by Chris Adrian
The first game was not the turtle race—that was second—but the candy-grab, in which Roman and Spartan Nits and Novices raced in relay a hundred yards to hurl themselves at a ten-foot-high pile of sawdust full of secret candy, burrowing for thirty seconds, timed from the arrival of the first runner, and bringing back as much as they could grab to the team pile, which would be weighed and tested against the other team’s pile at the end of the race. The whole enterprise yielded few points to the winning team, but as the opening event it was enthusiastically attended and the spectators routinely screamed themselves hoarse.
Jemma started the relay, running against Tiffany Cropp, the youngest daughter of an intensely competitive Roman family whose sisters were famous for their beauty, speed in the water, and the violence with which they wielded their field-hockey sticks. Tiffany, at age seven, was fiercer even than her sisters, though still ugly, like they’d been when they were her age. She had been known to find girls she lost to in the Olympiad and beat them till they cried. This made Jemma nervous.
“I’m going to win,” she said, as they were waiting for the gun to sound. “I’ve got new shoes.” Jemma looked down at them, keds so white and spotless they almost hurt her eyes. Her own shoes, red-white-and-blue and dusted with stars, were holdovers bought special for the previous year, and though too big then, now they pinched.
“My mom has a big silver crown,” Jemma said, not comforted or inspired by the statement, but it was all she could think to say.
“Your mom is smelly,” Tiffany said quietly, crouching down and touching her fingers to the grass like a professional runner. “Ass-smelly,” she added. Then the gun sounded, and they were off, Jemma flying along on the encouraging screams of her brother and parents, which she thought she could make out quite distinctly among the larger encompassing screams of the crowd. She beat Tiffany to the pile; the counselor called the start of the thirty seconds as soon as her fingers touched it, and Jemma felt like she had been gathering candy forever when she heard Tiffany’s little body collide against the sawdust with a solid thud. The layers of dust had been sitting all night; they were warm on the surface but cool inside. Jemma very much enjoyed the feel of it against her hands, and the lovely clean smell, so much that she had to concentrate very hard to keep from being distracted from her task. This early in the race the candy was easy to find; she grabbed the hardly buried chocolate flags and lollipops and gumballs and sour bombs and piled them in her pockets and, when those were full, held out her shirt to make a basket. She should have known better than to look over at Tiffany, who was already shrieking in triumph, but she did. Her pockets were overflowing and she had a gigantic candy bosom, and even as Jemma watched she withdrew a foot-long tootsie roll from the sawdust, too long for her pocket or for her shirt. In less than five seconds she tied it in her hair. Then the bell sounded and she ran off, letting her hand push a little sawdust in the air as she turned away from the pile. It flew toward Jemma’s face but it missed her.
Jemma beat her back to the line of children waiting to run, and slapped Martin Marty’s hand two or three seconds before Tiffany reached her team mate, but Tiffany had gathered a whole four ounces more candy, the full weight of the tootsie pop that she shook dramatically from her head, the last thing to fall on her pile. “I told you,” she said to Jemma, without a hint of charity, and indeed the Spartans went on to win the candy grab. Jemma and her team mates watched bitterly as the candy was distributed among the victorious team, with not a single sour jelly for the losers, even from what they’d gathered themselves.
Jemma did better in the turtle race, thanks to Mr. Peepers, in whom her faith had not been misplaced. He’d even been hard to catch; that’s how she knew he would be a winner. In late June turtles started disappearing from the woods around the reservoir. Jemma had only started looking the previous week, and was lucky to find somebody so fine so late, when all that were left were the aged and crippled and the permanently numbered turtles of years past. Mr. Peepers won his heat and placed third in the whole competition, beating Tiffany’s turtle, #22, in the first race. Tiffany paced her turtle during his whole run, straddling his lane and shouting at him incessantly until he began to wander in circles, and then simply lay down and withdrew into his shell.
The morning passed with the lemon-eating contest, the pogo-jousts, honeydew bowling, the Nit-toss, the Aspirant kick-ball game, and finally, the event that closed the morning games, coming well after morning tea but before the afternoon barbecue, the Great Red Rover. Every class lined up on the field, every child wore a number to be called by, since the group was too large for everyone to be known by name. It was a narrow Spartan victory, though the Cropp sisters remained an unbroken chain almost till the end. Tiffany, Alex, and Meg, they were lined up all in a row, and there was a quality to their voices as they called out your number that was almost electric and certainly disheartening. Jemma ran deliberately far to the left of them when she was called, and did nothing to help earn her team’s victory. She bounced right off the chain and landed on her back. But a big Spartan boy, Martin’s brother Jonathan, broke the Roman chain in the end. From prison Jemma saw Tiffany turn and bite herself softly on the shoulder, an expression she saved for her most furious rages.
Jemma stuffed herself with fried chicken and polished her old shoes with her greasy fingers, shared candy with some congenial Romans, lay in the grass with Rachel Rauschenburg and watched Calvin and some other boys roll the spare watermelons down the hill, and wore, briefly, her mother’s crown. At one o’clock she joined the march into the woods to liberate her turtle. Halfway there she stumbled on the mangled body of number twenty-two. He was belly down in the grass, half his shell caved-in, broken in the lines of the tiles. Jemma shielded Mr. Peepers’ eyes and walked on, knowing already, long before she saw the blood on her shoes, that deadly-kedded Tiffany had killed him for losing.
Nit, Novice, Aspirant, Myrmidon; Footpad, Freshman, Sophomore, Junior; Senior, Bronze Senior, Silver Senior, Gold Senior: every summer-camp class had their primary event, the one they trained hardest for, and the one that if won would yield the most points. The Nits had their toss, the Novices their turtle race, the Aspirants their tetherball tourney, the Myrmidons their soccer match, and the Footpads, Calvin’s class, their big lacrosse game. Jemma sat in the aluminum bleachers between her parents and watched her brother running back and forth across the field. She knew him through the obscuring helmet because his name was on his jersey and his stick was painted neon green.
She did not entirely understand the game. The carrying and throwing of the ball, the excited running about, the positions of the goals and duties of the goal keeper; these made sense, but she could not figure why it wasn’t more acceptable to beat the opposition with your stick. She wanted to see a duel, sticks swinging and blocking, boys ducking and leaping, and if two of them happened to do it balanced on a floating log in the river, it would be all the better. But all the checking was unofficial. The game paused now and then when one or the other coach decried a perceived foul, and gathered the wronged boy to him to examine and comfort him, and exhort him to vengeance and greater violence.
Calvin was good. He had been practicing all summer, in camp and evening team practice and on his own, throwing the ball against the wall of the house while Jemma sat in the driveway and watched, catching the ball again no matter how hard he threw it, sometimes without even seeming really to look at it. Twice Jemma saw him do it with his eyes closed; the third time the ball struck him in the head and knocked him on his back, so their mother, watching from the porch, made him put on his helmet even for solo practice. He scooped up a lost ball just at the Spartan goal and darted away with it. Jemma’s wrists made sympathetic cradling motions as he ran down the field. He’d tried to teach her to cradle the ball, but she failed to master it, and every time she’d tried to run with the ball it dropped out of the net and rolled away. Once she had to chase it all the way down to the Nottingham’s house.
Calvi
n passed the ball to Rachel’s sister Elena, the only girl on the Spartan team. She took it most of the way toward the goal, passing it briefly to Jonathan Marty when she was threatened by big Dickie, one of the two hulking Niebuhr brothers on the Roman team. Both hands on his stick, he rotated the empty end toward her head, and Jemma’s heart leapt. She ducked and rolled, taking the ball back from Jonathan just as she came to her feet. Romans converged from all over the field, a few pursuing her but most coming in from her front and her flanks. Just before she reached the crowd she made a long pass to Calvin out on the left edge of the field, who only had to dodge a couple Romans, pokey ones who had not been able to keep up with Elena’s pursuit. He brought the ball across his shoulder and slammed it into the goal.
The cheering and booing were so loud that Jemma had to cover her ears even while she shouted herself, so her screaming voice was oddly magnified, and echoed in her head. Her parents jumped up and down, making the aluminum rattle and flex, her mother waving her plastic torch and her father his red-white-and-blue sword-cane. It took a few minutes for the crowd to settle. Every event of the day was followed with care, but some, like the lacrosse game and the big Senior swim, drew special attention, and caused especially heated arguments. Exciting games were particularly divisive, and this was one of the most exciting pee-wee lacrosse games ever played on the reservoir field. Roman and Spartan points alternated in a way that would have seemed polite if not for the increasingly egregious checking, enough to sate even Jemma’s innocent bloodthirstiness. The teams were tied just as the clock was about to run out, when Calvin scooped up another dropped ball and would certainly have scored a winning goal if the Niebuhrs hadn’t ganged up on him in a way that would lead people to suspect they’d been given a specific assignment from their coach to take him down. One knocked his stick just after the other checked his belly; either blow alone he could have withstood, but the combination caused him to lose the ball. It was picked up by Ronnie Niebuhr, who made a long pass to another Roman close to the Spartan goal. The Spartan goalie, distracted by the injustice unfolding before everyone’s eyes but the blind referee’s, failed to block the shot, and the Romans won the game by a single point.
“What does it mean to wear this hat and these pants and wield this cane, if I can’t get justice for my son?” Jemma’s father asked, first of the referee, who would not call a foul, and then of the sky. Jemma participated in the bitter chants and the foot stomping, and shook a bouquet of rockets threateningly at the other side of the field, and muttered along with everyone else as the crowd broke up and people made their way down to the river for the corn roast.
Jemma walked with her brother and Elena. The two players carried their sticks over their shoulders, their gloves and jerseys slung off the end of the sticks. Jemma carried both helmets, clapping them softly together as she walked.
“The Romans are going to pay,” Elena said.
“Yeah!” said Jemma.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Calvin.
“Not really,” said Jemma.
“It was a big cheat,” said Elena.
“The worst ever,” Jemma agreed.
“It was just a game,” Calvin said. “It doesn’t matter much when you compare it to… a big lion running around and eating people.”
“Or an elephant,” said Jemma. “Who shmooshes you.”
“It’s just not fair,” Elena said, and then added, “Damn it.” It sounded weird, not like when Calvin said it. Jemma could tell she was not an experienced curser.
“Have you ever thought,” Calvin asked, stopping and standing just as they were passing through one of the sand traps protecting the second hole, “if we forgot who was a Spartan and who was a Roman, then we could just sort of turn around and take over.”
“That wouldn’t make it any more fair,” Elena said, and Jemma wondered aloud if the turtles were having a reunion party.
“Maybe it would,” Calvin said. He started walking again, using the end of his stick to push himself up when he made the big step out of the trap and onto the green. “We could have rushed the stands, both teams. Then we could have taken over.”
“My daddy said he’s going to sue the referee.”
“Sue him good,” Jemma said. “Sue off his pants.” Calvin was quiet then, and the two girls were quiet too as they walked the final blocks down to the river beach. Calvin was smiling every time Jemma looked over at him, thinking secret thoughts. Jemma closed her eyes and tried to think what he was thinking. It took a little while, but then, just as they got down to the water, she thought she saw it, an army of nine-year-olds riding lions out of the field and into the stands, biting off the heads of every adult and then tossing them back and forth with their lacrosse sticks. Jemma came behind them on an elephant named Justice. She held on with one hand to a thick red ribbon around his neck while he reared and stomped, encouraging him with cruel words in a language she didn’t even understand until a green lady in a ruined toga came crawling toward them. Justice lifted both his front legs high and let out a blast that broke windows all over the Forest. Jemma held him there, suspended over her mother.
The corn roast was supposed to be an occasion of fellowship and good feeling, when all the day’s competition was profitably reflected on, and victories savored but not gloated over. But that year a pall of resentment hung heavy over the feast. Jemma did not notice it at first. It was the usual corn roast, filled with the usual enjoyments. It had always been her favorite part of the holiday, when the hot afternoon faded into the warm evening and night, and the hoarded rockets of the day were spent in fits that anticipated in a very small way the fireworks to come.
Jemma and Rachel Rauschenburg hung their heads and arms over the pier, watching the half-matured sea nettles drifting up against the net that kept them out of the swimming area, and then sat with their legs dangling over the water, both of them trying to mix the fire from their sparklers—the Roman candles were prettier and more fun but they were in too partisan a mood to use them. They ran, up and down the dock, back and forth across the beach, around the picnic tables, stopping now and then to gnaw on a piece of corn, or suck the meat from a crab claw, or swill a soda so fast they got headaches from the cold of it. When they were good and sweaty they’d wade into the river and splash each other until they were refreshed.
Wandering, Jemma caught bits of conversation. At her parents’ big table, which should have held the best and happiest people of either team, only the Spartan elite were feasting. Jemma watched her father lifting crabs into one of the big steam pots, his fancy pants falling down on his hips and his beard slung backward around his neck. “It’s a fucking travesty,” he was saying. Her mother, fixing sparklers to her crown with the help of three attendants, agreed. Jemma lipped under the table with Rachel to trade between them a single piece of hot corn that each would butter again after every bite.
“Can you be any more blind and not have empty sockets in your head?”
“Not blind, oh no. Corrupt. Corrupt as Nero, and just as Roman.”
“You have to wonder how they live with themselves.”
“It’s a wonder they don’t feel like fakes. I’d feel like a fake.”
“You are a fake. Nothing real about you, honey.”
“Fuck off, Bob.”
“How can they eat? Doesn’t it make them sick? It makes me sick. I don’t think I can eat any more.”
“Darling, the lobster is coming. Don’t tell me…”
“Well maybe I could eat a little. But I won’t enjoy it.”
“Ruined. The whole day is ruined. I agree completely. Corruption has spoiled this day. Corruption is spoiling our country.”
“Something should be done about it.”
“Oh, something will be done about it. It’s not so long till November.”
“I meant tonight.
“I’m formulating a suit, but not tonight.”
“I for one will have to be a lot drunker before I do anything about it.”
“We had some,” Jemma said, and they ran off to hide under other tables and eat other people’s corn and shrimp. Underneath a Roman table they ate a whole lobster together, Jemma doing much of the dismembering because Rachel was squeamish, but Rachel devouring most of the rubbery tail meat. They went searching for Calvin because they wanted to pinch him with one of the big red claws. He was on the pier with a mixed group of boys, in the process of seeing how many magic snakes they could ignite at the same time. They had eighty of them set up in a circle of two layers. Jemma forgot to pinch him, too excited to remember when she heard about the plan. Four boys lit snakes at compass points on the circle, while Calvin leaned over and lit a few in the center. In a moment they were smoking and uncoiling, each individually at first but then they seemed to grow together, until it was one giant snake, a beast that was a deeper piece of darkness sucking up the torchlight and the flare of stray rockets. As it approached and exceeded child height they began to flee from it, all but Calvin, who was calling to it, pretending it was some demon he was summoning out of a deep black hell. “Come!” he was shouting at it. “Come and take them, my precious! Come and take them all!” Mr. Cropp came up with a fire extinguisher, blasting ash into the air to blow in a mass down the pier and into the Spartan table.
The big fight almost began then. Mr. Cropp and a Spartan dad exchanged a few drunken shoves until their wives—both of whom outmassed their husbands—pulled them apart. Rachel had wandered away, and suddenly the whole party seemed to go still for Jemma, even though everyone was still talking and laughing and running. All she could see was her brother, and all she could hear was her brother. He winked at her, and said, “Do you want to see something?”