The Night of the Moonbow (24 page)

“Friends and campers,” Pa began, rising and speaking in a warm, natural tone, “it pleases me greatly to gaze upon your happy faces this evening, and I trust we all have spent a profitable day in our sundry pursuits. I myself had the pleasure of viewing one of our feathered friends, a scarlet tanager, perched on a fencepost along the roadside. It has a nest with two fledglings, and for those among you who would care to investigate this rarity, I am tomorrow at your disposal ...”

Leo drew a breath of relief: it was going to be all right; Pa wouldn’t be going on about his feathered friends if he were planning to drop the ax on Leo’s head. But he was wrong; no sooner had Pa closed his mouth than he opened it again. He coughed and cleared his throat, then, mopping his brow, went on. “Eee-heh ... I regret . . . yes, I regret to say that there has come about a certain matter which deeply saddens me. And since this matter deals with the rights and privileges of the sworn members of the Seneca Lodge, I must of necessity turn these proceedings over to the Chief of the Senecas.” He looked across the hall to the Jeremiah table.

As occupant of this exalted post, Reece swung his legs over the bench and walked to the center of the room, where, folding his arms across his chest, he began speaking of his deep affection for the Seneca Lodge, and of the honor of having for the fifth year in a row been elected its leader, the Moonbow Warrior. He spoke of the feelings of amity and friendship among the members of the tribe, then, easing into the matter at hand, described how Pa Starbuck had happened by the Nature Lodge, where he had come upon a certain camper who, having broached the display case, had removed from it the Buffalo Bill headdress, which he had then presumed to place on his head.

At this announcement, a wave of indignation and disapproval rippled through the hall. Reece’s eyes traveled around the room, coming at last to rest on the guilty party, whose face had turned blood-red. “I now call upon the misguided camper who ran so roughshod over our Friend-Indeed traditions and dared to imagine that he was the Moonbow Warrior—”

“Get up, stupid,” Phil hissed. Dump nudged Leo with an elbow.

Leo gulped; as he made a move to stand, campers began pounding with their water tumblers and spoons, and a lively chant broke out.

“Wack-oh! Wack-oh! Wack-oh!”

“Get up!” Phil gave Leo’s thigh a painful pinch.

Leo jerked to his feet, but, once standing, gazing around at the sea of cold, scornful faces, he felt his knees go weak. He darted a look to Tiger, who answered it with a helpless one; clearly Leo was on his own.

“I’m sorry,” he managed at last. “I didn’t m-mean - I only wanted to see how it felt - I didn’t mean to insult the S-Sen-Senecas. I won’t d-do it again.”

“Darn tootin’ you won’t,” a deep voice rang out. “You won’t be able to!” Moriarity began to laugh, and the others joined in, till it seemed everyone was laughing.

Those were (almost) the last words any camper or staffer addressed to Leo on that day and for several days thereafter. For at the meeting of the Sachems it had been determined that, found guilty of flouting the camp’s most honored traditions, the culprit was to suffer an undisclosed period of silence. Leo was dispatched to Scarsdale, where he would remain until the required steps to recall him were undertaken. No camper or staffer would be permitted to address so much as a word to him: he was banished to Siberia, the outer reaches of Mongolia, the craters of the moon.

Seven o’clock that evening saw the lodge filling up for the scheduled ghost-story telling, a venerable Moonbow institution that always drew an enthusiastic crowd. Tonight the boys seemed in uncommonly boisterous spirits, chanting, clapping, and stamping their feet, and otherwise demonstrating their impatience, as Hank Ives, wearing a wind-braker with a green Sinclair Oil dinosaur embroidered on the back, oversaw the traditional dimming of the lights: the chandelier was lowered, the rope uncleated at the post and run through the seaman’s block and tackle that served as a pulley - with Bud Talbot and Blackjack Ratner weighing on the rope (the contraption was so heavy) - and one by one the lamps were extinguished.

As the chandelier was again hoisted aloft and tied off, the last of the campers filed in, among them Leo Joaquim. Looking neither right nor left, he took a seat at the end of a bench - he knew he was not welcome among the Jeremians, seated several rows ahead of him; he was in Scarsdale now, and not even Tiger and the Bomber could make a public display of friendliness, though they had covertly shown him a tacit sympathy.

Ankles crossed, leaning forward, Leo kept his head well down, trying to ignore the whispers and jibes and fingers pointing at him, to act as if he didn’t care. When Fritz came in with Wanda, they sat as close to the miscreant as they could, and Fritz gave him his usual friendly nod, Wanda a little wave, as if to say they weren’t going to cut him off simply because he’d put an old Indian bonnet on his head for a minute or two. Close behind them, however, came

Reece, to take his place among the Jeremians. Desolately Leo watched as the counselor struck his lighter and applied the flame horizontally to his pipe bowl, his lips emitting puffs of blue smoke that hung about his head. The lighter remaining lit, the flame illuminated his face, and his eyes, dark and piercing, seemed fixed on Leo. It was only a fleeting impression - in another second Reece’s index finger flipped the hinged cover over the flame, extinguishing it, and leaving only a vague, sinister impression to linger in the red glow of his pipe bowl - but Leo -shivered as the wind, unexpectedly brisk and chilly for that time of year, gusted down the chimney, coughing from its throat spurs of fiery ashes that blew across the stone hearth. Now the leaping flames threw grotesquely painted shadows upward along the walls, which in the firelight gave off a shuddery russet glow, and even though scores of humans occupied the room it seemed that as a body they had no protection whatever against the Unseen, that by the potency of the spoken word alone some malevolence or misadventure could befall them, some dreadful, alien presence might appear among them uninvited, laying waste to their ranks, leaving them powerless to act.

As the boys’ clamor died down, and an almost eerie silence fell in the room, Pete Melrose, who had charge of the evening, came before the hearth and, sitting on a canvas camp stool, kicked off the program. His tale was one familiar to many campers, but not to Leo, about the old lighthouse keeper to whom late one night there appeared the vengeful spirit of the woman he had betrayed as a young man, a grisly, beckoning phantom luring him from his warm bed to dash himself on the rocks below. Pete was followed by Jay St John, and then Charlie Penny, each holding forth with a tale more lurid than the one that had come before, until the campers jumped with every snapping of a log, giving themselves up willingly to the spell.

Finally the way was prepared for Henry Ives, who unfolded his lanky frame and shuffled to the front of the room, dug out the dottle from his pipe, refilled it, and began to talk. Ahhh, the boys murmured, the story of the Haunted House, their Haunted House - the strange and tragic tale that had thrilled generations of Friend-Indeed campers.

Old Man Steelyard, a notorious miser, had once been a prominent Windham County banker. Bilked by his partners of a large number of treasury notes, he had renounced his former society and, removing his wife and daughter to Moonbow Lake, had put up the house on the Old Lake Road. There the family lived in sparely furnished rooms, and the old man’s wife died of influenza when he refused to put sufficient coal in the grate, though it was rumored that, having cashed in his remaining notes for gold and now distrustful of all banks, he had squirreled away a treasure somewhere among the foundations of the house. To guard his miser’s hoard he bought a fierce dog, which, though a trial to peddlers and inquisitive neighbor boys — here Hank paused - became the pet of Mary, the old man’s daughter. They called it Lobo, because the dog was like a wolf. And it was good that Mary had a pet, for she was not permitted to mix with the local children or even to attend school with them; Steelyard saw to the girl’s education himself. Time passed, the girl grew to womanhood. Then one spring the well went dry.

Hank puffed thoughtfully for a few moments so that in the firelight his long, dour features were wreathed in blue smoke; he went on:

“Ol’ Man Steelyard, he drove into town to find himself a likely feller with divining know-how, an’ this feller come out to give the job a go. He must’ve ben good at his trade, for the folks hereabouts called him Digger. He went to pacin’ the property with his divinin’ rod an’, sure enough, the stick drew, they dug down, an’ they come to water. So the job was seen to, an’, bein’ a mean ol’ skinflint, Steelyard was anxious to get rid of Digger, but Digger said someone was needed to shovel out the new well, an’ since he was johnny-on-the-spot he got to stick around. An’ while he stuck around, Mary, she took a fancy to him, an’ Digger, he was makin’ sheep’s eyes right back at her. Then, when Digger got to layin’ in the new plumbin’ pipes to replace the old ones, his spade struck somethin’ along the cellar wall - he wasn’t called Digger for nothin’, heh-heh. He’d dug up Ol’ Man Steelyard’s box o’ gold. He didn’t let on he’d found it, but, keepin’ mum, he persuaded Mary to run off with him, proposed right in the ol’ man’s parlor, an’ together they planned to elope.”

Leo pictured the scene, Digger sitting close to Mary, whispering his plans into her ear, as Hank’s voice rose and fell, and outside the wind moaned among the trees and rattled the windowpanes like a skeleton’s bones. He missed having Tiger beside him, the Bomber, too, Tiger nudging him in the ribs before the good parts.

Now Hank had come to the night of the elopement, when Digger made an excuse to work late down in the cellar. “An’ that,” Hank went on, “was Digger’s mistake. Fer the ol’ man caught the thief red-handed an’ slammed him hard with his own spade an’ afterwards he hauled the body up the cellar steps an’ dumped it in the well. Not the new one, the old one that has that big ol’ slab of cee-ment over it. Digger wasn’t dead yet, he was still breathin’, but that didn’t matter. Steelyard was a generous fellow, he give him all the time he’d need to suffocate, nice an’ slow, the way a Chinee likes to do. An’ no sooner had he sealed over the well than he dragged poor Mary up to that corner room, where he locked her up, sayin’ she could, sit there by her window and look out on the well where Digger lay a-dyin’.

“After that somethin’ crept over the place, somethin’ like a spell, so come evenin’ drivers would hurry their buggies past, a man afoot would hurry his step. An’ up there, in the window, there she’d be, Mary, a-starin’ out. She never spoke to the ol’ man again fer havin’ kilt her man in such a cruel, inhuman way, an’ the ol’ man, he hated Mary fer her betrayal. So, though the two lived side by side, the house, it was silent as the tomb where Digger lay. Mary had only the dog, Lobo, fer comp’ny, an’ at night when that critter went out, he set up such a deal of noise over there in Injun Woods, why, ’twas like a wolf’s howl, a fittin’ sound in a place where murder’s ben done. That winter was bitter cold, an’ Mary sittin’ there by her window, till one day she was dead, too. Some said she died of grief, that or froze, an’ when she went the ol’ man drove Lobo off the property an’ lived alone, until, on a gusty night, a night like this one, when he was tucked abed, he waked to the sound of a wolf howlin’ outside his window. He jumped up an’ run to look out. There he seen the big dog, come back again and a-howlin’, and with the dog he seen his dead girl, Mary, sobbin’ by the wellhead. Not long after, the ol’ man up an’ disappeared. Folks suspected foul play, so the constable, he come out fer a look. He poked about all over that place an’ not a sign until, down in the cellar, he found that ol’ miser hangin’ from a beam. An’ after that the house, it stayed empty, nobody but a fool” - here Hank paused again - “ ’ud go in the place. ’Cept for one - the shade of poor Mary Steelyard. An’ if you was to pass by on some dark an’ windy night like this, who knows, you might see her up there in her winder . . . watchin’ ...”

Hank’s words died away among the rafters. In the lodge the silence was utter and complete; it was the storyteller’s supreme moment - that potent hush that signals the reluctance of any listener to articulate a syllable that might break the spell so skillfully woven. The fire burned low; outside, a tree branch scratched against the glass. The boys began to stir lethargically, as if awakening from a dark dream. Their feet scraped the floorboards as they got up and stretched.

Then, out of the sleepy silence, a moment that froze the blood. From beyond the windows, far off among the trees, came the deep, winding howl of a beast. A wolf! Yes - there it came again! No one moved, while the bloodcurdling sound rose and fell. No, not a wolf, they whispered, but Lobo, Mary’s companion. And then - a shriek! A woman’s cry, a sound of such horror that all who heard it became as stone. Lobo and - Mary! Leo hugged his ribs, his body trembling. The two, woman and beast, cried out together now; then, at their peak, the shrieks and howls broke, turning into a Tarzan yodel, and the room burst into relieved laughter.

That was a good one, ha ha. They laughed harder when Reece Hartsig walked through the doorway in the company of Gus Klaus, the two having sneaked off into the woods during Hank’s tale. It was just the kind of gag Heartless would pull, adding a bit of spice to the story and winning everybody to his side; even Leo could appreciate that.

But, wolf or no wolf, the spell still lay heavily upon Leo as he left the lodge, hanging back until his cabin-mates had gone ahead - he didn’t want to embarrass Tiger or the Bomber in front of the others. Then, rather than heading straight for the line-path, he wandered alone by a circuitous route that brought him out near the mailboxes, where he stopped and gauged the hour: there was probably a full thirty minutes before Wiggy Pugh would blow taps. He began to move again, turning left along the Old Lake Road. As he walked, a ghostly shadow rose up from out of the trees and went sailing off, a dark patch against the darker sky: Icarus, hunting for his supper.