Jill Barnett - The Days of Summer

“Jud? What does a soul look like?”

His brother looked at him. “You’re weird.”

Cale sat down and rested his chin in his hands. “I miss her.”

Jud didn’t say anything, but slid his arm around him, so Cale leaned against his shoulder, because if his parents were really dead, then Jud was all he had left.

When he glanced up, a man stood off to the side. His father’s father was tall and looked a little like his dad. But his hair was a mix of blond and brown and gray. He was looking at him with an unreadable expression. Cale straightened. “Why did you bring us here?”

Jud stood up so fast it was like he had a fire in his pants.

But their grandfather remained silent.

Why didn’t they know him? Why didn’t he say anything? Why did their mom and dad have to die and leave them with no one but him? Cale wanted to hit something, maybe this grim-faced man who stood away from him. “How come I don’t know you? Are you really my grandpa?” Cale took a step.

Jud grabbed his arm and hauled him back. “Stay here.”

“You’re Cale,” his grandfather said finally.

Cale stood in the taller shadow of his brother. “Yes.”

“And you’re Jud.” His grandfather shook his older brother’s hand as if he were a grown man, but didn’t offer to shake Cale’s. “Come with me,” he said to Jud, then went out the front door with Jud following.

Cale was his grandson, too, so he ran after them, dogging his brother, who was beside their grandfather. Cale ran past both of them and turned, half-running backward in front of his grandfather. “Where are we going?”

“To the garage.”

“Why?”

“I want to show your brother something.”

He wanted to show Jud but not him. “What?” Cale asked.

His grandfather kept walking.

“What do you want to show him?” Cale stayed ahead of him because he was afraid if he stopped now his grandfather would walk right over him. “You don’t like me,” Cale said.

His grandfather looked at him. “Does it matter if I like you?”

“Yes,” Cale said.

“Why?”

“Because you’re my grandfather. It’s your job to like me.”

He laughed then. “Good answer, Cale.”

For just a second, Cale thought his grandfather might like him after all.

“What makes you think I don’t like you?”

“You won’t talk to me.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because I haven’t done anything wrong.”

“So you think that you have to do something wrong for someone to not like you?”

Cale knew sometimes people had no reason at all not to like you. “I don’t know,” he answered truthfully.

“Think about it, and when you have an answer you can knock on this door and tell me.” His grandfather turned to Jud, holding the door open. “Come inside, son.”

Jud disappeared inside.

When Cale tried to sneak a peek, his grandfather blocked the doorway. “What if I told you that I like Jud because he’s the oldest?”

Cale stood stick-straight, arms at his sides, like soldiers in tall red hats who guarded queens and refused to show people what they were feeling.

“Answer me,” his grandfather said. “What would you say to that?”

“I would say that you’re a stupid old man.”

His grandfather’s expression didn’t change. “Perhaps I am,” he said finally, and closed the door in Cale’s face.

Cale lay in bed, listening for silence in the hallway. A tree outside the window moved in the wind as he lay there, his heart beating in his ears, his breath sounding loud and hollow beneath the covers. His brother was all the way down the hall in the house of a man who said they were supposed to call him Victor. Not Grandfather or Grandpa. Victor.

When only silence came from the hallway, Cale bolted from the bed and went straight to the closet. He carried an armload of clothes back to the bed, pulled up the covers, then socked them a few times so the lump looked like him sleeping.

His grandfather’s bedroom was at the end of a long, dark hallway on the second floor. The double doors were slightly open and a shaft of bright light cut across the wood floor. Cale followed the sound of Victor’s voice coming from inside. His grandfather was yelling on the phone.

“What the hell do you mean you can’t get the paintings? What auction house? Where?”

Cale stopped two feet from the door.

“Tell them they aren’t authorized to sell. Those paintings belong to the family. Screw the contract! You’re my attorney. Stop that sale. Hell, if you have to, buy them all. I don’t care how much it costs. I want every last painting.” His grandfather slammed down the phone, swearing.

Cale waited until he saw Victor walk into his bathroom, then moved quickly toward Jud’s room and slipped inside.

Jud sat up on his elbows. “What do you want?”

“Can I sleep here?”

“Have you been crying?”

“No. I wasn’t crying,” Cale lied.

Jud lifted the blankets. “Come on.”

Cale ran over, jumped in the air, and rolled into the middle of the bed.

“Move over, you hog,” Jud said, shoving him.

“I’m not a hog.” Cale stared up at a black ceiling, worried that tomorrow would be as bad as today and yesterday. He pulled the covers up.

A second later the light came on, bright and blinding, and Victor stood in the doorway. “What are you doing in here?”

Cale felt instantly sick.

“Never mind,” he said in the same angry voice he’d used on the phone. He crossed the room and pulled off the covers.

Jud looked too scared to say a word.

“In this house, we sleep in our own rooms.” Victor pulled Cale up, put his hands on his shoulders, and marched him to his own room, where he flipped on the light and paused before he pointed at the lump on the bed. “You know what that tells me?”

I’m in trouble . But all Cale said was, “No,” in a sulky voice.

Victor threw back the blankets. “It tells me that you knew damned well you were supposed to stay in your own bed.”

Cale didn’t admit anything.

“You are eight and I’m a lot older. There isn’t a trick you can pull I won’t see through.” He threw the clothes into a corner. “Now get into bed.”

Cale crawled in and lay board-stiff, his eyes on the ceiling.

“Do you want the light on?”

“No,” Cale said disgustedly and jerked the covers up over his head as the light went off. He could see through the white sheet.

His grandfather filled the doorway, backlit from the hall light. “Banning men don’t need anyone, Cale. We stand on our own.” He closed the door and the room went black.

* * *

Jud awoke to a sound like someone beating trash cans with a baseball bat. By the time he reached the window, the neighbor’s dogs were barking. It was after midnight, and misty fog hovered in the air. Cale lay sprawled in front of the wooden garage doors, two metal trash cans lids next to him, one of them spinning like a top, the barrels rolling down the concrete driveway toward the street. His little brother had tried to look in the high glass panes of the garage doors. Jud opened the window and called in a loud whisper, “Are you nuts? Get back inside. Hurry up!”

Cale sat up, rubbing the back of his head. “I want to see the red car.”

“Moron! It’s the middle of the night.”

“I know, but he won’t let me see it. He won’t let me talk to you or sleep with you. Besides, he’s asleep.”

“I was asleep, but someone woke me up making more noise than a train wreck.” Their grandfather stepped out of the shadows and walked toward Cale. There was a threat in the way he moved.

Jud leaned out the window. “Don’t you hurt him!”