By the light of the lantern, he reads Ian Fleming’s new Thunderball for hours, until, not even realizing he’s fallen asleep, he is stirred out of slumber by the stealthy approach of soft footfalls. Since being ambushed in his tent, he has slept fitfully, shallowly.
“Come on now.” It is the camp’s Scoutmaster, whispering through the canvas of the tent. “I want to show you something special,” says Wilbur.
The boy dresses quickly, unzips his tent, and meets the old man in the predawn chill.
They set off through the woods, Wilbur nimble as can be, leading them deeper into the forest than Nelson had ever ventured before. The composition of the trees changes as they move along, the topography of the land seeming to dip and run downhill, everything draining away from the oaks and maples near the campgrounds to this lower forest of cedar and tamarack, where the trees huddle closer together, the air scented with pitch and rot. The canopy is shorter here, but denser overhead. Wilbur moves noiselessly, even as Nelson finds himself stumbling over knobby cedar roots and tamarack knees.
And then, they come into a boreal bog, bordered on all sides by dead tamaracks, and a little pond reflecting silver moonlight. The air smells of peat and the spice of cologne. Wilbur crouches down.
“I’ve been watching them, generations of them, come here to drink from this pool,” he whispers. “I’ve never showed this place to anyone before.”
As to just what Wilbur is referring to, Nelson has no idea, but the world is perfectly still. They wait together, close as can be.
“Scoutmaster,” Nelson whispers, “I think—”
But Wilbur grips the boy’s kneecap firmly, and with his other hand, points.
Even without the moon, the buck would have glimmered in the wan morning glow, but bathed in that lunar light, the albino deer nearly shines as it silently approaches the pond. A wide rack of antlers crown its thick head and there—pink eyes, pink eyes. It laps at the pond, sending out tiny corrugated ripples across the surface. Nelson trembles with awe.
Wilbur moves very close to the boy, inching his face tighter and tighter to Nelson’s ears, until the boy can feel his whiskers against the skin there, skin seldom if ever touched. “Have you ever seen anything so beautiful?” Wilbur whispers. Now the old man scoots away, reaches for the boy’s shoulder, squeezes, and grins.
Other deer move out of the forest and stand beside the pool, grunting quietly and chewing slowly on bog grasses. Nelson can hear the grass against their fur, their teeth gnashing, the wetness of their nostrils. More than a few of these deer are also albino.
“I used to visit this place once a week, on Saturdays, after the campers had left. I came here to meditate, to . . .” Wilbur’s voice trails off though his lips still work, his eyes yet focused on the white buck.
“To what, sir?” Nelson asks, eyes still trained on the deer.
“To collect myself, son. To, ah, pray. I’d come here on Saturdays and simply watch these creatures. Some people call them ghost deer. Very rarely will a Scout spot a white one anywhere near camp, but it does happen. I tend to downplay their existence.” Wilbur looks down, runs a hand over a thick carpeting of moss. “To acknowledge their presence would be to spoil this place, I suspect. And, no doubt, to entice some barbarian of a father, or a renegade counselor, into killing one of these creatures. Taxidermied, one of these deer might bring hundreds, maybe thousands.” He smiles. “If a Scout tells me that he’s seen an albino deer, I tell him it must be a trick of the light, some strange dappling of the forest leaves, or maybe a deer with more blondish fur.” He eases out a small laugh.
“I worry about what will happen to them after I die,” Wilbur says quietly.
“Then it is a good thing this camp is here,” Nelson offers, “so we can protect them.”
Wilbur glances down, exhales, and then looks at Nelson. “That’s right,” he says quietly.
The deer continue their browsing, and the moon descends toward the horizon, as if hurrying away with important news.
BACK IN CAMP, Thomas Salkin is hunched over the fire pit, blowing furiously at a huge log cabin of sticks, split wood, and kindling. No smoke arises for all his efforts. Nelson walks boldly to the fire pit and, without saying a word, disassembles the framework of Salkin’s big fire, then reassembles a much smaller infrastructure: a single log, some pinecones, crumpled newspaper, and a handful of twigs. From the coals of the previous night’s fire he discovers one still hot coal, and using a stick, he pushes it to the side of the pit and begins coaxing it alive again, blowing tenderly. It begins to glow: first red, then orange, then a whitish-blue. Now he touches the coal with a single strip of newspaper; it catches fire. He returns the newspaper to the nest of kindling and blows patiently, adding fuel, stick by stick, until the fire’s health is without question.
“How’d you do that?” Thomas Salkin asks. “I had it all organized, only it wouldn’t catch. I even squirted some kerosene on there.”
Nelson dusts his palms off, then his knees. He is exhausted, more exhausted than any thirteen-year-old boy in the history of Camp Chippewa.
“It’s easy to suffocate a fire before it even gets a chance to breathe,” he explains. “Start small with the most combustible fuel first. Keep a nice pile of small kindling handy. Birch bark is best, or pinecones. Dried balsam boughs. Then, once it gets going, you’ve got to feed it, give it air.”
“Sounds like you’re describing a person or something,” Salkin jokes.
“I don’t know anything about people,” Nelson replies, moving off to his tent.
NELSON SPENDS THE BULK OF HIS DAY away from the merit badge clinics and his camp, building his own fire beside a secluded bay of Bass Lake. He isn’t sure precisely why he cares so much about the cooking of these contraband cobblers, but he does care; in everything he does, there is desire for perfection. And perhaps it is in the hope that when he and Wilbur appear at that derelict amphitheater, the Scouts assembled there will turn out to be covertly working on some miraculous surprise: a giant trebuchet, say, for launching water across the parade ground, or a chain saw carving of Wilbur himself—something other than what Nelson fears, which is what Wilbur had initially warned the entire camp of back on Monday, that if they were good and decent and honorable, they would never have any need to hide anything about their lives. And yet, certainly Counselor Tim, and apparently many other Scouts, are hiding something. But what? What are these movies Tim alluded to? Old James Cagney films? Pulpy gangster pictures full of tommy guns, the spray of bullets, loose women smoking cigarettes?
It is a beautiful day, and Nelson wishes, as he often does, for a friend to pass the time with. Some other boy to sit beside the fire with and discuss baseball or books . . . merit badges or school. But of course he is alone, the fire his only confidant.
THE KEY TO CONSISTENT CAMP BAKING is an evenly dispersed bed of coals; this ensures equal heating throughout the cast-iron pot. And because Nelson is cooking two cobblers, he sets about early that day gathering kindling and larger chunks of wood. Doing so close to camp would have drawn attention, which was why he set off on his own, and because of his time in the latrine, his fellow Scouts are treating him with a newfound respect and shameful distance. Before, he simply wasn’t invited to share their space. Now they recognize in themselves something ugly and embarrassing, something that separates him from them.
He thinks about his father’s words, about true friendship and loyalty. Wonders if he’ll ever experience such a kinship.
Sighing, Nelson finally takes out the pen and pad of paper he brought to the shore of the lake and begins to write a letter to his mother:
Dear Mom,
This has been the worst week of my life. It feels like someone has lifted a blindfold away from my face, and now I can see. Father was right, these boys are not my friends. What friend would damage Grandpa’s bugle? Knock down my tent? Send me down into the latrine after a stupid nickel?
Father hardly ever talks to me. Nobody does. I am so ready t
o come home. I have realized this week that I think you are my best friend. You have always loved me as I am, and defended me without question.
I do not write this letter to you in the hopes that you will feel sorry for me. I write to you so that you will know how much I love you.
Your son,
Nelson
He looks at the letter. Hears his cook fire pop and sizzle. Mosquitoes harass his ears, assault the back of his neck. He knows he cannot post the letter, and crumples it up, tossing it into the fire.
He begins another letter:
Dear Mom,
It has been a wonderful week here at camp, with Dad. The counselors have been very encouraging, and I am hopeful that by Friday afternoon I will have earned five new merit badges!
I have made a new friend. His name is Wilbur, and this morning he showed me the most amazing thing: a small herd of albino deer! I wish you could have seen them, Mom. Next year, I’ll know to bring a camera.
I hope you are well. I wonder how your week has been, what you are doing? I miss you. While it is fun here, I’m looking forward to coming home too.
Love,
Your son,
Nelson
PS—I am (as I write) making two peach cobblers to take to a special party tonight! (Invitation only . . . )
He folds the letter into a small square and slides it into his breast pocket. After dinner he will stop by the canteen, buy a stamp and an envelope, and mail the second letter to his mom, who might receive it Monday or Tuesday, by which time he’ll already be home again, waiting for school to resume in late August, though now with the goal of graduating early, and pushing into a new life, far afield. He will volunteer for the army, become part of a new brotherhood, change his body, use his skills, and prove to everyone, everyone that he can no longer be bullied or ignored.
15
NELSON IS SO, SO PATIENT IN THE CRAFTING OF THIS fire. He builds it large and wide and feeds the flames all morning long, using what oak and maple he can find to set a base of reliably hot coals. At lunchtime, he marches to the mess hall, eats without fanfare or conversation, and when the meal is finished, makes his way back to the fire. He knows that to abandon the fire as he just did was reckless and against every principle in Scouting—and yet, he does not care, the fire was built beside a lake, contained on that side, and there was the day of rain midweek. This fire was never going anywhere. He feels stronger for having gambled with thousands of acres of forest, the lives of hundreds of Scouts, and all the invisible creatures of the woods. He should, he knows, feel ashamed.
At about three o’clock in the afternoon, he stokes the fire again, and then, leaning against the trunk of a thick birch tree, falls into a troubled, fitful sleep.
He dreams of the ghost deer. He dreams them in winter, when, though otherworldly, they seem perfectly suited to their habitat, the naked forest under snow. In the dream, Wilbur lies dying beside a small fire, and Nelson rushes between the forest and fire relentlessly, trying to build the flames up, with the thought that the fire may somehow keep Wilbur warm, keep him alive. The deer look on, blinking their eyes dumbly.
Back and forth he runs, back and forth, breaking branches off live trees, hearing their woody screams, and never enough fuel to beat back the cold that is frosting Wilbur’s eyelids, his mustache, making fragile his thin, crinkled skin. What moisture his eyes held has now frozen, the lids forced forever open.
And Nelson, blowing and blowing at the flames, throwing more and more wood at the dwindling fire as daylight fades faster and faster, and night comes on cold and crystalline, perfectly silent, the stars suddenly dazzling and uncannily close, as if heaven were real, no farther than the treetops.
The ghost deer circle the dying fire now, gazing upon Wilbur’s frozen corpse, and Nelson, aware of his own frailty, the cold slinking through his garments, pressing past his flesh, taking hold deep within the marrow of his aching bones. Distantly, the sound of a single wolf. Time stretching itself into boundless indefinite uncertainty and Nelson strains to hear it again—another long, low howl.
Only this time, a hundred howls, a thousand, all as close as the tree line, like a necklace of teeth waiting to snap shut on him and snuff out the stars forever.
Then the ghost deer screaming, as deer will do when startled, and just as quickly, the dream done, and Nelson awake and panting.
He removes his broken glasses, rubs at his eyes, wipes some coagulated drool away from his lips, restores the glasses, and examines his lush, green world.
The cook fire crackles contentedly, contained within its little makeshift ring, a thick bed of coals radiating waves of heat. Far off: boy laughter, the hollow clap and slap of lacrosse sticks, the sound of oars protesting inside rusty aluminum locks, a lifeguard lazily blowing his whistle.
He builds up the fire one last time, and returns to camp for his bugle. Soon it will be the time to blow taps.
DINNER IS ROAST BEEF left so rare that each time the platter is passed a wave of greasy diluted blood spills over the side and onto the table. Bowls of mashed potatoes with calderas of melted butter circulate from hand to hand, and peas, too, and hot white bread to wipe the plates clean.
Nelson has no appetite and waits patiently for the meal to conclude. He has taken to sipping a cup of coffee as he listens to the other boys talk. Tonight they are whispering about him, about whether or not he is okay after the latrine, whether the experience hasn’t messed him up. Some of the younger boys are talking among themselves; they want to go home. One boy leans close to another and seems to ask him something about a new movie, but Nelson can’t tell which one they are discussing.
Maybe that’s what he will do when he returns to Eau Claire. Have his mother drop him off at the theater downtown, all burgundy velveteen grandeur and buttered popcorn; with the sizzle and fizz of Coca-Cola and the mad clamor of kid footsteps up thickly carpeted stars so very muffled; and, then, in secret dark corners and back-row sanctuaries, the new lovers draped over one another, their parents so far away. And then, a broken-in seat to settle into before that great rectangular expanse of screen up front. Maybe he’ll go see a western with those strange landscapes so alien to Wisconsin: rusty-orange desert flatland and jutting mesas and buttes, tumbleweed and cactus, arroyos and snakes and gunfights atop runaway trains or stagecoaches. Maybe he will fall asleep there, too, let his body go limp into that chair cushion until some kind theater attendant shakes him awake and leads him out by the guidance of a flashlight, back out into the too-bright glare of a late afternoon, the sun sliding down over the city’s pair of wide rivers, the tire factory, the beer brewery, and the paper plant panting out its rotten-egg steam, its choking fumes.
NELSON CANNOT RECALL Wilbur excusing them from supper, nor does he remember rising from his table with the rest of his troop. Just the sensation of walking beside them, down that familiar path, back to their campsite, with nothing on their agenda except toasting marshmallows or reading the tales of Algernon Blackwood, with the wicked goal of trying to terrify some younger boy in the troop into having a nightmare.
Sunset is still hours away in the west when Nelson slinks out of the camp and returns to his lakeside cook fire, the coals by this point close to perfect. Now he will mix the batter, pour it into the two greased Dutch ovens, and hope for that evenly browned flawlessness Tim will be expecting. His biggest challenge, he realizes, will be carrying the Dutch ovens all the way out to the old amphitheater; no small task considering each one weighs more than ten pounds. He decides to wrap one in towels and place it into his Duluth Trading Company portage pack. The other he will have to carry in his hands; it will be largely cool by then, though he could always wrap it, too, in a towel or blanket or perhaps wear a pair of oven mitts. He doubts anyone in camp will question where he is going; the latrine incident has elevated his name, he senses, to some kind of camp legend status, the other boys now in awe of him, if not even spooked.
He sets the two Dutch ovens on the coals and then jogs quietly
back to his tent, collects his needed supplies, and returns to the campfire. The cobblers will take about forty-five minutes of cooking, but already he can smell the peaches and the cakelike batter rising around the orange slices of fruit. Nelson imagines melting ice cream and a dash of fresh cinnamon, imagines sitting at the kitchen table while his mother hums a favorite melody, a cigarette smoldering in her favorite ashtray, coffee percolating on the stove, and outside, birds on the telephone wire calling out to the late afternoon neighborhood. Casually, his mom would turn from the Formica countertop where she was working a crossword puzzle, a pen balanced lightly between her teeth, and, from her apron produce three or four packs of baseball cards. These are for you, darling. I had to stop at the hardware store today on an errand for your father. I hope you get some good ones.
BY NOW THE LITTLE BAY SMELLS LIKE A KITCHEN, and using oven mitts and two heavy-duty pliers that Counselor Tim had included in the supply bag, Nelson moves the Dutch ovens off the coals and lets them cool near the shore. Lifting the lids, he reveals two flawless cobblers. Satisfied, he sits down and glances out over the lake, where a pair of loons are diving.
There is no guarantee that the party tonight is necessarily running afoul of Scout laws, but Nelson senses that something immoral is indeed happening. The cobblers will be his Trojan horse, the distraction he needs to bring Wilbur to the scene of the crime. He only hopes the old Scoutmaster won’t congratulate him for his participation right then and there, in front of everyone; he hopes there is a subtle white lie to tell in that moment, Well, I just happened to see Nelson carrying this heavy Dutch oven and thought to give him a hand. He refused but I just wouldn’t take no as an answer. Now, what’s happening here, boys? Wait a minute—are those cigars you’re smoking? And gambling! Either way, his desire to make friends has waned. In his mind, he sees himself working as hard as can be at school so that he can leave, build a new life, a new identity, accrue new skills. He is committed to this notion. He doesn’t want to be Bugler forever, but rather, a leader, a captain of men, a lieutenant or general, perhaps.
The Hearts of Men Page 9