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I shook my head and said, “I think you’re all nuts,” and then I walked out of the bunk. Ronnie came out after me a minute later, carrying his own full suitcase, bending over with the weight of it. I watched him as he struggled across to the flagpole in the center of the camp. He put the bag down at his feet and then, his eyes gleaming, he cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted, “Where’s Jimbo McFarland?”

There was no answer.

“Where’s Jimbo McFarland?” he shouted again.

“Stop yelling,” I called from the steps of the bunk. “He’s up at the handball courts.”

“Jimbo McFarland!” Ronnie screamed. “Jimbo McFarland!” and the camp voice-telephone system picked up the name, shouting it across behind the bunks and down by the gully and through the nature shack, “Jimbo McFarland!” and over to the lake where some kids were taking their Red Cross tests, and then up into the hills by the mess hall, and across the upper-camp baseball diamond, and the volleyball court, and finally reaching Jimbo where he was playing handball with one of the counselors.

Jimbo came striding down into the camp proper. He walked out of the hills like the gunslick he was, his back to the sun, crossing the dusty grounds for a final showdown, stopping some twenty feet from where Ronnie stood near the flagpole.

“You calling me?” he said.

“You want to play marbles?” Ronnie answered.

“Have you got any marbles?” Jimbo said.

“Will you match whatever I’ve got?”

Jimbo hesitated a moment, weighing his luck, and then said, “Sure,” tentatively accepting the challenge.

“Whatever’s in this bag?” Ronnie asked.

Again Jimbo hesitated. A crowd of kids had begun to gather, some of whom had followed Jimbo down out of the hills, the rest of whom had felt an excitement in the air, had felt that the moment of truth had finally arrived. They milled around the flagpole, waiting for Jimbo’s decision. The gauntlet was in the dust, the challenge had been delivered, and now they waited for the undisputed champion to decide whether or not he would defend his title. Jimbo nodded.

“However much you want to bet,” he said slowly, “is all right with me.” He had irrevocably accepted the challenge. He now had to call or lose the bet by default.

“Okay, then,” Ronnie said. He stooped down beside his suitcase. Slowly, nonchalantly, he unclasped the latches on either side. He put one hand gently on the lid, and then he looked up at Jimbo, grinned, quietly said, “Odds or evens, Jimbo?” and snapped open the lid of the bag.

From where I sat, I saw Jimbo’s face go white. I don’t know what crossed his mind in those few terrible moments as he stared into the bag at those thousands and thousands of marbles. I don’t know whether or not he even made a mental stab at calculating the number of glistening spheres in the suitcase. I only know that he staggered back a pace and his jaw fell slack. The kids were silent now, watching him. Ronnie kept squatting beside the suitcase, his hand resting on the opened lid, the sun glowing on the marbles.

“Well, Jimbo?” he said. “Odds or evens?”

“Odds or evens, Jimbo?”

Perhaps Jimbo was feverishly calculating in those breathless moments. Perhaps he was realizing he had walked into a trap from which there was no return: he would either call correctly and become the marble king of the entire world; or he would call incorrectly or not at all, and lose his fortune and his fame.

“Odds or evens?” Ronnie demanded.

Odds or evens, but how to call? How many thousands of marbles were in that suitcase, and really what difference did it make when it all narrowed down to a single marble, the real difference between odds and evens, one solitary marble, call wrong and the empire would come crashing down. Jimbo took a deep breath. The sweat was standing out on his face, his eyes were blinking. The kids around the flagpole stood silently awaiting his decision. Ronnie squatted by the suitcase with his hand on the lid.

“Odds or evens?” he asked again.

Jimbo shrugged. Honestly, because it was what he was really thinking, he said, “I... I don’t know.”

“Did you hear him?” Ronnie said immediately. “He loses by default!”

“Wait a minute, I...”

“You refused to call, you said you didn’t know! I win by default!” Ronnie said, and he snapped the lid of the bag shut, latched it and immediately lifted it from the ground.

“Now just a second,” Jimbo protested, but Ronnie was already walking away from him.

He stopped some five paces from the flagpole, turned abruptly, put the bag down, grinned, and said, “You stupid jerk! They were your own marbles!”

For a moment, his announcement hung on the dust-laden air. Jimbo blinked, not understanding him at first. The kids were silent and puzzled in the circle around the flagpole. Ronnie picked up the bag of marbles again and began walking toward his bunk with it, a triumphant grin on his face. And then the meaning of what he had said registered on Jimbo’s face, his eyes first, intelligence sparking there, his nose next, the nostrils flaring, his mouth then, the lips pulling back to show his teeth, and then his voice, bursting from his mouth in a wounded roar.

“You thief!”

His words, too, hung on the silent air, and then one of the kids said, “Did he steal them from you, Uncle Jimbo?” and another kid shouted, “He’s a crook!” and then suddenly the word “Thief!” was shouted by one of the senior boys and picked up by a junior, “Thief!” and the air rang with the word, “Thief!” and then it was shouted in unison, “Thief! Thief!” and all at once there was a bloodthirsty mob. A kid who had come down from the ball diamond waved his bat in the air and began running after Ronnie. Another kid seized a fallen branch and rushed past the flagpole with it. The others bellowed screams of anger and rage, hysterically racing toward Ronnie, who had dropped the suitcase and turned to face them. There was a pale, sickly smile on his mouth, as though he hadn’t expected this kind of backfire. “Look,” he said, but his voice was drowned out in the roar of the kids as they rushed forward with Jimbo. Ronnie turned and tried to run for his bunk, but Jimbo caught his collar from behind, and pulled him backward to the ground. I saw the kid raise his baseball bat and I leaped to my feet and yelled, “Stop it! Goddamn you, stop it!”

The bat hung in midair. Slowly they turned toward me.

“It’s only marbles,” I said.

The camp was silent.

“It’s only marbles,” I repeated. “Don’t you see?”

And then, because I had intruded upon a fantasy and threatened to shatter it, because the entire spiraling marbles structure was suddenly in danger, they turned from Ronnie, who was lying on the ground, and they ran toward me, shouting and screaming. Jimbo, the champion, struck me on the jaw with his fist, and when I fell to the ground, the kids began kicking me and pummeling me. There was more than anger in their blows and their whispered curses. There was conviction and an overriding necessity to convince the unbeliever as well. I refused to be convinced. I felt each deliberate blow, yes, each fierce kick, but I would not be convinced because I knew, even if they didn’t, that it was only marbles.

I quit Camp Marvin early the next morning. Not because of the beating. That wasn’t important. I carried my two suitcases all around the lake to Camp Lydia. It was raining, and I got soaking wet. I waited at the gate while one of the girl campers ran to get Rebecca. She came walking through the rain wearing her dirty trenchcoat, walking with that peculiar sideward lope, her hair wet and clinging to her face.