A Fistful of Fig Newtons (8 page)

“They’re all the same size,” Lieutenant Kneecamp said over
and over as he passed them out. I noticed Schwartz’s beanie sat on the top of his head like a half of a green tennis ball.

“NOW, ALL YOU CHIPMUNKS,” Captain Crabtree shouted, “LINE UP ON THE PLATFORM. You will sit in a group at the rear of the bus. A Chipmunk does not speak unless spoken to.”

The non-Chipmunks were a head taller and a foot wider than any of us. They had the kind of faces that kids who smoke have. They hit each other in the ribs, laughed back and forth, and a few threw wadded-up balls of paper at us Chipmunks. They wore identical blue jackets and Captain Crabtree called them Beavers.

“O.K., kid. Give ’em hell and hang in there.” That was all my old man had to say to me.

My mother patted my hat down over my ears and whispered, “Don’t forget what I said about your underwear. And you be careful, you hear me now?”

“ALL RIGHT, CHIPMUNKS, ONTO THE BUS. SINGLE FILE, THERE. MOVE OUT.”

The captain herded us onto the bus. We surged to the rear, battling for seats next to the windows. I squatted down in the back between Flick and Schwartz. Kissel sat a few rows up, next to a big fat Chipmunk who looked scared and was sobbing quietly. Then the Beavers whooped and trampled aboard, and Captain Crabtree stood in the aisle.

“Now, I don’t want any trouble on the trip, because if there is, I’m gonna start handing out demerits. Y’hear me? You play ball with me and I’ll play ball with you.” This was a phrase I was to hear many times in future life.

The parents stood on the platform outside the bus, waving and tapping on the windows, making signs to the various kids. Up front, Lieutenant Kneecamp started the engine with a roar. As it bellowed out, the fat Chipmunk next to Kissel wailed and began sobbing uncontrollably. Captain Crabtree stood up and glared angrily around the bus until he spotted Fatso.

“I DON’T WANNA GO!! WAAAAAAAA!! WAAAAAAAAAA!!!”

Lieutenant Kneecamp peered wearily around from the driver’s
seat with the expression of one who had witnessed this scene many times before. A couple of the grizzled Beavers laughed raucously and one gave a juicy Bronx cheer.

“WAAAAAAAAAA! I AIN’T GONNA GO!!”

The fat Chipmunk had hurled himself onto the floor of the bus and was crawling toward the door. Captain Crabtree, with the practiced quickness of a man who had seen it all, grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and said in a cold, level voice:

“Chipmunks do not cry. We will have no crying.”

The fat Chipmunk instantly stopped bawling and retreated slightly, his eyes round and staring.

“Put that hat back on, Chipmunk. NOW!” The fat Chipmunk quickly jammed his hat back onto his head.

“Lieutenant Kneecamp, will you please proceed?” Captain Crabtree had the situation well in hand. Pale and shaken, the fat Chipmunk slumped down next to Kissel. He had a wad of gum stuck on his knee. The lieutenant threw the bus into gear and we slowly pulled out of the terminal, amid frenzied waving and cheering among the assembled parentage. We rumbled out into the gray, rainy street, and the last sight I had of my family was the familiar image of my old man holding my kid brother by one ear and swatting him on the rump.

Captain Crabtree stood swaying in the aisle. “In three hours we will arrive at camp. We will make one stop, in precisely ninety minutes. If you have to go to the toilet, you will hold it until then.”

I had already felt faint stirrings. Now that he mentioned it, they flared up badly. I had been so excited that I’d forgotten to go after breakfast.

“We will now sing the ‘Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee Loyalty Song,’ ” Captain Crabtree shouted over the roar of the engine. “Here, pass these songbooks back. I have counted them. I want every one of them returned at the conclusion of the trip.” He needn’t have worried.

He handed out mimeographed blue pamphlets. There were mutterings here and there. The fat Chipmunk had closed his eyes
and appeared to be holding his breath. I was handed a songbook. The lettering on the front read
Nobba-WaWa-Nockee True-blue Trail Songs
.

“All right, men. The ‘Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee Loyalty Song’ is the first song in the book. It is sung to the tune of ‘Old MacDonald Had a Farm.’ You all know it. Ladadeedeedadadum,” Captain Crabtree sang tonelessly. I opened the book. Schwartz and Flick, their hats jammed down on their heads, had their books open, too. Life at Camp Nobba-WaWa-Nockee had officially begun.

The captain produced a pitch pipe that looked like a little harmonica. He blew briskly into it, producing a wavering note that was barely audible over the bellow of the worn Dodge motor.

“Now, sing it out. All together. I want to hear some life in it.” He blew into his pitch pipe again. Led by the Beavers, we began to sing the “Loyalty Song”:

There were thirty-seven verses, which made reference to pillow fights, totem poles, Indian trails, and the like, with the concluding blast:

Again the bus exploded in a roar of cheers and stompings, with a few hisses and a couple of raspberries from the Beaver contingent. The rain drummed on the sides of the bus as we hurtled toward our gala summer.

“Boy, lookit those great jackets all the big kids have,” said Schwartz enviously.

“Yeah,” said Flick. “And what’s that yellow thing on the front?” Over each boy’s heart was a golden emblem.

Kissel, who overheard us, squinted closely at the Beaver sitting in front of him. “I dunno,” he stage-whispered. “It looks like a picture of a rat holding an ice cream cone.”

The Beaver turned savagely, baring yellow teeth, his bull-like neck bulging red with rage. “That’s the Sacred Golden Tomahawk of Chief Chungacong, you stupid little freak!” he snarled. “Hey, Jake! You hear what this stupid little kid called the Sacred Beaver?”

“Yeah, I heard. I think we gotta teach ’im a lesson, eh, Dan?”

Dan Baxter, as we were later to find out to our sorrow, believed we should
all be
taught a lesson.

The fat Chipmunk, without warning, again hurled himself to the floor of the bus. A skinny Chipmunk yelled out, “HEY! He’s doin’ it AGAIN!”

Captain Crabtree rose ominously from his seat, staring back into the swaying bus. The fat Chipmunk lay sprawled in the aisle, kicking his feet like a grounded frog, his eyes clamped shut, his arms held rigidly to his sides. I had seen that move many times before. My cousin Buddy was famous for his spectacularly creative tantrums. One of his specialties was the very same catatonic beauty that the fat Chipmunk was now performing surpassingly well. If anything, he was even better than Buddy at his peak. The bus slowed to a crawl as Captain Crabtree lurched down the aisle.

“GET UP!” he barked, his voice crisp and cutting. The fat Chipmunk just lay there, quivering. One of his feet flicked upward, neatly disengaging his shoe, which bounced off the captain’s chest. It was a nice touch. The entire busload of kids, all of whom from time to time had themselves practiced tantrum throwing, recognized a tour-de-force performance.

“I SAID GET UP!” The fat Chipmunk quivered again, this time producing a venomous hissing sound–an interesting detail.

“What was that?” The captain’s voice was menacing. “What did you say?”

The hissing continued, now accompanied by a curious sideways writhing of the body that produced a rhythmic thumping as his plump buttocks drubbed on the bus floor.

“O.K.,” Captain Crabtree barked. Reaching down with a quick, swooping motion, he hauled the fat Chipmunk to his feet. Instantly, Fatso’s legs turned to rubber in counterattack.

“I’ve had about enough out of you,” the captain muttered, his glasses sliding down his nose from the exertion of holding the fat Chipmunk erect.

“This guy’s great!” Flick whispered, more to himself than to any of us. It was obvious we were witnessing a confrontation that could go either way.

“I’ll give you one more chance to sit down and behave.”

Captain Crabtree steered the blubbery, quivering mass toward his seat. The fat Chipmunk seemed to swell up like a toad, his face turning beet-red. Just as the captain was about to lower him to his seat, he let fly his ultimate crusher, a master stroke of the tantrum thrower’s art.

“BRRRAAAUUUUGGGGGHHHHH, BRAAAAAHHHHKKKKK!”

For a moment, none of us could comprehend what was happening. It was done so quickly, so cleanly, so deliberately. The captain staggered back, bellowing incoherently. A pungent aroma filled the rear of the bus. The captain reeled, dripping from his necktie down to his brass belt buckle. The fat Chipmunk seemed to have shrunk two sizes as he squatted on his seat, exuding malevolent satisfaction at a job well done.

“STOP THE BUS!” the captain hollered brokenly. “NOW!”

His crisp suntans were completely soaked by a deluge of vomit. The bus careened to a halt. The captain rushed up the aisle and out the front door. He disappeared into the weeds at the side of the road.

Immediately, the crowd broke into an uproar, with a few scattered bursts of applause coming from the Beavers up front. The
fat Chipmunk had won instant respect. Schwartz, his voice rising in excitement, asked, “Hey, kid, how’d ya do that?” There was no reply.

Flick, who was the naturalist among us, since he raised rabbits and hamsters, put the event in perspective. “He’s like a human skunk. When he’s trapped, he just lets ’em have it.”

The fat Chipmunk had opened his right eye and fixed Flick with a piercing glare. From that instant, he was known as Skunk. It was not in any sense a term of derision. He had clearly demonstrated that he could handle himself exceedingly well and was, in fact, lethal.

The captain, drenched to the skin from the driving rain, with bits of residual vomit staining his tie, but once again in charge, reentered the bus.

“All right. Let’s move out,” he ordered in a voice still shaking with rage. “One more incident and the colonel will get a full report.”

Comparative peace settled over the mob, which was now somehow changed as we rolled on through the rain. There was a brief stop at a gas station with an adjoining diner. We lined up outside the john.

“Hey, take a look at Skunk,” Flick said to me. Skunk was on a stool in the diner, taking on more ammunition in case there was further trouble.

We moved out again in a haze of drowsiness. It had been a long trip. The country had turned to farms, Bull Durham signs, and occasional run-down vegetable stands that all seemed to be closed. Old, gray, sagging farmhouses with hand-lettered signs reading FRESH EGGS and HANDMADE QUILTS FOR SALE rolled past. We were in Michigan. It wouldn’t be long now.

Finally the bus slowed at a crossroad. A rutted gravel road wound off to the north. A swaying yellow arrowhead attached to a tree trunk read CAMP NOBBA-WAWA-NOCKEE 2 MI. The bus exploded in a tidal wave of cheers as it wheeled onto the gravel
road. We were almost there. I felt a wild tightening in the pit of my stomach. In just a few minutes I would be at camp. Camp!

It was raining even harder now. The ditches on the side of the road were rushing torrents of muddy water. We were among heavy, dripping trees, and the branches intertwined over the road until we were rolling forward through a dark, green-black tunnel. Anxious and subdued, the Chipmunks peered out the windows into the passing gloom. We lurched around a bend and headed down a slope.

Schwartz hit me sharply on the shoulder. “Hey, look!” He half-rose from his seat, pointing toward the front of the bus. I stared ahead. The windshield wipers slapped back and forth. Then I saw it–a gray, flat gleam through the tangled trees ahead.

“What is it?” Flick asked, squinting. A tall, sandy-haired Beaver turned a scornful glance in our directions. “What does it look like, stupe?” He nudged the bullet-headed Beaver next to him and said loudly, for our benefit:

“Jee-zus. They’re getting worse every year. Guys like that wouldna lasted five minutes when we were Chipmunks. Right, Jake?”

Jake, the bullet-headed Beaver, laughed a grating cackle that boded ill for any Chipmunk who crossed his path.

“It’s the lake!” I shouted. “Holy smokes, it’s Lake Paddaclunka-whatever-they-call-it!!”

An expanse of choppy water lay ahead. The short, broad Beaver turned at this remark, his red neck straining again at his T-shirt.

“Hey, Jake!” he barked. “They don’t even know Old Pisshole when they see it.”

At this, five or six Beavers began poking each other and making incomprehensible cracks. Jake turned and grinned mirthlessly in our direction. He was missing three lower teeth and one of his ears appeared to be badly chewed.

“Y’mean none a’you know what Paddachungacong means?”
He waited for an answer. All we could do was stare dumbly back. “Well, I’ll tell ya. It means Sacred Place Where Big Chief Took a Leak.”

Again the Beavers roared in appreciation of Jake’s cutting wit. We later found out he was telling the truth. That’s exactly what Paddachungacong means.

By this time, the bus had rolled onto a broad clearing that sloped down to the lake. A row of stubby square log cabins with green tar-paper roofs straggled off toward the woods. The bus lurched to a halt in front of a long, flat, low building with a dark, screen-enclosed porch.

“All right, men, let’s move out.” Captain Crabtree again stood in the aisle, directing the troops. “Watch out for the puddles. And move up onto the porch.”

The yelling, scrambling mass of Beavers up front charged out the door and onto the porch, slamming the screen doors. We followed quietly, not knowing quite what to expect. The rain had let up, but the mud was two inches deep. My shoes had grown four sizes by the time I had walked a yard.

“Quit splashing, Schwartz!” hollered Flick as Schwartz kicked up sheets of muddy water behind him. A chill wind blew off the lake. Just before I reached the steps, a sharp sting hit me on the back of the neck. Instinctively, I swatted at it. Already a huge welt was rising next to my left ear. I could see several other Chipmunks swatting at invisible attackers.