face and from the corner of her mouth a tongue tip would peak.
When the beach-house children played games that weekend Annie was guardian of the rules, chooser of sides, arbiter of out and safe. She was famous for making the boys cry … she’d get them down in the sand and force them to say uncle. Perhaps out of character for such a tomboy she preferred wearing dresses and in fact Camel never saw her in jeans or shorts. But she was always coming back to the beach house with those dresses torn and dirty, her hands and face looking as though she’d been working with coal. Annie’s mother would send her from the dinner table to wash, Annie returning to fall wide-eyed upon barbecued chicken as if she were more than hungry for it, she was enraged that food was out there on a plate instead of in her belly where it clearly belonged. As she ate, barbecue sauce stained her mouth then up around her cheeks until she resembled a vampire well fed.
The day’s play would scuff Annie’s knees and palms, when her mother immersed her in the evening bath you could hear Anniethroughout the house screeching from the effect of water and soap on cut and scrape … but after that bath Annie would come out clean and flanneled to sit among the adults, usually close to Teddy Camel, and apply a fresh set of Band-Aids in a performance of care and self-admiration to match any woman adorning herself with jewelry.
She had a crush on him, Camel was a policeman and also there was about the man some dark gravity that tugged at a girl so full of light and bounce. She would come loping up from the beach and spot Teddy in the group of adults and beeline for him to throw herself salt-wet upon his lap, draping an orangutany arm around his neck.
Her mother would tell her to stop pestering him.
“He doesn’t mind,” Annie would say … then look hard with predator-narrowed eyes at Camel and demand, “Do you?”
He would reply that her mother was right, she was a pest, and Annie would stick her tongue out, then run away to terrorize the boys who always stood when she came around, junior officers in the presence of their superior.
Her mother would say to Camel, “She’s in love with you.”
“I’m in love with her too,” he’d reply.
No one took it wrong and Camel’s actions with the girl were always correct. They went together for seashore walks and one evening they sat on the beach as the sun set behind them, Camel and Annie watching the sea change its mind from bright invitation to dark warning. On these times alone with her he never spoke to Annie or touched her in ways he wouldn’t have done in her mother’s presence, or her father’s had he been alive, yet Camel felt strangely on guard whenever he was with Annie as if one part of himself sat in watchful judgment of another part.
Early in his career as a D.C. patrolman he had aided in the arrest of a man in his mid-thirties, a long-necked hillbilly being charged with having sexual intercourse with a girl of twelve. Camel kept an eye on him at the station house while paperwork was being assembled. The man lined up words in his head … andwhen he finally got them straight, he said, “I didn’t exactly rape her you know.”
Camel told him to save it for the detectives.
“You don’t understand how it was. She’s always coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel that don’t quite reach, always running around in her underwear … wanting to wrestle with me.” He pronounced it
rassle
. “I even told her, ‘Hey, I’m your mom’s boyfriend, not yours.’ Didn’t do no good, she’d come in my bedroom in the morning, her mother already off to work, and she’d ask me could I do up the back of her dress and she—”
Camel told him he didn’t want to hear it.
The man nodded in total agreement. “Ain’t nobody going to want to hear it, I know that … I
know
it.”
Camel held the man in utter, violent contempt as he continued his pathetic plea: “Ain’t
When the beach-house children played games that weekend Annie was guardian of the rules, chooser of sides, arbiter of out and safe. She was famous for making the boys cry … she’d get them down in the sand and force them to say uncle. Perhaps out of character for such a tomboy she preferred wearing dresses and in fact Camel never saw her in jeans or shorts. But she was always coming back to the beach house with those dresses torn and dirty, her hands and face looking as though she’d been working with coal. Annie’s mother would send her from the dinner table to wash, Annie returning to fall wide-eyed upon barbecued chicken as if she were more than hungry for it, she was enraged that food was out there on a plate instead of in her belly where it clearly belonged. As she ate, barbecue sauce stained her mouth then up around her cheeks until she resembled a vampire well fed.
The day’s play would scuff Annie’s knees and palms, when her mother immersed her in the evening bath you could hear Anniethroughout the house screeching from the effect of water and soap on cut and scrape … but after that bath Annie would come out clean and flanneled to sit among the adults, usually close to Teddy Camel, and apply a fresh set of Band-Aids in a performance of care and self-admiration to match any woman adorning herself with jewelry.
She had a crush on him, Camel was a policeman and also there was about the man some dark gravity that tugged at a girl so full of light and bounce. She would come loping up from the beach and spot Teddy in the group of adults and beeline for him to throw herself salt-wet upon his lap, draping an orangutany arm around his neck.
Her mother would tell her to stop pestering him.
“He doesn’t mind,” Annie would say … then look hard with predator-narrowed eyes at Camel and demand, “Do you?”
He would reply that her mother was right, she was a pest, and Annie would stick her tongue out, then run away to terrorize the boys who always stood when she came around, junior officers in the presence of their superior.
Her mother would say to Camel, “She’s in love with you.”
“I’m in love with her too,” he’d reply.
No one took it wrong and Camel’s actions with the girl were always correct. They went together for seashore walks and one evening they sat on the beach as the sun set behind them, Camel and Annie watching the sea change its mind from bright invitation to dark warning. On these times alone with her he never spoke to Annie or touched her in ways he wouldn’t have done in her mother’s presence, or her father’s had he been alive, yet Camel felt strangely on guard whenever he was with Annie as if one part of himself sat in watchful judgment of another part.
Early in his career as a D.C. patrolman he had aided in the arrest of a man in his mid-thirties, a long-necked hillbilly being charged with having sexual intercourse with a girl of twelve. Camel kept an eye on him at the station house while paperwork was being assembled. The man lined up words in his head … andwhen he finally got them straight, he said, “I didn’t exactly rape her you know.”
Camel told him to save it for the detectives.
“You don’t understand how it was. She’s always coming out of the bathroom wearing a towel that don’t quite reach, always running around in her underwear … wanting to wrestle with me.” He pronounced it
rassle
. “I even told her, ‘Hey, I’m your mom’s boyfriend, not yours.’ Didn’t do no good, she’d come in my bedroom in the morning, her mother already off to work, and she’d ask me could I do up the back of her dress and she—”
Camel told him he didn’t want to hear it.
The man nodded in total agreement. “Ain’t nobody going to want to hear it, I know that … I
know
it.”
Camel held the man in utter, violent contempt as he continued his pathetic plea: “Ain’t
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