Thomas Tryon - The Night of the Moonbow

“Shut up!” he shouted, sitting up and addressing the air. “Go away! Leave me alone!”

The cry sprang from his lips before he realized it; he glanced around in embarrassment. Then he threw himself back on the ground and covered his head with his arms, lids squeezed tight, while the same voice rang inside his head.

It grew momentarily chilly and, opening his eyes, Leo shivered as an errant cloud swept across the face of the sun, casting an unwelcome shadow. He peered upward, half-expecting to see a large-winged roc, Sinbad’s roc; but there was no such creature, and he forced himself to relax as the curtain of shadow was raised and he was laved again with gratifying warmth. Easy, pal, he told himself impatiently. There’s no one to hear, no one to make fun of you. But they’d heard him that first night in camp all right, when he’d had the bad dream and waked up hollering his head off. Even now he still hadn’t erased the memory of Pa’s gory tale, of the knife of Misswiss glinting in the moonlight and the scream of the dying maiden, which had become his own scream as he fell… fell, down into darkness.

He had come to blinking in the yellow beam of Reece’s flashlight. While the other Jeremians stirred groggily, trying to dope out what was going on, Reece had accompanied him out to the fountain, where he urged him to drink, then he’d walked him around the baseball diamond, talking quietly, the sound of his voice both soothing Leo and distracting him from his disturbing anxiety.

When he was yawning widely, they had returned to the cabin, where, shamed to silence, Leo wriggled in over the sill and flattened himself under his blankets, while several of his rudely awakened cabin-mates gathered out at Old Faithful. Lying in his bunk, Leo heard his name. on Phil’s lips.

“What was Wacko making such a ruckus for, anyways? Only sissies and twerps have nightmares. Cripes.”

“Cripes yourself,” came Tiger’s retort. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Everybody has dreams.”

In the morning Leo had faced queer looks, especially from Phil and his shadow Wally, as well as from some of the Ezekielites and the Hoseans on either side of Jeremiah, whose rest had likewise been disturbed. But Reece behaved as if nothing had happened and evidently he cautioned the boys to do likewise, for by the time they formed for the march to Sunday chapel the incident seemed to have been forgotten. And by the time services were over even Phil had quit grumbling.

Was it the magic of Pa’s oratory that did the trick? Leo had heard from Hank Ives that when it came to preaching a sermon the Reverend Garland Starbuck was possessed of the golden throat and silver tongue of a William Jennings Bryan, that his words, of honey or of fire, “could turn a Moonbow camper to stone” at the first hearing. And Leo had been impressed by Pa, decked out in his Sunday best (a full-sleeved, blousy shirt of snowiest broadcloth, touched up with a small black clip-on bow tie, a pair of gallused black trousers, seat shiny as a dime, and still shinier high-laced boots whose knob-like toes curled right off the ground), greeting his campers and staffers from his place beside Tabernacle Rock, thereafter speaking out boldly in the name of the Lord God Jehovah, entreating, cajoling, coaxing, and commanding these, his sons (and a single daughter) to bow down and make obeisance to the Maker of us all. (The camp schedule, as Leo had discovered in a few short days, left no doubt that Friend-Indeed was a “Bible camp”: morning chapel worship in the council ring was commonly followed by more prayers in the dining hall, more hymn singing, more Scripture reading, more ecclesiastical homilies bandied about, the saying of Grace at noon, too, vespers observed thrice weekly, as well as impromptu sing-alongs, with eager voices raised in praise of both “The Old Rugged Cross” and “The Old Oaken Bucket.”)

Though the memory of the morning’s embarrassments still caused him to blush, that night Leo had taken heart from the friendly bull session before Lights Out, conducted by Reece himself. The counselor had stretched out on his cot and led the discussion, about what it meant to be a Jeremian – a true-blue member of the team, as he put it – and how they were all looking forward to seeing the Hartsig Trophy emblazoned with their names under the heading “Best Campers of 1938.” And Leo, who had envied his cabin-mates their camaraderie and lighthearted give-and-take, the way Reece kidded around with them (especially Phil and Tiger), and the bonds they had formed through years of close association and shared experience, had felt – actually, physically felt, he thought – those bonds now being extended to include him.

Luckily there had been no bad dreams that night, no disturbances whatever, and next morning he had got up before reveille, ready to attack his first real camping day. He was off to a flying start – well, no, not quite. As a greenhorn at Moonbow he was bound to make a few mistakes, that would have been okay; unfortunately for him he had come a cropper three times in a row, which hadn’t upped his stock with either the Jeremians or their counselor.

First, the camp inspection committee, made up of a revolving panel culled from the Sachems’ Council, showed up in Jeremiah on its twice-weekly rounds, to find that Leo’s cap had been left on his pillow – one demerit – and the contents of his suitcase were not up to standard neatness – a second demerit, making Leo the only Jeremian to receive blackies that day.

Next came his introduction to the traditional soap bath. Monday was “wash day,” when first thing in the morning everyone fell out for the weekly soap bath in the lake, and Leo was tugging on his swim suit when he noticed he was getting funny looks from his cabin-mates.

“What are you doing, kiddo?” Phil demanded, wrapping his husky waist in a towel.

Leo gave him a look back; he was putting on his trunks, what else?

“Nobody wears a bathing suit to soap bath.”

“They don’t?”

"No. They go buck-assed naked.”

“Oh.” Leo crimsoned, and, pulling off his trunks, wrapped a towel around his waist. Though he was used to the casualness of dormitory life, the idea of standing around naked in the open air offended his sense of propriety, and when, within minutes, he found himself dockside amid a sea of robust male forms, legs, arms, and pale behinds, a forest of limp penises, of corrugated scrotums drawn up tight as walnut shells in the nippy morning air – all of Pa’s campers gathered to worship Hygeia, goddess of “cleanliness,” with their pious offerings of pink Lifebuoy or green Palmolive soap cakes – he clung desperately to his towel. The result had been a spate of scornful taunts.

“Come on, lily-white, dive in!” “Hey, Wacko, drop the laundry!” “Yeah, screwball, let the world see your dong!” This last from an older, thick-necked camper with a round, pimply, pug-ugly face and a nasty swagger, who wore a tattoo on his forearm, like Popeye. His name, Leo had already learned, was Claude Moriarity – more often known as “Bullnuts,” Leo now perceived, for obvious reasons. The sight of the new boy, covered with goose pimples, knees knocking from the morning chill, seemed to goad him, and he advanced menacingly.

“Okay, you guys!” he boomed. “Let’s get ’im!” And five or six campers had sprung on Leo and stripped away his towel, leaving him trying to cover his nakedness with both hands. This show of modesty further provoked Bullnuts and his pals, who, before Leo realized their full intent, had picked him up and chucked him off the dock into the swim crib, where he landed on his back and got water up his nose. Not knowing what else to do, he paddled helplessly around until the Bomber came to the rescue and loaned him his block of Ivory soap (“It floats”), then dived for Leo’s cake of Lifebuoy (which didn’t).