The Night of the Moonbow (10 page)

Next came his introduction to the traditional soap bath. Monday was “wash day,” when first thing in the morning everyone fell out for the weekly soap bath in the lake, and Leo was tugging on his swim suit when he noticed he was getting funny looks from his cabin-mates.

“What are you doing, kiddo?” Phil demanded, wrapping his husky waist in a towel.

Leo gave him a look back; he was putting on his trunks, what else?

“Nobody wears a bathing suit to soap bath.”

“They don’t?”

"No. They go buck-assed naked.”

“Oh.” Leo crimsoned, and, pulling off his trunks, wrapped a towel around his waist. Though he was used to the casualness of dormitory life, the idea of standing around naked in the open air offended his sense of propriety, and when, within minutes, he found himself dockside amid a sea of robust male forms, legs, arms, and pale behinds, a forest of limp penises, of corrugated scrotums drawn up tight as walnut shells in the nippy morning air - all of Pa’s campers gathered to worship Hygeia, goddess of “cleanliness,” with their pious offerings of pink Lifebuoy or green Palmolive soap cakes - he clung desperately to his towel. The result had been a spate of scornful taunts.

“Come on, lily-white, dive in!” “Hey, Wacko, drop the laundry!” “Yeah, screwball, let the world see your dong!” This last from an older, thick-necked camper with a round, pimply, pug-ugly face and a nasty swagger, who wore a tattoo on his forearm, like Popeye. His name, Leo had already learned, was Claude Moriarity - more often known as “Bullnuts,” Leo now perceived, for obvious reasons. The sight of the new boy, covered with goose pimples, knees knocking from the morning chill, seemed to goad him, and he advanced menacingly.

“Okay, you guys!” he boomed. “Let’s get ’im!” And five or six campers had sprung on Leo and stripped away his towel, leaving him trying to cover his nakedness with both hands. This show of modesty further provoked Bullnuts and his pals, who, before Leo realized their full intent, had picked him up and chucked him off the dock into the swim crib, where he landed on his back and got water up his nose. Not knowing what else to do, he paddled helplessly around until the Bomber came to the rescue and loaned him his block of Ivory soap (“It floats”), then dived for Leo’s cake of Lifebuoy (which didn’t).

The third incident of note occurred after dinner that evening, and marked the beginning of Leo’s troubles with Hap Holliday. He had been heading for the Dewdrop Inn, giving a wide berth to the playing field, where late baseball practice was in progress, hoping to go unnoticed by the coach, who Leo was afraid might try to trap him into playing. Swinging madly, Junior Leffingwell had hit a pop fly that sailed across the field and (having been missed by Oggie Ogden, in the outfield) bounced within ten feet of Leo and continued rolling toward him. Leo had stood transfixed, unable to do anything but stare at it, as if to touch it would do him injury.

“Come on, Wackeem, for cripes’ sake, throw the ball!”

This command, from Dump Dillworth, had finally roused him to dazed action. He had picked up the ball and awkwardly launched it toward the plate, but the throw had gone wild, and as Junior rounded third and sprinted for home, the entire field, players and spectators a-like, had erupted in scornful hoots and catcalls (“Woo-woo!” “Chicken wing!” “Hey, Wackoff, where’d you learn to throw, at dancing school?”).

Hap had made no secret of his scorn and mandated this morning’s private practice session, and later Leo had overheard Phil muttering that it looked like the new boy might turn out to be every bit as twerpy as Stanley Wagner. Wally agreed: Leo was twerpy. Tiger, however, had gone to bat for him: just because every Jeremian excelled at some sport or other, even if it was only Ping-Pong, didn’t mean Leo had to. He’d rack up plenty of happy points for Jeremiah other ways, they’d see.

Leo had been grateful - but worried, too. Because the truth was that every true-blue Jeremian made a good showing at athletics; his cabin-mates were not an assortment of wimpy oddballs - not, as Reece pointed out to Leo at that night’s bull session, the kind of boy who had a pillow called Albert and wore a hat that looked like something out of the funny papers. There followed a lecture on the nature of teamwork and about winning. The Jeremians, Reece reminded them, were winners because they operated as a team (led by a leader like himself), and if you played the game properly you came out a winner, too, while, if you didn’t . . . well, look at Stanley Wagner.

“Yeah, look at him,” said Phil, scowling. Then, tossing his cap by its bill, he led the Jeremians out to Old Faithful to brush their teeth.

“So how do you like it so far, kiddo?” he asked, fetching up beside Leo at the fountain.

Leo replied that he liked it fine so far.

“Well, don’t screw up,” said Phil. “We don’t want any more spuds in Jeremiah.”

“Aw, can it,” the Bomber growled. “He’s going to get us plenty points. And wait till he plays his fiddle at Major Bowes.”

Fifteen minutes later, when taps sounded, Phil’s remark still rankled, but as Leo lay on his bunk, staring up at the molded impression of Tiger’s backside pressed into the canvas overhead, he felt reassured. Stanley Wagner had been a spud, no doubt about that, and Jeremiah had paid the price. As cabin monitor, and second-in-command to Reece, Phil felt responsible, that was all.

Unfortunately, however, that night had been a repetition of the first, with another bad dream that had again disturbed the cabin and left Leo wrung out with imagined horror, as well as the butt of more jokes, especially from Phil, who now let it be known that in his view, the new boy was fast proving that he had inherited not only the bunk of Stanley Wagner but his shoes as well.

Deeply shamed, Leo made feeble apologies, but how could he explain? Whom could he confide in, tell about the dreams that haunted his sleep and woke him up screaming? It was the same old story all over again, only in a new setting.

At the Institute, Superintendent Poe had repeatedly cautioned him: “These dreams of yours are affecting your daily work, my boy. We must do something about them. It doesn’t do to be made prey to foolish fancies. I shall arrange for you to talk to our Doctor Percival, he’ll get you over this childish business quick enough ...”

So Leo had seen Dr Percival, who asked him to talk about his dreams.

Leo tried: dark, fearful, frightening, something large and hideous waiting in the dark to seize and devour him.

“What sort of thing?” pursued the doctor. He might as well have asked, Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Leo tried to describe it but failed; it was nameless, springing from who knew what hidden corner of his mind. He tried to picture it; couldn’t do that either, just . . . big and dark and terrifying.

“You must just make up your mind to stop dreaming,” Dr Percival had concluded. “Or simply try to dream nice, pleasant dreams, hm? It’s as easy to dream happy dreams as unhappy ones. Just make up your mind.” He wagged his head sadly. “Until you do, I am afraid you will never grow up. You will always be a boy, with a boy’s thoughts and a boy’s fears. Therefore you must govern your thoughts, discipline yourself, put on blinders and reins.”

But the doctor had no answer when Leo asked him how he was to accomplish this, when every day he could hear the laughter of the boys echoing along those green grim corridors, and the mocking jingle they loved to sing:

Oh my oh me oh, a crazy boy is Leo Oh me oh my oh, his nightmares make him cry-o . ..

He would have given anything to be able to get away from that chant, to find someplace where no one knew anything about him, someplace where he could forget. And, miraculously, now he had his chance: Moonbow Lake was waiting.

“Hey, Nutbread, those two old farts want you in administration office pronto.” This from Measles, the head proctor and Pitt tattler, who poked his ugly puss in at the dormitory door, his loud voice echoing in the long, Spartanly furnished room.

Leo had been pasted with the name Nutbread for so long that he answered to it readily enough, and he had leaped from his cot to make tracks to the administration office, where he found thin, prim, dry-as-dust Supervisor Poe seated behind his desk; with him, thinner, primmer, dustier Miss Meekum. Mr Poe eyed him across his glasses rims and inquired starchily how Leo thought he might enjoy spending a few weeks in the country, then without waiting for a reply began explaining how, through the merciful intercession of the Society of the Friends of Joshua, who maintained an affiliation with the Pitt Institute for Boys, a place had been made available at a summer camp on Moonbow Lake.

The matter was settled inside fifteen minutes. Miss Meekum helped him to assemble his paltry possessions and put them into the cardboard suitcase he’d been loaned, with its broken corners and its fake-alligator-paper hide. In addition, two army blankets, stiff with age, had been made up into a bundle along with Albert, without whom he hadn’t slept a night since Butch got killed.

“Regrettably, there is no time to sew nametapes in your things,” she said. “You must take care and not lose them, clothes are hard to replace these days.” And, as though to apologize for the lack of printed identification in his underwear, she pressed on him a fresh cake of Lifebuoy soap, and a celluloid soap “keeper.” “If you are frugal with your soap it should last all summer. It’s really a wonderful opportunity,” she went on, drawing her hanky through her ringless fingers. “Just imagine - a lovely lake and green trees and meadows and ...” She paused in her recitation of the charms to be found in the Connecticut wildwood, her wrinkled face sobering while behind her pinched-on steel glasses her eyes, like the eyes of a doe, swam liquidly at the thought of his journeying all of fifty miles away for eight weeks of camping. “You’ll be able to get a fresh start, Leo, in a new place, where you can look forward, not back. And, please, no talk about ...” She trailed off, her lids fluttering. He regarded her solemnly, waiting for her to finish her sentence. "... about the bridge and all of that. You must erase life’s blackboard and put the past behind you. Will you do that?”

“Yes,” he had said, thinking how silly she was, Elsie Meekum. Foolish words just seemed to come bubbling out of her like Nehi rootbeer when you shook up the bottle.

But there was a bridge, wasn’t there? And carbonated though she might be at times, Miss Meekum was also often wise and prudent. He must remember.

“And be truthful at all times,” she went on. “You know your penchant for - exaggeration.”

“Yes,” he said.

“And don’t forget to practice your music, practice every day. You’ll be rewarded and the boys will like you for it. Play that pretty Paganini piece you’ve worked so hard on. Promise, now.”

Yes, he promised again. He was always promising her. Following these cautionary words there was further bounty as she presented him with, first, a fake tortoiseshell toothbrush holder, then a blue-covered spiral notebook with lined pages, a fountain pen, and a bottle of Parker blue-black Quink.

“Take these, my dear, and keep a record of the happy time that lies ahead of you,” she said. “A few jottings every day, and long afterward, when you are older, you will be glad to have such a memento.” She thrust out her face to kiss him.

He had shivered at the touch of her withered lips, unused as he was to such intimate contact, and his eye caught the flecks of her pink face powder as they sifted from her cheeks. Poor, shriveled, woebegone Miss Meekum - yet he honored her gende claim on him, for who else was there for him to love?

Besides, he owed her; he knew that. Owed her plenty. Foolish, flat-chested spinster though she was, she’d proved a mother to him when he’d had no other, w
^r
hen his own mother was gone . . . gone across the L Street Bridge.

Suddenly he was sobbing, his body racked by painful spasms. Stop, he told himself, don’t be such a jerk. She’s dead and gone - dead and gone, and where’s the help for that? Who had the magic to bring her back? He lifted his tearstained face and pulled away bits of straw and grass. This wouldn’t do, wouldn’t do at all. If there was one thing he couldn’t stand, it was a crybaby.

Once more, high in the sycamore tree, the mockingbird offered its lighthearted song, its practiced notes interrupting his thoughts. He stiffened his spine, staring at the violin in his hand. If he wasn’t going to practice baseball he had better practice some more music - not just because he’d promised Miss Meekum he would but because he had been entered as a solo performer in the Major Bowes Amateur Night contest. He was a cinch to take a prize, Tiger had declared, and if he did he’d win extra points for Jeremiah. Extra points meant Reece would be pleased, and if Reece was pleased, everybody would be pleased.

Taking up his violin again, he fiddled an impromptu accompaniment to the mockingbird’s song, and when the singing stopped, Leo went on, segueing into an old favorite: “Poor Butterfly.” Of all the tunes from his earlier years, the ones his mother used to sing to him, this was the song he knew best. It had been her favorite; she’d heard it in a Broadway musical show she’s seen back during the World War. Such a wistful song, too; she always said it made her want to cry. Now, though she was gone, he remembered the song and played it often.

Poor Butterfly!

’Neath the blossoms waiting the words went,

Poor Butterfly!

For she loved him so.

Leo had loved that song from the first moment. He loved watching his mother as she played it, her pale lids fluttering, a little blue vein beating in her temple, her eyes shining - until there would come the brutal knocking from downstairs in the butcher shop; he would be pounding the broom handle on the ceiling, telling Emily to shut up, the noise was driving him crazy.

He rolled over and fingered his wallet out of his back pocket, then wiped his thumb and finger on the roll of his shorts and carefully extracted her photograph from one of the glassine windows. He held it with the utmost delicacy, for one corner was badly dog-eared, and the paper was in danger of cracking. The photo had been taken behind the pleated curtain of the little automatic picture booth by the entrance to Kresge’s 5 & 10 — four shots for a quarter, ten cents more for “artistic hand tinting.” “Smile, Mom,” he had told her, but she wouldn’t, she didn’t like showing her uneven teeth. What the camera had therefore captured was this other, gentler, and more tender smile, filled with caring and a pensive yearning - a trifle fearful too, the least tinge of anxiety in the eyes, those large, deep-set eyes.