Camp Pleasant

Read Camp Pleasant for Free Online Page B

Book: Read Camp Pleasant for Free Online
Authors: Richard Matheson
picture limping back to the cabin with his
Louisville Slugger
for a cane.
    A few nights later, I woke up and heard him sobbing. With a head- shaking sigh, I slipped out of bed and went over to him.
    “What now, little man?” I said. No answer. I pulled up his blanket again and pointed the flashlight beam at the foot. Which lay, unbandaged and dirty on the course blanket.
    “What did you do with your bandages?” I asked in an angry mutter.
    More silence. I shined the flashlight into his big, helpless eyes.
    “Well? What did you take them off for? Good God, haven’t you got any more sense than that?”
    “I wanted to look at it.”
    “Ohhhh
… Gawd
!

    I found the bandage coiled on the floor like a gauzy serpent and, tearing off the part that had gotten dirty, I re-bandaged the foot. It was inflamed again and Tony had to grit his teeth as I bandaged.
    “For God’s sake, cry if you want to,” I muttered grumpily.
    “Don’t want to.” His voice was thin and shaky but resolute.
    When I’d finished, I shined the light to the side of his face.
    “Now
look,”
I snapped. “Leave it alone! How do you expect it to get better if you play with it?”
    “Whassat? Whassat?” came a befuddled query from the semiconscious Chester Wickerly, wild man and wind breaker of Cabin 13.
    “Go to sleep,” I ordered, returning to my bed, tripping over Chester’s sneaker in so doing. I cursed and kicked the sneaker across the floor, seriously questioning my sanity in taking a counselor’s job for the summer.
    For the next few days, Tony was pretty well behaved. I don’t count him limping down to the lake to fish and falling in. That was in a day’s expectation. What I mean is—he left the new bandage intact and didn’t try to play baseball.
    Though, as a matter of fact, it was all I could do to keep him from running off on Cabin 13’s first hike day (each cabin had four during the two-month season). It was painfully obvious that Tony was in no condition for hiking but that didn’t seem to worry him. His obliviousness to the demands of the flesh bordered on lunacy.
    “Look,” I said, practically sitting on his chest, “your foot is bandaged. It’s infected. The way you’ve been treating it, you’re lucky you can get around at
all
. But you cannot walk for miles on it under a hot sun!
    “Aw, gee, Matt, I could hop on my good foot, couldn’t I?”
    “
No!

    His face curled up, blossom-like, and I had to resort to quiet, well- modulated reason. Arm around his match-stick shoulders, voice a soothing monotone, I said, “Stay in camp, Tony. You’ve got lizards and frogs to chase, ball games to watch, comic books to read, crafts to work on and a great big lake to fall in.”
    “Oh … sh—”
    “Aah-aah.”
    “Shoot.”
    I grinned at him. After a moment, he grinned back. “Diablo,” I said.
    “So’s your old man,” he countered.
    He lay on his bunk that afternoon, I remember, game foot propped up on the window sill, fingers picking out mattress stuffing from the bunk above. I was working out a musical program for the first campfire songfest and pow-wow which was coming up in a few days. My music directing, as yet, hadn’t really been put to the test except for some songs during movie-reel changing on Wednesday nights and for hymns on Sunday.
    While I worked, Tony sang his favorite song. He sang it often in his frail voice and, sometimes, I thought there was a kind of simile between the song and his life.
    “There was a little mouse lived on a hill
—mmm
-mmm
, mmm
-mmm
    There was a little mouse lived on a hill
—mmm
-mmm
, mmm
-mmm
    There was a little mouse lived on a hill As rough and tough as Buffalo Bill
—mmm
-mmm
, mmm
-mmm.”
    That was the opening verse which broke the ground for endless more in which this versatile rodent disported himself through varied, fantastic adventures, touching foot upon strange shores, accosting, in his mousy arrogance, a veritable galaxy of weird and fascinating

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