Bless the Beasts & Children

by Glendon Swarthout

  "Two hours, about, each way."

  "Four." Cotton figured out loud. "It must be eleven-thirty. Twelve, one, two, three—and say an hour to do it. Four-thirty we're back here. We have to be back in the sack again by daylight." He began to pace behind them.

  "How about it?" Goodenow asked.

  "We never miss," Shecker said.

  "We have to go," said Lally 2.

  "We're professionals," bragged his brother.

  "Bullcrap," Cotton said.

  Bending, he scooped up another pebble, and winding up, fired a bigleague fastball into the nearest tree. With a squawk and a whoosh, something flew out and over them, flapping wings. It scared them out of a year's growth. They flopped backwards or seized each other or leaped in panic, then recovered themselves and stood about like morons, stubbing the ground and grinning.

  "That's what I mean," Cotton said scornfully. "A bird and we blow our minds. I don't know if we're ready for anything this big."

  "We're not now, we never will be," Teft said.

  "Okay, but compared to this, everything else we've done was peanuts. We could get our ass in a sling on this. I'm serious."

  He had a point. They were silent. Lally 2 turned off his radio. Worms of doubt worked in them. They could do miracles now, but Lally 1 could also recall the first powwow, and Shecker, the raid they had flubbed. Cotton would never forget himself on the pitching mound another time. Under the best of circumstances theirs was a tenuous, temporary association. Apply stress, demand a rational decision, flush a bird unexpectedly from a tree, and they came down with a fast case of the fidgets.

  Box Canyon Boys Camp enrollment was drawn from the affluent metropolitan suburbs of the East and Middle West and restricted, with rare exceptions, to boys between thirteen and sixteen years of age. The fee for the eight-week session extending from late June to late August was sixteen hundred dollars, plus air fare. "Send Us a Boy—We'll Send You a Cowboy!" was the camp slogan. To this end each camper was assigned his own horse to ride and tend. The real means to this end, however, was competition. Boys they might come—immature, overprotected dudes with television for brains and smog for character—but men in the making they would go. Competition would hone them down and tall them up. Colicky yearlings they might have been, but competition and eight weeks and sixteen hundred dollars were guaranteed to deliver the goods their parents had bought and paid for: three dozen whipthin, deadeye, leathergut, spursharp, button-lip Westerners.

  By the end of the first week the enrollment had indeed shaken itself down into six teams in the six cabins. A natural selection of age and cruelty and regionalism and kindred interest had begun the process. Preliminary testing did the rest. Early trials in riding, archery, riflery, crafts, swimming, and field sports soon winnowed the wheat from the chaff, the achievers from the ineffectual. It was to be expected that any summer would single out a misfit or two, an isolate here, an emotionally disturbed there, but Cottons group was unique. They moved in with him because no one else would have them. They were known variously as the Weirds, the Screwups, the Locos. They were the bottom of the barrel.

  When they came to bat in their first baseball game, for example, they failed to score. They couldn't hit a bull in the behind with a bushel basket. When they took the field, Cotton pitched, Shecker caught. Lally 1 played first base, Goodenow third, Teft went to left, and Lally 2 to right field. It was the funniest athletic event the camp had ever seen. Behind the plate, Shecker ducked pitches rather than catching them, claiming Cotton threw too hard and hurt his hands. Easy grounders dribbled through Lally 1 and Goodenow as though through a sieve. Teft misjudged a fly ball to deep left, disappeared into the pines after it, and never returned. Lally 2 dropped a pop fly, sat down on the ground, and sucked his thumb. When the score was 21-0 and the stands hooted, Cotton charged into them, attacked two boys twice his size, got a loose tooth and a bloody nose for his efforts, and the game was over.

  "This is one show I'm not ramrodding," Cotton told them. "We're gonna vote. Think it over—today's Tuesday, the last week, and we go home Saturday, we go home winners. So if we try this, nothing or nobody stops us. So you be sure."

  He gave them a minute, then cleared his throat. "Okay, we vote. Everybody has to be for it. Everybody or we don't go. Okay, all in favor raise your right hand."

  It was unanimous.

  "What about you?" piped Lally 2.

  "Yeah," the others said, "what about it?"

  Cotton came among them, holding back, and they bunched up around him in the dark woods, shivering and uncertain until, that close, they could almost smell his pride in them, his excitement and desire. Then he let them have it, his voice low but so charged with passion that it prickled the hair on their heads.

  "You damn betcha. Let's go, men."

  3

  They champed at the bit. They would have double-timed again but Cotton marched them back along the sand road, telling them to save their hots, they would need them before this night was over, with a finger testing his loose tooth and thinking.

  On the rise overlooking camp he gathered them. "This is like a guerrilla operation," he said, "or a patrol or something. We've gotta plan it and time it and everybody do his part. First, we get dressed—and dress warm, because it's three thousand feet higher up there, it'll be cold as a witch's tit. Bring your flashlights and anything else you want, I guess, if we're taking a truck. Circle, don't let anybody see us. I'll give you guys five minutes to be in the truck shed ready to go. Any questions? Okay, spread out and move out."

  Lally 1 tried to sneak a letter home. It would not have reached his parents in any case, since they had just reconciled and shipped their sons to camp and jetted off for a camera safari in Kenya. Cotton caught him and tore up the letter. Stephen Lally, Jr., had a temper tantrum. Screaming at the top of his lungs he rose from his bed on hands and knees and rocked, butting his head against the wall. The others went to supper without him. When they returned, he had killed all the pets. Goodenow's lizards and beetles and spiders and snake, which he kept in cardboard boxes under his bed, Stephen Lally, Jr., had let out and stomped on the floor. His brother Billy's pets were a hoptoad and a baby rabbit, the latter crippled because one of its hind legs had been partially bitten off, probably by a coyote. The hoptoad he squashed, the baby jackrabbit he cornered and, pretending it was his baby brother, battered to death with a branding iron.

  One by one they deployed through the trees, roundabout the chow cabin to their own. Wheaties sawed wood as raucously as ever. Cotton was first outside again, and chose a route by the cabin of the Comanches, taking cover between pine boughs to evade a boy sleepwalking to the latrine, then behind the crafts cabin to the truck shed where he waited, tugging impatiently at the chin strap of the army helmet liner he had bought in a surplus store in Cleveland. Eventually, one after another the rest lurked into moonlight. They were dressed in what was almost the camp uniform: blue jackets with BC in white letters on the backs, wool shirts under, Levi's slim in the leg and tight in the crotch with concho belt buckles, sweat sox, and cowboy boots. But he could tell them apart by their headgear. It was the fashion that summer to affect freak headgear. Goodenow wore a Hopi headband he had beaded himself; Shecker a golf cap, bass-ackward, given to his father by Arnold Palmer after a round at Palm Springs; the Lally brothers expensive, identical ten-gallons, the wide brims of which, broken by rain and neglect, sagged over their ears; while Teft was made even taller by a billed Afrika Korps cap he had dug up in Greenwich Village.

  As soon as Teft joined them, Shecker went as usual into his James Cagney impersonation, hissing, "Ah, you dirty Kraut! You dirty, dirty Kraut!"

  Cotton shushed him, then noticed Lally 2 had his pillow, which was unnecessary enough, but also that Goodenow had lugged along the buffalo head, which was stupid. "Do you have to bring that?"

  Goodenow pouted. "You said anything we want. And we've only got three more days to keep it."

  Cotton shrugged. He asked Teft which pic
kup to take, the Dodge or one of the two Chevys. Teft whispered it made no difference to him, they all had keys.

  "I didn't know they leave the keys in."

  "I did. I keep an eye on keys. Anyway, who'd take a truck?"

  They settled on the Dodge, stowed pillow and buffalo head and flashlights in the bed, and with Teft in the cab, experimenting clutch and gearshift into neutral, they pushed the truck out of the shed. It was agreed they must push it through the pines and up and along the sand road far enough to start the engine without waking anyone.

  It was easy going past the chow cabin and the counselors' cabins and the Director's, and the five of them managed enough momentum to run the Dodge halfway up the rise, but no further. Teft jumped out to help. Grunting, they pushed heads down, twelve hands against the tailgate, boots delving into sand, but could not toil the truck another inch. Shecker advised starting the engine and barreling away and being long gone before anyone could react. Cotton muttered not to be a damn fool, they'd be followed for sure or the police called or something. They strained against the pickup for minutes it seemed, and as they tuckered out, as despair sapped them more quickly, even, than exertion, one by one they dropped out, winded, till only Cotton's intransigence held the vehicle in place.

  They waited, saying nothing, watching the silent struggle between his will and a ton of iron. He knew they had given up, sensibly, but he would not. His body arched, quivering, bent like a bow between irresistible truck and immovable earth. His helmet liner fell off. They feared Cotton a little at times like these. He was seized. He had fine frenzies. His motor control stuck, he scattershot his aggression at gods too indifferent to defeat, and his refusal to face the hard facts of night and day and weak and strong and life and death and gravity bordered on the psychotic. He was redheaded.

  Competition continued throughout the second week under a point scoring system. Scores of the six teams in riding, archery, riflery, crafts, swimming, and field sports were posted daily on a bulletin board at the chow cabin and totaled Saturday afternoon. That night the first powwow was held in the pines near the rifle range. Around a pungent mesquite fire the boys and counselors gathered, and the Camp Director explained the naming of tribes and the award of trophies. Scores would be kept for the remaining six weeks of the session. At the powwow each Saturday night the teams, to be known henceforth as tribes, would be christened and awarded trophies on the basis of points scored during that week. The highest-scoring tribe would be the Apaches, and with that name and rank would come certain perquisites of achievement—an evening trip into town to see a movie, for instance, and watermelon for dessert. After the Apaches, in descending point order, would follow the Sioux, the Comanches, the Cheyenne, and the Navajo. The name of the last, or sixth-place tribe, he would reveal later.

  He wished to emphasize, the Director said, that the rankings, and therefore the tribal names and trophies, were up for weekly grabs. With enough desire and elbow grease, any tribe might displace any other, and conversely, should it slack off, might fall off a notch or two in the standings. Incentive was thus inherent in the system, as it was in the American way of life. If you wanted to be Apaches badly enough, you could. If you wanted to avoid the ignominy of being low boys on the totem pole, you might. It was up to you. And now, he said, if the leader of the top team, now the Apaches, would step forward, he would present the trophy.

  One of the older, larger boys entered the firelight. From behind a tree the Director brought the head of a huge buffalo bull, with horns and beard, its glass eyes red-balled and fierce, its nostrils distended, and handed it over.

  The Sioux received the head of a mountain lion; the Comanches, the head of a black bear.

  To the Cheyenne and Navajo were given, respectively, the heads of a bobcat and a pronghorn antelope.

  The Director then asked for a representative of the team in last place. Cotton stepped forward and was presented with a large white chamber pot. By camp custom, the Director announced, the team in last place on points was not honored with an Indian name. Instead, to activate its progress up the ladder of achievement, it was traditionally called the Bedwetters.

  Cotton's body unstrung. He raised his head. Teft reached into the cab and set the truck in gear just as Cotton let go of the tailgate, picked up his helmet liner, and put it on.

  "Cotton?"

  "Yo."

  "What say we saddle up and ride into town," Teft suggested easily, carefully.

  "Then what?"

  "I'll get us wheels."

  "How?"

  "Bag 'em."

  "Steal a car?"

  "Rent it. I mean, use one for a few hours and bring it back and leave some coin in it. For gas and mileage." All of them had ample pocket money.

  "You should be locked up."

  But the idea let air into the tension. They crowded in on Cotton, clamoring in whispers, being silly.

  "How 'bout we bag two and race?"

  "You said nothing stops us!"

  "Teft—what a crook!"

  "Let Teft put you in the driver's seat, heh-heh," Shecker cracked.

  "Pipe down," Cotton hissed. "Teft, can you actually steal a car?"

  "Actually. Just call me Clyde."

  They giggled.

  "Pipe down." Cotton rubbed imaginary stubble on his chin. "Bag a car, bring it back. Maybe that's the only way, though. Okay, let's get this damn pile of junk back in the shed."

  It was short work to let the truck roll down the rise, and after that, Teft steering, to push it into its slot. Lally 2 unloaded his pillow, Goodenow the buffalo head, and in a group they headed for the tack barn to saddle up. The camp was lifeless except for the lights in the latrines. Halfway, however, rounding one of the great pines, over the wind sound they heard a screen door squeak open and bang shut. They did statues. Cateyed, they made out the silhouette of a man standing on the stoop of a cabin, and a firefly. It was the Camp Director, smoking a cigarette. They had not known he smoked. He seemed to stare directly at them. They could not move a muscle until the firefly described an arc and the door squeaked open and banged shut again. They went on weak in the knees.

  4

  In the black of the tack barn they fumbled among the baled hay and buckets and horse apparatus for bridles and blankets and saddles, then toted them into the corral. The animals knew them and behaved themselves.

  Cotton cinched up, standing near enough to Teft to whisper. "You sweating this?"

  "Are you?"

  "Damn right. If we hadn't happened to see that sign today and turned off. And then Lally Two breaking out. And the truck. I don't want to blow everything this close to going home. We voted, sure, but they don't know what they're taking on. We could wreck the whole summer."

  "It's wrecked anyway. Unless we swing this."

  Cotton flipped stirrups down. "You were grinding hell out of your teeth tonight."

  "I heard you holler yourself. Have a bad dream?" Cotton skipped that. "I guess we have to go."

  "Yup." They were through the corral gate when Teft held them up with a handwave, signaling to wait, gave Lally 1 his reins, and leaned away on long spider legs. He was gone several minutes, returning, to their surprise, with one of the .22 caliber bolt-action target rifles from the range. Then in single file they led the drowsy horses through the pines around the perimeter of the camp, cautiously over shale and needle droppings to join the sand road, and down the road a hundred yards before Cotton stopped them.

  "Teft, why'd you bring that gun?" he demanded.

  The others chortled. "Let's rob banks, Bonnie, baby!"

  "Kill! Kill!"

  "You'll never take me alive, copper!"

  "You get ammo?" Teft rattled a box of cartridges.

  "I thought they keep that rack locked now," Cotton said.

  "They do."

  Cotton shook his head and checked his wrist. "Eleven forty-eight. We're already behind schedule. Okay, mount up and move it."

  They climbed aboard, reached into jacket
pockets, snapped transistors on, and clucked the string into a trot. They were no cowboys. None of them had been born to the penthouse of a horse. Seven weeks of practice, though, had taught them how to cover the ground even if ungracefully, even if they snubbed the reins too short and rubbed horsehide raw with their knees and the slap-slap of their hind ends on saddles sounded like applause. Motion got their blood moving. The sand road kept their secret. To ride out against the rules, to ride out on a night of moon and mystery with high purpose for a theme and hooves for a beat and a counterpoint of creaking leather and Johnny Cash mooing "Don't Take Your Guns to Town"—to a boy this was wine and watermelon, first kisses and fireworks, liniment and delight.

  The biggest entrance in the history of Box Canyon Boys Camp was that made by Sammy Shecker. He came down from Las Vegas in a limousine with his father, Sid Shecker, the famous comic, who was doing a month in Vegas and a month at Tahoe and decided a summer in the Arizona mountains would be healthier for his son than one cooped up in hotel air conditioning. As the chauffeur attended to the boy's things, Sid and Sammy inspected the camp facilities, Sid puffing a panatela and Sammy biting his fingernails. Sid even stayed for lunch, making jokes about the availability of kosher food in the Wild West, and after lunch did a benefit standup half-hour while Sammy, who was already fat, had seconds and thirds of everything on the menu. All the campers had seen Sid Shecker on television, and although his material was largely lifted from that of other Jewish funnymen, his Arab-motherhood-Nazi-bagel-Brooklyn routines broke them up. Leaving them laughing, Sid went into the kitchen, tipped the cooks $20 each so Sammy shouldn't starve, took a counselor aside and tipped him $50 so Sammy should always have a friend, and offered the Director $100 so Sammy should have the best horse in the corral. This the Director refused, but there were no hard feelings and after spraying several ethnic one-liners for a boffo finish, the comedian roared off in his leased limousine and a chutzpah of dust.

  Around the S-curve, where they had earlier caught up with the runaway, they posted, and came to the wooden, roadwide camp gate. The rest reined in as Cotton, bending, unlatched the gate and rode it open. But they did not proceed. They treated themselves to a moment. It was as though they felt a redhot revelation coming on.