City Boy (17 page)

He rushed the boy outside and stood with him at the curb, signaling for a taxi. But none came at once, and Herbert, teetering on the curb, endured all the agonies of a rough sea voyage and then suddenly enjoyed the sovereign relief that comes of leaning over the rail. His father sympathetically gave him aid, and then walked the pale, shaky boy home. Fresh air was better for him, now, than a taxi. The walk gradually revived Herbie, and through the darkness of his discomfort the drift of the business talk began to come back to him.

“Pa,” he said timidly, “can Mr. Powers really sell the Place and throw you an' Mr. Krieger out?”

“Don't you worry about that,” said Bookbinder. But his face was tense and sad “Forget everything you heard, Herbie. For you it's castor oil and bed.”

And thus with castor oil, bed, and a chilly awareness that he had faded to distinguish himself, ended Herbie Bookbinder's first evening as a man among men.

T
he following Monday, the first of July, the emigration of children from the city began.

For the first time, Herbie Bookbinder gave up the well-known city pleasures of summertime—baths under fire hydrants, cold watermelons from horse-drawn wagons, picnics at city beaches or parks, and infinite lazy loitering in sun and shade wherever he pleased—and set out to taste the unknown delights of a country camp. The Bookbinder family loaded baggage and selves into the Chevrolet in front of 1075 Homer Avenue for the trip to Grand Central Station. An ancient watermelon wagon went by, pulled by the same old white horse, with the same old ragged, dirty-faced driver chanting his call: “Waw-dee-MAY-lun! Waw-dee-MAY-lun!” The wagon was piled high with fat green melons and chunks of ice; Herbie felt a pang of yearning for a chilly slice, and a wisp of regret at leaving home. But these sentiments faded as the car grunted and started on the journey. What was “Waw-dee-MAY-lun,” after all, compared to the coming feasts and splendors in far-off Manitou?

A beam of dusty sunlight slanted down across the empty dome of Grand Central Terminal and struck a large square yellow banner hanging on the wall in one corner of the huge concourse. Sewn on the banner in letters of red were the words:

Mr. Gauss was proud of the Old English lettering, so full of dignity and distinction. Unfortunately for Herbie, Felicia, and their parents, who were frantically searching for the banner ten minutes before train time,
Manitou
is rather hard to read at distance of more than ten feet. On all sides they could see banners: Camp Hiawatha, red and blue; Camp Algonquin, green and white; Camp Penobscot, green and gray; Camp Iroquois, blue and gold; Camp Pueblo, Camp Wigwam, Camp Totem, Camp Tomahawk, Camp Nokomis, Camp Tepee, and so on in fifty shapes and a hundred colors. If these flags suggested a renascence of the race of the American Indian at a tremendous war council, the huddles under them did not. In fact, nothing less resembling the noble naked redskin could have been imagined than these boiling knots of perspiring, peevish city children dressed in their “other” suits and frocks, submitting sullenly to last-minute kisses of red-eyed mothers or quarreling with each other or balking loudly at orders from the camp leaders.

Here and there the solid Indian array was pierced by a “Camp Williams” or “Camp Happiness.” Herbie was very glad he was not going to one of those dull places, but to one with a magic name like
Manitou
.

“There it is! I see Mr. Gauss!” cried Felicia at last, and the Bookbinders hurried to present themselves to the fat Pied Piper who was leading a line of children to his own private land of wonder.

To their disappointment, the manner of Mr. Gauss was far less cordial than it had been. He seemed, indeed, quite short with them. This was not really so; Mr. Gauss simply had a limited supply of the butter of good nature. Spread on one family at a time it was rich, but thinned over eighty at once it left a dry taste.

Herbie cast his eye around the mob under the yellow banner and quickly noticed Lennie Krieger at the center of an admiring cluster of smaller boys, loudly making predictions about the baseball pennant races. Separate herds of boys and girls seemed to be forming. The fat boy peered here and there, and spied Lucille in the girls' group. He smiled and waved at her, but she turned modestly away.

“Looks like fun, huh, Fleece?” said Herbie, but there was no answer, and he perceived with surprise that his sister was no longer beside him, but was being led away by a tall, bulbous woman whose face was a field of freckles. He later learned that this was Aunt Tillie, “head counselor” of the girls. Now in his turn he felt his hand grasped in a large, dank, leathery grip. He looked up at his captor, an immense fair-haired, square-faced man with tiny eyes and thick, rimless glasses.

“I'm Uncle Sandy, your head counselor,” said the man, “and you're little Herbie Bookbinder, aren't you? Come along.”

Herbie came along, not liking it particularly, and was brought to a harried-looking, thin young man with a deep tan, standing amid a batch of small boys. “This is Uncle Nig, your counselor,” said Uncle Sandy. “Bunk Eight, highest bunk of the Juniors. Isn't that swell?”

“Sandy, I've got six already,” protested Uncle Nig, but Uncle Sandy hurried off, saying over his shoulder, “We'll straighten everything out on the train. He looks about Bunk Eight size.”

Herbie glanced askance at the six short boys among whom he had been thrust, and they surveyed him with equally obvious distaste. They all looked disagreeable and very young.

“And what's your name, pal?” inquired Uncle Nig.

“Herbie Bookbinder,” said the boy. He turned to the lad nearest him. “Say, what class are you in public school?”

“5A, and what's it to you, Fat?” replied the boy.

“5A?” cried Herbie in horror. “I'm in 8B!”

Uncle Nig raised his eyebrows and said soothingly, “Don't start off telling lies, Herb. Be a regular guy.”

“But I
am
in 8B. I can prove it!”

The boys laughed at him. One said, “That's nothing, I go to high school.”

“Me, I go to Harvard,” added another, and raised more giggles.

Herbie was assailed with an extremely positive feeling that he was not going to like Camp Manitou.

“All aboard!” shouted Uncle Sandy through a megaphone. Aunt Tillie began pulling down the banner. “Say good-by, folks, we leave in three minutes.”

Herbie's waist was encircled by clutching arms. His mother had dropped to a squatting position beside him, her eyes streaming, her faded cheeks flushed with emotion.

“Good-by, my boy, my boy, my darling,” she sobbed. “I know you're going to be happy, so I'm happy, too. We'll come to see you.”

While she hugged and kissed him his father managed to free Herbie's right hand and shake it. “Be a man, Herbie,” he shouted over the tumult of the departure.

“Where's Cliff? I ain't even seen Cliff,” said Herbie petulantly, not knowing what else to say in the bewilderment of the moment. “Ain't he comin' to camp?”

“Is that all you can think about—Cliff—when you're going away from home? At least kiss me good-by,” complained the mother. Herbie considered kissing in public a mean business for a boy in 8B, but everybody else seemed to be doing it, so he obliged his mother with a brief smack on the nose.

“We'll take swell care of him, don't you worry, Mrs. Bookbinder,” said Uncle Nig. “All right, pals, let's get going.”

Driven, coaxed, shoved, and barked at by the young men and women known as counselors, the two flocks of children straggled to the train. The more emotional parents bleated at the flanks of the procession right up to the last gate. Jacob Bookbinder and his wife stood where the banner had hung, and waved at their retreating son and daughter whenever they glanced back. Just at the gate, Herbie took a last look at his mother and father. Standing amid the hurrying crowds of well-dressed tourists, wearing their everyday Bronx clothes, smiling and waving, they seemed like two tired, shabby little people to the boy; and, curiously enough, he saw something at that distance that he had never noticed when he had been much closer to them. He saw that his father's hair was almost all gray.

“Good-by, Ma! Good-by, Pa!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, when it was no longer possible for them to hear him.

“Keep in line, Herbie,” said Uncle Nig.

It was not possible for the boy to start crying amid other lads, and his face remained calm, but his eyes filled, his throat swelled, and he hardly saw where he was going, or knew what he was doing, or came to himself again, until the starting jar of the train told him he was really leaving New York City.

Some take it soon, some late—but it is a long step along the path of life when a child first pities his mother and father.

However, the feelings of boyhood, like the skies of spring, change quickly. A few minutes later he was absorbed in the unfamiliar view of the back parts of the city along the railroad track. Within five minutes he was bored by this novelty, and in its place the injustice of being classed with fifth-graders awoke in his mind as a great outrage. He rose and started to edge his way out of his seat, past the strange boy beside him.

“Where are you going, pal?” came the voice of Uncle Nig. The dark-faced counselor was in the seat behind him.

“Just to find my cousin Cliff.”

“Well, ask my permission first. I can't have you wandering off in all directions.”

“O.K.,” said Herbie, and stepped out into the aisle.

“Well?” said Uncle Nig.

“Well, what?”

“I'm still waiting for you to ask my permission to leave your seat.”

“I've already left it.”

“Well, then, get back into it.”

“But that's silly. I'll only have to get out of it again.”

“I decide what's silly and what isn't. Get back into your seat.”

Herbie hesitated, and briefly weighed the advisability of declaring his independence with a formal statement, such as “Horse feathers.” The right of this young man to order him about was not at all clear. He was putting the saddle on Herbie for the first time, when the tamest beast tends to balk; besides, he seemed to be himself in a twilight state, not quite boy, not quite man. But children of eleven are so used to the despotism of the adult race that they can hardly tell usurped authority from the real thing. Herbie added up the elements, took the sum, and climbed back into his seat.

“Fine, pal. Now go ahead and find your cousin.”

But to obey this would have savored of jumping through hoops. “Naw,” said Herbie gloomily, “I changed my mind.”

Uncle Sandy bulked huge at the head of the aisle.

“All right, gang,” he bawled through his megaphone, “here we go for another summer of rip-roaring fun at good old Camp Manitou. What say, you old-timers, let's show the new gang the Manitou spirit. Uncle Irish is back with us as swimming counselor, and he's going to lead you in the good old camp cheer. Now, give it a lot of spirit.”

A young man with the broadest shoulders Herbie had ever seen, and a shock of bright red hair, leaped into the aisle, shouted, “O.K., fellows. Let's give 'em ‘Oink-oink, bow-wow.’ All together, now. Hip, hip,” and began waving his arms in strange jerky motions. A ragged chant came forth from some of the boys, consisting of imitations of animal noises, railroad noises, and what sounded like firecracker noises, with no English words that Herbie could understand except a repeated exhortation to “get a rat trap bigger than a cat trap.”

When it was over, Uncle Irish cried, “O.K., now, you new fellows got it? Let's give it to 'em again, everybody, twice as loud.”

The thing was repeated. It was not twice as loud, however, but approximately half as loud. This time Herbie thought he heard, amid the squeals, hisses, croaks, and choo-choos, certain references to shanty towns, Chevrolets, chiggers, and cannibals, but he imagined he must be mistaken.

Uncle Sandy was on his feet again.

“That was pretty good, gang, pretty good. 'Course it'll sound a lot better when you new fellows really catch on. Now Uncle Irish is going to lead you in ‘Bulldog, Bulldog,’ our camp song. And I want plenty of spirit this time, particularly from you Seniors. You fellows know this song well enough. Now, come on, put some spirit into it.”

He pointed at a group of boys across the aisle from Herbie, about fourteen or fifteen years of age. They lolled in seats they had reversed so that four of them could face each other, and seemed very grand and old in their long trousers and fedora hats. When they were thus publicly rebuked, Herbie saw them grin evilly at each other and whisper.

“Bulldog, Bulldog” was duly sung in draggy discords. The older boys sat with locked lips. The voices of the head counselor and Uncle Irish boomed out through the car. As soon as the song ended, the silent long-trousered clique burst forth with the following chant, rendered in a sneering singsong, with much more spirit and precision than either the song or the cheer:

Here comes boloney,

Riding on a pony—

Hooray, Uncle Sandy!

The head counselor strode up the aisle, smiling a joyless smile. He stopped and towered beside Herbie's seat.