“Are you afraid your folks will divorce?” I asked.
“Well, he better take care of my mother first.” Katie turned towards me. “Wouldn’t he do that first?”
“I know you’re scared, for your mom, I mean.”
I reached across to Katie’s hand and got a handful of sand.
We both laughed and took a break from the conversation. It was time for cooling off. We pushed each other up, slipped on racing caps, and tripped over each other getting to the dock. We dove in at the same time and raced to the water system pipe in this man-made lake. It was only a few strokes away, and we were quickly refreshed and degreased.
I drew her dripping face towards me and kissed her gently. She started to pull away, afraid there were other guests on the shore. Everyone must have been at lunch. She kissed me back. A lot.
When we finished our bath and dried off, we sat and ate our BLTs, dripping mayo and bits of farm-grown tomatoes down our suits, licking up the mess and laughing. We chatted a bit more about Katie’s dad.
Katie said she understood his attraction to Joe more and more and confessed to actually liking Joe a lot.
“They’re like us.” She smiled as she twirled a strand of my sandy hair. “I know how my feelings have grown…and grown and grown.” She laughed and started to tickle me.
We hugged and sat with our arms around each other’s burning shoulders. Katie’s soft voice broke through the languid stillness of the air.
“It’s hard not to know what will happen.”
I whole-heartedly agreed.
Our early evening was spent eating with Katie’s mom, who had returned from the spa in good spirits, looking relaxed and smelling delightful. There had been a call from Doc saying they couldn’t get out of Boston that day.
Katie was disappointed, but said that it bought her some time to find the right questions and words for her father. Exhausted and burned, we kissed only once or twice and kept a short distance away from each other’s flaming skin under the crisp, thin sheet.
Chapter Forty-four
MORE JAILHOUSE BLUES
Our bodies had gravitated towards each other in the night. I just loved spooning. It automatically threw the switch, drawing me deeper into dreamland. I let myself go there, anticipating pleasant dreams.
“Chili? I’ll give you chili…down your pants.”
“Huh? Here’s a blanket, Pina. Go back to sleep.” I heard Katie’s voice, but all I pictured were gray, cement walls and iron bars. The smell of dirty bodies, male bodies filled my nostrils, and I felt a man’s penis against my thigh.
“Who’s ‘cornuto?’ You’ll cuckold me! Ha! Get off me. Shut the hell up with your corny and corn balls.”
Another violent dream. Crud. This time, I might be able to control it.
“You won’t get me tonight. I’ll get myself put in the hole.”
I would scream for the guard. I’d get myself out of there. I struggled and twisted and kicked.
“Wake up. Wake up! Please!” Katie was shaking me.
“Where? Who are they? They beat me up.” I clasped my chest with my hands.
“Here, let me wash your face. It’ll wake you up.” Katie tried to scrub my face.
I ripped at my mouth. There was a familiar smell on this gag. I had to stop it.
“You can’t suffocate me. No gags.”
“Pina, Pina! It’s Katie. I’m taking care of you. Where were you?”
Katie succeeded in waking me. I could see my dream more clearly from this distance. I was in jail, where a lot of rough, ugly men with long, dirty hair were fighting, pulling each other, clearing the way to me. Two grisly-looking guys like sumo wrestlers were about to pounce on me. Men were screaming, fists and feet were flying. They called me ‘Corny’ and ‘Cornuto’ and ‘Chili.’
This was not the dream I had anticipated, but I knew there were clues within. When Katie asked me if I meant “chili con carne,” everything started to come together: Fifi insisting on the word carne or meat, and something else having to do with the shirt.
I remember when I put on the shirt, and I felt so sick. Fifi didn’t understand the word “upchuck.” He said chuck was a good name, and then something about a roast or meat.
I was trying to recall images from my dream. The denim shirt I was wearing. I was on my stomach, and for just a minute, I could see my back, the back of my shirt. It read C- A- R-N…I couldn’t read the rest.
Guards with guns and clubs got me out of there before it was too late, but I continued to hear taunts and screams of “big man’s brown nose” and “I’ll show you brown.” That’s all I could remember.
“Well, this guy, the guy I think killed Butch. That was him in jail.”
“Who’s in jail?”
“Roger Brown’s in jail…I think.” I said, a bit exasperated that Katie wasn’t following me.
“So this guy is in jail, and other guys are beating up on him. His name is Carn-something, and he’s the ‘big man’s brown nose’.” Katie was piecing it together.
“I’m confused.” I had to admit it.
“Yeah. Me too.”
By now, we were fully awake. We decided to get up and start the day, which promised a bit of rain by the looks of the gray sky. It was already about seven, but the fog was darkish. That usually meant a real downpour. The only good thing about that was the smell of balsam and pine that the rain seemed to bounce back up in our faces.
Chapter Forty-five
DOC’S RETURN
Doc arrived very late that afternoon, to Katie’s relief. He seemed delighted to hear the two of us giggling as we all carried his bags in from the rental car.
He hugged Katie really hard and whispered, “I love you so much.”
He explained that the delay in coming back was due to bad weather. He told us about the new contacts they had made, contacts which seemed to clarify a lot about the case, as well as clear Doc’s and Fifi’s names.
Doc came over to me on the porch and lifted me off the floor, telling me how glad he was that I had made good choices. I was aware of Joe’s absence.
Catherine came out of the sitting room, eyeing Doc as if her were a stranger. He hugged her and kissed her on the cheek.
She mumbled, “My stranger,” and disappeared back into the sitting room, a trail of Kent smoke following like a scarf stretched out in the breeze.
Holding on to Katie on the porch love seat, Doc summarized some more details he had gleaned. He told us about a story from a Colby, Maine newspaper in ’43 about the suicide of Billy Collins. Just the way I had dreamt it – walking into the water. It had really felt like I was trying to wash away my guilt, to get to the clean water.
I left knowing Katie and Dr. McGuilvry needed to talk. Joe was checking into a room at the main house. I could just collapse in the Adirondack sofa in front of the dining hall.
There was still some time before lunch when Katie came bounding up from behind me. Katie’s talk with her father had lit up her face and put a sparkle in her eyes. She was gorgeous: dimples fully exposed, freckles dancing on her high cheekbones, a rosy glow all over.
She sat down in the green springy chair next to me, and her words seemed to tumble out. She explained to her dad how scared she was at first that he and Joe were like Roger, perverts, and how furious she was at him for doing this to her mother…and her.
“Pin, he started crying and kept on saying he was so sorry.”
“Wow…” I said, afraid to say too much or too little.
“Yeah. He told me he and Joe were attached—in friendship and in love—like you and me.”
“Wow! Cool daddy-o!”
“Yeah! He really did say that…then, I was crying, really sobbing, too.” Katie scrunched up her face. “I shouldn’t have, but I asked if he ever loved my mother. He said he did, very much. He started to sniffle again when he said he could never admit to anyone that he liked boys, not even to himself.”
“Hmm. I know about that…” I mumbled.
“I was afraid, too. Oh, crumb, Katie…I’m still afraid of what my parents might do.”
“Oh, Pin, they wouldn’t, would they? God…he did say a part of him died, and he tried to bury that part in work. I told him I was so sad I missed out on the parts he had to hide.”
“Katie.” I started to shake my head and squeezed my eyes real hard not to cry. “I don’t want to hide.”
“I can’t miss out on you, any part of you, Pina.” Katie reached for me, mumbling, “My dad said when people hide one part of themselves, other parts get hidden. I can’t let you disappear. Please don’t…”
Katie looked around, checking to make sure we were alone, and then hugged me hard.
“I hugged him too, a long time,” she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Everything was real quiet and a soft rain was falling. My dad and I just sat there getting drenched.”
I held Katie’s face, just to look into her eyes.
“I love you,” I said. “I really do.”
Chapter Forty-six
THE PRIEST AND THE SHRINK
Joe was coming down the path from the main house, a smile on his face, as we exited from the dining hall. Dressed in a slicker over his blue oxford shirt and his tennis sweater, he could have been one of the Kingston Trio. When we entered the McGuilvry cabin, Catherine’s face lit up as she greeted Joe, and he hugged her. They exchanged some very friendly words, to our surprise. Katie and I just threw each other the raised eyebrow look.
Joe said we could listen to the tape from their sessions with the former campers, in his spacious room in the main house if we wanted, but Doc assured us the cabin would be fine. Catherine was expected as a fourth for Bridge at the house, so we took over the sitting room.
Doc lit a fire that soon cracked and released its sappy aroma to the room. Joe made small talk with Katie and myself while Doc went to get a notebook and tea for all of us.
Joe leaned over and took Katie’s hand. He told her she was so brave; he hoped they could be friends.
She turned a few shades of crimson as she said, “Yes.”
Joe leaned out of his easy chair to rub my shoulder, and congratulated me for interpreting his father’s broken-English scribble. I laughed. I really liked Joe.
When Doc returned, we sipped our tea and Joe readied the tape. Before he hit play, he explained that we would hear Peter Shattuck, now a priest, and Wolfgang Holthaus, now a psychiatrist, on the tape. They had been the two counselors who were present the night Butch was killed.
I listened very closely to the tape of Peter Shattuck telling the gist of the story:
“Billy couldn’t hurt a fly. He, of all people, wanted to intimidate Butch. We were going to threaten to cut off Butch’s privates if he didn’t leave the girls alone. If he didn’t confess to attacking Regina. Cockamamie idea. We were doing it for Ron and Regina, and to show Butch he couldn’t keep getting away with his perversions,” explained Peter.
“Billy had the knife, but Roger took it and cut Butch once. A small jab. But then, Roger got nicked. His eyes went wild, and he started ripping off his clothes and brandishing the knife. Butch was bleeding, and the last thing I saw was Roger trying to grab Billy. I ran. I heard screams, but I kept on running. I got to the road and must have only been there about five or ten minutes when Wolfie showed up. He was bone white, and bleeding a bit from a small cut. He started vomiting. He said he wanted to get drunk and get laid. He put his hand on my throat and swore we wouldn’t talk about this.”
Then Wolfgang was speaking on the tape. “I stayed long enough to see Roger grasp Billy and hold a knife to his throat. Butch made some crude remark about Roger. Something to the effect of how he, Butch, should have included Roger in his repertoire of victims. Then, there was some more blood coming from Butch. I made one attempt to grab Billy, but I got cut. Then, there was total chaos. Blood and flashes of the knife and blood-curdling screams. I ran for my life.”
Wolfgang went on to say that Peter and he had contacted the police in later years without revealing sources and asked about a potential child molester in certain neighborhoods. There wasn’t any trace of Roger, and no one had reported Butch’s death. They couldn’t report the murder themselves, because they hadn’t actually seen him killed. They said they pushed on with the police, claiming that Wolfgang had dreams, and that maybe the police could contact a psychic. In the end, it came down to this: no body, no murder.
It was hard to listen to the recordings. Doc and Joe stopped the tape several times, worried that the stories were too graphic, but Katie and I told them to continue. By the end, Katie’s eyes were rather glazed, and I had heard enough. In a way, we knew all this, not the precise details, but the gist.
Katie and I just wanted to forget about the case for a while. Doc came up with a brilliant solution. He needed to have a long talk with Catherine, so maybe we’d like it if he dropped us off at the Spa to eat dinner. He would pick us up afterwards.
Katie and I exchanged a long look. She started to pout, and I tugged at her arm, reminding her it was probably about the tests Catherine had to have. I heard a gentle sigh of relief, and saw an enthusiastic nod of approval.
Doc also said he had an apology. He had promised to take us to Naples to go on a seaplane ride over Long Lake. He suggested we do that tomorrow after breakfast. We could eat lunch there on the boardwalk. All of us let out one huge cheer.
Joe said he’d see us in the morning. He had started to write bits and pieces of this story, and wondered if he could interview us. Where it would end up, he didn’t know, but we would definitely have starring roles.
I was beside myself with joy. Two days ago, I was going to go back in hiding. To bland old Queens. To be emotionally buried among the less-than-famous and wealthy, and to be a star disciple of the Holy Conservative Church. Today, I stood exposed, although not naked, on the road to the Albert Academy. A budding sleuth, and a soon-to-be star interviewee. I said as much out loud, and Katie gave me a friendly shove.
Most important, I was in love!
Chapter Forty-seven
CUTS OF BEEF
Doc dropped us at the Spa on Route 302 and said he’d pick us up in about two hours. Mrs. Robinson, the owner, was there; our families and Marge Robinson were well acquainted. Everyone knew we’d be safe in her care.
We sat in the corner booth overlooking the lake, and Katie started to giggle. Her smile seemed to stretch from ear to ear as she went on and on about her father and how kind he was to her. I had to cut her off to double-check on her order. She nodded yes to our traditional lobster roll and chocolate malted.
The lobster rolls here were incredible, tons of really fresh chunk lobster from the claws on a bun with grilled sides, not like the frankfurter buns at home. They used a combination mayonnaise and lemon dressing that squirted all over your face with each bite; a ritual part of the meal was licking our fingers clean after.
When Marge approached for our order, Katie asked for the lobster roll.
I barked, “Chuck chopped!”
“Wha?” said Katie, squinting at me. “You said a lobster roll.”
“Honey, what do you want?” said Marge.
“Chuck chop, chop chuck!”
I continued to shout. After my initial shock at having those words pop out of mouth, I started to get it. I was meant to say them.
Marge was so kind as she explained, “We have hamburger, and it’s all good, maybe even sirloin, I’ll check. But be patient, love,” she said, kneeling down by my side. She exchanged a look with Katie and tiptoed away.
“What is wrong? You love lobster.” Katie leaned across the formica tabletop until she was about an inch away from my nose.
“Chch…chu…” I tried to speak.
Clearly, I was not okay. Something had grabbed my insides and my vocal chords and everything came out in choppy monosyllables.
“I don’t know. I don’t know why I said that,” I said, but I thought I had a clue.
“What, what did you say?” Katie placed her hand on mine.
“Chuck.”
“Who’s Chuck?”
“No, it’s meat. My mother won’t buy the expensive meat. I always have to get it at the store, and they have to do it special. I always forget how it’s said, like ‘chopped chuck’ or ‘chuck chopped’ or ‘chop chop.’ I opened my mouth to say Lobster, and that came out.”
“Did you hear what you just said when I asked you who chuck was? That’s the answer, right? Chuck. It’s a name, maybe a name we need to know.”
That was all Katie said. Her eyes stayed fixed on me. Once, I might have been afraid she was feeling sorry for me, but now, I knew it was love, and she was just taking me in…all of me.
It was already late when Doc picked us up. We did get to eat lobster rolls, and Marge joked about the lobster rolls being so good, some people actually get tongue-tied.
Katie was excited to break the news of chuck chopped. She told her part of the story, leaving out her embarrassment. I said I thought it was like the dreams, and it made sense. It was a variation on meat or carne.
Katie jumped in to say, “But chuck—that’s the important part.” She reminded us of Fifi’s misunderstanding of the word upchuck.
Doc nodded approval and said we’d have plenty of time to talk about it more tomorrow on our way to Naples. For now, the return trip to the cabin lasted less than five minutes in pitch black and silence.
Doc made us tiptoe into the cabin, putting his finger to his lips. He was going to sleep in his sitting room instead of the bedroom. Katie flashed him a bug-eyed look and asked if her mother was okay. Doc merely said she was angry about having to have tests. I don’t think he meant to roll his eyes, but I could see he had had enough talking for the day.
Death and Love at the Old Summer Camp Page 18
