Camp Echo. Paul Theroux
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Rankin called out as we stuck out our elbows and aligned ourselves in a row. Then he pointed to a slouching boy with tangled hair. “What’s your name?”
“Pagazzo,” the boy said, in a mocking quack, his mouth open wide. One of his front teeth was cracked sideways in half, giving him a yellow fang.
“Stand up straight, Pagazzo, and fix those clodhoppers of yours. You’re giving me ten minutes to two with your feet.”
The boy took a breath so deep and loud that his nose narrowed and grew pale and then he gargled, grinning with yellow teeth as he exhaled and clicked his heels, and I knew at that moment we had a rebel in the cabin.
“You’re here at Camp Echo to learn what we call life lessons. In a few weeks, you’ll be tested at the Camporee, the shoot-out with Camp Metacomet, across the lake—the Metacomet Challenge. Okay?”
Pagazzo said, “The Metacomet Challenge. Sounds wicked.”
Butch Rankin frowned, then said, “Okay. The Boy Scout Oath. Let’s hear it.”
We raised our right hand, three fingers straight, thumb pressing the pinkie, and recited.
On my honor, I will do my best
To do my duty, to God and my country,
And to obey the Scout law;
To help other people at all times;
To keep myself physically strong,
Mentally awake, and morally straight.
“At ease,” Butch Rankin said, and saluted us. “And you, Pagazzo. Drop and give me ten.”
“For what?” Pagazzo said, frowning. Compressing his face made it yellower and his nose bigger.
Instead of replying, Butch Rankin leaned toward Pagazzo, hocked phlegm in imitation, and said, “Make it fifteen for defying an order.”
Pagazzo flopped to the cabin floor and, with his bum in the air and working his skinny arms, did fifteen laborious push-ups, finishing by gasping and flattening himself on the boards.
“As you were,” Butch Rankin said. He left, pulling the cabin door shut.
“He had a conniption,” Pagazzo said. He rolled over and, still lying on the floor, yawned with fatigue. “What a pisser.”
“He’s the marksmanship instructor,” Phelan said.
“I’ll clip him then. Give him two in the hat,” Pagazzo said. “Then I’ll say, ‘As you were, dead-ass.’”
But Phelan had begun to talk to the others. “My father promised I could shoot his gun when I get back from camp. It’s a Winchester thirty-thirty.”
“What time is dinner supposed to be?” Paretsky asked.
“He keeps it on his boat,” Phelan said.
“In about an hour,” Pomroy said. “They ring a bell.”
“His boat’s in Osterville. It’s a ketch,” Phelan said.
“So I guess you can catch it,” Pagazzo said.
“Do you live down there?” Paretsky asked. “My folks took me swimming there once. The water was wicked cold. My father showed me some rescues.”
“No, my dad’s a doctor in Winchester.”
Pagazzo said, “My old man’s a waiter. At Perella’s in the North End. Where the goombahs eat. They got guns like you wouldn’t believe.”
“I’ve already earned Civics,” Paretsky said. “I want to pass Marksmanship and Lifesaving. The main thing my father says is, ‘Don’t let the drowning person get ahold of you or he can drag you down with him.’”
“What’s that thing on your head?” Pagazzo asked.
A small woven disk was fastened by a bobby pin to Paretsky’s hair. I had never seen such an odd head covering, and was glad Pagazzo had asked.
“A yarmulke,” Paretsky said.
“Looks like a Frisbee.”
“The real name is kippah.”
“Okay, Skippah,” Pagazzo said, and at once Paretsky had a new name.
“A friend of my mother’s has one of those, only a bigger one,” Pinto said of Phelan’s hunting knife.
Phelan unsheathed his knife and flourished it, wagging it before Pinto’s face, and said, “This is a genuine Bowie knife. You have to be eighteen to buy one. My uncle gave it to me. He was a U.S. Marine.”
“A leatherneck, big deal,” Pagazzo said, and drew a switchblade out of his pocket and flicked it open, swiping the air with it. “How do you like this guinea toothpick?”
“Be careful with that thing,” Pinto said.
“You wish,” Pagazzo said, and swiped again. “I could deball you.”
“I mean it,” Pinto said with a screech in his voice.
“Sure. Every day and twice on Sunday.”
Phelan was saying to Paretsky, “A guy came into my father’s office. He had VD. He said he got it from a toilet. My father said, ‘That’s a hell of a place to take a girl.’”
“Hey, where’s the mulignan?” Pagazzo said.
Taking advantage of the confusion, I slipped out of the cabin. I had nothing to say, and it was too awkward to make conversation—most of the talk was in the form of boasts, or mockery. I was afraid of what they’d ask me. I had a hatchet: This was my boast, the hatchet buttoned into a leather hip holster to protect the blade I had carefully sharpened. I looped the hatchet holster to my belt, though its weight dragged my pants down and the handle bumped my leg when I walked.
Bayard Pomroy was standing away from the cabin, looking at the sooty evening sky, his face upturned, his skin silvery in the dusk.
“What’s up?” I said.
“That’s the Big Dipper.”
“I know that.”
Still looking up, his voice slightly strangled from craning his neck, he said, “The two stars on the edge are Merak and Dubhe. I’m getting an astronomy merit badge. See how they’re pointing?”
I could not see how they were pointing. I could just make out the corners of the bowl of the dipper. I said, “Yeah.”
“To Polaris,” he said.
“I was just going to say that.”
“The North Star,” he grunted, his face upturned.
“Right.”
“And if it was a little darker, we’d be able to see the Little Dipper.” He swiveled his head to take in the rest of the sky. “Maybe later.”
“How do you know this stuff?”
“My father’s a teacher. He’s got a telescope,” Pomroy said. “We look at the moon sometimes. He can name most of the craters. No one knows how they got there. And no one’s ever seen the other side of the moon. The dark side.”
“I don’t get it.”
“Because the same side of the moon is always facing the earth,” he said. “And that’s Venus. It’s always bright. Venus was the first one I learned.”
He was walking unsteadily, leaning backwards as he talked, because he was still scanning the sky. He stopped talking but kept moving and soon was lost in the darkness.
Soon after that, I heard a metallic clanging—not a bell, but what I would later find out was a boy whacking a short length of train track with a piece of steel pipe.
The cabin