Summer
There ain’t no meaning.
That’s where the fear lay all along. That’s what they didn’t get, all those people yellin’ and screamin’ on the television, those preening pastors crossing the air, those parents locking down their teens like they could keep grip on their wanderin’ souls.
And when it was over they couldn’t take it—that discovery. They went on mourning, they spoke of before like before was real or something. The death of ideals.
I get it though—the need for good and evil—but that endless stretch of gray between, that’s where you’ll find me and Raine, and maybe Pastor Bobby too.
Raine’s my sister. I got a photo of us on my nightstand, in a sparkly frame shaped like a heart; gaudy as hell but my daddy bought it for me. We’re young in that shot, arms linked, bubble-gum smiles and eyes squint ’cause we never did keep our sunhats on. We were camping up by the Red River, the part where the bank runs low and the water breaks for brown rocks so slick we weren’t never allowed to wade out. That’s the best spot for fishin’. Daddy reckons he’s pulled out striped bass just as big as the kind Uncle Tommy caught when he fished the Coosa.
That’s also the very same spot where Chief Black found a penis in the fall of 1985, back when the whole country was hot with talk of the McMartin preschool case and the couple hundred kids they reckoned was ritually abused there.
It’s far and away the most excitin’ thing that’s ever happened in the town of Grace so we all know the story by heart.
*
The penis belonged to Richie Reams. Richie was a high school football stud—big arms and light eyes and fingers that smelled of pussy most days. He lived with his momma in a single-wide over in the scratch-ass town of Haskell, though she spent her nights with a hard-drinkin’ trucker she met at the bar she tended.
Coach said Richie was destined for greatness if he could stay outta trouble, but that weren’t Richie’s way. Too much of a weakness for girls. Supply was dwindling though, especially being as Richie had a leanin’ toward blond-haired, blue-eyed innocents. There weren’t many of those left in Haskell. ’Course they still had the hair and the eyes, but Richie had fucked the innocence right outta them. That’s why he’d ventured into Grace. Virgin huntin’.
He set his sights on Mandy Deamer. She went to Westview, same high school I do. I’ve seen her photo: Farrah hair and dimpled smile, the kinda pure that turned Richie’s insides out.
He made sure to bump into Mandy outside Mae’s Diner on the first day of summer break. Might’ve made his move straight off but she kept a bull of a girl as her sidekick: Franny Vestal. Franny was the cruel kinda big; six two and wide, and dressed head to toe in black most days. She had her eyes set hard on Richie from the get-go, like she could see through the smoke in his mind. He’d tried to soften her with a couple throwaways—nice eyes, tall like a model, had a friend for her—the kinda lines Richie thought a fat girl should’ve swallowed whole. Not Franny. Richie told Black he’d reckoned she was a dyke.
Mandy caved two weeks later. Realized her mistake after Richie’s gold promises died hard in the blessed light of day. He was safely back in Haskell by the time she found out she was carryin’ his baby.
Four months into the pregnancy Mandy took her own life. The shame got to her; hot stares and cold whispers and holy judgment.
Her brother Harvey found her hangin’ from the long beam in the barn behind their place. Messed him up bad enough for the Deamers to pull their kids from Westview and school them at home from then on.
Franny came for Richie in the dead of night. Black later told the Briar County News she’d held chloroform over his mouth, so he didn’t wake when she stripped him naked, though he did when his cock came off.
She left him bleedin’ and screamin’ but called 911 ’cause she weren’t no murderer, she was just righting a wrong. She tossed his dick into the Red on her way home. A few hours later it washed up on the bank.
Lottie Stimson’s dog found it, picked it up in his slobberin’ mouth. Lottie wrestled it from him, screamed, then fetched Black, and Mitch Wild, who was Black’s partner back then.
They sent Lottie on her way, she was cryin’ bad. Black told her he’d stop by her place to take a statement, also told her to keep her mouth shut till then. ’Course she’d been straight on the telephone; said she’d heard noises in Hell’s Gate, probably the killer gettin’ a good look at her. She dressed it up nice enough for my momma to head straight over with a bottle of Barton.
Lottie also called her husband, Jasper, home from the logs; gave him an excuse to sit out front with his shotgun, his retarded brothers and more than a couple beers too. Itchy fingers. Now Jasper was known ’cause he’d just served a five bid in Fountain Correctional Facility for beatin’ a cop, so Black made a mental note to call ahead before he walked up their track. Though he forgot to pass that note on to his partner.
Mitch Wild was shot dead when he stopped by the Stimson place after dark that evenin’.
Franny handed herself in once she’d cooled. Talk was the cops found all kinds of dark at her house: wicker pentagrams hanging from the trees in her yard, sketches of Babylon and evil eyes, and that LaVeyan book on her nightstand. Black said it was bullshit but that didn’t stop it from burnin’, and the kids at school reckoned the flames fired blue and the smoke twisted into the face of Mandy as it rose.
I’ve heard that tale maybe fifty times, each a little different, but at the end I ain’t in no doubt who the devil in that story is, and it ain’t Franny.
Mandy is buried in a pretty spot in the cemetery beside St. Luke’s. She was my age when she died. Fifteen. That’s a long way short of a decent life.
I’d stop by her grave when I went to church and Momma would always say to me, “Keep clear of boys, Summer. They ain’t got nothin’ to give you but trouble.”
Raine sometimes complains that nothin’ exciting is ever gonna happen in Grace again.
Daddy told her careful what you wish for.