Camp Pleasant (10 page)

I took a shower and shave, even dressed; then realized there was no place to go and I had no desire to look for one. With a curse, I lay down on my bunk. I sat up and started to write a letter. This failed. In the middle of the first paragraph, I scratched out everything and flung the crumpled sheet across the cabin. Next I tried reading but that didn’t work either. I finally fell into a restless semi-doze. When the dinner horn sounded I went out and stood on the hill crest looking at the gray, shifting lake. A moment was profitably employed in visions of holding the heads of Ed and Mack beneath that cold-looking surface. This, too, passed.

I started walking. I wasn’t hungry so I by-passed the talk-buzzing dining hall. I wasn’t sick so I went by the dispensary. I wasn’t a section leader so I avoided their tent; and I wasn’t Jack Stauffer so I stayed out of his cabin.

Nolan’s cabin was silent and dim as I opened the kitchen screen door and entered. I moved into the living room and saw that the bedroom door was closed.

I settled myself on the couch and began reading about Joan Collins. Then I dropped the magazine and tried to penetrate the prose forests and off-center cuteness of
The New Yorker
, gleaning only one mild laugh from the cartoons. Finally I tossed aside the tenth
Life
magazine and looked around the room with unamused eyes.

I got up and walked over to the phonograph. I looked through the stack of popular records without interest, then found the classical albums on a shelf below the player. I picked out the Pathetique as being a composition fitting my frame of mind and warmed up the tuner. The music started and I sank down on the couch again to stare at the hoop rug and listen.

The main theme of the first movement was just receiving its first presentation by the strings when the bedroom door was unlocked and opened abruptly.

Ellen stood there looking at me. She was wearing only a slip.

“Where’s Ed?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“What’re
you
doing here?” she asked.

“It’s my day off,” I said.

She said nothing. She slumped a little, then straightened.

“What’re you doing here?” she asked again but this time I didn’t answer. I looked curiously at her, noting her tangled hair.

“Why’re you playing my music?” she asked in a sullen voice. “Who gave you permission?”

“Nobody. I just—”

She started for the record player.
“My
music,” she said. “Who gave you the permission?”

There was a little break in her voice as she spiked the last sentence. I got up nervously, still staring at her. She stood leaning against the case the record player was on. Then she replaced the record arm and the music started again.

“S’all right,” she said. “It’s all right for you to listen. You like music. You can listen because you like it. You do like it? Don’t you? You said you—”

“Yes,” I said, “I like it.”

“You listen to it,” she said. “He doesn’t like music. He
hates
music.”

She turned back to me suddenly and her chest jerked convulsively as she hiccupped. Something pulled in my stomach muscles, then dropped them. I gaped at her.

“That’s right,” she said, “I’m drunk. I’m awful drunk.”

“Ellen.”

“What’s the matter, haven’t you ever seen anybody drunk before?”

No answer from me.

“You think I’m terrible, don’t you?” she asked. “You think I’m no good.”

I shook my head, speechless.

“Don’t look at me like that!”

“Ellen.”

“Damn you!” She started toward me suddenly. “I said don’t look at me like—”

Her foot slipped on the hook rug and, with a gasping cry, she started to fall. I jumped forward and caught her, feeling her fingers clutch my shoulders again, feeling her body against me, soft and clinging; her voice suddenly different.

“Matt, don’t,” she said.

I put her down on the couch nervously and stood beside it. I felt as if someone was trying to crush my heart with a mail-gloved hand.

“Don’t hate me, Matt,” she said. “Please. I can’t help it. I don’t do it to be mean.”

“I’d better go, Ellen.”

“Don’t go,” she begged.

I sat down beside her, hearing the Pathetique symphony playing as if from another world. She put her shaking hand on mine.

“Do you think I’m awful, Matt?” she asked, her breath clouding over me.

“You’re not awful,” I said. “You’re afraid. You’re unhappy.”

For a moment I thought of Ed coming back and finding Ellen like this but the idea faded in my concern for her. She looked so pitiful and lost; like a little girl deserted by everyone. Her hand kept stroking at mine helplessly. She didn’t seem to notice the slip strap falling off her shoulder. She didn’t seem to notice anything in her desire to explain. I sat there, numbly, listening.

“Do you hate me, Matt?” she asked. I shook my head. “You shouldn’t be here. It’s not right you should—”

She pulled back her hand, her face hardening.

“Why am I talking to you?” she asked. “This’s
my
house.
Mine.”

“Of course it—”

“Oh, stop talking to me!”

Her head slumped forward, she stared at her hands, then ran the shaking fingers through her hair. “Go away,” she muttered. “Leave me alone.”

“Ellen, why—?”

“I’m nothing,” she said. “I’m nobody. Don’t worry about me.”

“Ellen, why did you marry him?”

I couldn’t help asking the question I’d asked myself a hundred times.

She looked up at me quickly. “Why shouldn’t I marry him!” she asked. “You want me to stay single all my life?”

I said nothing. I just stared at a young woman I couldn’t understand but couldn’t leave.

“You want to know?” she asked. “All right, I’ll tell you, you’re so damn curious.”

She drew in a rasping breath.

“They wanted to get rid of me,” she said. “They … j-j-just got tired of having me around the house, tired of me eating their food, tired of me using up their damn precious money! So they
sold
me! That’s what it amounts to.
Why don’t you marry Mister Nolan, dear
? He’s a good man and very attentive. I’m sure he loves you very much.”

Her head fell forward again.

“I’m sure he loves you very much,” she repeated in a low, hollow voice.

“It’s all right,” I said without thinking.

She looked at me with a thin smile I took for contempt although it was more than that.

“All right,” she repeated my words. “What do you know?
All right. “
Another shaking breath. “If you knew,” she said. “If you only knew….”

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “No, I wouldn’t tell you. I wouldn’t shock you.”

“That’s not why you won’t tell me” I said.

She drew back with dizzy hauteur. “Don’t talk to me like that,” she said.

Abruptly, she sobbed and flung a hand across her eyes. “Don’t talk to me like that!” she said. “Leave me alone!”

“No.” I couldn’t help it. I put my hand on her shoulder. She twisted away.

“Don’t touch me!”

“Ellen, I’m not—”

She drew back with a frightened look, biting on one finger. Then she drew the finger away and, visibly, tried to pull herself together. She drew up the shoulder strap suddenly and tugged the slip bodice up over the white tops of her breasts.

“You’d better go,” she said heavily. “This is no place for you. You— you’ll be corrupted, you’ll get sick at what you see. I don’t want to—”

She stopped as I put my hand on hers, tightly.

“I’m not sick,” I said.

“I’m warning you,” she told me. “Go away.”

“No.”

She looked at me, a dozen different emotions moving through her eyes. “But you—” she started, and that was all. It happened.

If I’d read it in a book, I’d have laughed at it. If I’d seen it in a movie, I’d have scoffed and not believed. Yet, I swear it was as if a power beyond us threw us together. No externals caused it. The room was dim and unattractive, the air chilly. Neither of us was looking very good at the moment. Even the music had stopped.

Only the scratching of the needle provided the background of our irrevocable kiss.

In that moment, her hands clutched at my back and I could feel her nails, slowly raking. I ran my hands over her warm shoulders and back. I felt her soft, moist mouth crushed against mine and I couldn’t have stopped if Ed Nolan had walked into the room with a loaded gun. It wasn’t a kiss; it was a mindless and despairing hunger.
Julia!
my mind cried even though I knew that Julia was dead.

Once I saw a woman on a curb watching a truck hit her little boy. I saw that look on Ellen’s face.

“Oh, no,” she begged someone, anyone. “Oh, no—no. Dear God, no.” She shoved back from me, looking horrified.

“Ellen.”

“Leave me alone. Oh, please.
Please.”

I pushed up quickly, all of it flooding over me—Ellen, Ed, the absolute impossibility of it. I backed away, her terrified eyes on me.

“It never happened,” she said. “It never happened. Do you hear me?”

“It happened.” It was all I could say.

“No!” Her lips twisted back in anguish. “It
didn’t
!
“

I started toward her but she jerked back with such a throat-wrenching sob that I suddenly realized it had to stop right then or it would never stop.

As the kitchen door slammed shut behind me, I could still hear her shuttered sobbing—if only in my mind. I walked dazedly along the path, hardly noticing the drizzle. My face felt as if it was on fire, my body shuddered without control. I kept swallowing something that wouldn’t go down. All I could think of was that I couldn’t stand to see anyone. I left the path and walked through the wind-rustled woods until I’d reached the road. Then, ignoring the mist-like rain in my face, I walked to
The Crossroads Tavern
.

It took an hour and three drinks to stop my hands from shaking.

I found Tony cleaning garbage cans that morning. He was sitting in front of the kitchen door, scrubbing way inside a deep garbage can with his bad hand.

“What the—?”

Tony looked up, his face a mask of hate; which softened only a trifle when he saw me.

“What’s he making you clean garbage cans for?” I asked.

“Because he’s a
bastard,”
Tony said bitterly.

“Did you have a fight?”

“So—I had a fight.”

“Oh,
Tony
. Who with? Oh, never mind—what’s the difference? Tony, when are you going to stop fighting?”

“When they stop pickin’ on me,” he said: the story of his life.

I looked at him a moment, then noticed that there was blood seeping from under the edges of his bandage.

“How long has it been bleeding?” I asked.

“What do I care?” he snapped.

“Can’t you clean the can with your other hand?”

“I’m a
lefty.”

Another moment of me returning his truculent gaze. Then I reached out and put my hand on his shoulder. He pulled away.

“Come on, Tony,” I said quietly. “I’m on your side; you know that.”

“Nobody’s on my side.”

“Tony.”

“Well … none o’ ya
do
nothin’!” he said angrily. “Ya all shit in ya pants when that fat slob comes around!”

“Wait a minute,” I said, turning away abruptly.

“Sure!” he said. “I got
plenty
o’time! I’ll be here all day!” I heard him fling his wooden brush into the can.

Ed Nolan looked up from his desk. “Whatta
you
want?” he inquired.

“Tony Rocca can’t clean those cans any more.”

“What business is it of yours?”

“His hand is bleeding. He can’t clean garbage cans in that condition.”

“I seem t’remember takin’ him out of your cabin,” said Big Ed.

“Whether he’s in my cabin or not does not alter the fact that his hand is bleeding. His stitches have probably—”

“I told ya he’s not your concern any more,” he said, his voice rising.

“You mean you’re going to let him—”

“And I told you to stay out o’ my way,” he snapped.

“All right,” I said. “
All right.”
I walked down along the lake edge until I reached Doc Rainey’s tent. I told him about Tony and his face grew worried. He put down his fountain pen and blew out a long, tired breath.

“You can stop it, can’t you?” I asked.

“I’m afraid not, Harper. I—”

“For Christ’s sake, isn’t there
any
stop to his abuses?”

“Is it really as bad as all that?” Doc asked me. “Don’t you think Ed would stop the boy if he thought he wasn’t well?”

“No,” I said, “I don’t think it.”

“Now, son,” he said, “aren’t you being carried away a little?”

“All right,” I said, “I’m being carried away.” I turned for the tent entrance. “But I’m going to get that kid off that damn detail if I get thrown out of camp for it. I’ve had it.”

“Son, don’t do anything you’ll be—”

When he didn’t finish I looked back and saw that he was rising from the table.

“All right,” he said wearily, “I’ll see what I can do.”

I stopped off at the dispensary as Doc headed for the dining hall. Ten minutes later, Miss Leiber and I came up to where Ed and Doc were looking at Tony’s hand.