New Moon (11 page)

Pine Cove was an uninhabited stretch of shore to which we travelled by canoe for an overnight. Debarking one by one, we waded ashore and stood in the clearing. Chipinaw’s waterfront was now one of the vignettes on the horizon. A frog plunged beneath lily pads, stirring up mud at my feet. He was perturbed by the arrival of so many noisy animals. The Lake smelled as if a giant watermelon had been cut open, one so vast it included sun and sky and trees.

The nature counselor, leading the way with his hatchet, cleared a trail while raising the canopy. After we arrived at the campsite, he instructed us to collect wood and twigs—anything of size that was once alive and now dead and flammable. As twigs and timber were deposited beside him, he stacked them around the log he had hewn. Then he poured liquid from a can and ignited the teepee. Flames shot up, and we watched little stick formations we called igloos collapse into red-orange ingots. Then we roasted hot dogs and corn in cans. The forest changed from sight to sound, and small animals could be heard running along pine needles and leaves.

Huddled around whining embers, we heard accounts of the Cropsey Maniac. Cut up real bad in a mill accident, his body had been sewn back together by incompetent doctors. Now he prowled the forest, seeking revenge. He kidnapped young campers and persecuted them—none yet from Chipinaw, we were told, but he had his eye on us.

As sparks rushed upward into the black, I invoked the habitable worlds I knew and imagined my ship hurtling at terrific speed toward them. The fusion of wind through trees, starting mysteriously, then ceasing, and a brilliant Milky Way, made it seem that the breeze was rustling the stars, though I knew it was only the woods of my home planet. Mostly the bigness overwhelmed me, and I bowed to the omneity of light. Under the Dipper and Orion, marshmallows bubbling crisp black on peeled sticks, I was happy
just to be alive and didn’t care who or where I was.

By sleeptime the last coals were disintegrating into whitened ash.

I remember our columns of pre-breakfast “spread-eagles” trekking along hillsides in soaked sneakers, collecting stray wrappers, bottle caps, and bits of foil into garbage bags (the required weekly campus clean-up) … punching the pocket of my glove and backing up as the batter swung (a stretch of flowering weeds separating outfield from forest) … lines at the one cold drinking fountain along the maintenance hut (by contrast the spigot at the stable was fed by a hose from the barn and repugnantly lukewarm and smelly) … waiters streaming through swinging doors with food for the famished … the Midgets’ march from the mess hall back to the cabin.

Thunderstorms passed close by as we lay in a blackened canopy. No formal activities—just Chinese checkers, comics, Rafter Ball, All-Star Baseball—a delirious litany of indoor fun. I alternated with an opponent, flipping a Spaldeen onto the central beam in the bunk and counting the bounces for single, double, triple, home run, playing nine innings. It took a fine touch (and luck) to get anything more than one bounce on the narrow board, though once it actually rolled to a stop for an alternate version of a homer.

All-Star Baseball’s board had a spinner over which we fit individual player disks with different-size zones for home runs, singles, doubles, strikeouts, and the rest of the plays based on career stats of each. I lay on my belly with the others, spinning for long-retired Charlie Keller or Aaron Robinson, trying to hit a home run by landing the arrow at the top on the sector marked 1—fat on Ted Williams and Mickey Mantle, a mere sliver for Pee Wee Reese and Billy Martin. There was an irresistible draw to the game’s circlets of thin cardboard, the spinning pointer, and the numbers 1, 2, 3, etc., assigned scientifically to achieve real game effects.

From out the windows came brief dazzles of light, which sent bowling pins, clearly of great size, toppling across Chipinaw. We giggled and threw ourselves onto one another, feigning terror.

In the damp undergrowth afterwards, we collected salamanders, plucking soft, wriggling bodies from moss and upturned stones and
dropping them into coffee cans. We transported these to the nature shack, where they were set in a glass terrarium.

I liked to run through fields by the stables, trying to catch grasshoppers before they flew up. If they jumped, I chased to where they landed, held their rickety beings in a cupped palm for an instant, then let them go.

This was the fabled countryside I had visited briefly at Swago and the Nevele. Now I lived there every day on the edge of unexplored wilderness.

Beside horses and straw, a hose siphoned into a rusty barrel. In puddles formed by its overflow, I rescued flies and other insects by floating leaves to them. Once these creatures started to crawl onto dry ground I bolted from their revivals. They were too wounded and precarious to watch, like miniature cropsies.

Fragrances of new-mown grass and flowering trees worked their spell. My toes wriggling in anonymous dirt and dead moths, the gurgle of a warm shower on my back, something foreign spread throughout my being. I was no longer Martha’s son or Jonny’s brother. I was a pagan thing.

My cousin Jay, his best friend Barry, and I forged an unlikely trio—the charismatic slugger; the pudgy mother’s boy; and the day-dreaming pip with whom they bickered and bonded. Jay was our king, power broker, and athlete supreme. Barry was his crony, another large butterball but a highbrow sourpuss too and a fitful student of the trumpet. I was our group’s jester and lone wolf.

Despite our dichotomies we melded realities, becoming close buddies and incorrigible needlers. Insofar as they were both Dodger fans and abhorred the Yankees, their preferred teasing was to grab each other in ballroom posture and wriggle around in a dance they called “the Gil McDougald.” “Stop!” I would protest, but that only made them pretend to kiss like birds.

I was the confederate to whom Jay confided his fear of the dark, for someone had to go ahead and flip the switch. The flashlight didn’t reassure him, and if I held it below my face aimed upward and made horror masks, he hated that despite its obvious frivolity.
At nightfall we kept a mutual eye out for the Cropsey Maniac as well as sources of unexplained plunks and snaps in the dark. Perhaps the Maniac lurked nearby or had sneaked into our cabin. Meanwhile we spooked each other with flashlit visages and squeals of “Eek, a freak.”

Jay told the rest of the bunk that teasing over my wet bed would not be tolerated. “He can’t help it,” he said. “How would you like it if it was you?”

My cousin’s protection was necessary, for mayhem was always imminent and some kids apparently existed only to deliver little hurts and pain. The means were as varied as they were ingenious, ranging from good-natured horseplay to recreational sadism. A damp towel could be lethal if snapped by letting it fall alongside someone’s legs or balls and then pulling it suddenly back, leaving a nasty sting. It seemed that the boys who delivered these surprisingly acute bites were themselves as lean and stringy as their towels. There were also nougies, subterfuge knuckle blows to the shoulder or head, delivered without warning or provocation. Part of one’s being was always alert and on guard against such intrusions, a way of life at Chipinaw.

We had rope-burn specialists too among us. I don’t know how mastery was gained, but aficionados would, almost any time that you were vulnerable, grab an arm or leg and, by a quick twist, one hand going one way, the other the opposite, leave a sensation of fire. Successful rope burns were these kids’ greatest amusement, so they collected coups like scalps; the fiends would say stuff like “Ready for my Indian rope burn?”

Of course we all tried this stuff, but we were not as effective or persistent as the pros.

Other kids specialized in the bending back of arms, a local favorite with all sorts of personalized signatures: an extra coil or jiggle, an off angle. The way some boys put a signature on their arm-twisting technique was unconsciously presexual—the precise seductive obverse of seduction, a flirtatious prod that jerked one into the allure of their craft and ravishment.

Fatsoes preferred the cobra grip; they would clutch you to their
rank, porky bellies and hug as hard as they could while affecting a German accent that was supposed to sound reptile or Dracula-like: “I’m going to squeeze the life out of you.” Under such attacks, I felt my nature change. All I wanted was to claw or kick or bite my way out.

By comparison to such recreant bullies, Jay was virtue plus brute force. His presence kept trouble at bay.

One afternoon Jerry, the head instructor, asked me to stay after General Swim. The rest of the Midgets hiked up the hill. I stood by the grandstand, curious to see what would happen next.

Jerry led me into the water and tried to coax me into swimming. I swung my arms in place.

Taking a loose egg from the lemon-line, he tossed it over my head and called, “It’s hit to the outfield. C’mon … bring it in. Get him at home.” I half-ran, half-paddled to the piece of wood and tossed it to him. He made the tag … but the runner was safe.

We continued that way several times a week, alone in the shallows—no talk about swimming but catches in deeper and deeper water, plays off the outfield wall … and gradually I was gliding along the water to corral the floating wood. He had this unspoken pact with me that I would pass the test and go into intermediate water.

On the chosen day I had to jump into the lake and sink beneath my head. I stood on the edge of the dock, hugging myself, feeling like an insubstantial wisp compared to the sleek tanks around me. But I shut off my mind and leaped. Plummeting into bubbles and green light, I felt the shock of cold and glimpsed the muddy bottom for an instant. I saw my terror clearly—that I’d become so dizzy I’d disappear, that I’d turn into a drowned body, floating like the cardboard I saw once, or thought I saw, along the surf at Long Beach: a dead lady. These semblances passed in a gasp as I shot to the surface, water clogging my nose and throat.

I swam to the far dock.

It was not difficult at all. In one part of me I knew why everyone else simply did it. In another sense I was a company of fragmented beings borne along together. Yes, swimming was important, but it
was also a distraction. Or perhaps it was that I had to be distracted from fantasies in order to do anything real. Like baseball—I didn’t learn to swim; it was inside me and I found it.

Saturdays were official visiting days, and we wore our Chipinaw whites. All morning we sat, restless, anticipative, through compulsory Hebrew services—the boys’ camp on one side of the armory, the girls on the other, counselors stationed along the aisles, trying to keep brothers and sisters, boyfriends and girlfriends, apart.

In relief at the nearing conclusion we raucously mangled the words of the final prayers
(“Dy-Dy-ASSHOLE!”
instead of
“Dy-Dy-Aynu!”).
Parents flooding the campus were already impatiently peering into the armory.

Then we were set free, and all hell broke loose—kids running to their Mommies and Daddies, presents and treats, no activities at all, do whatever you want.

This was a bittersweet interlude for me. The world was frayed, rife with possibility, but since neither Mommy and Daddy nor Uncle Paul came, I spent the time with Jay’s and Barry’s families. This meant dozens of new aunts and uncles and their cohorts from Uncle Paul’s hotel. Most of them weren’t
real
aunts and uncles, but they comprised a large clan and I appreciated being welcomed into it. The odd thing was, I didn’t like them individually—they were ostentatious and crude and talked too loud about stupid, made-up stuff. Almost every comment they made—it didn’t matter if it was an “uncle” or “aunt” speaking—was a joke that wasn’t funny or a flagrant boast. Being part of a prominent community eclipsed the embarrassment, so I attached myself to the periphery of the action and ignored its nonsense. “Richie is so shy,” people said, which excused my diffidence and concealed my disdain.

Aunt Ruthie and Barry’s mother, who was her best friend and whose name was also Ruth, flagrantly disregarded visiting rules. Ignoring Chipinaw’s limits as if they didn’t pertain to them, they dropped in at odd hours during the week to observe archery, baseball, arts and crafts—sometimes early enough in the day to help us clean our bunk for inspection. The Ruths were predictably back
every weekend, carvanning from Grossinger’s in chauffeured cars.

They arrived with giant sacks of fruit and freshly made white boxes of cookies and cakes, the largest bakery size. Though they didn’t bring quite enough to feed the whole camp, they came surprisingly close. Five sacks would be all peaches. You tore open a different carton of sacks to find grapes, apples, cherries, and honeydews. I remember the sweet redness of plums, our pilfered mess-hall knives splitting watermelons, cutting strings on boxes of chocolate chip cookies and chocolate-frosted trees, honey and marble cakes. That was Grossinger’s before I ever saw it.

Mommy and Daddy did show up once that first summer, in the middle, and by then I had a deep longing for them. The very sight of Martha Towers was heartbreakingly special, a lank handsome figure in a dark dress suddenly there in the line of parents streaming from the parking lot on visitor’s day, like no one else who ever was. I recognized her like Yankee pinstripes or the blue sky. Her smile was open and yearning, and she seemed delighted for once to see me. This was the woman whom Jonny and I called Mummsy Wine. There was an ashen sharpness to her, a quality I might call cynicism now—mocking the other parents, making cracks about their pretentiousness, their ugly clothes, their Cadillacs—but it was comforting because I agreed with that voice and heard it inside me all the time.

There wasn’t much to do with them except walk around aimlessly, though Daddy viewed the facilities with gusto, wishing he could dive into the lake or play a set of tennis. Mommy was on the lookout for notable people from her Grossinger days whom she enjoyed meeting again and introducing to her son. Deep down it was as though she really appreciated Uncle Paul and the fact she was once married to him. Grossinger’s made her special, and she shared that allegiance with me no matter how meager a son I was otherwise.