Ferris Beach Read Online Free PDF Page A

motel or tall buildings like in Clemmonsville, just a trailer park and rows of small pastel houses, much like that stretch behind our backyard. Still, I stopped asking to see amazing Ferris wheels when I began to smell the salt breeze and held my hand out the car window to feel the damp mist that seemed to hang in the air and sparkle like a spider web.
    “You’re about to see the ocean,” he said as we crested the old wooden drawbridge, and sure enough, when we came down the hill, I saw green water, smooth as glass way out where it met with the sky, and rolling and cresting and breaking up near the sand. I could not take it all in fast enough, and when we finally got to where we could park and get out, I ran out onto the sand. I kept checking to make sure my father was still there and he was, squatted by a dune, rolling up his trousers. I waited and then the two of us, holding hands, stepped into the water, the waves breaking on our ankles and then on my legs. He lifted me each time a big wave threatened to hit me above the waist—and then I saw Angela. Watching her come down the dune was almost like seeing a movie in slow-motion, seeing every step of her long bare legs, her feet sinking into the hot loose sand. My dad’s hand left my shoulder and flew up in a wave, back and forth, back and forth, like a flag heralding the beginning of a parade. She was beautiful there on top of the dune.
    “Angela, Angela,” he said over and over, his voice muffled in her thick hair. He pushed her back and looked at her, so young-looking and glamorous in her two-piece sparkly gold suit that hit right below her navel.
    “And you”—Angela stepped back from my father and stared at me—“Mary Katherine Gates. I’m so glad to finally meet you.” She squatted down, a rush of her scent coming to me with the ocean air, perfume or shampoo like gardenias. She studied me carefully, her eyes lingering on my cheek as I reached up to hold it. “Oh, don’t hide your pretty little face,” she whispered, andtook my hand. Her lips were coated in a pale pink frost like cotton candy. “She looks like a Burns,” Angela said, and twisted her hand round and round the brightly colored beads she wore, their turquoise blue a perfect match to the terry cloth coverup and the barefoot strapped sandals she carried. “See the copper in her hair?” Angela lifted a strand of my hair, and I strained to see it as well. “And those fine full lips.” She pinched my cheeks in like a fish face and then lifted her fingers to her own mouth. “Perfect for doing this,” she said, and played her lips up and down while humming like a funny musical instrument or underwater sounds. “And Freddie,” she said, and looked up, my dad’s shadow falling over her like a net, “you are a sight for sore eyes.” She blinked hard several times. Her lashes, separated and painted black, had left small brush strokes just below her thin arched brows.
    “Yes,” he whispered, and reached out to touch the strand of hair which fell near her eye. “So are you.”
    “How’s the general?” she asked and laughed, her question confusing me until my father said, “Cleva’s fine. You know she really has missed you.”
    “Yeah, right.” She waved a hand. “I’ll fry like a french fry if I don’t put on some lotion.” She leaned in close to me, and again I got a deep breath of her gardenia smell, as rich and sweet as our backyard in the early summer.
    We sat on her quilt while my dad walked up and over the dunes to go buy some milk for my lunch. She scooped the sand and uncovered a bed of coquinas, their polished, colorful shells seen briefly before they began to dig their way into hiding; she placed one, purple and white, into my palm, and then one by one curled my fingers down around it. “Don’t say I never gave you anything,” she said, and threw back her head laughing, her tongue stained deep red from the wine, her teeth as white as the shells that glistened with