That Summer by Allen Drury

Author:Allen Drury [Drury, Allen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: A moving novel of small-town politics and dark secrets from the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Advise and Consent.
Publisher: WordFire Press
Published: 2016-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

Three

The pleasant sounds of morning, given a little extra excitement by the knowledge that the weekend was beginning, that many extra people were in camp, that almost every cabin was full, came to them clearly as they moved about the Drummonds’ deck readying breakfast. From all around among the little groves and along the river bank dishes clinked, silverware rattled, there were scrapings of chairs being pushed up to tables and the cries of irate parents attempting to secure the presence of their wandering young. The balm of another perfect day lay upon the great river canyon, and in it the noises of humanity and nature blended in a kindly chorus gentle to the ear and comforting to the heart.

“The thing that worries me,” Louise said as she came out of the kitchen with a platter of scrambled eggs and bacon, “is that he’s taking it all so seriously. If he’d just ease up a little, it would be so much better for everybody.”

“How can he?” Jerry demanded, following with a pitcher of orange juice and a wicker basketful of doughnuts, “with Haila around? I gather she’s being extra-double bitchy about the whole thing.”

“What shall we do to her?” Einar asked lazily from the air-mattress where he lay sprawled full-length, looking up through the pine-tops with a cherubic air into the cloudless ten o’clock blue. “Weight her down with golf-clubs and throw her in the pool at midnight? Get old Mr. Stafford to shoot her next time she crosses his property on the way to Soda Springs? Lure her up-river and push her on top of a rattlesnake? Drown her at The Falls?”

“I want us to be serious, now,” Louise said. “What are we going to do about Bill? This man needs help.”

“I tell you what,” her husband suggested. “Let’s all help him by just—not helping him!” He gave a bright smile. “Wouldn’t that be an original idea?”

“It wouldn’t work in this place,” Einar said, stretching luxuriously and trying without success to grab his wife’s ankle as she passed on her way to the kitchen. “We’ve got to do something. You know that, Jer. Everybody around here has to do something. Even my Ma is thinking of getting into the act, and you know what that means.”

Louise groaned.

“God forbid. I haven’t tangled with Mother Magruder since you and Sally-Jane were romancing, and I’d rather not now. Kindly tell her to go away and not bother us, will you?”

“I’ll try,” Einar said thoughtfully. “Poor Bill needs all the help he can get.”

“There you go helping again,” Jerry said, sitting down and pouring the coffee. “Why don’t you just—”

“Well, I like the guy, let’s face it,” Einar said, leaping to his feet in one smoothly coordinated movement and moving to the table, where he sat down with a satisfied thump and cradled his arms protectively around the basket of doughnuts. “He deserves better than he’s got so far.”

“Better than he may get,” Louise said soberly. “I wish he didn’t take it so hard.

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