Gather Yourselves Together

  “Two weeks.”

  “This the first time?”

  “Yes.”

  “Nice place,” the fellow said.

  Carl gazed at the shapes splashing and shouting in the water. He was very quiet, saying nothing.

  Jimmy punched him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Homesick?”

  “No.” Carl looked up toward the platform on the other side. Figures lay in the sun. Beyond them a bank of black earth rose, twisted tree roots. A road, half way up the hillside. Along the skyline a distant row of firs.

  “What, then?”

  “I didn’t know there were girls here. I thought it was just boys.”

  “They live across the creek,” the fellow put in.

  “Sure, we saw their tents,” Jimmy said.

  On the edge of the platform a girl sat resting. In the sunlight her body sparkled and glistened. She had taken off her cap. Her hair was long and dark. It fell around her neck and shoulders. She was staring down into the water, her face expressionless.

  Carl watched her until Jimmy grabbed him and tried to roll him into the water.

  “Let go!” Carl shouted. The water closed over him. He dragged himself out, spluttering and spitting, water pouring from his mouth and nose.

  “You’re mad,” Jimmy said, noticing his expression.

  Carl threw himself onto the sand. “No.”

  “Yes you are.”

  On the platform the girl had disappeared. Carl did not know where she had gone. He waited, but she did not come back. A girl came up the ladder from the water, onto the platform, but it was not her. It was someone else.

  The sun crossed the sky. A cold wind whipped around them. The swimmers left the water.

  “Time to go in,” a counselor said. “Get cleaned up for dinner.”

  There was a dance. It was night. The tables in the redwood dining room had been cleared away to make room. A phonograph had been set up, records and a loudspeaker in the corner. Boys shuffled in, moving over to one side, lining up as far away from the girls as possible.

  “I can’t dance,” Jimmy said.

  “Too bad,” said Carl.

  “I didn’t come to camp to do any dancing.”

  A lot of the boys were punching each other and shuffling around. In the center of the room was a big space, separating the boys from the girls. Mr. Fletcher, the man who ran the camp, got out in the middle, waving for silence.

  “The first dance is girl’s choice!” he announced, wiping his neck with a red handkerchief.

  The music started from the phonograph. The boys slunk back against each other, moving toward the wall. A few girls came across the space toward them,

  “What’ll I do if some girl asks me to dance?” Jimmy muttered.

  “Tell her you want to sit this dance out.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means you don’t know how to dance.”

  A skinny girl with yellow hair wandered around in front of them, looking for somebody to dance with. The boys edged sullenly away, watching her uneasily.

  “Let’s go,” Jimmy whispered, tugging at Carl.

  “Where?”

  “Outside.”

  “We can’t go outside. We’re supposed to be in here dancing.”

  Jimmy said nothing. The girl had gone off with a little short fellow wearing a bow tie. “Whoever heard of a bow tie,” Jimmy said.

  In the warmth, the fellow’s face was shiny with perspiration. Several couples were dancing slowly.

  “Look at them.”

  Carl tried to see across the floor to the other side. Was—was she there? The girl with the dark hair. He looked and looked, but he could not see her.

  “What are you staring at?” Jimmy demanded.

  “Nothing.”

  “You see somebody?”

  “No.” It was true. He did not see her. More couples were on the floor. More girls had come across to ask boys to dance. Jimmy was getting more nervous.

  “I’m going outside,” Jimmy said.

  “All right.”

  “Aren’t you coming?”

  “No.”

  “You—you turd.” Jimmy punched him and then made his way over to the door and outside.

  Carl was alone. Sadness filled him. The music roared through the room. Couples shuffled around him, back and forth. A low murmur of talk dinned against his ears. He wandered around aimlessly. At a table there was punch, served in paper cups. A woman gave him a cup. He went on, sipping it. The punch was warm and thick. It tasted of fruit, like stale pop.

  When he got back to where he had been standing he saw her. His heart turned over inside him. She was dancing, in a long white dress with red flowers in her hair. She was laughing. He could see her teeth, little and even. Her skin was dark. She was Spanish or something. Her eyes were large and bright.

  Gloom descended over Carl, a strange sweet gloom, like the punch in the paper cup. It made him ache all over. He moved to the edge of the circle of watching boys.

  A plump girl grabbed his arm. “Dance? Dance?”

  “Let go.” He pulled away angrily. The plump girl ran off after someone else, laughing and shoving.

  The music ended. Jimmy came back inside, slipping over beside Carl. “How was it?” he asked.

  “How was what?”

  “The dancing.”

  “I didn’t dance.”

  “I never thought they’d have dancing at a camp,” Jimmy said. “Who ever heard of dancing at a camp?”

  It was very silent during the long nights, with everyone asleep and no light anywhere. Sometimes Carl woke up and lay listening, warm in his sleeping bag, only his head out. The night wind moved through the trees growing by the creek.

  Carl lay listening. He could hear many scratching sounds in the darkness. Animals? One morning he had found a grey squirrel standing on his sleeping bag. The air was heavy with mist. No one was up. The squirrel stood upright, gray and rigid. Then he flowed off onto the ground, followed by his tail. The squirrel dipped and weaved across to a big redwood tree and scrambled up it.

  Later, when the mists had faded, the kitchen people began to bang things around in the dining room. Lying in his sleeping bag, waiting for the breakfast gong to sound, Carl could hear their sound, echoing up the creek, a hollow sound, a distant drumming. A strange sound, mixing with the slowly drifting creek, the great silent trees, the leaves and earth.

  Everything was so different from home. His regular life seemed unreal. A dream. His room, his microscope, his stamps. The pictures. Books, records, endless drawers and piles. The stuffy closed-up room. Here the air was thin and clear. He could see for miles, rising green hills and trees, higher and higher. The smell of the air, the trees, the moist ground. The way stones felt under his feet. The freezing water. The dry sand against him.

  He paid a nickel to ride in a canoe, up the creek until he came to a bridge. The shore was covered with stones. Endless gray stones. He drifted with the stream, allowing the canoe to go where it wanted. He forgot that it was costing him a nickel an hour. He put the paddle down and lay stretched out, listening to the sound of the water, to the silence of the woods around him.

  On and on the canoe went. The camp was a long way behind. He stirred. It was time to go back. He was entirely alone, for the first time in his life. There was no one at all. It was not like being alone in his room. There he was surrounded with things, a whole roomful of things. And beyond the room was the whole city, endless men and women, countless people. In the city no one was ever alone.

  But here there was no one. He gazed at the steep banks that rose on both sides of him, tangled shrubbery, old roots, crumbling soil. The lines of trees, firs, redwoods, Cyprus, pine. A bird cried out, rushing away. A bluejay. So alone. It made him feel sad, but he enjoyed the sadness. The sweetness… It was such a strange sadness. As if he were rushing away, faster and faster, in his canoe, down the stream between the steep banks. Leaving everyone
behind him forever.

  He picked up the paddle and turned the canoe. He paddled back.

  At night he could hear the creek. He could not see it, but he knew it was there. The creek was very close to him, just beyond the trail and down the slope. Moving always, silently, carrying bits of bark and twigs and leaves along with it. Branches and leaves, all the way to the ocean.

  Carl stared up at the dark sky. Above the redwoods a few stars winked. He could see the outlines of the trees, the columns rising up on all sides, supporting the sky. He thought about the girl, the girl with the dark hair. Would he ever see her again? The two weeks were going swiftly. Across the stream was her tent, someplace on the other side. She was there, beyond the water, sleeping silently.

  He closed his eyes. When he opened them again the first feelers of gray mist were starting to settle down. It was morning. A vague, diffused light hung everywhere. The stars were gone. Carl shivered. It was very still and cold. In the cot next to him Jimmy grunted and turned over.

  Carl lay watching. Mist blew around him. His face was moist. He could see the creek, now. The broad surface, like pale stone. And the bank on the other side rising up, the trees and roots and vines. The ancient twisted roots.

  After a while he slipped out of his sleeping bag. He was trembling all over from the damp coldness. There was no sound. The world was utterly silent. He pulled his cotton pajamas around him and padded across the trail, down the slope, picking his way carefully. Nothing stirred. The mist eddied everywhere. He came to the bottom of the slope. There was the water, the flat opaque surface. It moved so slowly that it did not seem to move at all. But it was moving. A branch passed, a black dripping branch, cold and stark, its leaves hanging limp.

  Carl sat down on the slope at the edge of the water. Time passed. He did not feel the cold. The mists began to go away a little. But there was no color anywhere. The sky, the water, the trees, everything was dull and flat. Gray. A world of ghosts, silent shapes.

  He dozed. And when he opened his eyes she was standing on the other side of the stream. He was stiff all over, stiff and cold. She was looking at him. She did not speak. Carl and the girl gazed across the gray stream at each other.

  A bird flashed through the trees. Faintly, down the creek, a metallic booming drifted. The kitchen people, starting breakfast. The girl stood between two trees, her hand against one, at the very edge of the water. She wore a kind of gray robe. Her hair was long and black. Her eyes were black. He could see her tiny white teeth. Her mouth was open a little. A cloud of moisture rose from her lips as she breathed.

  Carl did not move. The trees, the girl, the water, everything blended together in the silent grayness. After a time he fell asleep again.

  When he woke, Jimmy was kicking him in the small of the back.

  “Get up!” Jimmy demanded, his voice shrill and far away.

  Carl stirred. He could hardly move. His bones ached. He was stiff and numb.

  “Get up!”

  Carl got slowly to his feet. His head ached and rang. He could hardly see. He was terribly tired. Up the bank he climbed, trembling and shaking.

  “What’s the matter? You sick? Why were you sitting there? How long were you sitting there?”

  He did not answer. He made his way to his cot and sat down. One of the counselors came striding along the trail. He halted. “Anything wrong?”

  “He’s sick,” Jimmy said.

  The counselor came over. “You sick, Fitter?”

  Carl nodded.

  “There’s something wrong with him,” Jimmy said.

  He lay in the nurse’s tent, in the big bed. The sheets were crisp and white. He was very tired. He wanted only to lie quietly.

  The nurse came in. “How do you feel?”

  “All right.” It was early morning, about ten. He could see the sun, shining through the tent flap.

  The nurse took his temperature. “Your mother will be up sometime today. Do you feel well enough for the trip back?”

  Carl nodded.

  “Have you had breakfast?”

  “No.”

  “I’ll have someone bring over your pancakes.” The nurse went out of the tent, past the table of bottles.

  Carl gazed out at the sunlight and the trees and vines. Soon he would be going home. His mother was coming. He was tired. He turned over on his side and closed his eyes.

  A sound filtered into his sleep. He lifted his head a little. The room came into focus. Someone was standing by the bed, looking silently down at him. He stirred, turning over. Was it—His heart caught. Was it—

  The woman moved closer. It was his mother. He lay back.

  “What did you do, fall in the water?” his mother demanded.

  He did not answer.

  “Get your clothes on. We’re going back to town. I can’t understand why they’d let a child fall in the water and just sit and get sick.”

  “I didn’t fall in.” But she had gone out of the tent. He got slowly out of bed.

  “Hurry up,” her voice came. “Do you need help?”

  “No,” Carl said.

  Carl’s mother died while he was in junior high school. He went to live with his grandmother and grandfather. They were German. His grandfather worked for the Wonder Bread Company. He slept all day long down in the cellar, coming up late at night to go to work.

  It was a huge old house that his grandparents had. In the front an ancient palm tree rose up, dirty and ugly. The front porch sagged. One of the side windows was broken. Carl had a room of his own, in the back of the house, where he could see the garden. The backyard was large. It was full of cats. At night he could hear them quarreling among themselves. The yard was wild and overgrown. The garden had not been tended for years. There were many plants out in the back. Bamboo, wisteria, jungle grass. At the far end berry bushes sagged with dripping blackberries.

  Early in the summertime Carl liked to go outside and stand, smelling the berries rotting in the sun, a sweet hot smell, like flesh of a person near him. He liked to go and lie down in the jungle grass near the berry bushes, smelling them, feeling them close to him. The smell of the berries, the warm wind, the movement of the bamboo all came together and made him sense life so close and tangent that he could scarcely believe there was not someone in the yard with him.

  He would become tired and go to sleep, lying in the grass. When he woke from sleep he always felt loggy and saturated with the smell and presence of the garden. He would struggle to his feet and go into the house to wash his face.

  Looking in the cracked mirror in the high-ceilinged old bathroom, the walls yellow and peeling, Carl would wonder at his reflection, wonder where he was going and what would finally become of him, as he grew older. His mother was dead. His grandparents were quite old. Soon he would be out on his own, earning his own living, making his own way. Where would he go? Which direction would he take? Soon he would know.

  He gazed and wondered.

  16

  WHEN CARL WAS in high school he joined the chess club and the debating team. He debated political questions with great zeal. There was one debate a week, held after school in one of the class rooms. Anyone who wanted to could come and listen. A few students came, and some of the teachers.

  “You’re a good debater, Carl,” Mr. McPherson said to him one day. “When we debate against Lawrence High I want you on the team.”

  Carl swelled with pleasure. “No kidding?”

  “What question do you want to take? The teams usually submit sample questions.”

  Carl considered. “I want to defend the Political Action Committee,” he stated. The PAC was under attack that year. Sidney Hillman was on the hook from all sides.

  Mr. McPherson raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s not my idea of a good subject. Why don’t you take federal aid to schools? Wouldn’t you rather tackle that?”

  “No. I want to defend the PAC. I feel a labor union has the right to make itself heard. How else can the working class gain political r
epresentation? It’s useless to expect the regular parties to represent labor. They’re firmly in the hands of reactionary big city business men.”

  Mr. McPherson shook his head. “Well, we’ll see,” he murmured. He went off down the hall.

  Carl had been a socialist for some time, ever since the middle of the tenth grade. He had attended a lecture on socialism by the Youth Socialist League at a neighborhood church. He contributed twenty-five cents and took home a handful of pamphlets. The pamphlets described the condition of the working masses. It was pretty awful.

  “Look at this,” Carl said to Bob Baily. They were sitting at a soda fountain. It was after school. Other high school kids sat around them, throwing paper wads at each other and playing the juke box.

  “What is it?” Baily said.

  Carl handed him a pamphlet, folded open. “Read it.”

  Baily read it, his lips moving. Presently he gave it back.

  “What do you think?” Carl demanded.

  “Interesting.”

  “Did you know things like that went on in this country?”

  “I guess not.”

  “Strikers beaten, their wives terrorized. Children working fifteen hours a day.” Carl told him about a book in which a child, working in a pork refining plant, had gradually lost his feet in the pools of corrosive acid lying everywhere on the cement floor, until at last there was nothing left below his ankles.

  “Terrible,” Baily said.

  “Well?”

  “Well what?”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  Baily considered. He was a tall thin youth with glasses and red hair. He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  “Don’t you want to get out in the streets?”

  “Streets?”

  “The barricades!” Carl shouted, his eyes flashing, his face alight.

  Baily was puzzled. But by then their cokes had come and the matter was forgotten. Carl drank his coke, staring off into the distance.

  “What are you thinking about?” Baily asked.

  Carl stirred. “What?”

  “What are you thinking about?”

  Carl smiled a little. “Many things,” he said.

  Carl went to college only one year. It was election year. A friend of his, a graduate student doing work in the political science department, was running for the office of city councilman against the corrupt Democratic and Republican candidates. Earl Norris was running on his own. He did not go along with anybody, not even with the Progressive Party, which was controlled by Stalinists.