The Summer Hideaway Page 14

  George hesitated, but Charles gamely followed along. Then curiosity got the better of George, and he brought up the rear. They came to a clearing with a big garden, its rows divided by long wooden planks. Nearby was a chicken coop, surrounded on all sides and the top by wire.

  “I have to gather the eggs,” said Jane. “Twice a day no matter what. It’s my job.”

  “Sounds like fun,” Charles said.

  “It’s not.” She stood in front of a latched gate. “Shows what you know.”

  “What’s not fun about it?”

  “Him, mainly. That bad rooster.” She pointed out a colorful bird with gleaming beads for eyes and colorful plumes arching from its tail. “He’s mean. He’s so mean.”

  “What’s a rooster doing in there anyway?” George demanded. “He’s sure not laying any eggs.”

  “Jiminy Cricket, don’t you know anything?” Jane said with a sniff. “Keeping a rooster around the chicken coop protects the chickens from predators. Plus, you need a rooster in order to keep the flock going. There can’t be any baby chicks without roosters. Anyways, the rooster pecks because he thinks humans are out to harm the flock.” Jane rolled her eyes.

  “That’s stupid,” said George.

  “They’re chickens,” she said. “They’re supposed to be stupid.”

  “The rooster doesn’t look all that dangerous. It’s just a bird,” George pointed out.

  “With a sharp beak,” she said. She put her hand on the latch, visibly screwing up her courage. In that instant, George started to like her.

  “You want some help?”

  “No, I’ll catch fire and brimstone if one of you gets hurt.” She slipped through the gate and headed for the nesting boxes. “Shoo!” she said to the rooster, flapping her hand in his face. “Go on with you.”

  The rooster lowered its head and rushed forward with amazing speed, sharp beak brandished like a knife. She swung out with her basket. “Get away, you bad rooster!”

  George stood outside the gate, torn by indecision.

  Charles sprang into action, ignoring protests from both his brother and from Jane. He chased the rooster away, waving his arms and making crazy noises. Jane moved quickly, plunging her hand into each nest and snatching the eggs. Within a couple of minutes, they were safely outside the pen, the wire basket full.

  Charles’s face was flushed with excitement. “Hey, that was something,” he said, running along the side of the pen, keeping pace with the rooster. “That was really something.”

  Jane batted her eyes like a matinee princess. “That’s the first time I didn’t get pecked in a long time.”

  “It’s a cinch with two people,” said Charles. “I’ll come and help you every day.”

  “That’s real nice,” she said, grinning at him.

  George felt oddly out of sorts about the whole exchange. “You can’t just drop everything and come here to do farm work,” he said to his brother.

  “Sure I can,” Charles said, predictably. “Maybe I like farm work.”

  George scowled at the basket. “The eggs are no good,” he said. “They’re filthy.”

  “Nonsense. These are farm fresh eggs. None fresher.”

  “They’ve got straw stuck to them, and…and…” He struggled to think of a polite way to say it.

  “Manure,” she said matter-of-factly. “That just means the eggs are fresh as can be.”

  Charles giggled.

  “It’s disgusting.” George regarded the eggs with revulsion.

  “What did you eat for breakfast this morning?” Jane demanded.

  “A cheese omelette.”

  “Ha. It was made from eggs gathered yesterday, just like this. I bet it was delicious.” She headed down the path. “Come on, you can help me wash them in the creek.” She called it a crick but George saw that she meant creek.

  She waded right in and crouched down, dipping the wire basket into the deep, fast-flowing water.

  “I’ll help,” Charles said with his typical eagerness. He leaped for a river rock.

  “It’s all right, I can—”

  She didn’t get a chance to finish. Charles missed the rock and plunged into the stream. He sputtered and flailed, fighting the current.

  George was trying to figure out what to do. Should he jump in and rescue his brother, or—

  “I gotcha.” Jane grabbed the back of Charles’s collar and tugged him toward her. He slipped and fell again, and down she went with a great splash, careful to keep her basket upright and above the water. They came up laughing, and sloshed over to the bank, their clothes plastered to their skin and their hair in straggles.

  “We broke two eggs,” she said.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, you didn’t know.” They were both dripping wet and grinning like fools.

  “I have to get back,” she said, wringing out her hair. “It’s my brother’s last day.”

  They walked her as far as the property edge. The afternoon sun beat down and Jane declared it lucky, as it was drying out her hair and clothes. “I’ll see you around,” she said.

  Charles and George stood watching her for a few minutes. She entered the yard through a gate and set her basket on the ground. Then she ran to Stuart, a tall, lanky young man with a huge smile and military haircut.

  He picked her up and swung her around, and she tilted back her head, laughing uproariously as she clasped him around the waist with her legs. The rest of the family gathered around, watching with fond smiles.

  “Hey, you,” Stuart said, “you’re all wet. You smell like the crick. And like sunshine! I’m sure going to miss you, Sunshine.”

  This was the kind of thing Mr. McClatchy ought to be covering for his paper, thought George. A family like this, one that didn’t have a fancy house and expensive things. They had each other, and were bound by a love even a stranger could see.

  McClatchy would probably say a story about an ordinary family wouldn’t sell papers. Even though stuff like this made John Steinbeck famous.

  “I miss Father,” Charles said as they hiked back to camp.

  George slung his arm around his brother’s skinny shoulders.

  When they returned to their cottage, Charles bubbled over with stories of their adventure. As George knew would be the case, their mother was not amused. She scolded him about getting his shoes wet and said, “You are here to make friends with the other guests. Not with the workers’ children.”

  “Does it matter?” asked Charles.

  “Of course it matters.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the other guests are like you. They’re the sort of people you’ll be surrounded with all your life.”

  “What if I don’t want to be with people like me?” Charles demanded.

  George snickered. “Now you know how I feel, having to be around you.”

  “Nuts to you,” Charles said.

  Nine

  Deep in the wilderness, the children made their own rules. They played out stories from myth, legend, fairy tales…or whatever George happened to scribble in his notebook the night before.

  Jane, who was a little older than Charles and a little younger than George, turned out to be a good match for both brothers. She declared herself a royal princess and claimed dominion over all she surveyed. Charles indulged his usual obsession with Superman. George told them the story of the Three Musketeers—Athos, Porthos, Aramis—and the way they always fought as an inseparable unit, protecting each other from all harm. He taught them to say “one for all and all for one” in French. The Three Musketeers became their favorite game.

  Despite the disapproval of George’s mother, the three became fast friends. The Gordons didn’t approve of the threesome any more than the Bellamys did. They, too, believed the hosts and guests should never mingle socially, but Mrs. Gordon was usually too busy running things to enforce many rules.

  Their favorite expedition was the hike to the summit of Watch Hill. From the very top, all
of Willow Lake could be seen, even the town, ten miles away on the opposite end of the lake. They could see the curvy lakeshore road that hugged the perimeter of the vast lake. From this perspective, Camp Kioga resembled a miniature model fort from colonial times. Spruce Island, the wooded atoll in the middle of the lake, rose up like a mystical green enchanted isle.

  George had been getting headaches for a few weeks running, but he didn’t tell his mother, because he didn’t want to be confined to his cabin. Today the pain was stabbing like a knife. Ignoring it, he crept out on a rocky outcropping and sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching the progress of a shiny black car on the road, far in the distance. You didn’t see too many cars in these parts, what with gas rationing in force, just the occasional farm vehicle or bus, and quite often, a horse and buggy. Even wealthy people left their cars at home as a sign of patriotism.

  “What are you looking at?” inquired Jane, sitting beside him.

  He gestured. “That car.”

  The approaching car gleamed with importance. It was as black as a hearse, and left a trail of dust behind it.

  They watched for a few minutes. The sun was just starting to slant toward afternoon, and its heat was so intense it seemed to pulse. Crickets sang in the tall grass, and the green smell of summertime rode the breeze. Bees browsed in the wildflowers that covered the hillside. Beside him, Jane was very still. She had a smell, too—her mother’s homemade soap, scented with evergreen. For a few seconds, it was so quiet he could detect the cadence of her breathing. It was even and slow.

  And then she gasped, startling him so that he nearly fell off the outcropping. “That car is turning up the camp road!”

  She jumped up and George gave a curt command to Charles—Let’s go—and for once his little brother didn’t argue or demand an explanation.

  The three of them ran hell-for-leather down the hill. George told himself not to think or speculate. A reporter didn’t judge or prognosticate until he had all the facts. George didn’t let himself imagine what he would do if the car brought news of his father.

  But the car kept rolling past the camp.

  And that was when George knew. He knew Jane understood, too, because he could hear her gasping with sobs.

  When they got to the Gordon house, the polished official vehicle was already there. They were too far away to hear what was being said. But in the end, it didn’t matter. They could see it playing out before them—an officer in fancy dress uniform, cap removed and tucked ceremonially under his elbow. His posture straight, arm snapping in a smart salute.

  Jane’s mother, coming out into the yard with her apron still on.

  There was a brief exchange. Mrs. Gordon sank to the ground as though her bones suddenly melted, her own strength not enough to hold her up. The officer scrambled awkwardly to help her.

  Jane turned to Charles and George, her eyes already haunted with unbearable knowing. “I have to go,” she said. She spoke with a curious dignity that made her seem older. Wiser. As if the girl who had gone up the hill was a different person from the one who had come down it.

  “I have to go,” she said again. “My mother needs me.”

  The news made its way slowly through Camp Kioga—Stuart Gordon was dead. He’d gone to the Pacific to fight in the war, and at the age of eighteen he’d been killed in action “in the performance of duty and service of his country,” according to the hand-delivered telegram.

  George kept seeing Stuart in his mind’s eye, twirling a laughing Jane around and calling her Sunshine. He imagined similar scenarios unfolding all around the country. Families were interrupted in the middle of dinner, the middle of the night, the middle of their lives, to be told somebody young and strong and beloved was dead.

  Charles started having nightmares. He would thrash and whimper in his bunk and wake up crying for his father.

  Someone said Mrs. Gordon was suffering from a terrible heartache and would be going to New Haven to stay with relatives for a change of scenery. Losing her son was simply too tragic for Mrs. Gordon to contemplate the future without him.

  Jane tried to explain. “Everything here reminds her of him. I heard my aunt Tilly say it’s causing a nervous disorder.” She scuffed her bare heel into the dusty ground. “That’s a code word for crazy.”

  George paid closer attention to accounts of the war in the newspaper. That was when he realized what he ought to do with his life. He ought to write for newspapers and magazines like Mr. McClatchy did. Somebody had to tell the world what was going on. Somebody had to tell the story behind the casualty numbers. If more people understood the true price being paid for the war, they might find a way to end it.

  Jane was going away with her mother. Her father would stay and run Camp Kioga, but her mother couldn’t bear to be here, where memories of her lost son lurked around every corner. Jane came to tell the Bellamy boys goodbye and said there was time for one more expedition through the forest, to their special place high on Watch Hill.

  George felt cranky and out of sorts. He had that same headache, the one that pounded hard no matter whether or not his mother gave him a headache powder. He felt sleepy, too, but it was a beautiful day and he was not about to stay inside.

  He didn’t exactly know how to act around Jane. He felt like he should treat her differently because she was different. She seemed more serious to him, maybe a little quieter, a noticeable change since she was usually so animated and bubbly.

  The hike to the top of Watch Hill made him especially tired. He felt more hot and sweaty than he’d ever been in his life. He and Charles and Jane stood at the summit, surveying the view below like gods of myth and legend.

  There was something wrong with George’s vision. The entire landscape blurred together like a watercolor—the lake in the woods. The sky and the long squiggle of the road. Everything spun like a pinwheel. The voices of the others sounded hollow, like echoes shouted down a tube.

  “My mother doesn’t want to help run the camp anymore,” Jane was telling them. “She told my father it makes her too sad. Pa and I love Camp Kioga, though. It was started by my grandfather, and I want it to be mine one day, and I aim to make that happen.”

  She sounded adamant, like she was in one of the melodramas they put on at camp.

  George thought he should commend her for her loyalty and lofty commitment. The words swirled around in his head. He must have made some kind of noise, because the others turned to stare at him. Their faces expanded and contracted as though viewed in a fun house mirror. Their voices sounded funny, too, like the Victrola when it needed a turn of the crank.

  And even though George meant to tell Jane she was brave and strong and that he admired her, something else came out. He fell to his knees while vomit erupted with undeniable force.

  He had just barely enough consciousness left to feel humiliated.

  He lost track of time and forgot where he was. Jane yelled something and Charles sped off down the hill. Then Jane crouched beside him and tried to give him water from her round, flat canteen. George couldn’t swallow the rusty-tasting liquid. Could barely even open his mouth. Could see only pinholes of light. He felt the water dribbling away, could hear Jane crying, and he wanted to tell her it was all right but that would be a lie. It was not all right. Something was terribly wrong and he was just as scared as she.

  An eternity passed. A lifetime. Maybe he slept. Maybe he died. No, sleep, because he became aware of a shadow falling over Jane, an eclipse plunging her into darkness, swallowing her whole.

  Help. He couldn’t say it, but he thought it. He needed Superman, not Clark Kent.

  The hulking forms of strangers surrounded George. Somebody scooped him up. Maybe he was being swooped to safety by Superman.

  But he wasn’t safe. Things melted together and things fell apart. He had only blurred impressions, couldn’t tell what was real and what was in his head. He sensed Jane Gordon being snatched away, reeled in, kept at a distance, growing smaller and smaller…dis
appearing. His own brother Charles was pulled away, too, disappearing, separated from him, forbidden to go near him.

  Vague impressions floated past George, and he struggled to separate the real images from the nightmares. He thought he saw men in special vulcanized coats arriving and shutting down everything—the dining hall, the cabins, the sporting facilities, the pool, everything.

  Official signs from the health department were posted everywhere: Quarantined by the Ulster County Board of Health.

  George was shrouded in blankets, piles and piles of them, even though his head was on fire.

  He was plunged into a zinc tub filled with icy water.

  He saw white lights. Naked bulbs staring down at him like monster eyes. His skinny, bloodless body no longer belonged to him.

  Too weak to cry out. But his soul cried out. His heart cried out. Nobody heard him. There were noises in his head, sounds and voices. He didn’t know what was real and what was in the comic book.

  All around him, white light. White sheets in the hospital room, white blinds on the window, a long white passageway with no end.

  His father. Concerned frown, lower half of his face wearing a surgeon’s mask, sleeve tied up at his left shoulder where his arm used to be. Why? Why? What was Father here for?

  Voices in the stark echoing hallway. Highly contagious…Commonly transmitted via contaminated food…They spoke as if he could not hear. Maybe he couldn’t. Or maybe this was just something else from the comic book in his head. The voices, though. He knew them. Mother, crying—long, desperate sobs. Father, coughing. No, not coughing. He was sobbing, too. George had never heard his father weep before.

  And the doctor had not yet spoken the dreaded word—the true diagnosis. It was as if Mother and Father already knew. A scream came from his mother like a howl of pain from a wounded animal.

  George told the ringing bells in his ears to be still so he could hear. He concentrated very hard on what the doctor was saying. A good reporter did that. He listened. He concentrated. He did not miss anything.