in the wind, twirling a dandelion in her fingers and watching the little parasols of fluff stream away.
She wore tan cotton shorts, white low-top canvas shoes and a red golf shirt I happened to know Don had given her when it got too small for him. She dropped the dandelion stem, stood up in that
unbelievably fine way of hers and walked across the grass to meet us as we got out of the car.

“I park,” said L.A. She enjoyed putting the Buick up in the garage, having absolutely no fear of the tight space.

“Guess what I heard,” said Diana.

“What?” I said, trying desperately not to stare at her legs.

“What?” said L.A.

“Pray tell,” said Gram.

“Some other girls got killed before the one Harpo and Biscuit found. Two of them. I heard Dad talking about it on the phone.”

YOU CAN FOCUS
on an idea, even an idea as big and momentous as other people dying, just so long before it numbs your mind and you run out of things to
think and say about it.

The names of the other girls who had been killed were Mandie Peyser and Marybeth Nichols, Diana told us. Mandie’s body had been found at the drive-in theater, behind the screen, and
Beth’s at the old lumberyard. Both of them had been naked, just like the girl L.A. and I found. I couldn’t remember any news about either of the first two at the time, but a lot happens
in a city as big as Dallas and not every murder makes the front page, which I had to admit was about all I usually read if you didn’t count the comics and the sports section. And it was
possible I had heard of the murders in a background kind of way, but because at that point I still hadn’t really gotten it through my head how much death actually had to do with me, maybe
they didn’t get my attention above the general roar of school and everything else that was going on in my life.

None of us really knew either of the other girls, but Diana was pretty sure she’d seen Mandie around school back in sixth grade and thought maybe she’d moved over to the Catholic
school the next year. We talked about the two of them for a while, little by little letting go of the unspoken assumption that dying was for the old and infirm, not people our age. For a while we
kept coming back to the things you say, like how rotten it was for them to die that way, and asking what kind of lunatic would do such a thing, but it wasn’t long before the conversation
began to lose steam.

I still couldn’t bring myself to tell anyone about my night visitor, secretly suspecting she was a sign of insanity and, whether that was true or not, being sure nobody was going to have
any answers for me anyway. When in doubt, saying nothing is nearly always the best policy. Silence can sometimes be repaired after the fact if need be, but not the wrong words. You can’t
unring a bell.

“It’s just so ugly and sad,” said Diana. “Who could do a thing like that?”

L.A. shrugged. Dee looked at her with an expression I couldn’t read.

“Somebody who’s nuts,” I ventured, still locked on to the idea of insanity.

“More like evil,” said Diana.

And that pretty much covered what we knew and thought. Gram, who had walked into the room during the conversation,
tsk
ed one last time, warned us against lurking fiends and strangers at
the door, grabbed her purse and left to go sit with Dr. Kepler. Diana and Dee, who’d been hanging out with L.A. and me for the afternoon, stuck around to play gin rummy. The murdered girls
stayed in my mind, but not, as far as I could see, in Diana’s, so here was another item on the long list of things that didn’t worry her excessively.

Of course, there was never any telling what Dee or L.A. were thinking, but L.A. had now become the picture of deadly concentration. We were playing our third hand, and after my draw she
carefully studied my eyes for a couple of seconds, discarded and said, “I’m knocking.” She spread her cards, everything in runs and sets except a red deuce and the spade seven she
knew I needed. Nine points.

I laid out my hand for Diana to count. There was no occasion for drama; as usual L.A. had looked straight into my defenseless brain, seen all the points I was holding and busted me. When she was
on like this, she was insuperable. Generally my only hope against her was the fantastic lucky streaks I occasionally had, when for a while I’d somehow know with perfect clarity what to hold
and what to toss and sometimes even what card was coming up. Fortunately I could usually feel these hot streaks coming and play them for all they were worth when they did, otherwise the opposition
would’ve had no respect for me at all.

Of course, today L.A. had softened me up ahead of time, offering me a swig of peppermint schnapps from a half-pint bottle while Gram was in the bathroom and before Dee and Diana arrived.

“Where’d you get it?” I said.

“The schnapps bunny. Try it.”

I took a taste before handing the flask back to L.A., not liking it much. She tipped it up and swallowed, then recapped it.

Dee and Diana were usually pretty bored when we played gin and always won or lost according to the fall of the cards instead of by skill or concentration. And you couldn’t really get them
interested in competing with anybody, which pretty much ruled them out as spades partners too. But Diana was our scorer for everything because her head worked like a calculator, and Dee was our
referee of choice because when he rendered a judgment it somehow settled the issue cleanly and conclusively, with no leftover doubt or malice.