City Boy (26 page)

When the game ended, Cliff, who had been lurking behind a far-off tree with the animal, came cantering into the field, the blanket flapping its faded message to the breeze. He stopped for a moment before the Penobscots, who forthwith rendered a “Bang chugga bang” for Clever Sam. After this Cliff brought his steed alongside Uncle Sandy at third base. It happened that the Penobscot leader, Uncle Husky, was conferring with Sandy at that moment. Aunt Tillie had edged herself into the talk, too, and it was noticed glumly by the boys that she and the fellow called Husky were in rare spirits, while Sandy, like a true man of Manitou, was downcast.

“Well, Sandy,” said Uncle Husky with a laugh, as Clever Sam came up, panting, “are we going to have the riding exhibition now?”

“No,” said Sandy sulkily.

Husky looked carefully at Clever Sam. “New horse, eh? Moth-eaten beast.”

“Maybe, but he's too much for me,” said Sandy. “He's a devil. That kid is the only one in camp who can ride him.”

Aunt Tillie spoke up. Her voice was a loud one, and all the boys could hear her. “It's a shame to spoil the parade. Husky, why don't you ride him?”

The handsome stranger smiled.

“Nonsense, Tillie,” put in Uncle Sandy. “You know perfectly well the animal is unmanageable.”

“For you, maybe, but not for Husky,” shrilled Aunt Tillie, with a superior smile. “He's a magnificent horseman. He's won cups.”

Hate radiated at her from the entire boys' camp. But under certain conditions women develop leaden hides.

“I don't mind trying him,” said the Penobscot carelessly, “if Sandy doesn't object.”

The head counselor hesitated. All the boys were listening.

“Go ahead, Uncle Sandy!” shouted Herbie suddenly from the ranks. “
Let
him try.”

Uncle Sandy's vexed look slowly faded, and was replaced, equally slowly, almost with the sound of cogs grinding, by an expression of the most Satanic cunning.

“Why, of course,” he said, grinning and squinting. “By all means, Husky. Let him have the horse, Cliff.”

The boy dismounted, handed the reins to Uncle Husky, and backed off hurriedly. For a moment the Penobscot leader and Clever Sam looked each other in the eye. Uncle Husky seemed to flinch slightly at what he saw. He said, “Tillie, I'd better mount him away from the kids,” and led the willing horse out to the center of the field.

Penobscot's chief counselor swung himself into the saddle with grace; and as soon as his thighs settled against the leather, Clever Sam's head dropped to the ground as though released by a spring and he began eating grass. The tall, powerful rider looked astounded, and snickers were heard in the ranks of Manitou. The next moment Clever Sam's head was yanked into the air by a pull that all but tore it off his neck.

“None of your nonsense!” cried Husky. He gave the animal a potent kick in the ribs. “Let's go, horse.”

Clever Sam turned and studied his rider briefly. Then he seized the man's right sneaker in his teeth, tore it off, and dropped it on the ground.

All Manitou cheered.

Aunt Tillie screamed, “Husky, be careful! The beast is vicious!”

Husky threw her a contemptuous look, gave his mount a slap on the flank that resounded among the hills like a pistol shot, and jerked the horse's head back as far as it could go three times. “Get going, horse!” he commanded.

Clever Sam got going, in his fashion. He began to do a decidedly original waltzing step, backward, and backed and backed. With his rider cursing, sawing the reins, and pummeling him with fists and heels, he backed around in a circle twice, then backed into the ragged wire netting behind home plate. Here he tried to rub his rider off against the posts, but Husky hung on, at the cost of a nasty scratching from the wire. The boys and girls of Manitou were rolling on the grass, half dead with laughter. The Penobscots were still. Aunt Tillie, in tears, was pleading for someone to go to the rider's aid, but nobody paid any attention to her, or noticed that her freckles were reappearing here and there in streaks along her face.

Clever Sam finally stopped trying to rub his rider off. He pranced sideways to the center of the field, and assumed a pose that can only be described as standing on his head, and issued several hoarse, grating noises. The third time he kicked up his hind legs to renew this position Uncle Husky gave up and thumped to the ground almost on the spot where he had mounted. Clever Sam at once ceased his ridiculous antics, and resumed his consumption of grass. Husky rose to his feet, dusted himself off angrily, and returned to his group, ignoring Aunt Tillie's anxious call, “Husky, Husky, are you all right?”

With one accord, without benefit of cheer leader, the boys of Manitou gave Clever Sam the loudest “Oink-oink, bow-wow” of all time.

Cliff trotted out to the horse, mounted him, and rode him off the field toward the dining halls, to great hosannas. The Penobscots had beaten Manitou in one contest, but had just as certainly been trounced in another. The score for the day stood at one victory apiece.

A sumptuous lunch followed. The noonday meal at Manitou, except on weekends (when most parents came to visit) was usually an affair of vague stew or creamed, chipped beef or Spanish omelet—wholesome, perhaps, but conceived in a spirit of compromise between bankbook and cookbook rather than in the intent to delight. Today, however, there was turkey, with fresh corn and watermelon. Penobscot's meals took a similar turn for the better when the games were on their grounds. The camp owners probably hoped to do some polite recruiting in this way, but they reckoned without the emotions the rivalry aroused. The boys were, in general, fooled into believing their enemies were better fed, but it only made them more bitter, both about the other camp and about their own. Manitou campers frequently went elsewhere after a summer under Gauss, but never to Penobscot, and there were no ex-Penobscots in the Gauss domain. This banquet was perhaps the only useless expenditure that the camp owner made, and he hopefully went on making it year after year.

An hour was set aside after lunch for sleeping, during which nobody slept. All thoughts were on the coming basketball game. The Penobscots lay about under trees, glorying over the baseball massacre and anticipating new conquest. Among the Manitous the mood was bleak. Mr. Gauss visited Yishy Gabelson in the infirmary to see if there were the slightest chance of allowing him to play. A thrill of hope raced through the camp when he was seen to enter the sick ward. As is usual in such situations, hope quickly gave birth to rumor. Defying the rest-hour rules, a lone Junior came capering along the deserted Company Street, shouting, “Yishy's all better! Yishy's gonna play!”

Everybody believed him. The campers leaped off their beds and danced out of their bunks into Company Street, yelling. Uncle Sandy charged from his tent and dispersed the carnival with a blast of his whistle. But the boys simply retreated into the bunks and kept up the wild merriment, jumping from bed to bed, swinging on rafters, and hugging each other. Mr. Gauss hurried out of the infirmary and exchanged words with the head counselor, who stood glaring in the middle of the empty street. Once again he blew his whistle, and shouted through the megaphone, “An announcement!” The noise stopped as though shut off by a switch. Boys stood on one foot or hung from rafters in rigid listening attitudes.

“The disgraceful exhibition that has just taken place gets its proper reward. Mr. Gauss informs me that Yishy can't possibly play and won't play. Now return to your cots and keep quiet! This is rest hour.”

The order to keep quiet was superfluous. Crushed, the boys dropped heavily on their beds, and moped away the rest of the hour. Herbie, who had danced and cheered as hard as anybody, lay with his face in his pillow. The honor of Camp Manitou, this flimsy, rundown device of poor Mr. Gauss, existing only to eke out his small salary as a schoolmaster, had become as important to Herbie Bookbinder as his own destiny.

The basketball game, surprisingly enough, began as a tight, vicious fight, in which Lennie Krieger outshone everybody on the court. He played in a frenzy of courage. Darting in and out among opponents a head taller than himself, twisting, scrambling, pouncing on the ball like a wild animal and tearing it out of the hands of opposing players, he kept the score even almost single-handed through three thrilling quarters. Victory began to seem likely, only because of him. His performance raised howl upon howl.

The best that was in Lennie came out in this game. He was a boy who, usually to his misfortune, saw reality in terms of ball games. Nothing but athletic prowess was vital to him, and this was why he could not study school subjects. This was also why he was a ruffian—caring for only one thing in life makes for crude manners; and this was why he was a bully—judging other boys by the yardstick of his own skill, he was left with a rough contempt for nearly all of them. But in the present instance he was challenged to his heart, and he met the challenge. An ancient sage said, “Despise no thing and no man—for there is no man that has not his hour, and no thing that has not its place.” This basketball game was Lennie Krieger's hour, and it was fine and grand.

At the very start of the fourth quarter, wrestling for the ball with the captain of the Penobscots, Lennie pulled his heavy opponent to the ground on top of him in a tangle of arms and legs, and rose with his right arm hanging queerly. He could not move it, and was obviously in pain, though he made no outcry. The game was halted. The doctor examined him, gave a verdict of dislocation and possible fracture, and ordered him to leave the court. A great moan came from the spectators, and even the Penobscots sympathized. “Please, please, I can play with my left hand,” Lennie begged the doctor, and reached wildly for the sweat-soaked basketball on the dusty ground to prove it. But the doctor held him back. Not until Uncle Sandy came and put his arm around the boy's shoulders did he wilt and permit himself to be led off the field, red-faced and weeping with pain and frustration. For whatever consolation it could give him, he received a cheer almost as loud as Clever Sam had had in the morning, as he dwindled away with the doctor toward the infirmary.

Penobscot proceeded to win the game, 45 to 35, and rode off cheering and singing in their busses, gorged with triumph. They left behind them a funereal atmosphere.

That night was movie night. When the show was an old cowboy picture, as was usually the case, it was run off on separate evenings for the boys and the girls. But now and then Mr. Gauss would pay the larger fee for a new film. In that case the camps were both assembled in the social hall at once, so that the owner could save money by keeping the print only one night. When Yishy had come down with poison ivy, Mr. Gauss, foreseeing the gloomy outcome, had hired a stirring new Douglas Fairbanks picture to lighten the misery of his campers. It was a humane notion. Merely assembling with the opposite sex on a week night gave the children a sense of festivity, and the thought of seeing a picture of later vintage than 1925 was gay, too. Trooping into the social hall, they found their grief diminishing.

Uncle Sid was playing “Bulldog, Bulldog” on the old piano with spirit, as the lines of boys and girls marched through the door side by side. The first thing the children noticed, besides the familiar white sheet and bulky movie projector, was the impressive figure of Lennie, seated alone in the first row, his right arm in a fresh white sling. Around his neck hung a placard announcing his election to the Royal Order of Gooferdusters. The sight of the wounded hero, thus singled out for distinction, lifted their hearts yet more. They took their seats in a state approaching comfort.

Uncle Nig, the movie operator, slipped the first reel into the projector. The usual hush was over the audience. He signaled for the turning out of the lights—and at that moment Mr. Gauss rose dramatically, exclaimed, “One moment, please,” and walked to the front of the hall. Here he stood, his back to the blank canvas sheet, and faced the puzzled children with a smile.

“B
oys and girls,” said the camp owner, “before we see this wonderful, exciting picture,
The Black Pirate,
I want to tell you just one thing about the events of this day.”

He looked around at the silent faces. Herbie, buried in one of the rear rows, wondered what he could possibly have to say. Wasn't it best to forget the Penobscot horror as quickly as possible?

“I want to tell you, boys and girls,” went on Mr. Gauss, “that today Camp Manitou was
not defeated.
”

There was a stunned stillness for a moment, then a tumult of yells and clapping. Mr. Gauss permitted the noise for perhaps thirty seconds, then quieted it with a raised hand.

“I saw those games,” he declaimed. “I know how the scores read. And still I say to you campers of Manitou we did not lose today.
We won.
”

More cheers. Herbie, not quite knowing what Mr. Gauss meant, but sensing a vague, wonderful meaning in his words, cheered too.

“Boys and girls, there are victories in the scoreboard sense, and there are victories in the moral sense. George Washington at Valley Forge won a victory in the moral sense. General Custer in his last stand won a victory in the moral sense. Moses, standing on the mountains of Moab, seeing the Land of Promise which he could not enter, won a victory in the moral sense. If Washington was truly defeated, if Custer was truly defeated, if Moses was truly defeated, then today Camp Manitou was defeated. But if those great heroes of history each won a great victory—
and you know that they did
—then today Camp Manitou won a great victory!”