City Boy (39 page)

“We always do that for laughs. Put down anybody who'll look funny in a nurse's uniform. Yishy would be fine, but you've got him as Uncle Peewee.”

Herbie thought a moment; then he scrawled on the paper and passed it to the head counselor, who looked at it and laughed aloud. The writing read:

Doctor—Daisy Gloster

Nurse—Lennie Krieger

Uncle Sandy glanced at the large cheap watch hanging on a nail over his bedside. “Nine twenty-five. Mr. Gauss wants to see you at nine-thirty, Herbie. Better run on up the hill. Come back here when you're through.”

“What's he want to see me about?”

The head counselor kept his eyes on his desk. “Can't say. About the money from the Ride, possibly. Hurry, boy.”

There was in Uncle Sandy's manner a sudden aloof cautiousness that Herbie didn't like. He left the tent and trotted up the hill, feeling the gloom of his dream stealing upon him again. He came to the steps of the guest house panting and red-faced, and as he paused for breath he was surprised to see Yishy Gabelson issue from the doorway of the camp office, shaking his head and grinding his teeth.

“Oh, that ——! Oh, that fat old ——!” muttered the Super-senior, using two epithets from the very bottom of the barrel of bad language. “Oh, that ——!” he added, using one even worse, and actually strange to Herbie's ears.

“Hey, Yishy, what's the matter?” cried Herbie anxiously, as the other strode past him unseeing. Yishy glanced around at him, startled.

“What are you still doing here? You know what's happened.”

“No, I don't,” quavered Herbie.

“
WHAT?
You mean he
hasn't
spoken to you about the money yet?”

Herbie's stomach contracted into a stony lump. “No, Yishy, honest.”

“Oh, that old liar!” Yishy staggered, put his hand to his forehead, and groaned. “Oh, that ——! That ——!” He repeated one old epithet and a brand-new one. Then he stumbled off down the hill, blaspheming and shaking his fists in the air. Herbie looked after this wild sight in wonder, and trudged unhappily up the steps and into the office.

An even greater surprise awaited him. Mr. Gauss was smiling as usual behind his desk, and seated near him on a dirty old plush chair—Herbie almost fainted as he beheld the man—was the emaciated driver, skinny and queer as ever, who had given him and Cliff the hitch from New York to Panksville!

“Ah, good morning, Herbie,” Mr. Gauss beamed. “And let me introduce you to Mr. Drabkind. Mr. Drabkind, this is one of our finest, cleverest, most outstanding campers. Herbie Bookbinder—I'm proud to say, also a pupil at my school.”

Mr. Drabkind extended a bluish hand to Herbie. The boy grasped the cold finger tips, pumped them once, and dropped them. The thin man peered at him through glasses thick as the bottoms of bottles.

“I don't see too well,” he apologized in his unforgettable reedy voice, “but it seems I've met you, Master Bookbinder, rather recently.”

Herbie shrugged and tried to still the quivering of his knees. “I don't see how that's possible,” said Mr. Gauss, looking hard at Herbie. “Do you, Herbert?”

Herbie shook his head, unable to utter a sound.

“You must be mistaken, Mr. Drabkind,” said the camp owner. “This is your first visit here this summer. Unless,” he added archly, “Herbie has been out traveling, unbeknownst to me.”

Was it a cat-and-mouse game, Herbie wondered through the fog of fear that enveloped his mind? He waited for the blow, if one was to fall.

“Well, I see so many boys—so many boys,” sighed Mr. Drabkind. He sat in the chair again, his frame curved like a wilting flower. “Though I don't somehow remember him as being in a crowd.”

“No, you wouldn't. Our Herbert stands out very much from the crowd,” said Mr. Gauss, and both men giggled politely and, Herbie thought, somewhat eerily. There was a short silence.

“Well, Mr. Gauss, we may as well come to the point,” piped the frail man. “I can't stay long, you know.”

“Herbie, you don't know who Mr. Drabkind is, do you?” said Mr. Gauss, looking down at his finger tips clasped before him.

As emphatically as he could, Herbie shook his head again.

“Of course he wouldn't,” said Mr. Drabkind. He took a card from a black wallet and handed it to Herbie. The boy read:

“Mr. Drabkind represents one of the worthiest causes I know of, Herbert,” said Mr. Gauss. “The Berkshire Free Camp gives several hundred poor city boys just the same kind of wonderful vacation you're having—well, of course, not as fine as we can give you in Manitou, but for a charity camp, as I say, a wonderful vacation.”

“Thanks in good part to men like you, Mr. Gauss—
and
to boys like Master Bookbinder,” interposed the wispy Mr. Drabkind.

Mr. Gauss directed a mechanical nod and smile at the visitor.

“Now, Herbie, if you had been here in previous years you'd know that we take a collection every summer for the Free Camp. We who are fortunate enough to have parents who can pay to give us a wonderful vacation at Manitou ought to help the boys who are not so lucky—don't you agree?”

Though not understanding the camp owner's drift, Herbie sensed that it would be better for him not to agree. But there seemed no help for it. He nodded.

“Fine. You see, you don't have to work very hard, Mr. Drabkind, to make a boy of the mental caliber of Herbert Bookbinder understand a simple matter.… Then I take it, Herbie, you approve of what I have done in writing this check.”

He held toward the boy a green slip. Herbie did not take it, but read the writing. The check was made out to the Berkshire Free Camp Fund, in the sum of two hundred dollars. He looked questioningly at Mr. Gauss.

“That sum of two hundred dollars, Herbie, represents the total earnings of your Ride, Yishy Gabelson's Freak Show, Gooch Lefko's House of Mirrors, and—ah—thirty-five dollars and fifty cents out of my own pocket. There were other little booths that took in some money, but they were not important enough, I feel, to be invited to share in this privilege.… Were you about to say something, Herbie?”

The boy had indeed opened his mouth to protest. But he glanced fearfully at Mr. Drabkind, shut it again without a word, and shook his head.

“Ah, then to go on. You understand, Herbie, that the money you earned at the Ride came out of the campers' pockets to begin with. You had the glory of—shall I say—assembling it. And I want to know, will you join Yishy, Gooch, and myself in contributing your collection to Mr. Drabkind's poor boys?”

Torn between anguish at the thought of losing the seventy-five dollars he must have to wipe out the theft, and fear that Mr. Drabkind would recognize his voice and betray him, Herbie was the most miserable boy in those mountains. How could he risk having Mr. Gauss, and thereafter his parents, learn that he had been picked up hitchhiking on Bronx River Parkway on the night of the robbery at the Place? His head buzzed with rage, frustration, and dread.

“Well, Herbie, shall I assume you approve, and hand Mr. Drabkind this check?” said Mr. Gauss, waving the fatal document in the direction of the thin man. “Yishy and Gooch have already gladly, I may say enthusiastically, contributed their entire earnings. It's all up to you now.”

Herbie thought of Yishy's actions, which had been enthusiasm of a sort, but hardly a glad enthusiasm. It was clear to him that Mr. Gauss must have told Yishy that he, Herbie, had already contributed his hundred and thirteen dollars.

What had actually happened was that Yishy, backed into the same corner that Herbie was in now, but not having his situation complicated by terror of Mr. Drabkind, had ventured an objection: “Shucks. I dunno. You mean to say Herbie Bookbinder's gonna give every nickel he made?” To this Mr. Gauss had replied, “I certainly would not ask you to do so if that were not the situation.” Yishy had surrendered with a surly “O.K., then,” and rushed from the office, to encounter Herbie in the way we have seen. Now, to be strict, Mr. Gauss had perhaps lied to Yishy. But he had phrased his answer carefully, and if caught in the apparent discrepancy, would have at once explained that his reply meant that he intended to
ask
Herbie to give all his money, just as he was asking Yishy.

The gray world of half truth, in which our gray Mr. Gausses spend their gray hours, fumbling for little gray advantages! Mr. Gauss's purpose in this complicated maneuver was simply to save himself about fifteen dollars, and at the same time gain a little prestige. The collection for the Free Camp in previous years had always netted about the same amount—fifty dollars—to which Mr. Gauss added fifty out of the camp treasury to make the round sum of a hundred. This equaled the regular contribution of Penobscot and other institutions of the size of Manitou. When Mr. Gauss had collected the cigar boxes the previous evening, he had fully intended to return the money to the boys. But next morning the Tempter brought Mr. Drabkind. It occurred to the camp owner, upon a rapid mental calculation, that he could double the Manitou contribution and lessen the usual cost to himself by the simple device of inviting the three most successful Mardi Gras enterprises to donate their earnings. He justified the act to himself and to Uncle Sandy by pointing out that the money was not “really” Herbie's, Yishy's, or Gooch's, but had come out of the payments of the campers. In any case (he declared in explaining the scheme to the head counselor) the boys would be given a free choice of contributing or declining to do so, therefore no objection could possibly be made. Uncle Sandy, a weary workhorse who knew his master well, bent a little lower under the burden of the summer and said nothing. He was counting the hours to his release. Only forty-eight remained.

And so Herbie was offered the free choice of contributing or not. With the check written out and hovering a few inches from the charity collector's hand, with two grown men cajoling him and prodding him, he had the choice of consenting to something practically done, or of trying to reverse events at the last instant, thus bringing on himself the odium of being uncharitable. There was the added pressure, though Mr. Gauss cannot be blamed therefor, of possible recognition by Mr. Drabkind at any moment. Wonderful to relate, the boy in these circumstances still managed to produce an ounce of resistance. He tried to disguise his voice by pitching it very high, and almost neighed, “Do I have to give all of it?”

“Pardon me?” said Mr. Gauss.

Herbie repeated, “Do I have to give all of it?” still sounding more like Clever Sam than himself. Mr. Drabkind looked amazed at the sound, but there was no light of remembrance in his expression, which was all that mattered to the boy.

“Why, no, Herbert, of course you don't,” said Mr. Gauss, also puzzled by the queer tones, but attributing them to nervousness. “Let me be perfectly clear on that point. You don't have to give one single solitary penny, Herbert. I know you received your materials for nothing through Elmer Bean's friend, otherwise I would of course suggest deducting about seventy-five dollars for expenses. But you may have all your money back if you wish.” He held the check pinched between thumbs and forefingers as though to tear it down the middle. “Say the word, and I'll send Mr. Drabkind away without this check. Say the word, and I'll give Gooch and Yishy their money back, too, and simply say, ‘Herbie Bookbinder has different ideas about charity than the rest of us.’ Say the word, Herbie, and the Free Camp gets not one cent of yours. It's all up to you, as I have said before. Shall I tear the check up or shall I hand it to Mr. Drabkind?”

Herbie, loaded down with his own lies, weakened by his fears of the gaunt man who had come back from his buried night of crime to haunt him, pressed without mercy by Mr. Gauss, caved in. He shrugged and nodded his head. At once the camp owner put the check in the hand of the charity collector.

“Thank you, Herbert!” he exclaimed. “You're the sort of young man I've always thought you were.”

“And let me thank you, Master Bookbinder,” shrilled Mr. Drabkind, folding the check carefully into his black wallet, “in the name of two hundred poor boys who will benefit by your—”

But Herbie was tottering out through the doorway. He bore a face of such utter tragedy that the camp owner felt an unfamiliar momentary sensation in his heart: doubt of his own rectitude.

“Herbie, come back here!” he called. “You shouldn't go like that.” The boy tramped down the steps and did not turn back.

“Well, thank you once more, Mr. Gauss, for an extraordinarily generous contribution, and good-by,” said Mr. Drabkind hurriedly. “Admirable boy, that Master Bookbinder. Admirable camp you run, indeed, Mr. Gauss. No, please don't trouble to see me out; my car's only a few feet from the house. Good-by, good-by.” In his haste, jamming his hat on his head and putting his wallet in his pocket, the willowy charity collector omitted to shake the camp owner's hand and took a quick departure.

When Herbie arrived back at Uncle Sandy's tent, it was five minutes to ten. Cliff was already there, dressed in the head counselor's famous old blue sweater and gray baseball cap, holding his megaphone and wearing the whistle, emblem of boys' camp sovereignty, on a thong around his neck. Sandy was earnestly giving him a multitude of last-minute suggestions as he struggled into a gray and green jersey of Cliff's that was laughably small on him. Herbie stood around feeling dull and useless.