City Boy

  “I'm Uncle Sandy, your head counselor,” said the man, “and you're little Herbie Bookbinder, aren't you? Come along.”

  Herbie came along, not liking it particularly, and was brought to a harried-looking, thin young man with a deep tan, standing amid a batch of small boys. “This is Uncle Nig, your counselor,” said Uncle Sandy. “Bunk Eight, highest bunk of the Juniors. Isn't that swell?”

  “Sandy, I've got six already,” protested Uncle Nig, but Uncle Sandy hurried off, saying over his shoulder, “We'll straighten everything out on the train. He looks about Bunk Eight size.”

  Herbie glanced askance at the six short boys among whom he had been thrust, and they surveyed him with equally obvious distaste. They all looked disagreeable and very young.

  “And what's your name, pal?” inquired Uncle Nig.

  “Herbie Bookbinder,” said the boy. He turned to the lad nearest him. “Say, what class are you in public school?”

  “5A, and what's it to you, Fat?” replied the boy.

  “5A?” cried Herbie in horror. “I'm in 8B!”

  Uncle Nig raised his eyebrows and said soothingly, “Don't start off telling lies, Herb. Be a regular guy.”

  “But I am in 8B. I can prove it!”

  The boys laughed at him. One said, “That's nothing, I go to high school.”

  “Me, I go to Harvard,” added another, and raised more giggles.

  Herbie was assailed with an extremely positive feeling that he was not going to like Camp Manitou.

  “All aboard!” shouted Uncle Sandy through a megaphone. Aunt Tillie began pulling down the banner. “Say good-by, folks, we leave in three minutes.”

  Herbie's waist was encircled by clutching arms. His mother had dropped to a squatting position beside him, her eyes streaming, her faded cheeks flushed with emotion.

  “Good-by, my boy, my boy, my darling,” she sobbed. “I know you're going to be happy, so I'm happy, too. We'll come to see you.”

  While she hugged and kissed him his father managed to free Herbie's right hand and shake it. “Be a man, Herbie,” he shouted over the tumult of the departure.

  “Where's Cliff? I ain't even seen Cliff,” said Herbie petulantly, not knowing what else to say in the bewilderment of the moment. “Ain't he comin' to camp?”

  “Is that all you can think about—Cliff—when you're going away from home? At least kiss me good-by,” complained the mother. Herbie considered kissing in public a mean business for a boy in 8B, but everybody else seemed to be doing it, so he obliged his mother with a brief smack on the nose.

  “We'll take swell care of him, don't you worry, Mrs. Bookbinder,” said Uncle Nig. “All right, pals, let's get going.”

  Driven, coaxed, shoved, and barked at by the young men and women known as counselors, the two flocks of children straggled to the train. The more emotional parents bleated at the flanks of the procession right up to the last gate. Jacob Bookbinder and his wife stood where the banner had hung, and waved at their retreating son and daughter whenever they glanced back. Just at the gate, Herbie took a last look at his mother and father. Standing amid the hurrying crowds of well-dressed tourists, wearing their everyday Bronx clothes, smiling and waving, they seemed like two tired, shabby little people to the boy; and, curiously enough, he saw something at that distance that he had never noticed when he had been much closer to them. He saw that his father's hair was almost all gray.

  “Good-by, Ma! Good-by, Pa!” he suddenly shouted at the top of his lungs, when it was no longer possible for them to hear him.

  “Keep in line, Herbie,” said Uncle Nig.

  It was not possible for the boy to start crying amid other lads, and his face remained calm, but his eyes filled, his throat swelled, and he hardly saw where he was going, or knew what he was doing, or came to himself again, until the starting jar of the train told him he was really leaving New York City.

  Some take it soon, some late—but it is a long step along the path of life when a child first pities his mother and father.

  However, the feelings of boyhood, like the skies of spring, change quickly. A few minutes later he was absorbed in the unfamiliar view of the back parts of the city along the railroad track. Within five minutes he was bored by this novelty, and in its place the injustice of being classed with fifth-graders awoke in his mind as a great outrage. He rose and started to edge his way out of his seat, past the strange boy beside him.

  “Where are you going, pal?” came the voice of Uncle Nig. The dark-faced counselor was in the seat behind him.

  “Just to find my cousin Cliff.”

  “Well, ask my permission first. I can't have you wandering off in all directions.”

  “O.K.,” said Herbie, and stepped out into the aisle.

  “Well?” said Uncle Nig.

  “Well, what?”

  “I'm still waiting for you to ask my permission to leave your seat.”

  “I've already left it.”

  “Well, then, get back into it.”

  “But that's silly. I'll only have to get out of it again.”

  “I decide what's silly and what isn't. Get back into your seat.”

  Herbie hesitated, and briefly weighed the advisability of declaring his independence with a formal statement, such as “Horse feathers.” The right of this young man to order him about was not at all clear. He was putting the saddle on Herbie for the first time, when the tamest beast tends to balk; besides, he seemed to be himself in a twilight state, not quite boy, not quite man. But children of eleven are so used to the despotism of the adult race that they can hardly tell usurped authority from the real thing. Herbie added up the elements, took the sum, and climbed back into his seat.

  “Fine, pal. Now go ahead and find your cousin.”

  But to obey this would have savored of jumping through hoops. “Naw,” said Herbie gloomily, “I changed my mind.”

  Uncle Sandy bulked huge at the head of the aisle.

  “All right, gang,” he bawled through his megaphone, “here we go for another summer of rip-roaring fun at good old Camp Manitou. What say, you old-timers, let's show the new gang the Manitou spirit. Uncle Irish is back with us as swimming counselor, and he's going to lead you in the good old camp cheer. Now, give it a lot of spirit.”

  A young man with the broadest shoulders Herbie had ever seen, and a shock of bright red hair, leaped into the aisle, shouted, “O.K., fellows. Let's give 'em ‘Oink-oink, bow-wow.’ All together, now. Hip, hip,” and began waving his arms in strange jerky motions. A ragged chant came forth from some of the boys, consisting of imitations of animal noises, railroad noises, and what sounded like firecracker noises, with no English words that Herbie could understand except a repeated exhortation to “get a rat trap bigger than a cat trap.”

  When it was over, Uncle Irish cried, “O.K., now, you new fellows got it? Let's give it to 'em again, everybody, twice as loud.”

  The thing was repeated. It was not twice as loud, however, but approximately half as loud. This time Herbie thought he heard, amid the squeals, hisses, croaks, and choo-choos, certain references to shanty towns, Chevrolets, chiggers, and cannibals, but he imagined he must be mistaken.

  Uncle Sandy was on his feet again.

  “That was pretty good, gang, pretty good. 'Course it'll sound a lot better when you new fellows really catch on. Now Uncle Irish is going to lead you in ‘Bulldog, Bulldog,’ our camp song. And I want plenty of spirit this time, particularly from you Seniors. You fellows know this song well enough. Now, come on, put some spirit into it.”

  He pointed at a group of boys across the aisle from Herbie, about fourteen or fifteen years of age. They lolled in seats they had reversed so that four of them could face each other, and seemed very grand and old in their long trousers and fedora hats. When they were thus publicly rebuked, Herbie saw them grin evilly at each other and whisper.

  “Bulldog, Bulldog” was duly sung in draggy discords. The older boys sat with locked lips. The voices of the head counsel
or and Uncle Irish boomed out through the car. As soon as the song ended, the silent long-trousered clique burst forth with the following chant, rendered in a sneering singsong, with much more spirit and precision than either the song or the cheer:

  Here comes boloney,

  Riding on a pony—

  Hooray, Uncle Sandy!

  The head counselor strode up the aisle, smiling a joyless smile. He stopped and towered beside Herbie's seat.

  “All right, Bunk Sixteen, I can take a joke,” he said for all the car to hear. “But there are a lot of new boys here who don't know what's right and what's wrong. If you fellows want to spend the first two weeks without senior privileges I'm perfectly agreeable. Just remember, once you're on this train you aren't behind your mama's skirts any more. You're in Camp Manitou. If you can't show real camp spirit, then keep your faces shut.”

  As Uncle Sandy walked back to the front of the car in a heavy silence, Herbie scanned the group of older boys. Smiles and whispers there were none—just shamed, resentful faces. The long trousers appeared to hang less jauntily on their gangling legs.

  “Now, gang,” said the head counselor in a pleasanter tone through the megaphone, “a few simple train rules. No leaving your seat, no changing of seats without your counselor's permission. No opening windows. Absolutely no visiting in the girls' car up ahead. If I catch anyone in the girls' car, it will be just too bad. It's a three-hour ride, so make yourselves comfortable, get acquainted, and get all set for the swellest summer you've ever had. That's all.”

  He sat down. Like a counterweight on a rope, Uncle Irish jumped up.

  “Come on, fellows. Let's give an ‘Oink-oink, bow-wow’ for the good old head counselor, Uncle Sandy.”

  And so a third time the chant was repeated, in such a dreary, tattered way that it all but died between the Chevrolets and the cannibals.

  The train was bowling through suburbs, now, and green was beginning to show here and there through gray and brick red. Herbie's spirits, dampened by the recent shows of force, began to revive. He watched the fleeing landscape with pleasure as the city grimness dwindled and the world in its pristine colors came more and more to view. After a while a cow flashed by—a living cow, an animal the boy had never seen except in picture books and milk-company advertisements. His heart leaped up. Perhaps camp would be fun, after all.

  Two counselors came along the aisle with baskets, and Herbie was handed a cardboard container of milk and a wrapped sandwich. He undid the paper; it was lettuce and canned salmon on rye bread, one of his favorite foods. He sank back into the seat, and munched and sipped and gazed out of the window at trees, brooks, and meadows. There was no longer any doubt about it: he was en route to the Promised Land.

  “Hey, Herbie, where you been?”

  His cousin, Cliff, was standing by the seat, a red and yellow felt cap, with the monogram “CM” on it, pulled down rakishly over one eye.

  “Hi, Cliff, where you been? Whereja get the cap?”

  “One of the guys in my bunk give it to me. They're a swell gang.”

  “What bunk is that?”

  “Twelve. Come on over. I been tellin' them about you.”

  Herbie got up and started to edge out; then he remembered.

  “Uncle Nig, permission to leave my seat?”

  The counselor, his nose in a heavy blue book entitled Comparative Literature, Third Year, grunted consent. Herbie joined his cousin in the aisle.

  “What're you doin' with these kids?” said Cliff in a low tone. “They don't even look like Intermediates.”

  “What's Intermediates?”

  “I'm an Intermediate. So's my whole bunk. It goes Midgets, Juniors, Intermediates, Seniors, and Super-seniors.”

  “Jumpin' cats, I remember now. Cliff, you know what? These kids are Juniors. Juniors! One of them is in 5A. They've stuck me in with Juniors!”

  Herbie pronounced the word “Juniors” as a minister says “pagans,” as a Southerner says “Yankees,” as a millionaire says “bolsheviks.”

  “Aw, it's a mistake,” said Cliff. “Come on an' talk to my counselor. Bet he gets you in with us.”

  Tilting the cap back, for the slant seriously cut down his vision, Cliff led his cousin to the group of boys surrounding the red-headed swimming counselor near the front of the car. “I'm in Uncle Irish's bunk,” he said proudly. Herbie observed lads his own age (and therefore somewhat larger than himself) laughing and joking with the cheer leader. He hoped mightily that he would be taken into this happy circle.

  “Hey, Uncle Irish,” said Cliff, “here's my cousin Herb I been tellin' you about.”

  “Oh, hello, boy wonder,” said Uncle Irish genially. (The name of Uncle Irish, by the way, was Abraham Potovsky.) “So you're the kid who's eleven years old and in 8B.”

  “Eleven and a half,” said Herbie, bashfully.

  “According to your cousin Cliff, you're about the smartest guy alive.”

  “Heck, I'm too fat to run a lot, so I read a lot,” said Herbie.

  This answer was a success both with the counselor and the boys, who had been staring at him rather critically. Uncle Irish laughed. A stocky boy with black hair that stood straight up said, “Well, he admits he's fat, anyway,” and smiled, and shifted so that Herbie could sit opposite the counselor.

  “What bunk are you in, Herb?” said another boy.

  Herbie felt ashamed, but he said, “They got me in Bunk Eight.”

  The cheer leader was amazed. “Bunk Eight for a boy in 8B? Why, that's impossible. They're Juniors.”

  “I guess it's a mistake. I hope so, anyway,” said Herbie.

  “It certainly is,” said Uncle Irish. “Come along right now. We'll talk to Uncle Sandy.”

  “See, I told you, Herb,” whispered Cliff.

  “Get 'im in with us, Uncle Irish,” said the boy with the standing hair.

  The counselor led Herbie by the hand to a front seat of the car which Uncle Sandy occupied in lone state, surrounded by charts, diagrams, and papers. He was preparing schedules of athletic activities, plotting them on sheets clipped to a writing board which he held in his lap. The one he was making at the moment bore the cryptic heading, “Basketball—Toothpaste.” It would bear fruit in due time, in desperate games between the Pepsodents and the Listerines, the Forhans and the Colgates. Boys who were Pebecos would vow everlasting hatred for boys who were Ipanas. Boys unfortunate enough to find themselves on the feeble Odonto team would tearfully ask their parents in mid-season to take them home. Uncle Sandy knew the simple truth that boys, and not only boys, will fight ten times more bitterly in a contest between labels, however inappropriate propriate and silly, than in a vague and casual tussle. So at Camp Manitou when baseball was played it was Fords against Cadillacs; volleyball, Greta Garbos against Joan Crawfords; track meets, Buffaloes against Polecats; and so forth, and so forth, the thin trick repeated and repeated, and never failing to goad the children into showing “camp spirit.” It ended at last in a so-called color war between the Reds and the Yellows. The whole camp, including counselors, was divided, and boys lost weight, made lifelong enemies, fought with fists, nearly drowned, and sometimes broke legs and arms defending the glorious name of Yellow or Red.

  “Sandy,” said Uncle Irish, “may I talk to you for a minute?”

  “Hmph,” said the head counselor, not taking his eye off the line he was drawing alongside the word Squibbs.

  “There seems to have been a mistake in placing one of the kids in Bunk Eight.”

  “Bunk Eight? That isn't your bunk, Irish,” said Uncle Sandy, rousing himself and peering at the speaker through thick lenses.

  “I know. I just happened to find out about it. This boy here, Herbie Bookbinder, is in the eighth grade, and you've got him among the Juniors.”

  Uncle Sandy transferred his squinting gaze to Herbie. His eyes had been nearly ruined in medical studies, of which he was now in the last year.

  “Oh, yes, Herbie Bookbinder.” He meditated a moment,
while Herbie fidgeted.

  “I'll be glad to take him into my bunk,” said the swimming counselor. “That's about where you should have put him, anyhow.”

  Unluckily for Herbie, Uncle Irish said the wrong thing. Sandy was a good-hearted sort of drudge; he had little humor in him and less warmth, but he was anxious to do his work well. Above all things, however, he disliked being forced to admit a mistake. The cheer leader's innocent phrase “you should have put him” was absorbed into the thick fluid of Uncle Sandy's mind as a criticism, and therefore set up irritation.

  “I'm not so sure of that,” he answered slowly. “The basis of camp subdivision is physique, not academic standing. The boy's the size of a Junior, isn't he?”

  “I suppose so,” said Uncle Irish, astonished that Sandy was even arguing the point, “but surely the kid's an exception. Why, he'll be miserable among boys he can't talk to. He simply won't stay the season.”

  Herbie listened to the debate with a pounding pulse, and thought that angels in heaven must have bright red hair and wide shoulders.

  Said Uncle Sandy grudgingly, “Why are you so anxious to have him in your bunk? Think his parents will be good tippers or something?”

  “Gosh, Sandy, I don't care where he goes. I just thought you'd be glad if I mentioned it.”

  Uncle Sandy was glad to correct the blunder, which he would have had to do in any case, but it was necessary for him to make the correction his own instead of Uncle Irish's. He picked up the chart of bunks and checked it over crossly.

  “Anyway, it's impossible to put him in your bunk. You seem to forget that with the space cut out for the water tank you have room for five, not six.”

  “But I only have four now, Sandy. You know, Arnold Osterman didn't show up at the station on account of mumps.”

  Sandy hauled his large mass erect. “Never mind, Irish, I'll take care of this. Your bunk stays as it is. Just go back to your boys. I'll place Herbie Bookbinder myself.”

  Herbie felt his hand once more enclosed by Uncle Sandy's moist, tough paw. He was cut off from Uncle Irish's bunk now, as surely as if it were in another camp. What small things determine happiness and disaster sometimes! Had the cheer leader spoken differently—a change of two or three words would have been enough—Herbie would have attained his desire, instead of being separated from it beyond recall. The head counselor hauled the boy back along the aisle and stopped beside the seat of a dumpy, middle-aged man, whose pale face was blue where it had been shaved. Herbie observed uneasily that Lennie Krieger was sitting in the seat opposite.