by Thomas Tryon
“What is it? Why was Reece weeping? What did somebody say to him to upset him like that? Fritz, did you say something?”
“Nothing that mattered, Mrs Hartsig. I was thinking, however.”
“Thinking what?” She teetered on her high heels. “Exactly what do you mean?”
“I was thinking that Reece will soon be going into the air force.”
“Yes? We know this.”
“And I was thinking how fortunate Camp Friend-Indeed will be when he has gone. I myself will be very glad to see the last of your son.”
“What? What are you saying?” She clutched fiercely at his sleeve. “How can you say such a thing? Especially after all his father has done for the camp? After all Reece has done?” Fritz looked her in the eye. “What has he dorie, Mrs Hartsig?” he asked quietly.
“How can you ask such a question? He’s done everything, simply everything! He’s set an example, for one thing, he’s given the boys someone to look up to and emulate. Why, wherever they go from here they will take the memory of Reece Hartsig with them.”
Fritz’s shoulders lifted, then drooped. “Let me just say this, please: I consider it just as well for Camp Friend-Indeed that your son should not be back next year. This place does not need men like him among its counselors, no matter how long he has been coming here.”
Joy stopped dabbing at her melting mascara and stared at him. “What nonsense are you talking now, Mr Auerbach?” “He’s thoughtless, your Reece, he’s careless of other people’s feelings. No matter what some may find to admire in his character, flaws are also evident. I would not like to think of campers’ emulating those as well.”
“Everyone has flaws!” Joy retorted, her mouth pulled down in an angry bow, her pale cheeks bedizened with two flaming spots of color. “I’m sure you have your share,
Mr Fritz Auerbach! You should think of that before you go around saying nasty things behind people’s backs!”
“I will be glad to say them to Reece’s face if you wish me to,” Fritz replied with icy formality. “I have said nothing but the truth.”
“What truth?”
“The truth that it is wrong to blame Leo Joaquim for an act he had no part in.”
“If you mean Tiger’s death I suggest you remember that it was Leo’s spider that inflicted the fatal bite.”
“Pardon, dear madame, but that is also untrue.”
“Say, wait a minute, Fritzy,” demanded Rolfe, lunging into the group. “You calling my wife a liar?”
“I am merely trying to point out that Leo is in no way to be held responsible for the tragedy that has happened here. And to. wrongfully blame him is not to be tolerated. I will be leaving tomorrow morning and—”
Rolfe hiked his chin. “Running away, are you?”
Fritz colored. “I assure you, sir, I am not running away at all. I am going to Washington to talk with some Red Cross people who may have knowledge concerning the fate of my family. But while I am gone from this place ...”
“Yes? Go on.”
“If upon my return I should learn that Leo has been mistreated or persecuted for any imagined sins, I would then be obliged to go to Dr Dunbar and inform him of the facts.” “What facts would those be?” demanded Rolfe, his heavy arm cradling his wife’s small form against his side.
“For one, the fact that if it weren’t for an act of carelessness on the part of your son it is highly likely that Tiger Abernathy would be alive today.”
Rolfe blinked; the muscles in his face began to work. “What the hell are you talking about? What act?”
“Leo knows. It happened here in this very cabin one afternoon. Reece insisted on inspecting the bite Tiger had from the spider.”
“Leo’s spider, let’s remember,” said Rolfe.
Fritz shot him a look. “That has nothing to do with it, since the spider was not venomous.”
“Then why did the boy get sick?”
Wanda spoke up. “Because the bite became infected. Reece used a soiled needle to open up his wound.”
“I don’t believe it,” Rolfe protested. “Reece would never do such a thing. He’d sterilize it. A good camper knows that.”
Fritz shrugged. “He did sterilize it—”
“There!” Joy cried. “Didn’t we say so?”
“But then he dropped it on the floor and forgot - he just—”
“Hey, where’d you get a story like that?”
Again Wanda spoke. “From Leo. He was there.”
Rolfe snorted with contempt. “Who do you think is going to believe anything he says? You’re all in cahoots.” “Is that what you think, sir?” Fritz said.
“No!” Joy’s chin quivered and tears came to her eyes as she spoke. “Reece had nothing to do with Tiger Abernathy’s dy— Oh, I can’t say the terrible word! It was an accident, that’s all! Just an accident!”
Fritz spoke quietly but firmly. “Yes, Mrs Hartsig, that is so. But now Leo is being blamed. And he is innocent. Do you think that is fair?”
Joy’s eyes snapped with hostility. “What does that matter? What my husband says is true, you and this -this—!” Without warning she whirled like a demon and rushed at Leo. “Oh, you naughty, vindictive boy! This is all your doing! To tell a story like that! Reece is right, you never should have been brought here. They had no business sending you. You’ve caused nothing but trouble from the day you arrived in camp. You’re the one who’s responsible! You killed Tiger with your nasty spider! You’re the killer if anybody is!”
She rushed out of the cabin onto the line-path, taking pittering little steps up and down, moaning and clawing at the air. Appalled, Rolfe went lumbering after her, making helpless, chastening gestures around her pathetic, bird-like, fluttering form. As the others watched in embarrassed silence, he managed to get her into the car and drove quickly away.
When the field had once more fallen quiet, Leo left the cabin and walked across the line-path into the pine grove, where the tall, silent trees rose beside the lake, and the light filtering down through the boughs was made visible in the dust stirred among the fallen needles by many pairs of feet. In his mind the place seemed just the same as it had been on the evening of his arrival: at a glance nothing had changed, yet now all was changed. He felt intensely the presence of his lost friend, as if Tiger Abernathy stood here beside him as he had on that first evening.
Mr Ives's jitney leaves a lot to be desired. I suggested he call it Bellerophon.
What a show-off Leo had been, a real spud. It was a wonder Tiger had put up with him for a minute, let alone taken him in hand and been his friend. He leaned back on his palms and sighted up to the top of the Methuselah Tree, where the owl still kept its eyrie among the topmost branches. Icarus the flyer.
Icarus.
Icarus?
That might be a good name for the owl. What do you think?
Fingering the hilt of the Bowie knife, Leo thought of the promise Tiger had made him give, to never say die. No matter what, he must, would, stay at camp to the end. As he watched, the owl spread its wings and sailed from its perch. From somewhere over in Indian Woods the dog began to howl again.
***
That evening a memorial torchlight parade was held, vividly recalling to Leo his first evening in camp. Again the lines of boys bearing their flickering brands wound through the pine grove and along the tiers of the council fire, but tonight the trembling flames were in token of a fallen comrade, prayers for a lost friend. And as, holding their torches, the campers joined voices in the old songs, each was suffused with his own personal memories of their dead companion, each in his heart had the hope that somehow at any moment he might come trotting in from a ball game, whistling between his teeth.
The service lasted no more than a half hour, and afterward, Reece in the lead, the boys wended their way silently back to the line-path, to gather in front of Jeremiah for the benediction. A breeze had arisen, making the torches flicker. From the White House came intermittent gusts of music - Le
o, unwelcome among the Jeremians, was there with Fritz and Wanda.
Afterward, people blamed what happened next on moon madness compounded by grief. But in truth there was no explanation for the hot dry wind of excitement that rushed lightly but noticeably among the campers, inciting them to movement and agitation, and more.
Through the window, Leo observed them as they held aloft their torches, the flames flickering in the darkness. Among them he was able to make out Reece and the Jeremians; Hap Holliday was there, too, and some of the bullies from High Endeavor. A dance began, an Indian toe-heel step, and they uttered savage Indian war cries behind their palms - ooooh-woo-wooo, ooooh-wooo-woo — bending low, leaping high, wilder and wilder they danced. Then, some six or eight of them broke free and went racing toward the cottage, where silhouetted in the open doorway stood Leo and Fritz, with Wanda at his side. The boys began yawing and japing at them, poking and lunging with their torches; Leo spotted Hap again, standing on the sidelines, entertained by the mischief.
Then, without warning, a torch was seen to pinwheel through the air and land on the roof, whose newly oiled shingles quickly took fire. A second torch flew up, and a third. Tlie three standing in the doorway ran inside to rescue Fritz’s possessions, but the heat quickly drove them out again, and a rushing, cracking, snapping sound was in the air. The enamel on the shutters popped in ugly blisters. The clapboards buckled with the heat, singing out their protests against the flames, while the little grove of white birch trees became so many torches, writhing in their turn, their foliage burning away until only black poles were left, like the bars of a prison.
By the time the firefighting equipment arrived from Woking Corners, nothing remained except a heap of blackened ruins. Everything was lost: the chess set from Hong Kong, the pewter-lidded stein from Neuschwanstein, the precious album of stamps, including the upside-down airmail special, the record collection, its shellac discs melting and flowing together to form a black viscous puddle of classical composers and that singular novelty Fritz had been so proud of, the voice of Johannes Brahms talking on the telephone with Alexander Graham Bell.
In those waning days of summer Ma Starbuck’s Concord grapes had reached perfection, their gleaming purple jackets dusted with white, like frost or sugar-glaze. But this summer Ma hadn’t put up her usual batch of grape jelly, and so the boys had been allowed to pick an occasional bunch, until the arbor had been largely denuded of its fruit. Now, early in the afternoon, on the last full day of camp, Ma sat with Dagmar Kronborg on the slatted bench beneath its dusty, fading leaves, snapping string beans into an enameled colander. The two women had been commiserating over the recent tragic events, Ma tearfully blaming herself for Tiger’s death, as if she had somehow been remiss in not having looked after him more closely, and Dagmar, more pragmatically, saying that such things happened in life, no one could have prevented it. The terrible fire that had consumed the cottage, however, that was something else. What could they have been thinking of, those boys?
Dagmar’s eyes flashed dangerously as she considered the unfortunate incidents that had led up to the disaster, and the fact that thus far Pa Starbuck had not found it necessary to bring any kind of critical pressure to bear as a result of the boys’ wicked behavior. Moreover, while the police and fire officials had been interrogating both campers and staff, nothing had as yet come of their inquiries. Nor, thought Dagmar, did such seem likely. Even Wanda, when questioned, had been unable to identify any of the perpetrators, though Fritz, never one to take things lying down, had sworn that upon his return he would force the issue with both Pa and Dr Dunbar.
“And Fritz - has he left camp yet?” Dagmar asked.
Ma dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief. As planned, Fritz had departed on the morning bus for Hartford, where he would entrain to New York and Washington to meet with the Red Cross group. Ma described the farewell between him and Leo, who, after Hank’s jitney had taken Fritz away, looked as if he’d lost his last friend.
“Maybe he has,” Dagmar said. With both Tiger and Fritz gone, Leo was more vulnerable than ever, and she deeply regretted the coolness between them.
Ma’s eyes welled with tears again as she confessed that she hardly knew what to make of it all anymore. How could things have gone so wrong? Camp Friend-Indeed wasn’t a place where bad things happened, it was a place for boys to spend a pleasant summer and enjoy themselves. They’d never lost a camper, never had the least bit of trouble -except for Stanley Wagner, who was the exception that helped prove the rule. And now, and now - Tiger, best trouper in camp, dead and buried, and all of Fritz’s things gone up in flames. A dark cloud seemed to hang over the camp, Ma said, and she feared that worse was to come.
Dagmar declared tartly that a man who walked around with his head in the clouds all the time couldn’t expect to avert trouble. “Gar’s either a child or a fool,” she added, then looked up to see the man himself coming into the arbor.
“Welladay, welladay,” Pa said as he lowered himself onto the bench where long ago he had lovingly carved a pair of initials (his and Ma’s, intertwined). Pushing back his hat, he wiped his brow, wagging his head in disbelief, like a farmer at a two-headed cow. “Welladay,” he repeated mournfully.
Dagmar’s lips pinched at the corners; she knew what “welladay” meant - the trials of Job were nothing compared with those that were now to be retailed in her ear: What, Pa dolorously asked, had he done to deserve all that now beset him, whence came these tribulations? And why Tiger, of all boys, to be taken?
“Tiger Abernathy! Now, there was a man!” he exclaimed. “A boy, true, but in time a man. Regrettable loss. Indeed, no one mourns his death more than I. But we can’t bring back the dead, can we? ‘Do not mourn me when I have crossed the bar, for I am mortal clay’ - that’s what that boy’d be telling us if he could.” He passed a hand across his face. “Well, enough, enough. The world’s a garden of roses if we can but forget the thorns.” He sighed again and contemplated the middle distance. A frown creased his brow and he tugged ruminatively at his lip. “Never should have had that orphan kid at camp,” he went on illogically. “Trouble’s his middle name. Spiders."
“Oh, don’t talk such foolishness, Gar!” Dagmar exclaimed. “You ought to be a comfort to the boy, not blame him for what was not his fault.”
Pa sighed and cast his eyes heavenward. “Eee-heh. We have tried, we have endeavored—”
Dagmar was clearly at the end of her patience. “Oh, bother endeavor!” she snapped. “If you’d just kept your eyes peeled, if you’d only paid a little attention, instead of always going in search of a new warbler or titmouse—” Pa’s smile was beatific. “Dagmar, I confess it, when I am with the birds, I am one with my Maker. As I tell my boys about our feathered friends—”
“Yes, your boys, your boys, but not the one boy,” Ma put in. “Dagmar’s right. I’ve got bad eyes, it’s true, but it’s not me who don’t see, Garland Starbuck.’
Pa stared at her, taken aback by this unexpected outburst. “Why, Mayree,” he began with some consternation, only to be cut off.
“Never mind the talk. You know as well as I do Leo didn’t cause Tiger’s death.”
“And if he didn’t, he’s still a mischief-maker. Look-at what he wrote in that journal of his. And putting on the Buffalo Bill War Bonnet the way he did and prancing around in it. Why, it’s like spitting on the flag.”
Dagmar moved her torso around inside the jacket of her blue suit, too hot for the weather. “Oh, be quiet, Garland, for pity’s sake. If I hear another word about your precious Buffalo Bill I shall lose my patience.”
“Oh, never do that, my dear,” Pa expostulated mildly. “The great man presented me with that headdress with his own two hands. It was the greatest day of my life, the very greatest. Why, I remember the look in that old Indian fighter’s eye—”
“Oh, Pa ” Ma looked at him with a baffled expression. “Must you go on so?”
Pa hiked his chin. “Why not? I pride myself on
possessing such a memento.”
“Oh, stop it, can’t you?” she said, at the end of her patience. “You may possess that bonnet, but it never came from Buffalo Bill. And don’t look at me like that. You know perfectly well Buffalo Bill never gave you a nickel in change, let alone the time of day.” She turned to Dagmar and explained. “It’s just a story, just one more of his fanciful tales to tell to the boys, it’s no more true than his moonbow tale.”
Dagmar straightened in her seat. “You mean it was all made up? About the bonnet?”
Ma nodded sadly. “Yes. All made up.”
Dagmar was shocked. “Are you saying that boy was sent to Scarsdale over a fake?” She glared at Pa. “What a fraud you are, Garland Starbuck!”
“Eeee-heh.” He countered this accusation with his characteristic wheeze. Then, as though coming out of a reverie, he gazed at his wife with brimming, reproachful eyes. “It was a good story, May-ree. The boys always liked it.”
“But it was a lie!” Dagmar exclaimed.
“I don’t see where’s the harm in a bit of exaggeration. Everything in life can’t be true, can it? It can’t all be real. Sometimes a little story eases things along. Truth’s not the only think makes a man happy.” He furrowed his brow and gave Ma a small, wistful smile. “If I am wrong, I hope I may be forgiven.”
He gazed entreatingly at both women, then heaved himself up, jerked his head round, and ambled off.
As he headed for the house, Leo emerged from the office, shading his eyes as he peered into the sun. Dagmar got up suddenly. “Well, I’ll be off as well,” she said crisply. She kissed Ma, and, tucking her bag under her arm, she marched away, meeting Leo halfway between the office and the arbor. His face was pale and pinched. “If you’re looking for Ma, she’s over there,” she said. “Try not to upset her more than she is.” She unsnapped her bag and took out a bill. “Here’s a dollar for you. Come, take it and don’t be foolish.”