“That’s what I know, big sis!”
One wasn’t expected to take on a little pest like Perse. Ambrose shied a lump of dirt at him, and when Perse shied back an oystershell that cut past like a knife, the whole gang called it a dirty trick and ran him across Erdmann’s cornlot. Then they all went in among the trees.
The Jungle, which like the Occult Order had been named by Ambrose, stood atop the riverbank between the Nurses’ Home and the new bridge. It was in fact a grove of honey locusts, in area no larger than a schoolyard, bounded on two of its inland sides by Erdmann’s cornlot and on the third by the East Dorset dump. But it was made mysterious by rank creepers and honeysuckle that covered the ground and shrouded every tree, and by a labyrinth of intersecting footpaths. Jungle-like too, there was about it a voluptuous fetidity: gray rats and starlings decomposed where B-B’d; curly-furred retrievers spoored the paths; there were to be seen on occasion, stuck on twig-ends or flung amid the creepers, ugly little somethings in whose presence Ambrose snickered with the rest; and if you parted the vines at the base of any tree, you might find a strew of brown pellets and fieldmouse bones, disgorged by feasting owls. It was the most exciting place Ambrose knew, in a special way. Its queer smell could retch him if he breathed too deeply, but in measured inhalations it had a rich, peculiarly stirring savor. And had he dared ask, he would have very much liked to know whether the others, when they hid in the viny bowers from whoever was It, felt as he did the urging of that place upon his bladder!
With Tarzan-cries they descended upon the Den, built of drift-timber and carpet from the dump and camouflaged with living vines. Peter and Herman Goltz raced to get there first, and Peter would have won, because anybody beat fat Herman, but his high-top came untied, and so they got there at the same time and dived to crawl through the entrance.
“Hey!”
They stopped in mid-scramble, backed off, stood up quickly.
“Whoops!” Herman hollered. Peter blushed and batted at him to be silent. All stared at the entryway of the hut.
A young man whom Ambrose did not recognize came out first. He had dark eyes and hair and a black moustache, and though he was clean-shaved, his jaw was blue with coming whiskers. He wore a white shirt and a tie and a yellow sweater under his leather jacket, and had dirtied his clean trousers on the Den floor. He stood up and scowled at the ring of boys as if he were going to be angry — but then grinned and brushed his pants-knees.
“Sorry, mates. Didn’t know it was your hut.”
The girl climbed out after. Her brown hair was mussed, her face drained of color, there were shards of dead leaf upon her coat. The fellow helped her up, and she walked straight off without looking at any of them, her right hand stuffed into her coat pocket. The fellow winked at Peter and hurried to follow.
“Hey, gee!” Herman Goltz whispered.
“Who was the guy?” Sandy Cooper wanted to know.
Someone declared that it was Tommy James, just out of the U. S. Navy.
Peter said that Peggy Robbins would get kicked out of nurse’s training if they found out, and Herman told how his big sister had been kicked out of nurse’s training with only four months to go.
“A bunch went buckbathing one night down to Shoal Creek, and Sis was the only one was kicked out for it.”
The Sphinxes all got to laughing and fooling around about Herman Goltz’s sister and about Peggy Robbins and her boyfriend. Some of the fellows wanted to take after them and razz them, but it was agreed that Tommy James was a tough customer. Somebody believed there had been a scar across his temple.
Herman wailed “Oh lover!” and collapsed against Peter, who wrestled him down into the creepers.
Cheeks burning, Ambrose joined in the merriment. “We ought to put a sign up! Private Property: No Smooching.”
The fellows laughed. But not in just the right way.
“Hey guys!” Sandy Cooper said. “Amby says they was smooching!”
Ambrose quickly grinned and cried “Like a duck! Like a duck!”; whenever a person said a thing to fool you, he’d say “Like a duck!” afterward to let you know you’d been fooled.
“Like a duck nothing,” Sandy Cooper rasped. “I bet I know what we’ll find inside.”
“Hey, yeah!” said Peter.
Sandy Cooper had an old flashlight that he carried on his belt, and so they let him go in first, and Peter and Herman and the others followed after. In just an instant Ambrose heard Sandy shout “Woo-hoo!” and there was excitement in the Den. He heard Peter cry “Let me see!” and Herman Goltz commence to giggle like a girl. Peter said “Let me see, damn it!”
“Go to Hell,” said the gritty voice of Sandy Cooper.
“Go to Hell your own self.”
Perse Goltz had scrambled in unnoticed with the rest, but now a Sphinx espied him.
“Get out of here, Perse. I thought I smelt something.”
“You smelt your own self,” the little boy retorted.
“Go on, get out, Perse,” Herman ordered. “You stink.”
“You stink worst.”
Somebody said “Bust him once,” but Perse was out before they could get him. He stuck out his tongue and made a great blasting raspberry at Peter, who had dived for his leg through the entrance.
Then Peter looked up at Ambrose from where he lay and said: “Our meeting’s started.”
“Yeah,” someone said from inside. “No babies allowed.”
“No smooching allowed,” another member ventured, mocking Ambrose in an official tone. Sandy Cooper added that no something-else was allowed, and what it was was the same word that would make him laugh sometimes instead of sicking his Chesapeake Bay dog on you.
“You and Perse skeedaddle now,” Peter said. His voice was not unkind, but there was an odd look on his face, and he hurried back into the Den, from which now came gleeful whispers. The name Peggy Robbins was mentioned, and someone dared, and double-dared, and dee-double-dared someone else, in vain, to go invite Ramona Peters to the meeting.
Perse Goltz had already gone a ways up the beach. Ambrose went down the high bank, checking his slide with the orange roots of undermined trees, and trudged after him. Peter had said, “Go to Hell your own self,” in a voice that told you he was used to saying such things. And the cursing wasn’t the worst of it.
Ambrose’s stomach felt tied and lumpy; by looking at his arm a certain way he could see droplets standing in the pores. It was what they meant when they spoke of breaking out in a cold sweat: very like what one felt in school assemblies, when one was waiting in the wings for the signal to step out onto the stage. He could not bear to think of the moustachioed boyfriend: that fellow’s wink, his curly hair, his leather jacket over white shirt and green tie, filled Ambrose’s heart with comprehension; they whispered to him that whatever mysteries had been in progress in the Den, they did not mean to Wimpy James’s brother what they meant to Peggy Robbins.
Toward her his feelings were less simple. He pictured them kicking her out of the Nurses’ Home: partly on the basis of Herman Goltz’s story about his sister, Ambrose imagined that disgraced student nurses were kicked out late at night, unclothed; he wondered who did the actual kicking, and where in the world the student nurses went from there.
Every one of the hurricanes that ushered in the fall took its toll upon the riverbank, with the result that the upper beach was strewn with trees long fallen from the cliff. Salt air and water quickly stripped their bark and scoured the trunks. They seemed never to decay; Ambrose could rub his hands along the polished gray wood with little fear of splinters. One saw that in years to come the Jungle would be gone entirely. He would be a man then, and it wouldn’t matter. Only his children, he supposed, might miss the winding paths and secret places — but of course you didn’t miss what you’d never had or known of.