The Night of the Moonbow Read online

  “Yes, ma’am. But—”

  Further comment was cut off by a slice of Ma’s hands. “Buts are for goats, dear. You just do as your old Ma asks, hm? It’s important for Pa that this boy gets a nice stay. And for Doctor Dunbar, too.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” But Tiger was having private doubts. What the Jeremians needed was a boy who would add to their cabin’s luster - a boy who could take over as shortstop for the Red Sox and swim a good Australian crawl, and do all the things a good camper could do - not some orphan who played the violin and needed a nursemaid.

  Ma’s chair screeched again as she turned in it and heaved herself up. “Wisht somebody would oil this darn old thing.” Walking gingerly, for her feet troubled her greatly, she went into the next room where someone had turned the radio on full blast.

  “Now, now, honeybunch,” she said, “that ain’t no way to play the raddio. Turn it down before we wake the dead.” Through the open doorway Tiger glimpsed Ma’s daughter, Wilhelmina-Sue, settling herself and her doll into Pa’s Morris chair. Tiger smiled at her, but she just sat with her chin resting possessively on the top of the doll’s head, staring glumly at nothing. It wasn’t easy getting Willa-Sue’s attention, ever. Halting of speech, she was a “late” child, and the butt of many a camper joke. Thirteen now, she was still in fourth grade and couldn’t do simple sums; but, although mentally feeble, she was remarkably precocious in her physical development, her greatest attraction for any camper being the size of the newly developed lumps under her dress.

  Tiger wiggled his fingers at her but received no more response than he had before, and, giving up trying to amuse the girl, he turned away; his eye happened to fall on the paperwork scattered across Ma’s desktop. The letter about the new boy lay open before him, and he was unable to resist the opportunity of glancing at what it contained.

  . . . Mr Poe and I both felt it was important that you and Reverend Starbuck be fully apprised of the circumstances, he read, upsetting as they may seem - but what is so upsetting in life that we cannot seek God’s succor in time of need f You will quickly comprehend what a tragic story is Leo Joaquim’s. We naturally trust these transcripts of the notorious case will be for your knowledge only, and that you will safeguard the enclosed information from prying eyes. We would not see the boy further wounded through the cruelties of unthinking—

  He read no further, for the groaning floorboards gave warning that Ma was coming back in.

  “S’long, Ma,” he said, tugging his cap down and opening the screen door. The moment he stepped outside Harpo was whining and scratching at the screen. The dog nosed the door open and licked Tiger’s hand, begging to accompany him down to the lower campus.

  “Can he come with me?” Tiger asked.

  “Why not? I suppose he’s more your beast than mine. But you best send him back up for his supper,” Ma said. “And if anybody says anything, you just tell ’em Harpo followed along on his own.”

  “Ma, you’re a peach.”

  . “That’s me, dear, fat and ripe and lots of fuzz.”

  When Tiger and the dog had gone, Ma sank back into her chair. No sooner was she settled than the cat roused itself, arched its back, and noiselessly slipped into her lap, where it began kneading her bosom with its paws and purring like a motor. “Yes, pussy, yes Jezzy,” Ma crooned, stroking its fur.

  Setting the cat against her thigh, she retrieved the letter and scanned its last lines again. We pray, Miss Meekum had written, Leo will find a safe berth there, and make the sort of friends the Friends of Joshua boys are famous for.

  With a smile Ma picked up the quarter Tiger had deposited on the desk and returned it to his envelope, which she replaced in its proper order at the head of the box. When this minor task was seen to, and after adjusting her eyeshade against the light, she poked around until she found a fresh file folder, then wrote out a label: “Joaquim, Leopold,” and slipped the boy’s medical reports and other documents into it. It was only as she folded the letter to include it in the file that she noticed something written on the back of the last page - a postscript from Elsie Meekum:

  So awfully sorry - have just checked bus times and find there’s no bus for Junction City on Sunday. Will have to send Leo Saturday afternoon.

  Now, there was a fly in the ointment. Ma pondered matters. If the boy was coming today, that meant he was bound to arrive on the five o’clock bus from Hartford. She must get cracking so she could arrange with Henry Ives to meet him at Four Corners with the jitney. Henry could deliver him straight to Cabin 7, where Tiger would be on hand to look after him.

  She returned the letter to its envelope, and placed it in the folder, which she set aside. From the back of the shoe box she took a fresh “spending” envelope like Tiger’s and across the top she began the name. She wrote:

  LEO

  then stopped; what was that last name? She had reference to Miss Meekum’s letter, then added:

  JOAQUIM

  “Joakum,” she murmured to herself as she wrote, “Leo Joakum.” She slipped the envelope back in the box, then laughed to herself. The envelope was empty, and likely to stay that way. In such times as these, who had spending money for a poor orphan boy? She opened her pocketbook and extracted three quarters - all the change she had. She had intended it for some new hair ribbons for Willa-Sue, but there were better uses for money than fripperies. She closed up the envelope and reinserted it in its place among the others, then took the file folder and, pulling open the yellow varnished cabinet, filed it between “Jackson, Jerome,” and “Jones, Bertram.”

  The clock chimed the quarter-hour and Ma’s chair squeaked again as she started; Jezzy hit the floor on four light feet. It was nearly powwow time. She must see to Willa-Sue’s supper. She hung her eyeshade on its hook, and was about to shut the drawer when, her fingernail flicking along the row of tabs, she recalled Miss Meekum’s admonition. Taking the new boy’s folder, she opened the door of the old pie safe she used for “important personals.” The safe had a lock against snoopers. She placed the folder among the documents, shut and locked the door, then fed the key under her ink-stained blotter with its advertisements from Bloom’s Stationery Emporium in Junction City, Est. 1926.

  The string of six cabins making up “Harmony,” the intermediate or junior unit of Camp Friend-Indeed that stretched between “High Endeavor” (seniors) and “Virtue” (cadets), were spread out along the line-path leading to the council ring in the pine grove at the lakefront and the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Nature Lodge, heart of the lower camp. Modest nine-bunk dwellings of brown-creosoted, tongue-and-groove siding set on blocks, identical in shape and size, each with its porch in front and clothesline beside or behind, the cabins had been built twenty years before to replace the original canvas tents, and had instead of solid walls sets of hinged side flaps that opened the entire structure up, bringing the outdoors inside. Each cabin had its name and number carved on a varnished pine plaque over the door: “Ezekiel - 6,” “Jeremiah - 7,” “Hosea - 8,” “Isaiah - 9,” and “Obadiah - 10,” and from the porch of each, through the red and brown tree trunks, could be seen the gleaming lake and waterfront, its boat dock and swim dock, the canoe racks, the diving float with its thirty-foot tower and board, and, out on the point, the cluster of High Endeavour cabins.

  A dozen feet in back of Jeremiah, between the chrome-pipe faucet and wash rack that the cabin shared with Hosea and Ezekiel, stood “Old Faithful,” the geyser-like drinking fountain that was the social center of the Harmony unit, and farther along the path was the “Dewdrop Inn,” as the six-hole privy was called - another social hub.

  Among the cabins, the late-afternoon sunshine filtered through the dark pine branches that formed a shady canopy overhead. Languorous, desultory talk and low, easy laughter emanated from the bunk racks in which campers reposed, at the lazy end of another summer’s day. The heat had died, the locusts had stilled their noise, the air was cool, with just a bit of breeze. Yet, the tranquil harmonies of the late afterno
on were all but lost on the boys of Jeremiah, who were come together in a moment of ferocious ecclesiastical endeavour.

  “ Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth First Samuel Second Samuel First Kings Second Kings - um - Ezra ...”

  “Chronicles, you forgot First Chronicles, Second Chronicles, then Ezra—” Monkey corrected.

  “Shit, Chronicles,” Eddie said, socking his forehead in frustration.

  “Yeah, shit,” echoed Peewee Oliphant.

  “Aw, can it, twerp,” ordered Monkey. “Who said you were allowed to swear? You want your mouth washed out with soap?”

  “Heh heh.” Young Peewee eyed Monkey warily from under the tan felt brim of the Tom Mix ten-gallon hat that was his preferred headgear. As the youngest boy at Friend-Indeed, Peewee Oliphant, age seven, was tolerated in Jeremiah cabin only by virtue of the fact that he was camp mascot. His father, in addition to being Friend-Indeed’s doctor, kept a summer cottage adjacent to the infirmary in Three Corner Cove, and since his romper days Peewee had been doggedly attempting to follow in the footsteps of the older boys.

  Furrowing his brow in concentration, Eddie took it from the top again. Come Monday, he would have to stand up in Bible-studies class and recite the books of the Old Testament without a mistake, so for the past quarter of an hour Monkey Twitchell had been coaching him.

  “Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers Deuteronomy Joshua Judges Ruth First Samuel Second Samuel First Kings Second Kings First Chronicles Second—”

  “Ohhh mi-iiii Gaawd!”

  This time it was the Bomber who interrupted the recitation, staring in lubricious disbelief at the copy of the King James Version of the Good Book open on his broad lap. “Listen to this, you guys, willya? This’ll whack you out! Sex - sex in the Bible!”

  “Sex in the Bible?” Monkey repeated blankly. Such things were not possible, not even in this modern world of marvels.

  To prove the truth of his dubious statement, the Bomber read for them the verses he had just stumbled across: Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins—

  Wow! they exclaimed. Tits in the Bible!

  “Wait, wait, that ain’t all!” He read more: This thy stature is like to a palm tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes. I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs therof; now also thy breasts shall be as clusters of the vine—/

  “See what I’m tellin’ ya? This here’s the Bible and this guy’s woggin’ on this dame’s tits!”

  Eddie, who had been lounging on his bunk, sat up, his eyes bugging with astonishment. “Boy, have we been missing somethin’! Who is this guy, anyways?”

  “I think it’s Solomon.”

  “Solomon?” Dump’s voice, changing this summer, climbed an octave. “For cripes’ sakes, if he’s supposed to be so wise why can’t he tell the difference between dates and grapes?” Baptized Donald Dixon Dillworth, Jr, Dump, who had the glasses and perpetually concerned expression of a serious scholar, bore his name heriocally. His studious side, however, did not keep him from regularly lining out home runs for Red Sox.

  “Aw jeez, willya listen to the guy?” The Bomber chortled. “Grapes or dates - if it’s tits, what’s the diff? Tits, man, big friggin’ tits - and they’re in the Bible!”

  This much was true, although Pa Starbuck would have perceived the Bomber’s interpretation of holy writ to be distressingly literal. Bomber Jackson had chanced upon the verses while leafing through the New Testament in search of Romans 5 (on mortal sin and atonement) - his assignment for the same Bible-studies class. If either he or Eddie should fail in his recitation on Monday morning he would earn demerits for Jermiah, a fact helping to account for the boys’ zealousness in their pursuit of ecclesiastical knowledge.

  The talk now turned to a consideration of sex closer to home, however; to wit, the sundry eroticisms of Gus Klaus, occupant of Hosea cabin, next door.

  “Gus was doin’ it again last night,” the Bomber observed with relish. He put aside his Bible, brought out his torch and began whittling on it, making ready for tonight’s council fire.

  Of the five campers, only Peewee did not know what “it” was, but, anticipating ridicule, he forbore to ask, hoping to deduce the answer from the general discussion.

  “How couldja tell?” inquired Eddie Fiske, dangling his legs over the edge of his bunk. Red-haired and freckled, with a mouth as wide as a slice of pie, Eddie had the sort of pale, liverish-looking skin that would peel all summer.

  “I seen him. Seen his sillarett.” The Bomber pantomimed furious onanistic activity, to the hilarity of Monkey and Eddie. Dump, who was inclined toward prudishness, and didn’t care for the endless stream of sex-talk that flowed in and around every cabin in the camp, didn’t think it funny.

  “Gus has sex on the brain,” declared Monkey. All bony ribs and hyperkinetic, Monkey Twitchell was well nicknamed: there was a simian quality to his small narrow face, large ears, and bright, swiveling eyes. And Monkey was right about Gus Klaus, who this year had arrives at camp with a sheaf of typewritten pages - the letterhead bore the legend “For Better Plumbing Kali Klaus” - containing the racier portions of James T. Farrell’s Studs Lonigan, assiduously copied out for Moonbow reading fare. “If he doesn’t watch out,” Monkey added, “he’s gonna get warts.”

  “Or grow hair on the palm of his hand,” Eddie stated.

  “Or go blind,” put in the Bomber authoritatively.

  The older campers were repeating the Reverend Starbuck’s oft-stated predictions of the consequences of this particular pastime.

  “Hey Bomber,” Peewee said. “How’s about givin’ us a look at Tits O’Shay?”

  “Oh, come on, Peewee,” said Dump. “You’re too young for that stuff.”

  “No, I ain’t.”

  “Then ask your father, don’t go looking at dirty pictures. ”

  “Hell, Tits O’Shay ain’t dirty,” declared the Bomber. “She’s cute.”

  Dump groaned a protest as the Bomber heaved himself up to retrieve the battered cardboard box he kept stored in his assigned space on the overhead shelf, and from it produced a small piece of polychromed cardboard, the end flap of a pound carton of Land O’Lakes butter showing the picture of a smiling Indian female kneeling and holding up before her chest a carton of Land O’Lakes butter on which was the picture of the identical smiling girl holding up another pound of butter, and so on, presumably, into infinity. In this instance, however, the portion above her hands where the carton rested had been cut out and the maiden’s bare knees were folded up into the excised rectangle, presenting the alluring picture of a smiling Indian maid holding in her hands two eye-filling breasts - the luscious Tits O’Shay. Monkey and Eddie were practically drooling, while Peewee stood bug-eyed on the bed behind them.

  “Okay, you guys, that’s enough for one day.” As the Bomber slipped the card into the box and stretched to return it to its hiding place, he emitted a volley of rude noises.

  “Pee-yoo, you farted!” Holding his nose and screwing up his face, Peewee pointed out the obvious.

  “Bombs away!” Eddie shouted, and began chanting, “Beans, beans the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot.” Then they all took up the refrain, “The more you toot the better you feel, so eat your beans at every meal.”

  “Aw, come on, you guys—”

  Despite his brashness, the Bomber was easily embarrassed, but it was because of this singular talent that he had been nicknamed “Bomber” in the first place; or sometimes the Brown Bomber, a cognomen stemming from a certain resemblance to boxer Joe Louis, who only the year before had knocked out Jim Braddock to become heavyweight champion of the world. Joe, of course, was a darker shade, but the swarthiness of the Bomber’s complexion, as well as his chunky features, furrowed brow, and poll of kinky black hair, marked a distinct likeness.

  Monkey and Eddie and Dump stopped their razzing, but Peewee, never knowing when to quit, continued to pinch his nose and repeat his pe
e-yoo’s. When at last he subsided, they all seemed to.run out of talk. Dump frowned at his watch; what was keeping the others? he wondered. All Boats In had rung, the lake lay deserted, the waterfront too. Just about everybody, campers and counselors, was already indoors, engaged in the before-dinner routine known as “powwow,” the final one for the first group of two-weekers.

  Fourteen days of camp had already passed, and tomorrow, Sunday, July 3, they would be going home, to be. replaced with a new incoming group, among them, the longed-for replacement for the infamous Stanley Wagner, and the talk in Cabin 7 now turned to speculation on this interesting subject. Whatever he turned out to be like, all the regular Jeremians hoped he would be the kind of boy who would help get them back in the habit of winning. For, until this summer, “Hartsig’s boys,” as they were called, had been prime stuff at Friend-Indeed. Thanks to the leadership of Reece, who had a peculiar knack of urging his campers to feats of prowess that outdid those of the other cabins (although even Reece had been stymied by Stanley), they had garnered more “happy points” and fewer “blackies”

  two years running, and (until Stanley had been inflicted on them) had fully expected to do the same again this season. If the new boy lived up to expectations, if he could “show some good old moxie,” and “bring home the bacon” (to use two of Reece’s favorite expressions), and, well, just “fit in,” they might still put it off; they might still see the names of the Jeremians and their counselor formally inscribed on the plaque at the base of the Hartsig Trophy, the handsome silver cup donated by Reece’s dad, Big Rolfe Hartsig.

  Voices were heard out on the line-path, and in a moment two more Jeremians entered the cabin. -

  “What’s going on?” demanded Phil Dodge, the taller and huskier of the two. “Jesus, Peewee, are you completely nuts!” he exclaimed, spotting the boy lolling grandly on Reece’s cot.