Bless the Beasts & Children (3 page)

They waited, saying nothing, watching the silent struggle between his will and a ton of iron. He knew they had given up, sensibly, but he would not. His body arched, quivering, bent like a bow between irresistible truck and immovable earth. His helmet liner fell off. They feared Cotton a little at times like these. He was seized. He had fine frenzies. His motor control stuck, he scattershot his aggression at gods too indifferent to defeat, and his refusal to face the hard facts of night and day and weak and strong and life and death and gravity bordered on the psychotic. He was redheaded.

Competition continued throughout the second week under a point scoring system. Scores of the six teams in riding, archery, riflery, crafts, swimming, and field sports were posted daily on a bulletin board at the chow cabin and totaled Saturday afternoon. That night the first powwow was held in the pines near the rifle range. Around a pungent mesquite fire the boys and counselors gathered, and the Camp Director explained the naming of tribes and the award of trophies. Scores would be kept for the remaining six weeks of the session. At the powwow each Saturday night the teams, to be known henceforth as tribes, would be christened and awarded trophies on the basis of points scored during that week. The highest-scoring tribe would be the Apaches, and with that name and rank would come certain perquisites of achievement—an evening trip into town to see a movie, for instance, and watermelon for dessert. After the Apaches, in descending point order, would follow the Sioux, the Comanches, the Cheyenne, and the Navajo. The name of the last, or sixth-place tribe, he would reveal later.

He wished to emphasize, the Director said, that the rankings, and therefore the tribal names and trophies, were up for weekly grabs. With enough desire and elbow grease, any tribe might displace any other, and conversely, should it slack off, might fall off a notch or two in the standings. Incentive was thus inherent in the system, as it was in the American way of life. If you wanted to be Apaches badly enough, you could. If you wanted to avoid the ignominy of being low boys on the totem pole, you might. It was up to you. And now, he said, if the leader of the top team, now the Apaches, would step forward, he would present the trophy.

One of the older, larger boys entered the firelight. From behind a tree the Director brought the head of a huge buffalo bull, with horns and beard, its glass eyes red-balled and fierce, its nostrils distended, and handed it over.

The Sioux received the head of a mountain lion; the Comanches, the head of a black bear.

To the Cheyenne and Navajo were given, respectively, the heads of a bobcat and a pronghorn antelope.

The Director then asked for a representative of the team in last place. Cotton stepped forward and was presented with a large white chamber pot. By camp custom, the Director announced, the team in last place on points was not honored with an Indian name. Instead, to activate its progress up the ladder of achievement, it was traditionally called the Bedwetters.

Cotton's body unstrung. He raised his head. Teft reached into the cab and set the truck in gear just as Cotton let go of the tailgate, picked up his helmet liner, and put it on.

"Cotton?"

"Yo."

"What say we saddle up and ride into town," Teft suggested easily, carefully.

"Then what?"

"I'll get us wheels."

"How?"

"Bag 'em."

"Steal a car?"

"Rent it. I mean, use one for a few hours and bring it back and leave some coin in it. For gas and mileage." All of them had ample pocket money.

"You should be locked up."

But the idea let air into the tension. They crowded in on Cotton, clamoring in whispers, being silly.

"How 'bout we bag two and race?"

"You said nothing stops us!"

"Teft—what a crook!"

"Let Teft put you in the driver's seat, heh-heh," Shecker cracked.

"Pipe down," Cotton hissed. "Teft, can you actually steal a car?"

"Actually. Just call me Clyde."

They giggled.

"Pipe down." Cotton rubbed imaginary stubble on his chin. "Bag a car, bring it back. Maybe that's the only way, though. Okay, let's get this damn pile of junk back in the shed."

It was short work to let the truck roll down the rise, and after that, Teft steering, to push it into its slot. Lally 2 unloaded his pillow, Goodenow the buffalo head, and in a group they headed for the tack barn to saddle up. The camp was lifeless except for the lights in the latrines. Halfway, however, rounding one of the great pines, over the wind sound they heard a screen door squeak open and bang shut. They did statues. Cateyed, they made out the silhouette of a man standing on the stoop of a cabin, and a firefly. It was the Camp Director, smoking a cigarette. They had not known he smoked. He seemed to stare directly at them. They could not move a muscle until the firefly described an arc and the door squeaked open and banged shut again. They went on weak in the knees.

In the black of the tack barn they fumbled among the baled hay and buckets and horse apparatus for bridles and blankets and saddles, then toted them into the corral. The animals knew them and behaved themselves.

Cotton cinched up, standing near enough to Teft to whisper. "You sweating this?"

"Are you?"

"Damn right. If we hadn't happened to see that sign today and turned off. And then Lally Two breaking out. And the truck. I don't want to blow everything this close to going home. We voted, sure, but they don't know what they're taking on. We could wreck the whole summer."

"It's wrecked anyway. Unless we swing this."

Cotton flipped stirrups down. "You were grinding hell out of your teeth tonight."

"I heard you holler yourself. Have a bad dream?" Cotton skipped that. "I guess we have to go."

"Yup." They were through the corral gate when Teft held them up with a handwave, signaling to wait, gave Lally 1 his reins, and leaned away on long spider legs. He was gone several minutes, returning, to their surprise, with one of the .22 caliber bolt-action target rifles from the range. Then in single file they led the drowsy horses through the pines around the perimeter of the camp, cautiously over shale and needle droppings to join the sand road, and down the road a hundred yards before Cotton stopped them.

"Teft, why'd you bring that gun?" he demanded.

The others chortled. "Let's rob banks, Bonnie, baby!"

"Kill! Kill!"

"You'll never take me alive, copper!"

"You get ammo?" Teft rattled a box of cartridges.

"I thought they keep that rack locked now," Cotton said.

"They do."

Cotton shook his head and checked his wrist. "Eleven forty-eight. We're already behind schedule. Okay, mount up and move it."

They climbed aboard, reached into jacket pockets, snapped transistors on, and clucked the string into a trot. They were no cowboys. None of them had been born to the penthouse of a horse. Seven weeks of practice, though, had taught them how to cover the ground even if ungracefully, even if they snubbed the reins too short and rubbed horsehide raw with their knees and the slap-slap of their hind ends on saddles sounded like applause. Motion got their blood moving. The sand road kept their secret. To ride out against the rules, to ride out on a night of moon and mystery with high purpose for a theme and hooves for a beat and a counterpoint of creaking leather and Johnny Cash mooing "Don't Take Your Guns to Town"—to a boy this was wine and watermelon, first kisses and fireworks, liniment and delight.

The biggest entrance in the history of Box Canyon Boys Camp was that made by Sammy Shecker. He came down from Las Vegas in a limousine with his father, Sid Shecker, the famous comic, who was doing a month in Vegas and a month at Tahoe and decided a summer in the Arizona mountains would be healthier for his son than one cooped up in hotel air conditioning. As the chauffeur attended to the boy's things, Sid and Sammy inspected the camp facilities, Sid puffing a panatela and Sammy biting his fingernails. Sid even stayed for lunch, making jokes about the availability of kosher food in the Wild West, and after lunch did a benefit standup half-hour while Sammy, who was already fat, had seconds and thirds of everything on the menu. All the campers had seen Sid Shecker on television, and although his material was largely lifted from that of other Jewish funnymen, his Arab-motherhood-Nazi-bagel-Brooklyn routines broke them up. Leaving them laughing, Sid went into the kitchen, tipped the cooks $20 each so Sammy shouldn't starve, took a counselor aside and tipped him $50 so Sammy should always have a friend, and offered the Director $100 so Sammy should have the best horse in the corral. This the Director refused, but there were no hard feelings and after spraying several ethnic one-liners for a boffo finish, the comedian roared off in his leased limousine and a
chutzpah
of dust
.

Around the S-curve, where they had earlier caught up with the runaway, they posted, and came to the wooden, roadwide camp gate. The rest reined in as Cotton, bending, unlatched the gate and rode it open. But they did not proceed. They treated themselves to a moment. It was as though they felt a redhot revelation coming on.

Under his army helmet Cotton reviewed his troops. Under the headband and golf cap and Afrika Korps cap and tramp ten-gallons they gauged him, then glanced at the burnt pillow under the arm of Lally 2, at the head of the bull buffalo between Goodenow's thighs, at the rifle barrel pointed over Teft's pommel, and then, longest, at each other. They were impressed. One was fifteen years old, four were fourteen, one was twelve. But they were tremendously impressed, by themselves and by what they were about to attempt.

They were mad for western movies. They doted on tales told with trumpets and ending in a pot of gold, a bucket of blood, or a chorus of the national anthem. The finest movie they had lately seen, the only one that summer in fact, was
The Professionals
. It had been a buster, a dollar-dreadful, a saga of some men expert with weapons, a handful of colorful, heroic characters who rode into Mexico on a mission of mercy—to rescue a voluptuous babe from the clutches of bandits who had abducted her for foul, they were sure, purposes. It was a fundamental film, they knew it in their souls, a yarn innocent and scabrous, brutal and principled, true and a liar, as old as the hills and as new as the next generation. You did not watch it. You sucked on it. For this is the marrowbone of every American adventure story: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous. Whether it be to scout a continent in a covered wagon, to weld the Union in a screaming Wilderness, to save the world for democracy, to vault seas and rip up jungles by the roots and sow our seed and flag and spirit, this has ever been the essence of our melodrama: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous.

And so they were.

They looked at each other. Cotton grinned, ear to ear. Teft, Shecker, Goodenow, and the Lally brothers grinned at him. He nodded and gigged his horse about before them. They battened down their hats. Suddenly, as one man, they lashed with reins and banged the outraged animals in the bellies. Away the Bedwetters went, charging through the gate and over the silver screen and into history like cavalry. "Eee-yah! Eee-yah!" they yelled. "Eee-yah!"

They booted at full gallop until the nags, unaccustomed to such shenanigans, were near collapse. Lally 2 had also dropped his pillow and would not go on without it. They waited for him near the paved highway into town, thanking their lucky stars they still had arms and legs, then swung right and let the animals weave at a drunkard walk along the gravel shoulder of the highway, blowing hard and slobbering.

One morning last autumn Goodenow was gripped by a phobic reaction to school. He could not enter his classroom. His breathing was labored, his state one of extreme fright. Interviewed by the principal, he disclosed fear for the safety of his mother, alone at home without him. He was passed on to the school psychologist, who quickly diagnosed the oedipal relationship. When he was four, Gerald's father died, and for eight years he slept with his mother. When he was twelve, his mother married an executive of a machine tool company in Cleveland, an engineer who had adult children of his own. The psychologist recommended therapy for Gerald and both parents. A man too old and preoccupied to be father to a young boy, the stepfather refused, but seen in private the mother revealed major ambivalence, a fragmentation between hostility and love, between the natural needs of a son and a new mate. Gerald's phobia intensified, as did his dependence on his mother. Placed in a special day school for emotionally disturbed children in Shaker Heights, where he lived, he underwent therapy. At the first sign of improvement, his stepfather enrolled him again in his regular school. The problem reappeared. He was unable to remain in the classroom. When his stepfather discovered that he wet the bed, he was severely punished.

They wrangled about what kind of car to bag. Shecker and Lally 1 were of the opinion that while you were at it, you might as well bag a Caddie or Imperial or Lincoln at least, but Cotton said no, six boys in a big car would stick out like sore thumbs. What they needed was a car nobody would notice, a nothing car.

"I was talking with the Director, one day after we took off for the movie," he said. "He told me we're juvenile delinquents the second we leave camp without permission. We can be picked up and tossed in the old hoosegow."

They wanted to know how come.

"Because by the law, a JD's anybody under sixteen who breaks the law or's a fugitive from his parents. That's the catch. He's our parents for the summer, acting as. If we break out, we're fugitives from our folks. He told me the camp's got it fixed that way with the fuzz. So bloodhounds and stuff."

A car passed them, and in the glare of its headlights they hunched down into jackets and up into headgear.

"Damn," Cotton swore. "We gotta get wheels fast."

He kicked his mount into a trot and the others followed him along the two-lane blacktop coiling in snake curves toward town. The first possibility they came to was a cocktail bar before which three cars were parked. They pulled up to consider.