The Night of the Moonbow

by Thomas Tryon

  “He killed her!” Leo shouted again, his eyes filled with terror. “Mother! Mother!” He burst into an agony of sobs.

  “Hush, hush, my dear,” Dagmar said, and, kneeling next to Leo, she took his hands and tried to reassure him. “Come, child, you mustn’t do this.” She looked frantically at I t it/, as Leo scuttled toward the wall like a frightened animal. Hugging his knees, he sank into the corner and buried his head in his arms. His shoulders shook, his sobs mounted hysterically, and he cried out once more “he killed her,” while beyond the hundred windowpanes in the library the thunder rolled down the darkened valley, like tenpins being toppled in a giant’s game of skittles, a chain of echoes dying away one after another into silence, dull, unnatural, and forbidding.

  PART FOUR: The Night of the Moonbow

  And so it had begun, the most besetting calamity that can happen at any summer camp, a solid week of rain; and just when the end of the month saw a troop of fresh arrivals being registered by Ma Starbuck and settled into the bunks reluctantly surrendered by departing campers. This was no way for new boys out to enjoy themselves for the rest of the season to be introduced to camping among the pines of Moonbow; from Virtue through Harmony to High Endeavor the cabins were shut up like so many wooden boxes, each a dark, damp, lantern-lit world of its own, inside which random campers, bored and restless, idly resorted to games of Parcheesi and Monopoly, to gum-card-scaling tournaments and hours-long bull sessions. Cornsilk consumption rose, and there was a brisk trafficking in printed contraband like Film Fun, The Police Gazette, and Pic and Click. Gus Klaus upped his status all along the line-path by reading once again to all comers the smuttiest passages from Studs Lonigan, while the most adventuresome campers, in quest of the bizarre, the prurient, or anyway the novel, ducked into the mephitic atmosphere of Malachi to take a gander at “Big Billy” Bosey exhibiting his boner from under an Indian blanket.

  At intervals dreary, sodden processions of rainwear-clad boys slogged their way about, from lower to upper campus for meals and crafts sessions (though the rain came in through holes in the barn roof), then back again, and a seemingly endless stream of disgruntled campers flowed through Wanda Koslowski’s dispensary, exhibiting swollen thumbs pinched in falling cabin flaps, burns from the careless lighting of kerosene wicks, bruises and contusions from slides in the wet mud, even a sprained ankle (Emerson Bean, ever fortune’s fool, slipped off the lodge porch on the second day of the deluge). And many was the camper obliged to force the hint of a smile in response to the hoary chestnut Pa Starbuck loved to pull on any unsuspecting passerby:

  “I sure hope this rain keeps up.”

  “Why’s that, Pa?”

  “ ’Cause if it keeps up it won’t come down.”

  Ha ha. Joe Miller lived.

  A primary victim of the camp’s darkened mood was Leo, who, unable to comprehend fully the knowledge that had been thrust so blindingly upon him at the Castle, felt more keenly than the others the growing disquiet along the line-path. By the time he had been driven back to the Castle that afternoon in Dagmar’s Pierce-Arrow, Word of what had happened was all over camp, and there was no escape from the jokes about his “Major Bowes nuttiness.” Maybe, they said, Wacko Wackeem should just quit “fiddling around.”

  Secretly, Leo was almost glad about the jokes; anything was better than the boys’ finding out the truth: that his stepfather had murdered Leo’s mother and her friend. Of this, no one must know, never a word. For the rest of his stay at Friend-Indeed he must confide in no one - not even Tiger, who, whatever questions he might have been itching to ask, like the true friend he was, by neither sign nor word indicated that he expected or even wanted to be let in on things. Loyally he took Leo’s part, standing up for him and telling the others to shut up and mind their own business. But his defense only caused Leo pangs of guilt. For what did friendship mean without trust? Yet how could he level with Tiger when doing so would only brand Leo a liar? How could he confess what he now knew to be so: that Rudy the butcher was still doing time in the state pen for manslaughter, Rudy Matuchek, the notorious “Butcher of Saggetts Notch,” whose picture had been in .ill the newspapers?

  At the council fire that night, moved into the lodge because of the rain, he watched the traditional rites and ceremonies, but for him they had now lost their magu. He was nervous and jumpy, couldn’t concentrate. He never even felt the usually warm clasp of hands in the Friendship Circle. He never heard the groans of his cabin-mates when Hap announced that Malachi was still ahead in the competition for the Hartsig Trophy.

  Then Reece made his customary entrance in a puff of smoke - in the doorway of the staff room, with his Indian two-step illuminated, not by the moon but by the great horn chandelier - and as he made his progress among the rows, dispensing the biweekly total of red feathers, Leo’s eyes tracked the bobbing tips of the Warrior’s headdress as closer he came, and closer, his eyes gleaming like red coals, turning at last into the row where the Jeremians sat, moving toward Leo - could he see into Leo’s false heart? - then passing him by (no feather for Wacko, never any feather for him), and disappearing into the shadows of the back hallway. And then Pa had told the Moonbow Tale . . .

  And later, after taps had sounded from the lodge porch, where Wiggy Pugh blew his cornet into the sheeting rain, Leo’s nightmare returned - not the same old dream, but close enough and even more disturbing: There she lay, the Moonbow Princess, atop the rock, the evil medicine man looming over her. The watching Leo yearned to save her, was compelled to make an attempt, yet he could not, his feet were fastened to the ground and would not obey him. Nothing could free him, nothing save her! He stared helplessly as the dark arm was raised, the blade flashed in the light, and descended. The knife was plunged into her heart. But see! The Indian princess was no longer a princess but Emily! And the executioner, Misswiss, had become Rudy in his straw hat and butcher’s apron!

  Such was his new dream, and as he had his first night in camp, he woke up screaming, while his cabin-mates stirred

  - “Wacko Wacko - dreaming again” - and went back to sleep. He lay panting and mutely sobbing, racked with shame and fear. The next night he dreamed a similar dream, and another night after that, and each time he awoke with a cry, each time terrified that he might have said something in his sleep to give away the truth that must at all cost remain safe.

  In the face of these renewed nocturnal disturbances, Reece took it upon himself to have Leo transferred to a bed in the infirmary “for observation.” There, when he awoke screaming, Wanda came padding in with her flashlight to sit beside him in the chair and talk him back to sleep again. He wanted badly to tell her about it; if he did she’d be sure to understand - Wanda seemed to understand about so many things; Fritz, too. But, much as he exerted himself, Leo couldn’t bring himself to say the words. A couple of times he made up his mind to do it and he would get right to the point of starting - then he would clam up, and that would be the end of that.

  When the time came for him to take up his abode in Jeremiah again, his counselor attempted to block his return, and only the intervention of Ma Starbuck kept Leo from being dispatched to a recently vacated bunk in High Endeavor. How could she know that such a move, though mortifying, would have been a relief to him? For, since the excursion to the Castle, of his seven bunkmates five had been barely speaking to him, and when Tiger and the Bomber were elsewhere the air in the cabin fairly crackled with hostility and ill will. If it wasn’t Phil razzing him, or Wally giving him sullen looks, or Dump criticizing him, or Monkey, once so easygoing and friendly, it was Reece himself, always there - even when he wasn’t - watching, measuring, assaying, and judging, as if by piercing Leo’s thoughts with that sharp look he could discover the terrible secret

  Leo strove so desperately to hide, and thereby make his own secret safe. Reece, who knew that Leo knew . . . who would never forgive him for “spying” that day at the icehouse, or for the bloody nose Leo had given him.

  As the rain hammered i
ts monotonous tattoo on the tarpaper roof, sounding hollowly in the interior of the cabin, Leo’s heart would jump at the sound of that instantly recognizable footfall on the porch. Or if by chance they met alone in the Dewdrop Inn, as happened occasionally, Leo, at the trough, would freeze with embarrassment, and his water would dry up as if a spigot had been turned off, while Reece would stare straight ahead, whistling or humming and pretending Leo wasn’t there. And in the night, as he lay in his bunk, eyes open to keep from dreaming, he would stare across at the counselor’s cot, at that blond head resting on the pillow, and it seemed to him that even with closed eyes Reece was watching him, and he would screw his own eyes shut, trying to blot out the scene that no one must ever discover.

  And yet, and yet, it remained, it was always there, waiting to catch him out. He couldn’t get away from it, couldn’t stop seeing it, dreaming it—

  No! Stop it, I don’t want to hear!

  “Not a whore!”

  “What?”

  Reece’s eyes were open now. “What did you say?”

  Then he tossed a look around at the awakened boys as if to say “Didn’t I say so? Nuts ...” Wacko really was wacko.

  During the day he avoided Jeremiah when he could, spending a good deal of his time working on the Austrian village, now almost finished. Because of the leaky roof in the crafts barn, it had been transferred from the Swoboda corner to the warmth and dryness of the lodge, where it was to be permanently displayed on a base specially constructed by Hank Ives. (Several notables, including some aldermen and Dr Dunbar, had been invited to a formal unveiling-and-dedication ceremony, and the local paper had promised to send a reporter and a photographer to cover the story.)

  When he had covered up his work with a sheet and put his tools away, Leo would leave the lodge for Fritz’s cottage, which, while the bad weather continued, unabated, had become among a certain group of campers a refuge from the stultifying atmosphere of their cabins, a place where boys unused to being kept indoors, unused even to one another’s company, older boys as well as Virtue small fry, found themselves mingling together, the members of an unofficial club - the “Katzenjammer Kids” was what Reece Hartsig dubbed them. There might be an impromptu musical program, when Fritz would play records on his Victrola: Enrico Caruso or Rosa Ponselle, or Madame Schumann-Heink singing “Ich liebe dich.” (One recording, a rare treasure, favored over the rest, was a talking disc on which could be heard a conversation between Alexander Graham Bell and Johannes Brahms.) Several of the boys, especially Tiger and Dusty Rhoades, were enthusiastic stamp-collectors, and, deprived of the pleasures of baseball, they spent hours poring over Fritz’s well-worn stamp album with a magnifying glass, exclaiming at its most notable entry, a 1918 U.S. Airmail stamp with the airplane at its center inverted, which had been a present to Fritz from his grandfather. Others - Leo and, unexpectedly, the Bomber - were good at chess, and often as not, while marshmallows hung from wire coat hangers toasted over Fritz’s hotplate, a game would be in progress, with four or five kibitzers following every move of the antique ivory figures Fritz’s father had brought from Hong Kong.

  It was perhaps inevitable that what had in fair weather been the welcome “cultural hub” of camp, in bad weather became the object of envy and rancor; that what had seemed only natural, ordinary behavior - for a few boys to drop by occasionally, during “free periods,” for .1 bit of music, a picture book to page through - now struck chords of jealousy among those campers who were allot ted no share in these activities (though they would have derived little pleasure from them in any case); inevitable that these malcontents and mischief-makers would begin holding meetings of their own, in places where one might least expect to discover them: up in the loft in the Marconi Radio Shop, for example, or at odd moments in the Dew-drop Inn, or hidden in Amos or Malachi or Hosea with the flaps closed . . .

  Oh, it ain’t gonna rain no more no more,

  It ain’t gonna rain no more,

  So how in the heck can I wash my neck When it ain’t gonna rain no more?

  sang the boys, though this ditty was far from reality. Yet, upon occasion, the torrent would let up, and even show signs of clearing, and it was at such a time that Leo, crossing the sodden playing field, noticed a lively crowd of Harmonyites stripped down to their underwear, sliding on a strip of hard-glazed mud. Their satisfyingly wet, dirty sport looked like fun. He would gladly have shucked off his duds and joined them, but he knew they wouldn’t want him. Their very hilarity and high spirits seemed to exclude him from their ranks.

  The song had come from Hosea, and as Leo approached he saw one of the side flaps open and a small figure pop out and trot off toward the cadet unit.

  “Hey, Peewee, wait up,” Leo called. The boy slowed reluctantly, ducking his eyes as Leo joined him.

  “What’s doin’, Peewit?” he asked.

  Peewee frowned. “Nuthin’. And don’t call me Peewit.” “Have you heard anything from your sister? Is she having a good time?”

  “What do you care?” came the cold reply.

  “I was only asking.”

  Peewee’s scowl was fierce. “She ain’t never cornin’ home, not ever.”

  Though Leo felt a pang, he knew better than to believe Peewee’s exaggerations. When the boy started away, Leo reached for him. “Hold on, Elephant, I want to talk to you.”

  “I can’t. I ain’t s’posed t’ hang around with you no more.”

  “Who says?”

  “The guys. You know.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because you hang around with Fritz. And you play dollies with Willa-Sue.”

  “I do not. And what’s wrong with hanging around with Fritz?”

  “He’s a Jew.”

  “So what?”

  “The Jews crucified Jesus Christ our Lord. Fritz shouldn’t be here, this is a Christian camp. Let him go to his own camp if he wants.”

  Leo stared. Who had been putting these words in the boy’s mouth? He glanced toward the cabin Peewee had just left. “What’s going on in there?” he asked.

  “Nuthin’.”

  "Are they having some kind of powwow?”

  Peewee scraped a toe in the mud. “Well-1 . . . sort of,” he said, and squirmed free and ran away into the wet.

  A day later, having gone over to the lodge in search of Oats’s copy of the world atlas, Leo glimpsed Wally Pfeiffer’s back as it disappeared down the cellar stairs. Sneaking down after him, Leo found him in the lower passageway, crouched on hands and knees, peeking through a space in the wall. Leo tiptoed up behind him and listened too. From the other side muffled voices could be heard, fragments of talk and laughter. As Leo leaned close to Wally’s ear, Wally started in alarm, then retreated as il Leo were carrying the plague. When some more sounds were heard from the other side of the partition, Wally fled up the stairs. What was wrong with him? Leo put his ear to the wall, trying to make out what was being said on the other side, then knelt in Wally’s place and put his eye to the crack.

  Commonly used by Henry Ives as his work- and storage-room, the space contained an assortment of carpentry tools neatly arranged above a workbench under a low ceiling. Today, candles stuck in bottles gave off a meager light and the air that blew through the crack smelled not only of paint and turpentine, a bit moldy and fetid, but of cigarette tobacco too. Through the aperture Leo could make out the silhouetted backs of several heads, and in the candle shine he identified the faces of Moriarity, Bosey, and Ratner, along with Phil Dodge and Dump Dillworth; he also identified the voices of others he could not see: Tallon and Klaus - and Monkey Twitchell. What bits of conversation he could grasp through the partition seemed commonplace enough, and yet - had someone mentioned his name? Were they talking about him in there? Pressing now an eye, now an ear to the crack, he strained to see, to catch a word, some hint of what was happening inside, but all he got were tantalizing fragments.

  Then he heard the scrape of footsteps and some louder talk. The meeting was breaking up. Leo
scuttled along the passage and hid behind some barrels tucked away under the stairs, holding his breath as the store-room door opened and a dozen campers filed out, went down the passage, and climbed the steps directly above his hiding place.

  When the coast was clear, he stood up, took a few steps, then jumped back as an arm shot out at him. Fingers grabbed the front of his shirt and jerked him forward so he was staring into the scowling face of Phil Dodge. Behind him stood Bosey, Moriarity, and Monkey.

  “Well, well, look who’s here,” said Bosey with a burlesque leer; “Wacko the quacko.”

  “What are you doing down here?” demanded Phils

  Leo stared, unable to think of an excuse for his presence in the cellar. Finally he pointed to the door to Hank’s storage room.

  “P-paint,” he managed. “I was looking for some paint. For Fritz’s model.”

  “Screw the paint. And screw you, Wacko,” said Bosey. “You better scram out of here if you know what’s good for you.”

  “I bet he’s been listening at keyholes,” Moriarity said, shouldering his way in and jutting out his jaw. “You’re always sticking your nose where it don’t belong. That big potato nose of yours. That big, long, Pinocchio schnozz of yours.”

  He took Leo’s nose between his knuckles and twisted it. “Big nose, huh?”

  Leo’s face heated up and his eyes stung as he tried . to pull away.

  Moriarity laughed and nudged Bosey, standing next to him. “ ’Smatter, can’tcha take it? Big Jimmy Durante schnozzola.” He gave the nose another painful twist, making Leo cry out.

  “That hurts!”

  “Aw, poor baby, he says it hurts. You know something, Wackoff, if I had that nose full of nickels I’d be so rich I wouldn’t ever have to work again. Right, Phil?”

  Phil was quick to agree; he turned to the others. “Come on, let’s leave this spud and get out of here.”

  Abandoning Leo, the four ran noisily up the stairs .uul disappeared. Leo waited until he was sure it was safe to leave, then crept away, feeling lucky he hadn’t got a fat lip for his snooping.