Free The Last Summer of the Camperdowns by Elizabeth Kelly Page B

instructions on how to stuff a wild bikini,” my mother would add, flicking cigarette ash onto the sand. No one knew how to rob a moment of its majesty better than Greer.
    On rare occasions, including that night, rogue winds and wild weather patterns would join forces with the tide and the ocean would surge to the top of the dune, making you feel as if you were perched on the dark edge of infinity, as if the whole world was a giant witch’s cauldron, gurgling black abyss, sky overhead filled with steam, ruination everywhere. Even now, the thought of it fills me with desolation.
    I caught sight of myself in the old iron mirror that hung over the sink. My tomboy cap of tropical red hair, hair the color of a geranium, rude hair that openly defied gravity by growing up rather than down, shrieked back at me.
    There was an enormous clap of thunder followed by a ghostly quiet. From across the road came the sound of a loud boom, then the high-pitched whinnying of horses. I called for my father. He was already midway down the stairs, my mother following. He reached the last stair and sprinted toward the living room. My mother froze on the landing. I rushed passed her and ran after him.
    She shouted out my name. “Riddle!” She called for my father. “Camp!”
    Boom! There was a stupendous crashing sound. Through the living room windows I could see the contorted silhouette of the big cormorant clock tree and far behind it the silvery outline of the yellow stable as the sky blew up, turned red and gold, black and gray, ash and cinder and flames soaring beyond the trees. The ocean behind us was roaring in the background, rising waters like claws scraping away at the containing range of cliffs.
    “Jesus Christ!” my father said. “Gin’s yellow barn is on fire.” He reached for the phone.
    “My God!” My mother’s arms dropped to her sides.
    I was standing at the window when I heard the explosion. The roof blew off the stable and the walls burst away from their foundation, windows detonating like small-arms fire, horses screaming, the line of oak trees melting, my father running from the house, across the fields, racing toward the fire that had become the whole world.

Chapter Seven

    I T WAS THE FIRST TIME I HAD EVER SEEN A MAN CRY. NOT JUST cry. Sob. Wail. Wring his hands, tear out his hair and foam at the mouth. Gurgling and roiling—you could have gone white-water rafting on all that hysteria—Gin was bent over at the waist, clutching his abdomen as if he were trying to keep himself from ripping apart at the seams. A thin string of drool ran from his lips to the kitchen floor. One of the dogs hurried over to lick the slick little pool of spit off the wood plank.
    Reaching down—Gin was always conducting a cursory self-inspection regardless of his personal drama—he brushed away a nettle loosely clinging to the hem of his shorts. He was crisply turned out, sharply pleated, meticulously pressed—ludicrously outfitted as if for a Patagonian safari—although his most dangerous meeting that day was with my mother. Which just goes to show that some people are never too upset to pay attention to how they look.
    “All that’s missing is the pith helmet and veil,” my father had said as he watched Gin walk down the driveway to the house a few minutes earlier, hysteria preceding him.
    “Calm down,” Camp said, his hand at the base of Gin’s neck, one part comfort, one part strangulation. His tone was flat but I could tell that he was making some attempt to control his disdain. My mother was sitting at the kitchen table, a remote outcropping of frozen tundra, the temperature in her immediate vicinity several degrees lower than the air around her. My parents looked at each other and exchanged deadly sighs that only I could hear, my eyes and ears sharpened by years of exposure to their marital Morse code. I stood in the doorway, receding, one foot in the kitchen, one foot in the hallway.
    “Three mares, three foals!