“Jordan,” he said. “Are you all right?” More growling: was it joy or terror? He couldn’t tell, and he was frightened. Maybe this was too much for her, too exciting. He wrapped his arms around her, pulling her up to put her back into the chair. The grass had been damper than he’d thought, and the right side of her face was streaked with mud.
“What the hell are you doing with that child?” Pam’s voice behind him. Rob turned, still holding Jordan, who was thrashing her arms like a propeller gone crazy. Pam was standing on the cement walk, hands on her hips, the posture of an accusing mother coming upon the children playing Doctor in the bushes. Her face was red, her hair mussed, as if she’d been running. There was a twig dangling above her ear.
“Nothing,” Rob said, “I was just…” She thinks I’m some kind of a pervert, he saw, and felt himself blushing. “I thought she would like to see what the grass felt like,” he said.
“You know that’s dangerous,” Pam said. “You know she isn’t supposed to be taken out. She could hit her head, injure herself…”
“I was watching her the whole time,” Rob said. Who was she to be bossing him around like this?
“I think you spend far too much time with that child,” Pam said, less angry now but definitely not convinced by his explanation. “You should spend more time with some of the others. It’s not good for them, you know, forming… attachments… that can’t possibly be kept up after camp.” Jordan’s eyes were open now; she was looking at Rob.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rob said, almost shouted. “How do you know, you don’t know…” She was accusing him, in advance, of betraying Jordan, abandoning her.
“Don’t get your girdle in a knot about it,” Pam said.
“But I think you should have a word with Bert, after Staff Lounge tonight. I’ve discussed this problem with him already.”
She turned away from him and walked quickly off towards the main house. On the back of her Bermuda shorts there was a small patch of wet mud.
Rob buckled Jordan back into the chair. This problem, Why was it a problem? There wasn’t much time, he would be assigned to other children, discouraged from seeing her, and she would think… What could he say to her, how to convince her? He knelt in front of her, resting his arms on the chair tray, and took hold of her left hand.
“I’m sorry if it frightened you, being on the ground,” he said. “Did it?” Her hand did not move. “Don’t pay any attention to what Pam just said. I’m going to write you letters after camp, lots of letters.” Would he? “And someone at your house can read them to you.” But of course they might forget, or lose the letters. In Pre-Meds, dissecting corpses, would he have time to remember her? Her eyes watched his face. She could see through him.
“I’m going to give you something special,” he told her, casting around desperately for something to give. He searched his pocket with his free hand. “This is my button, and it’s magic. I wore it on my shirt cuff like that just to keep it disguised.” He placed it in her hand, folded the fingers around it. “I’m giving it to you, and whenever you see it…” No, that wouldn’t do; someone was bound to find it in her pocket and throw it out, and she would have no way of explaining. “You don’t even have to see it, because it’s invisible sometimes. All you have to do is think about it. And every time you think about it, you’ll know I’m thinking specially about you. Okay?” He’d tried to make it as convincing as possible, but she was probably too old and too bright, she probably knew he was just trying to reassure her. In any case, she moved her hand yes. Whether it was real belief or embarrassed kindness he could never know.
After OT Rob went back to his own cabin, to help with the pre-dinner change into clean clothes that Bert felt was good for morale. The boys were unusually boisterous, but it was probably only his own anxiety and need for peace that made them seem that way. Or it might have been the show that was being put on that evening, by a number of the seniors. All of these boys were in it, even Pete, who was going to be the MC, with a mike strapped to his shoulder near his mouth. None of the ordinary counsellors were involved; they and the younger children were to be the audience, while Scott and Martina, Drama and Dance respectively, ran the show. Rob knew the boys had been practising for two weeks at least, but he had not been interested enough to ask them what the show was about.
“Lemme borrow your zit cream.”
“Wouldn’t do you any good, pusface.”
“Yeah, he’s got pimples on his pimples.”
“You spaz!” A scuffle.
“Cut that out, prickhead!”
Rob wondered if he would be transferred to another cabin. He was helping Dave Snider into his clean shirt, a pink one with charcoal stripes (“Cheap,” his mother’s voice said), when Gordon strolled into the cabin, late. Rob suspected him of thumbing into town for a quick drink in the beer-parlour, which wasn’t choosy about your age. He had been late a number of times recently, leaving Rob to attempt control of the cabin single-handed. He looked very smug; he didn’t reply to the admiring mock cheers that always accompanied his entrances, but dug into his pocket and, very casual, very cool, draped something over his bedpost. A pair of black panties, with red lace edges.
“Hey! Wow! Hey, Gord, whose are they?”
Out with the comb, patting the blond pompadour into place. “That’s for me to know and you to find out.”
“Hey, come on, Gord, eh Gord?”
“Hey, no fair, Gord! Bet you stole ‘em from the laundry!”
“Take a look, smart boy. They’re not from any laundry.”
Dave wheeled over and grabbed the panties. He stuck them on his head and circled the cabin floor. “Mickey Mouse, Mickey Mouse,” he sang. “Forever let us hold our whammers high… Hey, Groaner, you wanna try ‘em on? Bet they’d fit, you got a big head.”
Other hands snatched at the panties. Rob left the room, went down the hall into the washroom. They must have been in the woods, near him, near Jordan. Her outrage, lecturing him like that with the twigs still in her hair, what gave her the right? Mud on her rump.
His face, his nice face, bland and freckled, framed in neatly trimmed sandy hair, watched him from the mirror. He would have preferred a scar, a patch over one eye, sunburned wrinkles, a fang. How untouched he looked, like the fat on uncooked bacon: nobody’s fingerprints on him, no dirt, and he despised this purity. At the same time he could never be like the others, gloat over some woman’s musky underpants. Maybe I’m not normal, he thought with gloomy pride.
After the chaos and mess of dinner had been endured, Rob went to the auditorium with the others. The stage, which was like a school stage except for the ramps at either side, had its red curtains closed. There were no chairs. Those in wheelchairs didn’t need them, and the others sat on the floor, wherever they liked. Rob sought out Jordan and moved closer to her. He prepared to applaud, dutifully, whatever was set before him.
The lights in the room dimmed, there was some fumbling behind the curtains, and Pete in his chair was pushed out by several pairs of hands. The audience clapped, some cheered. Pete was quite popular.
“Don’t push me off the edge, you spaz,” he said into the mike, which got a laugh from some of the older boys. He was wearing a vaudeville straw hat with a red crepe-paper band, and someone had glued a false moustache unevenly to his upper lip.
“Ladies and gents,” he said. He made his moustache wiggle at one side, then at the other, and the younger children giggled. At that moment Rob almost liked him. “This here is the Fair-Eden Follies, and you better believe it, anyways, we all did a lot of falling down practising it.” His voice went serious. “We’ve all worked hard to make this a good show, and I want you to give a big hand to the first number, which is—a square dance, by the Fair-Eden Wheeler Dealers. Thank you.”