Camp Pleasant (17 page)

“I had no desire to see you,” he said, trying to sound assured, although I knew he wasn’t. The constant movement of his throat showed that.

“Why, Merv?” I asked.

“Listen, Harper, I don’t have to explain my movements to you!” he flared.

“Either you explain them to me or you’ll explain them to the sheriff!”

His lean face went blank. “What?”

“The sheriff?” Jackie said. “What in the name of God are—”

“You were going away, Merv,” I said. “You were fired and you said you were going away. But you’re still here—and Ed Nolan is dead.”

His face went slack. “You—you think that—”

“Why are you here?” I asked. “You said you were going away.”

“That’s
my
business.”

“Not any more it isn’t,” I answered.

“Oh, this is
impossible
!” Jackie said.

“Why are you still here?” I persisted.

“Get out of this cabin,” Merv told me. “I will not be—”

“All right,
don’t
tell me,” I said. “We’ll let the sheriff get it out of you.

He looked stunned again.

“I want facts,” I said. “You’re in a bad position. Either you tell me or you tell the sheriff. That’s
it.”

Merv swallowed. He glanced at Jackie who was breathing fitfully, left hand pressing against his chest.

“Do you think I killed Ed Nolan?” Merv asked.

“Can you give me one good reason why I shouldn’t think it?” I said.

“Good God, what do you take me for?” he said loudly. “Do you think I could do a thing like that?”

“You hated him,” I said.

“I
still
hate him,” he said. “But I had nothing to do with—”

“I’m not going to argue with you, Merv,” I said. “Can you prove you were somewhere else when it happened?”

Merv still looked dazed. “I … I don’t know,” he said. “It happened so long ago.”

“Not so long,” I said.

“Well….” Merv looked helplessly toward Jackie. “I—I don’t know where we were but—”

“Undoubtedly
here
,” Jackie said pettishly. “We rarely rise before noon.”

“Why did you come back?” I asked, my confidence slipping.

“I told you,” Merv said, “that’s my business.”

All the tension seemed to explode in me.

“Well, the hell with you!” I found myself yelling at him. “I’m not going to waste my time on you any more! You can be as coy as you like with the sheriff!”

I jerked open the door but Merv was across the room suddenly, his hand tight on my arm. He shoved the door closed.

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to be—involved.”

A slow rise of elation in me again.

“Why? If you’re innocent, why should you care?”

“I don’t want you to tell the sheriff,” he said slowly, and there was something more than pleading in his voice.

“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t,” I said.

He swallowed. “I was not involved in Ed Nolan’s death,” he said.

My stomach muscles jerked in tautly. “That’s for the sheriff to decide,” I said, turning the door knob.

His swing came as a total surprise. If he’d been the physical type like Mack, it might have worked. As it was, his fist only grazed my chin and made me fall, off balance, against the door. I grabbed his flailing right arm and spun him around, locking it behind his back. Our shoes scraped wildly on the floor boards and Merv gasped with pain.

“Stop that!” Jackie cried shrilly.

“I want an answer, Merv,” I said.

“You
filthy
—” His voice broke off into a sobbing grunt of pain as I jerked up his arm.

“The
story
!” I snarled, feeling as if I could kill him where he stood.

“You filthy brute!” Jackie cried, shivering impotently.

“I didn’t kill Ed Nolan!” Merv gasped.

“Then why were you afraid of me calling the sheriff?”

“I can’t—” Another twist of his arm. “Will you
stop
it!” he cried hysterically.

“God dam you, I’ll snap your arm right off if you don’t answer me!” I said, beyond sympathy, beyond reason. It was as if he were pushing Ellen toward her death and didn’t care.

“All
right
!” he said with a sharp break in his voice.

I let go abruptly and he stumbled toward the bed, sobbing.

“You filthy—” Jackie started to say, but I cut him off with a, “Shut up, damn it!” “Uh!”

Merv clumped down on the bed, his thin chest jerking with breaths. I should have felt sorry for him but I couldn’t.

“You’re like all of them,” he said in a trembling voice. “Like every one of them—blind, thoughtless. Without the sensitivity you were born with, without—”

“All right, cut the babbling,” I interrupted. “I want an answer to my question.”

His head lifted; his eyes burned into me.

“Why did I come back?” he asked, teeth gritted.

I tensed, anticipating.

“Because I was sick of fighting it,” he said. “Because I—” he forced it out—”wasn’t going to go home to my mother like a—defeated boy.”

I stared at him blankly.

“I
was
halfway home,” he went on brokenly. “Then—I knew I couldn’t face her. So I sent her a—a wire and said I’d left the camp and was going on a trip to the coast.” He swallowed. “And I came back here.”

“Why
?” I was too far gone; I really didn’t know.

His lips shook. “You won’t leave me anything, will you?” he said, his voice as bitter as any voice I’ve heard in my life.

“I—”

“I came back to Jackie!” He flung the words at me in a spasm of rage and shame.

I started to say something but words didn’t come.

“Are you
happy
now?” Merv asked me. “Happy you blundered in and forced it out of me? Happy to find out that I’m—” He didn’t finish the sentence. He looked at me accusingly. “Well, what are you waiting for?” he lashed out. “Don’t you know enough? Do I have to give you details? Do I have to draw you an outline of—
oh God, I hate what life is
! I hate it!”

I felt something draining from me. It was hope.

“I don’t want the police to get my name because if they got my name it would appear in the papers and my mother would see it,” Merv went on mechanically. “Is that clear enough? I don’t want my mother to know that—” The masochistic impulse departed suddenly. “Oh damn your filthy interference!” he sobbed at me.

My heartbeat was different now, a slow, metronomic beat in my chest. Merv raised his defeated eyes.

“Well?”
he asked. “Are you going to call the sheriff? Are you still going to….”

I drew in a shaky breath. “I don’t know,” I said. I wanted to believe he’d killed Ed Nolan and yet I couldn’t. I had no evidence to the contrary. I could still call the sheriff. There was still the motive, the possibility. But the assurance was gone.

“Go ahead,” said Merv, cutting at his own foundations again. “What’s the difference now? I don’t care. I just don’t care.”

“Sweetie, don’t say that,” Jackie begged suddenly, hurrying to the bed and sitting down beside him. He picked up Merv’s lifeless hand and stroked it. I turned and walked slowly across the room.

“What are you going to do?” Jackie asked. “If you have a drop of decency in you, you’ll let this thing go. I’ll testify he was with me the day it happened. We
were
together. Here.”

I said nothing.

“Well?” Jackie asked. I turned at the door and looked over at them. They were watching me like a husband and wife whose home life has been threatened.

“I don’t know,” I said.

Merv’s head fell forward. “It’s over,” he muttered.

“Sweetie!”

As I trudged across the court, I could hear the voice of Jackie in Cabin Eight. It soothed, it comforted.

When I reached the camp I found Sid in the office. I handed him the truck keys and told him what had happened.

“Have you called the sheriff?” he asked me when I finished. “I don’t know what to do,” I said.

“If there’s the slightest possibility,” he said, “we have to follow it up. You know that.” I nodded.

“I think we’d better,” he said quietly. “Would you—?”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. “Cabin Eight, Shady Haven Motel?”

“Yes.” I stood watching him as he wrote it down on a pad.

“Where are the kids?” I asked.

“In the Lodge,” he said, “watching the movies. Oh, incidentally, I’m afraid your cabin’s fallen a little behind in getting ready for the close- up. You’ll have to push them tomorrow.”

“I will,” I said.

“Well … get a good night’s sleep,” he said.

“Okay. Goodnight, Sid.”

“Goodnight, kid.”

It was to be the last complete day of camp life but Willie Pratt was not inspired. His reveille was as grotesquely ragged as ever. I tossed back the blankets with a hollow sigh and let my legs down over the side of the bunk.

“What’s this?” I muttered.

Tony was sitting on the edge of the bunk, dressed, leaning on his
Louisville Slugger
, his legs kicking a little.

“How long have you been up?” I asked.

He shrugged, that look of bitterness on his features. I figured it was best to leave him alone so I got up and went around patting each groaning sleeper.

“Come on,” I told them, “Let’s go. There’s a lot of work to do.”

“That’s all we
did
yesterday was work!” said Charlie Barnett. I paid no attention. I got dressed and walked up to Paradise to get cleaned up.

At breakfast Tony sat jabbing a spoon into his cereal, hardly eating a mouthful.

“You’d better eat something, Tony,” I said. “We have a lot of work to do today.”

“Don’t wanna.”

“You’ll get hungry.”

“The hell with it,” he muttered.

My boys were behind on the cabin so, outside of a little work in the dining hall that afternoon, the cabin itself had top priority.

After breakfast came a G.I. party. Two buckets of soapy water and stiff-bristled brushes scrubbed at the floor boards started it going. While this was going on, the Moody boys were outside with brooms, poking at the eaves, knocking down dead leaves, dust and spider webs.

I should have known better than to have Tony and Marty Gingold working together but I wasn’t thinking very accurately those days and I had them out policing the area around the cabin.

Jim Moody was the first to announce, “Hey, they’re
fighting

Without a word I strode out of the cabin, down the porch steps and around the side toward the two figures pummeling and grunting on the ground just at the edge of the woods. As I approached them, I saw Mack standing near his cabin watching with a smile on his face. I reached down and pulled up the two cursing assailants.

“We’re supposed to be working,” I said patiently. “Let’s go.”

“Well, he ain’t workin’!” Marty Gingold flared, his usually slicked- down hair ruffled and dusty.

Tony said nothing. He just stared at Marty with dead, hating eyes.

“What do you mean, he’s not working?” I asked.

“He’s just sittin’ on his ass on a rock. Well, if ya think I’m workin’ when
he
don’t, you’re full of o’—”

“All right, all right,” I interrupted. “Go on. Police. I’ll talk to Tony.”

Marty brushed himself off as he waddled away, muttering something about wops.

“Fat-ass
kike
!” Tony yelled after him, teeth clenched.

Marty whirled, fists suddenly clenched but I waved him off. “Go on,” I said. “Go on.”

Marty cursed to himself as he went off. He kicked a rock across the uneven ground. “Teacher’s pet,” he said. Tony lunged forward but I caught him by the arm and jerked him back.

I led him into the woods and sat him down on a log.

“Well, what is it now?” I asked.

He pressed his thin lips together and said nothing.

“Tony, we have work to do.
All
of us.”

“Fuck it,” he muttered.

I blew out a heavy breath.

“Tony, are we going to part friends or not?”

“Who gives a—”

“Tony.”

He looked up at me, the skin drawing tautly over the bones in his thin face.

“What do I give a fuck for this camp!” he said furiously. “Ya can shove it up ya—”

“That’s
enough
!” I wanted to drag him up by the arm and make him work. But I didn’t. I looked at him a moment longer, then said, “All right. Forget it. You don’t have to do anything. Just sit here all day long and
stew
. It’ll give you a fine memory of your last day at Camp Pleasant.”

“What do I care?”

“You care,” I said. “More than any of them.”

I turned and went back to the cabin where Chester had just spilled his pail of water for the third time. He began giggling hysterically as an outraged Charlie Barnett kicked over his pail and stomped in the puddles of water.

With my help, they finally finished up the floor, before it became waterlogged. Then we went out to do the screens. Marty Gingold was talking to the Moody boys.

“All done policing?” I asked him.

“Why should I police?” he asked bitterly. “Rocca ain’t.”

“Listen,” I said. “You don’t know a thing about Rocca. But remember this: He’s had one hell of a life. A life so hard that none of you can even imagine how bad it was. That’s all I can tell you about that but remember that the camp’s closing is hitting him hard. I know, I know,” I said, cutting off Marty’s protestations, “it’s hitting you hard too. Well, it’s not the same, believe me. You’re going back to a nice home, to people who love you. He isn’t. Now will you stop being so damn petty and forget about him. You’ll never even
see
him after tomorrow.”