“What for?”
“Wanda. Last night.”
“Oh, God, the pool. I’d forgotten.”
He checked his journal and gratefully paid the money.
24
All the days were sunny and the bodies bronze. All he watched was the sand and the exposed flesh, marvelling at the softer city white when a strap fell away. He wanted all the strange flesh-shadows.
He hardly ever looked at the sky. A bird swooping low over the beach surprised him. One of the Brandenburgs was blaring over the PA. He was lying on his back, eyes closed, annihilating himself in the heat and glare and music. Suddenly someone was kneeling over him.
“Let me squeeze it,” went Anne’s voice.
He opened his eyes and shivered.
“No, let me,” Wanda laughed.
They were trying to get at a blackhead in his forehead.
“Leave me alone,” he shouted like a maniac.
The violence of his reaction astonished them.
He pretended to smile, waited a decent interval, left the beach. The bunk was too cool. The night air hadn’t been cooked away. He looked around the small wooden cubicle. His laundry bag was bulging. He’d forgotten to send it off. That couldn’t be right. Not right for him. There was a box of Ritz crackers on the window-sill. That wasn’t how he was supposed to eat. He pulled out his journal. That wasn’t how he was supposed to write.
25
Martin Stark was killed in the first week of August 1958. He was accidentally run over by a bulldozer which was clearing a marshy area. The driver of the bulldozer, the Hungarian named Steve, was not aware that he had hit anything except the usual clumps, roots, stones. Martin was probably hiding in the reeds the better to trap his enemy.
When he didn’t show for supper Breavman thought he might be up there. He asked a junior counsellor to sit at his table. He walked leisurely to the marsh, glad for an excuse to leave the noisy mess hall.
He heard a noise from the weeds. He imagined that Martin had seen him coming and wanted to play a hiding game. He took off his shoes and waded in. He was terribly squashed, a tractor tread right across his back. He was lying face down. Where Breavman turned him over his mouth was full of guts.
Breavman walked back to the mess hall and told Krantz. His face went white. They agreed that the campers must not find out and that the body be removed secretly. Krantz went up to the marsh and returned in a few minutes.
“You stay up there until the camp’s asleep. Ed will take your bunk.”
“I want to go into town with the body,” Breavman said.
“We’ll see.”
“No, we won’t see. I’m going in with Martin.”
“Breavman, get the hell up there now and don’t give me arguments at a time like this. What’s the matter with you?”
He stood guard for a few hours. Nobody came by. The mosquitoes were very bad. He wondered what they were doing to the body. They’d been all over when he found it. There wasn’t much of a moon. He could hear the seniors singing at their bonfire. At about one in the morning the police and ambulance arrived. They worked under the headlights.
“I’m going in with him.”
Krantz had just spoken to Mrs. Stark on the phone. She had been remarkably calm. She had even mentioned that she wouldn’t press charges of criminal negligence. Krantz was very shaken.
“All right.”
“And I’m not coming back.”
“What do you mean you’re not coming back? Don’t start with me now, Breavman.”
“I’m quitting.”
“Camp runs another three weeks. I don’t have anybody to replace you.”
“I don’t care.”
Krantz grabbed his arm.
“You got a contract, Breavman.”
“Screw the contract. Don’t pay me.”
“You phony little bastard, at a time like this —”
“And you owe me five dollars. I had Wanda first. July eleventh, if you want to see my journal.”
“For Christ’s sake, Breavman, what are you talking about? What are you talking about? Don’t you see where you are? Don’t you see what is happening? A child has been killed and you’re talking about a lay —”
“A lay. That’s your language. Five dollars, Krantz. Then I’m getting out of here. This isn’t where I’m supposed to be —”
It was impossible to say who threw the first punch.
26
DON’T SQUEEZE ANYTHING OUT OF THE BODY IT DOESN’T OWE YOU ANYTHING was the complete entry.
He banged it out on the bus to Montreal, typewriter on knees.
It was the worst stretch of the road, signs and gas stations, and the back of the driver’s neck, and his damn washable plastic shirt was boiling him.
If only death could seize him, come through the scum, dignify.
What was it they sang at the end of the book?
Strength! strength! let us renew ourselves!
He would never learn the names of the trees he passed, he’d never learn anything, he’d always confront a lazy mystery. He wanted to be the tall black mourner who learns everything at the hole.
I’m sorry, Father, I don’t know the Latin for butterflies, I don’t know what stone the lookout is made of.
The driver was having trouble with the doors. Maybe they’d never open. How would it be to suffocate in a plastic shirt?
27
Dearest Shell,
It will take me a little while to tell you.
It’s two in the morning. You’re sleeping between the green-striped sheets we bought together and I know exactly how your body looks. You are lying on your side, knees bent like a jockey, and you’ve probably pushed the pillow off the bed and your hair looks like calligraphy, and one hand is cupped beside your mouth, and one arm leads over the edge like a bowsprit and your fingers are limp like things that are drifting.
It’s wonderful to be able to speak to you, my darling Shell. I can be peaceful because I know what I want to say.
I’m afraid of loneliness. Just visit a mental hospital or factory, sit
