Read That Camden Summer for Free Online Page A

deplorable. Just deplorable."
    Elfred urged her up the steps, picked his way across the good boards and opened the front door. She preceded him into what she supposed was a parlor. Wonder of wonders
    - it had electricity! But the wires were strung outside the walls and the bulbs hung bare. There were newspapers everywhere. The walls had been papered with them. The old man had collected
    them and they stood in sagging stacks around the edges of the room along with empty glass jars and more of the Portuguese floats. Soot stained the ceiling above a heater stove, and trash littered the floors. The place stank of urine and decay.
    Roberta announced, "I want my money back." "I can't get it back," Elfred told her. "The sale is conclusive."
    Roberta marched up to him, grabbed his folded umbrella and jabbed it smartly into his belly. Elfred doubled forward and grunted.
    "Oof! ... Ro-Roberta ... what in the "How are we supposed to live in this? How, Elfred! Would you tell me that!" she yelled.
    Elfred hugged his belly and stared at her, aghast. The girls had come onto the front porch and stood looking in dubiously. Rebecca stepped over the threshold and the others followed, picking their way carefully. Susan peered up a creaky-looking stairway that divided the two downstairs rooms. Rebecca walked over to a wall and peeled a strip of newspaper off, revealing ancient water-stained wallpaper behind it. "It won't be so bad, Mother. Once we burn the newspapers and paint the walls."
    Rebecca, however, was always the optimistic one.
    "It's unfit for a polecat!"
    A kitchen adjoined the living room. Lydia ventured into it and the others followed. She opened a door beneath a dry sink, releasing a fetid odor. What appeared to be a slop pail - empty, by some benevolent freak of
    bathroom."
    fate - had left a permanent stain in the wood of the floor.
    "Close that door, Lydia!" Roberta snapped. "And don't touch that filthy thing again. He probably pissed in it, for all we know!" To Elfred she snapped, "I suppose there's no
    "No. Just an outhouse."
    She turned away, too angry to face him. "Listen, Birdy, you said two hundred dollars. This is what you get for two hundred dollars."
    "Two hundred dollars I could have spent on something livable while financing the rest with a mortgage. "
    "You told me you didn't want a mortgage, so I figured it could be repaired with a little help. "
    She spun on him, pointing at a wall. "You repair it then, Elfred, because I don't have time! I've got to go out and earn a living for my girls! And while I do it, am I supposed to leave them in this?" She was shouting by this time, gesturing rabidly. " You stuck us with this skunk's nest! You make it livable! And while you're at it, you pay to make it livable! Lord help me, I trusted you, Elfred! "
    Elfred was backing away because Birdy was brandishing the umbrella again. He spread both hands as if to ward her off. "All right, Birdy, all right ... I will. I'll take care of it. "
    "And do it quickly, because this is no fit lodging for my girls!"
    "Very well, I'll see Gabriel Farley right away." "Yessir, you will," said a deep voice from the front room, and Gabriel Farley himself
    A I
    materialized. He stepped through the doorway into the kitchen and said, "Hello again."
    "Well, where did you come from?" Elfred asked.
    "Figured you could use me. If these ladies were going to live in old Sebastian's wake, it'd have to be fixed up some." He crossed his arms, cinched his hands beneath his armpits and scanned the tops of the walls. "Wouldn't mind giving you an estimate."
    Roberta brushed off her palms and shot him an acid glance. "Well, that was fast," she remarked dryly.
    "Lucky thing we met at the wharf or I wouldn't have known this place was going to be lived in again."
    Roberta wondered just how lucky. "So you're a carpenter, Mr. Farley?" "Carpenter, painter, general tradesman all
    rolled into one. I can fix most things."
    Her glance shifted from one man to the other.