Camp Pleasant (19 page)

“What’sa matter?” demanded Charlie Barnett.

“Go to sleep, it’s all right,” I said. “Just a bad dream.”

Then I turned back to Tony and sat there staring through my tears at the little boy who had killed Ed Nolan. I sat there stroking his hair with fingers I could barely feel. Tony, Tony; his name kept repeating itself in my mind. I couldn’t say another word to him.

After a while he fell asleep but I still sat there, looking down at his face. Even though I couldn’t see it, I could imagine it—thin, tear-streaked, those dark circles under his swollen eyes, those little pinched, worry lines that scarred his face even when he slept.

I don’t know how long I sat there. I felt like a block of stone. Odd, I kept thinking, ever since it happened, I’d felt as if I’d give half my life to know that Ellen was innocent. Now I knew it and it had only plunged me deeper into despair.

After a time, I stood up, feeling as if my legs were running into the floor boards. Slowly, with the motions of a drugged man, I put on my bathrobe and slippers and closed the screen door silently behind me.

It was a beautiful night. The sky was ebony black and cloudless, dotted with sprinkles of bright stars and with a great white saucer of a moon. Dark trees rustled in the cool wind and the air was filled with the peaceful sounds of night. I stumbled along, not noticing at all. I crossed the bridge and heard the stream gurgling underneath as it flowed down to the dark lake. I walked past the stillness of the dining hall and down the path past the leader’s tent.

There was a light burning in Doc’s tent. I found him slumped over his table, his head on his arms. I stood in the tent entrance a little while looking at him, watching his gray hair ruffle slightly in the breeze. I even wondered if I should go back to my cabin and forget about it.

Then, with a sigh, I spoke his name. He didn’t move. I stepped over to him and touched his shoulder. He grunted and raised his head, then blinked and stared at me for a moment before recognition came.

“Son?” he asked then in a dull, sleep-ridden voice.

I stared at him without speaking.

“What is it, son?” he asked, standing up.

My bathrobe rustled as I sank down on his cot.

“Tony did it,” I said. It was like driving a knife into myself.

I wasn’t prepared for the look of complete blankness on his face. I’d expected him to gasp, maybe even recoil with shock. He just sat down slowly, looking at me as if he hadn’t even heard what I said. Then, in the stillness, I heard him swallow dryly. His eyes fell and he drew in a long breath.

“So you know,” he murmured.

I felt the skin tightening across my face. “What do you—?” I started.

“I’ve known it all along,” he said. “The day it happened—I saw him come running out of the Nolan cabin. I didn’t know what had—happened. I just thought he’d gone to—I don’t know what I thought. I meant to speak to him about it later. Then you found Ed.”

I felt as if my breath had stopped.

“You let Ellen go to jail?” I asked incredulously. “You—”

I stopped as our eyes met.

“What would you have done?” he asked quietly. “You come to me now, not knowing what to do.”

He shook his head.

“I feel exactly as you do, son,” he said. “A complete—
disbelief
. It can’t be real, it must be a dream. A boy.
A ten-year-old boy
. What would they do to him? Execute him? No. But … maybe that would be even kinder than—”

He shook his head again and let out his breath slowly.

We sat looking at each other in the dim light, and I knew exactly why he hadn’t spoken of it. I was in love with Ellen but, even to me, the thought of turning in Tony seemed hideous. I knew why Doc had looked so worn and unhappy all the past weeks. It must have been a terrible weight to bear alone.

“I thought it might not be necessary to mention it,” he said. “There’s so little real evidence. I thought maybe no one would be held. But….”

I looked at him.

“Her lawyer told me there’s no hope of an acquittal,” he said. “There’s no evidence working for her.”

He was quiet. I sat looking at him, feeling torn in two.

“Doc, we’ve got to!” I burst out suddenly.

He raised his eyes.

“It sounds simple,” he said. “Just tell the sheriff that ten-year-old Tony Rocca killed his camp director.”

“But if we testified,” I said, “Tony was driven to it, you know that. If we told what happened.”

“He’d still be put away, son,” Doc said. “No matter how lenient they are, no matter how much they consider his situation—they’ll be forced to put him away again.” He shook his head miserably. “How could he survive it? How?”

We sat there silently, looking at the wooden floor. I kept thinking of Tony. Of how he must have thought with his boy-like logic that killing Ed was the answer. He’d get back in his own cabin then and everything would be all right. All he had to do was get rid of “the fat guy.”

I visualized him finding the hunting knife, maybe in the
Lost and Found
box, maybe he stole it. I saw him going down to the Nolan cabin without a plan, without any more precaution than going there when the rest of the camp was on the dock for the diving show. Or maybe there
had
been a plan, maybe there was a core of terrible shrewdness in him that his past life had caused.

But the rest was accident; Ellen being unconscious in the bathroom, Ed asleep on the living-room couch. Tony stealing in, the knife in his bandaged hand, that taut, wild look on his face.

“Jesus Christ,” I said, “what did they
do
to the poor kid?”

Doc murmured, “Yes. What did they do?”

When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I tried to do was believe it had all been a dream. For a long minute, lying there on my side and staring at the latticework of sunlight on the cabin wall, I almost managed to believe it; it was so completely far-fetched and bizarre.

Then I raised up on one elbow and saw Tony lying on his stomach, looking at me. He turned quickly onto his back with a rusde of bedclothes and I felt those cold fingers clamp shut on my insides again. It was true.

A wave of sickening despair fell across me as I looked at him.
Ten years old
, I thought. I remembered the first day I’d met him. I remembered his tense, angry pride, how he’d chosen to risk drowning rather than admit he couldn’t swim. I thought of how he’d remained silent about his torn foot because he was afraid to tell anyone. I thought of his lying about his mother’s letter, thought about that little song he sang. I thought about his endless truculent and yet pathetic search for happiness. He’d wanted only to be a boy but the world had not allowed it. It had driven him from youth.

“I s’pose ya’ll tell the cops,” Tony said.

I twitched in surprise and stared at him, unable to speak.

“Who cares?” he said, struggling to sound unconcerned. “It don’t matter t’me.”

“Oh … Tony.”

Reveille then; Willie Pratt’s last assault upon our ears. There was a rush of activity up the cabin line. This was not a day to stay in bed. My boys all dressed quickly, several of them staring guardedly at Tony. While he was lacing his sneakers, Chester whispered to me, “What’d he mean about cops?”

I shook my head. “Nothing.”

He didn’t look convinced and, when he and Jim Moody left for Paradise, I saw them talking in confederate tones.

Tony had managed to force a mantle of casualness upon himself. He kept whistling between his teeth while he dressed, packed the last of his clothes and rolled up his mattress to be carried down to the lodge later. Only the constant, erratic jerking of his chest as he breathed gave him away; that and his voice which was strained and brittle.

“No
more camp,”
he said. “Ain’t that a damn shame?”

No one spoke. Whistling louder yet, Tony left the cabin and headed for Paradise.

Charlie and Marty were at me. “What was he yellin’ for last night?” Marty probed. “What was he talkin’ about?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I
told
you—he had a bad dream.”

“Ye-ah?” asked a suspicious Charlie Barnett.

“Yeah
. Now get ready for breakfast.” There was a sinking sensation in my stomach as if someone were piling cold stones there.

I didn’t go to Paradise because I didn’t want to see Tony. I combed my hair and went to the dining hall kitchen and threw some water in my face, drying it with a handkerchief. When I came out of the kitchen, Sid was heading for the Senior cabins. He saw me and came over.

“I was just coming to see you,” he said and, from the way he said it, I knew that Doc had told him.

“Have you told anyone else yet?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Just Doc.”

He nodded. “Well,” he said, “Doc still isn’t sure.” He paused a moment, then said, “But I am. We’ll wait a while and see what happens.”

“Then what?” I asked.

“I’ll call the sheriff,” he said quietly. “We can’t let Ellen be sacrificed—no matter what it means to Tony.”

I didn’t nod or shake my head or speak or do anything. Sid put his hand on my arm and tightened the fingers.

“I feel as rotten as you do about this, Matt,” he said. “But it’s out of our hands. We have no right to even think about sacrificing one human being for another. It’s not our privilege.”

“No,” I said, hardly audible. I stood there watching him as he walked back toward the office.

Breakfast. All of us sitting around the table, not talking much, drinking our orange juice. I noticed Charlie and Marty exchange a meaningful glance, then Charlie seemed to brace himself. He drew in a quick breath and blurted it out suddenly without warning.

“Ya know what Tony told us?” he asked.

My hand twitched involuntarily and drops of orange juice dashed across the table. I glanced at Tony and saw him staring at Charlie, his nostrils flared a little, his chest rising and falling slowly and heavily, a crazy little smile pulling up his lips.

“Eat your breakfast,” I said in a husky voice.

“But d’ya know what he told us?” Marty insisted.

“I don’t
care
what he told you!” I snapped. “It’s not my business.” I felt as if they were closing in on me; as if I had to stop them before it was too late.

“Yeah, but—” Charlie and Marty started, almost simultaneously.

“But
nothing!
“ I cut it short. “Eat your breakfast I said.”

They all looked at each other, exchanging wary, suspicious glances. The juice seemed to turn to acid in my stomach. It was like a disease, this information. It seemed to be spreading. In a second now, someone at the next table would acquire it—Mack, maybe one of his boys. Then on to the next table—the next—a hideous wildfire of knowledge.

“I told ‘em—”

“Tony,
shut up!
“ I said furiously, feeling my stomach muscles go rigid. I don’t know what I had in mind. I knew it had to come out and yet I couldn’t bear the thought.

“He said he killed Big Ed,” Charlie Barnett finished it.

It was as if we’d all turned to stone. We sat there without moving or speaking, staring at each other and that smile was frozen to Tony’s tense, white face. I tried to think of something to say, something that would end this moment, dispel it—but I couldn’t. It was Tony who ended it.

“That’s right,” he said casually, as if he were admitting the theft of a candy bar.

The boys were almost as speechless as I was in the face of such a revelation.

“He’s kiddin’ us, ain’t he?” Jim Moody finally said in a frail voice.

“Hell, I’m kiddin’!” Tony said defiantly. “I stuck a—”

“Tony!”

I hadn’t meant to be so loud but they heard me at the next table and turned to see what was the matter.

“I’ll tell if I want!” Tony yelled back, the skin like drum-hide across his cheeks, an unnoticed tear lacing suddenly across his face.

“Tony, will you stop?” My voice was strengthless now. I was pleading with him.

He sank back against his chair, that smile flickering on his lips, breath failing him.

“I did it,” he said, as if it were a compulsive need for him to say it. “I killed the fat guy. None o’ you dopes had the nerve. Well, I did.
I did.”

I stood up on trembling legs and put my hand on Tony’s shoulder.

“Come on,” I said in a hollow voice.

“We goin’ t’town?” he asked, still trying to sound confident but unable to.

“Yes,” I said. From the corners of my eyes, I saw the boys staring at him with faces shocked into immobile masks.

I’ll remember that walk until I die. It wasn’t far—just to the office— but it seemed as if everyone in the dining hall were watching. It seemed to grow quiet as Tony and I walked across the floor. I felt eyes on us. Then I saw Doc and Sid rising, looking stunned, and I opened the office door and ushered Tony in.

When Doc and Sid came in, Tony was sitting down on a chair against the wall, looking at a map as if he were interested in it.

“What is it?” Doc asked quickly.

“He’s told the boys,” I said. “It’ll be all over the camp before the buses come. It’s no use trying to keep it secret any more. It’s … no use waiting.” I almost whispered the words.

We stood there looking down wordlessly at Tony. After a long moment, he turned around and looked up at us, his thin face blank.

Tony Rocca grinned at us.

“Hi,” he said.

Ellen and I sat quietly in the taxicab as it drove along the lakeside road, heading for Camp Pleasant. We hadn’t said a word since leaving Emmetsville almost an hour before. We just sat there, her hand in mine, staring ahead. Our bodies shifted a little as the taxi turned right at the crossroads and I felt her press against me. I turned to her and tried to smile. Our eyes held for a moment and then she turned her head away.

“I—almost wish you hadn’t found out,” she said quietly. “I believed I did it. I was almost resigned.”

I shook my head. “That wouldn’t have helped him,” I said. “It wouldn’t have—saved him.”

We were still again.

When we reached the camp, I told the driver to wait for us and we entered the camp grounds. We stood in the open area in front of the dining hall and there wasn’t a sound except for the rustling of the trees.