Leo didn’t know what to say. He ducked his head and didn’t look up again until they’d gone into the other room. He went onto the porch again. Over at Three Corner Cove, Wanda came out of the cottage with Maryann. Honey was with them. She had a handkerchief to her eyes. When she looked over and saw Leo she turned away, her shoulders shaking. Leo wanted to go and comfort her but didn’t know how to do that. Maryann and Wanda embraced; then Wanda came back along the path. Leo began to tremble. His eyes were blurring. As Wanda came up the steps, he turned and clambered over the railing to sprawl in the nasturtiums growing along the foundations. He scrambled up and without looking back raced along the path, passing the Oliphants’ cottage head down, to disappear into the same woods where Harpo was still howling.
Later Leo asked himself: how had the dog known when he himself had not?
Rock of ages,
Cleft for meeeeee.
Let me hide
Myself in thee-eeeee…
They were in the grove, all of them singing out the rousing old Protestant hymn whose words affirmed the help that cometh when a man’s faith abides in the Lord God of Hosts. Leo, however, could not take heart. Sitting in his rowboat, lost in thought, he doggedly kept his back to the somber gathering in the council ring, where every seat was filled and where the Reverend G. Garland Starbuck had for a half hour past been haranguing the assembled in his best William Jennings Bryan style. In truth, Leo had not wanted to admit to the fact of what lay atop Tabernacle Rock: the black box, covered with flowers; had not wanted to hear about “the young sapling alas too young cut down,” about “that peaceful lamb taken unto the Holy Shepherd’s loving flock,” who now “slept in the soft sweet bosom of Eternity and a Life Everlasting.”
The mere idea made Leo want to laugh. Far better to give Tiger a Viking’s funeral, the way Michael and his brothers had done in Beau Geste: set the coffin on fire and launch it out to sea in flames. Tiger would have loved a send-off like that! A burning vessel, the dead surrounded by battle shields and horned helmets, and a dead dog lying at his feet.
From where he sat Leo could make out certain figures in the congregation: the Abernathys were seated down front, along with Dr Dunbar and a number of the Society of Joshua elders. Wanda Koslowski was there too, and beside her Fritz, and a clutch of females he recognized as Ma Starbuck and Willa-Sue, Dagmar Kronborg, and Honey with her mother and Sally Berwick; on the log where the Jeremians were gathered could be seen the crop of blond curly hair belonging to Reece Hartsig.
At last the singing ended. Quickly, before the service could be brought to its pious conclusion, Leo took his violin from its case and began to play. Slowly, lugubriously, the notes rose from his strings and bow to float across the water to the council ring, where Pa and his congregation, recognizing the burlesque, were stunned to silence. Indignant heads craned toward the water to view the solitary and defiant camper out in the middle of the lake, and as the tune’s title was whispered among the subdued rows of campers they asked themselves who but Wacko Wackeem would have chosen to play a dumb ditty like “The Music Goes ’Round and Around” at such a time.
Pa was already enjoining his boys to raise their voices in an impromptu rendition of “Washed in the Blood of the Lamb,” which resulted in a sort of musical duel, with all contestants – the multitude in the grove and the party of one in the rowboat – doing their utmost to be heard. Then, as the onshore chorus swelled mightily, Leo switched tunes and tossed “Pop! Goes the Weasel” back in their teeth. The louder they sang, the louder he played, as though his solo rendition could drown out the choir of voices mounted against him. Louder grew the clamor, more jarring the contrapuntal notes, the jazzy, syncopated beat vibrating against the stolid, declarative phrases of the hymn. There would be the usual reprimands for his mischief-making, of course – that was to be expected – but Leo didn’t care. This was what Tiger would have wanted. Tiger would have understood; Tiger, who lay in the box on top of Tabernacle Rock.
If only Leo could share his grief with someone, as Harpo did. Ever since Tiger’s death the dog had roamed the camp road up and down, baying his sorrow. This morning he had been locked jn the old cold cellar under the crafts barn (where Ma stored her jams and preserves in an ancient icebox of yellow oak lined in zinc) so as to keep him from creating a disturbance during the service. But he must have escaped, for now he had taken up a picket post somewhere in the woods and was howling his fool head off. Leo had a pretty good idea of how lonely Harpo must feel.
He looked down at the knife: the Bowie knife Tiger had insisted be his. Since Tiger’s death he had kept the knife hidden from sight; he wasn’t going to let anyone rob him of Tiger’s parting gift. But today, he had decided, he had to wear it no matter what. Just as he’d had to play Tiger’s favorite song…
Finally the singing stopped and the last bars of Leo’s music hung in the torpid air, then melted into silence, leaving only their mocking memory. By now the gathering was breaking up, the council ring emptying, and Leo, laying away his instrument, noticed someone standing on the canoe dock; the thick, burly figure of the Bomber stood waving him in. He must go in, mustn’t he? Go in and face what awaited him? For with Tiger’s death he had become more than ever the camp pariah. Though no official decree of Scarsdale had been issued regarding him, hardly anyone was speaking to him. Every look, every pointing finger and whispered word said it was his fault, that he, Leo, was to blame. If it had not been for Wacko there would have been no service, no coffin, no dead friend. As for Reece, having forbidden Leo to visit the infirmary, and then learning that he’d been at Tiger’s bedside when he died, he was more vindictive than ever, determined to extract the last ounce of punishment.
Feeling imperiled on every side, Leo was wishing he had never come to camp. How was it possible for him to feel like this, when only a few short weeks ago he’d been so happy, when everything had seemed so fine? It was as though he’d been drinking water from a well, good, sweet, clear water, and now that water had been muddied and riled, it tasted bitter, as if the well had been poisoned.
He packed up his violin and headed for shore, paddling with neat, controlled strokes, the way Tiger had taught him. Off in the distance Harpo’s howling had ceased. As he neared the dock, the Bomber gave him a look.
“What the heck was that you was playin’?”
“Beethoven’s Fifth. Like it?”
“Somebody’s plenty burned about it,” the Bomber said.
Leo had no difficulty guessing who “somebody” was. With Leo at the bow, while the Bomber bent his broad back to the stern, the two boys jerked the canoe from the water and racked it up. The Bomber went to the clipboard to sign it in, and Leo, straightening, looked around the council ring. Everywhere stood knots of campers, staffers, and visitors, mixed together, talking, but moving slowly, as though their feet were held down by heavy weights. When he came nearer, Leo glimpsed more faces he recognized: Big Rolfe and Joy Hartsig, Hap Holliday, Hank Ives, a baker’s dozen church elders in black suits, doughty, gray-faced and official-looking; Honey Oliphant was now holding tight to her brother’s hand, as if he were a baby she was afraid of losing. They all stood in silent clusters regarding the casket, which in another moment was being removed from its resting place on the rock. Because it was so small, the box required only two bearers, who carried it up the aisle to the hearse parked hear the top of the ring. Burial was to be private; no campers would be there.
Then Harpo came straying toward them from among the trees, tail quivering but not wagging, a forlorn look in his eyes that made Leo want to fling his arms around the dog’s neck and hug him; but that would only make Leo cry and he had promised himself not to do that. Consequently he ignored Harpo, who finally wheeled and trotted away, while Leo climbed the ring and headed for Jeremiah.