Thomas Tryon - The Night of the Moonbow

The third incident of note occurred after dinner that evening, and marked the beginning of Leo’s troubles with Hap Holliday. He had been heading for the Dewdrop Inn, giving a wide berth to the playing field, where late baseball practice was in progress, hoping to go unnoticed by the coach, who Leo was afraid might try to trap him into playing. Swinging madly, Junior Leffingwell had hit a pop fly that sailed across the field and (having been missed by Oggie Ogden, in the outfield) bounced within ten feet of Leo and continued rolling toward him. Leo had stood transfixed, unable to do anything but stare at it, as if to touch it would do him injury.

“Come on, Wackeem, for cripes’ sake, throw the ball!”

This command, from Dump Dillworth, had finally roused him to dazed action. He had picked up the ball and awkwardly launched it toward the plate, but the throw had gone wild, and as Junior rounded third and sprinted for home, the entire field, players and spectators a-like, had erupted in scornful hoots and catcalls (“Woo-woo!” “Chicken wing!” “Hey, Wackoff, where’d you learn to throw, at dancing school?”).

Hap had made no secret of his scorn and mandated this morning’s private practice session, and later Leo had overheard Phil muttering that it looked like the new boy might turn out to be every bit as twerpy as Stanley Wagner. Wally agreed: Leo was twerpy. Tiger, however, had gone to bat for him: just because every Jeremian excelled at some sport or other, even if it was only Ping-Pong, didn’t mean Leo had to. He’d rack up plenty of happy points for Jeremiah other ways, they’d see.

Leo had been grateful – but worried, too. Because the truth was that every true-blue Jeremian made a good showing at athletics; his cabin-mates were not an assortment of wimpy oddballs – not, as Reece pointed out to Leo at that night’s bull session, the kind of boy who had a pillow called Albert and wore a hat that looked like something out of the funny papers. There followed a lecture on the nature of teamwork and about winning. The Jeremians, Reece reminded them, were winners because they operated as a team (led by a leader like himself), and if you played the game properly you came out a winner, too, while, if you didn’t… well, look at Stanley Wagner.

“Yeah, look at him,” said Phil, scowling. Then, tossing his cap by its bill, he led the Jeremians out to Old Faithful to brush their teeth.

“So how do you like it so far, kiddo?” he asked, fetching up beside Leo at the fountain.

Leo replied that he liked it fine so far.

“Well, don’t screw up,” said Phil. “We don’t want any more spuds in Jeremiah.”

“Aw, can it,” the Bomber growled. “He’s going to get us plenty points. And wait till he plays his fiddle at Major Bowes.”

Fifteen minutes later, when taps sounded, Phil’s remark still rankled, but as Leo lay on his bunk, staring up at the molded impression of Tiger’s backside pressed into the canvas overhead, he felt reassured. Stanley Wagner had been a spud, no doubt about that, and Jeremiah had paid the price. As cabin monitor, and second-in-command to Reece, Phil felt responsible, that was all.

Unfortunately, however, that night had been a repetition of the first, with another bad dream that had again disturbed the cabin and left Leo wrung out with imagined horror, as well as the butt of more jokes, especially from Phil, who now let it be known that in his view, the new boy was fast proving that he had inherited not only the bunk of Stanley Wagner but his shoes as well.

Deeply shamed, Leo made feeble apologies, but how could he explain? Whom could he confide in, tell about the dreams that haunted his sleep and woke him up screaming? It was the same old story all over again, only in a new setting.

At the Institute, Superintendent Poe had repeatedly cautioned him: “These dreams of yours are affecting your daily work, my boy. We must do something about them. It doesn’t do to be made prey to foolish fancies. I shall arrange for you to talk to our Doctor Percival, he’ll get you over this childish business quick enough…”

So Leo had seen Dr Percival, who asked him to talk about his dreams.

Leo tried: dark, fearful, frightening, something large and hideous waiting in the dark to seize and devour him.

“What sort of thing?” pursued the doctor. He might as well have asked, Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral? Leo tried to describe it but failed; it was nameless, springing from who knew what hidden corner of his mind. He tried to picture it; couldn’t do that either, just… big and dark and terrifying.

“You must just make up your mind to stop dreaming,” Dr Percival had concluded. “Or simply try to dream nice, pleasant dreams, hm? It’s as easy to dream happy dreams as unhappy ones. Just make up your mind.” He wagged his head sadly. “Until you do, I am afraid you will never grow up. You will always be a boy, with a boy’s thoughts and a boy’s fears. Therefore you must govern your thoughts, discipline yourself, put on blinders and reins.”

But the doctor had no answer when Leo asked him how he was to accomplish this, when every day he could hear the laughter of the boys echoing along those green grim corridors, and the mocking jingle they loved to sing:

Oh my oh me oh, a crazy boy is Leo Oh me oh my oh, his nightmares make him cry-o…

He would have given anything to be able to get away from that chant, to find someplace where no one knew anything about him, someplace where he could forget. And, miraculously, now he had his chance: Moonbow Lake was waiting.

“Hey, Nutbread, those two old farts want you in administration office pronto.” This from Measles, the head proctor and Pitt tattler, who poked his ugly puss in at the dormitory door, his loud voice echoing in the long, Spartanly furnished room.

Leo had been pasted with the name Nutbread for so long that he answered to it readily enough, and he had leaped from his cot to make tracks to the administration office, where he found thin, prim, dry-as-dust Supervisor Poe seated behind his desk; with him, thinner, primmer, dustier Miss Meekum. Mr Poe eyed him across his glasses rims and inquired starchily how Leo thought he might enjoy spending a few weeks in the country, then without waiting for a reply began explaining how, through the merciful intercession of the Society of the Friends of Joshua, who maintained an affiliation with the Pitt Institute for Boys, a place had been made available at a summer camp on Moonbow Lake.

The matter was settled inside fifteen minutes. Miss Meekum helped him to assemble his paltry possessions and put them into the cardboard suitcase he’d been loaned, with its broken corners and its fake-alligator-paper hide. In addition, two army blankets, stiff with age, had been made up into a bundle along with Albert, without whom he hadn’t slept a night since Butch got killed.

“Regrettably, there is no time to sew nametapes in your things,” she said. “You must take care and not lose them, clothes are hard to replace these days.” And, as though to apologize for the lack of printed identification in his underwear, she pressed on him a fresh cake of Lifebuoy soap, and a celluloid soap “keeper.” “If you are frugal with your soap it should last all summer. It’s really a wonderful opportunity,” she went on, drawing her hanky through her ringless fingers. “Just imagine – a lovely lake and green trees and meadows and…” She paused in her recitation of the charms to be found in the Connecticut wildwood, her wrinkled face sobering while behind her pinched-on steel glasses her eyes, like the eyes of a doe, swam liquidly at the thought of his journeying all of fifty miles away for eight weeks of camping. “You’ll be able to get a fresh start, Leo, in a new place, where you can look forward, not back. And, please, no talk about…” She trailed off, her lids fluttering. He regarded her solemnly, waiting for her to finish her sentence. "… about the bridge and all of that. You must erase life’s blackboard and put the past behind you. Will you do that?”