Dan Wakefield - Under the Apple Tree - A Novel

Artie wrote down “Yellow-breasted—” and then he got all out of concentration again, thinking of breast , which made him want to check again to see if his gonads were all right. Ever since the famous “jelly” speech of Senator Hapgood, Artie had the awful suspicion that his tools had shrunk, maybe like they were practicing how to hide or retreat to escape the possibility of being beaten to jelly. It was hard to forget about, since now every kid in the Camp went around saying, “Look out, or I’ll beat your privates to jelly!” and everyone snorted and wheezed and whooped, but even though they tried to act like it was funny, it was a nervous kind of funny. Artie knew his things were still there, he knew he could still pee all right, but ever since the speech he had not had anyone point at him in the morning and yell “H.O.!” because the towel wrapped around him for reveille lineup was sticking out in front of him due to a hard-on. In fact, the only guy he knew of who had had an H.O. for reveille lineup since the jelly speech was Ernest Maydap, who everyone figured was such a hick he didn’t even know what his “privates” were.

At night after taps, Artie lay in his bunk and tried to play with himself to see if his thing could get hard anymore, but the darn thing just lay there like a worm. Actually; that wasn’t a really fair test, since you had to be so careful not to make the bedsprings squeak or suffer the awful infamy of getting reported for jacking off in camp.

Breast —.

The unfinished word did not make Artie think of the nuthatch for Bird Study but of the pinup pictures he had, not just of Betty Grable but even ones he liked more now of Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, and Lana Turner. Of course he hadn’t brought them to Camp, that would have been un-Scouting, but he remembered them pretty darn well after all the scrutiny he had given them at night with his penlight under the covers.

“Gung ho—let’s go for a grackle!” Ribs O’Mahoney said, and the band of birdwatchers straggled on up the hill after him, clutching their pencils and notebooks.

Without even thinking he was going to do it, Artie dropped his notebook. He got down on his hands and knees, like he was searching for it, and then when the last of the Scouts had moved out of sight, he stuck the notebook in his pocket and slunk off into the woods in the other direction.

The Cabin Row was deserted. Everyone was off spotting birds, tying sheepshank knots, portaging canoes, baking potatoes in mud, identifying poison oak, learning how to do artificial respiration, weaving bright-colored strands into lanyards for carrying whistles around your neck, and all the other healthy, useful, character-building kinds of things that Scouts were supposed to do at Camp Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko.

All except Artie Garber. He was slinking into his cabin in the middle of the day like a pre-vert. It was dark and silent inside, and smelled of a mixture of citronella oil, shoeshine polish, and farts. The second day of Camp the Renfro brothers, skinny Arnold and fat Bud, had held a farting contest, and tied at 237 farts apiece in succession, which not only broke the recognized Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko all-time record set by the legendary Earl “V.A.” Beasley (he was so thin he was known as “the Vanishing American,” or “V.A.” for short) back in 1940, but also left an insidious, pungent odor that all the swabbings and airings-out that followed had been unable to completely get rid of.

Artie tried not to think about the smell, which was not the kind that got you in the mood, and climbed up on his bunk, the Upper Back Left. The Upper bunks were worst of all for trying to get away with any kind of fooling around on since the guy beneath you was bound to hear the slightest squeaking of bedsprings. “Bedsprings” made Artie think of the only other atrocity anyone claimed to have happened that was, worse than the blacksmith who accidentally smashed his own ball (worse, that is, until Senator Hapgood gave his speech). That was the one about a guy in one of the cabins cleaning his Upper bunk for Inspection and unknowingly getting one of his nuts caught in a spring when the Camp Commander came in and called “Attention” and the poor guy jumped down from the Upper, leaving his ball there caught in the spring and ripping it off as he made the fatal leap to the floor.

Artie touched his own balls to see if they were okay and at least they were there, but felt real small and tight. His thing itself was the shriveled worm it had been ever since the Senator’s speech. He touched it lightly with his fingers, massaging gently, and closed his eyes, picturing the pinup of Dorothy Lamour.

But nothing happened.

He figured he was more in the mood for a blonde, so he switched to Betty Grable, but she didn’t help either.

Neither did Lana Turner.

Sweat was breaking out on his hands and on his forehead, not from the heat of illicit excitement, but the panic of being unable to make his thing respond to his mind. Maybe some nerve connection had been broken by the specter of the torturing Nazis!

Thinking of that only made things worse, though, and Artie realized he’d better get going soon or the guys would be coming back from the Bird Study Hike, spotting him in the act like a ruby-faced gooney bird.

Then he thought of this real sexy movie he had seen just before coming to camp, called White Savage , with Maria Montez, Jon Hall, and Sabu, the elephant boy. Maria Montez was the sultry “Princess Tahia,” dressed in these slinky, harem-type outfits, with bangles and bracelets dangling from all over her. There was a scene where Jon Hall burst into her tent and real cool she dismissed her brawny bodyguards, saying, “You may go now. This may develop into a private matter.”

Artie imagined himself instead of Jon Hall bursting into the tent of Princess Tahia, and her telling the guards to get lost so she could be alone with him. He was wearing a Marine dress blue uniform, and he started removing the snazzy trousers with the red stripe down the side. Soon he and the Princess were lying on the silken pillows, writhing in ecstasy.

It was happening! His thing was growing, pulsing and throbbing. Princess Tahia was curing him of the dread “privates to jelly” fear! Gratefully now as well as passionately he lavished his kisses on her, at the same time moving up and down on top of her as she squirmed with lust on the silken pillows.

The bedsprings of the Upper bunk were squeaking in rhythm to Artie’s ravishing of Princess Tahia, and his own hard breathing accompanied it with hoarse, rasping fervor. He remembered in the midst of the passion to make sure his thing was between his underpants and his Scout short pants, so when the flood burst the telltale stain would not be in his sleeping bag, where his dirtiest deed would be discovered by his superior officer. He could hide his pants and put on others, but he couldn’t hide his sleeping bag, which was turned inside-out and examined by the Troop Leader at daily Inspection. The worst disgrace was to have that milky stain in your bag, and some of the mean guys in the troop had pulled what Artie thought was an awful trick on this poor hick Ernest Maydap, who had hardly ever been off his family’s farm except to go to Scout meetings at the local Grange Hall. The mean guys, led by the insidious Roscoe Wittles, had taken some real cream from the mess hall and poured it in a big spot in Maydap’s sleeping bag and rubbed it in, so at Inspection he got accused of spilling his seed right in Camp, which was un-Scoutlike behavior. Maydap had broken down crying, and later Artie tried to comfort him and say it was a dirty trick, but he hadn’t had the guts to do it in public, he just said it to Maydap walking alone in the woods.

Artie didn’t want to get the real stuff on his sleeping bag, so made that adjustment of his thing and was really going to town, about to explode, the spring-squawking and breath-rasping loud and uncontrolled when suddenly Artie heard another sound, the whine and slam of the screen door of the cabin, and just as he was bursting and flooding himself and Princess Tahia, he looked up to see Ben Vickman staring at him. Their eyes met for an awful moment of knowing, and Vickman turned and rushed from the cabin.