Camp Pleasant (9 page)

I found Tony underneath a punching Marty Gingold; a saliva-frothing Tony whose hands were twisted into bone-white claws on Marty’s back.

“Bite
me, will ya!” yelled Marty Gingold, driving a fist into Tony’s head. I dragged his punching pudginess off of Tony.

“What’s the matter with you!” I stormed.

“He
bit
me!” accused Marty.

“Son-of-a bitch
bastid,” Tony said in a low, menacing voice as he got up, “I’ll beat ya
brains
out!”

He leaped for Marty and I grabbed him in mid-air, hearing Marty’s returned challenge, “You’n what
army
!
“

Tony kicked and flailed in my grip, his face twisted with mindless fury. “I’ll cutcha heart out!” he screamed at Marty. “I’ll cutcha goddam
heart
out!”

“Tony!” My roar echoed off the ceiling and, I guess, deafened him since I shouted it right into his ear.

He looked up at me, breathing hard.

“Tony, stop it,” I said. “Stop it. Calm down.”

“No kike bastid is gonna—”

“Tony,
shut up
!
“

His mouth clamped shut into a living scar.

“You like to be called a
wop
?” I asked angrily. The tensing of his face and body gave me my answer. “Well, Marty doesn’t like to be called a kike either.”

“He made
fun
o’me,” Tony said through gritting teeth.

I looked at him for a solemn moment.

“If he did,” I said then, “it’s just because he doesn’t understand.”

Later, I took Tony and his belongings to the new cabin and he never said a word through all of it. He walked beside me and obeyed orders and hung up clothes and made his new bunk. But he never said a word.

Bob and I had been down in the lodge rehearsing a one-act play. We quit about a quarter to nine and Bob went to Ed’s cabin to play some cards, I headed for my cabin.

I was about halfway to the ridge on which the senior cabins stood when the sounds reached my ears—scraping shoes, groaning bedsprings and the excited encouragement of boys. I don’t know how I knew, I just did, the second I saw that the fight was going on in Mack’s cabin. I darted up the rest of the hill and into the cabin. As I entered, I saw Tony on the floor, struggling futiley while another kid—I didn’t know him— had his arm around Tony’s neck and was squeezing, gasping harshly—
“Surrender? Surrender?”

Tony could hardly breathe. There was a babbly froth of saliva running across his chin, his lips were drawn back tautly over his teeth. There was blood seeping from beneath the bandage on his wrist and hand. But he wouldn’t surrender.

Sitting on a bunk edge, enjoying his ringside seat, was Mack.

“For Christ sake!” I exploded and, bending over, I wrenched the boy’s arm from Tony’s neck. Immediately there were cries of
“Hey, whattaya doin’
!” and
“Get outta here
, this ain’t your cabin.”

The boy tried to kick Tony but I shoved him away and he went sailing into two of his buddies, the three of them landing in a heap on the floor. Tony tried to crawl after him, his face still deranged, but I dragged him up by his good arm and held on to him.

“What’s the
matter
with you?” I asked Mack, furiously. “You know damn well he’s got stitches in his wrist!” I held up Tony’s hand. “Look! It’s starting to
bleed
again!”

“He started it,” Mack said casually. “He wanted t’fight.”

“And you let him!”

“None o’ my business,” said Mack. “If the little wop wants t’fight, it’s his business.”

“That’s fine,” I said.
“Great!
You’re gonna help him a lot, an
awful
lot.”

“Look.” Mack got up, the casual look fading from his face. “You run your cabin your way. I’ll run mine
my
way.”

“Tony’s wrist is in bad shape!” I said. “You had no right to let him fight!”

“Look.”
He came over to me, truculent-faced. “He
asked
for it. Nobody did a thing to ‘im.”

“I’ll
bet,”
I said, feeling beneath my finger tips the terrible shaking of Tony’s arm.

“Look, you wanna start trouble?” Mack asked.

“Not right now, Mack,” I said coldly. “I’ll take a rain check on it though.”

“You got it, boy,” Mack answered. “Any time.”

“Come on, Tony,” I said.

“I don’ wanna,” he muttered brokenly, but I don’t think he even knew what he was saying.

“Where ya think you’re takin’
him
?” asked Mack.

“Out of here,” I said.

“Big Ed won’t
like
that,” he said mockingly.

“Tell him to
sue
me.”

I stopped in at my cabin and assigned Charlie Barnett to turn out the lights at nine. Then I put my arm around Tony’s shoulders and we started for Sid’s tent.

Tony’s chest kept twitching with helpless sobs as he trudged along beside me and I felt his flesh trembling under my hand. I tried to ask him some questions but it didn’t work; he could hardly talk. All I got was a few shaky, pitiful sounds that made no sense.

We met Sid just as he was coming out of his tent with a flash lantern to make his nightly inspection of the Senior Division.

“What’s
up
?” he asked concernedly, seeing us.

“Sid, you’ve got to get him back to me,” I said. “They’re gonna eat him alive in Mack’s cabin. I found him being choked to death by some little bastard and all Mack was doing was watching. They’ve probably been on Tony’s back all afternoon.
Look
at him for Christ’s sake!”

Sid looked. He shook his head restlessly. “Bring him in,” he said.

The only one in the tent was Barney Wright who was absorbed in a Spalding catalogue. We put Tony on Sid’s cot and Sid wrapped a blanket around his thin shoulders.

“What’sa matter with the kid?” asked Barney.

“He’s having it tough in his cabin,” Sid answered and, with a vague nod of his gray-haired dome, Barney Wright returned to his baseball illustrations.

We sat on each side of Tony, watching him as he stared at the floor with bleak, hope-lost eyes. Sid tried to talk to him but all Tony could do was shiver and sob. So for a long time there was no sound in the tent but that of Tony and the flutter of turning pages in Barney’s catalogue.

Finally though—how well I remember it—Tony reached up and wiped away tears with a grimy fist, sniffing as he did. I held my handkerchief to his nose and he blew into it weakly.

“He’s gonna send me away again,” he said then, his voice hollow and spiritless.

“Who, Tony?” Sid asked him.

“My pa. He’s gonna send me back t’the stir.”

“Why, Tony?” I asked.

“‘Cause I ain’t doin’ so good,” Tony answered, a single tear appearing in his left eye and running down his cheek. I blotted it away. “He said I’d go back if I didn’t do good.”

“Tony, no one’s going to send you back,” I said. “You’re all right.” “Naw.” Tony shook his head and there was on his face the most helpless expression I’ve ever seen on a child. “Naw. You don’t know ‘im. He’ll put me in the stir again.”

“Why should he?” Sid asked. “You haven’t done anything.” “I hit ‘im,” Tony said, sniffing. “I hit ‘im and he don’t like that.” I couldn’t talk. I just sat there numbly, looking at Tony’s thin, despair-ravaged face, hearing him answer Sid’s questions. “Why did you hit him, Tony?”

“‘Cause he hit my ma,” Tony said. “My ma and me was together when my pa went in the army. My ma worked at night and my Uncle Charlie give us some dough too.” “Didn’t your father send money?”

“Yeah but my ma didn’t use none of it. She put it in the bank. She made enough dough at night. And my Uncle Charlie give her some dough too.

“What happened when your father came home, Tony?” “He hit my ma and he hit me. He was always cursin’ and gettin’ drunk and hittin’ us. Ma cried at night. I could hear her, lots.” He shrugged, sniffed. “And you hit him,” Sid said.

“Yeah. He hit my ma in the face and I hit him so he hit me back. Then I went t’the stir.” He bit his lower lip to keep back the sobs. “I’m g-goin’ back again. He’ll make me.”

“No, he won’t, Tony,” Sid told him quietly. “We won’t let him.”

“Ya can’t stop ‘im,” said Tony defeatedly. “He d-does what he wants t’do.”

Later, Sid and I stood over the cot, looking down at Tony as he slept; looking at the tear-streaked cheeks, the light quiver of his thin lips. Then we went out on the porch and sat down on camp chairs, propping our feet on the railing.

“That poor kid,” I muttered. “Jesus
Christ
.” I shook my head. “He tears my heart out.”

Sid shook his head. “He’s confused all right,” he said.

“What about his story?” I asked.

“I think he believes what he says. But how much does a kid his age know of the facts? All he sees is his old man going away to war. His life is nice while his mother takes care of him. Then his old man comes back and starts beating him. That’s all he sees. It all sounds so simple.”

He sighed heavily.

“Well, it’s not simple; I’d bet money on that. How do we know what happened while Tony’s father was away? Christ, for all we know, his mother was sleeping with everybody.
She worked at night
—there’s a key phrase for you. And who’s this Uncle Charlie? I remember when I was a kid, my dad used to have me call all his friends Uncle—Uncle Bill and Uncle Ned and Uncle Mike.” He made a sound that was amused yet not amused. “None of them were related to me. And I’d lay money that Uncle Charlie is no relation of Tony’s either.”

“And the money in the bank?”

“Maybe Tony’s mother
told
him she put it in the bank. But how do we know?”

I stared at the black woods around us, at the occasional pinpoint flare of fireflies.

“It just doesn’t figure—the old man going away nice and coming back mean,” Sid went on. “There’s one point Tony doesn’t seem to understand. His old man got custody of him after the divorce. The woman always gets the kid unless she’s definitely proved to be unfit.”

He exhaled wearily.

“There’s one other thing,” he said grimly. “All Tony seems to remember is hitting his old man on the back. It’s not as simple as that.”

There was a long pause and I think I knew what was coming before it came.

“His old man is the one Tony tried to kill,” said Sid.

Eyes closing abruptly; shivering. I sat slumped in the canvas chair feeling the cold night wind blowing across my face.

“That’s great,” I muttered. “That’s just great.”

It was decided to let Tony sleep on Sid’s cot until morning. Sid said it was all right since there was an extra cot in the tent that night anyway. Mel Kramer, the head of the Junior Division being on his day off. Sid also said he’d do whatever he could to get Tony back in my cabin again.

As I walked slowly back to the cabin, I kept thinking about Tony. I thought of how he was going to grow up hard; like a flower transplanted from soft to rocky soil—the beauty gone, only the will to survive left. I might get him back in my cabin but, even then, there was only a little more than a month remaining to the season. In that brief time I might go on wrestling with his several devils, ousting some of them perhaps. But, when the summer ended, he’d go back to his father and, in no time, those devils would return, every damn one of them.

It made me angry. I hated a world where such things could happen to children. Because children were the future. It’s a statement made in a million graduation deliveries, it’s dull, a cliche. It’s true. As I thought that, I sensed something in my mind—like the flare of a torch in deep night. It was something of import, something with a particular meaning for me.

I didn’t catch it though. It passed away and was gone and all that was left was the memory of how Tony had looked in sleep—his face pale and drawn, one hand flung across his cheek as if someone were just about to hit him.

During clean-up period, the next morning, Sid came down the line with Tony. I went to the door and looked at them as they approached. Sid saw me and, as they went by, he just shook his head once, slowly. I stood in the doorway watching them go over to Mack’s cabin and up the porch steps. A moment’s inaudible mumble of conversation, then Sid reappeared.

I met him in front of my cabin. “What did he say?” I asked.

“He wants Tony to stay with Mack.”

“You told him about last night?”

“I told him everything,” he said. “It just didn’t do any good.”

“I see.”

“Tony will be all right,” he said. “I’ll keep on Mack’s tail and see to it.”

I nodded, and Sid left. I went back into the cabin.

A little later when morning activity began, I met Mack as he was starting for the athletic fields.

“What’re you doin’ here?” he asked, trying to look surprised.

“What are you talking about?” I asked.

“This is your day off.”

“No, it isn’t,” I said.

He shrugged. “Oh, I thought it was.”

I went to the dining hall and started helping Bob with play rehearsals. About eleven-fifteen, I left the dining hall to go for a swim and met Big Ed. I braced myself for a discussion about Tony but all he said was, “What’re
you
doin’ here?”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“This is your day off,” he said.

“No, it isn’t,” I told him. “Next Thursday is.”

“Didn’t MacNeil tell ya?”

“Tell me what?”

“He changed days with ya. You’re off today.”

“What
?” I stared at him. “Nobody told
me
anything about it.”

Big Ed looked as bland as his feeble acting powers would allow.

“S’not my fault,” he said, shrugging. “MacNeil said you wouldn’t mind. Said he asked ya.”

“Well, he
didn’t
. Why should I change with him?”

“If it wasn’t down on the schedule already,” said Big Ed, “I could change it back, but it’s too late now.”

I looked very obvious daggers at him.

“What’s the difference?” he said carelessly. “One day’s as good as another.”

“Sure,” I said.

“You might as well take off,” he said, turning away. “You missed a couple hours already.” He started for the office, saying over his shoulder, “Oh, and … forget about Rocca. You don’t have t’worry about him any more.” He left me with that and the office screen door slapped shut behind him.