The Glory Hand (13 page)

'Jo!' Sarah called, and the cheering died. 'Those were for hanging boats, not campers.' She gazed up at the roof, where more rusty chains were knotted to the rafters. 'How did you get it
down?'

'Easy,' Jo said. 'All I did was . . .'

'I don't want to know.' Sarah leveled a commanding gaze at the girls. 'Casmaran has never had a camper seriously injured, and I don't intend to let the first be one of mine. I guess the best way to discourage you is to remind you that the nearest hospital - the nearest
anything
- is 150 miles away.'

'There's always "Germ City." ' a voice from the rear of the cabin called, and the girls laughed.

'Ladies
, I'd like you to meet the latest addition to our motley crew . . .' Cassie tensed, expecting the inevitable.
'the Senator's daughter whose mother was tragically . . .'
Instead, Sarah introduced her simply as 'Cassie Broyles.' No one seemed the least bit impressed. They were daughters of famous parents, too, she reminded herself, and she tried to figure out whose child each of them was. She stopped herself: that was exactly what they'd come here to escape.

The girls returned to their unpacking with a vengeance, piling the shelves between their bunks with bikini underpants and copies of
Seventeen,
taping up posters - Pele, Rick Springfield, a soulful basset hound. No snapshots of boyfriends, Cassie noticed, and wondered if that was because no one wanted to expose herself to the teasing that would bring.

The two bare bulbs that burned overhead revealed the walls were hung with varnished oars and red, orange and green signal flags, but it was hard to tell whether the nautical gear had been put there for decoration, or merely for storage. In either case, it did little to cheer up the cavernous room. Neither did the two old lifesavers under the windows, stenciled 'USS LAKESIDE.'

Cassie spotted Robin sprawled on a lower bunk in the corner, furtively nibbling a chocolate chip cookie from the bag concealed under her pillow. She started towards her, but Sarah took her arm.

'Id like you to meet Chelsea Winfield, Cassie. We don't get many girls from Los Angeles.'

'Beverly Hills,'
the girl in blue plastic rollers and a flowered kimono corected her.

'Chelsea tops Casmaran's best-dressed list. She always comes to camp with enough clothes to last
two
summers, and enough
Chanel Number 5
to fill Lake Casmaran.' Sarah patted a well-worn teddy bear on Chelsea's pillow. 'And she only sleeps with what's-his-name . . .'

'Pooh,' Chelsea said. 'As in Pooh-ber-ty.'

When Cassie held out her hand, Chelsea fluttered her fingers without taking it. 'The nails.' They glistened with wet polish, a frosted purple.

'Summer Fling,'
Sarah read from the bottle of nail polish, and the others in the cabin hooted appreciatively. She nudged Cassie to the next bunk: 'This is . . .' A wave of static drowned her out. A girl with frizzy russet hair, in a Wings T-shirt, was fiddling with the dial of a transistor radio.

'Melanie, would you
mindT
The girl switched off the radio and pulled a mini-TV from her footlocker. Though she clicked from channel to channel, the screen was filled with snow. 'Melanie goes into withdrawal every summer when she comes up here,' Sarah said. 'No radio. No TV. She keeps hoping that civilization will creep a little bit closer, but it never does. Besides, Lake Casmaran is sitting in what was once a volcanic crater. The hills around us were the rim. They block out everything. Even if there
were
someone out there beaming Rod Stewart at us, or "Dallas", God forbid, we wouldn't be able to receive it. Sorry, Melanie, but it's strictly live entertainment from now on.'

'Next year I'm bringing Pac-Man.' Melanie stashed the TV back in her footlocker, then slumped down beside the girl with the blonde braid who was playing blackjack against herself. 'Deal me in.'

'Jo McGuire,' Sarah said to Cassie. 'Resident card shark.' Jo dealt the cards, and even before Melanie could rearrange hers, fanned out her own winning hand. 'Just because your father wheels and deals on Wall Street, Jo, doesn't mean you can pull that stuff here.' She eyed the six Hershy bars they were using as the pot. 'And no selling candy, either, okay?'

A reluctant echo: 'Okay.'

'What do you expect?' someone called. 'McGuire's practically part Jew.'

if she was,' another voice added, 'she'd never be at Casmaran.'

Jo didn't so much as look up as she dealt another hand, shielding her cards, but Sarah scooped them up: 'I'll just put these somewhere nice and safe, in case you get desperate later.' She took the cards to the cot by the door and opened a worn wicker trunk, dropping them inside.

'This is
my
space.' Sarah took some dried herbs from a tin canister in her trunk and pressed them into a tea strainer. 'I don't want anyone messing with it.' She dropped the tea strainer into an earthenware cup and poured in steaming water from an electric teapot on the floor. 'And anothe thing. I don't care if you find a corpse hanging from one o those things . . .' She pointed up at the sharp hooks of the boat chains dangling from the ceiling. 'I do yoga at dawn and I don't want anyone bugging me till I'm through. No that any of you characters will be up that early.' As an afterthought, she added, 'Did you meet everyone, Cassie?

Chelsea blew on her nails. 'I don't think Cassie met ou
scholarship
girl.'

'That's right.' Sarah's tone grew gentler, as if she were talking about someone who bruised easily, iris Paletti i new this summer, too,' she said, gesturing towards a bunk in a shadowy corner.

'Charity case
,' Chelsea mumbled under her breath, anc Sarah shot her a look.

'Maybe it would be nice if you went over and talked to her,' Sarah said to Cassie.

Lakeside's 'charity case' looked different from the Waspy girls in the cabin, Cassie thought. Iris' eyebrows were thick,
_a
nd almost met above her nose, and her skin was so sickly pale that it made her deep-set brown eyes seem almost black. She wore a faded Red Socks T-shirt and Madras bermudas, obvious hand-me-downs a size too large for her, which made her look even thinner than she was. Iris had the body of a ten-year-old, Cassie thought.

But her face - there was something about Iris' face that made her seem very old, her eyes an old lady's eyes, sad from memories. Sitting on her bunk in the corner, staring out at Cassie with those big, dark eyes, she reminded her of a trapped, frightened animal. Remembering that her father had been a 'charity case' too, Cassie extended her hand. 'Hi.'

'Hi.' Iris' clasp was weak, and her faint smile revealed crooked teeth. Probably the only girl in camp who hadn't gone to an orthodontist, Cassie thought. When Iris spoke, her voice was faint, but the words tumbled out, as if she were afraid that saying them too slowly would leave them open to criticism. 'I was very sorry to hear about what happened to your mother. I . . .'

'Thanks.' Cassie wanted to cut it short.

Iris didn't take the hint. 'I read about it in the paper. I mean, even before I knew that you were going to be at Casmaran, I prayed for you. The Lord took your mother away from you so suddenly, it must. . .'

'It wasn't the Lord! It was some bastard with a gun.'

'I'm . . . I'm sorry.' Iris' voice shrank to a whisper. 'I said the wrong thing.'

'She's real good at
that
,' Robin said from her bunk across from Iris'.

'You can sleep with me if you want,' Iris said to Cassie. 'My bottom bunk's free. I mean, I don't wet my bed or
^a
nything.' When nobody laughed, she bit her lip.

'Thanks, but I'm bunking with my friend.' Cassie hefted her sleeping bag onto the mattress above Robin.

If Iris
starts
in with
the
"Hail Mary
's" after lights-out,' Chelsea said, 'she's
going in
the lake.'

Iris turned away from them to face the crucifix she had tacked over her bed: Christ contorted in agony, the gilt edges of the cross gleaming. As far as Cassie was concerned, religion was a crock. Sure, her family had made a production of Christmas gifts. But Clay's father had been a staunch freethinker who had refused to set foot in a church. The only time Clay went to services was right before an election - it was the one really hypocritical thing she had ever seen him do. Cassie had never thought much about God. Not until her mother's death. Since then, she had decided that if God could have permitted someone like her mother to be murdered, He was a shit.

As she watched the frail girl cross herself and mumble a prayer, Cassie allowed herself the luxury of anger. At least it kept her from feeling like an outsider. Compared to Iris, she belonged.

When she climbed onto Robin's upper bunk, her friend grabbed her foot playfully. 'No rocking.'

'Come on.' Cassie lowered her voice, looking around to make sure no one heard. 'I don't rock anymore.'

She was lying. After her mother's death she had returned to the childhood habit of rocking herself to sleep, moving back and forth on the mattress to the rhythm of one of her mother's lullabies. Not that it had done much good. She hoped she wouldn't feel the need to do it here.

Cassie climbed onto the bunk, unrolled her sleeping bag and smoothed out the down quilting, then sprawled on top of it, bone-weary. Her gaze was drawn to the rafters. From among the sharp boat hooks that dangled on rusty chains two yellow eyes stared down at her. She sat up with a start.

'Hey, take it easy,' Jo laughed from a neighboring bunk 'That's just Midnight, the camp cat. She must be looking for a place to have her kittens. She has a litter every summer like clockwork.'

When the cat with thick blue-black fur and a stub of a tai crept into the shadows, Cassie sank back onto the pillow but more cautiously. Casmaran hadn't been the way her mother's letter had promised . . . not quite. She could stil taste Miss Grace's kiss in her mouth, and wonderec whether she had been too impulsive, deciding to come here.
But your mother loved Miss Grace,
Cassie thought.
She loved it here.
Wasn't that enough to forgive what had happened in the cottage? Besides, there was Sarah, she told herself. Her counselor - her friend, she hoped - would more than make up for the eccentric old lady.

Still, she wasn't ready to close her eyes, not yet. The cabin had a strange smell: the musty odor of rotting wood and stagnant water. The sharp boat hooks clanked together gently in the rafters as waves slapped against the pilings, and for a moment it felt as if the whole cabin were a boat, far out at sea.

Chapter 10

'Bug juice?'

Jo slid a pitcher down the redwood table and Cassie peered inside. Warily, she poured herself a cup of the inky fruit punch.

'Mystery Meat?' Melanie passed a platter of gray roast beef, and Cassie helped herself, realizing that she hadn't eaten anything since the donut she had split with her father that morning. As she speared a piece with her fork, she felt as though someone were watching her hungrily from behind. It was the stuffed animal heads that lined the masonry wall, a dozen of them - elk and deer, and a mangy fox - their glass eyes aglow with light from the wagon wheel chandeliers that hung from the high wood rafters.

The shouts and laughter of eighty campers, the clatter of melmac plates, echoed in the barnlike lodge, and Chelsea leaned towards Cassie and Robin to be heard: 'You new guys better chow down. After the first day, this slop gets worse.'

The others at the table started wolfing down their food, but Iris stopped them with a birdlike flutter of her hand. 'We haven't said "grace." ' She folded her hands on the edge of the table and closed her eyes.

'What does she think this is?' Jo mumbled, her mouth full. 'The Last Supper?'

g.h.-d

The campers laughed and continued eating, but Iris furrowed her brow and closed her eyes, her lips moving in a silent prayer.

Jo put her hand to her mouth and made a farting sound. Iris bit her lip and squeezed her eyes more tightly shut, continuing her prayer. But when Melanie and Chelsea began a raucous chorus of '
Onward Christian Soldiers,''
she looked like she was about to cry.

'Leave her alone!' Cassie said, surprised that she had been the one to come to Iris' defense, uncomfortable to receive her grateful stare.

'Well, what do you know?' Chelsea licked gravy from her fingers. 'Two Jesus freaks.'

Don't blow it,
Cassie warned herself.
Here you've begun to feel as if you might actually fit in at Casmaran, that your cabinmates might accept you - even like you. Why risk it all by siding with a loser - a girl you can't stand yourself?

Iris' lips formed '
Amen
,' and slowly, deliberately, she made the sign of the cross over her chest.

'Hallelujah]'
Jo flailed her hands over her head, minstrel style. '
Praise de LawdV

'Will you just
can
it?' Cassie cut Jo off, and the others stared at her. She knew now why she felt so protective of Iris. Iris looked as painfully sensitive, as vulnerable, as Cassie felt, a reflection of the small, scared part of herself. The more the others picked on Iris, the more it threatened her - she could so easily be their next target.