The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (33 page)

“Let me come with you,” I said to Camp. I didn’t like the way people were looking at my father.

“No. It’s late and you need to go home. Lou is waiting for you.” He looked around the room.

“Gula.” He gestured to the window, where Gula stood. “You can drive Riddle home when you take Gin.” Gula stiffened at being talked to that way, as if he were a servant.

“No,” I said, a sudden rush of adrenaline causing me to jump to my feet. “I want to go with you.”

“I will be happy to help in any way that I can,” Gula answered, recovering, as he approached. “It would be my pleasure.”

“I want to see Harry.” I tried another tack, the wrong one.

“Over my dead body,” Camp said. “You go with Gin and Gula.”

“But . . .” I was just getting ready to make my case. Ignoring my entreaties, Camp headed for the exit in the company of the dark-haired detective.

“Enough, Riddle!” my mother said, opting for the direct approach. “Hasn’t there been enough drama for one day? Do as you’re told and quit arguing. Go home!”

“I’m coming with you, Camp.” She followed behind him but he turned and stopped her. “No. Stay here with Michael. He needs you more than I do.”

She stared at him. Her eyes widened in quiet fury.

“If that’s what you want,” she said.

“I do.”

I reached for my mother’s hand as Camp vanished into the corridor. “Don’t listen,” I pleaded. “Go with him.”

“He doesn’t want me to, Riddle. Can’t you see? He prefers to handle things on his own. What would you have me do about it?”

Michael had been watching intently the freighted interaction between my parents. She turned to him. “Camp did not shoot Harry,” she said, as if she were imposing conditions on whatever was passing between them. Michael shrugged and held up his hands as if he were surrendering, an obvious act of convenience rather than of conviction.

I felt Gula’s fingers on the back of my neck, in barren contrast to the warmth of my father’s touch, as he directed me toward the door, Gin bringing up the rear. I looked quickly behind me. Michael was sitting alone on a bench, his head in his hands. My mother stood over him, looking at him, her posture a dichotomy, surrender in the slope of her shoulders, defiance in the tilt of her chin, harsh hospital lighting tracing the outline of her silhouette, a raw beam whose crude power did nothing to diminish her solitary beauty.

It occurred to me that my mother was a better person than she seemed to be—or wanted people to think she was.

C
OLD AND DAMP, IT
was a bad night. The ground was slippery and wet, trees leaned in the wind, fog obscured my vision, rising mist infected my imagination. Gin was passed out in the backseat after essentially crying himself to sleep over the catastrophic turn his garden party had taken. His determination to prostrate himself meant that I was forced to sit in the passenger seat next to Gula, who was blindly navigating the treacherous turns and narrow slopes of the road that led to Wellfleet and home.

It’s an isolated stretch of road. He was driving too fast at a point where one turn followed another and there was a dramatic swing in the road. The front end of the car veered to the right, Gula steered left, lifting his foot from the accelerator in an attempt to avoid the car parked in darkness at the side of the road. He slammed on the brakes as the car came to a skidding, swerving halt mere feet from a woodsy incline that sloped down into the marsh. Gin moaned and rolled over, his face buried in the leather upholstery.

“I suppose I should slow down,” Gula said, laughing a little, turning up the radio, the classical strains of a violin filling the car. He seemed nervous and that made me nervous. His voice was low and soft, empty as an echo.

We were miles from home and there wasn’t another vehicle on the road as Gula reduced his level of speed until it seemed as if we were barely moving at all. I stared out the passenger-side window and into the black night, the lonely whistle of the wind the only sound.

One hand on the steering wheel, Gula stared straight ahead as the car, tiptoeing stealthily, so slow and so quiet that it seemed to be relying on the wind for power, crept up and down the lush roads, wavering at times, gently swerving to the right, sometimes stopping, at which point I would renew my focus on the view outside my window and say nothing until the car gradually resumed its long, slow, silent, torturous journey home, neither one of us saying a single word.

I didn’t move, I didn’t breathe as the air in the car filled with the deadly vapor of whatever it was that he was thinking. That night in that slowly moving car, Gula’s crouching thoughts wore a hood. I don’t know how I knew, but I knew that a single whispered word from either one of us would ignite the fuse and trigger the explosion.

The lights of my parents’ house burned through the fog as we approached, Gin’s oblivious snoring an ugly companion to the beauty of the music.

“Do you still think your father is a good man?” Gula asked me.

Lou was waiting on the verandah. She waved and I waved back as I opened the passenger door and climbed out. For a second I worried that my legs wouldn’t support my weight. Gula got out of the car and, taking my elbow, walked toward the house with me, stopping some distance from the verandah.

“My grandmother was a mean old witch,” he said, as I watched Lou step back inside the door. “Ugly, too. She enjoyed frightening me when I was little. She used to repeat this gruesome lullaby every night before bedtime: ‘Old black sheep, where’s your lamb? Way down in the bottom, the buzzards and the flies, pickin’ at its eyes, and the poor little thing cries, “Maa-maa!” ’ I used to beg her to stop but it did no good. You know why?”

“No.”

“Neither do I, though I do know this,” he said, the glimmer of a distant light in his eyes. It wasn’t a reassuring glow. “She had her reasons.”

Chapter Thirty

“W
HAT HAPPENED AT THE POLICE STATION?” I ASKED CAMP
the following day. Exhausted by the day’s events, I passed out before he got home early in the morning.

My mother came home three or four hours later, explaining that she had stayed with Michael at the hospital until they were assured of Harry’s good condition.

I followed my parents into the dining room.

“Nothing happened,” Camp said. “What could happen? They asked me a few questions. I volunteered some answers and that was the end of it.”

“Do you think they believed you when you said you didn’t hurt Charlie or Harry?”

“I don’t think either one of them ever seriously entertained the ludicrous proposition that I did. I wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve concluded that Devlin and I are both nuts, though. Anyway, nothing for you to worry about.”

“That’s right, Riddle,” my mother said, reaching for a cardigan from the back of a chair. “If your father is charged with anything he can always plead insanity, a highly provable defense in his case.” She searched the sweater pockets for her cigarettes and a cigarette lighter. Finding them, she sat down at the table and lit up and ignored my glare. I didn’t see the humor in her remark.

“How are you? Did you get all that blood washed from your hair?” She paused as if she had finally heard herself. “Now, there’s something every mother wants to say at least once to her thirteen-year-old daughter.”

“Are you sure Harry’s okay?”

My mother nodded as my father picked up the morning newspaper, where news of the shooting was on the front page.

“He’s fine, Riddle,” she said. “He has a bad headache and stitches, but he should be able to go home today, according to the doctors. A lucky boy.”

“Can we forget about the Devlin family for a few moments, at least?” Camp asked.

We were just about to sit down to lunch when the phone rang.

“Shall I tell them you’re busy?” Lou asked. My father shook his head and jumped up from his chair, my mother’s annoyance reaching epic proportions as we listened to Camp boisterously greet some colleague from the party. Unlike Greer, I was happy for the diversion and relaxed into the vibrant, reassuring sound of his voice.

Camp had been appointed to a Democratic committee hastily devised to develop party policy concerning international terrorism, inspired by the attack on the Olympic athletes in Munich a few days earlier.

“It’s a bloody disgrace,” he said, referring to the disastrous rescue attempt, passions instantly inflamed, feet planted square on the floor, receiver at his ear, gesturing broadly with his free hand. “They bring in a handful of inexperienced weekend sharpshooters—alleged sharpshooters—surround them in darkness, give them second-rate firepower, minimal support and invite them to shoot one another. What the hell did they think was going to happen? Jesus, who did they put in charge of planning? The president of the local PTA? First thing you do in a situation like that is bring in snipers with legitimate combat experience and equip them properly. You want quantity and quality. You need at least two snipers on each known target. To hell with their restrictions about using the military.”

He paused for a moment, listening, considering. “No. No. Hogwash. The idea of a lone sniper is a myth. TV stuff. Sniping is a two-man operation, although, ultimately, in the purest, most existential sense, given the nature of the task, the sniper is a lone operator.”

My mother tapped her fingers on the tabletop impatiently and quietly gestured for me to start eating. “Have a little mayhem with your salad,” she whispered. “We should be liberating the camps by dessert.”

“Shhh,” I said, trying to hear.

“Christ, at Bastogne, we sat on that goddamn rooftop for days. No food, no sleep, no water. The crazy part of it was there was booze everywhere. It flowed like water from the tap. We took up position on top of a building that had housed an after-hours club. We found cartons of vodka in the basement. We were literally bathing in the stuff. I shaved with vodka.” He laughed. “I kid you not.”

“Lou, where did you buy this produce?” my mother said. “It tastes like a farmer’s field.”

“What should it taste like?” Lou asked her.

“The inside of a sterile plastic bag,” my mother said, as the two of us watched Camp’s dinner grow cold. “I prefer my vegetables to taste as if they were grown on a supermarket shelf.”

“Please, I can’t hear,” I said. Why were they talking about such stupid things?

“Yeah, the Springfield got the job done,” Camp conceded, “but I managed to commandeer an M28/30, Finnish rifle, a piece of art. Never missed a target.”

We finished up, my mother watching as I helped Lou clean off the table.

He was listening again, a look of frustration on his face, exasperation mingled with contempt. “Well, all I can say is that you’ve obviously never been at the front lines, my friend. Believe me, that Christmas at Bastogne, everyone was a target.”

I stacked the dishes in silence in the kitchen as Lou opened wide the faucet, the coarse rush of water running, pots and pans clanging, drowning out the sound of my father’s voice.

“So, did you go to Michael Devlin’s house last night and tuck him in?” I asked my mother, bitter as only a teenage girl is capable of being bitter. I was angry at my mother and wanted to punish her. Lou gasped and fled the room, the dogs trailing after her.

My mother laughed. “That’s none of your business. Although I suppose I should thank you for caring enough to ask, which is more than your father bothered to do.”

At that moment, Camp came into the kitchen, grabbed a piece of candy and headed back to make another series of calls. Sipping her coffee, my mother watched him walk from the room.

“Would you like to split a brownie?” I asked her.

“Why the hell not?”

I stood on my tiptoes, reaching for the plate of brownies on the high top shelf of the pantry, the tips of my fingers connecting with the porcelain tray. I never felt so small.

Chapter Thirty-One

T
HE NEXT DAY I WAS UP IN MY ROOM WHEN I SAW HARRY’S CAR
drive along the road and turn into Gin’s driveway. Stunned, I threw on some clothes and ran down the stairs, two at a time. I rushed to the barn and saddled up Mary.

A few moments later, I was cantering up the hill and down the long road leading to Gin’s. I arrived just in time to see Harry leading Boomslang, saddled and bridled, to the training ring where Gin had set up a series of jumps.

“I didn’t expect to see you here,” I said as Mary and I trotted up alongside him. His hair had been shaved around his ear, where the stitches were visible. His right eye was black and blue and red and inflamed.

“Funny, ’cause I was sure I’d see you here, though maybe not quite this fast. You made it in record time, Hoffa. I’ve been here, what, ten, fifteen minutes?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I said, acutely aware that my skin was the same sick-making shade of beige as tapioca pudding.

The tip of his boot in the stirrup, he eased himself up into the saddle.

“What are you doing here, Harry? Do you feel okay?” I watched him adjust the length of his stirrups, his face averted as he concentrated on the task at hand.

“I’m fine. I felt like a ride and I promised Gin I’d try to get a better feel for Boomslang’s jumping capabilities. Today seemed as good a day as any.” He sat up straight in the saddle and gathered the reins. “What’s the look for?” he said. “What am I supposed to do? Turn out all the lights and sit in the dark? My brother died, not me.”

He moved toward the ring and I followed behind, sliding down to the ground and holding open the gate for Boomslang and Harry as they entered. I tethered Mary to a low-lying branch of an old tree near the stable and took up a spot along the fence to watch.

It was apparent from the start that things weren’t going well. Boomslang reluctantly cleared two small hurdles but balked at the bigger fences.

“Hello, Jimmy,” Gin said, coming up behind me, his hand on my shoulder in a welcoming squeeze. “Surprised to see Harry here so soon after . . .”

“I know,” I said.

“They don’t seem to be clicking this morning,” Gin said, after watching Boomslang refuse the same jump three times.

“It’s Harry,” I said.

“I can see that,” Gin said, calling out some suggestions to Harry, who finally steered Boomslang to where we stood at the fence.

“Do you want to hand me that?’ Harry asked Gin, pointing to a leather riding crop slung over a post. “Thanks.”

The next time they approached the problematic fence—and they came at it fast, Harry opting for speed—he gave Boomslang a sharp tap with the riding crop. It didn’t have the desired effect. Boomslang swerved at the last minute and sent Harry sailing headfirst over the jump, just as he had done only weeks before.

Harry jumped to his feet as Gin and I ran into the ring to see if he was okay. He charged at Boomslang, crop raised over his head, ready to strike out.

“Harry!” I shouted, shocked. He stopped, stood motionless for a moment and then let the crop fall to the ground. He walked past Gin and me without saying a word, disappearing into the woods behind the stable.

I was leading Boomslang back to his stall when Harry reappeared.

“I’ll do that,” he said, reaching for the halter. He looked pale.

I stared at him. He nodded. “I’m okay.” He was stroking Boomslang’s neck. “I’ll take care of him.”

B
ACK IN HIS BOX
stall, Boomslang was relaxed and happy as Harry began currying his coat with a rubber brush, working in circular fashion from his head to his hindquarters. I sat on a bale of hay in the stall and watched.

“I’m going back to college this weekend,” Harry said, the words I had been dreading.

“Are you going to be home for Thanksgiving?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I doubt it. I figure I’ll just live in New Haven.”

“You’re not going to live in the house in Truro anymore?” I hoped I didn’t sound as devastated as I felt.

“No. Maybe someday. Not now.”

“I’m so sorry about everything, Harry.”

“I know.” He paused for a moment, leaning into Boomslang, face buried in his mane. “I know it’s crazy, but I worry about what would happen if Charlie were to come home and there’d be nobody there. How would he find me? How would he know where to look?”

“Harry. He’s dead. I don’t understand.”

“Jesus,” he said voice full of emotion. “I can’t go and I can’t stay. What the hell do I do?”

“I don’t know,” I admitted, as Harry resumed brushing. He seemed to have something else on his mind. I looked at him expectantly.

“Look, I don’t want to upset you, but I think there’s something you should know,” Harry said, breaking the silence. “Only if you want to. It’s your decision.”

“What’s it about?”

“Your dad. Your dad and my dad. I know what’s behind their beef.”

“You do?”

“It’s not pretty.” He paused. “Look, Hoffa, after what happened to me the other day, my father just kind of lost it. He got on the phone and gave an interview to the
New York Times
. I overheard him. He had something to say about your dad and it wasn’t good stuff. They’ll be calling your father soon to get his side of things, I guess. I figured you deserved a heads-up. You want me to tell you?”

I nodded. Harry dropped the brush and sat down next to me and began to tell me a familiar tale about Christmas in Bastogne—only this was a version of the story that I had never heard before.

“They were in Bastogne. Your father and my father were snipers. They worked as a team.” He flinched. “Not exactly the way you want to imagine your dad. They were positioned on the partially demolished roof of a bombed-out building, surrounded on every side by Germans, by freezing cold, by darkness. They had no food and no place to hide. Artillery fire and bombs were falling everywhere. Small-arms fire was all around them.”

I think I was listening but I can’t be sure. It felt as if I was listening.

“They were shooting at anything that moved. Everyone was a threat. The locals were warned to stay inside or risk being shot. It was Christmas morning when this little girl crept into view trying to get water from a well.” He hesitated.

“Say it. Just tell me,” I said.

He took a deep breath.

“Your dad shot her. On purpose.”

“What?”

“She’s dead. He killed her.”

I grabbed his arm.

“I don’t believe it,” I said. “That’s a lie. My father wouldn’t do such a thing.”

Harry shook his head.

“It’s true, Hoffa. He killed her and then he and my dad got into a big fight about it. Your dad said that in war even children were fair game. How did they know who sent her?”

“How did they know who sent her?” I was repeating him.

“Or what her true purpose was? Anyway. They started fighting, I mean, a physical fight, punching each other.”

“It doesn’t make sense.”

“A couple of the other guys in the platoon who knew about what happened wanted your dad charged with murder but my dad defended him—not what he’d done, killing the little girl, but because, in the end, he couldn’t bring himself to turn your father in since he had been such a heroic soldier and they were friends. So he worked on the other guys and they finally agreed to keep quiet about what happened. The soldiers that knew about it were killed in battle a few days later. So only my father and your father knew what had happened. My dad vowed to keep it a secret. Over the years it ate away at him and he started having doubts about his promise. When your dad ran for public office, he felt that he couldn’t keep silent any longer. I heard him say to the reporter, ‘He’s going to get elected to the House. Next he’ll be a senator and then, I know him, he’ll be after a presidential nomination.’ He said that in good conscience, he couldn’t allow that to happen. He said your dad was a bad man.”

“It’s not true,” I said, shaking my head, jumping up, pacing back and forth in the stall.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t want to tell you. I know you’ve been going crazy wondering. You deserve to know the truth. Hey, where are you going?”

Tears blurring my vision, I vaulted from the stall and into the corridor of the stable. “I want to go home,” I said. “I’ve heard enough. Your father is lying.”

“Why would my dad lie?” Harry said, standing up, calling after me.

“My mother, for a start!”

“Come on, Hoffa, calm down. Let’s talk about it.” He began walking toward me.

“Why is your father trying to destroy my family? Why does he hate my father so much? What’s wrong with him?”

Harry looked pained. “Look, I don’t want your family to get hurt. It’s crazy, what’s happening. My dad thinks your dad tried to kill me, for Christ’s sake! He thinks he killed Charlie.”

“That’s insane. He would never . . . He didn’t. I know he didn’t. And no matter what, Camp would never kill a little girl in cold blood.”

We were standing outside the stable door. One thing I knew for certain, I had no desire to fight with Harry. “Harry, why did you tell me?”

He looked surprised. “Because I’m your friend. You can’t keep this kind of thing a secret.”

I stared into his eyes. Something passed between us. I know it did. It wasn’t my imagination. “I have to get out of here,” I said, climbing on board Mary, cantering across the yard and toward the field and into the forest, navigating the winding trails, sunlight streaming through the tops of the trees illuminating the cool, canopied path.

The journey back home was littered with obstacles; fallen trees presented themselves at every turn. I pressed Mary forward, refusing to believe my father was capable of shooting down a child in cold blood. Mary cleared the low-lying jumps with ease. Then the obstacles grew in size and frequency, three feet, four feet; up and over she sailed. We kept going. Five feet. Mary was tired. I was tired. Each hurdle loomed larger than the last one.

By the time we reached the open pastures of home I was covered in dirt and mud, and Mary’s neck was speckled with spit and lather. The way was clear, but there were too many hurdles in the getting there. Reining Mary in, we stood still in the middle of the field, amidst the birdsong and the tall grass, as I tried to process fragments of overheard conversations and obscure references, mysterious behaviors and irreconcilable emotions, a jumbled collage of information, all of it running through my head like film in a projector.

“Nothing makes sense,” I moaned, and then I remembered something that Camp used to tell me. “When nothing makes sense, everything makes sense.”

“What does that mean?” I begged him to tell me.

“Someday, you’ll understand,” he said. “You need to figure it out for yourself.”

“When nothing makes sense, everything makes sense.” I repeated it out loud and, pulling my feet from the stirrups, I stretched out on Mary, the back of my head on her warm rump, my eyes closed tight against the penetrating rays of the late summer sun.

“Y
OU LOOK LIKE YOU
had a rough ride,” Camp said, surveying the damage when I walked into the kitchen, where he and my mother were locked into a huddle.

“I saw Harry today,” I said.

My father roared to his feet. “I told you that you were never allowed to see that boy again!”

“Camp, did you kill that little girl?” I started to cry. It was as if I had sprung a million leaks. Crying had become my job for the summer. “Harry’s dad talked to the
New York Times
. He told them that you deliberately killed a little girl in cold blood in Bastogne. He said that you were a murderer and that you don’t deserve to hold office.”

Camp recoiled as if he had been punched. He stared at me in disbelief. The expression on his face! I had hurt my father. I didn’t think it was possible. I will never forget how he looked at me that day.

“You think I would kill a little girl?”

I tried to take it back. The question. The implied accusation. The doubt. He wasn’t listening to me. I was kid stuff, and he had neither the inclination nor the time to indulge me. He was reaching for the phone. My mother looked over at me and shrugged.

“Aren’t you going to say anything? Aren’t you going to explain? I’m sorry. Just tell me, please,” I begged.

“Can you hang on a minute please? I’ll be right with you,” Camp said to the person on the other end of the line. He put his hand over the receiver.

“Those goddam Devlins. Jesus, I knew he was crazy but . . . You look here. I don’t need to explain myself to you, or to anybody else for that matter. Is that clear? You ever walk into this house again and start barking demands and allegations at me, you will have reason to regret it. Understand?”

I nodded. His manner was so cold, I felt as if I was adrift in frigid waters, and in a way I was. My hands were shaking, every part of me vibrated and stung. Even my internal organs felt raw and inflamed. I stopped at the bottom of the staircase and I felt unsure of taking that first step. I had climbed those long, winding stairs to my third-story bedroom a million times before and not thought a thing of it, so why did the ascent now seem insurmountable?