Under the Apple Tree Page 11

  Artie wrote down “Yellow-breasted—” and then he got all out of concentration again, thinking of breast, which made him want to check again to see if his gonads were all right. Ever since the famous “jelly” speech of Senator Hapgood, Artie had the awful suspicion that his tools had shrunk, maybe like they were practicing how to hide or retreat to escape the possibility of being beaten to jelly. It was hard to forget about, since now every kid in the Camp went around saying, “Look out, or I’ll beat your privates to jelly!” and everyone snorted and wheezed and whooped, but even though they tried to act like it was funny, it was a nervous kind of funny. Artie knew his things were still there, he knew he could still pee all right, but ever since the speech he had not had anyone point at him in the morning and yell “H.O.!” because the towel wrapped around him for reveille lineup was sticking out in front of him due to a hard-on. In fact, the only guy he knew of who had had an H.O. for reveille lineup since the jelly speech was Ernest Maydap, who everyone figured was such a hick he didn’t even know what his “privates” were.

  At night after taps, Artie lay in his bunk and tried to play with himself to see if his thing could get hard anymore, but the darn thing just lay there like a worm. Actually; that wasn’t a really fair test, since you had to be so careful not to make the bedsprings squeak or suffer the awful infamy of getting reported for jacking off in camp.

  Breast—.

  The unfinished word did not make Artie think of the nuthatch for Bird Study but of the pinup pictures he had, not just of Betty Grable but even ones he liked more now of Hedy Lamarr, Dorothy Lamour, and Lana Turner. Of course he hadn’t brought them to Camp, that would have been un-Scouting, but he remembered them pretty darn well after all the scrutiny he had given them at night with his penlight under the covers.

  “Gung ho—let’s go for a grackle!” Ribs O’Mahoney said, and the band of birdwatchers straggled on up the hill after him, clutching their pencils and notebooks.

  Without even thinking he was going to do it, Artie dropped his notebook. He got down on his hands and knees, like he was searching for it, and then when the last of the Scouts had moved out of sight, he stuck the notebook in his pocket and slunk off into the woods in the other direction.

  The Cabin Row was deserted. Everyone was off spotting birds, tying sheepshank knots, portaging canoes, baking potatoes in mud, identifying poison oak, learning how to do artificial respiration, weaving bright-colored strands into lanyards for carrying whistles around your neck, and all the other healthy, useful, character-building kinds of things that Scouts were supposed to do at Camp Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko.

  All except Artie Garber. He was slinking into his cabin in the middle of the day like a pre-vert. It was dark and silent inside, and smelled of a mixture of citronella oil, shoeshine polish, and farts. The second day of Camp the Renfro brothers, skinny Arnold and fat Bud, had held a farting contest, and tied at 237 farts apiece in succession, which not only broke the recognized Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko all-time record set by the legendary Earl “V.A.” Beasley (he was so thin he was known as “the Vanishing American,” or “V.A.” for short) back in 1940, but also left an insidious, pungent odor that all the swabbings and airings-out that followed had been unable to completely get rid of.

  Artie tried not to think about the smell, which was not the kind that got you in the mood, and climbed up on his bunk, the Upper Back Left. The Upper bunks were worst of all for trying to get away with any kind of fooling around on since the guy beneath you was bound to hear the slightest squeaking of bedsprings. “Bedsprings” made Artie think of the only other atrocity anyone claimed to have happened that was, worse than the blacksmith who accidentally smashed his own ball (worse, that is, until Senator Hapgood gave his speech). That was the one about a guy in one of the cabins cleaning his Upper bunk for Inspection and unknowingly getting one of his nuts caught in a spring when the Camp Commander came in and called “Attention” and the poor guy jumped down from the Upper, leaving his ball there caught in the spring and ripping it off as he made the fatal leap to the floor.

  Artie touched his own balls to see if they were okay and at least they were there, but felt real small and tight. His thing itself was the shriveled worm it had been ever since the Senator’s speech. He touched it lightly with his fingers, massaging gently, and closed his eyes, picturing the pinup of Dorothy Lamour.

  But nothing happened.

  He figured he was more in the mood for a blonde, so he switched to Betty Grable, but she didn’t help either.

  Neither did Lana Turner.

  Sweat was breaking out on his hands and on his forehead, not from the heat of illicit excitement, but the panic of being unable to make his thing respond to his mind. Maybe some nerve connection had been broken by the specter of the torturing Nazis!

  Thinking of that only made things worse, though, and Artie realized he’d better get going soon or the guys would be coming back from the Bird Study Hike, spotting him in the act like a ruby-faced gooney bird.

  Then he thought of this real sexy movie he had seen just before coming to camp, called White Savage, with Maria Montez, Jon Hall, and Sabu, the elephant boy. Maria Montez was the sultry “Princess Tahia,” dressed in these slinky, harem-type outfits, with bangles and bracelets dangling from all over her. There was a scene where Jon Hall burst into her tent and real cool she dismissed her brawny bodyguards, saying, “You may go now. This may develop into a private matter.”

  Artie imagined himself instead of Jon Hall bursting into the tent of Princess Tahia, and her telling the guards to get lost so she could be alone with him. He was wearing a Marine dress blue uniform, and he started removing the snazzy trousers with the red stripe down the side. Soon he and the Princess were lying on the silken pillows, writhing in ecstasy.

  It was happening! His thing was growing, pulsing and throbbing. Princess Tahia was curing him of the dread “privates to jelly” fear! Gratefully now as well as passionately he lavished his kisses on her, at the same time moving up and down on top of her as she squirmed with lust on the silken pillows.

  The bedsprings of the Upper bunk were squeaking in rhythm to Artie’s ravishing of Princess Tahia, and his own hard breathing accompanied it with hoarse, rasping fervor. He remembered in the midst of the passion to make sure his thing was between his underpants and his Scout short pants, so when the flood burst the telltale stain would not be in his sleeping bag, where his dirtiest deed would be discovered by his superior officer. He could hide his pants and put on others, but he couldn’t hide his sleeping bag, which was turned inside-out and examined by the Troop Leader at daily Inspection. The worst disgrace was to have that milky stain in your bag, and some of the mean guys in the troop had pulled what Artie thought was an awful trick on this poor hick Ernest Maydap, who had hardly ever been off his family’s farm except to go to Scout meetings at the local Grange Hall. The mean guys, led by the insidious Roscoe Wittles, had taken some real cream from the mess hall and poured it in a big spot in Maydap’s sleeping bag and rubbed it in, so at Inspection he got accused of spilling his seed right in Camp, which was un-Scoutlike behavior. Maydap had broken down crying, and later Artie tried to comfort him and say it was a dirty trick, but he hadn’t had the guts to do it in public, he just said it to Maydap walking alone in the woods.

  Artie didn’t want to get the real stuff on his sleeping bag, so made that adjustment of his thing and was really going to town, about to explode, the spring-squawking and breath-rasping loud and uncontrolled when suddenly Artie heard another sound, the whine and slam of the screen door of the cabin, and just as he was bursting and flooding himself and Princess Tahia, he looked up to see Ben Vickman staring at him. Their eyes met for an awful moment of knowing, and Vickman turned and rushed from the cabin.

  Ribs O’Mahoney was Camp Commander, but the actual Chief of Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko, the adult man in charge of the whole thing, like the Principal was in charge of high school, was Victor L. “Pops” Hagedorn. Pops was a large, shambling man who slicked back his
thinning hair with Brylcreem, but always looked sloppy somehow in his uniform, the knee socks never straight, the neckerchief askew, the shirt always coming untucked out of his pants. The important thing was that everyone agreed Pops had a heart as big as all outdoors. He didn’t have any kids of his own or even a wife but he was Father to the kids in his Latin class at Oakley Central, and in summers was Pops to the Scouts of Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko.

  Pops had summoned Artie to a private pow-wow with him at Shagbark Hickory, which was the name of the Chief’s cabin. Both the man and the boy sat in cross-legged Indian fashion on the floor of the cabin. Pops was filling his pipe, and as always, tobacco was spilling out and settling in flakes on his knobby knees. Artie wished he would hurry, knowing that Pops never really got to the point in a serious pow-wow until he had his pipe stoked up and burning.

  Artie could already feel his own cheeks burning, knowing he was here because Ben Vickman had reported his dirty deed to the Chief. That was terrible, and Artie was totally shamed, full of the guilt he knew was his due, but still he was thankful that Ben Vickman hadn’t squealed to the other Scouts. That would have even been worse, and Artie had to hand it to Ben for being a square shooter by keeping his trap shut to everyone but the Chief. On the other hand, going to the Chief just showed what a serious crime had been committed. It flashed through Artie’s mind that the appropriate punishment for sneaking away from a Bird Study Hike to whack off in full daylight in a cabin of Camp Cho-Ko-Mo-Ko, B.S.A., might be for the culprit to have his “privates beaten to jelly.”

  When the Chief finally got his pipe stoked up, with the clouds of tobacco smoke curling around his head, he spoke more in sadness than anger.

  “Artie,” he said, “you know what you did was wrong.”

  “Worse than that,” Artie volunteered with eagerness. “It was dirty.”

  The Chief nodded, looking wise and sorrowful.

  “I’m sure you’ve read what the Scout Manual has to say on the subject.”

  “Yes, sir, many times.”

  It was true. There was a chapter in the “Health and Safety” part of the Official Boy Scout Manual called “Conservation,” and although it didn’t use any of the actual words like jerking or whacking off or whipping the puppy, it said that all boys got these “urges” sometimes, and when they felt such bad desires coming on them, they should take cold showers and long walks. It also recommended “hip baths,” where the boy beset with lust sat in a tub of lukewarm water with his behind and his gonads soaking in the water and his legs hanging out over the edge. Artie had discussed this remedy with Warren Tutlow, but they started giggling, thinking how stupid they would look sitting in a washtub like that. And what if your folks came in and saw you, how were you to explain what the heck you were doing soaking your behind and gonads in a washtub of lukewarm water? Wouldn’t it be a dead giveaway that you were full of evil thoughts that were so hard to control you had to resort to such extreme measures?

  “And you’ve also read the part of the Bible, about how it’s wrong to ‘spill your seed’?” Pops continued.

  “Yes, sir,” Artie said.

  He had always wanted to ask why it said the wrong thing was “spilling your seed on the ground,” whether doing it “on the ground” was even worse than doing it on blankets or in a sleeping bag, but he didn’t think this was the time to go into that.

  “All boys have such desires,” the Chief said sadly.

  At least that made Artie feel normal.

  “But they have to learn to control them,” said the Chief.

  Now Artie felt crummy again, realizing he lacked self-control, willpower, and other stuff that made you have character. Maybe he would end up a bum hopping freight cars and getting tattoos. He could team up with Fishy Mitchelman and ride the rails, doing odd jobs to scrounge enough money to buy some cheap wine and maybe a can of Spam to heat up for dinner on a Sterno stove.

  “For your awn sake,” the Chief went on, “you must save yourself.”

  “I was already baptized,” Artie said, “but maybe it didn’t ‘take.’”

  “I didn’t mean in the religious sense,” the Chief said, “though of course that’s important, too, and the strength of the Lord should be able to help you in exercising self-control. What I meant was, you should save yourself for when you get married.”

  “When I get married?” Artie asked, knowing that was quite a ways off.

  The Chief nodded, his eyes misting over.

  “Someday,” he said, “you’ll meet a nice girl. The ‘right girl.’ You’ll want to settle down, and have children. Then you can use your seed in the way the Lord intended. Until then, for the sake of your future wife, as well as your own sake, you must try to save yourself.”

  “Until I get married,” Artie repeated, wanting to make sure.

  “Right now, it must seem a long way off, but the years fly by.”

  Years!

  Most guys didn’t get married till around twenty-one or so. That was nine years that Artie was supposed to go without spilling any of his seed. Was it because if you wasted too much of your seed you wouldn’t have enough left over to make babies? He wanted to ask, but was afraid. He remembered how overpowering the dirty desire was when it came over him, and he figured if he had any chance of resisting it he would have to spend the next nine years of his life taking hikes, cold showers, and hip baths. He would have to practically spend every night sitting in a washtub of lukewarm water with his legs dangling over the edge. Then he thought of something even worse than waiting nine years.

  “What if you never get married?” he asked.

  The Chief clamped down on his pipe and coughed. Fiery ashes spilled out onto his bare knees, and he swatted at them like hornets.

  “I didn’t mean you, sir,” Artie said quickly, “I just meant in general.”

  “The Lord finds different paths for all of us,” the Chief said. “I have my own children. My wonderful boys. Hundreds of them, in class and at Camp, year after year. You are one of them, son.”

  The Chief, with his eyes all watery now, reached out and placed a sweaty palm on Artie’s knee.

  O God, Artie prayed in silence, please don’t let Chief Hagedorn be a pre-vert.

  Artie bowed his head and sat frozen, not even twitching a muscle. But then the Chief just gave his knee a couple of pats and took his hand away.

  Artie breathed again.

  “It will all work out, according to God’s plan,” the Chief said. “You will find, if you do your best to preserve yourself, God will sometimes help you, relieve you of excess, during your sleep, when His will and not thine be done.”

  It was okay to have wet dreams, then. Well, that was something, at least. Maybe it would make Artie get more sleep, knowing there might be a heavenly reward for it.

  “Now,” the Chief said, “I want you to put all this behind you and get out there for the rest of camp and throw yourself into Scouting with everything you have.”

  “Yes, sir!” Artie said, pulling his legs out of the Indian squatting position.

  Artie figured he had lots to be grateful for. He had not been stripped of his rank of Second Class Scout, or sent home in shame, or made an example of, much less had his privates beaten to jelly. It was now up to him to spend the rest of Camp swimming and hiking and baking potatoes in the mud and all that good, healthy stuff, harder than any other kid in Camp, to try to make up for his dirty deed and so wear himself out that he wouldn’t even think about it again.

  The Chief, relighting his pipe, called out “Good Scouting!” as Artie charged out of the room and into the bright day.

  That night after taps, Artie couldn’t help worrying about how he was going to get through the next nine years without going crazy.

  2

  That September Artie started the seventh grade and the Allies invaded Italy. American and British troops had finally hit the mainland of Nazi-held “Fortress Europe.” Our team was really on the offensive now!

  Artie came home one
day from delivering his paper route to find Mom and Dad in the living room, dressed up like it was Sunday. Their faces were so darn white it looked like they might have just given blood to the Red Cross.

  “Whatsamatter?”

  Mom’s mouth opened but no sound came out, and she shook her head and looked down at the floor.

  “Roy,” Artie said. “He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “God willing,” Dad said.

  He went and put a hand on Artie’s shoulder.

  “Billy Watson was killed.”

  “Wings? You mean Wings Watson?”

  Dad nodded.

  “At Salerno. Over in Italy.”

  “I know. In ‘the ankle.’”

  “Son, he was hit by a shell. It wasn’t just in the ankle.”

  “No, I meant—”

  Artie felt like someone had punched him in the gut, and it was hard to talk, the words coming out between gasps of breath.

  “I meant ‘the ankle’ on—on ‘the Italian Boot,’ where we landed. Is where—Salerno—is.”

  He leaned against Dad and put an arm around him, holding on.

  “Thousands of miles from home,” Mom whispered. “Our Boys, dying.”

  Artie felt sick and scared at the same time.

  He had known that lots of Our Boys would get killed invading Italy, but that was the Price of Victory, so even though it made him feel sad there was no use getting down in the dumps about it. He had thought of the casualty figures in the War sort of like the opponents’ score in a ball game. It was bad if their score was high, but you didn’t think of each number of the total as a real American guy who was all the sudden dead. It was too hard to picture when you didn’t even know the guys who had changed into nothing but numbers.