The Last Summer of the Camperdowns (25 page)

Gula snorted noisily, throwing out his arm in a derisive gesture that Gin, eagerly extending his own arm upward toward Gula, misinterpreted as a helping hand.

“Oh, thank you,” he gushed, delighted and grateful at first but then, as it dawned on him that Gula had no intention of assisting him to his feet, seamlessly changing course, a man used to making social accommodations. “Never mind. It’s all right. I’m fine. Don’t trouble yourself,” he said. Gula wasn’t listening. He turned around and walked back into the house, door thumping shut behind him.

Little Hanzi crept from his crate and crawled along the ground toward Gin. He put his front paws on Gin’s lap and licked his cheek. Gin sat silent for a moment, then pulled Hanzi close and hugged him. “Aren’t you a dear little fellow for caring,” he said. He sat up and remained in place, petting Hanzi all the while, and then, recruiting the support of the porch railing, he pulled himself onto his feet, took time to brush himself off and bent down to offer Hanzi a final grateful pat.

“Thank you, Hanzi,” he said, withdrawing his keys from his jacket pocket, the keys jingling as he walked to his car, the car slowly reversing, low beams glowing, turning toward the dirt road leading back to the main house.

The cottage door opened again. Gula appeared, moonlight flooding the tiny clearing in the woods, illuminating him and the retreating car even as Harry and I remained concealed among the silver shadows.

Gula spat on the ground as he watched Gin drive away. Then something seemed to catch his eye. I froze as, with Hanzi’s eyes on him the whole time, he sighed and walked toward the dog, who wagged the tip of his tail in greeting. I held my breath and watched mesmerized as Gula sat down on the steps of the verandah and, making a quiet little chirruping sound, summoned Hanzi to his side.

Hanzi maneuvered himself into Gula’s lap, his ears flattened, and remained still and devoted as Gula rubbed his head and stroked the length of his thin body, speaking to him soothingly in a language I didn’t understand. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a biscuit. Hanzi accepted it gratefully. Withdrawing from Gula’s lap, tail wagging, he bit the biscuit in half, crumbs falling to the ground.

Gula watched him until he finished eating the biscuit, then with one last glance around he went back inside. I heard the latch of the cottage door as he locked it. The living room light snapped off. Neither Harry nor I moved, nor did we make a sound for what seemed like hours.

Harry was the first to get up. He snaked across the open space of the yard and, reaching Hanzi’s side, quickly unlatched the chain from his collar, snapped on a leash and, with the compliant dog pressed to his side, ran back to where I remained hidden, the faint trace of a limp inhibiting his sprint.

“Let’s get the hell out of here,” he hissed. I rose shakily to my feet, feeling as if I might faint. Harry and I started toward the woods and the clearing near the road where he had parked his car.

“Come on, Hanzi,” Harry urged softly as the dog hesitated, stopped and turned around. He looked back at the little cottage as if he knew that he would never see it or Gula again. Harry let the leash go slack as Hanzi said his silent goodbye.

P
OOR LITTLE HANZI CURLED
up next to me in the backseat of the car, his head in my lap, black eyes gazing up at me. I was stroking him from his head to his tail, over and over, trying to reassure him.

“Jesus, what the hell’s going on with Gin and Gula?” Harry asked from the driver’s seat, glancing up into the rearview mirror.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I thought Gula worked for Gin, not the other way around. Did you see Gula bump him across the verandah and knock him down?” He whistled. “Wouldn’t you know Gin would fall on his ass. For a minute I thought I might have to intervene. Then that son of a bitch wouldn’t help him up. Jesus. Poor Gin. Gula did everything but piss on him. What was with the spitting and the whirlwind stuff?”

“I don’t know, Harry,” I repeated.

“A little intense. I’m starting to wonder if ‘Gypsy horse’ isn’t code for world domination. That generation is obsessed with reaping whirlwinds in one form or another. They won’t be happy until the whole world is sucked up into a massive spinning vortex.”

I leaned down and kissed Hanzi between his eyes. Holding him close to me, I stared out the window, trying to empty my brain.

“Look, I wouldn’t worry about it. Don’t let your imagination run away with you. These old guys are wired so tight. We’re thinking they were plotting an assassination or a military coup, meanwhile they were talking about something they had for dinner. Besides, what in hell could Gin be involved in? Obviously, Gula smells Gin’s desperation and is exploiting the hell out of it.”

I nodded. “That’s the first time I’ve ever seen Gula be good to Hanzi.”

“Yeah, well, Hitler loved his German shepherd. Just because they’re monsters doesn’t mean they aren’t just as inconsistent as the rest of us.”

“I know, you’re right.”

“So then.” He reached for something in the passenger’s seat. “Snap out of it, Hoffa,” he said, tossing a fistful of Cheez-Its at my head. Hanzi flinched but then wagged his tail, thin and taut as a whip. It bumped weakly against the leather upholstery as I picked Cheez-Its from my hair and fed them to him one by one. He licked the tips of my orange fingers in gratitude.

I lay back, cheek against the leather upholstery, my legs curled beneath me, night breeze blowing through the open window and ruffling the stillness inside the car. My whole body ached.

I was sick with love for Harry Devlin, an illness for which there continues to be no cure.

I
T WAS ALMOST LUNCHTIME
the next day when I awoke to the sound of banging on the front door so loud and violent that the glass rattled in the windows, as if someone had decided to pummel the door to death.

“Hey, there, what the hell is going on?” my father shouted as he approached the entranceway, my mother exclaiming as she followed behind him. I jumped from my bed and hastily scanned the floor for something to wear. Grabbing a pair of shorts and a T-shirt, my hair tangled with Cheez-Its dust, I dashed down to the second floor where I hid on the landing, arriving just in time to see Gula, accompanied by Gin, as they were entering the house.

“Where is my dog? Where is Hanzi?” Gula’s voice was raspy and full of emotion.

“Good Lord,” my mother said. “Who do you think you are? How dare you burst in here like some sort of lunatic? What are you talking about?”

“Someone took my dog! What do you know? Was it Harry Devlin? He is the only one who would take my dog,” Gula hollered, pointing his finger, advancing dangerously close to my mother.

My father stepped in between them. “Watch yourself, my friend,” he growled.

“I can take care of myself,” my mother said, stepping out from behind my father and confronting Gula. She took one step forward and using both hands, flattening her palms on each of his shoulders, she pushed him as hard as she could, sending him spinning. He struggled to maintain his balance, falling backward into Gin, who caught him before he fell.

In a matter of seconds, the situation had transformed so dramatically that now my father had to step in to restrain my mother, who seemed hell-bent on murdering Gula. For his part, Gula was so stunned at the unexpected turn of events that it had the weird effect of calming him down.

“What do we have to do with Harry Devlin?” my mother demanded.

“I tried to stop him from coming over like this. I did, Greer. You must believe me. Oh, my! Gula, please!” Gin said, looking like a damp spot on a bed. Even at the best of times, Gin was something that needed fanning.

“For heaven’s sake, Gin, pull yourself together,” she said. “Think about it. Hanzi has probably fallen victim to a predator. The woods are full of such things. Look what the coyotes have done to your sheep.”

Composing himself with great effort, Gula seemed to think better of his conduct and began to apologize, frantically rubbing his hands together, generating so much friction I thought he would burst into flames.

“This was not the work of a coyote. I feel it inside.” He was pounding on his chest. “No. He’s gone. Taken. Stolen from me.” He stopped, as if he was reconfiguring something in his head. “Try to understand,” he beseeched. “He is all that I have in the world.” For a moment I almost felt sorry for him. Hanzi’s disappearance seemed to unhinge him.

“Well, I, for one, am delighted,” my mother said, never able to leave well enough alone. “It’s monstrous the way you treated that dog. I hope you never get him back.”

“I’m sorry you feel this way,” Gula said slowly and deliberately, his eyes never leaving my mother’s face, his gaze sharp as a knife to the throat.

My father had had enough. “This is preposterous, Gula. You can’t come over here behaving in such a threatening way.”

“It was the Devlin boy. Of course, it was. Who else?” He clenched his fist and held it to his forehead. “Understand me. All of you. I have had everything taken from me in my life. I won’t stand for this. It’s too much for a man to bear,” Gula said.

“Did you report the missing dog to the police?” my father asked, directing his question as much to Gin as to Gula.

“Maybe I should call in the FBI, what do you think?” Gula said sarcastically. “Let me tell you something, all of you. I handle my problems myself.”

“Well, that makes two of us,” my mother said as she and Gula squared off.

“Stand down, Greer,” Camp said wearily.

Gin put his hand on Gula’s shoulder. “Let’s go back home. He might show up yet. We’ll find him. Don’t worry.” He looked up at my parents. “I’m so sorry. Please try to understand. He’s just so distraught. Hanzi is everything to him.”

Gula, head bent, moved in sync with Gin toward the door.

“I take care of things in my own way and in my own time,” he said, one foot on the porch, the other still inside the house. “Harry Devlin will come to regret meeting me as much as I regret ever having met him.”

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
HE NEXT DAY AND FOR DAYS AFTER I SPENT EVERY FREE
moment I had, on foot, on horseback, via astral projection, surreptitiously checking out Gin’s place to see if Harry was there. There was no sign of him, nor anyone else for that matter. Only the Gypsy horse, Boomslang, who ran free in the pasture, cantering alongside Mary on the opposite side of the fence when I rode her early in the morning or at dusk.

He made his own wind, that horse, galloping across the field, mane soaring and tail streaming, rippling like an unmoored kite. I half expected him at any moment to leave the ground and take flight, vanishing into the blue sky and the clouds.

“Run into anyone interesting?” my mother said, glancing up slyly from where she sat in her tan leather club chair, feet elevated, smoking and drinking Coca-Cola, her singular concession to populism. The four basset hounds, arranged lifelessly on the floor around her like chalk outlines, barely lifted their heads, batted their tails and fell back to sleep, as she continued reading, poring over a story about Charlie Devlin and the various theories floating around about what happened to him.

“No,” I said, draping my jacket over the back of an occasional chair and flopping onto the sofa.

“Not for lack of trying, I’ll bet,” she said, making a point not to look up from her reading.

“Why don’t you just leave me alone?” I whined, my familiar unchanging refrain, chiming on the hour, never more conscious of futility than in my dealings with my mother.

“No problem,” she said, her concentration deepening.

The grandfather clock ticked loudly in the background. “Where’s Camp?” I said, conscious suddenly of the house’s unaccountable breadth of silence.

“Boston,” she said. “You knew that. You’ve just forgotten.”

“Oh yeah. I guess.” Index finger at my mouth, I began to shred my nails.

“Don’t bite your nails,” my mother ordered.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” I countered reflexively, chewing on my fist.

My mother put down the newspaper. “Look, there’s nothing to worry about. We’re perfectly fine here, the two of us.”

“What about Gula? What if he comes back over here and causes trouble when Camp is away?”

“Believe me, I wish he would. I’d love another crack at that cretin. I’d take out Gin, too, while I was at it.”

“You’re always looking to start a war.”

“You can’t appease a predator, little Miss Chamberlain. You must cut off its head.”

“Why can’t you be like every other mother and play tennis and get your hair done and go for lunch?”

“Ha! You’ve just described the deadliest faction of all.”

I stood up and headed for the stairs. “Why am I arguing with you? I don’t even care,” I said.

“Riddle,” my mother called out to me as she left her chair. I felt an attack of maternal empathy coming on.

“I know you’re upset about Harry, but at this time in his life, the age difference between you creates a gap as big as the Grand Canyon. You’re only thirteen; he’s got a year under his belt at Yale. You must be realistic.”

I started up the stairs, intending to ignore her.

“I do know what it feels like, Riddle.”

Stopping midway on the staircase, I heaved a great sigh.

“I was once your age. I remember what it feels like to labor under the romantic delusion that life is full of possibilities, all of them exhilarating and hopeful, a world in which it’s always Christmas, never winter. But it’s not like that. The events of your life creep along on all fours, they don’t dance, they don’t twirl. You’re thirteen, you think everything is going to happen to you. Meanwhile, nothing ever does, nothing you’d dreamt would happen anyway.”

She extended an arm over her head as if stretching, reaching for the ceiling, and then she raised her other arm, her fingers linking over her head. She lowered her hands onto the top of her head, resting them there, elbows extended like wings.

“Is this something you’ve been saving up for a special occasion?” I asked her, automatically suspecting and rejecting any attempt at intimacy on her part. “Just because you want to persuade me to become as miserable and cynical and hopeless as you are. Anyway, what right have you to complain? You grew up rich. You were a movie star.”

“Are a movie star. There’s no expiration date,” she corrected.

“Fine. Whatever you say. You married Camp and now he’s going to be a congressman. Everyone thinks you’re so beautiful and mysterious and interesting. What more do you want?”

“I’m not miserable. I’m not hopeless. I am not a cynic,” she said. “Quite the contrary.”

“Oh, that’s convincing. Please. I know your little secret, even if no one else does. You are an unhappy person and you want to make everyone around you unhappy too.”

“I know what it feels like to be your age and to think you know it all, when the truth is that you know nothing at all. It doesn’t get much better either. You want to know what I know? Nothing. Neither does anyone else.”

My fingers gripped the balustrade. Finally, something we both could agree on.

“Mom, can’t you just say you’re sorry? ‘I’m sorry, Riddle, that you’re upset. Wish there was something I could do to help make you feel better. Hey, Riddle, how about we share a bowl of ice cream?’ Ever hear of ice cream, Greer?”

It was no use. She was looking at me through the wooden rails of the staircase, listening the way you might listen to snow fall.

T
HAT EVENING I WAS
lying on top of the bedcovers fully dressed and staring at the ceiling—in those days I had an intimate relationship with the acanthus-leaf medallion overhead—when I heard a brisk rap on the front door.

Jumping from my bed, I ran to the top of the stairs. “Don’t answer!” I called down to my mother. Too late.

“Michael!” My mother’s voice floated skyward, lyrical and welcoming like the notes on my father’s piano. “What brings you to our humble home? If I’d known I would have arranged for an Air Force flyby.”

“Hello, Riddle.” Michael spotted me on the landing. I smiled back and sneaked a peek at the empty space behind him, praying to see Harry, my hopes dashed when my mother pushed shut the door, took Michael’s jacket and directed him into the living room.

I ventured down the stairs, inexorably drawn to the mystery of Michael Devlin. Given his feelings about Camp, he should have been my enemy, but he intrigued me. That world-weary elegance, combined with such pleasantness and something else—there was a certain feeling of tragic inevitability about Michael that made him seem as romantic as a lit candle. I liked him, though I didn’t want to like him. More than that, I wanted him to know I liked him, wanted him to like me.

He was so different from Camp. Michael made me see that there could be power in containment. Standing at the edge of the living room, I looked on from the doorway as he sat down in the living room in my father’s favorite chair, my mother offering to make him a drink.

Wreathed in smoke, the indolent haze of my mother’s habitual cigarette curling round him, he was burning away like incense, sending off aromatic smoke signals into the atmosphere. He wore a soft white shirt, open at the collar; one long sleeve was casually rolled to just below the elbow, the other sleeve hung loose to below his wrist. His shirttail was partly tucked and hung over a pair of seamless khakis. He had on a pair of sandals, the left one looking as if it were missing some crucial buckle. Skin politely tanned, he gave the impression of being long and lithe—although he wasn’t exceptionally tall, standing just less than six feet.

Something about him was different, as if I was looking at him through soft focus, or maybe it was the way he chose to present himself that particular evening. Every time I saw him I saw a subtle variation on the theme of Michael Devlin, as if he selected separate aspects of his character to highlight, depending on his mood or the way he wished to be seen by others. Most of us are integrated parts of a whole. In Michael’s case, all those fragments resisted the governance of adhesion. It made him interesting, as if he had wings to fly while the rest of us wore cement shoes. Then there was the sadness, a sorrow about Charlie that he bore lightly, giving him an appealing air of vulnerability, which elicited something in my mother that I had never before seen—or that she’d taken measures to conceal: caring, solicitude.

“Harry’s been a little under the weather. I can’t get through to him about taking it easy for a few days,” Michael was saying in response to my mother’s inquiry.

“Is he okay?” I interrupted.

“He’ll be fine.” The two of them seemed amused by my concern. He paused as she handed him his drink—she knew what he liked—and sat down across from him. “Actually, that’s what brings me here tonight. I wanted to talk to you, Greer. You, too, Riddle, if you have a moment.” He waved me into the room. “What do you know about this incident with the dog?”

My mother scrunched up her brow as if she were trying too hard to recall something unmemorable, a phone number or the name of a cereal. She reached for a copy of
Life
magazine sitting on the coffee table in front of her and casually flipped through the pages, as Michael waited patiently for her answer.

“Well,” she said taking her time, “I know that Harry was upset at the way Gin’s stable manager was treating his dog. The suspicion exists in certain quarters that he took the dog. Is that what you’ve heard?” She looked at him through the corner of her eye.

“I first found out about it when I got this phone call from Gin earlier today. He was upset, begging me to speak to Harry, imploring me to have Harry return this dog that he’s supposed to have taken. Well, of course, I told Gin that the whole idea of Harry stealing this man’s dog was ludicrous. He just kept insisting that it must have been Harry and that he understood why he did it. Please just return the dog, he said, and all will be forgiven.”

My mother snapped through the pages of the magazine, her cheeks flushing, disgust her natural blush.

“Gin is such a gutless wonder. Honestly, I’d like to take a stick to him sometimes.”

“Naturally, I told him that Harry didn’t have any part in the dognapping. Gin was ready for the butterfly net by the time we’d finished talking, just kept saying that it was going to cost him his Gypsy mare, that this fellow that works for him was going to quit and go back to Europe before bringing him the horse.”

“Please God,” my mother said prayerfully. “Gin has gone stark raving mad over these Irish tinker horses. I swear he would sell his mother to ensure that he gets a breeding pair. On second thought, I could be persuaded to sacrifice Mirabel for a whole lot less inducement than a horse. Her life for a Mars bar seems like an equitable trade to me.”

“Greer, just between you and me, Harry did take the dog. Admitted it right away. Unbelievable.”

“I thought as much, but I’d be hard pressed to criticize him for it. It’s an abomination the way that repulsive man treated that poor creature.”

“Should I be concerned about this man? What’s his name?”

“Gula Nightjar.”

“Good Christ. Seriously? Sounds like a fugitive from
The Twilight Zone
.”

“His provenance is far less distinguished than episodic TV, believe me,” my mother said. “The man is a praying mantis. He’s an insect. No brain to speak of, just a fusion of dangling ganglia. Oh, wait, I’m confusing him with Gin.”

Michael looked over at me and laughed out loud, totally enamored of my mother’s subversion.

“Harry tells me he does volunteer work for the campaign. What does Camp think of him?”

It was strange to hear Michael recruit Camp’s opinion, even indirectly.

“He thinks that Gula is a bit of a force to be reckoned with, as those quiet types inevitably are. Harry should avoid Gin’s for a while. Let things settle down.”

“He won’t listen to me or anyone else when he’s made up his mind, as you may have noticed. He’s really taken with this Gypsy horse and it gives him an interest, something to take his mind off . . .” Michael’s voice trailed off.

“Understandable,” my mother said, observing a respectful moment of silence before exploding. “I’m so sick of hearing about that goddamn horse.” She shut the magazine and thumped it onto the table.

“There, there, Greer, don’t fret. I understand that he has thick ankles and a big ass,” Michael said, reaching out to pat her hand. “What if I offer this Gulag fellow some money? That usually does the trick.”

“No!” I felt panic rising. Michael and my mother were caught off guard by the intensity of my response.

“Why the devil not?” My mother stood up and tried to stare me down, hands on her hips.

“You’ll make him angry. He’s not for sale. He’s not like everybody else.” I was flushed and aware that I was sounding like the script of a soap opera, but I couldn’t help myself.

“What the hell is going on here?” Greer asked me, brows furrowed.

I ignored her. “Mr. Devlin, please make sure that Harry doesn’t go to Gin’s place again. Gula hates Harry.”

“What’s wrong with this man? Why does he have it in for Harry?”

“I don’t know,” I said, backtracking a little, “it just seems that way to me. Well, he knows that Harry took the dog.”