Thomas Tryon - The Night of the Moonbow

At intervals dreary, sodden processions of rainwear-clad boys slogged their way about, from lower to upper campus for meals and crafts sessions (though the rain came in through holes in the barn roof), then back again, and a seemingly endless stream of disgruntled campers flowed through Wanda Koslowski’s dispensary, exhibiting swollen thumbs pinched in falling cabin flaps, burns from the careless lighting of kerosene wicks, bruises and contusions from slides in the wet mud, even a sprained ankle (Emerson Bean, ever fortune’s fool, slipped off the lodge porch on the second day of the deluge). And many was the camper obliged to force the hint of a smile in response to the hoary chestnut Pa Starbuck loved to pull on any unsuspecting passerby:

“I sure hope this rain keeps up.”

“Why’s that, Pa?”

“ ’Cause if it keeps up it won’t come down.”

Ha ha. Joe Miller lived.

A primary victim of the camp’s darkened mood was Leo, who, unable to comprehend fully the knowledge that had been thrust so blindingly upon him at the Castle, felt more keenly than the others the growing disquiet along the line-path. By the time he had been driven back to the Castle that afternoon in Dagmar’s Pierce-Arrow, Word of what had happened was all over camp, and there was no escape from the jokes about his “Major Bowes nuttiness.” Maybe, they said, Wacko Wackeem should just quit “fiddling around.”

Secretly, Leo was almost glad about the jokes; anything was better than the boys’ finding out the truth: that his stepfather had murdered Leo’s mother and her friend. Of this, no one must know, never a word. For the rest of his stay at Friend-Indeed he must confide in no one – not even Tiger, who, whatever questions he might have been itching to ask, like the true friend he was, by neither sign nor word indicated that he expected or even wanted to be let in on things. Loyally he took Leo’s part, standing up for him and telling the others to shut up and mind their own business. But his defense only caused Leo pangs of guilt. For what did friendship mean without trust? Yet how could he level with Tiger when doing so would only brand Leo a liar? How could he confess what he now knew to be so: that Rudy the butcher was still doing time in the state pen for manslaughter, Rudy Matuchek, the notorious “Butcher of Saggetts Notch,” whose picture had been in. ill the newspapers?

At the council fire that night, moved into the lodge because of the rain, he watched the traditional rites and ceremonies, but for him they had now lost their magu. He was nervous and jumpy, couldn’t concentrate. He never even felt the usually warm clasp of hands in the Friendship Circle. He never heard the groans of his cabin-mates when Hap announced that Malachi was still ahead in the competition for the Hartsig Trophy.

Then Reece made his customary entrance in a puff of smoke – in the doorway of the staff room, with his Indian two-step illuminated, not by the moon but by the great horn chandelier – and as he made his progress among the rows, dispensing the biweekly total of red feathers, Leo’s eyes tracked the bobbing tips of the Warrior’s headdress as closer he came, and closer, his eyes gleaming like red coals, turning at last into the row where the Jeremians sat, moving toward Leo – could he see into Leo’s false heart? – then passing him by (no feather for Wacko, never any feather for him), and disappearing into the shadows of the back hallway. And then Pa had told the Moonbow Tale…

And later, after taps had sounded from the lodge porch, where Wiggy Pugh blew his cornet into the sheeting rain, Leo’s nightmare returned – not the same old dream, but close enough and even more disturbing: There she lay, the Moonbow Princess, atop the rock, the evil medicine man looming over her. The watching Leo yearned to save her, was compelled to make an attempt, yet he could not, his feet were fastened to the ground and would not obey him. Nothing could free him, nothing save her! He stared helplessly as the dark arm was raised, the blade flashed in the light, and descended. The knife was plunged into her heart. But see! The Indian princess was no longer a princess but Emily! And the executioner, Misswiss, had become Rudy in his straw hat and butcher’s apron!

Such was his new dream, and as he had his first night in camp, he woke up screaming, while his cabin-mates stirred

– “Wacko Wacko – dreaming again” – and went back to sleep. He lay panting and mutely sobbing, racked with shame and fear. The next night he dreamed a similar dream, and another night after that, and each time he awoke with a cry, each time terrified that he might have said something in his sleep to give away the truth that must at all cost remain safe.

In the face of these renewed nocturnal disturbances, Reece took it upon himself to have Leo transferred to a bed in the infirmary “for observation.” There, when he awoke screaming, Wanda came padding in with her flashlight to sit beside him in the chair and talk him back to sleep again. He wanted badly to tell her about it; if he did she’d be sure to understand – Wanda seemed to understand about so many things; Fritz, too. But, much as he exerted himself, Leo couldn’t bring himself to say the words. A couple of times he made up his mind to do it and he would get right to the point of starting – then he would clam up, and that would be the end of that.

When the time came for him to take up his abode in Jeremiah again, his counselor attempted to block his return, and only the intervention of Ma Starbuck kept Leo from being dispatched to a recently vacated bunk in High Endeavor. How could she know that such a move, though mortifying, would have been a relief to him? For, since the excursion to the Castle, of his seven bunkmates five had been barely speaking to him, and when Tiger and the Bomber were elsewhere the air in the cabin fairly crackled with hostility and ill will. If it wasn’t Phil razzing him, or Wally giving him sullen looks, or Dump criticizing him, or Monkey, once so easygoing and friendly, it was Reece himself, always there – even when he wasn’t – watching, measuring, assaying, and judging, as if by piercing Leo’s thoughts with that sharp look he could discover the terrible secret

Leo strove so desperately to hide, and thereby make his own secret safe. Reece, who knew that Leo knew… who would never forgive him for “spying” that day at the icehouse, or for the bloody nose Leo had given him.

As the rain hammered its monotonous tattoo on the tarpaper roof, sounding hollowly in the interior of the cabin, Leo’s heart would jump at the sound of that instantly recognizable footfall on the porch. Or if by chance they met alone in the Dewdrop Inn, as happened occasionally, Leo, at the trough, would freeze with embarrassment, and his water would dry up as if a spigot had been turned off, while Reece would stare straight ahead, whistling or humming and pretending Leo wasn’t there. And in the night, as he lay in his bunk, eyes open to keep from dreaming, he would stare across at the counselor’s cot, at that blond head resting on the pillow, and it seemed to him that even with closed eyes Reece was watching him, and he would screw his own eyes shut, trying to blot out the scene that no one must ever discover.

And yet, and yet, it remained, it was always there, waiting to catch him out. He couldn’t get away from it, couldn’t stop seeing it, dreaming it No! Stop it, I don’t want to hear!

“Not a whore!”

“What?”

Reece’s eyes were open now. “What did you say?”

Then he tossed a look around at the awakened boys as if to say “Didn’t I say so? Nuts…” Wacko really was wacko.

During the day he avoided Jeremiah when he could, spending a good deal of his time working on the Austrian village, now almost finished. Because of the leaky roof in the crafts barn, it had been transferred from the Swoboda corner to the warmth and dryness of the lodge, where it was to be permanently displayed on a base specially constructed by Hank Ives. (Several notables, including some aldermen and Dr Dunbar, had been invited to a formal unveiling-and-dedication ceremony, and the local paper had promised to send a reporter and a photographer to cover the story.)