Thomas Tryon - The Night of the Moonbow

Phil dumped the frog into the fire bucket and partially covered it with a box until Reece could decide its fate. No sooner had he and Wally hit their bunks than the missing Jeremian came in over the back sill.

“Tiger!” Peewee crowed happily.

“Hi, sprout, what are you doing here? It’s powwow time.”

“I’m powwowing with your guys.”

“Jay say it was all right?” Jay St John was the counselor of Habakkuk, Peewee’s cabin.

“Yes-s.”

“I bet he didn’t,” Phil put in.

“Nerts to you,” Peewee said with a scowl. He tried chinning himself on Tiger’s bunk rail, then gave it up.

“Where’s Reece?” Tiger asked, looking around.

“He’s havin’ his picture taken with his dad,” Eddie reported.

“How come?”

Phil explained: On Big Rolfe’s order, Reece had donned his military school uniform and gone to have a newspaper picture taken at the Blue Ribbon Rathskeller over on the highway.

“It’s for the Bund,” the Bomber added.

Tiger knew about the weekly meetings of the German-American Bund, a popular local group to which Reece’s father paid allegiance. “Mail come?” he asked, looking around.

Phil produced the afternoon’s allotment: only two letters for Cabin 7, one for Reece, another for Wally. When Tiger tossed Reece’s letter onto his pillow, Peewee snatched it up and proceeded to inspect it closely.

“Y’know something, you guys? This thing really stinks!” he said, greedily sniffing the blue envelope, noting the return address penned in a light, feminine script with circles for the dots, over the i’s, and a puckered lipstick print on the flap. “It’s from Nancy Rider,” he added, glancing at the tinted snapshot of a shapely girl in the bathing suit tucked into the mirror frame over Reece’s cot.

“Listen, small fry, you better not go screwing around with that letter,” Tiger advised as Peewee sprang into a bunk; “Reece won’t like it.”

“Aw, Heartless don’t care,” Peewee protested, giving the letter another sniff and leaving a greasy thumb mark on the envelope as he returned it to Reece’s pillow.

Tiger wasn’t so sure of that; nor was anyone else. While the fact that, in the absence of Nancy Rider, their counselor was this summer newly smitten with Peewee’s sister, Honey, gave the kid points, it didn’t necessarily follow that he could get away with messing around in Heartless’s private mail.

“Gosh, look at that.” This from Eddie, who spoke in a confidential tone, his eye fixed on the line-path. The others looked too.

“Who d’you suppose it is?” Wally wondered, staring at the odd sight that had suddenly presented itself: twenty feet away someone was standing on the path – a strange-looking guy, with ears that stuck out and a comical hat on his head. A skinny, gawky type, who’d appeared out of nowhere. They couldn’t see his face because he was positioned with his back to the cabin.

“What’s he doin’ here, anyways?” said the Bomber.

“Betcha it’s your new boy,” Peewee said, revealing hitherto unrealized psychic powers.

“Cripes, you gotta be kidding,” the Bomber said in dismay.

“He’s not supposed to be here till tomorrow,” Phil added.

“Maybe he came early,” Tiger suggested. He jumped down from his bunk and signaled to Phil, and together they stepped out onto the porch. “Phil, you’re monitor. Go and bring him in.”

“Are you kiddin’? Not me. You really think it’s the new guy?”

Though he couldn’t be absolutely sure, something told Tiger that the boy on the path was indeed Leo Joaquim. If ever there was an orphan, this spud filled the bill.

“Holy maloley, take a gander at the luggage, will ya?” the Bomber muttered from inside the cabin.

The boy’s “luggage” was a worn cardboard suitcase, its clasps reinforced by a length of frayed rope. Beside it rested a blanket roll and a stack of small wooden boxes, both tied with twine, and a limp-looking pillow, and leaning against these was a black violin case, battered and scarred.

“Knock it off, Bomber,” Tiger said. “The rest of you stay here. And don’t act like a bunch of tools.”

Leaving Phil on the porch, Tiger went down the steps and made his way along the path. The newcomer stood amid his sorry paraphernalia, looking lost and tired.

“Hi,” Tiger said in a friendly voice. “ Who’re you looking for?”

“Cabin 7. Jeremiah.”

“You found it. You must be Leo Joakum.”

“Joaquim,” the boy said, pronouncing it Wack-eem. “And you must be Tiger Abernathy.”

“What makes you think so?”

“Mr Ives described you.” His voice had a rusty quality, a weary inflection.

“How come you got here today?”

“No bus Sunday.”

Tiger measured himself against the new boy: Leo was a good six inches taller, taller than any of the Jeremians. And he was thin – too thin, Tiger judged – sort of scarecrow-ish, all arms and legs, joints and angles. His clothes were a haphazard job: shorts of some heavy, rough material that looked as if it must itch, and far too tight. Black buttons were sewn with white thread onto the waist, and to these were attached suspenders of scalloped elastic that hung loosely over his narrow shoulders. Instead of sneakers he had on a pair of brown leather shoes, badly scuffed and worn, with thick, rigid soles, and maroon socks that drooped around his ankles. And then there was the hat -an old felt “crown,” its narrow brim cut in a sawtooth and embellished with an array of brightly colored soda bottle caps and political buttons. All in all Leo Joaquim was ' as un-likely looking a specimen as could be imagined at

Friend-Indeed. And what, Tiger wondered, would Reece say when he saw the new Jeremian? Yet – he was here. Tiger remembered Ma’s admonition.

“How old are you?” He was making conversation.

“I was fourteen last February. And you?”

“Fourteen too. Last month.”

“Congratulations.”

“Gotta pee?” Tiger asked, noticing that the boy was practically hopping from one foot to the other. “Help yourself. Take any bush.”

“It was a long bus ride,” Leo explained sheepishly as he stepped behind a shrub and relieved himself.

He was, Tiger thought as he waited on the path, decidedly weird. Still, there was something appealing in his shy, awkward manner, in the dusty, raspy voice. “Well,” he said as Leo rejoined him, “I guess we don’t want to stand around here all day, do we? Let me help you with something.” He took the cardboard suitcase. It felt heavy. “What you got in here, anyway?” he asked as they moved toward the cabin.

“The family jewels,” Leo replied.

Tiger laughed, and between them they got the stuff to the porch where Phil and, now, the others were waiting. There was a good deal of shuffling around while everyone said Hiya and shook hands and scratched elbows and the Bomber dropped the torch he was holding and picked it up again, and they all tried to act natural and naturally failed. Tiger performed the solemn introduction, getting the new boy’s name right, and one by one each of the Jeremians offered his hand and received in return an awkward handjerk.

Phil looked the newcomer up and down. “My name’s Dodge,” he announced, a bit over hearty.

“Mine’s Jackson,” the Bomber offered, and then the rest told their names, and Dump’s full title of Donald Dixon “Dump” Dillworth, Jr, was proclaimed amid much laughter and hoots of derision.

“And my name’s Peewee Oliphant,” crowed Peewee, whipping off his ten-gallon hat and sticking his mug out.

“And where is your trunk, Mr Pee Wee Elephant?” came the new boy’s quick reply.

This made them all laugh and the new boy laughed with them, then blinked his eyes once or twice as though they hurt, and said in his dry, sandpapery voice, “Glad to know you all.” His face was just a face, nothing extraordinary there except perhaps for the large, dark eyes – they peered out with a kind of faraway expression that went past you, or even through you.