The Night of the Moonbow

RINKYDINKS MEMBERS ONLY ALL OTHERS KEEP OUT AT PERIL OF LIFE!

and under this warning, a skull and crossbones. A moment more Leo stood at the top, trying but failing to hear the voice of conscience, knowing the others would think he was merely scared if he turned back now. Then he ducked his head and, imperiling the only life he’d ever get, entered the dim, musty room.

In the dim light, he could just make out the other two, busy doing something in a corner. As his eyes grew accustomed to the gloom, he saw that the Bomber was bending over a long bench, lighting a candle stub. Soon a wavering glow was making the shadows dance in the corners and along the ceiling.

“So what d’you think?” the Bomber asked as if he were welcoming a guest to his new house.

Leo shrugged; what could he say? The cellar was large and – well – spooky. It had a strange, earthy smell, but, then, what else could you expect from the cellar of a haunted house? Of ample proportions, it formed a spacious, below-ground room with stone walls, a hard-packed dirt floor, and a low-beamed ceiling supported by squared-off posts, into which a hinged trapdoor had been cut and from which a broken stair-ladder hung at an angle. There was an old furnace and an empty coal bin, and a cobweb-covered fuse box was attached to one wall. The mixture of odors – of dampness, soil, must, dust and rust, of stagnant rain pools in the corners – gave the place a special character that both attracted and repelled, a place for sinister doings.

“What does the sign mean?” Leo asked. “What are Rinky dinks?”

While Eddie described the illegal organization, the Bomber marched over to a wall and paced out a distance along the footing, then knelt and dislodged a stone, from behind which he extracted a coffee can. Bringing it back to the bench, he removed the lid and pulled out a half-empty pack of Old Gold cigarettes, along with a finger-soiled envelope.

“Smoke?” He fished a squashed cigarette from the crumpled pack and lit up.

“Sure, give us a drag,” Eddie said. The Bomber handed over his butt, then watched Eddie draw and choke, expelling the smoke in three gusts through both mouth and nostrils. The Bomber was contemptuous.

“Cripes, Ed, you know somethin’ – you smoke just like an old lady. Why don’tcha learn to inhale like I showed you?”

“It hurts my throat.”

“You got to get it way down into your lungs and then blow it out. See? Like this.” The Bomber offered an eloquent demonstration of this procedure, puffing voluminously, then proceeded to blow three uniform smoke rings that waffled gracefully through the air.

“You want a drag, Leo?” The Bomber held out the fuming butt. “These have ‘latakeeah’ in ’em,” he pointed out.

“Latakeeah’s only a kind of Turkish tobacco, that’s all,” Leo said knowledgeably. He took a drag, inhaled it, then coughed it out in a thick cloud.

“Must be the latakeeah,” the Bomber said with a smirk.

Leo took another puff; the pugeant tobacco was at once heady^ and dizzying. “ 'Kaf kaf,’ said Major Hoople,” he said; Eddie and the Bomber both chuckled. The blowhard major with the Shriner’s fez was a comic-strip favorite.

The three continued puffing on the cigarette, passing it back and forth; while they smoked, the Bomber made Leo privy to the contents of the envelope: half a dozen dog-eared photographs, which he ceremoniously tendered to Leo for perusal.

Leo blushed; he had never gazed upon their like before – though he’d heard of such phenomena often enough at Pitt, the large-buttocked women clad only in black stockings, the gentlemen self-conscious in funny-looking underwear, gartered socks; one of them wore a derby hat, which rendered him ridiculous, given his activity.

“They’re French,” the Bomber explained, about the cards. “From Gay Paree.”

Leo nodded, hoping he appeared sophisticated. He wondered what Kretch would have to say about all this. The Bomber made a sudden move, holding out his hand for silence.

“Cripes!”

“What is it?”

“Sssh. Button up. Somebody’s up there. Hear?”

Leo cocked an ear and, indeed, the Bomber was right. From overhead came the sound of stealthy footsteps. Someone was tiptoeing around up there! Cripes. The Bomber snatched the pictures from Leo’s hand and stuffed them back in the coffee can, then hastily returned it to its hiding place. Leo listened hard, wondering whether to bolt or stay put. Yes, definitely – someone was moving around up there. Now he was wishing they hadn’t visited the cellar – it was a mistake – they should have obeyed the signs and avoided the place like a pesthouse.

Suddenly the silence in the cellar was broken. Bounding toward the hatchway steps, Harpo began to bark. Harpo! His noise was bound to give them away.

“C’mon, let’s scram outta here,” the Bomber said and started toward the hatchway. But before they could gain the stairs, Bullnuts Moriarity came thundering down at them bellowing like a Blue Briton, followed by what seemed to Leo like a horde of savages, all yelling and waving their arms. Among the foe he glimpsed the moon-like features of Moon Mullens; Billy Bosey was there too, and Barty Tugwell, all bent on punishing the boys who had intruded into their sanctum. Leo felt himself slammed from side to side until he came dizzy. Someone gave him a jab in the ribs, while another had got his fingers into Leo’s hair and was trying to yank it out. Then, using brute force, the Bomber muscled his way through, dragging Leo along with him, Eddie in their wake. Before he knew it Leo was out the lower door and scrambling up the hatchway steps to freedom.

At the top he barked his shin on the edge of the stone step. The pain was excruciating and, biting back his moans, he hopped around on one foot, then hobbled off to hide in a clump of sumac bushes. By this time Eddie and the Bomber had reached the road and were nearly around the bend. From the cellar came angry voices, disputing whether or not to give chase. Evidently the decision was against pursuit, for no Rinkydink reappeared. Finally, feeling himself safe, Leo made his way back to the pond to collect his knapsack and violin; then, brushing the leaves from his knees, he headed down the lane to the road where he turned toward camp. When he reached the bend, he glanced back over his shoulder, as if checking to make sure that the house was still there; as he looked, he saw, or had the impression of, a shadowy figure seated in the upstairs window, gazing out – at him or at the view? He could not tell.

Out on the lower playing field the hour was on the cusp, gently poised between the setting of the sun and the rising of the moon, as the campers at Friend-Indeed gathered for the Snipe Hunt. Odd currents of barely stifled excitement whiffled among the knots of spectators and would-be nimrods who stood about conversing, not in giddy boisterousness, but soberly – an indication of the sport’s importance as a Traditional Camp Activity. Observing somberly from the sidelines, Leo wondered what they were saying, the old campers who were exchanging knowing winks and glances. Something was up, definitely.

Leo had no spirit for the evening’s activity, this hunt that the others expressed such a rousing passion for. Frankly, he’d just as soon skip it. As anticipated, his reception upon his return to camp had been on the heated side. Hap Holliday, fuming over the missed practice session, declared that Wacko could go on throwing a ball like Clara Bow for all he cared – he was washing his hands of the chicken-wing. Reece was even more put out and inclined toward stern measures. Having got wind of the illegal visit to the Haunted House, he docked all three malefactors three days’ worth of desserts. Since the Bomber and Eddie were old-timers and knew better than to go near such off-limits places, they were also deprived of their free-swim privileges, while Leo got a private dressing-down from his counselor, who let him know in no uncertain terms that if he wanted to fit into camp life he was going to have to play by the rules; alienating Coach by standing him up – and earning himself five blackies – was no way to get on at Friend-Indeed.

Leo would willingly have borne all without a twitch, if his misadventure hadn’t affected his friendship with Tiger Abernathy. Though Tiger had little to say about the morning’s matters, his very silence spoke volumes, and after dinner he broke a date with Leo to go canoeing; instead, while everyone was getting ready for the Snipe Hunt, he lay in bed reading a book and studiously ignoring Leo.

In the end, however, having decided that the real fault lay with the Bomber for coaxing Leo (and Eddie) into the cellar in the first place, he took pity, and when the other Jeremians left the cabin to join the group on the field, he detained Leo for a personal word. Slipping from his pocket something resembling a watch, he tucked it surreptitiously into Leo’s hand.

“Take this along,” he urged. “In case you need it.”

“What is it?”

“A compass. See?” He unsnapped the case of crocodile leatherette.

“Am I going to get lost?”

“No, but if by any chance you do-” He gave Leo a quick briefing on how to use the instrument. “And here’s a Hershey Bar – you might get hungry.” He slapped the candy bar into Leo’s palm, along with a packet of matches, also “in case,” and. gave him a friendly poke. “C’mon, let’s hop it.”

Brrrt – brrrt – brrrt-! Chest out, whistle shrilling, Hap Holliday came strutting across the field in his billed baseball cap and jacket with a white felt B sewn on the chest (Harold Hampton Holliday was a three-letter man from Bowdoin). “ ’Ray, Coach, ’ray!” the boys cheered, and Hap clutched his mitts overhead boxer-style, then called for quiet, and began counting heads. “Hey hey, guys, who’s missing here?” He consulted his clipboard. “Wackeem. Where’s Wackeem? Let’s get Slugger Wackeem over here.”

Finally, when Leo and the rest of the new boys had been obliged to come forward and suffer the mirthful scrutiny of the others, Hap proceeded to the matter at hand, explaining how the hunt worked. Campers experienced in the art of hunting snipe would be teamed up in pairs with a tyro, forming a hunting threesome, two to beat, one to catch. The “old” boys on each team would use tin pans and batons to flush the snipe through the woods and roust them in the direction of the catchers – the- new campers, who would handle the sacks and do the actual catching. Each team would report back to the lodge with its catch; the team that trapped the most birds would win.

Then it was time to pick the teams. One after the other the pairs of old boys stepped up, one by one the new boys'were assigned. Tiger and the Bomber drew Leffingwell; Tallon and Klaus got Dusty Rhoades. Hunnicutt of Malachi, one of the new boys in the High Endeavour unit, went with his cabin-mates Bosey and Mullens, while Emerson Bean fell to Dump and Eddie Fiske. Finally, of the new boys, only Leo was left; of the leaders, Phil Dodge and Wally Pfeiffer.

“Okay, Wacko,” Phil called, rubbing his palms briskly together, “I guess that makes us a team.” Leo moved reluctantly to join his assigned partners.

“All right, now, fellows,” Hap was shouting, “step up and collect your gear. One sack to each new boy. Beaters, grab your pans, let’s get going here.” He shoved a burlap sack smelling of fertilizer at Leo. “Take it, Wackeem,” he ordered. “If you can’t pitch a ball, maybe you can catch a bird,” he added, drawing a laugh.

Leo accepted the sack, feeling his cheeks heat up. Before he started off, Tiger swung by for a final pointer.

“Remember, when you’re in Indian Woods, the Old Lake Road is always to the north,” he said, then hurried away to catch up with the Bomber and Leffingwell, who were already halfway across the field, leaving Leo to Phil and Wally. Soon the boys had crossed the road and entered Indian Woods; in another few moments each team was out of sight and sound of the others, and on its own.

“This way, not far now,” Phil said encouragingly. They tramped along a while longer, until Phil stopped and cupped a hand to his ear.

“There! That’s them all right – snipe! We’re really in luck.”

“Sure are,” Wally seconded quickly.

Leo darted him a look, but Wally’s bland, noncommittal expression told him nothing, and Phil began issuing crisp instructions: Leo was to remain here, in this spot, with his sack, and wait. As beaters, Phil and Wally would make their way circuitously to the “other side,” where they knew the snipe were gathered. Beating their pans, they would flush the covey in Leo’s direction; all he had to do was shine his flashlight in their eyes to blind them, nab them, and carry them off.

“Where will you guys be?” Leo asked.

“We’ll meet you back at the lodge,” Phil said. “Here, better have my flashlight,” he added, exchanging it for Leo’s. “It’s got fresh batteries – you don’t want to be caught in the dark out here.” He jerked his head at Wally and they moved off together, calling ever more remote encouragement until they had disappeared into the encroaching darkness.

Leo waited, one, two, five minutes. Presently he heard the noisy clatter and bang of sticks against pans, a terrible racket doubtless designed to flush the snipe from their hiding places, but one (Leo noted) that instead of coming nearer was fading. The beaters were moving not closer, but farther away. In a few more minutes the noises had stopped altogether.

“Okay, you guys, that’s it, how do we get out of here?” he called after his erstwhile teammates. There was no answer. He called again; again no answer. Not a sound, not a peep, nothing. Just Leo Joaquim and the forest primeval. Letting the useless burlap sack slip to the ground, he squinted into the fading light, asking himself where the heck he’d been left.

The silence was eerie – a different silence from the quiet of Kelsoe’s meadow with its birdsong and butterflies in the sunshine – a brooding, ominous silence filled with menace; and in it, Leo realized, there was a message: like every last new boy in camp, he’d been had. There were no snipe. The Snipe Hunt was one of those Moonbow traditions that left dumb spuds like Wacko Joaquim holding the bag. Hello, sucker, ha ha. Some joke. Standing there like a dope in the middle of Indian Woods, he didn’t think it so funny. How was he to find his way out of the woods when every path looked just like every other? He could call out again, of course, hoping for an answer, but even if he and Bean or Hunnicutt found each other – un-likely in the dark, and it was getting darker by the minute – they would still be just as lost. Meanwhile the old-timers would be back at the lodge, gorging on watermelon and laughing their heads off.

Now he understood why Tiger had insisted that he take the compass, and, wondering if he could figure out how to use the thing, he sat down on a stump and opened it, then switched the button on Phil’s flashlight. Nuts; the flashlight didn’t work. When he unscrewed the barrel his probing fingers told him it was missing a battery. He swore and tossed it into the bushes, then brought the compass up close to his eyes, squinting. No dice: he couldn’t see the markings on its face, much less take any kind of bearing.

A chill breeze had arisen to rustle the leaves overhead, and he shrugged on his sweater. Finally he decided to take the same path Phil and Wally had taken – they would not, after all, have followed a route that led anywhere but straight back to camp – and, sticking his arms out in front of him to grope for bushes or tree trunks, he started off, blindly footing his way along the path, stumbling and blundering into things as if he had been set not to hunt the mythical snipe, but to run an obstacle course.

He soldiered on for a while, until, having twice barked his shins and once twisted his knee, he made out a fallen tree trunk and plunked himself down again. He strove to think, cudgeling his brain to come up with a way out of his predicament. It occurred to him that he could wander along these paths for hours and get nowhere. And no one would find him. He shivered, slapping at the mosquitoes that swarmed around his bare legs – they seemed to thrive on the citronella he had doused himself with – then roused himself, telling himself he must do something; he couldn’t sit here forever like a bump on a log. He arched his back and was about to get up when – what was that? A shaft of alarm nailed him in the chest. Out there – in the dark – something

… Yes, squinting hard, he could just make it out, a dark shape, over there, he could hear it moving around. Something… something was there! This was no joke. This wasn’t his imagination working overtime. He peered along the path. If only he could see better! His teeth began to chatter. He would get up and run, but his legs were too weak, his knees were wax. What was it? Hardly daring to breathe, he stretched his eyes wide in an attempt to pierce the shadows.

From the sounds in the underbrush he supposed the thing to be large and clumsy, heedlessly shattering twigs and branches as it came lurching nearer… nearer… Oh God, there it was – he could almost feel its breath, hot and panting on his neck. A moan of fear escaped his lips and, raising his arm to ward off the attack, he struggled to his feet and began to run. Unable to see where he was going, he managed to move only a few yards before he tripped and went sprawling to the ground. The beast was upon him-!

“ Moooooooo…”

The panic-stricken cow came crashing through the underbrush, apparently eager to make contact with a fellow creature, be it only a dumb camper as lost as she was.

The disconsolate sound mocked Leo, marking him a greater fool than he already felt. What if someone had been watching? He’d never live it down. The cow looked so ridiculous and out of place. He shooed it off, then considered his situation, rubbing his chilled arms; even under the wool sweater his goose bumps wouldn’t go down. Overhead the pine boughs whispered softly in the breeze. He was panting with nerves and fatigue. He had no choice; he must move on. But further probings into the dark now failed to locate any trees to guide him along the path. There was no longer a path, none at all. In trying to get away from the cow, he must have stumbled into a clearing. Utterly discouraged and despondent, he kicked a stump and jammed his fists deep into his pockets – but wait! He had forgotten the packet of matches Tiger had given him. He could read the compass in the light of a match. He fumbled them out and lit one; the flame blew out before he could get even a quick look at the compass face. He lit another, and another, with similar results. There were only a few matches left. To conserve them he would build a little fire to see by.

He scrabbled up some tinder of needles and twigs, and struck another match. The tinder caught quickly; when he had it going he added some bigger twigs and pieces of branches so the blaze lighted up the clearing sufficiently for him to get his bearings. What he found himself looking at caused him to blink in surprise and wonder. In the center of the open space was a circle of round rocks marking off a campfire site – there were charred bits of wood scattered about – and, a little way off, the dark mouth of a cave. The trunks of the nearby pine trees were blazed with ax markings and knife carvings, Indian signs like the ones on the old campers’ torches, with initials and dates.

As he peered around in wonder, it dawned on him that he had stumbled onto the site of the Senecas’ council fire. It also occurred to him that he had no business here, that he was trespassing: in this sacred spot were performed those secret rites that were taboo for nonentities like Wacko Wackeem. He could picture the scene, the Seneca braves and warriors with their painted faces, turkey feathers in their hair, gathered around the fire, making Big Medicine in the night.

Eager to investigate further, he stifled his misgivings and, using a pine branch that when lighted proved a satisfactory torch, he made his way into the cave. The space was much larger than it appeared from the outside. Its roof, formed by a solid slab of rock, slanted upward from the aperture, so that upon entering the cavern you had to crouch, yet once inside you were able to stand again. Raising his torch higher, he proceeded farther into the room, following a trail of symbols and pictographs. Here was a deer, here a beaver, here a raccoon, here a snake, and here – he brought his light closer – this was the picture the others pointed to, an Indian brave armed with a bow and a fistful of arrows, standing over the body of a buffalo. What did it all mean? The answer, like the contents of the little chamois bag each Seneca wore around his neck, was known only to a few, and to none who did not belong.

His torch began to gutter and he hurried outside again – to see, to his horror, that his little blaze had ignited the pine needles at the edge of the clearing he had made and was spreading out of control. A wave of panic surged up from the depths of his belly as he pictured the whole of Indian Woods going up in smoke, and, cursing his stupidity, he ran from one spot to another, stamping out the flames. But as fast as he stifled them in one place they sprang up in another. Water – he needed water! Desperately he unbuttoned his fly and peed as hard as he could. When he had quenched the last of the flames he discovered that he had also put out his original fire, a mistake that had again left him in the dark. A fine Seneca he’d make. Except He wasn’t in the dark after all. It was true – the moon was up! Finally a bit of luck! Now, if he could just figure out how to use Tiger’s compass. He dug it out again, holding it up so that the light fell across its face. He picked out a tree trunk in a beam of moonlight to the north and moved toward it. From there he sighted another tree and, referring to his compass, another, until – a light! Yes, certainly; he could make out a winking light through the trees. Civilization was over there somewhere.

He pushed on, feeling a creeping excitement as he thought of winning his way out of the forest and getting back to camp. He couldn’t wait to tell Phil and Wally he hadn’t been fooled, that he’d known all the time there were no stupid snipes. Then, almost without his being aware of it, he found himself clear of trees and standing on the sloping shoulder of the Old Lake Road. Car lights! That was what he’d seen, the headlights of a moving car! He laughed with joy and relief. He was saved! Now to get back to camp.

Wondering how far he had to go, he turned left and started walking – and stopped as he rounded the bend. The hulking silhouette of the old Steelyard place loomed before him. Chance had dumped him out upon the road almost in front of the Haunted House! For an instant he was actually glad to see it; he knew now that he wasn’t far from camp. But then, as he stared up at the tower window, at the peaked gable, the bent lightning rods and the gimcrack bits of gingerbread, the house seemed to transform itself, to become that other house, on Gallop Street, the way it had been before… before… when he was the butcher’s boy; and Emily, she was the butcher’s wife; and he, Rudy Matuchek, was the butcher, damn him to hell, and…

“No rhapsodies in this house!”

Out of the inky darkness filling his head, that same bright, slippery fish of thought swam by, recalling -what? Still, it wouldn’t come to him, but eluded him as always. What was it he was trying so desperately to remember?

“No rhapsodies in this house!” Again the angry voice sounded in his ears. “How many times I got to tell you, no rhapsodies in this house! Damn that kid. Where is he anyway? He’s never here when I want him! I get the strap now!”

“No! Don’t you touch him! Not again!”

“You shut your face! He’s no good, that boy! He needs discipline. I give him!”

“You so much as touch him, you’ll be sorry!”

“What you say?”

“You heard me. Don’t you lay a finger on him!”

“You shut up!”

The sound of his hand striking Emily’s face made Leo jerk back. Her sobs filled his ears. He let out an audible groan of pain. No! Don’t let it happen! No – please. Don’t hurt her! Overcome with fright, he tried to master the involuntary spasm that now gripped him. Then, the great storm broke from a great height, smashing down on him just as it had that night; an ominous thunderclap, a deep, tumultuous peal, and suddenly he is – yes – up there, in the window, watching for her – mother – mother – MOTHER – where are you?

He can hear the heavy downpour beating against the windowpane, drumming on the roof slates. The river is rising, rising fast to flood the dikes that laborers have spent two years throwing up, sweeping them away in a torrent, and the same tide is now loosening the footings of the L Street Bridge, and Emily – Emily is coming on the trolley car – the L Street car – Mother! – and Rudy is shouting and then the world begins to spin, a maelstrom sweeping everything away from him – Mother! – he hears her cry -“Leo, oh Leo… ” that dread sound of agony, her white hand fluttering, and – oh, Mother!

Suddenly he was running toward the house, up the crazy paving, up the steps, onto the porch to the open doorway gaping before him and He stopped; he could go no farther. Whatever it was, he could do nothing about it. It was too late. She was gone. He was alone…

Terrible sobs were wrenched from him, his eyes blurred with tears, tremors ran through him like electric shocks -for a while he stood there on the threshold, trapped like a bug in a spider’s newly spun web; felt himself cocooned in silken gauze that spun around his body, tighter and tighter, until he was made a small neat package of. Then, suddenly, a cold wind drifted across his back, chilling his neck, and the spell was broken. He turned away from the house and broke into a trot, down the walk to the road, pelting hard along its shoulder, never stopping for breath until he reached the rack of mailboxes at the top of the line-path, and beyond that, camp.

He forced his disturbing thoughts from his mind, determined to have the last laugh on his erstwhile snipe-hunting partners. As he came down the line-path he heard from the lodge sounds of merriment and lusty singing – no doubt the old boys enjoying their watermelon and making fun of all the dumb suckers still wandering around in Indian Woods. Shunning the lights, he made his way toward Jeremiah. He had an idea he wanted to execute. The cabin was dark and deserted when he reached it. He borrowed the Bomber’s extra flashlight, then hurried away to the toolshed behind the cottage where Fritz Auerbach stayed, and located a trowel and two small clay pots. From there he proceeded into the woods behind the cottage and dug up two pine seedlings, which he quickly transplanted into the pots; then, having returned the trowel to the shed, he hurried back to the cabin. He set one of the pots in the center of Phil’s bunk, the other on Wally’s, then stretched out on his own bunk to wait…

He must have dozed off; he was suddenly aware of subdued laughter, and he glimpsed figures coming down the line-path.

“… I bet he’ll never find his way out of there.” He recognized Phil’s voice, and there was a nasal chortle that sounded like Dump. “We’ll probably have to go out and wet-nurse him home,” Phil went on sourly, and in they came, five of the Lucky Seven – Tiger and the Bomber had yet to show. In the dim light no one noticed Leo at first, and he lay still, watching through slitted eyes as Phil, slurping the remains of a slice of watermelon, went to his bunk.

“What’s this junk doing here?” he demanded, turning with the potted tree that had been set out on his pillow.

“Evening, all,” Leo said, sitting up and grinning. “It’s a present. Wally has one too. Like them?”

Phil ordered the lantern lighted, then strode over to Leo and stared down at him.

“What the heck do you think you’re doing? You got dirt all over my pillow.”

“Sorry for that,” Leo replied, with no spark of humility. “How’d you get back so quick?”

“Yeah, how?” echoed Wally.

“It didn’t take long, did it?” Leo was relishing the baffled looks on their faces.

“You cheated,” Phil said. “You followed us out.”

“I never. You thought you’d gotten me good and lost, but you didn’t. I knew where I was all the time.”

“The heck you say!”

“And before I forget, thanks a lot for the loan of your flashlight. It was really kind of you guys. It didn’t work, though, so I threw it away.” He dipped into his pocket and produced the compass. “The reason I didn’t get lost was because I had this.”

Phil’s brows shot up. “That’s Abernathy’s. Where’d you get it?” As he reached for it, Leo put it behind his back.

“Tiger gave it to me.”

“Liar! He never! Hand it over.”

Leo defied him. “No, why should I?”

As he stuck the compass back in his pocket, Phil threw himself on him and shoved him back to the bunk rail. “Ow!” Leo cried, nursing an elbow. “That hurt!” “What’s going on?” Tiger was standing in the doorway with the Bomber.

' “He’s got your compass, Tige,” Phil said. “He stole it from your box.”

“No, he didn’t. I gave it to him.”

Phil was stunned. “You got to be kidding! You won that compass – it’s a prize.”

“That’s okay. I gave it to him.”

“Well, if that’s not – well, damn it anyway!”

“So how’d it go?” Tiger asked, turning to Leo.

“It-” Leo swept the circle of faces with bright eyes. “It was grand,” he said with profound satisfaction.

Phil glowered and turned away; he grabbed up his seedling and chucked it with the pot through the door; its fellow followed in short order.

“What was that all about?” Tiger asked.

Leo chuckled. “Those are the snipe I was supposed to bag.”

Tiger and the Bomber looked puzzled.

“He’s just being a weisenheimer,” Phil said. “They’re little pine trees!”

“I don’t get it,” Tiger said.

“It’s an anagram,” Leo explained. “Pines. P-i-n-e-s. S-n-i-p-e.”

Tiger darted a look of covert amusement to the Bomber. It wasn’t easy getting a leg up on Phil Dodge.

’Samatter, can’tcha take a joke?” the Bomber said, laughing. His bunk squeaked as he heaved himself up and hauled out his pajamas.

A moment later an angry expletive was heard from the porch.

“What the damn hell-!” Reece boomed out as he tripped over a pot. When he appeared in the doorway, he clutched a pine sapling in each hand, the roots exposed, pots gone.

“What’s this crap lying around out there for?” he demanded, looking around for the guilty party.

"It’s nothin’, Big Chief,” said the Bomber, hopping down to intercept him and forestall trouble. “Just a little gag is

Reece wasn’t to be put off. “I don’t get it. What gag?” He turned to Phil for explanation.

“Ask Wacko,” came the sullen reply.

“All right, Wackeem, is this some of your doing?”

Leo shrugged and feebly echoed the Bomber’s comment. “Just a joke.”

“I don’t like jokes. Not this kind anyway,” Reece fumed. “What do you think this place is, a shit-house? This is no Dewdrop Inn, it’s Jeremiah!"

“He’s got Tiger’s compass, too,” Phil was compelled to say.

“Is that true?” Reece demanded of Leo.

“I used it, sure.”

“Give Tiger back his property.”

“That’s okay, he can keep it,” Tiger said.

Reece scowled. “My dad awarded you that compass. It’s a good one. You take it back.”

To avoid further argument, Tiger pocketed the compass. “And you can have two mornings extra K.P. in exchange,” Reece said to Leo. “Post yourself for duty in the morning. And if anybody asks you why, tell them it’s because you’re a wiseguy.”

"Aw, c’mon,” the Bomber protested. “Have a heart.” “Yeah,” Leo said, “have a heart… Heartless.”

There was an awkward silence in the cabin; what Leo had intended as a joke hadn’t come off that way. Reece slowly turned his eyes on him. “What did you say?” he asked softly.

Leo blanched. “I just said… have a… h-heart.”

“You called me Heartless. Nobody calls me Heartless, got that?”

“Yes…”

“Yes, sir!"

“Yes, sir!"

“Now, you take the broom and clean up that mess out there.” Reece gestured toward the door.

“Yes, sir.” Leo took the broom and went out. He was disposing of the debris in the trash can when he saw Tiger waiting for him at the fountain.

“I guess I screwed up,” he said sheepishly.

“We told you he doesn’t like that name. The Bomber gets away with it sometimes – you forget you ever heard it. But ya done good, camper. Real smart.” He gave Leo a clap on the shoulder.

Leo warmed to the compliment; praise from Caesar. Still, he wished it had come not from Tiger, but from Reece himself.

Later, as he climbed into his bunk to settle down to sleep, he looked over at Reece in his cot a scant three-feet away. His eyes were slitted open, staring at him it seemed; Charlie Chan eyes that made Leo nervous.

“Shape up, Wacko,” they were saying. “Remember Stanley Wagner.”

Resolved to heed the silent warning, Leo shut his own eyes and tried to get some sleep. But sleep would not come that night, and he lay long awake, thinking about the luckless Stanley, who might have had bad dreams too, and about his sudden, mysterious departure. Leo decided he didn’t want to know too much about Stanley.

Ma Starbuck, seated with her ear as close to Pa’s static-riddled Atwater-Kent radio speaker as her bulk would allow, nodded emphatically. As usual, “Ma Perkins” was right. If Lauralee, a “modern” housewife, really wanted to hold on to her mate, Buzz Morgan – a “real good” garage mechanic who tuned up engines over at Zeke’s Service Station – she was just going to have to quit flirting with every Tom, Dick, and Harry who happened by.

“Ma Perkins” was a latter-day oracle in the Starbuck household, and no matter how busy she was, Ma stopped what she was doing to catch the quarter-hour broadcast, which just now vied with the whirr and clatter of the antiquated Gestetner machine grinding out The Pine Cone. Ma was used to doing several things at once (there was a brace of apple pies cooling on the shelf outside her kitchen window), but “Ma Perkins” was too good to miss, and not until Lauralee had agreed to watch her step (though she sure would like to “get outta this burg and see some city lights”) did Ma return to her typewriter, set up by the window so she could keep an eye on the compound formed by three facades – barn, store, and office – that was the hub of the upper camp.

Across the way in the barn, morning crafts session was in full swing. One of the oldest in the district, the barn was well suited to its current purpose, its old stalls, tackrooms, and lofts having been readily transformed into workrooms – the Marconi Radio Shop (in the hayloft), the Swoboda Wood-Carving Shop, the Rembrandt Paint Shop, the Silas Marner Weaving Shop, the Paul Revere Metalworking Shop – and on any morning except Sunday the place rang to the din of ball-peen hammers on sheet copper and saws eating wood, to the ceaseless hum of voices as young craftsmen went about the business of creating a work of art, this summer under the gentle guidance of Fritz Auerbach.

From time to time one of the boys would lay down his tools and come out to the pump for a cooling drink or to make a purchase at the Coop (stopping by the office first to get the money from his spending envelope). The Coop had once been exactly what its name implied, a chicken coop housing a flock of Rhode Island Reds, from which, in the camp’s earlier years, Ma had extracted her nickle of “egg money.” Nowadays, for two hours every morning and another in the evening, from behind its full-length oilcloth-covered counter, the counselors took turns vending materials for leather craft, beadwork, woodburning, and other handicraft projects, as well as candy bars and soda pop kept chilled in an old cold box upon which the legend MOXIE had all but worn away.

Now, through the window of the barn that marked the Swoboda Wood-Carving Shop, Ma glimpsed the feathered Tyrolean cap belonging to Fritz Auerbach. He was hard at work on his pet project, a scale model of a village in Austria called Durenstein, which, when completed, was intended as a special gift for Camp Friend-Indeed.

“Hi, Fritz,” she called. “How’s it going with all the little folk?”

Fritz put his head out the window and laughed. “No little folk today, Mrs Starbuck, only little houses.”

“I thought you was gonna call me Ma, like everybody else at camp.”

“Okay, Ma, you’re the boss.” He tipped his hat brim over his eye and withdrew, catching his feather in a knothole. Ma beamed approvingly. She liked Fritz; everyone did.

Though he supervised all arts-and-crafts activities, the Swoboda Wood-Carving Shop was Fritz’s personal duchy. Here he had set himself up with a sturdy workbench, a vise, chisels, knives, scroll saws, and other wood-working tools, and the adjacent walls were hung with tiny figures, human and animal, cleverly carved from chunks of wood and destined for the village: bushy-tailed squirrels, a tortoise, a deer, a man in lederhosen and a feathered cap. For Fritz was a master woodworker, and the Swoboda corner had become extremely popular with many of the campers, from the older boys in High Endeavor, eager to learn his carving secrets, to the cadets from Virtue like Peewee Oliphant, who crowded around him as he perched on his stool amid the aromatic sawdust and wood shavings.

Durenstein, the village on the outskirts of Vienna, was a place Fritz knew well – a little corner of his childhood that held many happy memories, unclouded by the misfortunes that had befallen him since. Sometimes, as he worked, he would tell the campers stories about how on Sundays in springtime he and his family would drive out of the city in their big touring car to take lunch under the arbor at a little cafe where the hasenpfeffer was tasty and they would drink May wine with strawberries in each glass and afterward sing the old German songs.

But no more. Fritz did not care to hear those songs any longer. It saddened Ma, for it didn’t seem likely he would ever see his family again – at Durenstein, or anywhere else. The Auerbachs had been one of the oldest and most respected banking families in Vienna; since the Austrian Nazis began their bid for power they had coveted the fortune of the family of Jews, and one night – this was some months before the Anschluss, when Hitler’s panzer units had rolled across the border into Austria -the Brownshirts had descended on the Auerbach house, breaking in at the front while the family escaped through the alley with only the clothes on their backs and a few bits of jewelry. Fritz, who had been away at school in Geneva, was sure his father would try to reach New York, and had himself made his way to America to wait, boarding with a family in Middletown and earning his tuition at Wesleyan by private tutoring in the German language. Among those he had taught had been Rex Kenniston’s younger brother, and it had been on Rex’s recommendation that Fritz, though a Jew, had been offered the post at Camp Friend-Indeed.

The results, Ma decided, had been gratifying. For Fritz, who had the most reason for complaint of all the young men on Pa’s staff, gave the impression of being the most content, and was the most easygoing and pleasant to be around, doing his utmost to hide the anguish that had already touched his dark, curly hair with silver. He was also – as Ma’s friend Dagmar Kronborg had pointed out with satisfaction – responsible for bringing to Friend-Indeed something of the “culture” the boys had encountered heretofore only on occasional visits to the Castle. Indeed, he had turned the so-called White House, the small cottage of which he was sole tenant, into the acknowledged cultural hub of the entire camp.

Ma smiled to herself. Being a “cultural hub” suited the little house, she thought, picturing it set in the grove of slender birches: the low, narrow doorway elegantly fronted by a sliver of porch, with its decorative bits of curlicue and filigree, and boasting a pair of Doric columns that had once framed the doorway of a building in Junction City. The tiny one-room “playhouse” Pa had contrived with Henry Ives in order to keep Ma close to him in that long-ago time when love was fresh had in recent years been the residence of Hap Holliday, who had been far from pleased at being relegated for the season to a bunk at Bachelors’ Haven, the staff dorm. But Ma had made up her mind as soon as she heard Fritz’s tragic story from Dr Dunbar. “That boy’ll need a home,” she had told Pa, “a place where he can be alone.” And when Fritz had moved into the cottage with his meager possessions – the few treasures he’d brought with him from Switzerland (an antique chess set, an album of stamps, and a pewter-lidded stein reputed to have come from “King Ludwig’s castle at Neuschwanstein”), a small shelf of books, and a collection of classical and jazz recordings that he played on an old Victrola he’d picked up in a Junction City secondhand shop – she knew she’d done the right thing. Besides, lately Fritz was proving an agreeable companion for Leo Joaquim, giving him a game of checkers and lending him books. A well-educated, cultured person like Fritz was bound to have an effect on the poor orphan, might even influence his entire future, help to mold him into the sort of person Ma believed him capable of becoming. “Glad Men from Happy Boys,” wasn’t that the Moonbow motto, Pa’s favorite slogan?

The sun having crept into her eyes, she adjusted her celluloid eyeshade to cut the glare as she checked on Willa-Sue, who was sitting on the slatted bench under the grape arbor, among the ragged clumps of snapdragons and hollyhocks, cradling her doll, and watching Jezebel, who was on the hunt for mice among the arbor’s sagging posts.

Ma sighed. Pa himself had carpentered the arbor some twenty-five years before, and in those happier days he and she would sit side by side on that same bench, holding hands and planning the future, in anticipation of which Pa had also constructed a cradle. But it wasn’t until the thirteenth year of their marriage that their union had been blessed by the precious gift of a child, a baby girl born just before Christmas, and when two whole summers had passed and they had yet to hear her first words it had dawned on Ma that there must be something wrong. Medical science and Doc Thomason had confirmed her suspicions. Pa had been brokenhearted, taking it as a personal insult

– Starbuck males didn’t breed mental defectives – and a new chapter had opened in the life story of Mary and Garland Starbuck.

Pa took to sleeping in the spare room in the narrow bed and turned away from his daughter and his wife; even the camp that he had founded, and its “boys,” seemed to lose their place in his heart. As for Ma, being by nature optimistic and resourceful, she had taken the disappointment in her stride. If Willa-Sue was a bit slow, that was all right; at least she wasn’t sickly or peaked, the way some children were, and Ma could help her along with her lessons. The trouble was, the boys enjoyed making fun of her. One camper in particular, and that had been most upsetting because of who he was; though it had happened so many years ago now, Ma had never forgotten it. She had been sitting right here in this very chair in this same office; the boys were hiking past the window to the dining hall. A few had stopped to play with Willa-Sue; another – Reece Hartsig, then a camper in Harmony – had impatiently urged them to hurry up.

“Come on, you spuds, leave the dummy alone and let’s hop it!”

The dummy.

“Dum-dum dummy,” the boys shouted and ran away. Ma had grabbed the child from her playpen and carried her inside as if she’d been burned by fire. Pa, connected up to his radio set by earphones, had missed it all. She never told him what had happened. It would have done no good, no good at all.

It was then Ma finally realized that the man she lived with was no longer the man she had married. And nowadays -nowadays, out for a walk among the Moonbow byways, he had his eyes forever on the treetops and the little birds that hopped about among their branches, and on the clouds floating above the trees, and on the sky beyond the clouds, and saw almost nothing of the doings of “his boys.” And this was too bad, because there were some problems Ma couldn’t solve – in particular those concerning that same Reece Hartsig and the new boy in Jeremiah, Leo Joaquim. The morning after the Snipe Hunt Reece had come storming into the office, griping about the dumb trick Leo had played on Phil and Wally and demanding that Ma switch him with Talbot in Isaiah; the new boy, he said, would never make a Jeremian, and would cost the cabin the Trophy. Ma wouldn’t budge. To Jeremiah had Leo come, in Jeremiah would he stay. Frankly, she thought him real clever, resourceful too (not many new campers so much as suspected the truth behind the Snipe Hunt), but even if she had been so inclined she would not have acceded to Reece’s request, which would have meant separating Leo from Tiger Abernathy. She had reminded the counselor of the happy points his new camper was already earning for Jeremiah with his spider collection, and Reece had seemed mollified. Still Ma couldn’t be sure; if only Pa would have a word with him – but she knew the likelihood of that was small, the summer would be gone before he did.

She forced herself out of her morose reverie and returned to the task at hand. As she completed the last page of The Pine Cone and peeled it from the machine, Leo himself appeared in the barn doorway and headed for the pump. For some reason Willa-Sue had fixed her interest on the new boy from the first day – probably because he was one of the few campers who paid her a degree of attention – and now, slumped on the bench, she ogled him across the compound, idly fingering the ribbon Ma had put in her hair.

“Willa-Sue, pull your dress down,” Leo told her as he passed. “People can see up it.”

Ma shook her head at the child. “Willa-Sue, honey,” she called through the window, “you heard what Leo said. And leave off tugging your ribbon, it looks so pretty. The way you look today, you could be a movie star if you wanted. What would my lambie-pie like for lunch? How’s about a nice cold plate?”

Willa-Sue’s dour features set like plaster and she eyed her parent with a sulky expression.

“Horsecock,” she blurted.

“Now, hush you, Willa-Sue, I told you, nice girls don’t talk like that, that’s boy talk. If you don’t want a cold plate, how’s about a nice sammich?”

WillarSue jammed a thumb in her mouth and stared. “What kind of sammich would my honeybunch like?” Ma prompted.

“Penis butter and jelly.”

That old joke; Ma shook her head despairingly, and called through the window for Leo to keep an eye on Willa-Sue while she went into the kitchen to make lunch; obligingly he carried his copper mug full of water over to the arbor and sat down beside her.

“Wacko Wacko, chews tobacco…” Willa-Sue stared at Leo, her bug-eyes slightly crossed, a giddy expression on her sallow face.

“Wacko, Wacko, chews tobacco,” she said again.

Leo spoke sternly. “I asked you not to call me that. My name’s Leo: L-e-o. Leo. For ‘Leopold.’ It’s the name of a king. Leopold, King of the Belgians.”

“Lee-pole.”

“Pold. With a d. Lee-oh-podub. Can you say it?”

“Leo-pol-dub.”

“Well, it’s better than Wacko,” he muttered.

“Wacko, Wacko.” She rolled her eyes and burred her lips at him.

He blew out his cheeks in exasperation. “What do you want, Willa-Sue?” It turned out she wanted him to do the Three Stooges imitation the Bomber had been coaching him in, so he obliged, making his stupid Curly face, doing “Nyuck nyuck nyuck,” and slapping his cheeks, squeaking, and rolling his eyes idiotically, while the girl clapped her hands in excitement.

“Moe, Moe!” she cried. “Now do Moe!”

He did Moe for her, combing his hair forward and slapping his face some more. Willa-Sue became more excited and began to laugh shrilly. She held out her doll to him.

“Wacko hold dolly,” she commanded, and Leo took the doll and held it on his lap.

Just then the jitney pulled into the drive; Hank Ives debarked, and began to ring the bell for Morning Swim.

Almost before the first peal died away, craftsmen by the dozen erupted from the barn.

“Woo-woo, look at Wacko,” one of them called.

“Playing with your dolly, Wacko?” said another.

Burning with embarrassment, Leo grabbed Willa-Sue’s hand and marched her across the lawn toward the office, where he delivered her up to Ma and the penis-butter sandwich. Then, before he could be detained further, he headed down the meadow path at a fast clip. He didn’t want to be late for Morning Swim.

As he came trotting along the line-path the rest of the Jeremians (except for Tiger and Dump, who were getting in some practice with Hatton, the new Red Sox first baseman) exploded through every cabin aperture and raced off toward the waterfront. By the time Leo had jumped into his trunks and joined them and scores of others on the swimming dock, everyone was already lined up according to cabins, and Rex Kenniston sat up on the lifeguard stand. His silver whistle blew, calling the large, boisterous group to order; he reminded them of the waterfront rules (threatening to expel anyone who disobeyed). Again the whistle sounded and at once the place erupted in watery riot, but no sooner was the crib full than Rex sounded his whistle a third time, calling for buddy check, waiting until all campers’ hands were paired in the air (Leo had drawn Monkey as this week’s swim buddy). A fourth whistle – double this time – was the signal for activity to continue, and the boys were off, the Bomber cannonballing through the water with Eddie (his buddy), and Monkey following with Leo, who was not a strong swimmer. When they reached the raft, instead of boarding it, the Bomber sucked in a breath and sank from sight; Eddie and Monkey, then Leo, followed suit, and when they surfaced they were in the hollow chamber beneath the raft, surrounded by eight metal drums harnessed together. A golden web of reflected sunlight darted about them, transforming the space into a glorious underwater cave, and their voices in medley reverberated crazily under the wooden floor.

Suddenly there was a loud clamor overhead. Dozens of feet were stamping and pounding on the floorboards, cries became shouts, focusing attention on those sequestered underneath. Then the raft began rocking back and forth, the metal drums sounding a hollow roll as the agitated water splashed against their sides.

“We better scram out of here,” Monkey said, seeking to avoid having Rex blow his whistle on them, and they all gulped a breath and flipped down into the watery depths.

By the time Leo came up outside the raft, Monkey was aboard her, and Leo clambered up after him. Eddie and the Bomber were going in, Monkey said – the Bomber wanted to get in some rowing practice. The Bomber was the intermediate unit’s star oarsman, and was expected to win the boat race – and ten happy points for Jeremiah – at the upcoming Water Carnival. Leo nodded. He watched as Bullnuts Moriarity, wearing a rubber bathing cap strapped under his double chin, his beefy body sausaged into trunks, clambered onto the raft, followed by his fellow Endeavorites Bud Talbot, the biggest boy in camp, and Jack “Blackjack” Ratner, whose name suited him, since he was of a thin, dark, and distinctly rodent-like character with a mole-spangled face. Presently they were joined by Phil and Wally, who exchanged a few words with them, after which they all sidled over to arrange themselves around Leo.

“Hey, Wacko,” Ratner began, affecting casualness, “us guys are all goin’ up the tower. Whyn’t you come on up too?”

So that was it. “No, thanks,” he said.

“Aw, heck, be a sport, Wacko,” said Talbot, dancing around on the balls of his feet.

Leo shook his head. “I’m heading in. Coming, Monkey?” he called, but his swim buddy remained where he was, stationed beside Phil and Wally. No help there, then. Suddenly Moriarity loomed in front of him.

“Come on, Wacko, don’t be a sis. It’s not as high as it looks.” He used his belly, nudging Leo along toward the ladder. “You never know if you like it till you’ve tried it, ain’t that right, boys?”

Leo glanced helplessly about. The water surrounding the raft was crowded with the curious faces of boys waiting to see what would happen next.

“You cornin’ or not?” demanded Moriarity.

“I said no.” Leo scowled. He mustn’t let them see he was scared of them.

“Ooh, he said noooo,” Bullnuts squealed, and gave a lewd shimmy of his midsection. “Then I guess we’ll just have to… ”

Their intention clearer now, the group pressed closer and, using his belly as a ram, Bullnuts forced Leo to the foot of the ladder, where they held him perpendicular and fixed his feet on the first rung.

“Go ahead, Wacko, climb,” Moriarity commanded, goosing him upward. Leo jerked, then climbed a rung or two higher.

“Higher!" Moriarity goosed him again. Leo looked around frantically, praying for a miracle. The top of the ladder seemed so far away; he would never make it. And if he did he would fall, he knew it. He was sick with fear and panic. Help, someone, help me; but there was no one to help. All across the waterfront, every eye was on him. Even the tadpoles in the swimming crib flailed their arms and passionately screamed; and the perfidious Peewee Oliphant – there he was, hanging on the crib rope and hollering, “Wacko! Wacko!” and “ ’Ray, ’ray, all the way!”

Looking across the water to the dock, Leo sought the help of Rex – surely Rex would do something, wouldn’t he? Only it wasn’t Rex on the lifeguard stand any longer, it was Reece, and he was calmly shading his eyes to observe more clearly the action on the float; so much for any help from that quarter – it would never occur to the counselor that a Jeremian would refuse to climb the tower; even Stanley Wagner had managed that.

In an attempt to escape his tormentors Leo climbed three or four more rungs: Moriarity pushed in right behind him, forcing him on. Up he went until his eyes were level with the diving platform, and there was nothing for it but to step onto it. Breathless and fearful, he watched as Moriarity, followed by Phil, then Wally, then Ratner and Talbot, then six or eight others with smirks and grins came off the ladder behind him. He inched his way closer to the edge of the platform, summoning up his courage, telling himself he could do it. He must do it! But when he dared to look down he blinked and froze, then backed away along the railing. A resounding boo! greeted this feckless action and again the air rang with taunts.

“Whatcha waitin’ for, Wacko?” Moriarity jeered. “Ya gonna take the jump or do we make ya walk the plank?” Worse, much worse, were Phil’s contemptuous words: “Come on, Wackeem, don’t make any more of a fool of yourself than you have to. Get it over.” Leo looked from Phil’s red, aggressive face to Wally’s pale, pimply one and hated them both. And Monkey, where was he? Down below, twiddling his thumbs. "Watch out you don’t crack your skull on the cable,” Phil added. “Go ahead, I dare you.”

Leo could see the thick steel rope receding at an angle to the bottom of the lake and the heavy cement block that held both the float and its tower fast, and it seemed to him that if he were to jump he would hit it. Yet the watery abyss pulled at him like a magnet. He must go over… must fall…

Feeling Moriarity’s hand pressing the small of his back, he gasped, then clutched the railing tighter. Go on, coward, the piggy eyes seemed to say, go ahead and jump. Ashamed, Leo lowered his head; he could feel the sickish heave of his insides. His stomach gurgled and turned over, and then, losing all control, he threw up his breakfast. Moriarity, the recipient of this unexpected eruption, let out a roar of indignation, and with a bellow flung himself from the platform and plummeted into the water below.

On the platform, still shaking with fright and mortification, Leo turned to face the rest of his tormentors. It was clear to them all – to Leo himself – that he had no intention of jumping, and so must take his punishment. They stepped aside as he moved toward the ladder and began his slow descent into shame. At the bottom, he dived from the raft and stroked for the dock, where he could see Reece hopping down from his perch, while excited campers, shouting and capering with gleeful anticipation, came skittering from everywhere: Wacko was going to get the paddle!

There was no rhyme and little reason to the business, organized as it was according to long-standing custom. The paddle, broad and thick as a breadboard, was borne aloft from the hook where it was hung, and Leo was bent over the paddling barrel and held in place. Then Moriarity – first in line by virtue of the indignity he had suffered – stepped up, spit on his palms, drew the board back, and swung.

As the blow fell, hard, Leo jerked forward on the barrel and a cheer went up. Then Reece took the paddle and handed it to the next boy, itching to have a go. Before long what had begun as a sporting affair, the traditional camp chastisement for lack of nerve, had turned into an ugly demonstration of camper brutality. Pain, humiliation, and shame: Leo suffered all without a whimper. How could he whimper? He had passed out.

“Hey, you guys – he’s out cold!” cried Ratner, looking down at the limp form drooped over the barrel. As the clamor slowly died and a guilt-laden silence ensued, Fritz Auerbach pushed his way through the gathering to emerge at the head of the line. “All right, that’s enough!” he said, grabbing the paddle from Bosey.

“Hey, what’s the big idea?” Reece demanded, stepping up. “What d’you think you’re doing?”

“Putting a stop to this sadistic business, what does it look like?” He shoved Reece aside, then leaned over and lifted

Leo up in his arms. “This boy is hurt. I will take him to the infirmary. Get out of my way, please.”

Reece wasn’t about to let him pass. “That kid’s not really hurt. Why don’t you just stay out of this, Fritzy? I’m in charge here.”

Fritz stared. “What kind of man are you, to allow such a thing to be done to a boy? What kind of place is Friend-Indeed that it would permit this to happen?” Reece was at his most condescending. “Look, Fritzy, you’re new around here. This happens to be a camp tradition, it’s been going on for years – right, boys?” He glanced around, from Phil to Moriarity to Ratner to Bosey, all of whom exchanged sheepish looks but had nothing to say.

“Then it is time it stopped,” Fritz replied forcefully. “Such childishness. Now, step aside, please; otherwise I shall be obliged to knock you down.”

Everybody stood silently by while Reece reconsidered matters, and when he finally gave way Fritz pushed past him, carrying Leo’s limp form from the dock, passing along the waterfront in the direction of Three Corner Cove.

By siesta time, after lunch, the waterfront lay tranquil and serene, the lake lapping the shore with its meekest touch, boats docked, canoes beached in squads, the punishment paddle hung on its hook. It was as if the camp could stand only so much of violent activity, of clamorous voices and hypertense confusion, before it must retreat again into order and serenity, to catch its breath before the next upheaval should occur.

Whatever Fritz Auerbach (a foreigner, after all, and not privy to Moonbow traditions) might have to say about it, the paddling of a camper who had failed to go off the tower after having climbed it was a tradition, and even though everyone had witnessed the way Moriarity had boldly goosed Leo up the ladder, that fact was already being overlooked. Notice had been served that this kind of “differentness” would not be tolerated at Camp Friend-Indeed, and Wacko Wackeem had better shape up or else. Nor did the fact that Fritz had opposed Reece in the matter do Fritz’s own case much good. Taking public issue with the counselor universally regarded as the best Friend-Indeed ever had, had only served to place him together with Leo in the same camp, so to speak.

Fritz did have two allies in the matter, however. At the infirmary, to which he had conveyed the sufferer, Wanda Koslowski, the camp nurse, had been outraged. Leo’s “baganza,” she declared, looked like “an Italian sunset,” and in short order she had popped him into a fresh, clean-smelling white bed, applied soothing lotions, given him a pill to relieve the pain, and positioned a pillow to jack up his hips and an ice pack to cradle his backside. Indeed, so tenderly did she treat his wounded posterior (without further injury to his dignity) that the grateful beneficiary of her ministrations decided he was considerably better off than Emerson Bean, who had acquired a case of poison ivy during the Snipe Hunt and lay four feet away in the adjoining bed, looking wretched and uncomfortable under a chalky pink coating of calamine lotion.

Fritz’s other ally was Doc Oliphant, whose arrival at the infirmary just as Leo was getting settled required that the ice pack be removed. “Good God, man,” he muttered to Fritz, “what have they done to this boy?”

“Paddled him,” came Fritz’s flat reponse.

“I should say they did! Blast those savages!” snapped the doctor. “Why didn’t Rex stop it?”

“Rex wasn’t there, I’m afraid. He had to take a phone call.”

“Then who had charge of the waterfront?”

"Reece Hartsig was on the bench. He said it was the tradition.”

“So it is.” The doctor sighed. “But they went too far this time. You’d better keep the lad here overnight, give him a good shoring up, then send him back. Slip him a little mickey, so he’ll rest. Here’s Honey; she’ll cheer him up.” He smiled at his daughter, who had just appeared in the doorway. She kissed him, then came into the room, looking down at Leo, who turned red to his ears at being viewed (by Honey Oliphant!) in such an ignominious position.

“Goodness,” she said, “that looks awfully sore. And Emerson – you poor thing-”

She clucked sympathetically and made the sort of mothering sounds that went straight to Leo’s heart. Having Honey Oliphant in the same room with him was almost worth getting paddled for. Of course he couldn’t really talk to her; he wasn’t given to conversing with goddesses, or maybe not a goddess, maybe just an angel with a halo -all that bright-yellow hair that reminded him of Emily’s.

But, then, he didn’t have to talk, because she did, chattering gaily in a way that made him forget his stinging backside, joking about “Tillie,” the skeleton that stood on a metal stand in the corner – a former camper, she said, who hadn’t got enough to eat during his stay at Friend-Indeed, which reminded Leo that he had missed lunch. Honey smiled. She and her mother were going to make strawberry ice cream for supper and she’d bring over some for the patients. Meanwhile – here was Wanda with the trays.

After Honey left the room, it seemed to dim, and nothing happened to brighten things much, since next to arrive was Heartless himself. He came striding through the door accompanied by-Fritz and Wanda, who had had their heads together in the dispensary, to “check on his camper.” Having lifted the ice pack and tugged down Leo’s shorts, Reece humorously voiced the opinion that the Italian sunset didn’t look so bad to him. “If you knew you weren’t going to jump,” he said to Leo, “why did you go up the tower in the first place?”

“He didn’t go up of his own accord,” Fritz put in quickly. “He was forced. You were there – surely you must have seen.”

Reece’s teeth clenched and the muscles in his jaws pulsed as he half-turned to reply. “This is my camper, Fritz. I’m sure he’s perfectly capable of speaking for himself.”

“You talk about him as if he were a possession, something you own.”

Reece gave an angry snort. “He’s a Jeremian, isn’t he? He may not be the best one, but he’s still a Jeremian. Which makes him my camper.”

“Not now it doesn’t. Since he’s in this infirmary, if he’s anybody’s camper he’s Wanda’s. Besides, if you’d been looking after him properly, he wouldn’t be here.” He frowned. Reece was staring at him from under a cocked eyebrow. “Excuse me, please,” Fritz said stiffly, “but is there something about me that offends you?”

Reece’s eye was on Fritz’s chest: the Star of David he always wore on a chain around his neck was hanging outside his shirt.

“What do you wear that thing for, anyway?”

Fritz glanced down. “Why should I not?”

Reece scowled. “Maybe you didn’t know it, Fritzy, but we don’t wear stuff like that around here.”

“You do.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mean the cedar heart you wear – and your Seneca knot as well.”

Reece’s hand went to his throat. “That’s different. The Seneca knot’s a badge of honor. Members of the Lodge have always worn it. It’s something we believe in.”

“As I believe in this,” Fritz replied calmly. “Really, I don’t see that there’s a great deal of difference. Is there?” Reece gave him an exasperated look. “Okay, Katzenjammer, don’t make a big thing out of it.”

Fritz’s eyes flashed. “Please don’t call me that.”

“Why not?”

“I don’t like it. It is the name of a pack of low German comics in the funny papers, and, to tell the truth, I don’t happen to think Germans are very funny folk these days.” He turned to Wanda. “Now, if you will all excuse me, I have things to do. I’m sure Leo is in good hands with you.”

With a nod to Leo and Emerson, he left the room. “Gee,” Reece said to Wanda, “I didn’t know your boyfriend was such a prima donna.” He gave Leo’s elastic waistband a brisk snap, then dropped the ice pack on the table with a bang. “Okay, kiddo, hop out of there, we’ve got things to do.”

Wanda was outraged. “He’ll do nothing of the sort! He’s staying right where he is – in bed!”

Reece showed surprise. “You don’t mean to say you intend to keep him lolling around just because he got a couple of bruises on his fanny?”

“It’s not just a couple of bruises, he can barely move. Besides, he’s under doctor’s orders. He’s to stay here overnight at least.”

Reece looked genuinely puzzled. “Gee, Goldilocks, I just don’t get it. A guy gets a little paddling and you want to treat him like he’s the Dying Gladiator or something. That stuff doesn’t go in Jeremiah. I won’t stand for any of my boys malingering.”

“He’s not malingering,” Wanda retorted. “He has quite a painful hematoma. A boy can’t take a beating like that and then be expected to go hopping around on both feet. Tomorrow will be soon enough. Why don’t you just scram on out of here-”

“Now don’t get yourself in an uproar, nursie,” Reece began playfully, but nursie wasn’t in a playful mood.

“Oh, get out,” she growled, and, pushing him from the sickroom, she went to fetch some more cubes for Leo’s ice pack.

Wanda Koslowski was, Leo and Emerson decided, just what a camp nurse ought to be, with her cap with the two blue stripes on it identifying her as a graduate of Saint Francis Hospital in Hartford, and the crisp crackle of her starched uniform, the slippery slide of her white stockings, the puckery tread of her rubber-soled oxfords on the green linoleum floor. They liked the brisk, efficient way she went about looking after them, and especially the way, when she leaned over to administer the thermometer, the feminine swell of her bosom (embellished with a nurse’s pin of red-blue-and-gold enamel) pressed against them.

The afternoon wore on, bringing no more visitors, but enlivened by the sight of Honey Oliphant over at Three Corner Cove: she had taken her drum majorette’s baton down to the dock to practice, and was tossing the flashing rod into the air and catching it in- a series of deft moves, never missing once. Togged out in her white shorts and halter, with her lissome figure and her golden hair and dimples smile, Honey was (the boys decided) like a Petty Girl out of Esquire magazine.

At powwow time Fritz came back with Rex Kenniston, who expressed sympathy and blamed himself for having left his post.

“I’m okay,” Leo said.

“Are you kidding?” said Fritz. “I’d like to be in a nice clean bed, such as yours, waited on hand and foot by this Valkyrie.”

He grinned at Wanda, who gave his hand a push.

“I brought you this,” Fritz went on, holding up a book he had under his arm. “We’ll speak of it when you’re feeling better. In the meantime, you must get well if you’re going to play for us in the Major Bowes Amateur Night contest.”

Fritz said he’d stop by again in the morning, Rex said goodnight, and they left. Leo glanced through the book Fritz had left him, a collection of stories, tales in verse, old classics, some of which Emily had once read to Leo, and which he was now free to enjoy again.

But right now he did not feel like reading. Where were the Jeremians? he wondered. Why hadn’t they dropped by to say hello? Were they mad at him? Finally, not long before bedtime, they appeared, Tiger, Bomber, Dump, Monkey, and Eddie – all but Phil and Wally. Still, five visitors was plenty; the room was small and their talk and laughter reverberated off the tongue-and-groove walls. No direct references were made to Leo’s injuries, and they all seemed bent on speaking of other things: there’d been a baseball game and then powwow, and after supper an archery contest, which Reece naturally expected all Jeremians to attend.

Then two more visitors arrived: Honey, accompanied by her mother, Maryann, bringing ice cream, dishes, and spoons. Honey had thoughtfully brought along her radio, which she left with the boys so they could listen to “Lights Out.” At nine o’clock, except for the invalids, they all prepared to head back to camp, but Leo asked that Tiger and the Bomber be allowed to stay a little longer – there was something he wanted to tell them. Wanda okayed the request and, when she had dispatched Emerson to the Dewdrop, Leo called the Bomber to come away from the windowsill where he was perched. He wanted to explain, he said, why he’d been unable to jump off the tower.

“Aw, that’s okay, you don’t have to explain,” the Bomber said. “You’ll get over it anyways. By the end of summer you’ll be doing swan dives off the tower.”

Leo shook his head. He would never go up that ladder again, would never jump off the platform. The mere thought sickened him. “Acrophobia – that’s what Dr Epstein called it.”

“Who’s Dr Epstein?” the Bomber said.

“The doctor at the as-as-” He tried to get the word out but couldn’t.

“Never mind,” Tiger said. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to… ”

“But I do. I wa-want to, only it’s – it’s hard. I n-never told anyone. Dr Epstein was – at the as-asylum.”

“You mean” – the Bomber showed surprise – “the loony bin?”

Leo nodded.

“Why? What happened to you?”

Leo giggled. “I guess they must have thought I was loony.”

There was a bit of a laugh over that. Leo was feeling better. '

“Yeah, but, really, why were you there?” the Bomber insisted.

Leo shrugged. “I couldn’t remember anything. My mind just went blooey. You know-” he imitated the “cuckoo” in a cuckoo clock. “That’s when they told me my mother wa. s dead.”

“Jeez,” said a sympathetic Bomber. “How’d that happen, anyways?”

There was a pause; Tiger watched and listened, saying nothing. Leo interlaced his fingers and rotated his palms together, thinking it out.

“There was this bridge,” he said at last. “The L Street Bridge. It was old and rusty. They’d been working on it, trying to repair it. The river overflowed, it – it just carried the bridge away.”

The Bomber leaned on the foot of the bed. “And your folks were on it?”

“Yes. On it.” Leo was staring out the window. All he had to do was close his eyes and he would see them, Emily and Rudy in the delivery truck, driving onto the bridge – and below, the deep and rushy river swirling and foaming, that boiling witch’s pot – and hear her cries -“Help! Help!” – the words ringing in his ears. “Mother! Mother! MOTHER! I’ll save you” – but he cannot save her. No one can. The bridge begins to sway, it humps up like as camel’s back and buckles, and all at once goes crashing down into the river, taking with it all the stars in the sky, all of them falling and drowning in the Cat River and Leo had a siege of coughing that he relieved with a full tumbler of water. When he had drained the glass the Bomber took it, and Leo lay back against the pillow. His backside was hurting again; maybe Wanda would give him another one of those little pills.

Nobody said anything more until Emerson came back from taking his pee and climbed stiffly into bed, pulling up the sheet until only his itchy, swollen, bunny-pink face was visible.

“Jeez, Emmy,” the Bomber boomed, “you shoulda heard what we just heard.”

“Yeah? What was it?” Emerson asked.

“Forget it, Emmy,” Tiger said. “You didn’t miss anything.” He slipped Leo a wink and leaned closer to the bed, his gray eyes shining in the lamplight. “It’s getting late,” he said. “We’d better break it up.”

A look to the Bomber forced him reluctantly to his feet just as Wanda reappeared to send the two visitors on their way and get her patients ready for bed. Deftly she touched up Emerson’s calamine lotion, then gave Leo a refreshing witch-hazel sponging, afterward folding down his coverlet a precise eight inches and smoothing it with deft, professional strokes. It was like being put to bed by Emily, a little.

“Do I get another pill?” Leo asked in a small voice, looking as pathetic as he knew how.

“Is your baganza hurtin’ again?” She brushed his hair back. “I’ll go get one for you,” she said, and went out; her pharmacopoeia was in Doc Oliphant’s keeping at Three Corner Cove.

No sooner had she gone than Tiger’s crewcut head reappeared at the windowsill. He leaned over and tossed a pillow onto Leo’s bed, following it with a small cardboard box that rattled. The pillow was Albert, the box contained Black Crows.

“In case you get hungry,” Tiger explained. “Don’t say anything to Wanda.”

“Thanks,” Leo said.

“Anytime. Listen…” Tiger’s voice sank to a whisper. “I’m really sorry – about what happened, I mean. It wasn’t fair of Reece to let it go on that way. You shouldn’t have been paddled. Sometimes things just go too far, that’s all. It won’t happen again. Friend-Indeeders don’t act that way.”

He said it with such assurance that Leo got the feeling Tiger was making himself personally responsible for seeing to it.

“ ‘Never say die,’ ” Tiger added, then was gone.

Emerson took a drink and gave Leo a curious look. “What was that about?”

“Nothing, Emmy, something between us Jeremians, that’s all. Have a Black Crow,” he added. “Just don’t get licorice on your sheets.”

Hearing a footstep, he tucked the candy under his pillow and swallowed as Wanda returned to dole out his pill, give the boys another drink of water, and turn out the light. When she’d gone again Emerson corked right ‘off; he was a good sleeper. Ten minutes later, however, Leo was still awake, and, lying there, he turned his head and stared out the window into the velvety summer dark, where gleaming fireflies hung in luminous clusters, and the thick air hummed with the persistent twang of night peepers.

It was such sights and sounds that reminded him of earlier, childhood days, when Emily was still alive, when he and she would sit sipping lemonade on the back porch, watching the nightpeepers at the bottom of the yard. Before… well, just “before.”

His last living memory of her was on the evening of the big storm, when he was alone with Rudy in the Gallop Street house, anxiously waiting for her to come home. He would never forget the storm raging outside, the wind that banged the shutters against the clapboards and threatened to loosen the chimney bricks – and the river rising hourly, the Cat River that threatened to carry the whole bridge away. The L Street Bridge that would bring her home on the trolley – the bridge everyone feared would wash out.

It had rained so hard all day that Rudy hadn’t opened the shop – few customers would have come – and the streets ran with water. At the south end of town the river flooded the dike, and the torrent rushed under the L Street Bridge. Schools were closed; Leo stayed in his room, praying that Emily would come home: there had been a telephone call and she had hurried away right after lunch, telling Leo only that she had to go see somebody. As the hours passed he became panicky. Where had she disappeared to in all this awful weather? If she was going upstreet she would have to cross the L Street Bridge; it was the only way. What if – No, he wouldn’t think it, he mustn’t! Suddenly he wanted to go and shout at Rudy, tell him to do something to save her.

Rudy was downstairs in the front room, drinking whisky from a glass, his ear glued to the radio for the latest bulletins, and from time to time Leo would go lean over the stair railing and listen to the announcer giving further details: roads were being washed out; more volunteers were manning what remained of the levees, and a special crew had stayed all afternoon sandbagging the supports of the bridge.

Around four Leo lay down on his bed and dozed; the storm seemed far away; the rattle of the rain in the tin drains lulled him. He was awakened by the sound of another trolley car coming down the street; he tiptoed to the front window. Yes! There she was! He watched with relief as a man helped her down. He recognized John Burroughs. John was coming to their house! Something wonderful was going to happen, Leo felt sure of it. Something that would change his life. He was going to the music school after all! He was sure of it! He ran into the hallway and leaned over the banister, saw them coming into the vestibule. Glimpsing him from below, Emily motioned for him to stay upstairs and wait. The doors to the front room closed behind them.

To calm himself, Leo found his violin and began to play. The song was “Poor Butterfly.” But then had come Rudy’s footsteps on the stairs. The door was flung open. “No rhapsodies in this house,” he shouted, and Leo put the violin away. When he heard the parlor doors slam shut again, he crept to the head of the stairs and listened, he heard their voices, Emily’s, Rudy’s, John’s.

“Didn’t I say? No rhapsodies in this house?!” came the angry roar from below.

When John spoke in a reasonable tone Rudy only shouted more angrily. Then Emily was crying out, and John was saying he would take Emily away, Leo too. “You don’t love her, Matuchek,” John went on. “You use her badly. She is a good woman and doesn’t deserve such treatment.”

“You call her a good woman? When you have her in your bed? What kind of man are you?” Rudy ranted. “To run off with another man’s wife!”

From that moment Leo’s memories remained a blur; he recalled a series of images, yet all occurring at the same time, frozen, as in a tableau, and illuminated by blinding flashes of lighting, while the storm raged outside:

“You can’t take her!” Rudy is shouting. “She’ll never go with you. If you want the kid so much, go ahead – take him.”

“I’m taking him with me-” That is Emily’s voice.

“Shut your mouth, you whore.”

Rudy must have struck her then, for she cries out in pain; Leo can bear it no longer; he starts down the stairs, then stops, cowering against the wall as the doors slide open and Emily comes hurrying through, John behind her, then Rudy. Rudy grabs John by the shoulder and swings him around, and the two men struggle.

Catching sight of Leo on the staircase, Emily reaches out to him. He wants to rush down, to fly to her and throw his arms around her, hide his eyes so he can’t see. But at that moment the combatants break apart. John stands disheveled, breathing heavily, while Rudy pulls away and with another curse runs into the shop. Emily entreats John to leave quickly, before there is more trouble. “He’ll do something terrible, I know it.” But John refuses. “Not without you. Come with me, now. Leo too. We’ll all go.”

Leo starts down the stairs. Quickly – quickly – Mother, let’s go before – before the bridge – we must get across the river… All around, the thunder crashes. A livid streak of lightning turns everything silver. He trips on the stair, stumbles, sees, in another flash of lightning, Emily’s white face twisted in an agony of pain and despair – “Mother!” -he reaches out to her – “Mother! MOTHER!”and then he is falling… falling… falling…

He awakes. Where is he? In a white world, pristine in its brightness. A white room, in a white bed with white sheets and coverlet; white, everything is white. In the corner someone sits, a nurse: she wears a white uniform and cap. Is he in a hospital, then? Shortly afterward a doctor comes in;

Leo is sure he’s a doctor because of the stethoscope around his neck. He talks in a coaxing sort of voice, asking lots of questions. Later the nurse talks to him. Her name is Miss Holmes. He doesn’t like her much. She is determined to amuse him. She lays out cards for a game: Authors. Right off Leo draws four Longfellows and a pair of Hawthornes; it’s not hard to beat someone as dumb as Miss Holmes. She has a mustache like the bearded lady in Barnum amp; Bailey’s.

Later, he has a visitor. A woman calling herself Mrs Kranze, who says she knows him. Is she crazy? Leo has never seen her before. A friend, she tells him; she is a friend of his mother’s.

“I want my mother,” he says, as if the saying would produce Emily’s corporeal form. Mrs Kranze’s face is all screwed up, tears are squeezed from her puffy eyes.

“Gone. She’s gone.” She sobs onto his hair. “Poor child, poor, poor boy. What is to become of you now?”

Mother? M-mother? Where is she? The pain in his head is bad; the darkness is coming back, the white room is turning to black, and out of the blackness, the terrible jolt of memory. Something about the bridge? Yes, that’s it – the bridge – the L Street Bridge – his mother – the bridge. “Did she go over the bridge?” he asks. “Did she go across?” Mrs Kranze stares at him, biting her lips, the tears running down beside her large nose. “Yes,” she says, at last, “across the bridge.”

Over at Three Corner Cove the darkness was suddenly cleaved as the Oliphants’ porch light came on. In a moment the phonograph began playing:

You go to my head Like a sip of sparkling Burgundy brew And I find the very mention of you Like the kicker in a julep or two.

Honey appeared and sat down on the top step, eating from a dish propped on her knees: Ice cream? Leo wondered. Her hair burnished by the lamplight, she seemed to go with the music; she was sparkling burgundy, and he wished he were sitting next to her. But then-, as he watched, someone else materialized from the shadows. Reece sat beside her until she finished her ice cream and set the dish down. Then he got up and pulled her to him, and they began dancing, to the music.

The thrill of the thought

That you might give a thought

To my plea casts a spell over me.

Still I say to myself,

“Get a hold of yourself,

Can’t you see that it never can be.”

Leo’s heart was doing flip-flops. If he required any schooling in the way of a man with a maid, there it was, chapter and verse, the music, the starlight, the sweet nothings whispered in the ear. That was how grown-ups behaved, he guessed; Reece wasn’t a boy, but a man, a combination of brain, muscles, glamour, and good looks, the flickering flame around which pretty moths like Honey Oliphant were bound to flit. And even after he had fallen asleep he continued to see the pair, turning and turning together, whirling like love phantoms in the dream dark, round and round in each other’s arms while the music played and the moonlight danced on the water of Moonbow lake and there were kisses in the shadows.

The luscious lipsticked damsel with tresses of gleaming gold leaned languidly upon the casement while down below her lovesick troubadour strummed his mandolina and crooned “Come into the Garden, Maude.” The more passionate his song, the more languidly the beauteous creature leaned across the sill, her hand like some pale and fragile blossom as it gestured for her lover to ascend, a la Rapunzel, by making a ladder of her long lustrous looks. The song ended, the troubador flung away his instrument (it was a ukulele) and climbed -or tried to- in order to receive a kiss from his lady’s rosy lips. Success, however, was not in the cards. It was a difficult moment; the weight of the amorous swain loosened the poor damsel’s hair, which when it pulled free revealed Gus Klaus in female disguise, while the troubadour (Zipper Tallon) tumbled to the floor amid shouts and laughter, and the stage curtains (campers’ blankets strung on a wire) swung to.

Cheers and jeers and thunderous stamping of feet greeted the conclusion of the skit, the noise rising to the roof beam from which the famous Camp Friend-Indeed horn chandelier shed upon the scene the glow of some two dozen kerosene lanterns. In the camp’s earliest days Pa and Hank Ives had put the structure together out of the antlers of countless deer, elk, and moose, along with a pair from an African antelope contributed by Dagmar Kronborg and taken from the trophy walls of the Castle itself. More than six feet in diameter, three times that in circumference, suspended on a thick hawser through a block and tackle screwed into the rooftree, the fixture now actually shook, so great was the din.

Until a few years before, the Major Bowes Amateur Night theatricals had been held in the dining hall, but, thanks as usual to the generosity of Big Rolfe Hartsig, who had sent one of his construction crews over to put up the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Nature Lodge, all such camp activities were now presented in the building on the lower campus, which this evening was filled almost to overflowing; every seat was taken, with the younger fry seated cross-legged on the floor in front of the stage, each camp unit with its respective group of counselors, each counselor doing his best to quell the high-spirited rowdiness that always enlivened such gatherings. Up front the center section had been reserved for staffers and their guests, among whom tonight was Ma’s old friend Dagmar, making her first visit to Friend-Indeed since Stanley Wagner’s malfeasance had led her to bar the Castle to campers. When she walked in, there had been a buzz among the boys – did this mean all was forgiven? – and embarrassed looks, but now, after the third skit of the evening, she seemed one of them again, obviously enjoying herself, her laughter ringing out above that of the loudest camper in the room.

Next to appear, a solo effort, was Mr Jerome Jackson, the Brown Bomber, performing one of his specialties, his famous impression of Fats Waller (“I’se a-muggin’s, boom-dee-ah-dah”). Leo, sitting rather gingerly among his other cabin-mates, glanced around, checking the rows for some sign of Reece, who hadn’t shown up for the entertainment. His nose was out of joint because, having assigned “his boys” his own choice of a skit – “The Kindergarten,” one of his favorites and an old chestnut – he had discovered at the last minute that a switch had been made. Without consulting him, Tiger and the Bomber had persuaded the others to veto the classroom comedy in favor of an idea Leo had gotten while in the infirmary. Learning of the change, Reece had branded the whole business a conspiracy (“A

Jeremian is loyal to his counselor and sticks by a bargain”), and a violation of the team spirit that had always heretofore characterized Cabin 7 (Phil and Wally, out of deference to their leader, had refused to take part), and after dinner he had driven off with Honey Oliphant in the Green Hornet to take in a drive-in movie.

The curtains had closed on the Bomber (to loud whistles and applause), and the succeeding presentation was about to get under way. Once again the rafters shook to hand-clapping, foot-stamping, catcalls, and cheers as Pa made another introduction, venturing the announcement that the Ezekiel cabin’s contribution to Major Bowes Night would be nothing less than the famed entertainment known as “The Old Lady and the Cow” – groans around the hall – or “An Udder Laff Riot” – laughs and applause – the role of the Old Lady to be essayed by that sterling thespian Emerson Bean (now recovered from his poison ivy), the cow jointly by those sterling look-a-likes the Smith twins, otherwise known as the Coughdrops.

Watching this corny routine, the Bomber whispered to Tiger that Ezekiel was attempting either to empty the hall in a hurry or to put the audience to sleep. Having played the rear end of the cow often enough himself, he knew you couldn’t help getting a boffola laugh when the front end, feet crossed, sat down on the rear end, and then both ends sat on the Old Lady, whereupon all three wound up on the floor; but the Smith brothers were woefully inept and in need of rehearsal, while the old, moth-eaten costume, which kept stretching perilously, then sagging, had nothing whatever about it that might be considered bovine. Then Smith-behind got tangled up with Smith-before, Old Lady Bean’s long skirt was heavily trodden upon, and when the fabric tore away altogether, revealing undershorts, printed in sloops and maritime pennants, the unlucky accident produced the single genuine laugh the skit afforded.

“ ‘All right, all right,’ ” Pa said when the hilarity subsided, imitating the familiar nasal monotone of radio’s famous

Major Bowes as he gave the “Wheel of Fortune” a good spin. “ ‘Round and round she goes, and where she stops, nobody knows,’ ” and the sock and buskin were passed along at last to the Jeremians. After a positive bouquet of an introduction, which wilted from its very floweriness, Pa announced the title: “The Doctor Is Definitely In,” or “Oh, Doc, You Struck a Nerve,” and no sooner had the performance begun than everyone in the audience knew that here was surely the hit of the evening.

The stage curtains parted to reveal a large bedsheet stretched taut across a wooden frame. A spotlight from behind illuminating this makeshift screen, and there appeared upon it the silhouette of a figure who pantomimed being afflicted with a bad stomach ache. Next, the audience was treated to the sight of a buxom nurse featuring an oversized poitrine and derriere, who assisted the patient in ridding himself of his coat, then proceeded to take his temperature with a three-foot-long outdoor thermometer. The nurse (the Bomber) grew considerably agitated, while the patient (Monkey Twitchel) became sicker by the moment. Presently an offstage bell rang and a voice announced “Dr Mackinschleisser – call sur-ger-ee.”

Now onto the sheet were tossed the capering shadows of three assistants (Fiske and Dillworth, and one shorter than the rest – Abernathy, of course), and the nurse proceeded with a remarkable amount of ado to scrub up, using a jumbo sponge and a basin the size of a potato tub. Ablutions completed, the three assistants heaved the protesting patient onto the operating table, then stumbled over one another getting out of the way as the gangly silhouette of the doctor was catapulted onto the screen as though shot from a cannon. Tall, thin, and of an antic disposition, Dr Mackinschleisser, hero of the piece, was rendered the more hilarious by his very two-dimensionality. Alternately tipping his Derby like a boulevardier and furiously twirling his furled umbrella, which he spun between his fingers like a drum major’s baton, he brought down the house as soon as he appeared onstage. By the time he had executed the complex business of removing his gloves – starting each fingertip with a neat clip of his choppers, and finally rolling the gloves into a ball, popping them into his mouth, and devouring them – tears of laughter could be observed. Now, opening his Gladstone bag, the doctor pulled out a stethoscope, whose rubber cords he first snapped at the nurse’s behind, then got stuck in his eye as he attempted to fit the instrument into his ears. Keenly listening to the patient’s heartbeat, he wagged a disconsolate head: the prognosis was bad. Not so bad, however, that the patient might not once or twice lift his head from the table, for which trouble he received a whack with the doctor’s oversized mallet.

At last, after some tricky mathematical calculations with a jumbo set of calipers upon the patient’s chest, presumably to determine the location of the heart, the incision was made (by means of the vigorous employment of a lumberman’s cross-cut saw), the body cavity was exposed (held open by a pair of carpenter’s clamps), and the doctor proceeded to remove the sundry causes of the patient’s discomfort: a pair of hip boots, a baseball bat, a hot-water bottle, a tennis racket with three balls, a pocketbook, some ladies’ hosiery, a string of breakfast sausages, a toilet plunger, assorted crockery, cutlery, and cookware, a head of cabbage, a waiter’s tray, plus yards of stuffing which even in silhouette looked suspiciously like excelsior. Finally, after further intensive probing, there followed a baby by the heels, crying, for which pains it received a stiff whack with the mallet.

“My dolly! Don’t hurt her!” came an anxious cry from the audience.

“Hush, Willa-Sue,” Ma was heard to say, “he’s only doing make-believe. ”

The child’s outburst earned another laugh, serving to remind the audience that the performer, the comical Dr Mackinschleisser, was none other than Wacko Wackeem, actor extraordinaire, who now invited his patient to take a bow (thanks to the surgeon’s wide medical experience, he had made a “full recovery”). As the cast reassembled and took its bows in front of the curtain, there was no question: Jeremiah had no rival in the skit department.

But there was still more to come: after a brief intermission, during which the actors shed their costumes and resumed their seats in the audience, Henry Ives sheepishly shuffled on and read from his copy of Chic Sale’s book of backhouse humor, then played his one-man band. This entertainment was followed by Pa on his jazz whistle with “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” and “Don’t Bring Lulu,” and Wiggy Pugh’s rendition of “I Can’t Get Started” on the same cornet he used for sounding taps. Next on was Charlie Penny, Job’s counselor, in a cowboy hat and neckerchief, twirling a lariat and telling Will Rogers jokes, after which Ezekiel’s counselor, Peter Melrose, led the camp chorus in “Darktown Strutters’ Ball” and “Sleepytime Down South,” inviting the audience to sing along.

Knowing that his solo violin performance was to follow this act, Leo circled around to the back of the room, where he had left his violin case. His bow had been rosined, the violin tuned, so he had only to wait to be introduced. When he heard Pa announce his name, with an awkward shift of limbs, he circled behind the audience to the stage. There was a murmur of anticipation as Pa announced the first selection, “In a Monastery Garden” by Ketelby, a piece Leo knew well, and the audience stirred in their seats, falling silent when, hunching his shoulders, Leo raised his violin, tucked it under his chin, lifted the bow, and began to play.

For the first few moments he had to fight the attack of nerves that always besieged him when he played on stage, but, presently, he experienced a familiar lift of spirits, that welcome sense of authority that seemed to carry him out of himself. He had only to give himself up to his deepest instincts and play the best he knew how. As his bow drew forth the deep, rich melody, his eyes roamed the faces of his audience, then the section reserved for the Harmony unit, where Tiger and the Bomber sat among the other Jeremians. Across the tip of the moving bow, he saw the look of rapt anticipation on their faces, as if they were just waiting for Leo to show what he could do. But at that moment Leo was most aware of Dagmar Kronborg, who sat calmly in her place, her eyes alive with interest, a bit quizzical, but appreciative. He could tell from her frequent nods that she approved, and this heartened him, spurring him to play his absolute best. Well, he thought, as he approached the final bars of the piece, it’s all going well – as well as he’d hoped it would. First the skit, now his own recital.

When the number ended, the applause was generous, the audience eager for more. Leo made a brief adjustment to his strings, tested them once or twice, and prepared himself for his encore. The room fell quickly silent. He had started to raise his instrument and slide it in under his chin again w'hen a loud sound was heard at the entrance; the double screen doors had opened, then slammed with a clatter. Heads turned at the disturbance, and a murmur of recognition swept through the crowd. The newcomer was Reece Hartsig. With him was Honey, her waist encircled by his arm. Appearing to enjoy the stir their entrance had caused, Reece tipped his cap in greeting to Ma and winked at Dagmar. He made no attempt to sit down but rather, keeping Honey close beside him, remained standing in full view of all, lounging against a post as he looked toward the stage.

Leo swallowed; felt a rush of panic. Suddenly, inexplicably, his fingers began to tremble, and his Adam’s apple bobbed nervously in his throat. Then, mustering his courage, he took a deep breath, shut his eyes for a moment, and began.

Almost from the instant he first drew his bow across the strings, the audience was aware that something had happened. The performer was no longer exhibiting the ease and assurance he had demonstrated before. His eyes had taken on a harried expression, never lighting anywhere, but always returning, as if drawn by a magnet, to the back of the room, where Reece still leaned against the post, his arm around Honey’s waist.

A jarring off-note set teeth on edge, an unexpected sharpness, then, quickly, a second mistake. The bow faltered, slurring clumsily across the strings, producing a shocking series of dissonances. Ma glanced at Dagmar, who stiffened in her chair. Tiger’s brow was creased with bewilderment.

Then the final humiliation: Leo broke off midway through the bridge, halting with dismaying finality, and just stood there, awkward and embarrassed, blinking into the light. For a moment it seemed he might take up his melody again, but instead the violin slid away from the notch of his shoulder. He made a short, oblique movement backward, paused for a moment, then, clutching the violin in one hand, the bow in the other, he swerved abruptly and headed for the nearest exit. Eyes still lowered, shoulders hiked up, he reached the door, fumbled with the screen, trying to pull it toward him when it wanted pushing, then, outside, fled into the engulfing dark, while, in the excitement that greeted his precipitate departure, Pa rose from his seat and, hands clasped, announced the final presentation. Above the sound of the audience, clearly audible, came the voice of Claude Moriarity: “Wacko forgot his machine-gun case.”

His joke produced a wave of jeers and laughter that spread throughout the hall until Pa had to call “All right, now – all right, now,” so the closing act might begin. Only Dagmar Kronborg, silent and rigid in her place, and Tiger Abernathy, flushed with embarrassment at the humiliation of his friend, refused to join in the merriment as onstage Joey Ripley of Malachi and his ocarina had a go at “Dardanella.”