Sweetwater Creek Read Online Free PDF Page A

“Best crystal in the world. Only thing worthy of a fine single malt.”
    Walter used the word “fine” a lot. It was a ritual, too. Walter Parmenter sometimes seemed to his daughter a restless subterranean force held together by rituals.
    His euphoria last night had, for once, a tangible thread in it. He and the boys had a guest on the Thanksgiving hunt, a neighboring planter with homes in Idaho and Long Island and even Hungary, where, her father said, the hunting was the best in the world.
    Townsend Chappelle had both inherited money and made it, managing the network of supermarket newspapers about this Hollywood star’s anorexia and that one’s secret marriage at thirteen to a male exotic dancer at Chippendale’s. It had been the family business for decades. By now he had an unimaginable amount of money. Hunting was his life, and he had made Spartina, his great plantation on Wadmalaw Sound, into a sportsman’s paradise. Friends came from all over the world to hunt there, among them celebrities of every persuasion, whose post-hunt antics made the rounds of Charleston, usually in whispers. An invitation to hunt at Spartina was tantamount to one to hunt at Bernard Baruch’s fabled Hobcaw Barony in its halcyon days. The mere name Spartina shrouded the guest in privilege and singularity.
    And he was joining the Parmenters on Thanksgiving morning because he wanted to see a good Boykin in action and he had heard that Sweetwater had exceptional ones. His own prize Labradors were too large for the stubby little boats that slipped into duck blinds, and his own flushing spaniels were too small to sustain long runs in extreme heat or swims in icy water. He wanted to start his own kennel of perfect waterfowl spaniels. Friends had referred him to Walter.
    “Who are you taking besides Elvis, Dad?” Walt Junior said.
    “No others, this time. Elvis is the best we’re ever likely to have. I’m going to let him go after a quail or two, too, and if we’re lucky he can flush a deer for us.”
    “Don’t you think that’s kind of risky?” Carter said. “Elvis has never actually hunted. Maybe you ought to have some backup.”
    “Don’t need it. Dog can do anything you tell him to,” their father said. “He’s done everything but go in the water after a shot game bird; he’s a beautiful sight in the water with the dummies. Sails right in like a dolphin.”
    “You going to take Emily?” Walt Junior said, looking sidewise at her out of his father’s narrow blue eyes. Emily did not raise her head or speak.
    “Not this time. Might put ol’ Townsend off, to have a little girl underfoot petting the dog.”
    Still, Emily said nothing. Did he truly not remember who had trained at least half of last year’s Boykins?
    The silence spun out awkwardly. Walter jerked around to look at her, suddenly, as if remembering she was there.
    “I’ll let her come down and put a bug in Elvis’s ear before we leave,” he said jovially. “That way he’ll have it on good authority what he’s supposed to do. By the time we get back Chappelle will order every pup we’ve got coming along for the next fifty years, and let us train them, too. The whole Lowcountry will follow on his heels, just like water when you pull the stopper out.”
    He looked as if he might actually levitate into the murky air of the breakfast room. Emily excused herself and got up to go to bed. She thought her heart would burst with rage and a sneaking, childish sorrow.
    “Wait a minute, Emily,” her father called after her. She stopped but did not turn.
    “Tell Cleta and your aunt Jenny that I want somebody to make up some of those benné seed things they have at Charleston cocktail parties, and get a good bottle of sherry in here, and polish up the library and have a fire going in there about sunset. I expect Mr. Townsend Chappelle would be glad of a drink and a bite in front of the fire while we’re finishing our business up. It’s only hospitable to