He lay panting into the pillow where her hair fanned out like a corona. The music had stopped so abruptly, he found himself disoriented. Birdsong wafted in through the opened window on ribbons of wind; a cicada hummed incessantly in the dry August heat, but he found it all too quiet, as though a gunshot had fired and hushed the world. He lifted his face from her hair and spread kisses across her face. He couldn’t get enough of her. He could swallow her whole and it still wouldn’t be enough. She smiled and brushed his bangs from his eyes, her breath in time with his.
“You have to get back,” she whispered and planted kisses around his mouth and nose and down along his jaw. “They’ll be wondering where you are.”
Let them wait; Haven didn’t give a damn. But she was right. Already he could hear the voices of the other girls drifting across the camp. Reluctantly, he pulled away from her and searched the bed for his pants. Charlotte sat up and buttoned her blouse and adjusted her skirt. They didn’t look at one another. Haven didn’t know if he could really face her again after what they had just done. He turned away as he hiked his pants up to his waist and buttoned the fly.
“Are you sorry this happened?” he asked, taking extra care to tuck his shirt into his waistband.
“What? No!” Charlotte gaped at him and clutched her blouse shut as though suddenly embarrassed.
“I feel like a hypocrite,” he said.
“Why would you feel that way?”
“All this time I only had eyes for Mabel,” Haven admitted. “When you were here all along. I just didn’t see you and I don’t know why. You’re a million times more beautiful than her.”
“I’m not beautiful,” Charlotte blushed and hooked strands of her hair behind her ears. “I’m just a gawky, buck-toothed, four-eyes and that’s all I’ll ever be.”
“That’s not true,” he said and leaned down to paste a kiss her between her eyes. “You’re the most beautiful girl in the world to me.”
“Go, Haven.” She pushed him back and cocked her head toward the door. “Before they catch you in here. We’ll talk about this later.”
Haven surreptitiously slipped through the door of the cabin. The younger girls had gathered in their usual cliques and were casting stones into the lake, trying to make them skip along the surface. Others kicked bits of the burnt cross along the ground while Margaret scraped the remains into a pile with the rake from the woodshed. Mabel was nowhere about and Haven was grateful. He would probably slug her across her smug, pouty mouth if he ever had to face her again. He decided to return to the kitchen and help Jude finish cleaning up the breakfast dishes. All activities had been cancelled for the day until Miss Nokomis returned from Camp Hiawatha.
A fist as solid as an iron bar smashed into his face as he pushed through the kitchen doors, knocking him back on his heels. Haven reeled into the dining room, his arms pinwheeling behind him. He stumbled and careened into a chair, sending it crashing to the floor. Yellow stars exploded in his field of vision; something wet and salty gushed into his mouth. Stunned, he lay on his back. Pain bloomed from that soft spot between his nostrils. When the stars cleared, Jude was looming over him, rubbing one fist before balling them both in front of his chest like a pugilist ready for the first round. His breath heaved in and out, a steam engine gathering speed. Haven propped himself up on his elbows and stared, blood trickling down his face and dripping from his chin.
“Where you been at?” Jude growled.
“What?” Haven wiped the blood from mouth, leaving a scarlet streak across his cheek.
“I saw you leaving Miss Charlotte’s cabin,” Jude crowed. “I looked in the window and seen what you been doing in there.”
Panic erupted in Haven’s chest. Had the others seen him in there with Charlotte too? He couldn’t lie, but he also couldn’t reveal the truth.
“What are you talking about?”
Jude grabbed Haven by the shirt, now splattered with blood, and heaved him to his feet. Haven’s feet knocked together as he struggled to regain his footing. Jude was not much taller than him and a good deal thinner, but in his grasp, Haven felt like a limp rag doll.
“Don’t you go lying to me!” Jude growled, his breath searing Haven’s bleeding nose. “I ain’t stupid!”
“Let go of me!”
Haven hauled back and pummelled Jude across the temple so hard the chapped skin around his knuckles split and bled. Jude’s head jerked back, but he didn’t let Haven go. Tightening his grip, he spun Haven around and smashed him against the nearest wall, knocking the wind from his lungs. Haven raised his foot and kicked Jude in the gut with all his strength. Jude’s eyes bulged and a soft “oomph” whooshed from his mouth. He gripped his middle and staggered back, fighting to inhale. Haven leapt away from the wall. He wanted to beat Jude to a bloody curd but he just couldn’t do it. Madness was solidifying in Jude’s brain.
Haven left the lodge. Heads turned and stared at him when the girls saw his mashed nose and bloody shirt. He waded into the lake and sluiced cold water over his face, staining the turbid water pink. The bleeding had stopped but his upper lip swelled and the flesh between his nostrils flared and throbbed. He considered himself lucky that he hadn’t lost any teeth.
“What happened?” Margaret splashed into the lake behind him.
Jude ran out of the lodge before Haven could reply. He lunged at Jude, fists raised for battle. The girls screamed and scattered when they heard the mania in Jude’s voice.
“You bastard!”
This time Haven was ready for him. He thrust his fist into Jude’s face. Jude’s head snapped back, but it was as though he didn’t feel the blow. He cuffed Haven across the jaw. The next blow sent Jude pirouetting back from the shore; Haven followed, hoping he could subdue him once he had him pinned to the ground.
The bus jostled through the gate, clouds of smoke spewing from its rear. Jude’s expression froze; his eyes darted from the bus to Haven to the small cluster of girls who huddled to the side of the clearing. He raised his bleeding fists and backed away, his head jerking from side to side, a maniacal glaze in his eyes. Haven’s face was streaked with muddy water and blood; he wiped his nose in his damp shirt and pain zipped through his head.
Eleanor parked the bus by the gate and ran toward them, leaving it idling in a cloud of dust.
“What’s going on?” she screamed when she saw the fracas.
Panic trembled through Jude’s body. Haven had never seen anyone shake so much. This would have been the perfect opportunity to deliver one final blow and knock Jude to the ground. Eleanor stepped between them, holding them back from one another at arm’s length.
“Miss Nokomis . . . ” Jude’s face contorted, his fists at his temples.
“Stop this, both of you!” Eleanor demanded.
“Dammit! You know how much I love Miss Charlotte!” Jude screamed at Haven. “Why’d you have to do it? She should have been mine!”
“What are you talking about?” Eleanor demanded.
Haven turned away, hoping Charlotte was nowhere near earshot.
“She’d never be yours and you know it,” he said. “You’re too different from each other. You’re too . . . ” He couldn’t bring the final words out.
“Well fuck you!” Jude screamed so loud his voice broke like cracked glass and faded on the last syllable. He backed away from the clearing amid gasps from the girls; several of them covered their ears and ran into the sanctuary of their cabins.
He turned and stomped past the bus and through the opened gate, his long ropy arms swinging at his sides. He slapped branches and leaves out of his way as he disappeared into woods; the brush fell back behind him, swallowing him like a great beast devouring its prey.
CHAPTER 16
FLAMES MUFFLED THE SCREAMS THAT echoed throughout the cabin. Charlie sat up in bed and clasped his stuffed bear, Teddy Eddy, against his chest; the button eyes were hot and burned the soft spot of his wrists, but he could barely feel it. Jonathon Crumb and his twin brother Joey were
in bed opposite him; their figures dim as ghosts through the smoke that pillowed around them. The ceiling was almost completely gone; the flames had eaten away at the roof and were now working their way along the rafters that crisscrossed overhead. More fire snaked its way along the walls, the jagged flames dancing deliriously as they engulfed the dresser and the chair in the corner where Charlie had dutifully hung his Camp Hiawatha uniform every night.
Each time he tried to draw in a breath to scream, acrid smoke filled his mouth and stung his teary eyes. He wanted his mother; it was all he could think of as he watched the fire devour his cabin and smother the screams of his friends: I want my mommy! He tried to shout but all that came out was a hacking cough. A spark dropped from a rafter and drifted onto his bed. He tried to scream again and kicked at the flame that sprouted on the quilt.
A dark figure crashed through the door, sending more sparks flying in all directions. The smoke obscured his features, but Charlie could see he was tall and lean with wide robust shoulders. He coughed into a cloth he held to his face as he picked his way through the burning rubble toward the other bed. Jonathon and Joey leapt from their beds, tears boiling down their cheeks, their striped pyjamas rolling up their backs. The man dropped his cloth and hoisted a boy in each arm.
“Hold on!” he shouted over the roar of the flames.
Charlie lunged at the figure, grabbing at whatever he could get a hold of. The man crouched low and turned his back to him.
“Get on my back!” he called, his voice hoarse from coughing. “Hold on tight! Don’t let go!”
Charlie gripped the man’s shirt and scampered onto his back; he wrapped his arms around the man’s neck and pressed his face into the nape. The man rose and ran toward the door, all three boys dangling from his body.
A rafter crashed to the floor in a flurry of sparks. Charlie shrieked and buried his face in the man’s hair. Fresh flames burst from the broken beam. It leaned against the doorway, blocking their exit. The man stopped just in time. He staggered back a few steps, Charlie still swinging from his neck, Jonathon and Joey drooping from his arms.
“Get out!” he ordered.
He dropped Joey and shook his shoulders until Charlie slid off his back. He lifted Jonathon over the burning rafter and threw him into the safety of the dark night. Next, he scooped Joey up in his arms and tossed him over the flames after his brother, the little boy wailing through the smoke.
When Charlie was younger, his parents had taken him to the circus. His favourite act had been the white puffy poodles trained to leap through burning hoops. He was in awe of them, wondering how they could brave the flames and manage to emerge on the other side unscathed. Now he knew. The man lifted him over the flaming rafter and tossed him through the fire. Heat licked his body as he sailed over the flames.
He landed hard on his feet and stumbled into the cold dust. Cool fresh air filled his congested lungs and he hungrily gulped it in. The entire camp was enclosed in a cocoon of hazy orange light. A crowd had gathered round the cabin and the lodge, where flames shot out from the roof; the windows had been shattered and smoke ballooned between jagged spears of glass. Bells clanged over the treetops and grew louder as the fire truck neared the camp. Charlie staggered to his feet and looked around for the man. People were shouting and dashing about, buckets of water sloshing in their hands. Jonathon and Joey were huddled against one of the older boys, crying and pointing at the cabin that had been their home all summer. Mr. Brandish galloped about, shouting orders at Billy and David, who wandered round the clearing with moronic expressions on their dazed faces.
Charlie turned and peered through the conflagration in the doorway. The man stood silhouetted against the flames and smoke, hacking and coughing into his fist. A tremendous crack broke the roar of the fire. The man looked up just as another rafter collapsed on top of him. Charlie joined in the collective screams that rattled the night. He just couldn’t understand it. Where was he? One minute the man was standing there, the next minute he was gone. Just gone.
CHAPTER 17
A SIMPLE CROSS OF WHITEWASHED wood was all Bess could afford to mark his grave. Gertie Follows, representing the Women’s Auxiliary, had passed the cap around the church following Sunday service. She had stood at the pulpit and announced how this valiant young man had perished in the flames while rescuing three children from their burning cabin at Camp Hiawatha. There had been relatively little damage to the camp. Only one cabin had burned to the ground, the result of a stray spark that had leapt the short distance from the main lodge. The stable and dock were untouched; the barge was intact save for a small hole in the canopy where a spark had landed and promptly burned itself out.
There was no mention of how the fire started or who was responsible for the bedlam that had occurred the previous night at Camp Nokomis. No one knew, but Bess guessed it would only be a matter of time before the gossip mill creaked into motion. The congregation was more than happy to donate whatever they could. Coins plopped into the upturned cap as it was passed around the pews. The cap was still warm, like a simmering ember prolonging its eventual death.
Bess and Gertie had Dr. Simmons wrap the body in a white sheet and place it in simple wooden casket. He probably would have survived the burns to his body had it not been for the rafter that had fallen on him and crushed his spine. When members of the Davisville Volunteer Fire Brigade sifted through the smouldering wreckage, they found him lying in his back, the skin charred and peeling from his face, the eyes wide open but unseeing. The fire had singed away his clothes, exposing parts of his thighs and torso. The blackened remains of a harmonica lay directly over his heart. Bess didn’t have the fortitude to tell the congregation that it was his music they had heard all summer, wafting over the pines and across the meadows at twilight, meandering down the alleys and between the tombstones in the very cemetery where he was to be buried.
The day of the funeral, Charlotte wandered out to the field beyond the church grounds and gathered an armload of daisies. There were so many of them she appeared to float in a hazy sea of saffron and cream. She picked the choicest flowers for the grave, carefully laying each long stemmed bloom across her arm until it looked as though she cradled a baby in the crook of her arm. A soft wind whisked at her dress and the long blue ribbon in her straw hat as she made her way back to the cemetery to join the others. She laid the bouquet at the base of the cross and stepped back. Gertie began the eulogy:
“Lord, please accept this humble soul into your loving arms. He was a kind, loving young man whose music made everyone smile and want to sing . . . ” She trailed off, not knowing what to say next. She had barely known him. Eleanor stepped forward. She knew exactly what to say:
“From the headlands Hiawatha . . . sent forth such a wail of anguish . . . such a fearful lamentation . . . that the bison paused to listen . . . and the wolves howled from the prairies . . . and the thunder in the distance . . . starting answered ‘Baim-wawa . . . ’”
All eyes lowered in reverence as she continued. Leaning on his walking stick, Wetherby removed his bowler and pressed it to his heart, his heavy lips stitched into a tight frown.
“He is dead the sweet musician . . . he the sweetest of all singers . . . he has gone from us forever . . . he has moved a little nearer . . . to the Master of all music . . . to the Master of all singing . . . O my brother, Chibiabos . . . ”
“O, my brother Chibiabos,” Wetherby repeated.
Everyone lifted their eyes and stared down at the humble marker crowded with daisies. Tall grasses, dry and burnished bronze by the sun, bent in the breeze and tickled the flowers. There was no name on the cross. Eleanor had promised her mother that she would return with a brush and pot of paint to label the grave properly as soon as she knew what name to write.
“Didn’t he have a last name?” Bess asked.
“Probably,” Wetherby replied. “Just don’t know if Marcus was his first or last name. Never told us.”
“What about his family?”
Gertie asked. “They ought to be told. Someone somewhere must be missing him, the poor little lamb.”
Haven and Wetherby exchanged glances. It had never occurred to Haven that Marcus would be known as anyone other than Marcus.
“He said he came from out east,” Wetherby replied and waved his arm across the bucolic fields beyond the cemetery. “But east is a mighty big place.”
“He told me he’d been riding the rails for two years,” Haven added.
“Nonsense,” Bess sniffed. “The lad couldn’t have been any more than twenty.”
Haven gulped, remembering what Marcus had told him the evening they first met. He had been right: once you start riding you never get off. He had come so close it scared him to think he would have been the same age as Marcus had been when he first started hitching rides on trains.
“He said his mother was Greek,” Haven added, as though it would help.
“Is that all anyone knows of him?” Eleanor asked. She stood apart from them, her arm around Charlotte. “What about you, Mr. Wetherby? Didn’t you and Jude ride the rails with him for a while last year?”
“We did,” Wetherby admitted. “Me and Judy . . . ” he paused and gulped audibly as though a peach pit had become lodged in his throat. “Me and Judy, we ride the rails with him a spell last year. We taught him the mouth organ and he taught us which trains to catch to get to where we was going, us being from not around here. He always talked around the fire of where he was headed and how sweet it would be once he got there. Never talked much of himself, but he sure loved listening to the stories we told of the days when we played the speakeasies.”
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