And so it had begun, the most besetting calamity that can happen at any summer camp, a solid week of rain; and just when the end of the month saw a troop of fresh arrivals being registered by Ma Starbuck and settled into the bunks reluctantly surrendered by departing campers. This was no way for new boys out to enjoy themselves for the rest of the season to be introduced to camping among the pines of Moonbow; from Virtue through Harmony to High Endeavor the cabins were shut up like so many wooden boxes, each a dark, damp, lantern-lit world of its own, inside which random campers, bored and restless, idly resorted to games of Parcheesi and Monopoly, to gum-card-scaling tournaments and hours-long bull sessions. Cornsilk consumption rose, and there was a brisk trafficking in printed contraband like Film Fun, The Police Gazette, and Pic and Click. Gus Klaus upped his status all along the line-path by reading once again to all comers the smuttiest passages from Studs Lonigan, while the most adventuresome campers, in quest of the bizarre, the prurient, or anyway the novel, ducked into the mephitic atmosphere of Malachi to take a gander at “Big Billy” Bosey exhibiting his boner from under an Indian blanket.
At intervals dreary, sodden processions of rainwear-clad boys slogged their way about, from lower to upper campus for meals and crafts sessions (though the rain came in through holes in the barn roof), then back again, and a seemingly endless stream of disgruntled campers flowed through Wanda Koslowski’s dispensary, exhibiting swollen thumbs pinched in falling cabin flaps, burns from the careless lighting of kerosene wicks, bruises and contusions from slides in the wet mud, even a sprained ankle (Emerson Bean, ever fortune’s fool, slipped off the lodge porch on the second day of the deluge). And many was the camper obliged to force the hint of a smile in response to the hoary chestnut Pa Starbuck loved to pull on any unsuspecting passerby:
“I sure hope this rain keeps up.”
“Why’s that, Pa?”
“ ’Cause if it keeps up it won’t come down.”
Ha ha. Joe Miller lived.
A primary victim of the camp’s darkened mood was Leo, who, unable to comprehend fully the knowledge that had been thrust so blindingly upon him at the Castle, felt more keenly than the others the growing disquiet along the line-path. By the time he had been driven back to the Castle that afternoon in Dagmar’s Pierce-Arrow, Word of what had happened was all over camp, and there was no escape from the jokes about his “Major Bowes nuttiness.” Maybe, they said, Wacko Wackeem should just quit “fiddling around.”
Secretly, Leo was almost glad about the jokes; anything was better than the boys’ finding out the truth: that his stepfather had murdered Leo’s mother and her friend. Of this, no one must know, never a word. For the rest of his stay at Friend-Indeed he must confide in no one – not even Tiger, who, whatever questions he might have been itching to ask, like the true friend he was, by neither sign nor word indicated that he expected or even wanted to be let in on things. Loyally he took Leo’s part, standing up for him and telling the others to shut up and mind their own business. But his defense only caused Leo pangs of guilt. For what did friendship mean without trust? Yet how could he level with Tiger when doing so would only brand Leo a liar? How could he confess what he now knew to be so: that Rudy the butcher was still doing time in the state pen for manslaughter, Rudy Matuchek, the notorious “Butcher of Saggetts Notch,” whose picture had been in. ill the newspapers?
At the council fire that night, moved into the lodge because of the rain, he watched the traditional rites and ceremonies, but for him they had now lost their magu. He was nervous and jumpy, couldn’t concentrate. He never even felt the usually warm clasp of hands in the Friendship Circle. He never heard the groans of his cabin-mates when Hap announced that Malachi was still ahead in the competition for the Hartsig Trophy.
Then Reece made his customary entrance in a puff of smoke – in the doorway of the staff room, with his Indian two-step illuminated, not by the moon but by the great horn chandelier – and as he made his progress among the rows, dispensing the biweekly total of red feathers, Leo’s eyes tracked the bobbing tips of the Warrior’s headdress as closer he came, and closer, his eyes gleaming like red coals, turning at last into the row where the Jeremians sat, moving toward Leo – could he see into Leo’s false heart? – then passing him by (no feather for Wacko, never any feather for him), and disappearing into the shadows of the back hallway. And then Pa had told the Moonbow Tale…
And later, after taps had sounded from the lodge porch, where Wiggy Pugh blew his cornet into the sheeting rain, Leo’s nightmare returned – not the same old dream, but close enough and even more disturbing: There she lay, the Moonbow Princess, atop the rock, the evil medicine man looming over her. The watching Leo yearned to save her, was compelled to make an attempt, yet he could not, his feet were fastened to the ground and would not obey him. Nothing could free him, nothing save her! He stared helplessly as the dark arm was raised, the blade flashed in the light, and descended. The knife was plunged into her heart. But see! The Indian princess was no longer a princess but Emily! And the executioner, Misswiss, had become Rudy in his straw hat and butcher’s apron!
Such was his new dream, and as he had his first night in camp, he woke up screaming, while his cabin-mates stirred
– “Wacko Wacko – dreaming again” – and went back to sleep. He lay panting and mutely sobbing, racked with shame and fear. The next night he dreamed a similar dream, and another night after that, and each time he awoke with a cry, each time terrified that he might have said something in his sleep to give away the truth that must at all cost remain safe.
In the face of these renewed nocturnal disturbances, Reece took it upon himself to have Leo transferred to a bed in the infirmary “for observation.” There, when he awoke screaming, Wanda came padding in with her flashlight to sit beside him in the chair and talk him back to sleep again. He wanted badly to tell her about it; if he did she’d be sure to understand – Wanda seemed to understand about so many things; Fritz, too. But, much as he exerted himself, Leo couldn’t bring himself to say the words. A couple of times he made up his mind to do it and he would get right to the point of starting – then he would clam up, and that would be the end of that.
When the time came for him to take up his abode in Jeremiah again, his counselor attempted to block his return, and only the intervention of Ma Starbuck kept Leo from being dispatched to a recently vacated bunk in High Endeavor. How could she know that such a move, though mortifying, would have been a relief to him? For, since the excursion to the Castle, of his seven bunkmates five had been barely speaking to him, and when Tiger and the Bomber were elsewhere the air in the cabin fairly crackled with hostility and ill will. If it wasn’t Phil razzing him, or Wally giving him sullen looks, or Dump criticizing him, or Monkey, once so easygoing and friendly, it was Reece himself, always there – even when he wasn’t – watching, measuring, assaying, and judging, as if by piercing Leo’s thoughts with that sharp look he could discover the terrible secret
Leo strove so desperately to hide, and thereby make his own secret safe. Reece, who knew that Leo knew… who would never forgive him for “spying” that day at the icehouse, or for the bloody nose Leo had given him.
As the rain hammered its monotonous tattoo on the tarpaper roof, sounding hollowly in the interior of the cabin, Leo’s heart would jump at the sound of that instantly recognizable footfall on the porch. Or if by chance they met alone in the Dewdrop Inn, as happened occasionally, Leo, at the trough, would freeze with embarrassment, and his water would dry up as if a spigot had been turned off, while Reece would stare straight ahead, whistling or humming and pretending Leo wasn’t there. And in the night, as he lay in his bunk, eyes open to keep from dreaming, he would stare across at the counselor’s cot, at that blond head resting on the pillow, and it seemed to him that even with closed eyes Reece was watching him, and he would screw his own eyes shut, trying to blot out the scene that no one must ever discover.
And yet, and yet, it remained, it was always there, waiting to catch him out. He couldn’t get away from it, couldn’t stop seeing it, dreaming it No! Stop it, I don’t want to hear!
“Not a whore!”
“What?”
Reece’s eyes were open now. “What did you say?”
Then he tossed a look around at the awakened boys as if to say “Didn’t I say so? Nuts…” Wacko really was wacko.
During the day he avoided Jeremiah when he could, spending a good deal of his time working on the Austrian village, now almost finished. Because of the leaky roof in the crafts barn, it had been transferred from the Swoboda corner to the warmth and dryness of the lodge, where it was to be permanently displayed on a base specially constructed by Hank Ives. (Several notables, including some aldermen and Dr Dunbar, had been invited to a formal unveiling-and-dedication ceremony, and the local paper had promised to send a reporter and a photographer to cover the story.)
When he had covered up his work with a sheet and put his tools away, Leo would leave the lodge for Fritz’s cottage, which, while the bad weather continued, unabated, had become among a certain group of campers a refuge from the stultifying atmosphere of their cabins, a place where boys unused to being kept indoors, unused even to one another’s company, older boys as well as Virtue small fry, found themselves mingling together, the members of an unofficial club – the “Katzenjammer Kids” was what Reece Hartsig dubbed them. There might be an impromptu musical program, when Fritz would play records on his Victrola: Enrico Caruso or Rosa Ponselle, or Madame Schumann-Heink singing “Ich liebe dich.” (One recording, a rare treasure, favored over the rest, was a talking disc on which could be heard a conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Johannes Brahms.) Several of the boys, especially Tiger and Dusty Rhoades, were enthusiastic stamp-collectors, and, deprived of the pleasures of baseball, they spent hours poring over Fritz’s well-worn stamp album with a magnifying glass, exclaiming at its most notable entry, a 1918 U.S. Airmail stamp with the airplane at its center inverted, which had been a present to Fritz from his grandfather. Others – Leo and, unexpectedly, the Bomber – were good at chess, and often as not, while marshmallows hung from wire coat hangers toasted over Fritz’s hotplate, a game would be in progress, with four or five kibitzers following every move of the antique ivory figures Fritz’s father had brought from Hong Kong.
It was perhaps inevitable that what had in fair weather been the welcome “cultural hub” of camp, in bad weather became the object of envy and rancor; that what had seemed only natural, ordinary behavior – for a few boys to drop by occasionally, during “free periods,” for. 1 bit of music, a picture book to page through – now struck chords of jealousy among those campers who were allot ted no share in these activities (though they would have derived little pleasure from them in any case); inevitable that these malcontents and mischief-makers would begin holding meetings of their own, in places where one might least expect to discover them: up in the loft in the Marconi Radio Shop, for example, or at odd moments in the Dew-drop Inn, or hidden in Amos or Malachi or Hosea with the flaps closed…
Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more no more,
It ain’t gonna rain no more,
So how in the heck can I wash my neck When it ain’t gonna rain no more? sang the boys, though this ditty was far from reality. Yet, upon occasion, the torrent would let up, and even show signs of clearing, and it was at such a time that Leo, crossing the sodden playing field, noticed a lively crowd of Harmonyites stripped down to their underwear, sliding on a strip of hard-glazed mud. Their satisfyingly wet, dirty sport looked like fun. He would gladly have shucked off his duds and joined them, but he knew they wouldn’t want him. Their very hilarity and high spirits seemed to exclude him from their ranks.
The song had come from Hosea, and as Leo approached he saw one of the side flaps open and a small figure pop out and trot off toward the cadet unit.
“Hey, Peewee, wait up,” Leo called. The boy slowed reluctantly, ducking his eyes as Leo joined him.
“What’s doin’, Peewit?” he asked.
Peewee frowned. “Nuthin’. And don’t call me Peewit.” “Have you heard anything from your sister? Is she having a good time?”
“What do you care?” came the cold reply.
“I was only asking.”
Peewee’s scowl was fierce. “She ain’t never cornin’ home, not ever.”
Though Leo felt a pang, he knew better than to believe Peewee’s exaggerations. When the boy started away, Leo reached for him. “Hold on, Elephant, I want to talk to you.”
“I can’t. I ain’t s’posed t’ hang around with you no more.”
“Who says?”
“The guys. You know.”
“Why not?”
“Because you hang around with Fritz. And you play dollies with Willa-Sue.”
“I do not. And what’s wrong with hanging around with Fritz?”
“He’s a Jew.”
“So what?”
“The Jews crucified Jesus Christ our Lord. Fritz shouldn’t be here, this is a Christian camp. Let him go to his own camp if he wants.”
Leo stared. Who had been putting these words in the boy’s mouth? He glanced toward the cabin Peewee had just left. “What’s going on in there?” he asked.
“Nuthin’.”
"Are they having some kind of powwow?”
Peewee scraped a toe in the mud. “Well-1… sort of,” he said, and squirmed free and ran away into the wet.
A day later, having gone over to the lodge in search of Oats’s copy of the world atlas, Leo glimpsed Wally Pfeiffer’s back as it disappeared down the cellar stairs. Sneaking down after him, Leo found him in the lower passageway, crouched on hands and knees, peeking through a space in the wall. Leo tiptoed up behind him and listened too. From the other side muffled voices could be heard, fragments of talk and laughter. As Leo leaned close to Wally’s ear, Wally started in alarm, then retreated as il Leo were carrying the plague. When some more sounds were heard from the other side of the partition, Wally fled up the stairs. What was wrong with him? Leo put his ear to the wall, trying to make out what was being said on the other side, then knelt in Wally’s place and put his eye to the crack.
Commonly used by Henry Ives as his work- and storage-room, the space contained an assortment of carpentry tools neatly arranged above a workbench under a low ceiling. Today, candles stuck in bottles gave off a meager light and the air that blew through the crack smelled not only of paint and turpentine, a bit moldy and fetid, but of cigarette tobacco too. Through the aperture Leo could make out the silhouetted backs of several heads, and in the candle shine he identified the faces of Moriarity, Bosey, and Ratner, along with Phil Dodge and Dump Dillworth; he also identified the voices of others he could not see: Tallon and Klaus – and Monkey Twitchell. What bits of conversation he could grasp through the partition seemed commonplace enough, and yet – had someone mentioned his name? Were they talking about him in there? Pressing now an eye, now an ear to the crack, he strained to see, to catch a word, some hint of what was happening inside, but all he got were tantalizing fragments.
Then he heard the scrape of footsteps and some louder talk. The meeting was breaking up. Leo scuttled along the passage and hid behind some barrels tucked away under the stairs, holding his breath as the store-room door opened and a dozen campers filed out, went down the passage, and climbed the steps directly above his hiding place.
When the coast was clear, he stood up, took a few steps, then jumped back as an arm shot out at him. Fingers grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked him forward so he was staring into the scowling face of Phil Dodge. Behind him stood Bosey, Moriarity, and Monkey.
“Well, well, look who’s here,” said Bosey with a burlesque leer; “Wacko the quacko.”
“What are you doing down here?” demanded Phils
Leo stared, unable to think of an excuse for his presence in the cellar. Finally he pointed to the door to Hank’s storage room.
“P-paint,” he managed. “I was looking for some paint. For Fritz’s model.”
“Screw the paint. And screw you, Wacko,” said Bosey. “You better scram out of here if you know what’s good for you.”
“I bet he’s been listening at keyholes,” Moriarity said, shouldering his way in and jutting out his jaw. “You’re always sticking your nose where it don’t belong. That big potato nose of yours. That big, long, Pinocchio schnozz of yours.”
He took Leo’s nose between his knuckles and twisted it. “Big nose, huh?”
Leo’s face heated up and his eyes stung as he tried. to pull away.
Moriarity laughed and nudged Bosey, standing next to him. “ ’Smatter, can’tcha take it? Big Jimmy Durante schnozzola.” He gave the nose another painful twist, making Leo cry out.
“That hurts!”
“Aw, poor baby, he says it hurts. You know something, Wackoff, if I had that nose full of nickels I’d be so rich I wouldn’t ever have to work again. Right, Phil?”
Phil was quick to agree; he turned to the others. “Come on, let’s leave this spud and get out of here.”
Abandoning Leo, the four ran noisily up the stairs. uul disappeared. Leo waited until he was sure it was safe to leave, then crept away, feeling lucky he hadn’t got a fat lip for his snooping.
That evening, after he’d gone through the candy line (the store had been moved inside the barn because of the weather), he waited for Peewee to make his purchase, then grabbed him and walked him down to the lower camp, using the occasion – and Peewee’s inability to keep quiet even in the company of one he had been told to avoid – to ferret out everything he could concerning the unexplained goings-on. The gatherings in Hosea and in the cellar had been meetings of a new secret club calling itself the “Mingoes,” after the sinister Algonquin tribe described by James Fenimore Cooper in The Last of the Mohicans. Originators and self-appointed “chiefs” of the organization were Phil Dodge and Billy Bosey. Other founding members included – as might have been expected – Claude Moriarity and the other erstwhile Rinkydinks, who had been deprived by the rain of their usual meeting place at the Steelyard house. Gus Klaus, Bud Talbot, Blackjack Ratner, and Zipper Tallon had soon joined, then Dump Dillworth and Monkey Twitchell. Initiation into the club required a sacred oath, sworn in blood, to divulge nothing about the club or its meetings, never even to acknowledge its existence, never to squeal on a fellow member, and never to break the code of silence that had been ordained.
Having gleaned these wisps of information, Leo mulled them over privately, unsettled by the thought that whatever was going on had something to do with him. It was almost as if the club had sprung into existence for the sole purpose of excluding Wacko Wackeem from its membership, and intimidating him into the bargain. And now, everywhere he went around camp, it seemed, he caught “looks,” observed silent but meaningful exchanges, heard stealthy whispers, glimpsed tight little granny knots of conspirators in conference, knots that quickly untied themselves at his approach. But when he expressed his concern to Tiger and the Bomber, he was reassured. “They don’t mean anything,” Tiger declared scornfully. “The Mingoes are just the Rinkydinks in full dress. It’ll all blow over when the rain stops, you’ll see. Besides, if Dr Dunbar gets wind of it, he’ll put a stop to it quick enough.”
But Leo had his doubts. The way things were right now, no one could say when the rain would stop. And what if news of the Mingoes never reached Dr Dunbar’s ears?
And so the rain continued – after nearly a week, the trails were sluices of mud, the playing field a pond. Blessedly, Leo was alone this afternoon – Reece had taken a toothache to the dentist in Junction City, and the other Harmonyites were all at the lodge, where Oats Gurley was giving a demonstration of taxidermy – and for half an hour or so, huddled like a mummy in his blankets, while outside the wind moaned among the wet fir boughs, and up among the roof beams moths swooned in a blind delirium around the amber lantern glow, he made entries in his journal, interrupted only by Hank Ives delivering the mail, late as usual because of the mud, which slowed his jitney.
Lying back, Leo closed his notebook and stared up at the handtinted snapshot of the delectable Nancy Driver in Reece’s mirror. He turned his flashlight beam on it, reading the inscription at the bottom:
Virginia Beach
Summer 1937
“Wish You Were Here”
XXX
Nan
He allowed his eye to trace caressingly the lines of her curvaceous figure and the way it filled her gleaming bathing, suit, appreciating the way in which her wavy hair hung shoulder-length, the laughing smile on her lips. He enjoyed imagining he knew some girl like that, one he could go dancing with or take for a ride in his convertible coupe. Fat chance, he thought. Nancy was years older than Honey, and he’d been tongue-tied around Honey; maybe, though,'he could say some things in writing, maybe that would make it easier. He liked the notion of having a pretty girl to correspond with. He’d never had a pen pal. Except, perhaps… now that he thought about it, perhaps he did: Leo’s quota of mail had consisted of a single letter, from Miss Meekum (“don’t forget to wear rubbers in the rain”; at Friend-Indeed nobody ever wore rubbers), and – more importantly – a postcard whose arrival had surprised him considerably. The card was from Honey Oliphant, from Cape Cod, and it depicted a lighthouse by the seashore. In her delicate, careful script, she had penned:
Hello from sunny Cape Cod. The water here is so cold – brrrrr!
Having a wonderful time, wish you were here. I think of you often and the brave thing you did. See you some time.
Love, H.O.
Love, H.O.
He felt his heart beat faster at the mere idea that, some hundred miles distant, she had given him the slightest thought, let alone written to him. Maybe if he could talk"Peewee into giving him his sister’s address he could write her back.
He capped his pen and slipped his journal and the postcard under his pillow as footsteps sounded on the porch. The door opened and Phil marched in with Dump,
Monkey, and Eddie, followed by Moriarity, Moon Mullens, and some others of the Rinkydink gang. Leo wondered where Tiger and the Bomber were – and Wally. For once Phil’s ever-present shadow wasn’t running behind him. Phil kicked the door shut and stood with his back to it, regarding Leo suspiciously, while the others stripped off their wet gear and, spreading themselves among the available bunks, made themselves at home.
“Hey, Wacko, whatcha doin’ in here all by yerself?” demanded Moriarity. “Poundin’ your pud, J bet.” Leo turned scarlet but didn’t dignify the crudity by making a reply. The room was so crammed with faces he feared and disliked that he didn’t know which to look at. He glanced at Eddie for a cue, but Eddie, who was fiddling with his belt buckle, failed to make eye contact.
“You know something, Wacko?” This was Phil. “We’ve been thinking about you, all of us.”
Leo looked around the circle of faces. “No kidding. Did you decide anything – you and your braintrust?”
“Don’t get wise with me, Wacko. What we decided was that, if you were really smart, you’d get on that bus you came here on and head back to where you came from. This really isn’t your kind of place.” He put his hand in his pocket. “You haven’t got the hang of things around here,” he went on, “so we’ve all chipped in the four bucks it’ll take to get you home.” He held out a handful of quarters. Leo stared at them, then turned away.
“Skip it,” he said. “Who needs your money?”
“Hey, you guys,” crowed Phil, “listen to Daddy Warbucks.”
“That ain’t Daddy Warbucks, that’s Little Orphan Annie.”
This from Moriarity, who had been watching closely. “I can tell you one thing, if Little Orphan Annie don’t scrammay-voo out of here while the scrammin’s good, he’ll be asking for trouble. A guy like him needs to be taught a lesson, right, Phil?”
Phil nodded grimly. “I think Wacko already knows we have ways of getting rid of people we don’t like.”
Leo returned Phil’s glare. “Like Stanley Wagner, is ih. n what you mean?”
Phil’s brow furrowed. “You better shut up about Stanley Wagner before you-” He broke off without finishing as the door opened again and Pfeiffer slipped in, dripping.
“Well, here you are,” Wally said, shaking out his poncho and staring around at the group. “You didn’t tell me you were leaving.”
“Jeez, Pfeiffer,” said Moon Mullens, “does Phil have to draw you a map every time he wants to do something? He’s not your mother, you know.”
“Shut the damn door,” growled Zipper. “My ass is freezing.”
Wally slammed the door shut; he hung his slicker over Phil’s, then began sneezing. “I’m catching a cold, I can feel it.” He slid his red, bulbous eyes around the room. His long pale lashes were wet, as though he’d been crying. “I know you had another meeting,” he said, failing to heed Phil’s frowning look. “I’m sure of it.”
“Shut up about that,” said Moriarity; all eyes had gone to Leo.
“No, I won’t shut up,” Wally retorted. “Phil promised I could join.”
“I never.”
“You did! You said you’d take me, then you played ditch on me.”
Phil’s look grew menacing. “I said shut up about that.” Ignoring Leo, Wally stared rigidly at the others. “Well, am I going to be a Mingo or not? You promised. You said I could take the oath. You said-”
Phil raised a heavy fist. “You better shut up about what I said.”
“I don’t care. I’ll tell. I know what’s going on. You’re not so smart. I’ll tell Pa, he’ll – ooof!” Wally crumpled as Phil’s knuckles caught him in the midriff. When he’d got his breath back he lifted a face white as flour paste, and fell back toward his bunk.
Phil smiled. “Some guys just have to learn,” he said. “On the other hand” – taking in Leo – “some guys never learn.” He leaned over and, grabbing Leo’s pillow, gave it a spin in the air.
“Albert, huh?” he went on. “First time I ever heard of a camper snuggling up to someone named Albert at night, right, you guys?”
As Leo reached to grab the pillow, Phil sent it across the room to Zipper. Leo rushed after it, but Zipper tossed k to Moon, and so it went, all around the room. As Leo made a last, desperate attempt to recapture his property, Moriarity siezed it with both hands and yanked it apart; the seams gave way and the pillow spilled feathers into the air like the snowflakes in a blizzard.
“Aw, gee, look what I done,” wailed Moriarity. “I ruint poor Wacko’s pillow. Now what’s the baby going to sleep on, no more Albert.”
The feathers floated to the floor; some of them cascaded onto Reece’s bunk.
“Boy, Wacko,” Phil said with a smirk, “you better get that stuff cleaned up before Big Chief sees it.”
“Me? I didn’t do it. He did. He-”
He had turned and was staring at Moriarity, who, having rid himself of the torn pillow, had discovered Leo’s journal, and was now thumbing through its pages. Leo tried to snatch the notebook away, but Moriarity straight-armed him. “Screw you, Wacko, don’t interrupt me-” While he read, the rest waited and watched with anticipation.
“ ‘Moriarity, the big bad Brobdingnagian boob-?’ What’s that supposed to mean? Where do you come off callin’ me names, you little twerp?”
It was useless to explain about Jonathan Swift to the likes of Bullnuts Moriarity; useless to explain anything to anyone. Meanwhile, Phil and the other Jeremians were getting a big kick out of Moriarity being the butt of Wacko’s joke.
“Don’t laugh, you guys,” Moriarity said. “Wait’ll you read what he says about you and Reece. He calls him a cigar-store Indian, and then – listen to this – Reece is Snow White, and you guys are the Seven Dwarfs.”
Abruptly the laughter stopped. Phil walked over to Leo. “I guess we know what you think of us now, don’t we, guys?” he sneered. As Leo started to reply Phil put up a deprecating hand. “Don’t bother to explain; we don’t care what you think of us, Wacko. Go ahead, write anything you want to, we don’t care.”
“It was just a joke-”
“Yeah, sure, we know.” He winked elaborately at the others. “But – we do care about what you wrote about Reece. He’s not going to like being called ‘Snow White,’ is he?”
Again the door opened and the group increased by three: Tiger, the Bomber, and Fritz, who asked what was up. “They have my journal and won’t give it back,” Leo said. Fritz saw the notebook in Moriarity’s fist. “I think you’d better give Leo back his property, Claude,” he said in his soft-spoken way. “Gentlemen don’t go around reading other people’s private papers.”
“I do when it’s about me, damn it. He called me a Brob-Brobdy-something boob!”
Fritz’s lips twitched with incipient laughter. “Never mind, Claude, forget it.” He put a hand out. “Just let me have the book.”
“Nuts,” Moriarity said, sneering. “I betcha there’s a lotta guys ’ud be real interested in reading some of what Wacko’s got to say here. ’Specially about a certain trip to the Wolf’s Cave.”
The Wolfs Cavef What was Wacko doing at the cave when he wasn’t a Seneca?
As Bullnuts brandished the offending pages in Leo’s face, Fritz made a move toward him, but Bullnuts, surprisingly quick on his feet, sidestepped him, holding the booklet out of reach.
“Outta my way, Jewboy. Who wants you buttin’ in around here anyways?”
“I must insist. Please let me have the book!”
“Go ahead, make me.”
Fritz eyed him up and down. “Claude, if you think I’m going to expend any physical effort on you, you’re wrong.”
“Yeah. Know what you are, Katzenjammer? A coward, that’s what.”
Before Fritz could say or do anything, the door again opened, this time admitting Reece. He was togged out in his sporty military trench coat, with its nattily cinched waist and folded shoulder tabs, wearing his garrison cap, whose black patent visor dripped with water. He unbelted his coat, hung the cap and coat on the back of the door, then turned and coolly surveyed the scene.
“Maybe someone can tell me what’s been going on in here,” he said.
“It’s Wacko’s feathers.” Moriarity laughed. “Wacko-quacko’s feathers.”
“Moriarity’s got Leo’s journal,” Fritz said.
Reece gave him a deadly look. “What are you doing in here? And what do you mean, Moriarity’s got Wacko’s journal?”
“It seems plain enough. I am describing the situation as it exists; I am sure you will treat the matter as is called for. In the meanwhile, I must get back to my cottage. Like the lodge, it too has a leak in the roof.”
He put on his rain hat and left abruptly. When he had gone, Reece addressed himself to Moriarity.
“Well, have you this stuff of Wackeem’s?”
“Sure, we got it.”
“Then give it back,” he ordered.
“Yeah, but listen-”
Reece cut off the protest. “It’s not yours, you’ve no business reading it.”
“Yeah, but you don’t know what he done. He was in the Wolf’s Cave. He was messin’ around with Seneca stuff. Read it yourself if you don’t believe me.” Moriarity held out the journal. Reece took it and began thumbing its pages
“See? Right there-” Bullnuts used a dirty thumb to point with. “Read how he was pissing on the sacred fire ring! Read that!”
Reece looked up, his eye fixed on Leo. “What were yon doing at the Wolf’s Cave? Don’t you know better than to go there? It’s off limits.”
Stammering, Leo tried to explain how he’d stumbled on the place the night of the Snipe Hunt. “I got lost. 1 only found it by accident,” he said weakly. “Please make them give me back my book.” His appeal went unheeded, however; Reece scrutinized page after page, the crease between his brows deepening as he read. Finally he closed the cover and slowly rolled the notebook up, scroll-like, in his hands.
“You know what I think?” he said quietly, looking around at the group. “I think our great author here should be made to eat his words.”
Aah, they all thought, here it came, one of Heartless’s big numbers.
“Yes, that’s it,” Reece reiterated. “I think our Ernie Hemingway should be made to eat every one of these pages he wrote.”
Ahh, that was clever, the boys’ looks said. Leave it to Heartless to come up with a way of making the punishment fit the crime.
“We’ll just find out how they taste.” Unrolling the notebook, Reece opened it and randomly tore out a page, which he proffered to Leo with exaggerated ceremony. “Eat it," he said softly.
Leo blinked. “I c-can’t.”
“Go on, eat it.” The words cut through the air.
“No.”
“Eat it!” Again Reece’s eyes blazed.
With a hopeless shrug Leo obeyed. Slowly he tore the page into quarters, crumpled the pieces, and took them one by one between his lips, munching slowly and methodically. He chewed for a long time, and when he finally swallowed, with an audible gulp, someone giggled
– Gus Klaus. Instantly Reece’s stern gaze fell upon the miscreant. This was no joking matter. He tore a second page from the spiral and held it out.
Leo backed off a step. “I can’t. It’s ma-making me sick.”
“I promise you’ll be a lot sicker if you don’t,” Reece growled. Leo took the page and munched it. A third followed, then a fourth.
The boys looked at each other. How many pages Would Reece make him eat, they wondered – all of them? Finally Tiger was moved to protest. “C’mon, he is liable to get sick.”
“That’s too bad,” Reece retorted. “From now on maybe he’ll be more careful what he writes down for other people to read.” He held up the notebook clenched in his hand. “See, Tige? This is what comes of indulging a spud, making excuses for him every chance you get.” He addressed Leo again. “One of these days you’re going to find yourself in deep trouble – you know that, Wackeem? And you know where you’re going to wind up? Right back where you came from, at the Institute.” He smacked the offending journal into his palm, clamped his fingers around it, and stepped back to the door, which he threw open. “Okay, you guys, hop it, all of you.”
“Where to?” asked the Bomber. “It’s powwow time. And it’s rainin’ out.”
“I said scram. Wackeem and I are going to have a little powwow of our own.”
When the cabin was cleared, Leo stood in the corner, waiting for whatever further punishment was scheduled to be meted out. Instead of the anticipated tirade, however,
Reece tried a new, “confidential” tack, and when he spoke it was quietly, without rancor.
“So what do you think, Wacko?” he asked softly. “About what?”
“Oh… about you – and camp. I don’t think we could say that it’s been the greatest success, could we?”
“I don’t know.”
“Is that all you can ever say? ‘I don’t know.’ I hear tell you’re brighter than that, a lot brighter.” He jerked his head toward the door through which the boys had retreated. “Don’t you care if they think you’re a sissy and a coward?”
Leo’s look was defiant. “I’m not a coward.”
“You give a darn good imitation of it.” He shook his head with mock despair, then sat down on his footlocker. He kicked off his wet moccasins, dried his feet, and put on a pair of dry socks from the tray inside the locker. Then, shutting the lid, he dragged his boots out from under the cot and went about the elaborate ritual of polishing them. The industry with which he conducted this chore meant that the silence was prolonged. In the stillness the moths resumed their mad romance with the lantern, until one, dusting past Reece’s cheek, caused him to jerk his head back and softly curse. Leo watched as it whirled and made another pass, attracted by the flickering light. This time it brushed against Reece’s head. His hand flashed out and he imprisoned it within the hollow of his fist. Instead of crushing it as another might have done, he plucked it out with care, thumb and forefinger holding it fastidiously by one wing. Then with his other thumb he depressed the lamp lever, raising the glass chimney and freeing the flame. There was a soft hiss, a crackle, and the moth was no more. Reece took his hand away, wiped it on his leg, and lowered the chimney again.
“There’s ‘Poor Butterfly’ for you, kiddo. Go play that on your squawk box,” he said, and resumed wiping oil on the toe of the boot, keeping his eyes on Leo to get his reaction.
Leo said nothing. They looked to him, those cold blue eyes, like eyes seen through a painted mask. Cave cane, they seemed to say: Beware the dog. And then, as his own gaze fell, Reece’s lit upon the postcard lying on the bed, where Moriarity’s destruction of the pillow had exposed it.
“What’s that?” Reece demanded. He bent and picked it up, held it close to the lantern.
“Well, well,” he murmured, “sounds like you two have got real chummy.”
“She was just saying hello. To let me know She was okay. After
…”
“Well? After what?”
“You know. You hurt her.”
Reece glowered. “What’re you talking about?” he snarled, his voice suddenly hoarse.
With a quick, savage movement his arm shot out and his fingers closed around Leo’s throat. Leo felt the breath being choked out of him; he’d never seen Reece so angry. His face was a chalky color, his voice was a hoarse rasp; he yanked Leo up by the hair and shoved his face close. “Who the hell do you think you are? Where do you come off giving me all this crap, anyhow? You ought to learn to keep your trap shut.” His hand squeezed tighter, making Leo wince with pain. “And I’m warning you,” Reece growled between clenched teeth, “if you ever say one thing about that business, if anything ever goes around, you’ll regret it, you hear me? You’ll get it good. Understand?”
Yes. Leo understood: like Stanley Wagner got it good. Reece neatened his clothing and tucked his shirt in carefully. He put on his freshly oiled boots, caught up his coat and tipped his cap onto the back of his head. A hint of a smile hid in the corners of his lips as he gave Leo a last look, then strode out. In the doorway he whirled for a parting word: “I don’t want to see one single feather in here when I come back,” he said. “Not if it takes you the whole dinner hour.”
By dinnertime news of Leo’s transgression had spread through the campground, and as he shuffled to his accustomed place in the dining hall, there was a palpable undercurrent of mischief in the air, a suppressed hint of something about to happen, but when he looked to the Bomber for a clue, all he got back was a blank, studied glance, not a sly wink, not a sign. As for Tiger, though he said nothing, his very silence was a reproach.
During the meal Leo couldn’t eat a morsel and made only token passes at his food. The corned beef was rubbery, just the smell of the boiled cabbage made his gorge rise, and as he picked away at his plate he didn’t have to look up to feel the battery of hostile eyes drilling him from every side; whatever talk there was, he was sure it had to do with Wacko Wackeem, who’d been forced to eat crow in the guise of a blue-lined spiral notebook. Dessert time came, rice pudding, and after Monkey, half of this week’s waiter team, handed around the dishes, everyone seemed suddenly interested as Leo took his spoon and dug into his portion (no matter what, he couldn’t resist pudding -with raisins yet).
The moment Oats’s tin cricket sounded dismissal, the boys sprang up like jack-in-the-boxes, and the table waiters started hustling their trays, eager to get their tables cleared, while the balance of the campers went trooping outside,. heading for the lodge and the scheduled early-evening “rainy-day” activity – a sing-along and a movie. Before l. eo could get away, however, he was accosted by Bullnuts, also waiting on table that week.
“Hey, Wacko, I see you ate all yourpuddin’,” he said. His look was foxy as he hoisted his tray to his shoulder. “Hope you don’t get the collywobbles from it,” he added, before making his way back into the aluminum pandemonium of the kitchen.
Not that Leo really cared much what Bullnuts said. It was the rift that had erupted between him and Tiger: This morning they had been friends, this evening Tiger was making no bones of the fact that he was fed up.
“If you ask me, you’re pretty dumb soifietimes, you know that?” Tiger said now, as they walked down to the lower campus after dinner.
“But those things were private. How was I to know they’d read them?”
“You should have thought, that’s all. Now you’ll never get in the Senecas.”
Leo was stung. For Tiger to take this tack was grossly unfair. “Who cares?” he said with a shrug.
“You cared bad enough two weeks ago.” Tiger sighed. “I guess you were right. Maybe you shouldn’t have come to Moonbow. Maybe Reece was right.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Maybe you’re just not good camper fodder after all.” Leo saw red. “I think you’re all a bunch of shits,” he said.
“It goes both ways, kiddo.”
“Okay yourself, kiddo.” Leo lengthened his stride and marched away. Turning in the roadway, he tossed Tiger a smirk. “Okay for you, Brew-ster-r-r,” he said.
Reece, who had been walking behind them, and had overheard the quarrel, caught up for a private word with Tiger. “Ya done good, camper,” Leo heard him say. “Now you’re being the guy we all know. You just got off track, that’s all.” And when they got to the lower playing field, Reece tossed an arm around Tiger’s shoulders, led him over to the Green Hornet, and the pair sped away, radio blaring.
By the time Leo reached the cabin, he wasn’t feeling vet well; swallowing all that paper was making his stomach, u i up. He hiked it over to the infirmary, where Wanda goi out the bottle of rhubarb-and-soda, her universal panacea for stomach woes, administered Leo a healthy dose, and sent him on his way, but when he got back to Jeremiah he felt sicker than before, and he fell into his bunk, where he lay, hot and panting and nauseated. From the lodge he could hear them singing “Down by the Station.” He wanted to go pee, then brush his teeth and go to sleep. He did none of those things. Instead, he kicked off his sneakers, took his flashlight, and began to read.
But he didn’t feel like reading either, and he shut his book and stared out at the deserted playing field. His stomach was making angry rumbles, and the rhubarb-and-soda made him burp.
He could hear the faint pitterpat of water dripping from tree leaves onto the roof; it had a nice cozy sound, reminding him of rainy afternoons with Emily in the house on Gallop Street. He must have dozed, because before he knew it he heard the sounds of the Jeremians trooping up the cabin steps. He doused his lighted flashlight quickly and feigned sleep as they came trooping in, talking and laughing as if he weren’t there, then out again to the wash rack and Old Faithful to brush their teeth, and back in, to settle into their bunks with the usual last-minute quota of gags and giggles.
He hated lying there in bed, awake but unable to read, and in desperation began to recite “Hiawatha” to himself; he had reached the stanza that began
As unto the bow the cord is,
So unto the man is woman… when the first spasm hit him, causing his body to contort as if it had been lashed. Then a second cramp seized him. When it passed, finally, he lay there in his bunk, trying to catch his breath. Sweat poured off him; his pajamas were soaked. Something more must be wrong than a few pieces of paper. When the next cramp came it made him sit bolt upright, clutching his belly. Stifling a moan, he felt an interior gurgling under his palms as his stomach lifted and heaved. He knew he had to get to the Dewdrop, but couldn’t make a move. Squeezing his eyes shut and gritting his teeth, he forced himself to hold on tight until the pain passed; then he grabbed his flashlight and slipped from his bunk, dropping out the rear of the cabin onto the wet ground. The earth was drenched, each step sucked at his foot as, stepping over puddles, half bent over and clutching his midsection, he headed off in the direction of the latrine.
When he got there he pulled up short, pushed open the door and hurried in, loosening the string of his pajama bottoms as he grabbed the first hole. Blessed relief flooded through him as he relaxed and voided, and the gnawing seizure that had tied his innards in knots slackened its grip. Then, through the window, he heard the call of a bird – what kind of bird he could not tell, but obviously one of the nocturnal sort. To this sound was quickly joined a second, as if in formal reply to the first-its mate, perhaps? The duet was joined by yet a third call, nearer, Leo thought, lower-pitched, its tone eerie and off-putting – an ominous note, followed by a protracted silence. He became suddenly alert, frowning as he forced his ears to pick out small, meaningful sounds, but for a time all remained quiet. No, no – wait – there! Something was moving outside, a telltale twig had cracked. Then, in one mind-shattering moment, a heavy object flew through the window and struck the kerosene lamp, sending it crashing to the floor, where, extinguished, it rolled away into the dark. Leo froze, waiting for more to follow, but nothing was forthcoming; he groped for his flashlight and snapped it on. A large stone lay in the corner. He shut off the light again and listened. Through the dark oblong of the window he picked out the faintest of sounds, as though several creatures, human or other wise, had convened out there in the surrounding darkness. The next thing he knew, the walls of the building were being subjected to a series of violent blows, seemingly on all sides simultaneously, a hammering so thunderous that to protect his ears he pressed his palms over them.
When it Stopped, he got to his feet, groping for his pajama bottoms and yanking them up to his waist; but before his fingers could locate the ends of the cord, the floor tilted and the building began to sway. Back and forth it pitched, its abrupt, rocking movement catching him off guard and propelling him from the buckets to the opposite wall, where he smacked his forehead against a two-by-four. With the sickening upheaval the noisy tattoo along the building’s outer surfaces resumed, accompanied by voices – gleeful laughter. The rocking intensified. The building was being torn loose from its moorings! Defenseless, Leo felt his body tumbling head over heels as the Dewdrop Inn toppled on its back. He came to rest sprawled across the holes and, looking up, saw the door drop open above him. It missed his head by inches, swinging crazily on its hinges.
For a moment he lay where he’d been flung, dizzily trying to get his breath, his ear catching the fragments of laughter as they fitfully exploded and were suppressed in the darkness outside. Silence fell again. He could taste blood where his lips had been cut; more was running into his eye from a gash in his scalp. Beyond the oblong shape created by the open door, he glimpsed bits of tree foliage silhouetted against the sky. He got up and slowly, painfully made a futile attempt to reach the open doorway; then, getting another idea, he made his way to the window, which, because of the overturning, now lay close to the ground, and crawled free. Outside, he stumbled to his feet. ind looked around him. The Dewdrop lay on its back like some gross, wounded beast, its underpinnings naked to view; in the dark pit he could see patches of white where I lie usual ration of quicklime had been applied. The stench made him feel nearly as sick as he’d been before, and he covered his mouth to keep from vomiting.
Suddenly a figure in a slicker and sou’wester hat lurched into the pathway; it was Bullnuts Moriarity. He held up a lantern; in its light two shadows appeared behind him, advancing toward Leo, who now drew back: Bullnuts he could probably elude; a gang would make things truly difficult. He was filled with relief as he recognized the voices of Fritz and Wanda, who were coming along the path.
“What is going on here?” Fritz demanded sternly, shining a flashlight around. He frowned as he spotted Moriarity. “Claude, what are you up to? What was all that racket?” Finally he saw Leo, then the overturned latrine. “Leo, are you all right?” he asked, stepping toward him. “What’s been going on around here?” He shone his light into the pit.
“Aw, gee, willya lookit that!” Moriarity pretended to have only just noticed the overturned latrine. “My golly – whoever do you think done that? Turned over the Dewdrop Inn.”
The wet sputter of giggles issued from the bushes on either side of the path.
“All right, you fellows,” Fritz called at the sound. “Whoever you are, you can come out now, the fun’s over.”
A sudden flurry of activity erupted among the shrubbery as dark forms broke from their hiding places and scuttled to safety in the encompassing dark.
Fritz now shone his light on Leo. “I think we’d better get you over to the infirmary and let Wanda have a look at that head. As for you, Claude,” he went on, turning to Moriarity, “you may consider yourself on report.”
“For what?” Claude bellowed. “I didn’t do it all on my own. Those guys were in on it too.”
“Rinkydinks, I suppose? Kindly give me their names and I’ll see they’re all properly dealt with.”
“You got to be kiddin’.”
“Try me and see, Claude. Now I suggest everybody get to bed. Leo, that means you, too.”
As Fritz turned to go, Moriarity made a sudden movement forward. But Leo was swift enough to dodge him, leaving a space for Bullnuts to plunge headlong through, his momentum carrying him over the edge of the latrine pit. No one was more surprised than Claude to find himself hurtling through space, lantern and all, to hit the bottom with a wet, splishing sound.
The boys who had gone to bed during a final deluge of rain awoke to a bright world again, and although the entire camp was so waterlogged that it would take days for the place to dry out (from the red-painted designations on his dock pilings Doc Oliphant was able to demonstrate that the lake had risen two and a half inches in the six days of rain), with the return of good weather everyone at Moonbow cheered and roused himself and felt renewed, as if before the season’s end Friend-Indeed had been granted a second lease on life. Like schoolboys too long cooped up in the classroom, the campers burst forth into the sunshine, giving full vent to their natural ebullience; spreading themselves across the breast of the lake in flotillas of watercraft, carousing north and south along the line-path, shinnying up the trees in Shinny Park, and catching snakes and firing slingshots at anything that moved. Every clothesline from Virtue to Endeavor sagged with damp shorts and polo shirts, and moldy bathing towels and bedding were spread out for airing on every available cabin roof and shutter.
To all outward appearances the world at Moonbow Lake was green and gold again. But not for Wacko Wackeem, whose stock at Friend-Indeed had plummeted since the exposure of the contents of his private journal. With his incriminating comments set down in Parker’s blue-black Quink, how could he afterward deny what he had written? Or explain that his comments were just private jokes, not to be taken seriously – that Reece Hartsig didn’t really look like a cigar-store Indian in his Moonbow Warrior’s garb, that Claude Moriarity didn’t really bear a resemblence in certain particulars to Farmer Kelsoe’s prize bull, or that Pa Starbuck wasn’t the Bible-thumping Billy Sunday of Moonbow Lake.
And the boys had had their private revenge. Knocking latrines off their beam ends was old-timers’ sport at Moonbow – mischievous campers had been pulling such stunts since the days when Rolfe Hartsig was an adolescent bunkee and Jeremiah was only a tent – but it was not exactly customary for such barrelhousing to occur when a person happened to be inside the Dewdrop. Nonetheless, Pa had chalked the business up as another prank – and if it was more than that, well, Leo had trespassed, hadn’t he? – and let it go at that. As for Moriarity’s tumble into the pit, even Pa smiled at the reports, while Bullnuts went around camp loudly demanding reprisals. Thus far, however, he had done nothing along those lines, and for the time being the joke remained on him.
If only, Leo thought, that could have been the end of it. But now, from every quarter, starting in Cabin 7 and extending up and down the line-path to the outer reaches of High Endeavor and Virtue, he felt the resentment of his fellow campers. There was a general feeling that he had “got away with it,” that peeing on the Seneca campfire was a violation on a par with dancing around in the Buffalo Bill War Bonnet, and fully deserving of punishment. But the Sachems’ Council, convening to adjudicate the matter, stood divided on the issue, with a few, after an impassioned argument by Fritz Auerbach, maintaining that the real “crime” had been reading Leo’s diary. Since the Sachems’ decisions were required to be unanimous, no action was taken, as a result of which, two things happened: one, after an acrimonious row, Reece Hartsig resigned from the council, and, two, the Mingoes, whose clandestine meetings had been removed to the Rinkydinks’ former bailiwick in the cellar of the Steelyard house, let it be known that they themselves would see to the matter.
When formal notice of the council’s decision (or lack thereof) had been posted on the bulletin board outside the lodge for all to see, the paper was torn down in the dead of night, and in its
stead a crudely lettered poster appeared:
WANTED: WACKO WACKEEM
Dead or Alive (Preferably dead)
For Crimes Against the Camp
Also wanted:
Fritzy Katzenjammer alias THE NOSE
Quickly removed, the placard was (as usual) ascribed to camper hijinks, with Pa listening to Fritz’s objections with half an ear, then dragging out his “Boys will be boys” wheeze and declaring he was sure the whole thing was only meant as a joke. During his pre-dinner remarks after grace, he reminded the boys that this was Camp “Friend-Indeed,” and that “Actions speak louder than words.”
And that was that. Except that at night, when the sun had gone and a gibbous moon gored the dark sky with its horns, mischief was afoot. After lights out, campers would find excuses to visit the Dewdrop Inn. As they came and went they stopped in dark clusters for a few words, mirthful sputters and giggles, and then the mocking warning would be sounded among the trees: “Wacko, Wacko… someone’s gonna getcha!” And along the needled paths the spores of poisonous toadstools – Amanita muscaria -blossomed in the potent dark.
Far worse than all this for Leo, however, was his fall from grace where Tiger was concerned. The two boys were constantly thrown together in the normal course of events, but since their quarrel no words more intimate than “pass the potatoes” had been spoken between them, no look had been exchanged. Though Leo was resentful of what he judged to be Tiger’s failure to understand the situation -how could Tiger blame him when Leo’s privacy had been invaded? – he regretted his flagrant use of the despised epithet and would gladly have called it back. But to do so required an apology he couldn’t find it in himself to offer, and so they remained apart, each playing “Invisible Man” to the other.
Leo felt the schism keenly as the day approached when, with the completion of the village, he hoped once again to redeem himself for all that had gone before. The model would repose on its stand in its glass display case, the formal unveiling would be held, photographs would be taken for the paper, and the two creators of the village would be honored. By Tuesday morning everything was set, and he sat on his stool in the work corner of the lodge, surveying the fruits of his labors. Was it all right, he wondered? He had just given the castle one last coat of banana oil, the fortress was fitted securely into its mountain site, the banner with its Hapsburg device was flying over the portcullis. If only, Leo thought, Tiger would come by to make it up, everything would be just fine.
It was not Tiger who arrived, however, but Pa Starbuck, accompanied by two young men who were announced as the newspaper reporter and his sidekick photographer. While the photographer checked his camera equipment, the reporter asked Leo some questions (“What’s your name, son, and where do you come from? Are your folks members of the Society of Joshua? What do they call you? Play baseball? What’s your batting average? Ha ha”). Leo was relieved of further interrogation by the arrival of Fritz, who greeted the reporter with aplomb and provided him with some background on the real Durenstein. Pa kept looking at his watch, growing more impatient every minute until the Hartsigs, including Reece, finally arrived, twenty minutes late, Rolfe giving as an excuse for their tardiness the fact that he’d had to stop at the film exchange in Putnam to pick up the movie for tonight’s program.
While Reece shook hands with the reporter, an old high-school chum he greeted as “Andy,” Joy Hartsig walked straight to the model to look it over, her eyes shining with pleasure. As often happened when she was around, she quickly became the focus of the gathering, her gold and ivory bracelets jangling as she gestured, patting her coiffure or bringing her cigarette to her red lips.
“Goodness,” she cooed, “haven’t you two done a lot of work! I’m simply astonished.” She smiled warmly at Fritz, her diamond rings catching the light as she crushed her fingers under her chin. “I just love the way you’re making everything a little skewed, a bit crooked,” she added. “It gives a nice fairy-tale effect. At least I imagine that’s what you were after. Wouldn’t it be fun to visit the real thing sometime?”
“I don’t imagine you’d care to visit it just now, Mrs Hartsig,” Fritz said with a touch of irony. Joy’s bright smile left her lips as she laid a hand on his arm.
“I know how much it means to you,” she said. “Is that how it looked when you were a boy?”
“More or' less. It^s not easy making things look exactly the way you recall them. But it’s close, I think.”
“What do you think, Dutch?” Joy asked her husband.
“Looks pretty authentic to me,” Rolfe replied. He was especially taken with the steamboat Leo had crafted, its wheel beating the waves of the blue plaster Danube.
Then the photographer, who had been trying a series of angles, asked that the model be moved out of its corner to a position where everyone could be grouped around it for the shot he wanted. Fritz and Leo, with the newspapermen, performed the job, carrying the worktable out into the middle of the room, after which several pictures were taken of the model with Pa and the Hartsigs (excepting Reece, who declined), and finally with Leo and Fritz, who was' asked to make a further statement about his creation.
Fritz’s expression grew serious and he groped for suitable words. “This is my gift to the campers of Friend-Indeed,” he said at last, “and to Dr Dunbar and the Friends of Joshua, who have invited me to spend my summer here and who have behaved kindly and generously toward an exile from his own land.”
He paused, and the reporter’s glance fell on Reece, who had been leaning nonchalantly against the wall and who now sauntered over.
“What’s your opinion, Reece?” the reporter asked. “Got something to say about this project?”
“It’s fine…” Reece said with a pleasant smile, "… if you like Tinkertoys,” he added, and there was a moment’s silence while the reporter tried to decide whether he was sincere or joking.
“Oh, but I do!” said Fritz, relieving the others of potential embarrassment. “Everyone enjoys toys, doesn’t he? We’re all children at heart, aren’t we? And see here-” They watched as he reached behind the model to move a tiny brass lever built into the foundation. In a moment a ticking sound could be heard, then tinkling music began: the familiar strains of the “Blue Danube” waltz.
“What a wonderful touch! Whose idea was that?” Joy asked. “Yours, Fritz?”
“No, ma’am.” Fritz gallantly declined the intended compliment. The idea had been Leo’s. The works had come from a dime-store music box.
“Clever lad,” said Joy. “I’m sure he deserves a lot of praise.” She beamed her brightest at Leo, who flushed with pleasure but modestly pointed out that the idea for the village as a whole had been Fritz’s, that he, Leo, had merely “helped out.”
“Let’s get a shot of the whole group, shall we?” the photographer suggested, re-forming the gathering with Fritz and Leo in the center. “Come on, Reece, you get in on this too.”
“Thanks. I’ll skip it.”
“Just one?”
“Didn’t you hear me?”
“Okay, okay, sorry.”
The photographer directed a puzzled look at his colleague, who shrugged, as if to say, “Consider the source,” and went on questioning Fritz, jotting down statistics on the population of Durenstein and the Austrian wine industry. From these considerations he moved on to a general sizing-up of the political situation in Austria, and Fritz spoke heatedly about Hitler, saying that with the way things were going there was. bound to be a war in Europe pretty soon.
Rolfe rubbed his palms together. “You’ve got it all wrong, Fritz; Hitler doesn’t really want war, he only wants what’s coming to him, what belongs to Germany by right, to guarantee her natural borders. Take it from me,” he went on, “Stalin’s the guy we really have to watch. If we’re not careful, we’ll have a bunch of Bolsheviks running the good old U.S.A. It’s the Commies that are making all the trouble, on both sides of the Atlantic.”
Fritz leaned forward, his look intense. “May I ask, sir, have you heard of Mein Kampf?”
“Sure. What about it?”
“If you were to read that book you would learn exactly what Hitler plans to do. And make no mistake – he means to do it! Already he is rounding up all who oppose him. He has taken my family, he has robbed us of our property, they are in prison. I may never see them again.”
“Come on, pal, we mustn’t dramatize these things. I’m sure your family is okay.” Rolfe turned to the others. “Besides, Hitler’s only after the big-money boys-” Fritz’s face had gone red with anger, and Pa, seeing it, stepped forward in an attempt to temporize. “Now, now, Fritz, let’s exercise a little control shall we? What’s happening over there has nothing to do with us over here.” “You’re wrong,” Fritz said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Now Reece stepped into the argument. “Watch it, Katzenjammer!”
Fritz rounded on him. “I have asked you not to call me that.”
Reece gave him his blandest smile. “It’s just a joke, Fritzy.”
“I do not find it amusing.” Fritz glowered, and Joy began chattering to cover the awkwardness. Andy, who had been scribbling in his notebook, asked Rolfe, “Can I print all that, what you said about the big-money boys?”
“Sure, why not?” Rolfe replied. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?” Then he gave Andy a friendly clap between the shoulders and sent him off with his partner to write up his story.
Movie night always drew an enthusiastic crowd, and that night the boys seemed in uncommonly boisterous spirits, as shortly before eight they came trooping into the lodge and took their places. The movie projector rested on a card table in front of the model, which had been left in the center of the room to be ready for the dedication ceremony, but the older boys ranged their seats around it without much difficulty, so that no one’s view was obscured. Big Rolfe’s friend at the film exchange had selected The Phantom of the Opera, the Lon Chaney silent hit, and as the last stragglers appeared the audience began to chant, clap, and stamp their feet and otherwise demonstrate their eagerness to be scared out of ten years’ growth by an actor whose fame rested on precisely that, a singular ability to terrify audiences in movie houses across the country, where fainting and horror-stricken females had to be carried on stretchers into the lobby and revived with ammoniac ampules and carted off in waiting ambulances.
There was a hitch in the proceedings – no one knew why, until Oats Gurley, whose duty it was to operate the movie projector, said they couldn’t start until Reece put in an appearance with the film cans. A mixture of cheers and jeers sounded in the room. Then the boys began to chant: “We want Heartless, we want Heartless…”
At last the courier arrived – at which the room erupted into louder huzzahs. After he had exhibited the cans of film and made mock bows to all sides, he slipped in among “his boys,” and the reels began to turn.
Alas, anticipation soon turned to disappointment. Lon Chaney had gone to the Great Movie Show in the Sky, had in fact died eight years before, and his silent movie had a decidedly creaky look. In fact, the term “the flickers” had been coined to describe films such as this one; old and scratched, the reels had undoubtedly run through the sprockets of untold projectors over the years, and the titles leaped and danced about on the screen. Catcalls and whistles, groans and jokes greeted the coloratura singing her heart out on the stage of the Paris Opera House and the corny notes written by the “Phantom” threatening the end of her career, nay, her life, if she presumed to appear onstage instead of his beloved Christine. There followed a higher-scoring scene in which, while the heroine dares her fate, the giant crystal chandelier at the top of the opera-house ceiling is made by some sinister hand (Yikes! The Phantom!) to come crashing down into the orchestra, crushing to death those spectators unlucky enough to be sitting beneath the fixture. And then, finally, the electrifying moment when “Erik,” the Phantom, first appears, his features hidden by a mask. With his long, slender, and enticing hand he lures Christine down, down, many floors below, under the opera house, where there exists a sullen black lagoon and, anchored at a stone mooring step, a slender, coffin-like vessel. Upon this slender vessel the lady is persuaded to embark for the Phantom’s subterranean apartments, where she is safely, and presumably contentedly, installed, seemingly only a little intimidated by her bizarre surroundings and the Phantom’s eternally masked presence. Later, unable to control her curiosity, as he plays the organ she slips up behind the unsuspecting Phantom and tears away his mask. Oh, horror! His features bared, he turns upon her and shows her that nightmare face, skull-like and awful to look upon with grinning teeth and two holes where a nose ought to have been.
Ha ha!
The Phantom scornfully mocks Christine and her irrepressible curiosity, then moves menacingly toward her. Unable to tear his eyes from the screen, Leo watches with mounting horror. For him the movie is too real; it scares him. Heedless of where he is, he leaps to his feet with a shout, which rings out and reverberates against the ceiling.
No sooner had the sound burst from him than a wave of mocking laughter shook the room, and “Wacko, Wacko, Wacko,” the epithet ran along the rows. “Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.” Flashlights were switched on, their probing beams sought him out, illuminating his dazed features. Ducking his head, he stumbled up the aisle and rushed outside; the door clattered loudly at his back, producing another volley of laughter. Hot with shame and embarrassment, he rushed down the steps and made his way blindly along the first path he came to. It was dark and he had trouble finding his way. To his left he could hear the lake water lapping the shore, and he pushed on until he came out at Three Corner Cove. No lights were on at the infirmary, nor at the Oliphants’ cottage, yet he judged someone to be home, because the car was pulled up on the grass. He trudged to the end of the dock and sat down, dangling his legs and listening to the sound of the water against the pilings. What a fool he was to act that way. When would he ever learn?
“Leo?”
He turned around to find Fritz and Wanda, who had stolen up behind him.
“Mind if we join you?” Fritz asked. No reply; but Leo was glad all the same for the company.
“You all right?” Wanda asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s nice here,” she said, “but I’ll bet it’d be nicer inside. I think if we looked in the icebox we’d find some ice cream. How does that sound?”
Leo was appreciative; neither had asked about his exhibition in the iodge; now here was Wanda inviting him in for ice cream, a thing camp rules strictly forbade her to do.
She gave Leo a hand up and they left the dock for the infirmary, where Wanda turned on lights and went inside. Leo and Fritz waited on the porch until she reappeared with a tray of ice cream and cookies. Then Fritz got up to tune in Wayne King and the Lady Esther Orchestra, and soon they had a little party going and, despite his embarrassment, Leo was enjoying himself.
His enjoyment was short-lived, however; another flashlight beam broke the surrounding dark, and Reece appeared. Leo tensed as the counselor marched up the steps and surveyed the scene.
“Well, this is chummy. Somebody’s birthday?”
“We were just having a taste of ice cream,” Wanda said lightly. “Sorry, there’s none left.”
Reece scowled at Leo. “I figured this is where I’d find you. What’s the idea, running out like a crazy man?” Without waiting for an answer, he leaned over to take Leo’s dish.
“Oh, let him finish,” Wanda protested. “Stop picking on him all the time.”
Reece swung on her angrily. “When are you two going to stop coddling this spud?”
Wanda tipped the ash from her cigarette into the nasturtiums below the railing. “Nobody’s coddling him,” she returned evenly. “Leo really doesn’t deserve the kind of treatment he’s been getting around here.”
“Look, like I told you once before, he’s not your camper, he’s my camper,” Reece retorted. “I’m the counselor of Jeremiah, and as long as he sleeps in my cabin he belongs to me. I’ll decide what to do with him, not you.”
“I’m only trying to help. He’s got to have someone he can turn to in this place.”
“And that someone is you, hm? The way you spoil him, he’ll never get anywhere. You’re like a mother hen.” “Then I’m glad – since he hasn’t got a mother.”
Reece’s voice sharpened. “Lots of people don’t have mothers and they get along just fine. So take my advice and steer clear of him”
Fritz snorted. “And you are going to make me, I suppose, with your Mingoes and your foolish posters.”
Reece lounged negligently on the railing, his expression lightly mocking, as if he found Fritz a figure of amusement. “You just don’t get the picture, do you, Fritzy.”
“I expect you’d be happy to show it to me, though.” “Anytime you like, bud.” Making fists, Reece assumed an offensive stance. “Come on, 1 dare you.”
Wanda put out a restraining hand. “Don’t, please, there’s no point to it.”
Reece crossed his arms and smirked. “Better listen to your girlfriend, Fritzy. And you better shut up about the Germans, too. I’m German and proud of it.”
Fritz shook his head sadly. “Sometimes I think I shall never understand people like you.”
“That’s okay, Fritzy,” Reece returned softly, “sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever understand people like you either. So why don’t you just trot along and play with your toy village? Or, better yet, go back and join your family in that pretty little camp they’re no doubt in.”
“Reece!” Wanda sprang to her feet in protest and took Fritz’s arm, only to have him shake her off. Suddenly the two men were grappling together, furiously pummeling each other. The muffled sounds of blows punctuated the dark while Wanda cried out for them to stop, trying to get herself between them but unable to separate them.
Reece’s tall, muscular form towered over the smaller, wirier Fritz, who seemed to be catching the worst of it, until the sounds of the struggle produced results: lights came on at Three Corner Cove, and Doc Oliphant appeared on his porch. “What’s going on over there?” he demanded, peering across the water.
“There, then – will you two please stop now?” hissed Wanda. “It’s all right,” she called back, “just a little kidding around.”
“Wanda, dear, try and control your hot-blooded beau, won’t you?” came the doctor’s admonition as he went back inside and turned off the porch light. Panting from their exertions, the two combatants faced each other with dull, sullen looks.
“You’re bleeding,” Wanda said to Reece, whose lip had been opened by a lucky punch from Fritz’s hard knuckles. “Let me get something for it.”
“Skip it.” Reece spat over the railing, then turned to Leo.
“All right, camper, skip off to where you belong,” he said, and, his lip red with blood in the lamplight, he swung away down the steps. With a prompting nod from Fritz, Leo followed. At the head of the path Reece split off without a word or sign to disappear in the direction of Bachelors’ Haven and the game of poker in progress, while Leo limped back to Jeremiah, where, as taps blew, he fell onto his bunk with his clothes on.
The crescent moon hangs high above the lake. Nothing stirs, except, in Hosea, Gus Klaus snores fitfully, making liquid flutters under his nose. Presently, from among the cabins of the Harmony unit, a solitary figure emerges, creeping stealthily along the line-path, crouching low as if fearful of discovery. With purpose and intent he moves onto the lodge path.
High in the Methuselah Tree the owl Icarus spies him soft-walking along the path, stealing up to the lodge. Inside, like a wandering moth, a pale light flits across the wide-board floor to the upright joist where the rope supporting the great horn chandelier is figure-eighted over the cleat. The dark phantom bends closer; in his hand a knife. Its sharp blade presses hard against the twisted fibers of the rope, then begins its calculated work, making a ragged cut. It is not difficult: the rope is old. One after another the strands give way, until only a handful remain intact to carry the weight of the fixture. Satisfied with his handiwork, the phantom sheathes the knife and melts into the darkness.
All is quiet again in the lodge. But in the darkness the implacable force of gravity works upon the weakened rope, exerting its power, causing the remaining strands to relinquish their hold, one after another parting. Icarus cocks his head. Soon now… any moment… yes – now!
The ponderous mass of iron and animal horn breaks free of its beam, the severed rope speeds through the tackle, the wheels turn noisily, as the chandelier comes crashing to the floor. The pine grove is rocked by the deafening sound, the lodge walls tremble from the impact, the panes in the windows rattle. In the cabins along the line-path campers and staff spring to sudden wakefulness. What is it, they ask? What has happened? Shouts and calls break out, fifty pinpoints of light are seen flickering along the pathways, converging on the lodge. And inside:
“Ah, too bad,” they mutter. “What a thing.” For the old worn rope, frayed after many years of use, has, it seems, given way, dropping the horn wonder to the floor. Beneath the clutter the village of Durenstein lies ground to dust.
Quietly, with great determination, the small spider tried to spin her web across a wide crack in the weir at Kelsoe’s Pond, where Leo had taken refuge. Poor thing, he thought, I know just how you feel. He had bestowed a name on the spider – Elsie – and hoped she would prosper in the way of her kind. Under more promising circumstances he would have collected her for his arachnid exhibit, but where was the point? Tonight he might return to the lodge to find that the shelves of his display case had suffered a fate similar to that of Durenstein.
Again he was swept by a hot wave of resentment and frustration. It had been Fritz who had noticed the ends of rope that when put together butted neatly; but when Fritz produced the evidence for Pa and voiced his suspicions -that Reece Hartsig, who had been seen leaving Jeremiah after midnight, was the guilty party – Pa had turned a deaf ear, bemoaning the loss of the model but saying there were no grounds to suspect the counselor, who had no doubt been answering a call of nature at the Dewdrop. And in the end what did it matter, really? It was the spirit of a gift that counted, wasn’t it? As for the work that had gone into it – Jeremiah would get the points Leo had earned for it, eee-heh.
And that was pretty much that. Before the end of the day the formal dedication had been canceled, the newspaper story and pictures were yanked, and the platform for the model had vanished without a trace.
Leo wanted to stop thinking about it all, to blot everything from his mind; there was no one he cared to be with – not even Fritz, while Tiger, it seemed, was a lost cause. So here he was, back at Kelsoe’s Pond, alone except for little, hardworking Elsie; good enough company, he decided, if it came to that. The spider’s unflinching persistence put him in mind of the tale Emily had read to him about the Scottish hero Robert the Bruce, who “seven times had flung himself into the fray against the English” (Emily read) and who “at nightfall still had not won the day. Knowing all was lost and that on the morrow he must yield or die,” he had taken refuge in a crofter’s cottage, where he had watched a spider – just such a spider as Elsie, Leo imagined
– trying desperately to throw a filament from which to hang her web. Each time the line fell short, yet each time she would climb back up and bravely attempt the toss again, until – until at last – success! The line held, and the spider suspended her web from it. And having watched this little drama enacted, “Robert had slept soundly, then, awakening refreshed, strode forth to marshal his troops one more time and finally to carry the day.”
The moral, Emily said – all the tales in the book had morals at the end – was “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” Whatever it was, you did it, and you did it over and over until it came right – until you won. It was like Tiger’s motto: “Never say die.” Leo guessed that was easy if you weren’t the butt of every prankster in camp, if every bully wasn’t looking for a chance to knock you down, if nearly everyone wasn’t lying in wait for you, to call you a liar, to destroy all your handiwork. He wasn’t Robert the Bruce, after all, he was only Wacko Wackeem, and this spider wasn’t going to bridge the gap in the stone in a hundred hundred years.
His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of an auto motor, and he recognized the expensive purr of Dagmar’s Pierce-Arrow. He straightened up and, looking across the turf, saw the car tooling toward him. Augie behind the wheel, Dagmar peering out the window. In a moment it pulled up; Augie helped Dagmar out, and, giving Leo a wave, she made her way toward him.
“There you are,” she called agreeably. “Ma said we’d find you here. May I join you?”
Without waiting for his response, she seated herself on the grass. “What a pretty spot. I haven’t been here for years. Knute used to fish in this pond, I remember. Do you come here often?”
“Sometimes.”
“I was very sorry to hear of what has happened to the model village. A terrible thing, I have been talking with Ma and Fritz about it. That young man must be taught a lesson! He can’t go around behaving like some thug simply because he’s big and strong or because he’s Rolfe Hartsig’s son.” She had a good deal more to say on the subject of Reece’s recent behavior, none of it flattering. “I say he had better change his ways and quickly,” she concluded. “When he flies from the nest next year he won’t find the world half so well-feathered as it is at home.”
She paused expectantly, but when Leo said nothing, went on. “Fritz also told me about these Mingoes, or whatever they please to call themselves-”
“They’re out to get me, I know they are,” Leo cried, unable to stop himself.
“Don’t be a blubberer,” said Dagmar starchily. “I’m sure Pa will put a stop to them.”
“He won’t. He never does. Fritz told him!”
“Then someone will have to talk to Dr Dunbar. Perhaps I’ll ring him myself.”
She jerked her chin firmly for emphasis. “But Leo,” she went on, “in any case, you must not think it was wrong, your coming here. I am not a superstitious woman, but somehow I know, I am certain, that you were meant to come here to Moonbow, that it would – will – lead to very important things. Things that will change your whole life.” She regarded him long and a trifle wistfully. “Leo, you are young and do not see it; but if you did…”
“See what?”
“See that you are standing upon the golden threshold. You are waiting just outside the door, nearly ready to step through. Into a world so glorious not even you can imagine it. But if you could see, you would realize it is there, for you to grasp and make the most of. If only you will do it. If only you will make the most of your talent. Yes! You cannot appreciate this – not yet – what it means to be an artist, how hard you must work and struggle for it, how hard you must fight against those who cannot understand. And you must make up your mind to it, that as an artist you will always be apart, always different. That is what helps make you an artist, that difference.”
Her eyes held an urgency as she spoke, talked on, trying to reach him with her words. Leo listened, knowing they were meaningful things she was trying to express, but he felt uncomfortable nevertheless. Even while they sat beside the water the dusk was gathering around them, and as she talked her face grew pale in the purple light, the wrinkles in her skin more pronounced.
She changed her position to bring herself closer to him, forcing him to attend more closely to her words. “What I am trying to say is that you have displayed your talents to me on two different occasions. Both times things were amiss and the performance was interrupted, but that fact takes nothing away from your God-given abilities. Professor Pinero agrees. Yours is a rare gift, a gift that requires nourishment. It seems to us that if you were given the opportunity to pursue your studies as your mother wanted you to, you could go farther than even she dreamed.” This mention of Emily caused him to drop his head. Using her thumb, Dagmar raised it again. “Leo?”
“Yes?”
“Why did you tell me your mother and father had died in a train accident?”
“Did I?”
“Yes. Don’t you remember?”
He shook his head. “It’s true,” he said. “They did! It’s true!” But even as he spoke he knew she had found out the truth.
“Leo, my dear, listen to me, please,” she went on. “You needn’t be ashamed. I have spoken with Ma. She told me. You mustn’t think I am being a nosy Parker, but I believed you would wish me to know. Isn’t that so? Aren’t these things we should speak of, you and I, if we are to be friends?”
“I suppose so.” He feigned a profound interest in the spider. “But what if someone else finds out?”
“Who? The campers, do you mean? Or Reece? They won’t, never fear.”
But Leo was remembering the village. Suddenly he looked up at her. “Can we talk at the Castle?”
“Why there, please?”
“Because I want to come.”
“And you shall,” she replied. “We’ll have a nice visit before you leave.”
“No. Not a visit. To stay.”
“To stay?”
“Yes. Then you can ask me anything you want. And I’ll play for you. But you must promise to keep me. Forever and ever.”
“Oh, my dear, how can I do that?”
“Tell Mr Poe and Miss Meekum you want me,” he said eagerly. “Say I’m to come and stay with you.”
“That’s a very nice idea. Perhaps you can come for Christmas vacation. But I’m afraid a longer visit would be out of the question.”
“Why?”
“Leo, I am an old woman, I cannot have the responsibility of a boy to look after. What would happen if I became ill-?”
“Augie! Augie will take care of me.”
“Nonsense! That’s ridiculous. Augie is older than I. He’s not well. I wouldn’t think of burdening him.”
She consulted her watch, then stubbed out her cigarette and dropped her Camels into her bag. “My stomach’s rumbling,” she said. “I must get home for supper.” She stood and brushed off her seat, then put out a hand and wiggled her fingers coaxingly. “Come. Augie will drive you back to camp.”
She reached for his arm but he pulled away abruptly.
“I don’t want to.”
“I thought you liked riding in my automobile.”
“No, I don’t want to,” he said again.
She laughed her robust laugh. “What do you want, then?”
“I told you. I want to come with you and live in your castle.”
“But I have explained that is not possible. You must go back, of course.” She smiled encouragement. “Before the summer’s over we’ll play duets again, how will that be?” He stiffened and spoke coldly. “That’s okay. You don’t have to be polite.”
“But I am not being polite. I mean what I say. I want you to come. I hope you will visit me many times in future.” He turned a little away. “I’m liable to be pretty busy.” A faint line of dissatisfaction drew itself between her brows. “Come now, please don’t scowl so. I may be an old woman, but I know what I’m talking about.” She smiled and touched a finger to the back of his hand. “Be a good boy, Leo, won’t you? Aren’t we friends, you and I? I hoped we were…” She tried to force his chin up, but he ducked his head and stubbornly refused to look at her.
She sighed. “I had not thought to find you so ill-mannered. I fear I have mistaken myself in you.” She sighed. “Very well, then, let us part, not as I hoped we would, but as we must. Good-bye.”
He only half-watched her as she marched away, her back stiffened with affront, bits of leaf and straw attached to her skirt. He wanted to run after her and say he was sorry, but his feet wouldn’t obey his brain. He pretended not to notice as Augie helped her into the car, shut the doors, turned the car around, and drove away down the lane. She never even looked around once. Leo felt tears sting his eyes.
“Okay for you,” he said aloud, tossing a pebble into the water, and returned his attention to Elsie, who had labored on without letup. In the end he felt compelled to take her; she was probably the last spider he would add to his exhibit before leaving camp. More happy points for Jeremiah: what a joke that was. He fished out a codfish box from his knapsack, pulled back the lid,'and, using his pen, flicked the creature inside and slid the top home.
It was not until the following morning, after cabin cleanup, while they waited for inspection, that he remembered “Elsie.” The Robert the Bruce spider had passed a supper-less night, and it was with some trepidation that Leo now removed her box from the knapsack to have a look. Elsie lay on her back, her eight legs bent and shriveled up. But when Leo gave the inert form a shake, she miraculously revived; her legs straightened, she flopped onto her belly, and began to scramble frantically around her prison.
“Yikes! It’s alive!” cried Peewee (having “dropped by” as usual), as the spider crawled up the side of the box. Leo tried to contain her by reinserting the panel into its grooves, but he wasn’t fast enough and she escaped, describing an arc through the air to land near Reece’s footlocker, where Tiger sat sewing on the button that had popped off his polo shirt during the last ball game.
“Look out – look out!” shouted Peewee, dancing up and down like a dervish. “It’s on you! It’s on your leg!”
Tiger was frozen in place, staring at the spider clinging to his thigh.
“Don’t worry,” Leo said. “It’s not going to hurt anybody.” Slowly he put out his hand to seize the towel hanging at the end of Eddie’s bunk, and with a quick pass brushed the spider from Tiger’s leg into the box.
“You ought to keep those dumb things out of here,” Phil said darkly as Leo slid the top shut.
“Yeah,” said Dump. “What if he’d got bit? We’ve got a game tomorrow, you know.”
“It wouldn’t matter if he did,” Leo said. “The spiders around here aren’t poisonous.”
“How do you know?” demanded Phil.
“Because there are only two venomous spiders in the whole United States, and neither is indigenous to Connecticut.” “Aw, screw you and your fifty-cent words, Wacko,” Phil sneered. “You think you know everything.”
“I know which spiders are dangerous and which aren’t, and that’s a lot more than you seem to know.”
“Spiders can bite, even if they’re not poisonous,” Monkey argued.
“I think it did,” Tiger said, with a sheepish laugh. As the others crowded around, he indicated a small red mark visible on the inside of his thigh. Leo got down on his knees and inspected the bite.
“It’s nothing to worry about,” he said finally. “But just to be on the safe side, maybe you should go let Wanda take a look at it.”
“Naw, forget it,” Tiger said, without looking at Leo. “I’ll just put some stuff on it.” He found a half-dollar-size tin of Campho-Phenique and dabbed some on the mark, and let it go at that.
By the next morning, however, the mark had enlarged and turned purple. “Now I go see Wanda,” Tiger announced, and after breakfast off he went to the infirmary, while the other Jeremians waited at the cabin. A scowling Phil let Leo know just where the boys – and their counselor -stood on matters.
“I hope you’re satisfied,” Phil said grimly, while Dump and Monkey muttered about “Wacko’s spider,” making Leo feel worse than he already did. Fortunately, when Tiger came back, the bite washed and dressed with a square gauze pad fastened by adhesive tape, he reported that Wanda’s diagnosis was that there was nothing to worry about: he was still good for today’s game.
Later, just before powwow Leo came in from the cottage, where he’d been listening to records with Fritz, to find Tiger sitting in his bunk discussing with Phil the results of the game (Red Sox 9, Cards 2; Abernathy slammed three homers, putting Jeremiah in the lead for the Trophy at last). Leo looked at the bandage on Tiger’s leg, wanting to say something, but unable to find the right words. In the adjoining bunk the Bomber was thumbing through a dog-eared copy of National Geographic, studying a bevy of bare-breasted maidens. Suddenly he sat up.
“Hey, watch it, guys, here comes H ^ eart l ^ ess›” he said, and, stuffing the magazine under his pillow, he hopped out the side of the cabin to hang his wet towel and trunks on the line, while inside Jeremiah, Reece greeted his boys, then sat down on his footlocker and shucked off his tennis shoes. Removing his sweaty socks, he folded them neatly before dropping them into his laundry case. One foot crossed over a knee, he dusted his toes with foot powder before donning fresh socks.
“How’s the bite?” he asked Tiger offhandedly.
“Okay,” came the reply.
“Let’s have a look anyway.”
“No, really, it’s okay.”
“So let me see,” Reece insisted.
“It’s bandaged,” Tiger demurred. “Wanda said not to take it off.”
Reece scowled. “Look, Kemo Sabe, I want to check it, okay? So hop down here toot sweet and let’s have a look at it.”
Knowing better than to argue when Reece’s mind was set, Tiger jumped down from his bunk, hitting the floor hard. “It’s okay, I’m telling you,” he said.
“Good,” Reece declared. “But I still want to make sure. Jeremiah may be ahead on points, but we’ve got to stay that way if we’re going to cop that Trophy.” He drew Tiger to him and, using his fingernails, he lifted' away the adhesive strips so the gauze pad hung down like a miniature trapdoor. Leaning closer, he whistled softly.
“Whoa, now, fellah, this doesn’t look so good.” What had been a small red mark had now developed an angry-looking whitehead of pus at its center.
“Jeez, I thought you said it was clearing up,” Phil said. “It doesn’t hurt,” Tiger returned stolidly.
Reece got up and rummaged around in his footlocker. “If it’s come to a head, that just means it needs lancing, to get the pus out.”
“That’s okay, I’d rather have Wanda do it,” Tiger protested, trying to tape the pad back in position.
“Sure, sure, I know; but she’s not here.” It was true: Fritz and Wanda had driven into Putnam to see a movie show. Reece brought out his canvas sewing kit and unrolled it, slipped a needle from among several others, then meticulously rerolled the kit. He took the needle, produced a matchbook and, using his last match, passed the tip through the flame. He laid aside the burnt match and empty book, blew on the needle to cool it, then began to probe the head of the pustule.
Tiger squirmed. “Ouch, that hurts.”
“Come on, hold still, can’t you? Stop fidgeting.”
“I just wish you’d quit,” Tiger said.
“It’s got to be done, camper, if you’d just – godarn it!” lie exclaimed, as the needle escaped his fingers. He retrieved it quickly and, steadying his hand, broke the skin of the pustule, releasing the fluid. “There – see, all done!” He milled a tissue from the Kleenex packet on his shelf and blotted up the leakage, then deftly restored Wanda’s gauze |›. id with its adhesive strips as the other Jeremians burst into the cabin. liy all rights this impromptu job of surgery should Itave done the trick; unfortunately, it did not. Next day, when Tiger reported to the infirmary to have the dressing i lunged, there was a degree of increased inflammation that i iiused Wanda to wonder, but she washed the infection thoroughly, dressed it, and applied a fresh bandage.
“Better lay off the swimming for a day or two,” she advised. “And check back with me this afternoon.”
Though Tiger did his share of grousing, he heeded Wanda’s advice and stayed out of the water, morning and afternoon. But by the following morning he was limping, and, he announced, his leg had begun to throb. The boys watched as he peeled down the tapes and dropped the gauze pad. Overnight the inflamed area had enlarged to the size of a quarter, and there were Scarlet lines extending above and below the infected area. Again Tiger headed for the infirmary.
“What does it mean?” he asked Wanda, who put on her glasses for a closer examination.
“It means I think we’ll consult the doc.” Unfortunately, this did not mean Doc Oliphant, who night before last had turned the dispensary keys over to Wanda and driven to Hartford, thence to New York, for a medical conference. In the event of an emergency, she was instructed to seek out old Dr Malcolm over at Woking Corners, and this she now proceeded to do, using the office telephone. The doctor obligingly drove over and examined Tiger’s leg, pronouncing him a fine fellow but allowing as how they might do well to keep him in the infirmary a day or so, until the “local low-grade infection” was cleared up. To “take the strain off,” a Rube Goldberg harness was rigged up with ropes and pulleys and a window-sash weight that kept the patient’s leg hoisted into the air, and a prescription was written for the new sulfanilamide drug.
All afternoon Wanda’s latest charge garnered numbers of visitors who sat jawing with him and joking about his “torture-chamber rig.” Not only did the Jeremians come trooping into the room with Reece, at their head, but other campers from up and down the line-path paid duty visits, including Peewee, whose rambunctiousness became so annoying that Wanda banished him from indoors and he had to resort to standing on a box with his head inside the sickroom window. Even Pa took time out from his birding to pass by for an encouraging ^yord, while Hank Ives delivered Ma and Willa-Sue by jitney for a get-together. (Ma had baked brownies for general consumption, which she brought packed in a candy box.)
Only Leo stayed away, watching the procession to and from the infirmary with a heavy heart. Already he was being blamed for Tiger’s predicament, and though he was sure the spider’s bite had not been poisonous, there was no doubt that it was Leo who had put Friend-Indeed’s star camper in a position to be bitten in the first place. His anguish over this fact was compounded by his quarrel with Tiger. With each day that had passed since their foolish argument Leo had looked for a way to make it up with his friend, to have things as they had been before, had tried and had failed. But now… now he must get in to see Tiger and explain, apologize, he must. Around and around his thoughts went and still there was no resolution. Then, during powwow that evening, as the conversation turned to the upcoming glee-club concert, the answer came to him, and after supper he took his violin and crept up to the sickroom window, where he settled himself against the wall and began playing, listening for some reaction from inside. It came almost on cue, the mirthful sputter that said Tiger was getting it. l. eo beamed. Nurse Koslowski, however, didn’t find it so amusing. Leo had just reached the release when her reproachful features appeared in the window.
“Okay, wise-apple, what’s the big idea?” she demanded, poking her head out at him. “You think this is an amusement park or something?”
Leo grinned and shrugged. “I was just playing.”
“What kind of song is that, anyway?”
“ ‘The Music Goes ’Round and Around.’ Tiger likes it.”
“If he does, he’s the only one. Now suppose you just nut that harp away for a while and get your baganza inside here.”
“How’s he doing?” asked Leo as he came around the porch and up the steps.
“He’ll live. Go ahead in, he’ll be glad to see you.” Behind the screen that helped close off the doorway to the sickroom, Tiger lay in his white hospital bed, his leg hiked as if from a skiing accident.
“Hi,” Leo said.
“Hi yourself.”
“How’re you doing?”
“Okay. How about you?”
“Me? I’m fine.”
“Well, don’t just stand there, come on it.”
Leo sat in the chair, maintaining a discreet distance. “What brings you down this way?” Tiger asked.
“I was – that is – I wanted to see how you were coming along. If it weren’t for my spider you wouldn’t be here.” “Don’t give it a thought. It’s not your fault. I’m glad to see you.”
“You are?”
“Yup. Real glad. We’re some pair, you and me. Acting like two dumb-bells.”
Leo dropped his gaze. “You were right. I’ve been acting like a jerk. And I’m sorry I called you that name.”
“I don’t think I’ll die because of it. Let’s just forget it ever happened.” Tiger held out his hand. “Shake?”
Leo held out his. “Shake.”
“Your playing was really neat,” Tiger went on.
“Glad you liked it.”
“How’s Harpo? I miss him.”
“He’s okay – he misses you, too. He’s really been dogging it since you haven’t been around.”
Tiger laughed at Leo’s pun. “Listen,” he said, lowering his voice. “I was wondering. Do you think you could bring him down here so I could see him?”
Leo lowered his voice too. “Would Wanda let you have a dog in here? He’s liable to have germs and stuff.” “Maybe you could fix it for when she’s not around.”
“I heard that, Tiger Abernathy!”
A stern-faced Nurse Koslowski stood in the doorway. “ ‘When she’s not around,’ what? What plots are you two brigands hatching?”
“He wants to see Harpo,” Leo explained.
“Oh no you don’t, not that flea-bitten hound; not in my infirmary. Is that completely understood?”
“Yes, m’am,” replied Leo.
“Aw, Wanda-”
“Never mind the ‘Aw, Wanda’s,’ Abernathy. Just remember. And for your information, Leo, visiting hours are just about fini’d, so suppose you trot on out of here while our boy gets some sleep.”
Leo adjusted his position, then glanced up at her. “I was wondering – could we read a little?”
“Reading, huh? Okay, go ahead. I’ll sneak a smoke on the porch. But keep it down in here, or I’ll have to toss you out on your baganza.” Her uniform rattled as she turned down the radio, then left the room, her rubber soles squeaking on the painted floor.
Leo pulled his chair closer to the bed and took out several books from his knapsack. Tiger’s choice was “Horatius at the Bridge,” and so Leo began with the tale of “The Captain of the Gate,” set with two stalwart companions to defend the bridge to Rome until the span could be destroyed and the city made safe. He read the hero’s credo:
“To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late.
And how can man die better Than facing fearful odds,
For the ashes of his fathers,
And the temples of his Gods…” and he read how, in those days,
… none was for a party;
Then all were for the state;
Then the great man helped the poor,
And the poor man loved the great:
Then lands were fairly portioned;
Then spoils were fairly sold:
The Romans were like brothers In the brave days of old.
He read until a figure in white appeared in the doorway. Finger to her lips, Wanda signaled Leo to leave.
“Don’t stop,” Tiger murmured. “I’m not asleep.”
“If you’re not, you’re giving a darned good imitation of it,” the nurse replied. “Doctor wants you to rest.”
“But I want to hear the end.”
“Next time. Pretend it’s a cliffhanger. Like Pearl White and that stuff.”
“Tomorrow?” Tiger asked.
Wanda blew out her cheeks. “I suppose – only no dogs, got it?”
“In the infirmary, right?”
“In the infirmary, right.”
“Okay, kiddo.”
Leo went away whistling “The Monkey Wrapped His Tail Around the Flagpole.”
Next day, when Leo looked in at the infirmary window, he found the patient entertaining a pair of visitors whose presence both surprised and pleased him. Seated on chairs brought in from the other rooms were Honey Oliphant, returned at last to Moonbow late the night before, and her Cape Cod friend, Sally Berwick. Also attending the invalid were the Bomber and Emerson Bean, along with Dusty Rhoades and Junior Leffingwell. The Bomber had just got off one of his corny jokes and everyone groaned when an alert-looking, hairy head appeared in the open window.
“Harpo!” Tiger exclaimed with pleasure, stretching out welcoming arms.
“Good evening, Mr Abernathy,” said Harpo, wagging his shaggy head. He spoke in a deep, solemn voice, and sported a bow tie along with the famous Eddie Foy derby. “I don’t believe I’ve met the dark-haired young lady,” Harpo declared, his pink tongue hanging out moistly from under his whiskers. “Is she a new girl in town?” Sally, as dark as Honey was fair, giggled.
“Please be so kind as to introduce us,” Harpo went on, and managed cleverly to doff his headgear.
Getting into the spirit of the thing, Tiger performed the social amenities from his bed. “Sally, this is Harpo the Talking Dog. He can perform twenty tricks in twenty minutes, or ten tricks in ten, take your pick. Harpo, shake hands with Sally.”
“Hullo, Sal,” said the dog and shook hands in a friendly way. “How’s tricks? Say, is she in the movies?” he asked Tiger.
“No, she is not in the movies,” Honey replied.
“Would she like to be? I know a guy in Hollywood.” The girls giggled.
“And I see the Belle of Moonbow Lake has returned to grace our shores once again,” the dog went on sauvely. “I would like to say on behalf of all the other dogs in the neighborhood that we are very pleased to see her again. We’ve been leading a dog’s life since she’s been gone.” Honey laughed outright. “Why, thank you, Harpo. You’re so complimentary. Especially for a dog.”
“Oh, we dogs know our onions, girls,” Harpo returned, and laughed. “Being nearer to the ground, we can spot a well-turned ankle with the best of them.”
“Oh, Harpo, you’re making her blush!” exclaimed Sally as Honey clapped a palm to each cheek.
“If so, it is the blush the sun provides the peach,” replied the dog majestically. Then, so intriguing did the hairy visitor find the gathering inside that he clambered over the sill and bounded into the room. In two more bounds he was up on the bed, keening with pleasure and joyfully licking Tiger’s face.
“Harpo, you get right down from there this minute!” Honey jumped up and clapped her hands; in another moment Leo followed Harpo in over the sill, hurried to the bed, seized the dog around its middle, and hauled it bodily from the covers. With the animal’s jumbo-sized head blocking his view, its four paws- sticking straight out, its animated tail swinging like a clock pendulum, Leo energetically wrestled it toward the doorway – where something impeded further progress.
“I thought we said no dogs in here!” came Wanda’s stern voice as, pushing him backward, she marched into the room and confronted the gathering. “Isn’t that what we said, boys and girls?”
“Yes – only-” Blindly Leo engineered an awkward circle, trying to get his bearings.
“Only nothing!” Wanda retorted with mock fierceness. “Out! O-u-t, out! All dogs, all boys with dogs. Now. This minute. This very instant, Leo Joaquim, or you’ll rue the day, I promise.”
So the hairy object of Tiger’s affection was banished from the premises – not far ^however: Harpo took up a position outside the window, tongue still hanging a-pant, earnestly cocking his head, the model of canine rectitude. Meanwhile, Wanda cleared out her place of work, dispatching Tiger’s visitors to their respective cabins, Honey and her friend Sally back to Three Corner Cove.
The two girls were on the path when Honey, having spotted Leo on the point, waited for him to catch up, while Sally went on ahead to the cottage.
“Well, Leo,” Honey began as he came up to her, “how are things?”
“Okay.”
“Just ‘okay’?”
“Well, sort of – only-”
“Only what?”
Leo blushed, stumbling for words.
Pretending not to notice, Honey put her hand in her pocket. “Would you like to see some of my snapshots from the Cape?” Without waiting for a reply she took them out and one by one handed them over: the bridge at the Cape Cod Canal (Honey arm-in-arm with Sally Berwick); several shots of the beach (Honey in her yellow bathing suit building a sand castle; Honey with a lifeguard); the lighthouse at Nauset Heights (Honey on her bicycle)…
The exhibition got no farther. Suddenly the screen door at the cottage flew open and Peewee came racing across the porch and down the steps, an orange Popsicle melting in his fist.
“Peewee – here’s Leo,” his sister called. “Come say hello.”
The boy shot Leo a fierce scowl. “I can’t talk to him, he’s a spud,” he said, and ran on toward camp.
“Gosh, what’s been going on around here while I’ve been gone?” Honey asked. “Why are you and Peewee on the outs? You used to be such good pals.”
Leo ran his tongue around inside his mouth. “It’s nothing. Peewee’s just-” He shrugged.
Honey laughed. “Young; I know. Master Harrison has a lot of growing up to do, I’m afraid.”
“Is that Peewee’s name? ‘Harrison’?”
“Yes. Isn’t it ridiculous?” Her expression sobered. “I was real sorry to hear about what happened to your model village. After all your hard work. I know how disappointed you must be. However could such a thing have happened?”
Leo didn’t see any point in hashing the matter over again, so he let it go at the “frayed-rope” story, though he wasn’t sure Honey bought it, any more than he did.
“Honestly, I don’t know what this place is coming to,” Honey said. “Everyone always has such a good time, really. But this summer – well, it’s almost over.
Doesn’t seem possible, does it? Labor Day’ll be here before we know it.”
Sally’s round, jolly face appeared at the sink window, where she was pumping water (she was making lemonade). Honey drew Leo aside for a more personal word.
“I’ve been telling Sal about your music,” Honey confided. “I said you were just about the best violin player I’d ever heard.”
“You did?”
“I certainly did. I can’t wait till you’re famous and I can tell my children I knew you when.”
“I’ve been wanting to thank you,” Leo said shyly.
“For what?”
“For the postal card.”
“Oh, that. I wondered if you ever got it. I love sending postcards. I send them to all my friends. Some collect them.”
Leo was deflated by this news. Others got cards, too. “Will you keep yours?” she asked. He nodded, eyes cast down to his toes.
“Good. And sometime, when you go somewhere, I want you to be sure and send me one. For my collection. Okay?”
“Okay,” he murmured.
The quietness was suddenly rent by a shrill blast on a whistle. “Oh, gee, I think you’re being paged-”
Leo looked up to see Reece standing on the infirmary porch with his whistle.
“All right, camper, let’s hop it,” he called through cupped hands.
Honey gave Leo’s hand a brief, encouraging squeeze. “You’d better go.” She ducked inside; Leo had no choice but to return the way he’d come.
Reece was waiting at the head of the path, a disapproving frown on his face. “What were you doing over there?” “Talking.”
“About what?” “Just – talking, that’s all.”
“About me, I bet. Weren’t you?”
“No. We weren’t. It was something else.”
Using the palm of his hand, Reece propelled Leo along the path in front of him.
“Where’ve you been all afternoon?”
“I was with Tiger.”
“You keep away from the infirmary. I don’t want you going there. Tiger’s not feeling well, he doesn’t need spuds like you bothering him.”
“I wasn’t bothering him. He said he was glad I came.” “He’s just being nice. That’s the way Tiger is.”
“We’re friends. I’m going to visit his house this fall. He’s going to have me stay overnight.”
Reece gave him a look of disgust. “You’re nuts if you believe that. The only reason he bothered with you was that Ma told him to. If she hadn’t-”
“We wouldn’t be friends, you mean?”
“I mean you’re not up to his standard. It takes a special kind of guy to be friends with Tiger Abernathy.”
They had reached a fork in the path; Leo started off toward the infirmary, only to have Reece hold him back.
“I told you, Wackeem, I want you to keep away from there.”
Reece wheeled and went loping along the path to the Oliphant cottage, where the girls were sunning themselves on the dock.
Friday morning the talk was all over camp: Tiger Abernathy was being sent home. For once, Hank Ives wasn’t first with the bulletin: Leo had already heard it from Ma. She was waiting for him as he passed her office on his way to breakfast. Wanda had telephoned Lake Winnipesaukee and spoken directly with Pat Abernathy. He. and Tiger’s mother were cutting short their stay and driving down as soon as they could pack up and get started.
Leo had listened to the news with two minds. He realized that whatever it took to make Tiger well again must be done, but even though, thanks to Reece’s edict, he hadn’t seen his friend for two days, the prospect of his leaving camp for good was a daunting one. With Tiger gone Leo would have only the Bomber (who had taken his cue from Tiger where Leo was concerned) to depend on.
When the Bomber came up from the lake after swim, the two boys wandered off to the woods for a private confab.
“I have to see him,” Leo declared. “I have to tell him something. Something important.”
“Whyn’tcha tell me and I kin relay the message to him,” the Bomber suggested.
“No!” he blurted. The Bomber’s offer was well meant, but not one Leo could accept. What he had to say was for Tiger’s ears alone.
The Bomber sensibly suggested Leo wait until after dinner that evening to get to the infirmary. Tonight was Counselors’ Night at the lodge; Hap Holliday was putting on a locker-room skit, featuring Reece in the role of the ' “Little Bambino,” Babe Ruth. With the counselor thus occupied, Leo would have his chance.
It was getting dark when Leo, on KP, finished drying and putting away the last stack of chinaware, and once dismissed he ran all the way down to camp. Skirting the lodge, where the evening’s program was already in progress, he made his way into the sickroom by vaulting in over the sill. Tiger was listening to the radio. A fine sheen of perspiration gleamed on his brow, and his cheeks looked unnaturally flushed. “Hi,” Leo said.
“Hi. Come on in. Where’ve you been?”
“Reece told me to keep away. He doesn’t like it that we made it up between us.”
“Tough stuff, I’d say. He’ll just have to get over it.” Leo was grateful for the vote of confidence. He tiptoed to the bedside and sat in the chair.
“How’re you feeling?”
“I feel okay, I guess. Sort of. I’ve been having weird dreams, though.”
“What kind of weird?”
“Well, just – you know – weird. Sort of like nightmares. Everything’s screwy. You know what that’s like.”
Did he ever.
“Have you heard?” Tiger went on. “I’m leaving.”
“Ma told me.”
“I don’t want to,” Tiger said glumly. He adjusted his position and his eyes swerved about the room as if reluctant to light anywhere.
“Will we still see each other?” Leo asked, “Like we said?” “You mean when camp’s over? Sure we will,” Tiger said expansively. “Leave it to me.”
“Reece said-”
“Said what?”
“That you were just pretending. About inviting me to visit. He said you didn’t mean it.”
“Sure, I meant it, otherwise I wouldn’t have asked you.” “He said you’ve been acting friendly just because Ma said to.” “It’s true, Ma did ask me to show you the ropes, me and the Bomber. But she never made me. I had you pegged right from the start.”
“Pegged as what?”
“Well, as – as different, see? But good different. Something we didn’t have too many of around here. Remember ‘Icarus’?”
“I guess you thought that was nervy of me, naming your owl.”
“Not my owl. He was yours, right from the start. I told Bomber later, I said you were going to be a very interesting member of Jeremiah, very unusual. And you were. Are. So don’t pay any attention to what Reece – or anybody else – says. We’re friends now and we’ll go on being friends. When you come to our house, I’ll have my mom bake you her special lemon pie-”
“Great.”
“And my dad has a friend who’s a barnstormer. Maybe dad’ll get him to take us up for a spin. Is it a deal?”
“A deal.”
Solemnly they shook hands. Tiger lay back, fatigued. “Something else on your mind?” he asked, as Leo started to speak, then stopped.
“I was thinking…” Leo began again.
“What?”
“There’s something – you ought to know before you leave. I wanted to tell you before now, only… only…” He groped for words that wouldn’t come.
Tiger roused himself sufficiently to be attentive. “That’s okay. Whatever it is, just spit it out. That’s the best way.”
Now that he’d initiated the conversation, Leo was having serious doubts about going through with it. “You’ll probably get mad at me,” he muttered.
“Try me.”
Leo leaned close to Tiger’s pillow and lowered his voice; he couldn’t take a chance on anyone’s overhearing. “I’ve been keeping something from you. And if we’re going to go on being friends, it’s something you should know about. Only, after I’ve told you, maybe you won’t want to be friends anymore. It has to do with something that happened a long time ago, except – well, it’s still going on, in a way. I mean it’s still-”
He broke off.
Tiger studied him. “Does it have something to do with when you were in the asylum?” he asked.
Leo shot him a grateful look. “You remember that time at Dagmar’s? When I – when I – well, ran out of the room? During the storm?”
Tiger nodded.
“That’s when I remembered.” Leo stopped, then went on, confessing the truth of what had happened that stormy night in the house on Gallop Street, getting it all out at last. Tiger listened with the thoughtful, earnest expression Leo had come to know so well.
“And Rudy’s still alive, isn’t he?” Tiger ventured.
Leo was taken aback. “How did you know?”
“I just figured. He’s doing time in the pen, isn’t he?” Leo confessed that this was so.
“And that’s why you get those bad dreams,” Tiger went on. “Cripes, that’s enough to give anybody nightmares. I’d be screwy myself.” He produced a wan smile. “ ‘Ya done good in spite of it, camper,’ ” he said.
This affirmation made Leo feel better; his spirits were further cheered when he was instructed to open the table drawer: in it lay Tiger’s Bowie knife in its leather sheath.
“I want you to have it. To remember me when you go back to Pitt.”
“I can’t do that. It’s yours, you won it.”
“I’m leaving, remember? I won’t need it. But you might.”
Leo shrugged. “I don’t think I’ll stay, after you’re gone.” “Why not? Listen, I know the guys’ve pulled some lousy tricks on you, but you don’t want to let that stuff get you. Don’t give in to them.”
Leo shook his head stubbornly. “I don’t want to stay without you.”
“That’s crazy! It’s just what they want you to do – quit. You don’t want them thinking they licked you, do you? That you’re another Stanley?”
“Do you think I am?”
“ ’Course not. And you’re no quitter, either. ‘Never Say Die’ – remember the Count?”
Leo was in no mood for talk about the count. “They’re saying it’s my fault you’re sick. The Mingoes-”
Tiger was scornful. “Forget the Mingoes, they’re all full of you-know-what.” He gestured toward the knife. “Now take it, will you? I want you to.”
Following the command, Leo took the knife, undid his belt, and slid it through the slits in the sheath. He thought about what Kretch would say when he showed it off; how Measles and all his loudmouth bunch would carry on. Tiger’s gift was a token of friendship and esteem, honor, even, things guys like Measles didn’t know – or care – anything about.
They fell silent for a time. Leo’s eye wandered to the night table, where Tiger’s medicine bag lay, beaded and feathered, guarding its tantalizing secret. He still yearned to know what it contained, what made those provocative little bumps in the bag. From the Oliphants’ dock came the strains of music from Honey’s Victrola. Then, “Finish the poem, why don’t you?” Tiger said, opening his eyes. “I don’t want to go to sleep this time without knowing how it ends.”
Leo was agreeable. Opening Fritz’s book, he picked up where he’d left off three days before, with the Etruscan forces making a bid to cross the Tiber bridge.
Four hundred trumpets sounded A peal of war-like glee,
As that great host, with measured tread,
And spears advanced, and ensigns spread,
Rolled slowly towards the bridge’s head,
Where stood the dauntless Three.
“The dauntless Three.” Leo glanced over to the bed to see if Tiger had heard, but his eyes were on the ceiling. Leo went on:
Alone stood brave Horatius,
But constant still in mind;
Thrice thirty thousand foes before,
And the broad flood behind.
“Down with him!” cried false Sextus,
With a smile on his pale face.
“Now yield thee,” cried Lars Porsena,
“Now yield thee to our grace.”
But the stubborn Horatius would never yield; he fought on until the bridge went down, and Rome was saved. For his valor he was awarded public lands to till, and a bronze statue was erected in his honor.
It stands in the Comitium,
Plain for all folk to see;
Horatius in his harness,
Halting upon one knees
And underneath is written,
In letters all of gold,
How valiantly he kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.
When Leo looked up he saw that Tiger’s eyes were shut, his cheek lay upon the pillow. Leo watched him a moment longer, then reached over to switch off the bedside lamp. Unwilled, his fingers went instead to the Seneca bag, lying in a pool of light. He picked it up and held it by its string. The chamois sack twisted slowly in the lamplight, not heavy, but somehow weighted by the mystery of its contents.
He hefted it, then let it drop into his cupped palm. What power did it contain? Just touching the bag made his hand tremble. Gingerly he kneaded its contents between his fingertips. What was it? Something small, hard, round. He inserted two digits into the neck of the bag, loosened it, and felt inside. Three small objects, round, sort of, about the size of raisins. Nuts? Beans? Checking to make sure Tiger’s eyes remained shut, he spilled the objects into his palm: three pebbles, that was all, just three ordinary pebbles, one black, one white, one red. It didn’t make sense. Why were three common pebbles of such significance? He was about to return them to the bag when one of them slipped through his fingers and bounced on the floor. He bent quickly and picked it up. When he straightened, Tiger’s eyes were on him. Leo turned scarlet with guilt.
“I – I-”
Tiger reached over and took the pebble, dropped it into the bag and closed the neck. “It’s okay, don’t worry,” he said.
“I only wanted to – to-”
“To know. It’s natural, I guess.” Tiger opened the bag again and spilled out the pebbles, then picked up the black stone and held it to the light.
“This stone is for the earth, who is the mother of us all, who births us and feeds us and protects us all our lives. And this” – holding up the red one – “is the blood of the Senecas, who are blood brothers, bound together in friendship and loyalty through all our lives. And this” -the white stone – “is for purity of soul. The shining spirit of the Great Manitou who awaits his sons in the Happy Hunting Grounds.”
He closed his fist around the pebbles and clenched them tightly so his knuckles turned white. Then he spilled them back into their bag, pulled the drawstring, and set the bag back on the night table.
“Thanks for the poem,” he said, leaning back on the pillow. “It’s a good one. ’Specially the ending.”
Through the trees came the light notes of Wiggy Pugh’s cornet as he blew retreat. Leo knew he should be getting back to camp; he’d have a tough enough job explaining to Reece why he’d missed Counselors’ Night; there’d be docked desserts to pay for that crime. And for the hundredth time a vision of Stanley Wagner crept into his mind, that shadow that had a habit of reappearing at the moment Leo least expected it.
Such thoughts failed to force him from the sickroom, however. Tiger had shut his eyes again; there were drops of perspiration on his brow; it felt hot to Leo’s touch. Then he stirred in the bed and spoke a few words, which Leo failed to catch.
“What?” he asked.
Tiger mumbled again, but again the sense was lost.
From across the way at Three Corner Cove came the soft strains of dance music:
You go to my head
With a smile that makes my temp’rature rise,
Like a summer with a thousand Julys,
You intoxicate my soul with your eyes.
There was a curious thing about music heard across water, an indefinable something that altered the tonal qualities of the notes, not subtracting but adding to their sum, rounding and hollowing them, making them both remote and somehow more intimate, like the warming gleam of a familiar but faraway star. And in years to come, whenever he might hear that song, no matter where he was or what he was doing, for Leo Joaquim it would always be the summer of ’38, his Moonbow summer.
Beyond the partition, Wanda lay on the day bed, listening to the soft burr of the boys’ voices. She glanced at her alarm clock. Eleven. It was late. She tried to picture the Abernathys in their car, rushing through the night to their son’s bedside. No need, of course, no real need, she told herself. But as well they were coming, just in case. She must go in and shoo Leo out. Hearing a sound, she sat up: a dark shape slipped through the open doorway. Wanda smiled to herself as she listened to the nails clicking on the floorboards. Well, who cared, really? A dog wasn’t going to hurt anything. She could hear the music from over at the Oliphants’. She lay thinking in the dark, then felt her eyelids drooping…
She hadn’t slept. She was certain of it. Yet, when she looked at the clock again, its phosphorescent hands told her it was ten minutes past midnight. She got up quickly and tiptoed from the room. In the adjoining one Tiger lay on the bed with his eyes shut, his free leg angled and sticking out from beneath the sheet. In the chair Leo slumped, head canted to one side, his mouth partly open, hands loosely folded in his lap. Between the chair and the bed lay Harpo, who raised a sleepy head to regard her with inquisitive eyes, then dropped his muzzle to the floor again.
Wanda felt Tiger’s forehead; it was moist and warm -too warm. Still, if he was resting she didn’t want to disturb him; there was no telling if he’d get back to sleep again. She checked her watch. She estimated the Abernathys would arrive some time after breakfast, certainly not before. A hundred and fifty miles was a good distance to travel.
She went back into the other room, lit a cigarette, and sat smoking as she looked out into the darkness.
Hours later, in the sickroom, Leo came awake in his chair. It was Harpo who’d roused him. The dog was sitting close to the bed, rubbing the crown of his head against the bedrails, whimpering, and Leo got up and went to calm him. Absently he stroked the animal and stared down at Tiger’s head on the pillow. His cheeks had lost their bright color, and when Leo touched his friend’s forehead it felt cool. He got his chair and sat close to the bed, wishing Tiger would open his eyes so they could talk some more. After a while Harpo sat up, then clambered awkwardly into Leo’s lap, where he sat licking his face, looking from him to Tiger in the bed. The animal felt hot and heavy and Leo wanted to put him down, but he didn’t. Under his thick curly coat the dog was trembling. Probably he should be put out; Wanda would be annoyed if she awoke and found she’d been disobeyed.
Through the window he could see familiar shapes as the dawn began to break. The lake surface was already glinting in the early-morning light. A fine mist curled along the edges of the Three Corner Cove. On the washline three sets of female bathing attire hung: Maryann’s, Honey’s, and Sally Berwick’s. Doc’s Chris-Craft rode at easy anchor, calm and motionless.
Leo tensed as from the bed came the sound of Tiger’s voice.
“Ha… al… yee hepp… ridge,” Leo heard. Was it fever talk? Tiger’s eyes were open and he stared up at Leo but didn’t seem to recognize him.
“What? What did you say?” Leo asked.
Tiger turned his head restlessly on the pillow.
“How al – keh… uh… ”
Leo frowned slightly. Then it came to him. “How valiantly he kept the bridge,” he said. Tiger moved his hand on the coverlet, smiled, and shut his eyes again. He looked peaceful. Leo felt exhausted but not sleepy. Harpo had become too heavy. Leo put him down, then got up and stretched a couple of times.
“Come on, Harp,” Leo whispered, but the dog, now lying near the foot of the bed, made no move. Leo paused a moment longer, then backed away and left the room. Through the dispensary doorway he could see Wanda stretched out on the cot. She moved, then sat up, rubbing her eyes.
“Is he going to be okay?” Leo asked.
Swinging her feet to the floor and kneading her back, Wanda drilled him with a look. “Of course he’s going to be okay.” She took her thermometer, shook it down, and went in to look at the patient, while Leo wandered out onto the porch. His backside ached. The camp was already stirring. Over at the Oliphants’, Maryann appeared on the porch. She was wearing an Indian-pattern bathrobe, carrying a coffee mug and a lighted cigarette. Leo returned her wave, wondering why nobody ever saw her in curlers like other women.
Just then Harpo forged his way through the open doorway, bursting from the place like the hound of hell itself, bounding down the porch steps and racing off along the path, past Three Corner Cove to disappear into the woods. A moment later an unearthly howl arose that raised the hair on the nape of Leo’s neck.
“Gosh, what’s wrong with that poor creature?” Maryann called over. No one answered. On the infirmary porch Leo was backed against the railing so hard a spur hurt his leg. Heedless of the discomfort, he was staring at Wanda, who stood motionless in the doorway. Her brimming eyes sparkled in the morning light. But people like Wanda didn’t cry, they helped others dry their tears. In a husky voice she told him she was going over to use the Oliphants’ telephone. Gripping the porch post, Leo followed her with his eyes as she went down the steps and along the path; then he walked back inside.
In the sickroom the shades were pulled down to the sill. The bedsheet was drawn up over the pillow. He could make out the general shape of Tiger’s head underneath. He did not go inside the room. His knees seemed about to fold on him, and he sat down suddenly in Wanda’s chair. He tried to think, but his thoughts floated out of reach like ghostly things, as if what was happening wasn’t really happening, was just part of a dream, another bad dream he’d had. Yes, that was it, he was still asleep, he hadn’t woken at all, and he was still dreaming. In a moment he would wake up and everything would be okay – it would, wouldn’t it? If only He heard the sound of an auto engine. Through the opposite window he saw a car pull into view. It came to a stop on the grassy spot beside the infirmary and the Abernathys got out. They came up the steps and into the room. “Hello, Leo,” they said. “How is our boy?”
Leo didn’t know what to say. He ducked his head and didn’t look up again until they’d gone into the other room. He went onto the porch again. Over at Three Corner Cove, Wanda came out of the cottage with Maryann. Honey was with them. She had a handkerchief to her eyes. When she looked over and saw Leo she turned away, her shoulders shaking. Leo wanted to go and comfort her but didn’t know how to do that. Maryann and Wanda embraced; then Wanda came back along the path. Leo began to tremble. His eyes were blurring. As Wanda came up the steps, he turned and clambered over the railing to sprawl in the nasturtiums growing along the foundations. He scrambled up and without looking back raced along the path, passing the Oliphants’ cottage head down, to disappear into the same woods where Harpo was still howling.
Later Leo asked himself: how had the dog known when he himself had not?
Rock of ages,
Cleft for meeeeee.
Let me hide
Myself in thee-eeeee…
They were in the grove, all of them singing out the rousing old Protestant hymn whose words affirmed the help that cometh when a man’s faith abides in the Lord God of Hosts. Leo, however, could not take heart. Sitting in his rowboat, lost in thought, he doggedly kept his back to the somber gathering in the council ring, where every seat was filled and where the Reverend G. Garland Starbuck had for a half hour past been haranguing the assembled in his best William Jennings Bryan style. In truth, Leo had not wanted to admit to the fact of what lay atop Tabernacle Rock: the black box, covered with flowers; had not wanted to hear about “the young sapling alas too young cut down,” about “that peaceful lamb taken unto the Holy Shepherd’s loving flock,” who now “slept in the soft sweet bosom of Eternity and a Life Everlasting.”
The mere idea made Leo want to laugh. Far better to give Tiger a Viking’s funeral, the way Michael and his brothers had done in Beau Geste: set the coffin on fire and launch it out to sea in flames. Tiger would have loved a send-off like that! A burning vessel, the dead surrounded by battle shields and horned helmets, and a dead dog lying at his feet.
From where he sat Leo could make out certain figures in the congregation: the Abernathys were seated down front, along with Dr Dunbar and a number of the Society of Joshua elders. Wanda Koslowski was there too, and beside her Fritz, and a clutch of females he recognized as Ma Starbuck and Willa-Sue, Dagmar Kronborg, and Honey with her mother and Sally Berwick; on the log where the Jeremians were gathered could be seen the crop of blond curly hair belonging to Reece Hartsig.
At last the singing ended. Quickly, before the service could be brought to its pious conclusion, Leo took his violin from its case and began to play. Slowly, lugubriously, the notes rose from his strings and bow to float across the water to the council ring, where Pa and his congregation, recognizing the burlesque, were stunned to silence. Indignant heads craned toward the water to view the solitary and defiant camper out in the middle of the lake, and as the tune’s title was whispered among the subdued rows of campers they asked themselves who but Wacko Wackeem would have chosen to play a dumb ditty like “The Music Goes ’Round and Around” at such a time.
Pa was already enjoining his boys to raise their voices in an impromptu rendition of “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” which resulted in a sort of musical duel, with all contestants – the multitude in the grove and the party of one in the rowboat – doing their utmost to be heard. Then, as the onshore chorus swelled mightily, Leo switched tunes and tossed “Pop! Goes the Weasel” back in their teeth. The louder they sang, the louder he played, as though his solo rendition could drown out the choir of voices mounted against him. Louder grew the clamor, more jarring the contrapuntal notes, the jazzy, syncopated beat vibrating against the stolid, declarative phrases of the hymn. There would be the usual reprimands for his mischief-making, of course – that was to be expected – but Leo didn’t care. This was what Tiger would have wanted. Tiger would have understood; Tiger, who lay in the box on top of Tabernacle Rock.
If only Leo could share his grief with someone, as Harpo did. Ever since Tiger’s death the dog had roamed the camp road up and down, baying his sorrow. This morning he had been locked jn the old cold cellar under the crafts barn (where Ma stored her jams and preserves in an ancient icebox of yellow oak lined in zinc) so as to keep him from creating a disturbance during the service. But he must have escaped, for now he had taken up a picket post somewhere in the woods and was howling his fool head off. Leo had a pretty good idea of how lonely Harpo must feel.
He looked down at the knife: the Bowie knife Tiger had insisted be his. Since Tiger’s death he had kept the knife hidden from sight; he wasn’t going to let anyone rob him of Tiger’s parting gift. But today, he had decided, he had to wear it no matter what. Just as he’d had to play Tiger’s favorite song…
Finally the singing stopped and the last bars of Leo’s music hung in the torpid air, then melted into silence, leaving only their mocking memory. By now the gathering was breaking up, the council ring emptying, and Leo, laying away his instrument, noticed someone standing on the canoe dock; the thick, burly figure of the Bomber stood waving him in. He must go in, mustn’t he? Go in and face what awaited him? For with Tiger’s death he had become more than ever the camp pariah. Though no official decree of Scarsdale had been issued regarding him, hardly anyone was speaking to him. Every look, every pointing finger and whispered word said it was his fault, that he, Leo, was to blame. If it had not been for Wacko there would have been no service, no coffin, no dead friend. As for Reece, having forbidden Leo to visit the infirmary, and then learning that he’d been at Tiger’s bedside when he died, he was more vindictive than ever, determined to extract the last ounce of punishment.
Feeling imperiled on every side, Leo was wishing he had never come to camp. How was it possible for him to feel like this, when only a few short weeks ago he’d been so happy, when everything had seemed so fine? It was as though he’d been drinking water from a well, good, sweet, clear water, and now that water had been muddied and riled, it tasted bitter, as if the well had been poisoned.
He packed up his violin and headed for shore, paddling with neat, controlled strokes, the way Tiger had taught him. Off in the distance Harpo’s howling had ceased. As he neared the dock, the Bomber gave him a look.
“What the heck was that you was playin’?”
“Beethoven’s Fifth. Like it?”
“Somebody’s plenty burned about it,” the Bomber said.
Leo had no difficulty guessing who “somebody” was. With Leo at the bow, while the Bomber bent his broad back to the stern, the two boys jerked the canoe from the water and racked it up. The Bomber went to the clipboard to sign it in, and Leo, straightening, looked around the council ring. Everywhere stood knots of campers, staffers, and visitors, mixed together, talking, but moving slowly, as though their feet were held down by heavy weights. When he came nearer, Leo glimpsed more faces he recognized: Big Rolfe and Joy Hartsig, Hap Holliday, Hank Ives, a baker’s dozen church elders in black suits, doughty, gray-faced and official-looking; Honey Oliphant was now holding tight to her brother’s hand, as if he were a baby she was afraid of losing. They all stood in silent clusters regarding the casket, which in another moment was being removed from its resting place on the rock. Because it was so small, the box required only two bearers, who carried it up the aisle to the hearse parked hear the top of the ring. Burial was to be private; no campers would be there.
Then Harpo came straying toward them from among the trees, tail quivering but not wagging, a forlorn look in his eyes that made Leo want to fling his arms around the dog’s neck and hug him; but that would only make Leo cry and he had promised himself not to do that. Consequently he ignored Harpo, who finally wheeled and trotted away, while Leo climbed the ring and headed for Jeremiah.
Midway up the aisle he paused at the sight of Wanda, standing beside Fritz near a tree. She always seemed so different out of uniform. Today she had on a street frock and a little hat with a veil and she was wearing gloves. Leo hadn’t spoken with her since the morning Tiger died.
A group of Virtue cadets was standing nearby. “It’s all Wacko’s fault,” one of them was saying, “him and his spider-”
“Don’t say that, it’s not so,” Fritz said quickly. “You boys oughtn’t to repeat untrue stories. Now, run along.” Leo ducked his head as the group broke up and moved away. “It’s all right,” Fritz said, giving his shoulder an encouraging pat, “don’t pay any attention to that kind of talk.” The gesture, meant to be comforting, somehow only made Leo feel worse.
As he came onto the line-path, he saw the Abernathys talking with Pa Starbuck and the Hartsigs. Mrs Abernathy was holding a sheaf of gladioli and staring at the black box, its foot protruding eloquently through the open doors of the hearse. Leo flushed with embarrassment as she turned her eyes on him, then quickly looked away again. He desperately wanted to say something to her, to explain about the music and why he hadn’t been at the funeral, though something in her expression said she already understood, a little.
Instead, to his surprise, he found himself going up to her and holding out the sheathed Bowie knife. Misunderstanding his gesture, she shied and turned her face into her husband’s shoulder.
“Isn’t that Tiger’s knife?” Pat Abernathy asked.
Leo nodded. “He gave it to me,” he said. “I think you should have it.”
Mrs Abernathy’s voice quavered. “I’m sure that if Tiger gave it to you, he wanted you to have it. Keep it and remember him always. I know he thought a lot of you.”
Then, as Leo watched her from under his brows, she seemed to give out all of a sudden. The flowers slipped from her grasp and, with Rolfe’s assistance, her husband led her toward their car, parked just behind the hearse.
Leo went on, holding the knife in one hand, his violin case in the other. Across the line-path a grim-faced Phil was waiting on the porch of Jeremiah. Leo veered off toward the Dewdrop Inn; he wasn’t up to a confrontation right now. But Phil quickly intercepted him, hustling him into the cabin, where seven or eight boys were sitting around silently in the bunks.
“Okay, Wackeem, let’s hear it,” Phil began with an angry scowl. “Suppose you tell us what that dumb stunt was that you just pulled with your fiddle?”
Leo shrugged. “Nothing. Tiger liked that song, is all.”
“Liked it? That dumb thing? You sure have a lousy sense of the fitness of things. You’re holding every camper here up to ridicule. Isn’t that right, fellows?”
Leo glanced about at the funeral-solemn, resentful faces: Dump, Monkey, Eddie, Ogden, and Klaus, faces that had shown no friendliness in some time, and others – Dusty, Emerson – who since Tiger’s death had kept their distance. It fell to the Bomber to take Leo’s part.
“Cripes, leave him alone, Phil, why don’t you?” he protested. Phil whirled on him belligerently.
“Listen, toad-face, you better button up if you know what’s good for you. And what are you looking so bug-eyed at?” he demanded of Wally, who had been standing by the door.
“Nothing,” Wally murmured and climbed into his bunk.
Phil was staring at Leo’s hand. “Cripes – look!” he exclaimed, pointing. “He’s got Tiger’s knife! Where’d you get it?”
“Tiger gave it to me. He wanted me to have it.”
“Liar! You stole it!”
“The heck I did!”
“Why would Tiger give you his knife?” Phil stuck out his hand. “Give it to me,” he demanded.
When Leo refused, a scuffle began as Phil tried to wrest the knife from him. Failing in his attempt, he called for assistance. Dump jumped up and pulled at Leo, who, turning quickly, got an elbow in the mouth. In another moment a figure had appeared behind them, an arm reached out, a hand seized Phil by the scruff and pulled him away.
“All right, boys,” said Fritz Auerbach brusquely, “that’s enough of these strong-arm tactics. We don’t want any fighting today.”
Phil struggled in Fritz’s grip. “Let me go.”
“I’ll be happy to – after you return Leo’s property to him.”
“It’s not his! It’s Tiger’s!”
Coming in behind Fritz at the doorway, Wanda spoke up. “It was Tiger’s. Now it’s Leo’s. That’s how Tiger wanted it.”
“Who asked you?” Phil said, rudely. Fritz was about to take him to task when Reece came into view on the path. “All right, what’s all the racket about?” he demanded, joining the group. “Don’t you guys know we just had a funeral service around here?”
“Phil is bent on keeping Tiger’s knife,” Fritz explained. “But Tiger wanted Leo to have it.”
Reece eyed him. “How do you know? Did Tiger say so?”
“No, but Leo told me-”
“Oh? So you’ll take his word, then?”
“He’s not a liar. I believe him.”
“It’s true!” Leo cried. “We talked about it the night before he – he said – since he was going home – he -he-”
“Be quiet,” Reece ordered. “Phil, give him back the knife.”
Phil drew back in outrage. “No, I won’t! He can’t have it.”
Reece repeated the order in stronger terms. Cowed, Phil grudgingly handed over the knife, which Leo took and held behind him. Turning, Phil deliberately jabbed him in the ribs. “You really are a crummy little spud, you know that?”
“All right, you guys hop it over to the lodge and wait for me,” Reece said. “I want to talk to you.”
Obediently the boys trooped out of the cabin, all but the Bomber, who lingered in the doorway, waiting for a word with Leo.
“Hey, that means you, too, Jerome!” Phil snapped from outdoors. Reece fixed his eye on the Bomber, who nodded, then turned to Leo.
“I gotta go. I’ll see you after, huh?”
He left the cabin, bringing up the rear as the others followed behind Phil and disappeared along the path to the lodge. Reece turned his attention to Fritz, who was examining Leo’s bruised lip.
“They just won’t stop, will they?” Fritz said.
“They would if they weren’t given provocation. And while we’re on the subject, what are you doing around here anyway? I thought I told you to keep out of my campers’ business.”
“They were ganging up on Leo again.”
“Sure, I know, everyone’s always ganging up on ‘poor Leo.’ ”
“But they were,” Wanda insisted. “Look what they did to him.”
Reece waved an impatient hand. “Yes, take a good look at him. If it weren’t for him and his damnable spider Tiger Abernathy wouldn’t be being carried out of here in a box. He – he-”
He broke off, then turned and marched out. The others watched him go. Wanda turned to Leo. “You’d better come with me, while I put something on that lip of yours.” She was halfway out the door when she encountered the Hartsigs. There was an awkward shuffling of positions as Wanda stepped aside for Joy, who stood in the doorway, her eyes sparkling with fresh tears.
“What is it? Why was Reece weeping? What did somebody say to him to upset him like that? Fritz, did you say something?”
“Nothing that mattered, Mrs Hartsig. I was thinking, however.”
“Thinking what?” She teetered on her high heels. “Exactly what do you mean?”
“I was thinking that Reece will soon be going into the air force.”
“Yes? We know this.”
“And I was thinking how fortunate Camp Friend-Indeed will be when he has gone. I myself will be very glad to see the last of your son.”
“What? What are you saying?” She clutched fiercely at his sleeve. “How can you say such a thing? Especially after all his father has done for the camp? After all Reece has done?” Fritz looked her in the eye. “What has he dorie, Mrs Hartsig?” he asked quietly.
“How can you ask such a question? He’s done everything, simply everything! He’s set an example, for one thing, he’s given the boys someone to look up to and emulate. Why, wherever they go from here they will take the memory of Reece Hartsig with them.”
Fritz’s shoulders lifted, then drooped. “Let me just say this, please: I consider it just as well for Camp Friend-Indeed that your son should not be back next year. This place does not need men like him among its counselors, no matter how long he has been coming here.”
Joy stopped dabbing at her melting mascara and stared at him. “What nonsense are you talking now, Mr Auerbach?” “He’s thoughtless, your Reece, he’s careless of other people’s feelings. No matter what some may find to admire in his character, flaws are also evident. I would not like to think of campers’ emulating those as well.”
“Everyone has flaws!” Joy retorted, her mouth pulled down in an angry bow, her pale cheeks bedizened with two flaming spots of color. “I’m sure you have your share,
Mr Fritz Auerbach! You should think of that before you go around saying nasty things behind people’s backs!”
“I will be glad to say them to Reece’s face if you wish me to,” Fritz replied with icy formality. “I have said nothing but the truth.”
“What truth?”
“The truth that it is wrong to blame Leo Joaquim for an act he had no part in.”
“If you mean Tiger’s death I suggest you remember that it was Leo’s spider that inflicted the fatal bite.”
“Pardon, dear madame, but that is also untrue.”
“Say, wait a minute, Fritzy,” demanded Rolfe, lunging into the group. “You calling my wife a liar?”
“I am merely trying to point out that Leo is in no way to be held responsible for the tragedy that has happened here. And to. wrongfully blame him is not to be tolerated. I will be leaving tomorrow morning and-”
Rolfe hiked his chin. “Running away, are you?”
Fritz colored. “I assure you, sir, I am not running away at all. I am going to Washington to talk with some Red Cross people who may have knowledge concerning the fate of my family. But while I am gone from this place…”
“Yes? Go on.”
“If upon my return I should learn that Leo has been mistreated or persecuted for any imagined sins, I would then be obliged to go to Dr Dunbar and inform him of the facts.” “What facts would those be?” demanded Rolfe, his heavy arm cradling his wife’s small form against his side.
“For one, the fact that if it weren’t for an act of carelessness on the part of your son it is highly likely that Tiger Abernathy would be alive today.”
Rolfe blinked; the muscles in his face began to work. “What the hell are you talking about? What act?”
“Leo knows. It happened here in this very cabin one afternoon. Reece insisted on inspecting the bite Tiger had from the spider.”
“Leo’s spider, let’s remember,” said Rolfe.
Fritz shot him a look. “That has nothing to do with it, since the spider was not venomous.”
“Then why did the boy get sick?”
Wanda spoke up. “Because the bite became infected. Reece used a soiled needle to open up his wound.”
“I don’t believe it,” Rolfe protested. “Reece would never do such a thing. He’d sterilize it. A good camper knows that.”
Fritz shrugged. “He did sterilize it-”
“There!” Joy cried. “Didn’t we say so?”
“But then he dropped it on the floor and forgot – he just-”
“Hey, where’d you get a story like that?”
Again Wanda spoke. “From Leo. He was there.”
Rolfe snorted with contempt. “Who do you think is going to believe anything he says? You’re all in cahoots.” “Is that what you think, sir?” Fritz said.
“No!” Joy’s chin quivered and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. “Reece had nothing to do with Tiger Abernathy’s dy- Oh, I can’t say the terrible word! It was an accident, that’s all! Just an accident!”
Fritz spoke quietly but firmly. “Yes, Mrs Hartsig, that is so. But now Leo is being blamed. And he is innocent. Do you think that is fair?”
Joy’s eyes snapped with hostility. “What does that matter? What my husband says is true, you and this -this-!” Without warning she whirled like a demon and rushed at Leo. “Oh, you naughty, vindictive boy! This is all your doing! To tell a story like that! Reece is right, you never should have been brought here. They had no business sending you. You’ve caused nothing but trouble from the day you arrived in camp. You’re the one who’s responsible! You killed Tiger with your nasty spider! You’re the killer if anybody is!”
She rushed out of the cabin onto the line-path, taking pittering little steps up and down, moaning and clawing at the air. Appalled, Rolfe went lumbering after her, making helpless, chastening gestures around her pathetic, bird-like, fluttering form. As the others watched in embarrassed silence, he managed to get her into the car and drove quickly away.
When the field had once more fallen quiet, Leo left the cabin and walked across the line-path into the pine grove, where the tall, silent trees rose beside the lake, and the light filtering down through the boughs was made visible in the dust stirred among the fallen needles by many pairs of feet. In his mind the place seemed just the same as it had been on the evening of his arrival: at a glance nothing had changed, yet now all was changed. He felt intensely the presence of his lost friend, as if Tiger Abernathy stood here beside him as he had on that first evening.
Mr Ives's jitney leaves a lot to be desired. I suggested he call it Bellerophon.
What a show-off Leo had been, a real spud. It was a wonder Tiger had put up with him for a minute, let alone taken him in hand and been his friend. He leaned back on his palms and sighted up to the top of the Methuselah Tree, where the owl still kept its eyrie among the topmost branches. Icarus the flyer.
Icarus.
Icarus?
That might be a good name for the owl. What do you think?
Fingering the hilt of the Bowie knife, Leo thought of the promise Tiger had made him give, to never say die. No matter what, he must, would, stay at camp to the end. As he watched, the owl spread its wings and sailed from its perch. From somewhere over in Indian Woods the dog began to howl again.
That evening a memorial torchlight parade was held, vividly recalling to Leo his first evening in camp. Again the lines of boys bearing their flickering brands wound through the pine grove and along the tiers of the council fire, but tonight the trembling flames were in token of a fallen comrade, prayers for a lost friend. And as, holding their torches, the campers joined voices in the old songs, each was suffused with his own personal memories of their dead companion, each in his heart had the hope that somehow at any moment he might come trotting in from a ball game, whistling between his teeth.
The service lasted no more than a half hour, and afterward, Reece in the lead, the boys wended their way silently back to the line-path, to gather in front of Jeremiah for the benediction. A breeze had arisen, making the torches flicker. From the White House came intermittent gusts of music – Leo, unwelcome among the Jeremians, was there with Fritz and Wanda.
Afterward, people blamed what happened next on moon madness compounded by grief. But in truth there was no explanation for the hot dry wind of excitement that rushed lightly but noticeably among the campers, inciting them to movement and agitation, and more.
Through the window, Leo observed them as they held aloft their torches, the flames flickering in the darkness. Among them he was able to make out Reece and the Jeremians; Hap Holliday was there, too, and some of the bullies from High Endeavor. A dance began, an Indian toe-heel step, and they uttered savage Indian war cries behind their palms – ooooh-woo-wooo, ooooh-wooo-woo – bending low, leaping high, wilder and wilder they danced. Then, some six or eight of them broke free and went racing toward the cottage, where silhouetted in the open doorway stood Leo and Fritz, with Wanda at his side. The boys began yawing and japing at them, poking and lunging with their torches; Leo spotted Hap again, standing on the sidelines, entertained by the mischief.
Then, without warning, a torch was seen to pinwheel through the air and land on the roof, whose newly oiled shingles quickly took fire. A second torch flew up, and a third. Tlie three standing in the doorway ran inside to rescue Fritz’s possessions, but the heat quickly drove them out again, and a rushing, cracking, snapping sound was in the air. The enamel on the shutters popped in ugly blisters. The clapboards buckled with the heat, singing out their protests against the flames, while the little grove of white birch trees became so many torches, writhing in their turn, their foliage burning away until only black poles were left, like the bars of a prison.
By the time the firefighting equipment arrived from Woking Corners, nothing remained except a heap of blackened ruins. Everything was lost: the chess set from Hong Kong, the pewter-lidded stein from Neuschwanstein, the precious album of stamps, including the upside-down airmail special, the record collection, its shellac discs melting and flowing together to form a black viscous puddle of classical composers and that singular novelty Fritz had been so proud of, the voice of Johannes Brahms talking on the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell.
In those waning days of summer Ma Starbuck’s Concord grapes had reached perfection, their gleaming purple jackets dusted with white, like frost or sugar-glaze. But this summer Ma hadn’t put up her usual batch of grape jelly, and so the boys had been allowed to pick an occasional bunch, until the arbor had been largely denuded of its fruit. Now, early in the afternoon, on the last full day of camp, Ma sat with Dagmar Kronborg on the slatted bench beneath its dusty, fading leaves, snapping string beans into an enameled colander. The two women had been commiserating over the recent tragic events, Ma tearfully blaming herself for Tiger’s death, as if she had somehow been remiss in not having looked after him more closely, and Dagmar, more pragmatically, saying that such things happened in life, no one could have prevented it. The terrible fire that had consumed the cottage, however, that was something else. What could they have been thinking of, those boys?
Dagmar’s eyes flashed dangerously as she considered the unfortunate incidents that had led up to the disaster, and the fact that thus far Pa Starbuck had not found it necessary to bring any kind of critical pressure to bear as a result of the boys’ wicked behavior. Moreover, while the police and fire officials had been interrogating both campers and staff, nothing had as yet come of their inquiries. Nor, thought Dagmar, did such seem likely. Even Wanda, when questioned, had been unable to identify any of the perpetrators, though Fritz, never one to take things lying down, had sworn that upon his return he would force the issue with both Pa and Dr Dunbar.
“And Fritz – has he left camp yet?” Dagmar asked.
Ma dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. As planned, Fritz had departed on the morning bus for Hartford, where he would entrain to New York and Washington to meet with the Red Cross group. Ma described the farewell between him and Leo, who, after Hank’s jitney had taken Fritz away, looked as if he’d lost his last friend.
“Maybe he has,” Dagmar said. With both Tiger and Fritz gone, Leo was more vulnerable than ever, and she deeply regretted the coolness between them.
Ma’s eyes welled with tears again as she confessed that she hardly knew what to make of it all anymore. How could things have gone so wrong? Camp Friend-Indeed wasn’t a place where bad things happened, it was a place for boys to spend a pleasant summer and enjoy themselves. They’d never lost a camper, never had the least bit of trouble -except for Stanley Wagner, who was the exception that helped prove the rule. And now, and now – Tiger, best trouper in camp, dead and buried, and all of Fritz’s things gone up in flames. A dark cloud seemed to hang over the camp, Ma said, and she feared that worse was to come.
Dagmar declared tartly that a man who walked around with his head in the clouds all the time couldn’t expect to avert trouble. “Gar’s either a child or a fool,” she added, then looked up to see the man himself coming into the arbor.
“Welladay, welladay,” Pa said as he lowered himself onto the bench where long ago he had lovingly carved a pair of initials (his and Ma’s, intertwined). Pushing back his hat, he wiped his brow, wagging his head in disbelief, like a farmer at a two-headed cow. “Welladay,” he repeated mournfully.
Dagmar’s lips pinched at the corners; she knew what “welladay” meant – the trials of Job were nothing compared with those that were now to be retailed in her ear: What, Pa dolorously asked, had he done to deserve all that now beset him, whence came these tribulations? And why Tiger, of all boys, to be taken?
“Tiger Abernathy! Now, there was a man!” he exclaimed. “A boy, true, but in time a man. Regrettable loss. Indeed, no one mourns his death more than I. But we can’t bring back the dead, can we? ‘Do not mourn me when I have crossed the bar, for I am mortal clay’ – that’s what that boy’d be telling us if he could.” He passed a hand across his face. “Well, enough, enough. The world’s a garden of roses if we can but forget the thorns.” He sighed again and contemplated the middle distance. A frown creased his brow and he tugged ruminatively at his lip. “Never should have had that orphan kid at camp,” he went on illogically. “Trouble’s his middle name. Spiders."
“Oh, don’t talk such foolishness, Gar!” Dagmar exclaimed. “You ought to be a comfort to the boy, not blame him for what was not his fault.”
Pa sighed and cast his eyes heavenward. “ Eee -heh. We have tried, we have endeavored-”
Dagmar was clearly at the end of her patience. “Oh, bother endeavor!” she snapped. “If you’d just kept your eyes peeled, if you’d only paid a little attention, instead of always going in search of a new warbler or titmouse-” Pa’s smile was beatific. “Dagmar, I confess it, when I am with the birds, I am one with my Maker. As I tell my boys about our feathered friends-”
“Yes, your boys, your boys, but not the one boy,” Ma put in. “Dagmar’s right. I’ve got bad eyes, it’s true, but it’s not me who don’t see, Garland Starbuck.’
Pa stared at her, taken aback by this unexpected outburst. “Why, Mayree,” he began with some consternation, only to be cut off.
“Never mind the talk. You know as well as I do Leo didn’t cause Tiger’s death.”
“And if he didn’t, he’s still a mischief-maker. Look-at what he wrote in that journal of his. And putting on the Buffalo Bill War Bonnet the way he did and prancing around in it. Why, it’s like spitting on the flag.”
Dagmar moved her torso around inside the jacket of her blue suit, too hot for the weather. “Oh, be quiet, Garland, for pity’s sake. If I hear another word about your precious Buffalo Bill I shall lose my patience.”
“Oh, never do that, my dear,” Pa expostulated mildly. “The great man presented me with that headdress with his own two hands. It was the greatest day of my life, the very greatest. Why, I remember the look in that old Indian fighter’s eye-”
“Oh, Pa ” Ma looked at him with a baffled expression. “Must you go on so?”
Pa hiked his chin. “Why not? I pride myself on possessing such a memento.”
“Oh, stop it, can’t you?” she said, at the end of her patience. “You may possess that bonnet, but it never came from Buffalo Bill. And don’t look at me like that. You know perfectly well Buffalo Bill never gave you a nickel in change, let alone the time of day.” She turned to Dagmar and explained. “It’s just a story, just one more of his fanciful tales to tell to the boys, it’s no more true than his moonbow tale.”
Dagmar straightened in her seat. “You mean it was all made up? About the bonnet?”
Ma nodded sadly. “Yes. All made up.”
Dagmar was shocked. “Are you saying that boy was sent to Scarsdale over a fake?” She glared at Pa. “What a fraud you are, Garland Starbuck!”
“Eeee-heh.” He countered this accusation with his characteristic wheeze. Then, as though coming out of a reverie, he gazed at his wife with brimming, reproachful eyes. “It was a good story, May-ree. The boys always liked it.”
“But it was a lie!” Dagmar exclaimed.
“I don’t see where’s the harm in a bit of exaggeration. Everything in life can’t be true, can it? It can’t all be real. Sometimes a little story eases things along. Truth’s not the only think makes a man happy.” He furrowed his brow and gave Ma a small, wistful smile. “If I am wrong, I hope I may be forgiven.”
He gazed entreatingly at both women, then heaved himself up, jerked his head round, and ambled off.
As he headed for the house, Leo emerged from the office, shading his eyes as he peered into the sun. Dagmar got up suddenly. “Well, I’ll be off as well,” she said crisply. She kissed Ma, and, tucking her bag under her arm, she marched away, meeting Leo halfway between the office and the arbor. His face was pale and pinched. “If you’re looking for Ma, she’s over there,” she said. “Try not to upset her more than she is.” She unsnapped her bag and took out a bill. “Here’s a dollar for you. Come, take it and don’t be foolish.”
He shook his head.
“Stubborn boy.” She snapped the money back in the bag. “I won’t see you again once you’re gone, I expect.” She started away, then turned back. “Ask Ma to tell you about Pa’s famous Buffalo Bill War Bonnet,” she said; then, pulling in her chin, she marched away, while a mystified Leo went on to the arbor, where Ma set aside her colander and made room on the bench beside her.
Leo glanced at her. Her iron-gray hair had a side part today, and was rolled around her ears on a bit of ribbon. “What did Dagmar have to say to you?” she began. “Nothing.”
“She must have said something. I saw her talking.”
“She said to ask you about the war bonnet.”
Ma shook her head ruefully. “It’s of no matter now, honey. Your old Ma shamed her mate of thirty years in front of company, and she’s mighty sorry. But how are you? Are you all right? You’ve lost your friend-” “Fritz.”
“Fritz, too – though I was thinking of Tiger.” A tear appeared behind her glasses. When she took them off to wipe her eyes she seemed a stranger to Leo. Her pupils were clouded by a milky film, and she visored them with her crabbed hand, attempting for vanity’s sake to hide her affliction. “It’s not right to weep for the dead, I suppose,” she said, fumbling for her handkerchief. “God don’t want that, I know. Tiger’s with his Maker in paradise now, and ’twon’t do to mourn him overmuch.”
Evidently her glasses didn’t please her, because she took them off again and rubbed the lenses with her handkerchief. “You’re a good boy, Leo Joaquim.” She still pronounced it “Joakum.” “Don’t seem possible the summer’s over.” She sighed. “Seems like you all just got here and soon you’ll be leaving.” She beckoned him nearer. “See here, Leo, Dagmar’s told me how bad you want to stay with her at the Castle. I’m sure she’d like to have you come visit, thinking a good deal of you the way she does. She’s got plans for you – musical plans. You’ve got to get your schoolin’, ’n’ t’ do that you’ve got to go someplace where there’s folks to teach you proper, don’tcha see? Now, before you leave, I want you to phone her up and tell her you’re sorry. Yes, she told me how you spoke. And y’are sorry – aren’tcha?” He nodded and dragged his toe in the dirt. “Of course y’are!
“And, dear,” she went on, “I know you’ve been meanly treated by some of the boys. But, oh, honey, I don’t think they meant to be bad. I’m sure they didn’t. Our boys are good boys, Moonbow boys, only – I don’t know, this summer something seemed to get into them. They were all mischief-bent. I don’t know why, this summer. ’Twasn’t like that before and I’m sure it won’t be that way again. Besides, a body’s got to go on. I’ve got to go on, you’ve got to go on, we’ve all got to go on. My mama said it, a man’s got to find his own way home.”
Leo nodded.
“Well, go along, then,” she said. She sighed again and peered at the cat, lying on the slates. “Jezzy, suppertime, is it?” She heaved herself up and went to get Jezebel the tasty fishhead Henry Ives had saved for her.
When Leo crossed the compound he found Pa waiting for him.
“I wish a word with you,” Pa said, beckoning. Leo approached hesitantly, not knowing of what he might be found guilty this time.
“Well, young man,” Pa began, running the tip of his tongue around his store-bought teeth, “and how are we today?”
Leo offered a positive report on his current state of health and general well-being while' Pa managed not to look directly at him.
“Eeee-heh,” he said. His tone took on an unaccustomed intimacy. “See here, son, I want you to know I have been deeply distressed, deeply distressed, at some of the things that have happened around here this summer. Can’t think what possessed our campers to behave like savages. A pack of miscreants, they were. But let us not be too harsh in our judgments, eh? Boys will be boys, I always say. Too quickly they all grow up, too soon they must face the cares and burdens of adulthood. ‘Glad Men from Happy Boys,’ eh? There’s the spirit! The good old Friend-Indeed spirit.” He smote his kneecap. “I say let the lads have their fun while they may, make hay while the sun shines, so to speak.”
Before Leo could properly respond to this, Pa sighed again, then went on. “We must take these setbacks in stride, you know. After all, God gives us no heavier burden than He provides us with the strength to bear, isn’t that so?” He took out his pocket square and pressed his lips. His eyes were moist as he looked at Leo, planning his next words. He started, stopped, began again, employing a confidential tone. “I find myself hoping that, should occasion arise when Dr Dunbar and the Friends of Joshua come among us again, that you might withhold comment as to what has transpired here. It’s all in the past now; why make more of it than necessary? Hm? So I am wondering if I could possibly prevail on you – we don’t like to get Big Rolfe upset, do we? Not when he’s in such a giving frame of mind. I think I can say we would be one of the first camps on the whole Eastern Seaboard to have chemical toilets – should Rolfe decide to afford us them. In the meantime, if it’s all the same to you, we needn’t say anything to anyone about these matters, need we? After all, accidents will happen. And Dr Dunbar, fine gentleman that he is, is not required to know everything that goes on here at camp, now, is he – hem?”
He wove his fingers into a basket, allowed his eyes to meet Leo’s, and quickly shifted them. “Well, well, go along, then,” he said and sent Leo from him with a finger on his shoulder. The screen door slammed behind him and in a moment the radio came on: “Vic and Sade.”
Leo did not linger but headed for the lower camp.
In the loft doorway, Reece Hartsig leaned against the lintel, his expression coolly thoughtful as, fingering his cedar heart, he watched Leo trot down the meadow path. He straightened; then, moving quickly down the stairs, he crossed the compound and crept up to the office door. He peered through the screen and, satisfied that the place was empty, opened the door quietly. Once inside, he went immediately to Ma’s desk and slid his fingers under the ink-stained blotter. He used the key to open the pie safe, from which he removed the manila folder Ma had placed there. He shut the door, returned the key to its place, then slipped the folder and its contents inside his shirt. As he started to cross the room again, something caught his eye and he froze. Willa-Sue was watching him from the hallway.
He glared at her.
The girl started to shake. He thrust her roughly aside and headed for the door.
Not long after, Leo was standing in the Dewdrop Inn, where he’d made a stop, his pee creating a satisfyingly tinny sound against the trough. Suddenly the door opened and someone ducked quickly inside: Wally Pfeiffer. He halted, back to the door, staring at Leo, his large eyes blinking rapidly. Leo grimaced; he had paid hardly any attention to Wally since Tiger got sick.
“I’ve got something to tell you,” Wally began, a worried expression on his face. “I know you don’t like me but-” “Cut it out,” Leo said. “What is it?”
As Wally darted a furtive look out the window, the sound of cheering could be heard coming from the far edge of the playing field, where the final round of the last archery tournament was in progress. Obviously someone had just hit a bulls-eye. Sliding a sidelong glance at Leo, Wally said, “You better get out of here. You’re in trouble.”
Leo couldn’t resist a snicker. “Tell me something I don’t know.”
“It’s true. The Mingoes. They’re going to get you.” Wally lowered his voice further. “Remember Stanley? Stanley Wagner?”
“What about him?”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
“Sure – he stole a paperweight from the Castle and got caught.”
“He didn’t steal it. I did.”
“You did?”
“The whole thing was Reece’s idea. He wanted Stanley out of camp and he would have done anything to get him out. Right from the start.”
“You mean he didn’t want him in Jeremiah, isn’t that it? Because he was afraid Jeremiah’d lose the trophy?”
Wally nodded.
“Then Stanley was framed.”
Wally nodded again. “I sneaked the paperweight out of the cabinet and slipped it to Phil. He hid it in Stanley’s suitcase. Then Reece held an inspection and made believe he accidentally found it.”
“Why didn’t Stanley deny it?”
“He did. But the Sachems put him in Scarsdale anyway. Reece thought that would get rid of him, but Stanley fooled him. He stuck it. Reece was really mad. When Scarsdale didn’t work, they locked him up in the Haunted House -in the cellar – and scared the heck out of him. Stanley was a mess. He called his folks and they came and took him.” “Why didn’t they do something?”
“Maybe they didn’t believe him. He was a big storyteller, Stanley.”
“Then why didn’t you do something? You knew the truth.”
“I – I couldn’t. Phil threatened me. He said if I told, he’d fix me. And he would. He likes hurting people. You reme'mber after the Snipe Hunt – when he was mad at you
– he was the one who put the guys up to making you climb the ladder. He said you’d never jump, so you were bound to get paddled.”
Leo buttoned up, then stepped away from the trough, looking Wally up and down. “So why are you telling me now? You never liked me.”
“No, I never. Only-” A fierce scowl knit his brows and his voice was a hoarse rasp as he again looked out the window, checking for eavesdroppers. “It’s because of Tiger,” he said earnestly.
“What do you mean?”
“He was the best guy in camp, Tiger,” Wally said. “And he didn’t have to die. It was Reece.”
“How do you know?”
“I was there," he declared forcefully. “I was just coming in when Reece dropped the needle. I saw it too.”
Leo shook his head in disbelief. “You saw it? And you didn’t say anything? Everybody blames me.”
Wally spoke urgently. “I know. That’s why you’ve got to get out.” He looked around before going on. “They don’t want you leaving camp without getting back at you. If you’re smart, you’ll scram while you still can get away.”
Leo squinted hard at him, trying to see the truth. Wally was about to say more when the dinner bell rang. There was no more time; Wally would leave first, then Leo.
“Be careful,” Wally cautioned as he started out. “They’re watching you.”
He slipped through the doorway; in a moment Leo followed him.
The camp seemed eerily quiet. A light breeze drifted from among the trees on his right, carrying with it the faintly recognizable calls of baseball players on the upper playing field, their voices distorted by distance. The gradually fading light produced a milky iridescence, uncommon greens tinged with blue, blue with violet, purple shadows flecked with gold, and over all an opalescent glaze, like the mother-of-pearl in seashells. As Leo headed away from the Dewdrop, strains of music reached his ears. Someone was playing a violin – badly. He broke into a run. When he reached Jeremiah he was confronted by the sight of Billy Bosey, perched on Reece’s footlocker, Leo’s instrument clamped under his chin as he sawed away on the strings. The Bomber, sitting crosslegged in Eddie’s bunk, was grinning hugely, while Peewee Oliphant peered down from Tiger’s empty bunk.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Leo cried, outraged. “You don’t know how to play that!”
“Hell I don’t. Give a listen, kiddo.”
He sawed some more, while Leo stood by, not knowing what to do. If there was a scuffle, the violin might get damaged.
Bosey grinned. “Some hot stuff, huh?”
Leo tried to seize the instrument, but Bosey held it out of reach. “Hold your water, Wacko, I’m not finished,” he said, then passed the violin behind him to Dump. Leo ran around, the cot and tried to take it from Dump, only to see it handed to Monkey, who handed it down to Eddie, who slipped it back to Bosey. Each time Leo tried to grab it, he ended up empty-handed. Furious, he stormed at Bosey again, who this time handed it up to Peewee, who in turn slipped it to Blackjack, who began strumming it like a ukulele, singing “Sweet Leilani” through his nose.
Then the Bomber let out one of his blasts, causing further ribaldry and the usual chorus of “Bomber did it! Bomber did it!” The Bomber heaved himself up and began fanning his rear end.
“Pee-you!” Peewee shouted, holding his nose.
Just as the Bomber went to reseat himself in the bunk, Ratner inserted the violin under his rear end. The Bomber fell heavily into the bunk, and there was an ugly sound of splintering wood.
A silence fell. He reached under himself, and sheepishly extracted the mutilated instrument, which he gripped by its neck and held up.
“Jeez, it broke!” he exclaimed with mock surprise. There was a chorus of oohs and Leo felt the sting of tears as he took the pieces, several of which dangled from the strings.
“Cripes,” said Bosey, “look at him, willya, he’s going to cry. A lousy violin and he’s going to cry over it.”
“I am not.”
“Sure you are – look at you, you got tears in your eyes already. Go ahead and cry. You’re nothing but a sissy anyway. Cry all you want.”
Leo squeezed his eyes shut; when he opened them again he was staring accusingly at the Bomber.
“Don’t look at me like that, Wacko,” he said. “You seen it was an accident.”
“You’re a liar! You did it on purpose, you know you did.” He glared around at the others. “All of you, you planned it!”
“Aw, you’re crazy. Why would we do a thing like that, Wacko?”
“B-because – because you’re – you’re all a bunch of shits.”
Bosey got up and squared off at Leo. “Hey, wait a sec, Wacko, who you calling names?”
“You! The whole bunch of you-”
He had more to say, but he was silenced by the sound of cheers, coming from the playing field. A few minutes later Phil jumped onto the porch, clutching something in his upraised hand.
“Look at what Reece knocked off,” he declared proudly. Hanging by its feet, like a Christmas goose, head down, eyes glazed, was the owl, an arrow still piercing its breast. Blood dripped on the warped floorboards.
Leo turned and bolted. Outside the sun had slipped behind the clouds. And it seemed to him to have taken with it all the warmth of the world; all the sweetness and goodness of it, leaving behind only a dusky bleakness and changing ordinary objects – the archery butts, the Dewdrop Inn, the cottage ruins, the Green Hornet – into ribbony shadows, as if the edge of the playing field were the edge of the world and beyond that lay terra incognita.
Evening saw the farewell banquet in the dining hall, with the tables decorated with ferns and flowers in token of the camp’s last big night of the summer. Ma and Willa-Sue were in evidence at the staff table, along with Doc Oliphant and Maryann, Honey, too, everyone eager to learn who the winners of the Hartsig Memorial Trophy were going to be.
When the meal ended Leo watched as Pa rose to offer some choice parting words – the usual Friend-Indeed talk, which Leo only half heeded; he was still thinking about Icarus, felled by Reece’s arrow, never to fly again. And the violin. What, if he had lived, would Tiger have thought of the destruction of Emily’s violin, the treasure that to Leo had been such a potent talisman, not only of the past but of. the future that Dagmar had spoken of?
A stir among the campers marked the end of Pa’s speech, as he turned to the presentation of the initial awards: Bibles and felt badges for various camp competitions. He was followed by Hap, making the athletic awards, then Rex, who handled the aquatic awards in a like fashion, and Oats, who bestowed certificates of merit for nature studies and, in Fritz’s absence, for crafts. As each camper received his prize there were cheers and applause, until Leo’s name was announced – to be greeted with silence, not a jeer or a knock, only a titter or two from the back of the room. Leo cursed the spider collection that made it necessary now for him to exhibit himself before the camp and, blushing furiously, he all but snatched the paper from Oats and regained his seat.
Finally it was time for the awarding of the Trophy. The winning cabin’s name did not come immediately to Pa’s lips, however, for some fulsome words of general commendation were required to lay the carpet, so to speak, before the grand announcement could be made. During these remarks Hap stood by, exhibiting the silver cup for all to see. And, finally, the winner was – Jeremiah! Reece strode to where Pa stood, to accept the cup “in the name of all Jeremians, past, present, and future,” with special thanks to Tiger Abernathy, who had contributed so much toward winning it.
So, the Jeremians, as expected, had taken the Trophy. That any other cabin should have won seemed unthinkable yet as he left the dining hall Leo harbored a curious sense of “so what?”, as if, with Tiger gone, the whole thing had never mattered much after all.
At eight o’clock that evening, as he’d done all summer before the start of each council fire, Pa made his customary appearance at the head of the line-path, bearing aloft the Great Torch, its sacred flame a beacon for all to see, there to be met by the trio of honorary runners, who lighted their torches from his, then separated to carry the flames to all three units.
Was it possible, thought Leo, watching the ceremony from Old Faithful, where he’d been waiting alone, that this was the final campfire of the season, the last time the Senecas would meet, the last telling of the moonbow tale? Could it really be that eight whole weeks had elapsed since he had come to camp? Possible that Tiger Abernathy was actually dead, that Leo would never see him again, that on this last evening they wouldn’t be sitting side by side at the council fire sharing in the fun? Half an hour earlier, as he prepared for the evening’s activity, he had felt the prick of goose pimples along his legs. He still wanted to leave, to get out, but he had promised Tiger he wouldn’t run away, and he wouldn’t, despite all that had happened -“Never Say Die.” As a result of Wally’s warning, however, he had slipped Tiger’s compass into his pocket, and had buckled the knife onto his belt. The funny thing was, Wally himself hadn’t shown up since dinner, which didn’t necessarily mean anything, since, for the past several days, he’d been giving both the cabin and Phil a wide berth. Still, the torchlight parade had started and it wasn’t like Wally to miss formation.
By now the runners had passed along the line with the fire, and, the torches having been lighted, the procession began, as it had begun on Leo’s first night at camp. Then he had thrilled at that bobbing, flickering necklace of flames, and at its promise of friendliness and good fellowship; now it seemed silly, almost meaningless. As he fell in line behind the others he was glad he’d put on his sweater. The evening air suddenly felt moist and clammy, and presently a fine, silvery mist, too light to be a fog, began to fall, refracting the smattering of pallid moonlight and giving the night an uncommonly eerie look, pale and silvery.
Entering the council ring behind the rest of the Jeremians, Leo noted that Pa had already assumed his customary place in the twig chair, his back to Tabernacle Rock, watching the boys as they filed into the rows, nodding at this one and that, his cheeks red as pippins, his blue eyes twinkling in the firelight. As always, the air in the grove was scented with the pungent odor of pine, but the damp chill this evening caused Leo to shiver and, taking his seat among the Jeremians, he hunched forward, hugging his bare knees.
When everyone was seated, Pa rose and, extending his arms, began weaving the traditional Friendship Chain that joined one camper to his fellow, all around the ring, arm over arm, hand clasped in hand, the boys of all three units linked according to tradition. And Leo, too, joined hands, with Eddie on the left and Monkey on the right, yet their touch was cold, not as it had been on that first night.
Camping in the pines of Moonbow
Down by the lake… they sang, and when the anthem ended Pa began his introductory remarks, commenting on the unusual change in weather, then lapsing into one of his long-winded circumlocutions concerning “the true meaning” of Camp Friend-Indeed, including the inevitable sentimental reminiscences that earned the usual ripples of approval and indulgent laughter among his auditors. Yet this evening they seemed less content than usual to devote full attention to his words, and as he glanced about him Leo noted the absence of certain parties: Tugwell and Ogden, Bosey and Mullens and Klaus. All ought to have been present, but all were missing. And Wally – he, too, was still absent. What had become of him?
But there was no time to ponder minor mysteries. The time had come for the final selection of new members for the Seneca Lodge. As usual, Pa settled back in his chair, and out of the magical puff of smoke the familiar figure of the Moonbow Warrior appeared, in one hand the medicine bags, in the other the bouquet of red feathers. His body painted, his face daubed with color, his brow crowned by the war bonnet, the Indian Chief stood in the firelight, showing off his nearly naked form, until the tom-tom beat was heard, and as the dance began the usual awed silence fell along the rows. Who among the campers would be picked tonight? With muttered congratulations, three of the last four-weekers received their feathers and medicine bags, and so it went, until the Warrior reached the row in front of the row where the Jeremians sat, and Willard, of Obadiah, received the feather. Leo could hardly look at the dancing figure of the Moonbow Warrior; he felt a rush of emotion – anger, resentment, even fear, as Reece, in his war paint, moved into Leo’s row. As the Warrior loomed larger, Leo suddenly realized it wasn’t Reece at all, but Jay St John, who was impersonating the
Warrior. Others among the watchers were also aware of the unscheduled substitution, and furtive whispers ran among the rows. Leo heard his name muttered and he had a sudden feeling of apprehension; something was afoot, something to do with him.
Closer came the Warrior, then, as Leo stared unbelieving, the dark arm extended and the hand offered the Seneca red feather and the medicine bag – to him!
Reflexively he reached for them, and held them before him, and the muttering grew louder, louder still. Campers were talking openly, but not about him, not him now, but something else entirely. Something was happening, something strange, even wonderful, and for that moment Leo forgot all about the red feather. Look, they were saying, look at it! See? What is it? And all around the council ring boys were turning their gaze skyward. There was a sudden break in the overcast, like a ragged tear in a curtain, and through the tear the moonlight brilliantly streamed downward, setting into silvery vibration the accumulated molecules of mist, millions upon millions of them, each globule spinning and floating in the livid atmosphere. Was it-? Could it be-? Hardly daring to breathe, they watched as, above the mist-shrouded waters, the particles of moisture began to gather themselves together, resolving themselves into a thin veil, a curtain of shimmering light, and the broad bow took form, shaping itself into a luminous arc that spanned the lake, from the hills behind them to the tall tip of the Methuselah Tree.
As if pulled by some magnetic force, one by one campers and counselors a-like rose to their feet, some abandoning their places to make a concerted movement toward the waterfront, where the view was unobscured. Aaah, they breathed, it is the moonbow! The moonbow they’d been hearing about for so long – the moonbow of Pa’s story suddenly made real, a light like no other in the world.
To Leo, standing with the rest by the lakeshore, it suddenly seemed that the magical arc bathing them in its silvery glow was a sign. A sign that the bitter events of the summer should be forgotten, that from now on everything would be all right, that they were all true Friend-Indeeders here together, boys of Moonbow who, having passed through a long, dark way, had again emerged into the light. As he gazed up at the sky it was as if all the mean tricks that had been played on him had not been played, the angry words not spoken. This, this was the thing he would take with him when he left, the moonbpw. If only Tiger were here to see it.
The phenomenon lasted for three minutes, no longer. Then a breeze rose up from the east to tear at the gauzy mist, and before their eyes the arc dissolved, ending as it had begun, in darkness. Leo sat down again, shivering and hugging his ribs. Clutched in his hand was the red feather, from his neck hung the empty medicine bag, soon to be filled with magic. The sight of them brought him back to reality. Yes – he remembered – the Moonbow Warrior had presented it to him. Within the hour he would be made a Seneca brave. Already someone was tapping his shoulder. “Get going,” came the whisper, and Leo saw the other Seneca designates leaving their places to go to the Wolf’s Cave.
Like an automaton, Leo jerked to his feet and switched on his flashlight; as he joined the rest of the honor party his mind again strayed to Tiger, and his fingers caressed the empty medicine bag on its string around his neck. Suddenly, another, more sobering thought crossed his mind: There was something fishy in all this.
Again he recalled Wally’s warning and his heart beat fast. Yes – he was certain – this was just another Mingo trick and he’d fallen for it! What a sap! He wasn’t to be made a Seneca; they were planning to get him off in the woods and do a Stanley Wagner on him! Holding his breath, he' glanced discreetly to both sides, ahead and behind. No one seemed to be paying him much attention as they trudged along the path toward Indian Woods. He made up his mind.
He must make his run for it – right now, or it would be too late. Scarcely breaking stride, he turned down the nearest crosspath and sprinted forward. No sooner had he begun his move than a shout erupted behind him and they were on to him. He ran as if from the devil himself, dashing blindly along the path, panting, his breath coming in heavy, exploding bursts, hearing nothing but the sound of his own feet hitting the needled ground, legs frantically pinwheeling as he spurred himself on. The light grew dimmer and he was forced to slow his gait; the ground was boggy; pale scarves of mist threaded among the trees, and with every headlong step the way grew more treacherous. Though the sounds of pursuit had died away, still he did not feel safe, only alone. He had started off with such a violent rush, and now he wasn’t sure where he was. It was the Snipe Hunt all over again, only tonight the games were over, the games, the jokes, the fun. No anagrams this time.
He picked up his pace, stumbled, then stopped dead, staring ahead. Before him in the shadows a quartet of menacing silhouettes barred his way. He blinked once, twice, thinking he must be imagining them, but the four, mute and motionless, remained, staring back at him. Their faces were smudged with burnt cork, their eyes shone white. Who they were he did not know; but what matter? They were there and they wanted him. No sense in running anymore. They had him.
Then “Come with us,” he heard one say in an ominous, oddly manipulated voice, a bit of playacting.
“What do you want?” he said, trying to pump some sound of courage into his words.
The order was repeated. The air was very still.
Suddenly Leo felt his body go flaccid, like old rubber with no spring in it, and he knew he was licked. It would be Stanley-time at the Wolf’s Cave. A robot, he proceeded as directed by his summoners.
Single file, like Indians, they broke away from camp property onto the Old Lake Road, heading, surprisingly, not into Indian Woods, as Leo had figured, but farther east, toward Pissing Rock. Trudging along the shoulder, he could hear the open-throated drag of his captors’ breathing as they marched doggedly on, the two backs ahead of him sturdy and somehow brutal-looking, while, from behind him, his every flagging step earned him a helpful prod in the small of his back, forcing him to keep pace. There was no other sound except the rhythmic crunch of their shoe soles; no cars passed, no dogs barked, nothing. Done with its brilliant show, the moon had hid its face. The night was dark, and Leo fearful of what lay ahead.
They came around the bend and then he saw it: there, beyond the treetops, rose the slanted roofs and chimneys of the Steelyard place. It was to the Haunted House that they were taking him, then, not to Indian Woods, not to the grove, not the cave. Tonight Leo Joaquim would witness no gathering of the Senecas, nor would he be made a member of that honorable lodge.
Larger and more sinister the roof peaks and gables loomed as they drew near. He wanted to look away but could not. He dragged his step, only to suffer another prod that made him jerk, forcing him on. Now they were hustling him up the crazy paving, past the beds of cinders and weeds. At the front steps he balked. Nothing could make him enter that house another time. They would have to kill him first.
“Go up, or we’ll drag you by your hair,” ordered one of them, his face disguised, voice too.
“Be a man,” advised his partner. “Go forward.”
Yes, thought Leo, be a man. Above all, he must be a man. Glad Man from Happy Boy. Ha ha…
The first pair marched onto the porch. Leo must follow. Making up his mind to it, he placed his foot on the bottom step and began his ascent behind the two rigid backs, the other two close behind him. The floorboards creaked, and the structure protested under their combined weight. As the party approached the doorway, the leaders held up their lanterns, then stepped inside. Leo stared at the dark portal.
“Go on in,” growled a warning voice.
“No. I won’t.” But his stubbornness was to no avail. A shove from behind propelled him across the threshold. He grew dizzy as the familiar shadows rose about him, and the odors assailed his nose. He clenched his fists, trying to control his trembling, fighting against the wave of sickness and fright that was raising the flesh on his bare legs.
“Well, bring him along then,” commanded another voice, one he hadn’t heard before, and he was given another shove. Despite his protests they manhandled him along the hallway to its end, where the heavy trapdoor stood open, with the two masked leaders waiting beside it, holding up their lanterns.
Leo was forced to stop at the edge of the hole in the floor, aware by now that they were conducting him to the Rinkydink cellar.
“We’re here,” called a voice from behind him.
“Come down.”
“Go down,” Leo was told. He stiffened.
“No, I won’t.”
“He says he won’t come down.”
“Who cares what he says? Make him. And quick, we haven’t got all night.”
Leo cried out as he felt the push from behind and he fell through the trapdoor. He was falling – falling – but instead of hitting the earth he felt his fall broken by pairs of arms, which caught and set him on his feet.
Dazed, he blinked, staring around him. The cellar seemed to be alive with light. Torches flamed everywhere. He could make out some twenty or thirty huddled forms arranged along the walls of the room, a band of grotesque, fearsome-looking figures, their faces besmirched with blacking and garishly painted. Others were wearing animal masks, furred and horned, and were clad in weird wild-man and Indian outfits. In addition to the torches, their hands clutched makeshift weapons – sticks and staves, tomahawks, axes and shields taken from the exhibition wall at the lodge, Leo realized.
But this ragtag-and-bobtail lot was no brotherhood of Senecas come together in a ceremony of honor and friendship. Tonight, the night of the last campfire – night of the moonbow – there would be held not Seneca ceremonies, but Mingo revels. In the flickering torchlight, one by one he examined the evil-looking bunch, seeking hints as to who was who. Yet so successful were their disguises that they were to all intents and purposes impenetrable – except -yes – maybe the one got up as a fox, who now took up a position of importance before Leo, eyes glinting behind his furry muzzle. In one “paw” he displayed an Indian rattle, which when shaken gave off a menacing sound, like the tail of a rattlesnake. It must be Phil, Leo decided. He’d been clever enough to remove his ring, but there was a telltale white band around his finger that the burnt cork had missed.
“Go ahead, look about you,” the fox suggested with a spurious show of affability. “See what is to be seen. Think where you are, and to what purpose.”
He gestured beyond the intervening heads, past the furnace and the coal bin, toward the shadows at the far end of the cellar. There a line of Indian blankets was hung with wooden clothes pins on a wire stretching fully across the room, effectively shutting off the farther view, while in the corner was something else Leo hadn’t noticed before. He stood tiptoe, trying to make out what – no, who – it was.
“Go on, take a good look,” urged the fox smoothly. “It’s a friend of yours. Maybe he’ll give you an idea of what’s going to happen – just in case you were wondering.”
Oh no! Leo stared in alarm and astonishment as he recognized Wally Pfeiffer. His arms had been pulled back over his head and secured, his ankles and legs bound as well. On his bare chest a crude swastika had been drawn; his lips were swollen.
“What have you done to him?” Leo demanded in consternation.
“See for yourself,” said the fox. “That’s what we do to traitors. And that spud’s a traitor if ever there was one, isn’t he, men?”
“Yeah, traitor!” they shouted. “Lousy traitor.” And, “Liar!” they called, and “Lousy, dirty creep!”
The fox resumed. “We’ve been teaching him a lesson, we have. We’ve been reminding him whose side he’s supposed to be on, and not to go warning other traitors. Present company not excepted.”
“But he’s hurt-”
“He needed a lesson,” someone muttered.
“It’s true,” said the fox. “He needed to be taught. Like certain others need it, too.” He paused for effect, allowing his words to sink in, then he spoke again. “Let’s see how well the lousy spud’s learned his lesson.” He gave Wally a jab with his staff. “All right, traitor, hop to it. Come on, say it-”
Wally’s eyes rolled in their sockets and his lips moved, but no sounds came out. The fox seized him by the hair, and yanked his head back.
“You heard me, speak! Do as you’ve been told.”
He tried to speak but couldn’t manage it. Again the fox’s hand snapped out, catching him a crack across the lips.
“Say it!”
Wally turned a pitiful face toward Leo. “Y-you – d-dirty
– murdering – bas-bas-tard.”
And he spat.
Leo recoiled as Wally’s spittle flew into his face.
“Make him say the rest,” prompted another voice, deep and resonant. It came from the lips of a “wolf.” Leo could see the flash of eyes behind the mask. Eyes and voice, he knew both: they belonged to the Brown Bomber. His friend, who had smashed his violin. '
“Well, speak up,” urged the wolf. Wally only stared in fright.
“Leave him alone, Bomber,” Leo said in a low voice. “He didn’t do anything to you-”
“Silence!” came the fox’s crisp command. “There is no Bomber here. We are the. brotherhood of Mingoes.” That much, ironically, was true: no Bomber here, not really. The third of the Three Musketeers had betrayed not only Leo but Tiger Abernathy as well.
As if reading Leo’s thoughts, the wolf turned away and prompted Wally again.
“Go on, now – say it.”
“I forget…”
“Tell him what you are,” he commanded.
Wally’s head lolled. “I’m nothing b-but a dirty – traitor. I d-deserve – t-to – d-die.”
“All right, that’s enough of that crap,” came an impatient voice. “Let’s get on with it and stop all this screwin’ around.”
As hands reached for Leo, he broke free and, ducking under their outstretched arms, headed for the hatchway steps. Before he could reach them he felt a heavy blow across the back of his neck; he crumpled to the floor. Amid shouts, they grabbed him and dragged him back into the light, securing him with rawhide thongs to a post in the same way Wally was tied. Bodies huddled closer now; faces, hot and sweaty, were streaked with soot.
“Let the trial begin,” the fox intoned.
“Yeah,” they all muttered, nodding, “the trial…”
Still dizzy from the blow to his neck, Leo peered around at their faces, at their eyes agleam, anticipatory, hungry for action. So he was to be tried, then. But on what charges? What was his crime?
“A man should be told what he’s being tried for,” he said, trying to keep his voice even.
The fox stared back at him. “I’m the judge here. You must say ‘Your Honor’ to me, like in a real court.”
Leo put on a show of bravado. “This isn’t a court, it’s just some stupid game. You’re all nuts!”
The forthright declaration provoked a volley of laughter: they were nuts? No pal, Wacko was the one who was nuts. After all, Wacko had been to the asylum. The fox’s fist flew up and caught him across the mouth. The blow hurt. Tears stung his eyes and he was helpless to wipe them away. Now he was certain the fox was Phil. “He likes to hurt people,” Wally had said. Leo could taste blood, feel his lip swelling.
“Hey, come on, you guys,” someone called out wearily. “Let’s get on with it.” His companions muttered agreement. They wanted the whole show. The group parted as another figure, this one featuring a bear’s physiognomy, made his appearance.
“Who is it that now comes before the tribunal of the Mingo Lodge, and to what end?” intoned the fox.
“It is I,” said the bear, “Nananda the All-knowing Spirit of the Mingo tribe, and I have come to accuse. Am I permitted to continue?”
“Who do you accuse?” came the query.
A grubby finger was raised, pointed.
“I accuse the prisoner.” From the voice Leo thought perhaps the bruin was Bosey; the thick-set “crocodile” at his shoulder was Bullnuts.
The fox nodded gravely. “Very well, you may continue, Mr Prosecutor. Call your first witness.”
The bear turned and surveyed the group on both sides of him. “I call the frog,” he said. “Let him come forward and testify. Listen carefully, all of you, to what he has to say.”
The group gave way and yet another figure, smaller than the others and costumed as a frog, was pushed forward.
“Say, then. Give evidence,” instructed the fox eagerly. The bear prompted the frog. When the frog spoke it was in the accents of Peewee Oliphant.
The whole idea of Peewee’s being in on this monstrous show turned Leo’s stomach.
“Why have you dragged him here?” he demanded. “He’s only a kid, he should be in bed.”
Haw haw! A wave of scornful laughter filled the room.
The fox held up a restraining hand. “We know of no ‘Peewee’ here,” he said sternly. “We know only the frog. Speak, frog. Tell the warriors of the sacred Mingo tribe all you know.”
The frog talked fast, as if by rote. The prisoner, he said, had tried to do nasty things with the frog’s sister.
“What things?” demanded the fox.
The accusation was made: He had shown her dirty pictures at Three Corner Cove! He had corrupted an innocent girl.
Leo was speechless. They had put the words in Peewee’s mouth and got him to repeat them.
“Well, what have you to say for yourself?” Nananda the bear growled impatiently, stepping up to Leo. “Do you deny it?”
“I deny everything!”
“We knew you would. All right, the witness is excused. Now you can go to bed, froggy.”
Further mirth greeted this sally. The fox quickly squelched it.
There was still one who was missing from the stage as far as Leo could tell, an important player at that:. Reece. Where was Heartless? Taller and more formidable than all the rest, he should be a stand-out among the boys, yet he was nowhere discernible, not to Leo, not yet, anyway. As for the other Jeremians, though he could not pick them out in their disguises, he knew they must be there, all of them, come to have their revenge on Wacko Wackeem.
“You all have heard the first witness,” the fox went on, raising his voice for everyone to hear. “There are others. And evidence.”
Ahh, they said, evidence. What kind of evidence?
“It grows late. Let us proceed,” declared the fox. “You see before you the lowest type of criminal, brought here to our meeting place for trial and judgment. He had thought to be inducted into the Seneca Lodge this night – not knowing the Senecas would never have his kind. For we will prove how unworthy a brave this prisoner is. We will show him to be a liar and a cheat-”
“I am not!” shouted Leo, straining at his bonds, wishing he could free his hands. Tiger’s knife still sat on his hip; they hadn’t noticed it. If he could reach far enough, catch the hilt with his fingers, maybe… He worked the cords to stretch and loosen them.
“Aw, someone shut him up!” called one.
“Yeah, quit grousin’.”
“Snuff it, Wacko, or we’ll do it for you.”
The fox shook his rattle vigorously, commanding attention. “The prisoner has not been given leave to speak! He is therefore instructed to remain silent until the court advises him otherwise.” He addressed the prosecutor again. “Tell the court, what lies has the prisoner told?”
The bear was inclined toward obsequiousness. “If it please the court, not just one lie, but many. Many lies. And many are those who have heard him speak such lies.” “Make your accusations.”
The bear nodded gravely. The others shifted among their ranks; audible whispers of anticipation ran around the circle; the bear went on. “To begin with, he has made it known to everyone at camp that his father is dead.”
“And is this a misrepresentation of the facts?”
“Yes, Your Honor. His father’s as alive as anyone in this room.” At this disclosure exclamations of surprise erupted; heads bobbed and jockeyed for a better look at the accused. The blood had drained from Leo’s face and he could feel his body trembling.
In the “prosecutor’s” hand was a manila folder with a white tab. “It is the prisoner’s private file,” the bear went on, “loaned to us for these proceedings by Ma Starbuck.” Leo strained forward against the thongs. “I don’t believe you – Ma never would have! Somebody stole it!” “Silence!”
With grimy paws the bear opened the file. “Your Honor, I wish at this point to introduce as evidence the following documents.” He shuffled through and extracted certain items, which he identified in the same solemn tone:
“First, the standard registration forms of Camp Friend-Indeed. Second, copies of the records of the Pitt Institute for Boys, stating the truth beyond any shadow of a doubt. Third, a handwritten letter from one Miss – Miss” – he riffled his way to the end of the letter for the name – “Miss Elsie Meekum, a member of the orphanage staff. Will the court please allow these documents to be noted and entered as ‘Exhibits A, B, and C for the prosecution’?”
The fox looked the documents over with burlesque judiciousness. Leo watched mutely. He knew Ma: she would never have willingly surrendered her file, to anyone. But what did that matter? Now everyone in camp would know the truth about the butcher’s boy.
“Where is his father, then?”
The prosecutor turned to the prisoner for an answer. “Where is your father,” he demanded. “Speak!”
“He’s dead,” he said.
The prosecutor snorted and raised a scornful voice so all could hear. “Do you hear, men? He lies even to this court.”
Leo lifted his own voice to be heard over the other’s. “He is dead. He’s talking about my stepfather.”
“Listen, all of you,” came the bear’s voice, projecting so the sound carried among the trees. “He’s not dead, this father. His name is Rudy Matuchek, and he has drawn the sentence of twenty years imprisonment.”
At this news the band of watchers put their heads together and again jabbered among themselves.
Once more the judge raised a hand for silence and addressed the prosecutor.
“We are interested in your words. For what crime is this man in prison?”
“For the crime of murder!”
Murder! The word swept through the ranks. “It is a fact,” the prosecutor continued. “Here is the proof, in my hand.” Again he waved the documents. “Now ask me, for whose murder?”
“Yes, whose?” they demanded in unison, jostling one another in their eagerness to see and hear. Again the “judge” was forced to call for order.
“For the murder of his wife!” came the reply. “And his wife’s boyfriend.” Another eruption greeted this sensational revelation. The bear eagerly pressed his point. “Hear me, men. It’s all here in the file, every word.” He held up the folder.
The alligator had a further word to add. “His mother was a slut. She was having an affair with this other guy-” He would have gone on, but was silenced by the bear, who with obvious relish provided the details.
“The father was a butcher and he took his butcher knife and stabbed them both to death. He was convicted and sent to prison. That’s why the prisoner was sent to the orphanage. And before that he was in the nuthouse – the loony bin. It’s all here, anyone can read it!” He brandished the papers over his head while the commotion grew louder. Leo strained harder to free himself, his eyes wildly staring at his accuser, who just shook his head at him. “You see how it is – you think you can go around telling these lies-” “They’re not lies!” Leo shouted defiantly. “They’re not!”
“Are they the truth, then?”
“Not exactly, but-”
“Well, there you are! You’re a liar; and furthermore… ” the bear went on, ignoring Leo’s denial and taking up a position close to the fox. “Furthermore… I stand here before this tribunal to accuse the prisoner of being responsible for the death of Tiger Abernathy.” He raised his voice so it echoed off the cellar walls. “Like father, like son!”
Angry mutters ran about the circle. Leo stared at the bear-head. “That’s not true!”
“Silence!” the judge roared. “On what do you base this accusation?” he asked the prosecutor.
“It’s simple. The prisoner is a collector of spiders. One of these spiders was poisonous and it bit the deceased and gave him blood poisoning. If it weren’t for that, Tiger wouldn’t have died.”
Leo again protested. “The spider wasn’t poisonous and everybody knows it! Ten spiders like that one could have bit someone and they’d never have died. The bite became infected because-”
“Silence in the court! The prisoner has not been given leave to speak. Mr Prosecutor, you may continue.”
“Thank you, Your Honor,” returned the prosecutor, bowing. He came closer to Leo. “So, prisoner, you will call others liar, will you? When it is you yourself who is the liar!”
“Everything I’ve said is true.”
“I don’t think so. In fact” – turning to the courtroom again – “I think we have already proved beyond doubt that if there is any lying being done here, the prisoner is the one doing it. And his hands are stained with the blood of Tiger Abernathy, who except for him would be standing here at this very moment.”
“He wouldn't! He’d never be here! Let me go!” Again Leo strained against his bonds. This was more than a game, this was diabolical. He thought of Stanley Wagner. “You have no right!”
“Shut up!”
“Silence him.”
“Give him a poke to shut his mouth.”
“Silence! Silence, I said!” shouted the judge. “Enough of this. If there are any more outbursts I’ll order the prisoner gagged. We won’t waste any more time. We’ll have the verdict. And the sentence-!”
“ ’Ray! ’Ray!” the boys shouted. “Time for sentencing.” “Jury! What is your verdict?” came the call. As one they spat the word out in his face.
Guilty.
Guilty!
GUILTY!
The cellar rang with shouts and cries, while Leo stared in disbelief and mounting alarm. No use for him to struggle more. But the end – where was that? And when it came, what would it be?
The fox again stepped forward and raised his arms for silence. In the sudden hush he spoke to the prisoner: “You have been found guilty of the worst kind of crime
– the crime of breaking faith. Everybody knows it was your spider that killed Tiger. It won’t do you any good to go on lying about it. A liar is what you are and you will be punished accordingly.”
He paused, turning to speak sotto voce with the bear and several others who crowded around him to hear what he had to say. Leo watched, hating them all. The fox turned back, cleared his throat. “The penalty you will pay for your lies and treachery is as follows – watch – watch, all, see what has been arranged for the guilty.”
Leo watches. The fox reaches up and pulls a cord. Bright lights flash on as the curtain of blankets is pulled back, revealing a makeshift stage upon which a tableau is being enacted, a grisly tableau whose essence swiftly communicates itself to Leo. He shouts out in horror. He would look away, but cannot. There, in full view, stands the menacing figure of Rudy, the butcher of Saggetts Notch, in his shirtsleeves and his bloodied apron, his straw hat perched on his head, his drooping mustache, his ever-present cigar, and, clutched in one upraised hand, his butcher knife, its blade besmirched. His other hand is closed around the throat of Emily, her breast covered with blood. She is dead; he has killed her!
“Mother!”
The anguished cry echoes in the room. In terror and surprise, Leo springs forward, free at last of his bonds, his fingers scrabbling at his hip. As his body knocks heavily against the exposed flank of the murderer, his fingers close around his own knife, freeing it from its sheath. Its steel blade flashes in the light.
“No – stop!” comes a cry from among the crowd -a futile cry, for Leo’s avenging knife thrusts home. As the blade strikes there is an explosive sound of shocked surprise from Rudy, who gasps, groans, crumples, then falls backward. Frantic hands snatch at Leo, yanking him away from the stage. He stares dazedly at the gory sight of the murdered Emily, who in some unaccountable yet miraculous transformation has been restored to life, her blood-spattered features now changing into those of Gus Klaus, a look of bug-eyed horror on his face as he peers down at the lifeless body of Reece Hartsig, who lies bleeding on the floor, an expression of surprise frozen forever in his eyes, Tiger Abernathy’s parting gift to Wacko Wackeem buried to the hilt under his ribs.