Camp Pleasant

by Richard Matheson

We were breaking open our cereal boxes when Bob said, “Here comes Big Ed.”

  I looked up, curious, to see that my original conception of Ed Nolan was quite accurate. He was middle-aged, semi-bald, a great hulk of a man squeaking over the floorboards like an ape in sneakers, his face broad and red-flushed behind rimless glasses, the contour of his thick- lipped mouth broken by the dark jutting of an unlit, half-smoked cigar.

  A general murmur of “Hi ya, Ed,” went up from the counselors and he raised one paw of a hand in greeting, not the remotest flicker of change on his face. He sank down heavily in the chair beside his wife’s and I saw her wince as he, quite obviously, pinched her under the table. He plucked the cigar from his mouth, laid it beside his plate, quaffed down orange juice in a swallow and refilled his glass to the brim.

  “Ed is hungry,” Bob murmured beneath the general chatter of conversation at the table. “He’s probably had ten or eleven rashers of bacon and a few dozen eggs.”

  While we ate I looked over at Nolan. He was wolfing down cereal, his cheeks bulging with spoonfuls of it, heavily sugared. I noticed the small hole in his tee-shirt through which protruded tufts of black hair. Directly under his large pectorals began the downward bulge of his belly. I glanced at his wife. She seemed so out of place next to Nolan; like a fawn coupled to a grizzly bear. Once, she looked up before I could glance away and, for an instant, I unable to take my eyes from hers. She smiled a little at me and I felt a shudder run down my back as I reached for the newly brought plate of scrambled eggs.

  In the middle of eggs and toast Nolan rose and stood silently until the noise had abated and the eating ceased. Then he picked the cigar from his mouth and spoke.

  “Some of you have been with me before,” he said. “Some of you are here for the first time. But remember this—all of you. No matter if you’re new here or you know the ropes—I expect good work from you. You’re being paid for it and that’s the way I want my camp run.”

  While Ed Nolan talked, I looked at his wife. She was staring at the table and there was a look of strange, bleak emptiness in her eyes.

  5.

  Directly after breakfast, Bob and I retired to the fields to scythe until the ground was thick with mown grass, the air heavy with the hot smell of sap and pollen dust. We worked under an over blast of sunlight, the salty taste of sweat in our mouths. I hadn’t done manual labor since the army and that morning did me in. By ten I had to handkerchief my right hand to protect the blisters. By eleven I was starting to burn and had to put my tee-shirt back on; by twelve the burning ache had penetrated to my muscles. I sat stiff and miserable at lunch, downing nevertheless, a gigantic meal.

  Happily, lunch was followed by an hour’s rest period, a regular feature of Camp Pleasant’s schedule. I slept heavily and motionlessly on the cabin bunk until Bob shook me back to consciousness. Groggy with sleep, I trudged back to the fields again for an afternoon of gathering up the cut grass and stuffing it into sacks which we tossed on the truck so Sid Goldberg could drive them to the giant incinerator.

  At four-thirty, Big Ed pronounced the lake open. I wanted to head for my bunk and sleep again but Bob managed to talk me out of it. I wasglad he did. The lake was barely cool and it soothed my muscles to feel the water stroking them.

  Supper was at five-thirty. Ellen Nolan wasn’t there. When I asked Bob about it he said that there was a kitchen in the Nolan’s cabin and, sometimes, Ellen Nolan ate there instead of going to the dining hall.

  The meal was interrupted at mid-point by another Nolan speech. He told us that we had only three days to get the camp into “topnotch” shape and if we didn’t “get into high gear” he’d have to take away our swimming time and cut the rest period in half. The camp, he said, had always been in “topnotch” shape on opening day and, by God, he was going to see to it that it was this year too.

  When Big Ed had finished, we returned to our cold supper and finished it. Afterward, Bob, Merv and I took the half-mile walk up the road to the small grocery store. There, we sat on the porch, sipping Cokes, Merv smoking his slender pipe, Bob a cigarette.

  “Does he always give speeches?” I asked.

  “Incessantly,” Bob said.

  “How bad is he really?” I asked.

  “He represents,” Merv said, “all that is dismaying in the world. His insensibility to the feeling of others is shocking. His crushing approach to human relations is hideous.”

  “You make him sound like Hitler,” I said.

  “In his own oafish way,” Merv said, “Ed Nolan has reduced Camp Pleasant to a microcosm of the Third Reich.”

  “Why do you stand for it?” I asked. “Why do the kids’ parents stand for it?”

  “To answer the first question,” Merv answered, “Bob and I come here because we like the camp and the country. I worked in this camp years before Nolan came and I’m certainly not going to let him keep mefrom my summer here which I enjoy. As to opposing him, however, this is tantamount to an attempt to bash in the side of a tank with a daisy. Nolan has the support of the parents for the simple reason that they don’t know about him. Kids don’t talk about discipline unless it’s fresh in their minds or done to crushing excess. Ed knows the limits. He always slacks off around visiting day and toward the end of each camping period.”

  “Then he’s not dumb,” I said.

  “Oh no, he has great animal cunning,” Merv conceded, “which is, precisely, what makes him so dangerous.”

  I put down my empty Coke bottle.

  “Looks like I’m in for a grand summer,” I said.

  “Oh, don’t worry about it,” Bob said. “Just stay out of his way and he won’t even notice you.

  I tried to console myself with that.

  6.

  In the evenings, the Nolan’s cabin was open house to Camp Pleasant personnel. There was a record player, current magazines, checker, chess and card games and a screened-in porch of wicker chairs where one could sit and gaze at the night-shrouded lake.

  I wanted to go to bed but Bob talked me into a game of chess before sacking out. So, after returning from the grocery store, we started for the Nolan cabin, Merv leaving us with the statement that he had some reading to do.

  “He doesn’t ever go to Ed’s cabin,” Bob said. “There’s a lot of tension between them. Ed hates him, I think. He’s been trying to oust Merv for years but Merv is almost an institution in the camp and the only one who knows the surrounding country well enough to-organize hikes.” Bob shook his head. “Ed keeps looking for some excuse to get rid of Merv. Maybe some day he’ll find one.”

  We walked along the trail past the wooden-floored tent where Sid Goldberg, Barney Wright and the heads of the Junior and Intermediate sections lived. Sid was sitting on the small porch, his legs propped up on the railing. He greeted us and we said hello as we passed.

  “He seems like a nice fella,” Bob said, “even if he is a dirty kike.”

  “Mack been at you too?” I asked.

  “Yowza.” Bob pointed to a little cabin in a patch of trees. “That’s where Jack Stauffer and his wife live,” he said. “Doc Rainey used to live there but he let Jack have it last year after Jack got married. Doc lives in a little tent by the water. He’s a good guy, Doc. He should be head of the camp.”

  The trail turned left now and I saw, at its foot, a moderately sized log cabin with yellow curtains in the windows.

  “There’s Ellen Nolan in the kitchen,” Bob said and I saw her pass before the window.

  “She’s a pretty girl,” I said.

  “You think so?” Bob asked, sounding surprised. “I never thought of her that way. She’s always seemed like, oh, I don’t know. Just Big Ed’s wife, I guess.”

  We reached the house and Bob pulled open a groaning screen door. Ellen Nolan, standing at the sink, looked around.

  “Hi, Ellen,” Bob said and she smiled. “You haven’t met Matt Harper, have you?”

  “No, I haven’t, Bob,” Ellen said.

  We smiled a
t each other.

  “Ed tells me you’re going to be our music director,” she said.

  “Yes.” I nodded, thinking again how incredible it seemed that she was Ed Nolan’s wife.

  “That’s wonderful,” she said. Her brown eyes met mine as I heard Bob saying that we’d come down for a game of chess.

  Ed Nolan was in the living room, talking sports with two of the athletic counselors.

  “—play hard ball, fast ball.” We got in on the tail end of his speech. “Teach ‘em to win, not to lose. I don’t go for this defeatist stuff, it makes a kid think in terms of winning or losing. If that’s sportsmanship, you can have it.” He glanced aside at us, then went on. “You teach a kid how to win] that’s the American way. Play hard, play fast and win!”

  He finished, his face reflecting satisfaction with his philosophy as he turned to us. He nodded curtly at Bob, extended his beefy hand to me.

  “Haven’t had a chance to talk to you man-to-man, Harper,” he said. “Glad you dropped by, boy.”

  His bullish handshake sent needles of cutting fire into the raw flesh under my broken blisters and I couldn’t keep the grimace from my face.

  “What’s wrong, boy?” he asked bluffly. “Too rough for ya?”

  I told him it was blistered and he laughed. “Y’need a little toughenin’ up,” he said. “A summer’s hard work’ll do ya good. Sit down, boy, sit down.”

  “Could I get a drink of water first?” I asked, and he shrugged and pointed in the general direction of the kitchen. As I headed for it, I wondered why I’d said that. I wasn’t thirsty at all. Maybe, I thought, I just wanted to get away from Nolan; or maybe I wanted to see Ellen Nolan again.

  She was still at the sink, finishing up the dishes. She looked up with a friendly smile as I came in.

  “May I get a drink?” I asked.

  “Of course.” She gestured toward a cupboard-with her hand. “The glasses are up there.”

  As I stood close to her, running faucet water into the glass, I noticed, from the corners of my eyes, her looking at me. I turned to face her and she smiled quickly.

  “Did your hands blister badly today?” she asked.

  I nodded.

  “Let me see,” she said. She held my hand in her warm palm. “Oh, that looks terrible,” she said concernedly. “You should have it treated.”

  “At the dispensary?” I asked.

  “No, I have some ointment in the house,” she said. “We can do it here.”

  “What’s up, El?” Ed Nolan’s voice inquired loudly as we came into the living room. When Ellen told him, he scoffed. “Aaah, that’s nonsense. A few blisters never hurt anybody. Y’need toughening, boy.”

  “I know,” I said politely, choosing concession as my guide to success with Big Ed Nolan. As I followed Ellen Nolan into the hallway, I heard Ed Nolan say to Bob, “You don’t like sports, do you, Dalrymple?” and Bob’s flustered, “Why … sure, sure I do, Ed. I’m not too good at them, of course, but—”

  “Uh-huh,” said Ed.

  In the tiny bathroom, Ellen got boric acid ointment and a box of gauze.

  “Go on in here,” Ellen said, flicking on the bedroom light. “Sit down.”

  It gave me an odd sensation to sit on the bed beside Ellen Nolan. To hear her husband talking sports in the next room and see the picture of him, bulky in his football uniform, hanging over the bed with the pennant Carlyle Teacher’s College tacked under it. To feel the careful touchof her fingers on my palm and watch her serious face as she put on ointment, then wrapped gauze around my hand and tied it.

  “Like hers,” I said without thinking.

  She glanced up at me. “What?”

  “Nothing,” I said, “I was only….”

  I didn’t finish. I felt my heart thudding slowly, harshly. Her hands were like Julia’s hands, warm and certain. I looked away from them.

  “What sort of music will you teach the boys?” Ellen asked me.

  “Oh, the usual run of camp songs,” I said. “I’ve worked with kids before—at other camps—and they don’t seem to like anything but the easiest songs.”

  She nodded. “I suppose so,” she said. “It’s a pity you can’t give them a music appreciation course though. You know, play records and discuss them.”

  “Classical music?” I asked.

  She nodded with a smile. “I think all people would like classical music if only they were exposed to it early enough,” she said.

  “You like it?” I asked.

  “I love it,” she said, “but my—” she hesitated for a revealing moment— “we don’t have too many records,” she finished.

  “What do you have?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you when we’re through,” she said. “We have Tschaikowsky’s—”

  “What are ya doin’, El?” Ed Nolan’s voice came splashing over us like cold coffee and we both looked up to see him filling the doorway.

  “I’m bandaging his hand, Ed,” Ellen said as if she were apologizing.

  “Well, come on out,” he said irritably. “Our bedroom isn’t a hospital, y’know.”

  Ellen Nolan’s voice was barely audible as she said, “All right.” I stood quickly, feeling restive under the flat gaze of Ed Nolan’s eyes. For a moment, I hesitated between waiting to follow Ellen Nolan out and proceeding her. Then, as Ed stepped into the room and gestured once with his head, I moved abruptly for the doorway.

  “We got a dispensary y’know,” Ed said, attempting to sound amused but failing. “Our bedroom isn’t no blister hospital.”

  I glanced over my shoulder and saw the tight look on Ellen Nolan’s face, the rising color in her cheeks. Then I saw Ed Nolan pinch her as she moved past him. She gasped suddenly and lurched so bad she would have fallen if he hadn’t caught her arm.

  “Take it easy, El,” said Big Ed, smirking. “You’ll last longer.”

  He came out after her and saw me standing in the middle of the living-room floor. “Sit down, boy,” he said.

  “Mrs. Nolan said she was going to show me some records,” I said.

  “Never mind that,” Ed said. “Sit down. I want to talk to you.”

  Without a word, I sat down beside Bob, as Ellen Nolan moved back toward the kitchen.

  “What are your plans for singin’ this summer?” Ed asked me. “I’ll tell you right now I argued with the board against havin’ a music director so I’m gonna expect mighty good work from ya before I’m convinced.”

  “Here’s what I’m planning,” I began.

  As I spoke I could hear Ellen Nolan moving in the kitchen.

  7.

  “Tomorrow we’re gonna work on the cabins,” Ed Nolan told us at supper the next day, “and that’s all we’re gonna work on because I want those cabins in topnotch order by Wednesday morning when the campers arrive. Oh—” he conceded with a brusque gesture—”there may be a few odds and ends besides the cabins. A few of you cabin counselors may be assigned to other jobs but they’ll only last an hour or so. Your main job’ll be the cabins.”

  In the morning, Ed Nolan grabbed my arm as I was leaving the dining hall.

  “Say, listen, boy, would you do me a favor?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I said. “What is it?”

  “Well, we got all our work assigned for today but we’re still a couple o’ men short for helping clean up Paradise.”

  “Oh?” I said.

  “I thought maybe you and Dalrymple might pitch in and help up there for a little while,” said Big Ed.

  “All right,” I said. “I’ll be glad to.”

  “I’ll tell Doc Rainey then,” he said. “Tell your friend Dalrymple.”

  “We’ll still be able to work on our cabins today, won’t we?” I asked as Bid Ed started away.

  “Sure, sure,” he tossed over his receding shoulder. “It’ll just be for a little while.”

  When I told Bob about it, I saw the tightening of angry suspicion knit his features.

  “That son-of-a-bitc
h is out to get us,” he said. “He’ll have us up there all day.”

  “If he does, he’s cutting his own throat,” I said. “He’s the one who wants the cabins done by tomorrow morning.”

  “He’ll expect them done by tomorrow morning too,” Bob said.

  For an hour we worked down the long, facing rows of toilets, Bob humming a minor transposition of “Stranger in Paradise,” as he scrubbed and flushed and scrubbed again.

  “There is beauty here,” he announced once, straightening up, dripping brush in hand. “There is intangible loveliness, grace, symmetry — a formlessness of unspeakable glory.”

  “There is a strong odor,” I conceded.

  “Callow youth,” he said sadly, “who do not see this moment in its true significance. Hark.” He flushed. “It is the rushing of a crystal stream, a torrent of summer madness. Ah, it is Niagara, Victoria!”

  “It is a toilet flushing,” I said, still cleaning.

  “You miss the point, fellow,” he said. “The moment escapes you.” He belched echoingly.

  “It is the horn of Rolande summoning Charlemagne,” I said.

  “You’ve got it,” he said. “Sit on it.” He sang, “Once you have found it, never let it go. Once you have found it—”

  Morning passed. There was only one other person working with us —a limp-armed dishwasher from the kitchen who mopped at the floor as if he were playing shuffleboard. By dinnertime, Paradise was still not regained from a winter’s neglect.

  Ellen was in the dining hall when we got there.

  All through the meal, she kept looking at the table, only twice looking up, seeing me, and quickly lowering her eyes. Near the end of the meal, while Ed was telling us how slowly he thought the cabins were getting done and how, by God, we had better get into high gear and clean them up if it took all night—I looked at Ellen again and this time she didn’t lower her waiting eyes. Instead, there was a moment—it seemed long; it probably lasted three seconds—a moment in which her eyes almost spoke to me—asking me to understand.

  “Let’s tell Doc,” Bob said when Ed’s talk was done, chopping away my thoughts of her and bringing me back again to the little prison of present difficulties; namely, getting our cabins done.