The Night of the Moonbow (2 page)

“Maybe it’s Injun smoke,” Tiger said with a straight face, down on his hands and knees now, meticulously pinching up the last bits of glass the broom had overlooked.

. “Tiger Abernathy, you’re a caution! Why, you couldn’t find a Injun within a hundred miles of Moonbow Lake. Looks like it’s cornin’ from the old Steelyard place. I just hope nobody’s lightin’ fires over there.”

She watched as Tiger, the smallest boy in the intermediate unit, but a winner for all that, clambered onto a chair to have a closer look. It wasn’t likely anybody’d be stupid enough to build a fire at the Haunted House in broad daylight, but, then, you never knew what those crazy Rinkydinks might get up to. Though the existence of the Rinkydink Club, a motley collection of the camp’s older boys, was kept hidden from Pa Starbuck, Ma was not fooled; she knew they held secret meetings down in the cellar of the house, where they smoked Lucky Strikes and talked about “doing it,” in defiance of camp rules, not to mention the ghost that roamed the premises and was reputed, from time to time, to have been “seen.” If Tiger gauged matters correctly, however, the smoke was coming not from the Haunted House but from Indian Woods, where a work detail of “fire-builders” was policing the Seneca campfire area for that evening’s initiation rites. Tonight, being the end of the first two-week camp period, .would see the first all-camper council fire and torchlight parade, when the newest members of the Seneca Lodge would be initiated. Yesterday, at a special meeting, seven inductees had been chosen for the honor.

Reassured, Ma returned to the papers she had been perusing before Tiger’s line drive interrupted her, while Tiger finished his task. Presently, he shook the dustpan into the tin wastebasket beside her chair, then asked for his money envelope.

“Coop’s not open, honey. You can’t have your money envelope less’n store’s open, you know that.’

“I want it so I can pay for the glass.”

“So’s he can pay for the glass,” Ma repeated to no one in particular. “Tiger Abernathy, there’s not another boy in camp would come in here of his own accord and offer to pay for a smashed windowpane. You aim to break that record as well?”

He waited while she riffled with plump fingers through the alphabetized money envelopes standing in the Thom

McAn shoebox she used for filing purposes. Her eyes, always troublesome, were bothered by the afternoon sun streaming through the back window, and she reached for her green celluloid eyeshade, the sort that gamblers and railway baggage-masters favor. Ma had her own homey style. With her broad, maternal bosom, made for comforting boys, her graying hair that hardly knew which way to grow, her round, puffy cheeks, untouched by the artifice of makeup, her firm little chin, and the slip straps that always showed through the tops of her dresses, she was every camper’s “Ma.”

Still waiting as she searched, Tiger added helpfully, “I’m the first one, Ma. Ab, remember?”

“Shucks, and don’t I know it. Abernathy, Brewster — here you are.”

Tiger winced at the name; nobody, except at his peril, ever called Tiger “Brewster,” not even the teachers in school. The last guy who tried had had the wind butted out of him by Tiger’s granite-hard head and been sent sprawling.

Ma flicked the envelope out of the box and handed it over. With tanned, grubby fingers, Tiger pinched the clasp, lifted the flap, blew, and peered inside.

“How much do you figure the damage’ll be, Ma?” he asked.

“Well, lessee, glass ought to be ’bout a quarter, don’t you think?”

“How about the putty and the glazier’s points?”

“Hell’s bells, what do I know about putty or them other doodads? You slap a quarter there on the desk and we’ll call it square.”

Her chair swiveled with a screech as she turned to face her desk again. The cubbyholes of the old rolltop were stuffed with an array of envelopes and papers, and more of the same littered the oaken surface, along with ledgers, open and shut,- and a cast-iron spindle piercing a sheaf of pink laundry slips. A blocked-out campers’ chart, showing the allocation of bunks in the cabins of the various units, stood out amid the jumble. Ma’s desk was, so to speak, the central switchboard and nerve center of Friend-Indeed; from it were disbursed all payments, all orders and announcements, practically all the comings and goings of the entire camp.

“Before you go, Tige, I need a word with you.”

Glancing past the pale, balding spot on the top of her head, Tiger saw she was staring intently at the chart.

“Something wrong?” he asked.

Ma shook her head. “There’s this new boy coming tomorrow, is all” - she rummaged through the papers on her desk - “the one replacing Stanley Wagner, you know.”

Tiger knew. This summer Howie Bochman, one of their regular cabin-mates, had been lost to the Jeremians as a result of having contracted a case of infantile paralysis, a blow that had been compounded by Howie’s replacement, the unfortunate Stanley Wagner. Unfortunate because Stanley’s presence in Cabin 7 had not worked out. He had been, in a word, a spud, and the entire camp still smarted from the embarrassing and shameful episode that had ended his brief stay at Friend-Indeed.

“Not good camper fodder,” had been the judgment of Reece Hartsig, Jeremiah’s counselor, and no one had disagreed. A bedwetter (at fourteen!), a crybaby, and incurably homesick, Stanley had proved the wimpiest camper anyone could recall ever having come to the lake. Demerits had rained like hailstones upon Cabin 7 for Stanley’s sundry errors and malfeasances, and the camel’s back had been broken when, after a visit by a select group of campers to the Castle, a crystal paperweight had been discovered missing, in consequence of which Ma’s friend, Dagmar Kronborg, had declared her home and its “trophy room” off limits for the remainder of the season.

The paperweight had eventually turned up hidden at the bottom of Stanley’s suitcase, and after an official meeting of the Sachems’ Council, the camp’s governing board, the culprit had been “sent to Scarsdale,” which meant nobody in camp was allowed to talk to him for three whole days; then, having survived this trial, the next day Stanley had simply gone up in smoke, his parents spiriting him away with neither farewells nor apologies, and leaving behind only the yellow-stained length of canvas in his bunk. Now that bunk would get a new canvas, and a new boy in it, and all the Jeremians were looking forward to his coming.

Ma found what she was looking for, an already opened letter. Tiger, who knew better than to read over a person’s shoulder, waited until she looked up; her face was suddenly dyed emerald as a sunbeam pierced her eyeshade.

“Name’s Leo,” she said. She adjusted her spectacles -“Leo - Joakum? I guess that’s how you’d say it.” “Where’s he from?” Tiger asked.

“Saggetts Notch.” She gave him a glance. “Fact is, he comes from Pitt.”

“The Institute?” Tiger was surprised. “An orphan?”

Ma nodded. “Dr Dunbar and the Joshua Society folks arranged it.”

Tiger mulled over this unexpected news; he didn’t know any orphans that he could recall. Ma held up the three pages of script and explained. The letter had been written by one Elsie Meekum, an assistant to Edwin Poe, supervisor of the Institute, and that gentleman’s liaison with Dr Dunbar, the president of the Friends of Joshua.

“It’s a sad case,” Ma said, her face expressing sympathy for the plight of this Leo Joakum. “We must be sure he has a good time. Try to see he fits in, so he doesn’t end up like—” Though she left her sentence unfinished, Tiger knew she was thinking of Stanley.

He put the question uppermost in his mind. “Does he play baseball?”

Ma was vague on this point. “I don’t really know. I should think so, though - most boys play baseball, don’t they? He plays on the violin, anyways - the lady says he’s a real - real what?” She consulted Miss Meekum’s lines. “Yes - ‘prodigy,’ she writes. Mercy, we could be getting our own Bobby Breen.” She laid down the page with the others. “I expect he’ll find it a bit strange at first, so I’m counting on you to show him the ropes, you and Bomber, in particular. Maybe you can hang him some netting so he don’t get eaten by mosquitoes.” She fixed him with her eyes, large and round as a raccoon’s behind the magnifying lenses. “I’m depending on you to be good pals to him. See that the other boys treat him right. They’ll follow along if you lead ’em.”

“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.