Camp Pleasant

by Richard Matheson

“That’s enough singin’,” Ed immediately countermanded. “Go get some sun and exercise.”

  “Yay!” A general cheer, a general, floor-shaking exodus around my fuming self.

  “I can’t very well improve their singing without practice,” I said irritably to Ed when the sound of running and screen door slappings had abated.

  “Never mind that,” he shunted me aside again. “Let’s get somethin’ clear right now, Harper. You’re responsible for your cabin—twenty-four hours a day!”

  “Mister Nolan, was Tony Rocca playing ball?”

  “He probably would’ve at any second,” he answered. “That would’ve really taken care of his hand.”

  “Mister Nolan,” I said, “I knew Tony Rocca was up there. He—”

  “You knew it!”

  “Will you let me finish?” I snapped, catching him flat-footed. “I gave him permission to go up there on the stipulation that he wouldn’t do anything besides sit there and watch.”

  His repressing of anger was plainly visible but he managed it. A look of contempt crossed his features.

  “And you believed him,” he said.

  “Yes,” I said, “I believed him. I thought it was time somebody had a little faith in the kid.”

  “You know all about him, don’t ya?”

  “I know enough,” I said, not thinking.

  The lines of his face tensed into lines of hard curiosity. “How d’ya know?” he demanded suddenly. “Who told ya?”

  “Tony,” I said.

  “Did Goldberg tell ya?”

  “No. Tony told me.” I had to swallow but I didn’t.

  “I don’t like lyin’ from my counselors, boy,” he said. “If I find out ya been lyin’….”

  He left it unfinished, potential. There was silence a moment, each of us staring at the other. Then he turned away, and casually, dropped behind him these words.

  “Go help Rocca pack. He’s bein’ transferred.”

  “What?” I started forward with a jerky movement. “Transferred? What for?”

  He stopped and whirled. “Because you don’t know how t’take care of him, that’s why!” he stormed.

  I shuddered back, thrown off balance by the vehemence of his attack. “That’s not true,” I said. “It’s not true at all.”

  “I s’pose ya call lettin’ him get cut t’pieces takin’ care of him!”

  “These things weren’t my fault,” I said. “Besides, they’re not the important—”

  “Aaah, get out o’ here!” he snarled. “You’re like all of ‘em; you so- called brainy boys. All talk and no sense. You’re bluffs, all o’ ya!”

  “Sure,” I said flatly. “Whose cabin is Tony going to?”

  Was that a smile? “MacNeil’s” said Big Ed Nolan.

  I turned away. “That’s swell,’” I said.

  Walking back to the cabin, I wondered why Ed hadn’t fired me. The only thing I came up with was the fact that he was already short one counselor with Merv ousted. He didn’t like me but he couldn’t spare me. Not yet.

  I found Tony in his bunk, burrowed under the covers, trembling with soundless sobs. I felt tightness fill my chest and throat as I stood by the bunk, looking down at him. Then, with a very tired sigh, I gathered together his things and put them all in his near-empty trunk. Across this I laid his bat like a squire laying down the sword of his slaughtered knight.

  I sat down on the mattress beside him. “Tony.”

  Silence. I put my hand on the shaking lump that was his head. “Tony,” I said again, “Pull the cover off your head, Tony. I want to talk to you.”

  “I ain’t goin’!”

  “Tony, take down the blanket.”

  “No, I ain’t goin’!“

  Gently, I drew back the covers. His thin cheeks were wet with tears.

  “Tony,” I said, hoping I’d just imagined the break in my voice.

  “Why’d ya let ‘im?” he asked me pitifully. “Why’d ya let ‘im, Matt? You said I could go t’the ball field.”

  “I know, Tony,” I said. “There was nothing wrong in your going. Mister Nolan just thinks there was.”

  “Then I don’t have t’go?” His thin voice rising hopefully.

  I sighed. “I’m afraid so, Tony,” I said. “That’s what he wants.”

  He drew in a sob jerkily, his chest shaking with it. “Who’s he think he is?” he asked. “King Shit?”

  “Shhh, Tony,” I said. “That won’t help.”

  “I hate ‘im,” he said bitterly. “Who’s he think he is?”

  “Come on, Tony,” I said. “I think we’d better get it over with.”

  “But I like this cabin. I know all the fellas in it.”

  “I know, Tony,” I said. “But I can’t do anything about it. Really I can’t Tony.”

  “No!” he sobbed, tears pulsing from his eyes again. “I ain’t goin’. He can’t make me! The dirty son-of-a—”

  My finger over his lips cut him short. From the mouths of babes, the phrase occurred ironically.

  Then Marty Gingold came in from the dock, dripping lake drops on the floor. He stared at Tony with that brutal frankness of the young. “What’sa matter?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” I said. I got up and blew out a disgusted breath. “Come on, Tony,” I said. “You’re only going next door.”

  “No.” Sullen; without hope.

  “‘S he bein’ transferred?” Marty Gingold inquired interestedly.

  I nodded curtly. “I’m going next door a second, Tony,” I said. “Get your things moved now.”

  “No.”

  “Who we gettin’?” asked diplomatic Marty Gingold. “Hope it’s someone that can play ball.”

  “Shut the hell up,” said Tony.

  “Fungoo,” answered Marty.

  “Oh … shut up both of you!” I muttered irritably as I went out of the cabin.

  I found a disgusted-looking boy flinging clothes into a trunk with furious motions. I glanced at the empty bunk.

  “So you’re the one,” I said. “What’s your name?”

  “Riley!” He flung the words the way he flung his swim suit into the trunk. “What’s yours? “

  “Mud,” I said. He paid no never mind.

  “What’sa matta with this dump anyway?” he asked angrily of the air. “Why the hell do I have t’transfer for some lousy wop!”

  “He isn’t any happier about it than you are,” I said.

  “Then what the hell’s he comin’ for?”

  “Politics,” I said.

  “So what!,” he answered.

  That was when I heard the thumping and the bellowing curse from my own cabin. “Oh….” With a curse of my own, I lunged out the doorway and bounded to the steps of my cabin.

  I found Tony underneath a punching Marty Gingold; a saliva-frothing Tony whose hands were twisted into bone-white claws on Marty’s back.

  “Bite me, will ya!” yelled Marty Gingold, driving a fist into Tony’s head. I dragged his punching pudginess off of Tony.

  “What’s the matter with you!” I stormed.

  “He bit me!” accused Marty.

  “Son-of-a bitch bastid,” Tony said in a low, menacing voice as he got up, “I’ll beat ya brains out!”

  He leaped for Marty and I grabbed him in mid-air, hearing Marty’s returned challenge, “You’n what army!“

  Tony kicked and flailed in my grip, his face twisted with mindless fury. “I’ll cutcha heart out!” he screamed at Marty. “I’ll cutcha goddam heart out!”

  “Tony!” My roar echoed off the ceiling and, I guess, deafened him since I shouted it right into his ear.

  He looked up at me, breathing hard.

  “Tony, stop it,” I said. “Stop it. Calm down.”

  “No kike bastid is gonna—”

  “Tony, shut up!“

  His mouth clamped shut into a living scar.

  “You like to be called a wop?” I asked angrily. The tensing of his face and body gave me my answer. “Wel
l, Marty doesn’t like to be called a kike either.”

  “He made fun o’me,” Tony said through gritting teeth.

  I looked at him for a solemn moment.

  “If he did,” I said then, “it’s just because he doesn’t understand.”

  Later, I took Tony and his belongings to the new cabin and he never said a word through all of it. He walked beside me and obeyed orders and hung up clothes and made his new bunk. But he never said a word.

  3.

  Bob and I had been down in the lodge rehearsing a one-act play. We quit about a quarter to nine and Bob went to Ed’s cabin to play some cards, I headed for my cabin.

  I was about halfway to the ridge on which the senior cabins stood when the sounds reached my ears—scraping shoes, groaning bedsprings and the excited encouragement of boys. I don’t know how I knew, I just did, the second I saw that the fight was going on in Mack’s cabin. I darted up the rest of the hill and into the cabin. As I entered, I saw Tony on the floor, struggling futiley while another kid—I didn’t know him— had his arm around Tony’s neck and was squeezing, gasping harshly— “Surrender? Surrender?”

  Tony could hardly breathe. There was a babbly froth of saliva running across his chin, his lips were drawn back tautly over his teeth. There was blood seeping from beneath the bandage on his wrist and hand. But he wouldn’t surrender.

  Sitting on a bunk edge, enjoying his ringside seat, was Mack.

  “For Christ sake!” I exploded and, bending over, I wrenched the boy’s arm from Tony’s neck. Immediately there were cries of “Hey, whattaya doin’!” and “Get outta here, this ain’t your cabin.”

  The boy tried to kick Tony but I shoved him away and he went sailing into two of his buddies, the three of them landing in a heap on the floor. Tony tried to crawl after him, his face still deranged, but I dragged him up by his good arm and held on to him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” I asked Mack, furiously. “You know damn well he’s got stitches in his wrist!” I held up Tony’s hand. “Look! It’s starting to bleed again!”

  “He started it,” Mack said casually. “He wanted t’fight.”

  “And you let him!”

  “None o’ my business,” said Mack. “If the little wop wants t’fight, it’s his business.”

  “That’s fine,” I said. “Great! You’re gonna help him a lot, an awful lot.”

  “Look.” Mack got up, the casual look fading from his face. “You run your cabin your way. I’ll run mine my way.”

  “Tony’s wrist is in bad shape!” I said. “You had no right to let him fight!”

  “Look.” He came over to me, truculent-faced. “He asked for it. Nobody did a thing to ‘im.”

  “I’ll bet,” I said, feeling beneath my finger tips the terrible shaking of Tony’s arm.

  “Look, you wanna start trouble?” Mack asked.

  “Not right now, Mack,” I said coldly. “I’ll take a rain check on it though.”

  “You got it, boy,” Mack answered. “Any time.”

  “Come on, Tony,” I said.

  “I don’ wanna,” he muttered brokenly, but I don’t think he even knew what he was saying.

  “Where ya think you’re takin’ him?” asked Mack.

  “Out of here,” I said.

  “Big Ed won’t like that,” he said mockingly.

  “Tell him to sue me.”

  I stopped in at my cabin and assigned Charlie Barnett to turn out the lights at nine. Then I put my arm around Tony’s shoulders and we started for Sid’s tent.

  Tony’s chest kept twitching with helpless sobs as he trudged along beside me and I felt his flesh trembling under my hand. I tried to ask him some questions but it didn’t work; he could hardly talk. All I got was a few shaky, pitiful sounds that made no sense.

  We met Sid just as he was coming out of his tent with a flash lantern to make his nightly inspection of the Senior Division.

  “What’s up?” he asked concernedly, seeing us.

  “Sid, you’ve got to get him back to me,” I said. “They’re gonna eat him alive in Mack’s cabin. I found him being choked to death by some little bastard and all Mack was doing was watching. They’ve probably been on Tony’s back all afternoon. Look at him for Christ’s sake!”

  Sid looked. He shook his head restlessly. “Bring him in,” he said.

  The only one in the tent was Barney Wright who was absorbed in a Spalding catalogue. We put Tony on Sid’s cot and Sid wrapped a blanket around his thin shoulders.

  “What’sa matter with the kid?” asked Barney.

  “He’s having it tough in his cabin,” Sid answered and, with a vague nod of his gray-haired dome, Barney Wright returned to his baseball illustrations.

  We sat on each side of Tony, watching him as he stared at the floor with bleak, hope-lost eyes. Sid tried to talk to him but all Tony could do was shiver and sob. So for a long time there was no sound in the tent but that of Tony and the flutter of turning pages in Barney’s catalogue.

  Finally though—how well I remember it—Tony reached up and wiped away tears with a grimy fist, sniffing as he did. I held my handkerchief to his nose and he blew into it weakly.

  “He’s gonna send me away again,” he said then, his voice hollow and spiritless.

  “Who, Tony?” Sid asked him.

  “My pa. He’s gonna send me back t’the stir.”

  “Why, Tony?” I asked.

  “‘Cause I ain’t doin’ so good,” Tony answered, a single tear appearing in his left eye and running down his cheek. I blotted it away. “He said I’d go back if I didn’t do good.”

  “Tony, no one’s going to send you back,” I said. “You’re all right.” “Naw.” Tony shook his head and there was on his face the most helpless expression I’ve ever seen on a child. “Naw. You don’t know ‘im. He’ll put me in the stir again.”

  “Why should he?” Sid asked. “You haven’t done anything.” “I hit ‘im,” Tony said, sniffing. “I hit ‘im and he don’t like that.” I couldn’t talk. I just sat there numbly, looking at Tony’s thin, despair-ravaged face, hearing him answer Sid’s questions. “Why did you hit him, Tony?”

  “‘Cause he hit my ma,” Tony said. “My ma and me was together when my pa went in the army. My ma worked at night and my Uncle Charlie give us some dough too.” “Didn’t your father send money?”

  “Yeah but my ma didn’t use none of it. She put it in the bank. She made enough dough at night. And my Uncle Charlie give her some dough too.

  “What happened when your father came home, Tony?” “He hit my ma and he hit me. He was always cursin’ and gettin’ drunk and hittin’ us. Ma cried at night. I could hear her, lots.” He shrugged, sniffed. “And you hit him,” Sid said.

  “Yeah. He hit my ma in the face and I hit him so he hit me back. Then I went t’the stir.” He bit his lower lip to keep back the sobs. “I’m g-goin’ back again. He’ll make me.”

  “No, he won’t, Tony,” Sid told him quietly. “We won’t let him.”

  “Ya can’t stop ‘im,” said Tony defeatedly. “He d-does what he wants t’do.”

  Later, Sid and I stood over the cot, looking down at Tony as he slept; looking at the tear-streaked cheeks, the light quiver of his thin lips. Then we went out on the porch and sat down on camp chairs, propping our feet on the railing.

  “That poor kid,” I muttered. “Jesus Christ.” I shook my head. “He tears my heart out.”

  Sid shook his head. “He’s confused all right,” he said.

  “What about his story?” I asked.

  “I think he believes what he says. But how much does a kid his age know of the facts? All he sees is his old man going away to war. His life is nice while his mother takes care of him. Then his old man comes back and starts beating him. That’s all he sees. It all sounds so simple.”

  He sighed heavily.

  “Well, it’s not simple; I’d bet money on that. How do we know what happened while Tony’s father was away? Christ,
for all we know, his mother was sleeping with everybody. She worked at night—there’s a key phrase for you. And who’s this Uncle Charlie? I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to have me call all his friends Uncle—Uncle Bill and Uncle Ned and Uncle Mike.” He made a sound that was amused yet not amused. “None of them were related to me. And I’d lay money that Uncle Charlie is no relation of Tony’s either.”

  “And the money in the bank?”

  “Maybe Tony’s mother told him she put it in the bank. But how do we know?”

  I stared at the black woods around us, at the occasional pinpoint flare of fireflies.

  “It just doesn’t figure—the old man going away nice and coming back mean,” Sid went on. “There’s one point Tony doesn’t seem to understand. His old man got custody of him after the divorce. The woman always gets the kid unless she’s definitely proved to be unfit.”

  He exhaled wearily.

  “There’s one other thing,” he said grimly. “All Tony seems to remember is hitting his old man on the back. It’s not as simple as that.”

  There was a long pause and I think I knew what was coming before it came.

  “His old man is the one Tony tried to kill,” said Sid.

  Eyes closing abruptly; shivering. I sat slumped in the canvas chair feeling the cold night wind blowing across my face.

  “That’s great,” I muttered. “That’s just great.”

  It was decided to let Tony sleep on Sid’s cot until morning. Sid said it was all right since there was an extra cot in the tent that night anyway. Mel Kramer, the head of the Junior Division being on his day off. Sid also said he’d do whatever he could to get Tony back in my cabin again.

  As I walked slowly back to the cabin, I kept thinking about Tony. I thought of how he was going to grow up hard; like a flower transplanted from soft to rocky soil—the beauty gone, only the will to survive left. I might get him back in my cabin but, even then, there was only a little more than a month remaining to the season. In that brief time I might go on wrestling with his several devils, ousting some of them perhaps. But, when the summer ended, he’d go back to his father and, in no time, those devils would return, every damn one of them.

  It made me angry. I hated a world where such things could happen to children. Because children were the future. It’s a statement made in a million graduation deliveries, it’s dull, a cliche. It’s true. As I thought that, I sensed something in my mind—like the flare of a torch in deep night. It was something of import, something with a particular meaning for me.