Breavman looked at a tall girl named Wanda. She was sitting at the far end of the dock, dangling her toes in the water. She had good legs and yellow hair but they didn’t whip him. She wasn’t quite in the great golden tradition. Wanda, you’re safe from Breavman.
All the girls were very plain. And this was the joke. He knew what two months in that community would do. He’d be writing sonnets to all of them. These poems-to-be made him tired.
The Laurentian sky was jammed with stars. Breavman, who didn’t know the names of constellations, judged confusion to be an aspect of their beauty.
“Counsellors’ meeting,” Krantz called up to the balcony.
“Let’s not go, Krantz.”
“Brilliant idea, except that I’m chairman.”
As they walked to the Counsellors’ Lounge they were joined by Ed, a first-year law student at McGill.
“First guy to make it with Wanda gets it,” Ed proposed. “I mean, it’s a matter of time. We’re all going to make her before the summer’s over, it happens every season, but this way one of us stands to collect.”
Breavman hated that kind of young-buck talk. He wished he had the courage to smash his face. Maybe Krantz would do it. He was supposed to be a lover now.
“I suppose you’re wondering how we can be certain when the first man claims the money.” Ed, the legalist, explained the silence of the other two. Breavman searched the silence for their old unity.
“I think we can trust each other,” said Krantz. “Breavman?”
Breavman called their attention to a falling star.
“A contract of cosmic significance.”
They agreed that five dollars each would make the pool worthwhile.
What did you expect, Breavman, reunion on a windy hill, a knife ceremony and the exchange of blood?
5
The bus depot was a chaos of parents, children, fishing rods, tennis racquets, and bewildered dogs dragged to see their young masters away. Mothers who had been awaiting the great day for weeks were suddenly stricken with a certainty that their babies would starve without them. A special diet was pressed into Breavman’s hand along with a five-dollar bill.
“I know you’ll look after him,” a woman shouted hurriedly, scanning the crowd meanwhile for someone else to bribe.
Fifteen minutes before the scheduled departure Breavman sneaked into one of the empty waiting buses. He closed his eyes and listened to the confusion beyond the window. What was he doing with these people?
“My name is Martin Stark. Capital S, small t, small a, small r, small k. No e.”
Breavman wheeled around.
In the seat behind him, sitting very stiffly, was a boy of about twelve years. His eyes were incredibly white, not naturally, but as if he were straining to show as much white as possible. This gave him an expression of having just seen a catastrophe.
“Sometimes I spell it with an e and then I have to tear up the page and begin again.”
He spoke in a monotone, but over-articulating each word as if it were an elocution lesson.
“My name is Breavman. Capital B, small r, small e …”
He had been warned about Martin, who was going to be one of his campers. According to Ed, Martin was half-nut, half-genius. His mother was supposed to be ashamed of him. At any rate she never came on Visiting Day. Today, Breavman learned from the boy, she had come an hour early and deposited him in the bus with the command not to stir. Thus she avoided meeting the other parents.
“I’m your counsellor this summer, Martin.”
Martin registered no reaction to this information. He continued to stare beyond Breavman with a kind of vacant, unchanging terror. He had a bony face and a great Caesar nose. Because he generally clenched his teeth when he wasn’t talking, the lines of his jaw were severely outlined.
“What’s your favourite store?” asked Martin.
“What’s yours?”
“Dionne’s. What’s your favourite parking lot?”
“I don’t know. What’s yours?”
“Dionne’s Parking Lot.”
The questions excited Martin because now he asked breathlessly, “How many windows are in the building Dionne’s is in?”
“I don’t know, Martin. How many?”
“In all the walls?”
“Of course all the walls. What good would it do to know the number of windows in only one wall or even three walls?”
Martin supplied a number triumphantly. Breavman idiotically promised himself he would check next time he was in town.
“How many cars were in the Dionne’s Parking Lot last Thursday?”
“Tell me.”
Fifty campers invaded the bus. There was much scrambling and bargaining for seats and Breavman’s rapport with the boy was lost. Martin sat calmly through the ride, mumbling to himself. Breavman learned later that he liked to give himself four-figure numbers to multiply together.
On the way north Breavman asked him, “Do you like the country side?”
“After I investigate it.”
6
Three hundred jaws make a lot of noise chewing together. The benches were always too far from or close to the table and needed complicated co-operative action to adjust. He almost slapped a camper for blowing bubbles in his glass of milk.
After the meal Breavman and Ed performed, Breavman pumping out intricate chords that he knew were lost and Ed ruining the high registers of his harmonica to rise above the general mess-hall din.
Breavman, who always wanted to hear Handel playing in his head, beat the wire strings of a borrowed guitar. He had no callouses to resist the bite of the strings on the fingers of his left hand.
His campers and Ed’s shared a bunkhouse, and the counsellors had a partitioned area to themselves in the same wood building. They had between them decided on a policy of rigorous discipline for the first few days. Then they would ease off and be nice guys. After a stern talk the boys went to bed efficiently, except for Martin, who took half an hour to urinate. Ed told them to keep quiet in the morning no matter what time they got up.
The counsellors lay
