The Night of the Moonbow (36 page)

“Come on, pal, we mustn’t dramatize these things. I’m sure your family is okay.” Rolfe turned to the others. “Besides, Hitler’s only after the big-money boys—” Fritz’s face had gone red with anger, and Pa, seeing it, stepped forward in an attempt to temporize. “Now, now, Fritz, let’s exercise a little control shall we? What’s happening over there has nothing to do with us over here.” “You’re wrong,” Fritz said. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

Now Reece stepped into the argument. “Watch it, Katzenjammer!”

Fritz rounded on him. “I have asked you not to call me that.”

Reece gave him his blandest smile. “It’s just a joke, Fritzy.”

“I do not find it amusing.” Fritz glowered, and Joy began chattering to cover the awkwardness. Andy, who had been scribbling in his notebook, asked Rolfe, “Can I print all that, what you said about the big-money boys?”

“Sure, why not?” Rolfe replied. “It’s the truth, isn’t it?” Then he gave Andy a friendly clap between the shoulders and sent him off with his partner to write up his story.

***

Movie night always drew an enthusiastic crowd, and that night the boys seemed in uncommonly boisterous spirits, as shortly before eight they came trooping into the lodge and took their places. The movie projector rested on a card table in front of the model, which had been left in the center of the room to be ready for the dedication ceremony, but the older boys ranged their seats around it without much difficulty, so that no one’s view was obscured. Big Rolfe’s friend at the film exchange had selected The Phantom of the Opera, the Lon Chaney silent hit, and as the last stragglers appeared the audience began to chant, clap, and stamp their feet and otherwise demonstrate their eagerness to be scared out of ten years’ growth by an actor whose fame rested on precisely that, a singular ability to terrify audiences in movie houses across the country, where fainting and horror-stricken females had to be carried on stretchers into the lobby and revived with ammoniac ampules and carted off in waiting ambulances.

There was a hitch in the proceedings - no one knew why, until Oats Gurley, whose duty it was to operate the movie projector, said they couldn’t start until Reece put in an appearance with the film cans. A mixture of cheers and jeers sounded in the room. Then the boys began to chant: “We want Heartless, we want Heartless ...”

At last the courier arrived - at which the room erupted into louder huzzahs. After he had exhibited the cans of film and made mock bows to all sides, he slipped in among “his boys,” and the reels began to turn.

Alas, anticipation soon turned to disappointment. Lon Chaney had gone to the Great Movie Show in the Sky, had in fact died eight years before, and his silent movie had a decidedly creaky look. In fact, the term “the flickers” had been coined to describe films such as this one; old and scratched, the reels had undoubtedly run through the sprockets of untold projectors over the years, and the titles leaped and danced about on the screen. Catcalls and whistles, groans and jokes greeted the coloratura singing her heart out on the stage of the Paris Opera House and the corny notes written by the “Phantom” threatening the end of her career, nay, her life, if she presumed to appear onstage instead of his beloved Christine. There followed a higher-scoring scene in which, while the heroine dares her fate, the giant crystal chandelier at the top of the opera-house ceiling is made by some sinister hand (Yikes! The Phantom!) to come crashing down into the orchestra, crushing to death those spectators unlucky enough to be sitting beneath the fixture. And then, finally, the electrifying moment when “Erik,” the Phantom, first appears, his features hidden by a mask. With his long, slender, and enticing hand he lures Christine down, down, many floors below, under the opera house, where there exists a sullen black lagoon and, anchored at a stone mooring step, a slender, coffin-like vessel. Upon this slender vessel the lady is persuaded to embark for the Phantom’s subterranean apartments, where she is safely, and presumably contentedly, installed, seemingly only a little intimidated by her bizarre surroundings and the Phantom’s eternally masked presence. Later, unable to control her curiosity, as he plays the organ she slips up behind the unsuspecting Phantom and tears away his mask. Oh, horror! His features bared, he turns upon her and shows her that nightmare face, skull-like and awful to look upon with grinning teeth and two holes where a nose ought to have been.

Ha ha!

The Phantom scornfully mocks Christine and her irrepressible curiosity, then moves menacingly toward her. Unable to tear his eyes from the screen, Leo watches with mounting horror. For him the movie is too real; it scares him. Heedless of where he is, he leaps to his feet with a shout, which rings out and reverberates against the ceiling.

No sooner had the sound burst from him than a wave of mocking laughter shook the room, and “Wacko, Wacko, Wacko,” the epithet ran along the rows. “Scaredy-cat, scaredy-cat.” Flashlights were switched on, their probing beams sought him out, illuminating his dazed features. Ducking his head, he stumbled up the aisle and rushed outside; the door clattered loudly at his back, producing another volley of laughter. Hot with shame and embarrassment, he rushed down the steps and made his way blindly along the first path he came to. It was dark and he had trouble finding his way. To his left he could hear the lake water lapping the shore, and he pushed on until he came out at Three Corner Cove. No lights were on at the infirmary, nor at the Oliphants’ cottage, yet he judged someone to be home, because the car was pulled up on the grass. He trudged to the end of the dock and sat down, dangling his legs and listening to the sound of the water against the pilings. What a fool he was to act that way. When would he ever learn?

“Leo?”

He turned around to find Fritz and Wanda, who had stolen up behind him.

“Mind if we join you?” Fritz asked. No reply; but Leo was glad all the same for the company.

“You all right?” Wanda asked.

“Yes.”

“It’s nice here,” she said, “but I’ll bet it’d be nicer inside. I think if we looked in the icebox we’d find some ice cream. How does that sound?”

Leo was appreciative; neither had asked about his exhibition in the iodge; now here was Wanda inviting him in for ice cream, a thing camp rules strictly forbade her to do.

She gave Leo a hand up and they left the dock for the infirmary, where Wanda turned on lights and went inside. Leo and Fritz waited on the porch until she reappeared with a tray of ice cream and cookies. Then Fritz got up to tune in Wayne King and the Lady Esther Orchestra, and soon they had a little party going and, despite his embarrassment, Leo was enjoying himself.

His enjoyment was short-lived, however; another flashlight beam broke the surrounding dark, and Reece appeared. Leo tensed as the counselor marched up the steps and surveyed the scene.

“Well, this is chummy. Somebody’s birthday?”

“We were just having a taste of ice cream,” Wanda said lightly. “Sorry, there’s none left.”

Reece scowled at Leo. “I figured this is where I’d find you. What’s the idea, running out like a crazy man?” Without waiting for an answer, he leaned over to take Leo’s dish.

“Oh, let him finish,” Wanda protested. “Stop picking on him all the time.”

Reece swung on her angrily. “When are you two going to stop coddling this spud?”

Wanda tipped the ash from her cigarette into the nasturtiums below the railing. “Nobody’s coddling him,” she returned evenly. “Leo really doesn’t deserve the kind of treatment he’s been getting around here.”

“Look, like I told you once before, he’s not your camper, he’s my camper,” Reece retorted. “I’m the counselor of Jeremiah, and as long as he sleeps in my cabin he belongs to me. I’ll decide what to do with him, not you.”

“I’m only trying to help. He’s got to have someone he can turn to in this place.”

“And that someone is you, hm? The way you spoil him, he’ll never get anywhere. You’re like a mother hen.” “Then I’m glad - since he hasn’t got a mother.”

Reece’s voice sharpened. “Lots of people don’t have mothers and they get along just fine. So take my advice and steer clear of him”

Fritz snorted. “And you are going to make me, I suppose, with your Mingoes and your foolish posters.”

Reece lounged negligently on the railing, his expression lightly mocking, as if he found Fritz a figure of amusement. “You just don’t get the picture, do you, Fritzy.”

“I expect you’d be happy to show it to me, though.” “Anytime you like, bud.” Making fists, Reece assumed an offensive stance. “Come on, 1 dare you.”

Wanda put out a restraining hand. “Don’t, please, there’s no point to it.”

Reece crossed his arms and smirked. “Better listen to your girlfriend, Fritzy. And you better shut up about the Germans, too. I’m German and proud of it.”

Fritz shook his head sadly. “Sometimes I think I shall never understand people like you.”

“That’s okay, Fritzy,” Reece returned softly, “sometimes I don’t think I’ll ever understand people like you either. So why don’t you just trot along and play with your toy village? Or, better yet, go back and join your family in that pretty little camp they’re no doubt in.”

“Reece!” Wanda sprang to her feet in protest and took Fritz’s arm, only to have him shake her off. Suddenly the two men were grappling together, furiously pummeling each other. The muffled sounds of blows punctuated the dark while Wanda cried out for them to stop, trying to get herself between them but unable to separate them.

Reece’s tall, muscular form towered over the smaller, wirier Fritz, who seemed to be catching the worst of it, until the sounds of the struggle produced results: lights came on at Three Corner Cove, and Doc Oliphant appeared on his porch. “What’s going on over there?” he demanded, peering across the water.

“There, then - will you two please stop now?” hissed Wanda. “It’s all right,” she called back, “just a little kidding around.”

“Wanda, dear, try and control your hot-blooded beau, won’t you?” came the doctor’s admonition as he went back inside and turned off the porch light.-

Panting from their exertions, the two combatants faced each other with dull, sullen looks.

“You’re bleeding,” Wanda said to Reece, whose lip had been opened by a lucky punch from Fritz’s hard knuckles. “Let me get something for it.”

“Skip it.” Reece spat over the railing, then turned to Leo.

“All right, camper, skip off to where you belong,” he said, and, his lip red with blood in the lamplight, he swung away down the steps. With a prompting nod from Fritz, Leo followed. At the head of the path Reece split off without a word or sign to disappear in the direction of Bachelors’ Haven and the game of poker in progress, while Leo limped back to Jeremiah, where, as taps blew, he fell onto his bunk with his clothes on.

The crescent moon hangs high above the lake. Nothing stirs, except, in Hosea, Gus Klaus snores fitfully, making liquid flutters under his nose. Presently, from among the cabins of the Harmony unit, a solitary figure emerges, creeping stealthily along the line-path, crouching low as if fearful of discovery. With purpose and intent he moves onto the lodge path.

High in the Methuselah Tree the owl Icarus spies him soft-walking along the path, stealing up to the lodge. Inside, like a wandering moth, a pale light flits across the wide-board floor to the upright joist where the rope supporting the great horn chandelier is figure-eighted over the cleat. The dark phantom bends closer; in his hand a knife. Its sharp blade presses hard against the twisted fibers of the rope, then begins its calculated work, making a ragged cut. It is not difficult: the rope is old. One after another the strands give way, until only a handful remain intact to carry the weight of the fixture. Satisfied with his handiwork, the phantom sheathes the knife and melts into the darkness.

All is quiet again in the lodge. But in the darkness the implacable force of gravity works upon the weakened rope, exerting its power, causing the remaining strands to relinquish their hold, one after another parting. Icarus cocks his head. Soon now . . . any moment . . . yes - now!

The ponderous mass of iron and animal horn breaks free of its beam, the severed rope speeds through the tackle, the wheels turn noisily, as the chandelier comes crashing to the floor. The pine grove is rocked by the deafening sound, the lodge walls tremble from the impact, the panes in the windows rattle. In the cabins along the line-path campers and staff spring to sudden wakefulness. What is it, they ask? What has happened? Shouts and calls break out, fifty pinpoints of light are seen flickering along the pathways, converging on the lodge. And inside:

“Ah, too bad,” they mutter. “What a thing.” For the old worn rope, frayed after many years of use, has, it seems, given way, dropping the horn wonder to the floor. Beneath the clutter the village of Durenstein lies ground to dust.

Quietly, with great determination, the small spider tried to spin her web across a wide crack in the weir at Kelsoe’s Pond, where Leo had taken refuge. Poor thing, he thought, I know just how you feel. He had bestowed a name on the spider - Elsie - and hoped she would prosper in the way of her kind. Under more promising circumstances he would have collected her for his arachnid exhibit, but where was the point? Tonight he might return to the lodge to find that the shelves of his display case had suffered a fate similar to that of Durenstein.

Again he was swept by a hot wave of resentment and frustration. It had been Fritz who had noticed the ends of rope that when put together butted neatly; but when Fritz produced the evidence for Pa and voiced his suspicions -that Reece Hartsig, who had been seen leaving Jeremiah after midnight, was the guilty party - Pa had turned a deaf ear, bemoaning the loss of the model but saying there were no grounds to suspect the counselor, who had no doubt been answering a call of nature at the Dewdrop. And in the end what did it matter, really? It was the spirit of a gift that counted, wasn’t it? As for the work that had gone into it - Jeremiah would get the points Leo had earned for it, eee-heh.

And that was pretty much that. Before the end of the day the formal dedication had been canceled, the newspaper story and pictures were yanked, and the platform for the model had vanished without a trace.