suggested play and joy and mischief. The pine trees stood in bunches, their branches grown together in dark, tangled canopies. The tunnel-like paths beneath them twisted and wound this way and that, past other kinds of trees—gnarled maples and birch trees with papery bark that unraveled in long, teasing curls. There were jags of rock to hide behind, patches of canary grass high as my waist. And the woods had a downward tilt to them—they sloped down from the camp in a way that implied decline, a kind of crumbling collapse toward Lake Deed, which lay below, and which was black and miles around and always fringed with a foamy white discharge. There were deep currents in the lake, too. If you watched it closely for a long time, you could detect a slow churning motion, a sluggish kind of spinning.
I had my first encounter with McCrae at Lake Deed.
This land below About Face was to be used to expand the camp. Sergeant Brill hoped to get a permit from the state to raze most of the trees by next year, and he often punished the camp’s worst cadets, like McCrae, by forcing them to help clear the walkway leading down through the trees to the lake. When I wasn’t on trumpet or driving Lex to the hospital, Sergeant Brill had me do menial things around the camp—help dolly boxes of food from the supply trucks into the canteen closet, or restock the bathrooms. But sometimes when he sent cadets down to the lake he had me go with the other drill sergeants “to have an extra set of eyes around,” as he said. So I tagged along and watched drill sergeants like Williams tie the cadets together by their waists with a leash-like metal cable and then march them through the locked fencing at the back of the camp and down into the woods. I followed them through the trees and hovered at the edge of the group, looking for any kind of acting out. There was an after- school camp for wealthy children somewhere on the other side of the water, and though we never saw them out on the lake itself, on still days we could hear those other children playing on their beach—the yelps, the laughter, the gasps brought on by the sting of cold water. I often caught McCrae staring out over the dark, spinning expanse in the direction of those voices. And with such hatred in his eyes! Like if he had a second’s chance he’d split their heads open one by one, like pieces of firewood.
Once, during the cadets’ lunch hour, I saw McCrae, still attached to the others by the leash, fidgeting with something by the edge of the water. The other three drill sergeants were eating their lunches and talking nearby, and though I wasn’t supposed to address the cadets myself, I went over.
“McCrae, what are you up to?” I said in a friendly tone. I never spoke harshly to the cadets. I figured that maybe if I seemed relaxed around them, they might open up to me.
McCrae stood up, but when he glanced over his shoulder and saw who I was, he kept his back to me. I could see that he had something in his hands. “The music man,” he said. He had started the cadets calling me “music man.”
“Hey, music man,” said Cadet Spitz, sitting on a rock by the shore. “You got some bird shit in your hair.”
I reached up to feel my head before realizing that he was talking about my patch of white hair. The cadets laughed, the cable between them shaking. Spitz looked at McCrae as though for approval, but McCrae stood facing the lake.
“Funny, Spitz,” I said. “Hey, McCrae. What’s in your hands there, buddy?”
“Nothing to worry about, music man,” he said, his back still to me. The water lapped at the shore.
“McCrae. Do me a favor and show me your hands,” I said. Out of the corner of my eye I saw another drill sergeant approaching. I wanted to handle this before he took over.
“Come on now, music man,” said McCrae. “Let’s not start acting like a drill sergeant.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said, growing angry.
“It means we all know you were assigned to this job. It’s no secret. Cadet Granz over there thinks they sent you here because you’re one of those special retards who, you know, can do some things real good, like count or play a instrument. No offense. But I’m of the mind that you did something wrong to end up here, just like us. So what’s the story?”
“My story is I’m here to serve my community, McCrae. And as an official drill sergeant I’m ordering you to turn around! Right now!”
McCrae laughed. “Okay, okay. Don’t get all riled up.”
“McCrae!” shouted the other drill sergeant. “Shut up and turn around!” He grabbed McCrae and spun him around.
McCrae let something flap up out of his hands. It rushed at me, beating its wings against my chest and neck. I grabbed it, and saw that it was a baby loon. How McCrae had managed to catch the bird, I don’t know. Attached to its leg was a luggage tag, one of the slips we tied to the cadets’ duffels when we shipped them in or out.
“Empty your pockets, McCrae,” said the drill sergeant.
McCrae pulled his pockets inside out and a dozen little pieces of paper fluttered to the ground.
“That’s the end of lunch, then,” said the drill sergeant. Then he addressed the other cadets. “Drop what you’re eating and get back to work.” The boys sighed and swore under their breath, then got to their feet and started working again. As the other drill sergeant pushed him past me, McCrae shot me a sad look, a look that said he was disappointed in me, as though I’d let him down somehow. I looked at the loon, the tag still attached to its leg. I pictured it landing on the other side of the lake, on the beach where the children from the other camp were playing; I pictured it landing right in some little girl’s hands.
“Nunce” is short for
Each morning at five fifty I took my place beneath the flagpole, dew still beading the grass, the occasional low fog stewing around my ankles, and waited there until it was time to play reveille. I listened to the rope gently bell against the flagpole. I watched a golden outline materialize around the distant treetops. And then, right at six o’clock, I emptied myself into that horn. Sometimes I rang loud enough to knock the birds from the trees. At night, I returned to the spot and played taps the same way.
When Brill didn’t need me to do much, I practiced down by the lake. He’d given me permission to use his locker because it was larger than the standard lockers, which wouldn’t fit my horn. He was one of the only sergeants with keys to the back gate, so I was always careful when I borrowed them to go practice.
I thought someone might complain about my playing, maybe someone who lived on the lake, or even someone from that other camp across the water, but no one ever did. Even when I played at night, imagining that I was playing just for Lex, no one got upset. In the evenings I tried to play softly, hoarsely. I crooned out songs like “In the Still of the Night” and “Blue Hawaii,” songs of romance and longing, coaxing songs, while the lake spun slowly around, black and sparkling as a new record.
Every few days I drove Lex back and forth to the hospital. Rich northeastern forest hemmed the road nearly all the way, and as time passed, I got to watch the onset of the frost, the first snow. Williams stopped tagging along after the second week, so the rides were just me and Lex. She always sat in the last row, the farthest away from me. The first few weeks I tried to make conversation, but she kept cutting me short, answering with a nod or a shake of the head. There was no blaming her. By the time we were off to the hospital, her system was clogged with nearly three days’ worth of urea, so much that even from the driver’s seat I could see how egg-pale her skin was. It itched her, too. She kept a housepainter’s brush in her purse that she often took out and used to scratch herself. I’d watch in the mirror as she feathered the brush up and down her neck and arms and thighs. Occasionally her skin pained her so much that she cried, quietly though, with her head leaned against the window. As winter deepened, the trip grew much longer. Deer appeared in the road more often and slipped and spun on patches of ice while trying to get out of the way. The sky became a gray faucet of snow. I had to drive with caution.
One snowy day in December the drive took an especially long time. Usually the trip took about forty minutes, but that afternoon an hour into the ride we were hardly more than two-thirds of the way there. Lex had given up
