After breakfast is finished and the Scouts have been dismissed, Nelson rushes out of the mess hall and into the densely humid air. Now thunder booms out low and loud over the camp, with not a bird to be seen, nor a breath of wind to unsettle the leaves of the trees. He walks quickly back to camp and enters his tent just as the first slow, fat drops of rain beat upon the canvas roof like fingertips flicking the fabric.
Nelson crawls onto his cot, pulls a light blanket over his body, and biting a rolled-up pair of socks, begins sobbing until he falls asleep.
6
“HEY, BUGLER, WAKE UP. WAKE UP, BUGLER.”
The words are like a rope, pulling him up and out of the deep waters of sleep, but slowly, for he is a very heavy anchor at the bottom of a cold, black northern lake.
“Bugler, wake up. You missed lunch.”
Now he bursts up and out of his slumber, as if breaking through a crust of ice to gulp down breaths of cold air. Sitting erect, he instinctively reaches beside his cot for his glasses, only to feel nothing, momentarily panics, before remembering—they are gone.
“No, Nelson,” says Jonathan Quick, “here they are. Right here, in my hand. Here you go.”
Reaching out, he feels the shape of the frames, slides them on and over his ears, settles them onto his nose, perhaps a little askew, but still—he is grateful. One of the lenses is cracked, but at least he can see. “Where’d you find them?” he asks.
“In the woods. Totally by chance,” Jonathan says, looking at his boots. “Listen, I’m sorry about that lens, it might be my fault. Then again, that’s how I found them. See, I heard a little crunch, looked down at my boot, and . . . there they were.” He peers around the tent. “Here, I brought you something.” He hands Nelson what appears to be a peanut butter sandwich on Wonder Bread. “You haven’t eaten since breakfast.”
Nelson swings his feet off the cot and sits, perches the glasses on his forehead, and rubs at his eyes with his free hand. Chews the sandwich suspiciously, won’t look at Quick.
“You found them in the woods?” he asks.
“Sure, well, I was out doing a little compass work and then, well, like I said, I apologize, Bugler, but I heard a little crunch, and sure enough. Figured they must be yours, since you weren’t wearing them this morning at reveille.”
“So you just—of all the acres and acres of land, you just happen to step on my glasses?” He chews slowly, his mouth very dry without any cold milk to wash the sandwich down.
Rain continues to drum the canvas as water drips steadily down the central tent pole to the ground below. It will be a wet night, Nelson knows. Jonathan Quick’s light mood seems to have dissolved.
“That’s right,” Jonathan says. “I would have thought you’d be grateful.”
“Somebody—last night—last night someone destroyed my bugle. Pissed on it. Bent it all out of shape.”
Jonathan tries not to smile, not to laugh, his hands rising to his mouth.
“It’s not funny.”
“Come on, Nelson, it’s a little bit funny.”
“That’s not just some ordinary horn, Jonathan. It was my grandfather’s. It was in World War One. And they, those bastards . . . They pissed all over it! To hell with you all!”
“Hey, watch it now, Bugler. I’m the best friend you’ve got.”
“Some good that’s done me. Nobody talks to me, unless it’s to make fun of me. Nobody eats with me. And now my bugle is destroyed. In fact, I’m of the mind that you were out there last night. With them. Maybe you pissed in my horn along with everyone else, huh?”
“Come on, Nelson. We were just out . . . Look, we were out smoking cigarettes, okay? And you scared them. That’s all. I didn’t know they were going to hurt your bugle. So . . . Listen, I apologize about that, I really do, geez.”
“So you smoke cigarettes, too?”
Jonathan runs a muscled hand through his long, thick, brown hair. Nods his head. “Some of the older guys might have been up to something else, but I wasn’t invited to wherever they were going. I think you interrupted them.”
“Why didn’t you say something to me?”
“I didn’t know it was you.”
“Aw, horseshit, Jonathan. The other boys seemed to know pretty damn fast.” He is not accustomed to cursing, but twice now he just swore in Jonathan’s presence, and sees the power in that forbidden language. How it surprises the older boy, makes wide his eyes and straightens his posture right up. Nelson feels instantly older, wiser, hardened even. He likes swearing, likes that word, horseshit. It’s a good one.
Jonathan lowers his head, examines the backs of his hands. “Sorry, Nelson. I’ve let you down.”
Nelson can’t remember the last time someone actually apologized to him. What’s more, he recognizes that Jonathan is right; he is the best friend Nelson has at the moment.
“It’s all right, Jonathan. Thanks for finding my glasses.”
Jonathan glances up at the younger boy. “You can still see with those things? They’re pretty messed up.”
“Better than being blind—that’s for sure. Last night I wandered around the forest for—I don’t know—hours, trying to find the campsite. Couldn’t see a thing.”
Jonathan shifts uneasily, clears his throat, seems ready to leave. Only now, Nelson is desperate for him to stay, this young man he so admires who, inexplicably, treats him with some degree of kindness. “I have chocolate,” he blurts out, “and pretzels. We could play cribbage, or, I brought some baseball cards, just in case someone wanted to trade. You could look through them; I could even give you one or two.”
Standing halfway up, the older boy parts the tent flaps, peers outside at the wet, green world soaked under a deluge that shows no sign of relenting. Nothing stirs, except the leaves trembling with the steady pitter-patter barrage of the afternoon rain. He moves back into the tent. “Sure,” he says, “we’ve got time.”
THEY SIT ON OPPOSITE ENDS OF NELSON’S COT, the cribbage board between them, a Hershey’s chocolate bar and some pretzels arrayed proudly on a Scout kerchief. The lantern throws a warm, happy light over it all and by and by the boys pass a canteen back and forth. They play three games of cribbage—Jonathan winning twice—and then Nelson produces a four-inch stack of baseball cards rubber-banded together and stored in the same shoe box that holds his snacks.
“Do you collect cards?” he asks Jonathan.
“A little bit,” the older boy shrugs. “I used to collect ’em more, you know, when I was younger.” He blushes at the gulf in years between the two boys that he’s just emphasized. “Right now,” he shrugs, “I’m trying to save money for a car.”
“Oh,” Nelson says. The notion of driving an automobile seems light-years away, some unknowable parallel reality far out in a distant galaxy. “How much does that even cost?”
“More than I have,” Jonathan says, unwinding the rubber bands and beginning to study the cards. “My dad says he’ll help out, but . . . still. I gotta have a couple hundred, probably. Hey, you got any Eddie Mathews cards?”
“I think so. What I really try to collect are rookie cards.”
“Why?”
“I think they’ll be worth more.”
Jonathan balances a little square of chocolate on top of a pretzel, then pops it in his mouth, seeming to relish every chew. “Worth more?”
“Well, I mean, if I hang on to these cards long enough, maybe they’ll be worth something. You know? My grandma collects first edition books, and some of them are worth dozens, maybe hundreds of dollars. Maybe more. So I was thinking, if I can keep some of these rookie cards safe, maybe they’ll be worth a lot of money someday, like those first editions. Because that’s what a rookie card is, really, a first edition.”
Jonathan peers at the cards with what looks like slightly more reverence. “Huh. I just thought you put ’em in your bike spokes, or used ’em for BB gun practice. Or bookmarks.”
“I really shouldn’t have them rubber-banded them like that,
either,” Nelson continues, “’cause the pressure, you know, leaves little indentations on the sides of the cardboard. Nobody else seems to care, but I notice. My grandma barely touches her first editions, and—you’re not going to believe this—sometimes she wears white gloves when she does.”
“No kidding,” Jonathan says, shuffling slowly through the stack, and then scrutinizing one card at length. “What about this Pete Rose guy? He any good?”
“Nice choice,” Nelson nods. “He might even win Rookie of the Year. I heard that earlier this season, he ran to first base on a walk. You believe that? A walk!”
“You only have one of his cards, though. Are you sure?”
“That’s okay, take it,” Nelson says. “Hey, thanks for finding my glasses. Really, I mean it.”
Jonathan slips the baseball card into the breast pocket of his uniform shirt, exhales slowly, and dips toward the tent flaps.
“Jonathan,” Nelson says.
“Yeah.”
“We’re friends, right?”
“Sure, Nelson—sure we’re friends.”
Nelson smiles at his cot, thinks, I’m so glad. “Then what were those guys doing last night, out there in the forest?”
Jonathan looks at him with sad, serious eyes, then exhales. “I don’t know, old chum. But it wasn’t knot tying or practicing their first aid skills.”
And now Jonathan turns his back on the younger boy, moves his head out of the tent, into the rain, “Sometimes,” he begins quietly, “I think you get mixed up in something, and it’s like stepping into a river. The current takes you and the next thing you know, you’re swimming . . .” He stands up fully and is gone, the flaps undulating behind him like green canvas curtains.
“Jonathan,” Nelson calls out, still sitting on his cot, holding two handfuls of baseball cards. But by the time he peeks his head out into the rain, Jonathan is thirty steps away, hands buried in his pockets, chin pointed at the mud, and small puddles of water already collecting in his footsteps.
AFTER DINNER, several of the counselors perform a skit called “Iron-Gut.” Then four Scoutmasters gather into a barbershop quartet and warble on and on for close to a half hour, and later, a radio is wheeled to the middle of the dining hall and every boy, every father leans closer to catch—an afternoon game way out west, in San Francisco—Warren Spahn pitching against Juan Marichal. Evening begins to drape over the forestland, though a steady rain still pounds the mess hall’s sharply inclined roof. Even the Scouts, stir crazy as they are from being cooped up inside all day, seem disinclined to leave their mugs of hot chocolate, sugary tea, or milky coffee. A fire is built in the grand fieldstone hearth and the light inside the long room shifts toward a warm pumpkin orange while deep shadows collect heavily in the corners. Now the air smells of chocolate and peanut butter and sugary dough as the cooks circulate baskets of still warm cookies, and when night is finally and truly ensconced over the camp, Nelson’s troopmaster, Mr. Blanton, strides toward the two oversize doors of the mess hall, steps outside, withdraws a hand from the dry warmth of his pocket, and offers it out beyond the protection of the eaves, later returning to his troop’s table, declaring, “Come on, boys. I don’t think we’ll melt.”
The steady, sometimes violent rain of the afternoon and early evening has been replaced by a dark, drizzling mist that seems to fall from a bank of clouds just above the treetops. The wet air feels good in Nelson’s lungs, as he walks with his troop, the boys recounting the baseball game, the two great pitchers. Across the asphalt road that snakes through camp, frogs bound ahead of the boys, while steam rises off the pavement to join the clouds overhead.
Nelson’s father is suddenly beside him.
“You found your glasses.”
He did notice! “Oh, yeah . . . They fell beneath my bunk. Just couldn’t find them this morning.”
“Are they broken, Nelson?”
The boy fidgets, removes the glasses from his face, rubs at the bridge of his nose. “Yes. I’m sorry, Dad. Guess I stepped on them in my tent this afternoon when I was looking around. I didn’t mean to.”
“You’ve got to be more careful with your glasses, Nelson. How many times have we had to have them repaired?”
“Three—no. Guess, this’ll be the fourth.”
“Christ, you think that’s free? You think new lenses, new frames—you think any of that is free?”
“No, Father.”
“Christ.”
“I’m sorry.” Nelson shrinks slightly, leaning away from his father as they walk, ready for the blow to come, even here, even at camp.
“Is everything quite all right, Nelson?”
Now his father is looking at him through the darkness with a degree of concern that Nelson rarely witnesses.
“You have to protect those glasses, Nelson,” his father says. “Okay? I mean, what if your mother and I couldn’t afford to fix them, huh? Then what? What would you do? How would you survive? Do you understand?”
“Yes, Father,” he says. Although, why wouldn’t his parents have enough money to fix his eyeglasses? That doesn’t even make sense . . .
His father hums a deep low note of dissatisfaction. “All right, then, sleep well, Nelson. Be well rested for tomorrow morning. Your bugling this morning . . . Why, it was as if you stepped on your horn as well . . .” And with that Nelson’s father moves off without another word into the unknowable night.
BACK AT CAMP there is some excitement when a younger Scout encounters a porcupine at the outhouse, but the startled creature lumbers slowly off into the ferns and isn’t seen again. Nelson starts the evening fire, stacks a load of kindling and logs next to the fire ring, and then slinks off into the near shadows and listens as the other Scouts discuss the baseball game they’ve all heard.
Mr. Blanton and several fathers stand tightly together, laughing, a silver flask flashing between their hands in the firelight as they pour a quick glug or two into their coffee mugs. Nelson’s father stands off to the side, talking quietly to another father who stares into the fire, nodding from time to time. Clete’s glasses glint in the light like mirrors and his hands move excitedly in a way that seems only to push the other man farther away, closer to the fire. Nelson wonders if he isn’t talking about his work in insurance, perhaps trying to sell the man something, wondering if that wasn’t the whole pretext for participating in the trip. Just what Nelson needs—not only is he a kid no one wants to be friends with, he’s a kid whose father has spent summer camp trying to sell insurance policies to all the other dads who were just trying to have a good time. The boy shakes his head, and retreats to his tent. He is just . . . so very tired.
Nelson removes his clothing without the light of the lantern, shivers in the wet air of the tent. The temperature has fallen, and a slight wind rustles the bottom of the tent’s canvas, sends big fat drops of rainwater sliding off the leaves above to land on the tent in sudden violent pats. He crawls into his thick, downy sleeping bag, happy as always to be alone when no one expects anything different from him. He curls into a small ball and rubs at his arms with clammy hands. Within moments, he is asleep.
7
HE WAKES TO RIPPLING LAUGHTER AND THE WET COLLAPSE of his tent all around him: a pole banging against his forehead, the damp canvas slapping down onto his dry sleeping bag, and then, more alarming yet, the lantern pitching over, the dangerous smell of kerosene, the panic of imagining his bugle again stolen, his baseball cards suddenly sodden with rain and mud. Then, just as quickly, the laughter is gone, and Nelson sits on his cot, spreading his arms to lift the wet canvas off himself, trying to find the lantern with his feet then locating the matches, only hoping he does not set himself on fire.
The lantern hisses to life to reveal all of his belongings, which seem, for the most part, intact and dry. Only his sleeping bag is already waterlogged. Dressing quickly, he manages to resurrect the tent, and then, standing in the midnight damp cold, tilts his head to the heavens. Not a single star, not even the searchlight o
f the moon to shine through the gray wispy hair of a cloud.
Nelson does not feel like sleeping alone now. And so he walks through camp—starkly quiet, without even much in the way of snoring—and comes to his father’s tent. He pauses, for it is always so difficult to announce oneself at the door of a tent: no door to knock against, no knocker, no doorbell. Just the straight line of a vertical zipper. He clears his throat, loudly.
Nothing.
He leans in close to the canvas and in a polite, hoarse voice, says, “Dad? Dad? It’s me, Nelson.”
Then, the distinct sound of his dad’s snuffling, the cot protesting beneath his shifting body, the rustle of his sleeping bag.
“Dad?”
“Nelson? Are you all right, boy?”
“Can I come in?”
A zipper whizzes open. “Quickly,” his father says.
Nelson crawls inside, zippering the night safely back out. No one is going to knock this tent down, he thinks, feeling instantly safer.
The tent looks remarkably like his own: impeccably neat, but with the dense canvas-scented air marked by pleasant hints of tobacco and aftershave. His father’s effects are all in order: shaving kit, clothing, boots, an issue of Life magazine, his salesmanship books. Now Nelson lays his sleeping bag down alongside his father’s cot and, crawling into the bag dressed in warm clothes, tries to fall asleep, but sleep does not come.
The Hearts of Men Page 5