Camp Pleasant Read Free

in greeting, not the remotest flicker of change on his face. He sank down heavily in the chair beside his wife’s and I saw her wince as he, quite obviously, pinched her under the table. He plucked the cigar from his mouth, laid it beside his plate, quaffed down orange juice in a swallow and refilled his glass to the brim.
    “Ed is hungry,” Bob murmured beneath the general chatter of conversation at the table. “He’s probably had ten or eleven rashers of bacon and a few dozen eggs.”
    While we ate I looked over at Nolan. He was wolfing down cereal, his cheeks bulging with spoonfuls of it, heavily sugared. I noticed the small hole in his tee-shirt through which protruded tufts of black hair. Directly under his large pectorals began the downward bulge of his belly. I glanced at his wife. She seemed so out of place next to Nolan; like a fawn coupled to a grizzly bear. Once, she looked up before I could glance away and, for an instant, I unable to take my eyes from hers. She smiled a little at me and I felt a shudder run down my back as I reached for the newly brought plate of scrambled eggs.
    In the middle of eggs and toast Nolan rose and stood silently until the noise had abated and the eating ceased. Then he picked the cigar from his mouth and spoke.
    “Some of you have been with me before,” he said. “Some of you are here for the first time. But remember this—all of you. No matter if you’re new here or you know the ropes—I expect good work from you. You’re being paid for it and that’s the way I want my camp run.”
    While Ed Nolan talked, I looked at his wife. She was staring at the table and there was a look of strange, bleak emptiness in her eyes.
5.
    Directly after breakfast, Bob and I retired to the fields to scythe until the ground was thick with mown grass, the air heavy with the hot smell of sap and pollen dust. We worked under an over blast of sunlight, the salty taste of sweat in our mouths. I hadn’t done manual labor since the army and that morning did me in. By ten I had to handkerchief my right hand to protect the blisters. By eleven I was starting to burn and had to put my tee-shirt back on; by twelve the burning ache had penetrated to my muscles. I sat stiff and miserable at lunch, downing nevertheless, a gigantic meal.
    Happily, lunch was followed by an hour’s rest period, a regular feature of Camp Pleasant’s schedule. I slept heavily and motionlessly on the cabin bunk until Bob shook me back to consciousness. Groggy with sleep, I trudged back to the fields again for an afternoon of gathering up the cut grass and stuffing it into sacks which we tossed on the truck so Sid Goldberg could drive them to the giant incinerator.
    At four-thirty, Big Ed pronounced the lake open. I wanted to head for my bunk and sleep again but Bob managed to talk me out of it. I wasglad he did. The lake was barely cool and it soothed my muscles to feel the water stroking them.
    Supper was at five-thirty. Ellen Nolan wasn’t there. When I asked Bob about it he said that there was a kitchen in the Nolan’s cabin and, sometimes, Ellen Nolan ate there instead of going to the dining hall.
    The meal was interrupted at mid-point by another Nolan speech. He told us that we had only three days to get the camp into “topnotch” shape and if we didn’t “get into high gear” he’d have to take away our swimming time and cut the rest period in half. The camp, he said, had always been in “topnotch” shape on opening day and, by God, he was going to see to it that it was this year too.
    When Big Ed had finished, we returned to our cold supper and finished it. Afterward, Bob, Merv and I took the half-mile walk up the road to the small grocery store. There, we sat on the porch, sipping Cokes, Merv smoking his slender pipe, Bob a cigarette.
    “Does he always give speeches?” I asked.
    “Incessantly,” Bob said.
    “How bad is he really?” I asked.
    “He represents,” Merv said, “all that is dismaying in