A Fistful of Fig Newtons

by Jean Shepherd

  The treasure hunt was the traditional high point, the crowning event in the panoply of camp life. By now, we were scarred, mosquito-bitten, smoke-blackened veterans of almost four weeks on the shores of Lake Paddachungacong. The hunt began with everybody in camp–Beavers and Chipmunks alike–gathered in a huge circle around the flagpole. A tremendous campfire lit up the ring of faces with a flickering orange light. For the past week, the treasure hunt had been the number-one topic of conversation. Now, here it was–zero hour. The heat from the roaring flames blossomed the festering blotch of poison ivy under the thick coating of calamine lotion on my back. It was the darkest night we’d had since coming to camp. No stars, no moon, just the pitch black of the Michigan woods. The lake had disappeared with nightfall and become a black, sinister void.

  At the base of the flagpole, in the center of the ring, Colonel Bullard swept us all with the gaze of imperious command. Across the circle, I could barely make out the stolid bulk of Dan Baxter skulking behind Jake Brannigan, who was whispering to his circle of veteran Beavers. The light glinted on their golden badges of rank. I adjusted my Chipmunk cap, setting it squarely on my head. It was going to be a long night. I heard Schwartz chomping nervously on a malted-milk ball next to me in the darkness. All around me my fellow Chipmunks waited for the starting gun.

  “It’s a perfect night for the treasure hunt, eh, men?” The swagger stick slapped smartly for punctuation. Beavers and Chipmunks shifted expectantly. “As you doubtless know, the treasure hunt is our yearly competition between the Chipmunks and the Beavers. And the Chipmunk or Beaver who unearths the concealed Sacred Golden Tomahawk of Chief Chungacong will bring eternal honor to his lodge. All members of his lodge will receive the Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee Woodsman Award. My wife, Mrs. Bullard herself, designed this handsome badge. The winners will deserve their award for their valiant performance in the deep woods!”

  A current of fear zipped up and down my spine as he said “the deep woods.”

  “Now, Captain Crabtree, issue the secret envelopes. And good luck to you all, men.”

  The colonel saluted Crappo, who led his crew of lieutenants around the circle. The envelopes glowed dead white in the blackness of the night. Each lodge had elected one kid who would accept the envelope and act as leader, a purely honorary title, since leadership was not a strong point among the Chipmunks. We had elected Schwartz to represent Mole Lodge.

  “Stupe! Get out there! Do something!” whispered Flick from somewhere back in the crowd. Schwartz, beads of sweat popping out on his forehead, lurched forward. The Tank handed him the envelope.

  “Give ’em hell, kid!” Biggie slapped Schwartz on the top of his beanie with a tooth-rattling smack and passed on to the next lodge leader.

  We knew the rules, which said that we couldn’t open the envelope until the signal. After that, every lodge was on its own, and the one to come back with the Sacred Golden Tomahawk was the winner. Each lodge had been supplied with an official Boy Scout flashlight to help us follow the clues in the envelope–clues that would carry us, in the dead of night, through the wilderness and straight to the treasure. Lieutenant Kneecamp (better known as “Peecamp”) tossed a bundle of branches onto the fire. It roared and crackled, sending sparks shooting off into the blackness.

  “Ready, boys? Remember, play the game well.” Colonel Bullard’s hand shot skyward. He clutched a gleaming silver automatic.

  “ONE!”

  Schwartz sniffed loudly.

  “TWO!”

  Jake Brannigan, across the circle, crouched like a sprinter.

  “THREE!”

  BANG!

  The circle dissolved into a maelstrom of stumbling kids. The Beavers, with the craftiness of veterans, immediately melted into the darkness and were gone. Then Jaguar Lodge fled whooping off and disappeared into the woods. Schwartz stood there tearing frantically at the envelope.

  “Come on, Schwartz! What the hell’s in that thing?” somebody yelled. In his frantic haste, Schwartz ripped the envelope down the middle, tearing the clue into two neat halves that fluttered to the ground. Struggling to turn on the flashlight, I felt my thumbnail split back to the knuckle. Bodies hurtled past us. Schwartz and the fat Chipmunk scurried about in the blackness on their hands and knees, looking for the torn clue.

  “Gimme some light!” Schwartz grunted. I felt his hand grasping my Keds.

  “Leggo my foot!”

  “Shut up!”

  The light glared forth. Quickly we scooped up the two halves of paper. Schwartz squinted at the typewritten sheet and began to read:

  “ ‘Into the dark …

  This is no lark …’ What the heck’s a lark?” he asked.

  One of the Moles answered, “Some kind of bird. Come on!”

  “ ‘Due north by the wall …

  Past Honest Abe’s work …

  You cannot shirk …

  Straight o’er and up Everest …

  ’Neath the oldest one …

  Only the squirrel knows.’ ”

  “Is that all there is?” asked Kissel.

  “That’s it.”

  We looked blankly at each other.

  “Which way is north?” I asked.

  “That way.” Flick pointed past the chapel.

  “Let’s go!”

  We charged up the path. Almost immediately, the blackness was so total that I had the sensation of running upside down on the ceiling of a black room. The others clumped and crashed around me.

  “Hold it, Schwartz!” There was something wrong with the flashlight. It kept going off and on.

  “My shoe came off!” wailed Flick. “Where’s the light?”

  We found his shoe and got it back on.

  Mole Lodge was beginning to fall apart.

  We examined the note again.

  “What’s this ‘wall’ stuff?” Schwartz croaked.

  “I don’t know,” someone said.

  “Well, let’s go north till we hit it.”

  That seemed like a good idea.

  “Where’s north?”

  “Why don’t we look for some moss?”

  “Moss?”

  “Yeah, moss. It always points north.”

  We scrounged around in the poison ivy, looking for moss on a tree trunk.

  “Hey, you guys, here’s some!” Flick sang out excitedly. Sure enough, he had found moss at the base of an oak tree.

  “It goes all the way around!” Another theory shot to hell.

  “Well, it’s kinda thick on this side.”

  We charged off once again, crashing through the dense underbrush. Branches slashed at my face; brambles and sharp twigs gouged and ripped. I began to feel a deep, mounting fear. I had no idea where we were or what would happen next. Schwartz, who was thrashing around ahead of me, was now carrying the light. I could hear Flick fall heavily from time to time behind us.

  Up ahead, the flashlight suddenly vanished, along with Schwartz. A second later, the ground disappeared beneath me; I was in free-fall. I clawed at the air, then hit hard, rolled over and over down a steep hill, and finally hit Schwartz with a grunt. Other bodies landed on top of us, squirming and writhing. Mole Lodge lay in a heap at the bottom of a ravine. Scratched, bruised, scared, we huddled next to a huge ghostly boulder. The flashlight still worked, but it was growing dimmer. The silence of the woods was total. We spoke in hoarse whispers.

  “What do we do now?”

  Nobody answered.

  Finally: “Where’s Skunk?”

  For the first time, I noticed that the fat Chipmunk was no longer with us.

  “He musta gone back to the lodge,” Flick whispered.

  “He’s probably back there eatin’ malted-milk balls.” I felt a twinge of envy.

  Schwartz switched off the light to save the batteries. Once again we huddled in the darkness.

  Crack! Crunch! Oh, my God! Something was coming at us.

  “Turn on the light, Schwartz!” Flick squeaked.

  The light flar
ed on, its beam quivering in Schwartz’s hand. There, in the feeble ray, stood Jake Brannigan. Behind him a couple of other Beavers lurked, dark blobs against the trees. Brannigan flashed a crooked smile.

  “You little stupes are makin’ enough goddamn noise in the weeds here to scare the crap out of every raccoon within fifty miles. Right, boys?”

  His toadies guffawed behind him. Now we’re gonna get it, I thought. This is it! Mole Lodge is about to be annihilated by the Brannigan Gang. I inched backward.

  “Hey, Dan,” he said over his shoulder, “tell these boobs who’s gonna win that golden hatchet.”

  Dan snorted derisively, spitting out a long stream of dark brown fluid.

  Jake’s look of scorn softened for a moment in what might pass in another man for pity.

  “You guys lost? Lemme look at yer goddamn clue.” He grabbed the pieces from Schwartz’s hand. I was surprised he could read.

  “I’ll give you dumb kids a break. This ‘Honest Abe’ crap must be about that rail fence up thataway.” He pointed up the ravine. “Now, get outa our way.”

  We did not have to be told twice. Mole Lodge galloped up the ravine. The last sound we heard was Jake’s dry cackle; and then we were alone.

  “Boy, that was kinda nice of him, helpin’ us out like that,” said Flick.

  “Sure was,” I answered, too relieved at having been spared to question Jake’s unaccountable fit of compassion.

  We struggled against vines, falling rocks, and tangled undergrowth. And a few minutes later, sure enough, there was a fence. It stood ahead of us, gray and sagging.

  Schwartz darted under the top rail. I followed. Close behind me came Flick and the other Mole Lodgers. It was even darker here than back in the ravine. We inched along the fence blindly, gropingly. The ground seemed to be rising steeply. We struggled upward, each wrapped in his own fear. Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee seemed millions of miles away. There was only us and the blackness. Our flashlight had faded to a birthday-candle glow. We clung together in a tiny knot. Schwartz held the light, futilely pointing it ahead. I was just pulling an angry thistle off my knee when Schwartz, close by, sucked in his breath hard and sharp. The sound he made was like no sound I had ever heard anyone make before–a kind of rushing, gurgling gasp.

  There, in the glow of our flashlight, loomed a huge, monstrous live Thing!

  “Bruuuuuuuufffff!” it snorted.

  “EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYYYAAAAAAAA AAAAA!” I heard a deafening scream. It was me!

  Flick shot back past me like a cannon ball, moving with maniacal speed, sobbing rhythmically. I felt the ground pounding beneath my shoes. Schwartz kept pace with me in a curious clawing scrabble. He was running, pushing himself forward with whatever touched the ground–his head, his knees, his elbows, and occasionally his feet. He yelled hysterically over and over: “THE THING! THE THING! THE THING!”

  As the cry was taken up by other voices in the darkness, I heard crashings ahead, to the left, to the right, behind, all around me. I ran even faster.

  Flick gasped between sobs, “Jake done it! Jake done it! He sent us to the Thing!” Even as I faced certain death, I realized that Jake Brannigan had planned it all.

  I heard muffled thuds as bodies collided with tree trunks. Sweat and tears poured down my face. My eyes burned. My head throbbed. My lungs were ready to burst. I pained from a million cuts and bruises. Ahead, I became dimly aware of a faint glow. My knee crashed against a tree. I ricocheted off a stump. I hardly felt it. I got up and ran on.

  Suddenly, it was all over, like some nightmare that ends with a pail of water in the face. We broke into a clearing at blessed Nobba-WaWa-Nockee. I never thought I’d see it again. All around me, battered and torn Chipmunks, their eyes rolling wildly, pursued relentlessly by the Thing, popped out of the woods. Even a few hysterical Beavers raced by. We were safe. Miraculously, though it was covered with mud and stickers, I still had my Chipmunk hat on.

  Old Leather Ass stood there glaring at us, his face grim in the flickering light from the campfire.

  “This is a sorry spectacle! What’s this nonsense about a Thing? What Thing? There’s nothing in those woods but the gentle creatures of the forest–right, Crabtree?”

  Crabtree nodded, but you could tell he wasn’t sure.

  “This is the first year in the history of Nobba-WaWa-Nockee that no lodge has returned with the Sacred Golden Tomahawk. I am appalled at the craven behavior—”

  “Excuse me, Colonel Bullard, sir. I beg to differ, sir.”

  From somewhere off to my right, a reedy voice broke in. The colonel, who was not accustomed to interruptions, slapped his thigh angrily with his swagger stick.

  “What’s that?”

  “Excuse me, Colonel, sir. Is this your sacred golden hatchet?” The voice was drenched with sarcasm.

  A figure stepped out into the circle of firelight. Great Scott! It was Skunk! His Nobba-WaWa-Nockee T-shirt was crisp, his green beanie square on his head, his thick glasses gleaming brightly. He held something in his hand.

  “By George, that certainly is the Sacred Golden Tomahawk. SPLENDID!”

  “Thank you, sir. When my fellow members of Mole Lodge childishly panicked, I simply took matters into my own hands. It was quite interesting, actually, although ordinarily these idiotic games bore me.”

  The camp was in an uproar. Mole Lodge had come through!

  That night, back in our snug cabin, covered with iodine and Band-Aids, Schwartz sidled up to Skunkie and asked him where he had found it.

  “In the Longlodge, of course, in the case where it’s kept on display all year round. It was simple deduction that they’d try to mislead us into believing the tomahawk was buried somewhere in the woods, rather than right here in camp in plain sight of everyone. The clues led me straight to it. If any of you had ever bothered to read Poe’s ‘The Purloined Letter’ …”

  We didn’t know whether to put him on our shoulders or throw him into the lake.

  The next Saturday, our last morning in camp, was bright with golden sunshine, turning the lake into a billion flashing diamonds. After our last breakfast, the Chipmunks and Beavers, in two platoons, assembled on the tennis court. Colonel Bullard addressed us:

  “You Chipmunks have come through magnificently. And now for the moment we have all awaited. There have been good times and difficult times, but we have come through it with clean bodies, clean minds, and stout hearts. I now pronounce you, with the power vested in me by the Great Spirit of Chungacong, full and honored members of the Sacred Clan of BEAVERS.”

  The ex-Chipmunks cheered and, in the hallowed tradition of Nobba-WaWa-Nockee, flung our hated Chipmunk caps into the air. A storm of green beanies rose over the tennis court.

  A moment later I zipped up my crisp new blue Beaver jacket with its golden emblem bright over my heart. We sauntered back toward Mole Lodge, over the gravel path, past the administration building. We had three hours to kill until the buses picked us up and took us back to civilization. There they came now, wheezing up the rutted road. I saw a row of pale, staring faces all wearing bright new green Chipmunk beanies. Casually, we swaggered past the rec hall. Someone nudged me.

  “Lookit that buncha babies.” It was my fellow Beaver, Jake Brannigan.

  “How ’bout that short little twerp?” I barked cruelly. “Let’s throw him in the crapper.”

  “Nah,” Jake answered, spitting between his teeth. “That’s too good for the little bastard. How ’bout a cow flop in his soup?”

  “Not bad, Jake,” I answered, as we set out for the nearest meadow. “These kids are gettin’ worse every year.”

  “Let’s throw him in the crapper!”

  “… a cow flop in his soup.”

  How’s that for Utopia, gang? Did you notice that the little buggers immediately began torturing the incoming rookies just as they had been harassed in their day?

  True, true, the minute one generation discovers the first wrinkle, it relentlessly attacks the upcoming gene
ration as being callow, lacking in morals of any sort, hopelessly dumb. Going back to the days when men squatted in caves, eating clams, it has been so. I can just see a barrel-chested Neanderthal glaring across his flickering fire at a skulking teen-age Neanderthal and grunting:

  “Get off your lazy ass. You never do anything around the cave. You kids don’t know what it was like when I was your age. Why, we …”

  The line in my lane of the tunnel began to move again, slowly, tentatively. I laughed out loud, picturing the scene in the cave. I could almost smell the charred bones of elk, the same dampness of this god damned tunnel.

  I stuck my head out of the window and yelled at the next generation, ahead in their Charger.

  “Move it, you dumb boobs. Get your thumbs out!” I was carrying on an ancient tradition.

  We ground to a halt. My mind searched for another idea to worry, to play with. Boredom was setting in. I examined the interior of my car minutely. The headliner, the sun visor, my little world of gauges and locked doors, sealed in a bathysphere under the mysterious waters. How many hours of my life had I spent alone in this metal cocoon, my only companion a fevered imagination?

  Marcel Proust Meets the New Jersey Tailgater, and Survives

  “Marcel Proust, the great French Impressionist writer, had a cork-lined room built so that he could write in absolute concentration. This cork-lined room cut out all sounds from the outside world so that he could concentrate and relive his past, which he put into his finely detailed works.”

  The pasty-faced TV professor cleared his throat nervously and blinked at the camera with a noticeably spasmodic ticlike wink. He cleared his throat again, and continued–his voice crackly like dry onionskin paper that’s been left in the sun too long.