Эд Макбейн - Barking at Butterflies and other stories

He became even richer the afternoon he played Uncle Marvin and won five hundred marbles from him, a blow from which Marvin never recovered. By this time, beating Jimbo had become an obsession. Jimbo was the sole topic of camp discussion, overshadowing the approaching Color War, eclipsing the visit of a famous football player who talked about the ways and means of forward passing while nobody listened. The counselors, the kids, even the camp doctor, were interested only in the ways and means of amassing more marbles to pit against Jimbo’s growing empire. They discussed shooting techniques, and whether or not they should play with the sun facing them or behind their backs. They discussed the potency of the mass shot as against a slow deliberate one-at-a-time sort of game. They discussed different kinds of shooters, the illegality of using steelies, the current exchange rate of pureys. The kids loved every minute of it. They awoke each morning brimming with plans for Jimbo’s ultimate downfall. To them, beating him was important only because it would give them an opportunity to prove that adults, especially adult counselors, were all a bunch of no-good finks.

On Monday of the third week of the madness, the smart money entered the marbles business — and the gambling element began taking over.

But before that, on Sunday night, I broke quarantine.

I am usually a law-abiding fellow, and I might never have broken quarantine were it not for Horizontal Ronnie, who, I later came to learn, had very definite criminal leanings.

“Look,” he said to me, “what’s to stop us from taking one of the canoes and paddling over to the other side?”

“Well,” I said, “there’s a polio scare.”

“Don’t you want to see What’s-her-name?”

“Rebecca.”

“Yeah, don’t you want to see her?”

“Sure I do.”

“Has every kid in this camp and also in Camp Lydia, by Marvin’s own admission, in his very own words, been inoculated against polio?”

“Well, yes,” I said.

“Then would you mind telling me how there is a polio scare?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

“Fine. I’ll meet you at the boat dock tonight at nine o’clock. I’ll take care of getting word to the girls.”

I guess I didn’t trust him even then, because I took care of getting word to Becky myself that afternoon, by sending over one of my notes tied to an empty milk can. That night, at nine o’clock on the dot, Ronnie and I met at the boat dock and silently slipped one of the canoes into the water. We didn’t talk at all until we were in the middle of the lake, and then Ronnie said, “We’ll come back around eleven. Is that all right with you?”

“Sure,” I said.

“Boy, that Laura,” he said, and fell silent again, apparently contemplating what was ahead. Laura, whom I had only seen once or twice before the quarantine, was a very pretty blond girl who always wore white sweaters and tight white shorts. She also wore a perfume that was very hard to avoid smelling, and the few times I had seen her was in the counselors’ shack where she kept playing the “Malaguena” over and over again on the piano. She was a very mysterious girl, what with her sweater and shorts and her perfume and her “Malaguena.” She was eighteen years old.

“I think I know how to beat him,” Ronnie said suddenly.

“Huh?”

“Jimbo. I think I know how to beat the bastard.”

“How?” I asked.

“Never mind,” Ronnie said, and then he fell silent again, but it seemed to me he was paddling more furiously.

I met Rebecca under the pines bordering the lake. She was wearing black slacks and a black bulky sweater, and she rushed into my arms and didn’t say anything for the longest time, just held herself close to me, and then lifted her head and stared into my face, and then smiled that fast-breaking smile, and fleetingly kissed me on the cheek, and pulled away and looked into my face again.

We skirted the edge of the pine forest, the night was still, I could feel her hand tight in my own. We sat with our backs to one of the huge boulders overlooking the lake, and I held her in my arms and told her how miserable I’d been without her, and she kept kissing my closed eyes as I spoke, tiny little punctuating kisses that made me weak.

The night was very dark. Somewhere across the lake a dog began barking, and then the barking stopped and the night was still again.

“I can barely see you, Becky,” I whispered.

I held her close, I held her slender body close to mine. She was Becky, she was trembling, she was joy and sadness together, echoing inside me. If I held her a moment longer my heart would burst, I knew my heart would burst and shower trailing sparks on the night. And yet I held her, wanting to cry in my happiness, dizzy with the smell of her hair, loving everything about her in that timeless, brimming moment, still knowing my heart would burst, loving her closed eyes and the whispery touch of her lashes, and the rough wool of her sweater, and the delicate motion of her hands on my face. I kissed her, I died, I smiled, I listened to thunder, for oh, the kiss of Rebecca Goldblatt, the kiss, the heart-stopping kiss of my girl.

The world was dark and still.

“I love you,” she said.

“I love you,” I said.

And then she threw her arms around my neck and put her face against mine, tight, I could feel her cheekbone hard against mine, and suddenly she was crying.

“Hey,” I said. “What... honey, what is it?”

“Oh, Donald,” she said, “what are we going to do? I love you so much.”

“I think we ought to tell him,” I said, “when we get back.”

“How can we do that?” Becky said.

“I can go to him. I can say we’re in love with each other.”

“Oh yes, yes, ” Becky said breathlessly. “I do love you, Donald.”

“Then that’s what we’ll do.”

“He...” She shook her head in the darkness. I knew that her eyes were very solemn, even though I couldn’t see them. “He won’t listen,” Becky said. “He’ll try to break us up.”

“Nobody will ever break us up,” I said. “Ever.”

“What... what will you tell him?”

“That we love each other. That when we finish school we’re going to get married.”

“He won’t let us.”

“The hell with him.”

“He doesn’t know you. He thinks Italians are terrible.”

“I can’t help what he thinks,” I said.

“Donald...” She paused. She was shaking her head again, and she began to tremble. “Donald, you can’t do it.”

“Why not?”

“Because he believes it, don’t you see? He really believes you are some — some terrible sort of person.”

“I know, but that doesn’t make it true. And simply because he believes it is no reason for me to behave as if I believe it.” I nodded my head in the darkness. I felt pretty convinced by what I was saying, but at the same time I was scared to death of facing her father. “I’ll tell him when we get back,” I said.

Becky was quiet for a long long time.

Then she said, “If only I was Italian.”

I held her very close to me, and I kissed the top of her head very gently. Right then I knew everything was going to be all right. I knew it because Becky had said, “If only I was Italian,” when she could just as easily have said, “If only you were Jewish.”

Horizontal Ronnie swung into action the very next day.

He had been inordinately silent the night before on the trip back across the lake, and I hadn’t disturbed his thoughts because I assumed he was working out his system for beating Jimbo. Besides, I was working out what I would tell Becky’s father when we got back to the city.