City Boy (35 page)

Cliff ran into the woods and came out leading a very stiff-legged and balky Clever Sam. The animal was obviously outraged at having been tied up in dew and darkness all night. He grunted, neighed, pulled his head this way and that, and bucked.

“This ain't gonna be good,” said Herbie.

“No, it ain't,” agreed his cousin, and mounted to the saddle. Clever Sam looked around at him, then walked to a thick old oak tree and, leaning against it at a sharp angle, rubbed the boy off his back. Cliff dropped harmlessly to the ground and stood up at once. Clever Sam began cropping goldenrod with sullen glances from under his knobby brows at his ex-rider.

“Cliff, it's twenty after. The bugler gets up at ten of.”

Cliff approached the horse again cautiously. “I think maybe he'll be O.K. now. I don't blame him. Hey, Sam, I'm sorry. I wouldn't of done it if I didn't have to. We gotta get back to camp fast. Be a good guy.”

He got back into the saddle. The horse raised his head and stood quietly, until Herbie drew near. Then he flattened his ears, whinnied, and stamped his hoofs.

“He's got it in for you, too, Herbie.”

“What'll he do to me?” said Herbie fearfully.

“You'll just have to climb aboard an' find out.”

Assisted by his cousin, Herbie managed to heave himself up on the horse's back. He grasped Cliff around the waist and awaited the worst. The worst turned out to be fairly bad. Clever Sam set forth toward camp at a ragged, violent trot, with an amazing amount of up-and-down movement. His flanks bobbed like buoys in a storm, and the worst of the bobbing took place between Herbie's chubby thighs. Cliff tried in vain to induce Clever Sam to lope, to gallop, and finally, when Herbie began to groan like a dying man, even to walk. The horse maintained exactly the same excruciating pace from the highway to the stable. The slapping, scraping, pounding, and burning that Herbie endured is beyond the power of words to tell. But if purging by fire is truly the penalty for sin, then Clever Sam ransomed Herbie from retribution in hell for anything he had done that night.

Herbie's watch read twenty minutes to seven, and Cliff was just backing Clever Sam into his stall, when Elmer Bean walked into the stable. The handy man staggered with astonishment when he saw the two haggard, dirty boys in their city clothes, but when Herbie handed him the fifty dollars he was constrained to sit, trembling a little, on the bench.

“I said I'd get it, and I got it,” said Herbie.

“Where the blazes you guys been?”

“What difference does that make? We can build the ride now, can't we?”

“I guess so, but—where'd you git it, Herb? Know somebody in another camp?”

“What's the difference? See you later, Elmer. We gotta get back into our bunks before reveille. Come on, Cliff!”

“You didn't—you didn't steal it, fellers?”

“Heck, no!” said Herbie over his shoulder with immense righteous indignation. “We borrowed it.”

The boys ran down the hill. The camp was as still as a row of pyramids. In fifteen minutes it would be swarming with life. Keeping to the bushes to evade possible early risers, Cliff and Herbie made their way to the camphor locker, doffed their clothes, and pressed the spring lock back into place loosely.

“We better come back an' hammer it later. We'll wake 'em up,” said Cliff, pushing at the nails with his fist. He glanced at his cousin for approval, and saw Herbie standing with a horror-stricken look on his face.

“Cliff,” he said hollowly. “You know what? I forgot to leave the note in the safe saying we borrowed the money. So we stole it after all. We stole the money, Cliff!”

“Aw, they'll get it back with interest, won't they?”

“Yeah, but meantime—meantime we're just plain crooks.”

“For cryin' out loud, let's worry about that later. We gotta get into our bunks.”

Clad in brief white drawers, the two boys crept up behind the bungalows, avoiding Company Street, and each tiptoed into his own bunk. As Herbie slid into his cot it squeaked, and he heard Uncle Sid make the familiar snores and snuffles that preceded his waking. The boy closed his eyes and pretended unconsciousness. In a minute the make believe was a reality; he was fast asleep. When the squalling bugle, ten minutes later, brought all his bunkmates tumbling out of bed, it failed to awake him. He lay like one dead.

“All right, boys,” said Uncle Sid. “Flophouse reveille for Herbie Bookbinder.”

“A pleasure,” exclaimed Lennie. He and Eddie Bromberg sprang to the ends of Herbie's cot and upset it sideways. The sleeper sprawled to the floor and opened red, bleary eyes.

“Top o' the morning, General Garbage!” said Lennie.

“Get a move on,” said Uncle Sid. “You'd think you hadn't slept at all.”

Herbie groaned, picked his bruised, partly skinned, dog-tired body off the floor, and stumbled out with the other boys to greet the new day—with fifteen minutes of setting-up exercises.

M
r. Gauss came shuffling absently across the girls' lawn later that same morning, moodily weighing the advantages and disadvantages of using only three busses instead of four to carry the children to the railway station the following week. He had just about decided that the saving of money was worth the bitterness that would be caused by the overcrowding when a surprising sight drove the matter from his mind. Two parallel lines of fresh white lumber stretched from the top of the hill a quarter of the way down. There was a great pile of boards and cans where the lines began, and his handy man and three boys were working like ants around the pile. As he watched, two of the boys, Herbie and Ted, left the pile carrying four boards together by the ends. They walked down the hill, laid the boards so as to lengthen the lines, and scampered uphill again.

“Here, here!” exclaimed the camp owner, approaching and waving a reproachful forefinger before him, his usual battle emblem. “What on earth is the meaning of all this?”

Herbie, Ted, and Cliff dropped their work and clustered around Elmer, as though for protection.

“It's for the Mardigrass, Mr. Gauss—er, Skipper,” said Herbie eagerly.

“Boy's got an idea for some kind of ride,” said Elmer Bean. “I think it'll be O.K.”

“Yes, but—who gave anyone permission to build this thing? And where did all this material come from? Why, it looks like a hundred dollars' worth. Who's paying for all this, I want to know?”

Herbie looked appealingly at the handy man, who said, “Well, sir, it's like this. I know Tom Nostrand down to the Panksville Lumber Yard, see, an' I tole him about this idea this boy had. He's a pretty good guy, an' he gave me this stuff. See, he has no kids hisself, and he's pretty soft where kids are concerned.”

This was not a complete lie; Elmer Bean was hardly as facile a fictionizer as Herbie. It had turned out that fifty dollars was not much more than half of what was needed to buy the materials from the lumber yard. Elmer had wheedled the stuff at a short price from Tom Nostrand in the manner just described. In recounting the tale to Mr. Gauss he simply took the precaution of omitting the detail of the mysterious cash the boys had given him.

Mr. Gauss was partly placated by the answer, to the extent that he knew he was not out of pocket. But he grumbled, “What sort of silly ride is it?”

Herbie started to describe his project with hot enthusiasm, but before the Skipper's fishy stare and pursed lips his force waned quickly, and he ended by stammering, apologizing, and not making much sense.

“Anyway, Uncle Sandy said,” Herbie concluded lamely, “we could try anything we wanted. Can't we?”

“I never heard worse foolishness,” said Mr. Gauss. “And to think of wasting all this fine material on such a harebrained scheme! Elmer, I'm disappointed in you. You shouldn't encourage them. These boards will do nicely to repair the canoe dock. Better haul them down there right away. The grease can go in the garage. You needn't do the repairs, of course, till after the season.”

“You mean,” exclaimed Herbie in dismay, “we don't get to build our ride, after everything we done?”

“Not done, did—past tense,” said Mr. Gauss. “Of course not, Herbie. I'm sorry, but it'll never work. You should thank me for preventing you from wasting your time.”

Herbie's stiff, exhausted body failed him. He fell to the ground and cried.

“Now, now, none of that,” said Mr. Gauss, a little flustered. “Be a man, Herbie. Get up.”

The boy stifled his sobs in an elbow, but did not stir.

“Why, look, Mr. Gauss,” said the handy man, “I don't guess I can do what you said.”

“What's this?” The camp owner glared at the mutineer.

“Well, see, I got that stuff offa Tom Nostrand fer the kids. Now, if we jest use it fer camp repairs, why, we gotta pay fer it, if we're honest. So if I do what you said, I'll have to tell Tom an' you'll get a bill fer the stuff tomorrow. A hunnerd dollars. Er do you want me to be dishonest an' not tell him 'bout it?”

With three children listening, the question was an embarrassing one for Mr. Gauss. “That's got nothing to do with it. I simply thought, as long as the stuff is here—of course I don't want to pay for it. The canoe dock doesn't need repairs that badly.”

“Why, sir, we can use it to repair the dock all right,” said Elmer, “
after
the Mardigrass. See, the wood'll still be here. It won't be new, but it'll be good. Tom Nostrand won't have no use for it, see,
once we build Herbie's ride.
”

This presentation of the case licked the camp owner. As the price of getting a hundred dollars' worth of lumber for nothing, he probably would have permitted the boys to build an altar to Baal.

“Well, I've never been one to interfere with the children's pleasures,” he said, “so long as they're not hurtful. Go ahead, boys, waste your time, so long as you're having fun. That's what camp is for. You have my permission to build your ride.” He swept a happy smile over the group, like a water hose washing away any possible ill feeling, and his rotund back parts swayed rhythmically as he ascended to the camp office.

The beaver is the handy comparison when hard work is to be described, but has a beaver ever equaled what Herbie did that day? The fat boy had hardly slept for thirty-six hours and his body was one great ache, yet in that condition he did the longest, hardest day's work of his life. Cliff was in a bad case, too, but he was stronger than his cousin, and he had not taken the battering from Clever Sam that still throbbed in Herbie's muscles and bones. As Herbie toiled and sweated, carrying out Elmer Bean's directions, a red mist swam before his eyes. His feet and hands blistered. Often it seemed to him that his arms would refuse to come away from his sides when he willed them to. Yet somehow, stumbling and slipping, he did whatever he was told.

Ted was an early recruit to the labor. He came with Lennie to jeer, and remained without the model of Character to work. Later in the morning, Felicia, hearing the spreading news of her brother's project, came and joined the labor gang. By lunch time both camps were gratefully gnawing this bone of novelty, and Herbie had acquired a quick notoriety, not exactly favorable. A few boys and girls appreciated the daring of the scheme and predicted it would work, but the popular reaction was one of ridicule. Some fine jokes were passed about “General Garbage's ride.” Herbie, Cliff, and Ted came, late into the dining hall, having received permission to be absent from the regular marching lines, and a spontaneous cheer arose from the seated campers:

“Here comes boloney

Riding on a pony.

Hooray, General Garbage!”

But Herbie was too tired to care. He fell into his seat, happier for the rest than for the food, and dozed through most of the meal.

Strangely enough, he revived in the afternoon. His joints grew limber, his eyes cleared, and he made merry remarks to cheer on his fellow workers. The handy man left him in charge while he went to do other chores, and was surprised at his return two hours later to find the rails laid to the edge of the water. Then came the tedious task of securing the boards to each other and to the ground, a drudgery in which the children were still engaged when they heard the call for the evening meal. Herbie went to his bunk to change his clothes, still feeling spry, but he sat on his bed to take off his socks, and instantly toppled over and fell asleep. His “second wind,” that occult burst of energy which nature gives us in desperate straits when normal strength is burnt out, was gone. His bunkmates could hardly jar him into opening his eyes. Uncle Sid, with unusual wisdom, decided to let him be. Herbie lay as he was until midnight, when he awoke ragingly hungry and thirsty. He crept up to the dining hall by the light of the moon, and foraged in the dark kitchen until he came upon one of the long loaves of bread that served an entire bunk at a meal. He ate the whole loaf, washing it down with six glasses of water from the dishwasher's faucet, and decided that the most delicious food in the world was bread and water. Then he returned to his bunk, undressed, and slept like a brass idol until reveille.

He woke to a new day, refreshed and easier in his limbs, but low spirited. The weather was sultry. Felicia retired from the gang early in the morning, made faint by the heat. The handy man and the three boys labored on at the Ride with streaming brows, wet bodies, and slippery palms. Herbie had not in his life done such honest work. He discovered gratefully that work was the River of Forgetfulness of the storybooks, a plunge into which caused the past to disappear, if only for a while.