“Yes, ma’am. But-”
Further comment was cut off by a slice of Ma’s hands. “Buts are for goats, dear. You just do as your old Ma asks, hm? It’s important for Pa that this boy gets a nice stay. And for Doctor Dunbar, too.”
“Yes, ma’am.” But Tiger was having private doubts. What the Jeremians needed was a boy who would add to their cabin’s luster – a boy who could take over as shortstop for the Red Sox and swim a good Australian crawl, and do all the things a good camper could do – not some orphan who played the violin and needed a nursemaid.
Ma’s chair screeched again as she turned in it and heaved herself up. “Wisht somebody would oil this darn old thing.” Walking gingerly, for her feet troubled her greatly, she went into the next room where someone had turned the radio on full blast.
“Now, now, honeybunch,” she said, “that ain’t no way to play the raddio. Turn it down before we wake the dead.” Through the open doorway Tiger glimpsed Ma’s daughter, Wilhelmina-Sue, settling herself and her doll into Pa’s Morris chair. Tiger smiled at her, but she just sat with her chin resting possessively on the top of the doll’s head, staring glumly at nothing. It wasn’t easy getting Willa-Sue’s attention, ever. Halting of speech, she was a “late” child, and the butt of many a camper joke. Thirteen now, she was still in fourth grade and couldn’t do simple sums; but, although mentally feeble, she was remarkably precocious in her physical development, her greatest attraction for any camper being the size of the newly developed lumps under her dress.
Tiger wiggled his fingers at her but received no more response than he had before, and, giving up trying to amuse the girl, he turned away; his eye happened to fall on the paperwork scattered across Ma’s desktop. The letter about the new boy lay open before him, and he was unable to resist the opportunity of glancing at what it contained.
… Mr Poe and I both felt it was important that you and Reverend Starbuck be fully apprised of the circumstances, he read, upsetting as they may seem – but what is so upsetting in life that we cannot seek God’s succor in time of need f You will quickly comprehend what a tragic story is Leo Joaquim’s. We naturally trust these transcripts of the notorious case will be for your knowledge only, and that you will safeguard the enclosed information from prying eyes. We would not see the boy further wounded through the cruelties of unthinking He read no further, for the groaning floorboards gave warning that Ma was coming back in.
“S’long, Ma,” he said, tugging his cap down and opening the screen door. The moment he stepped outside Harpo was whining and scratching at the screen. The dog nosed the door open and licked Tiger’s hand, begging to accompany him down to the lower campus.
“Can he come with me?” Tiger asked.
“Why not? I suppose he’s more your beast than mine. But you best send him back up for his supper,” Ma said. “And if anybody says anything, you just tell ’em Harpo followed along on his own.”
“Ma, you’re a peach.” . “That’s me, dear, fat and ripe and lots of fuzz.”
When Tiger and the dog had gone, Ma sank back into her chair. No sooner was she settled than the cat roused itself, arched its back, and noiselessly slipped into her lap, where it began kneading her bosom with its paws and purring like a motor. “Yes, pussy, yes Jezzy,” Ma crooned, stroking its fur.
Setting the cat against her thigh, she retrieved the letter and scanned its last lines again. We pray, Miss Meekum had written, Leo will find a safe berth there, and make the sort of friends the Friends of Joshua boys are famous for.
With a smile Ma picked up the quarter Tiger had deposited on the desk and returned it to his envelope, which she replaced in its proper order at the head of the box. When this minor task was seen to, and after adjusting her eyeshade against the light, she poked around until she found a fresh file folder, then wrote out a labeclass="underline" “Joaquim, Leopold,” and slipped the boy’s medical reports and other documents into it. It was only as she folded the letter to include it in the file that she noticed something written on the back of the last page – a postscript from Elsie Meekum:
So awfully sorry – have just checked bus times and find there’s no bus for Junction City on Sunday. Will have to send Leo Saturday afternoon.
Now, there was a fly in the ointment. Ma pondered matters. If the boy was coming today, that meant he was bound to arrive on the five o’clock bus from Hartford. She must get cracking so she could arrange with Henry Ives to meet him at Four Corners with the jitney. Henry could deliver him straight to Cabin 7, where Tiger would be on hand to look after him.
She returned the letter to its envelope, and placed it in the folder, which she set aside. From the back of the shoe box she took a fresh “spending” envelope like Tiger’s and across the top she
began the name. She wrote: LEO then stopped; what was that last name? She had reference to Miss Meekum’s letter, then added: JOAQUIM
“Joakum,” she murmured to herself as she wrote, “Leo Joakum.” She slipped the envelope back in the box, then laughed to herself. The envelope was empty, and likely to stay that way. In such times as these, who had spending money for a poor orphan boy? She opened her pocketbook and extracted three quarters – all the change she had. She had intended it for some new hair ribbons for Willa-Sue, but there were better uses for money than fripperies. She closed up the envelope and reinserted it in its place among the others, then took the file folder and, pulling open the yellow varnished cabinet, filed it between “Jackson, Jerome,” and “Jones, Bertram.”
The clock chimed the quarter-hour and Ma’s chair squeaked again as she started; Jezzy hit the floor on four light feet. It was nearly powwow time. She must see to Willa-Sue’s supper. She hung her eyeshade on its hook, and was about to shut the drawer when, her fingernail flicking along the row of tabs, she recalled Miss Meekum’s admonition. Taking the new boy’s folder, she opened the door of the old pie safe she used for “important personals.” The safe had a lock against snoopers. She placed the folder among the documents, shut and locked the door, then fed the key
under her ink-stained blotter with its advertisements from Bloom’s Stationery Emporium in Junction City, Est. 1926.
The string of six cabins making up “Harmony,” the intermediate or junior unit of Camp Friend-Indeed that stretched between “High Endeavor” (seniors) and “Virtue” (cadets), were spread out along the line-path leading to the council ring in the pine grove at the lakefront and the Teddy Roosevelt Memorial Nature Lodge, heart of the lower camp. Modest nine-bunk dwellings of brown-creosoted, tongue-and-groove siding set on blocks, identical in shape and size, each with its porch in front and clothesline beside or behind, the cabins had been built twenty years before to replace the original canvas tents, and had instead of solid walls sets of hinged side flaps that opened the entire structure up, bringing the outdoors inside. Each cabin had its name and number carved on a varnished pine plaque over the door: “Ezekiel – 6,” “Jeremiah – 7,” “Hosea – 8,” “Isaiah – 9,” and “Obadiah – 10,” and from the porch of each, through the red and brown tree trunks, could be seen the gleaming lake and waterfront, its boat dock and swim dock, the canoe racks, the diving float with its thirty-foot tower and board, and, out on the point, the cluster of High Endeavour cabins.
A dozen feet in back of Jeremiah, between the chrome-pipe faucet and wash rack that the cabin shared with Hosea and Ezekiel, stood “Old Faithful,” the geyser-like drinking fountain that was the social center of the Harmony unit, and farther along the path was the “Dewdrop Inn,” as the six-hole privy was called – another social hub.
Among the cabins, the late-afternoon sunshine filtered through the dark pine branches that formed a shady canopy overhead. Languorous, desultory talk and low, easy laughter emanated from the bunk racks in which campers reposed, at the lazy end of another summer’s day. The heat had died, the locusts had stilled their noise, the air was cool, with just a bit of breeze. Yet, the tranquil harmonies of the late afternoon were all but lost on the boys of Jeremiah, who were come together in a moment of ferocious ecclesiastical endeavour.