The Hearts of Men

by Nickolas Butler

  Jonathan lifts the seat of the toilet.

  “Christ,” he says, “it’s gonna be tight down there, little buddy.”

  The distance between toilet platform and the top layer of the pit is maybe five feet. At first, they lower Nelson slowly, mindful of their jerry-rigged harness, lest it fail the boy. But as he swings off the sides of the latrine, his feet, hips, and shoulders scraping all kinds of horrors, he shouts up, “Just drop me! Do it quick! Come on!”

  So they do, to a gruesomely loud plop, and then the sound of Nelson vomiting. Now Troop #16 rushes to surround the latrine, Jack-the-Ginger pushing through the crowd of boys to enter the privy.

  “Son of a bitch,” he mumbles, glancing down at Nelson. “He actually did it.”

  “Well,” Jonathan says, “we’re not the kind of Scouts who welsh on a deal. And Bugler is a goddamned tough kid, isn’t he, fellas?”

  Nelson’s troop mates cheer him on, suddenly his defenders, his brothers. Nothing insincere about the encouragements they rain down upon him now, even as some of them turn their racking shoulders, their gagging mouths, their red-rimmed eyes, and stumble out into the ferns to vomit their stomachs empty. Poor Nelson is coated, every bit of him, paper in his hair, and the sounds he is making . . . The awful, awful whimpers giving way to groans and sobs and then more vomiting.

  How he struggles in that deep, dark latrine, his arms floundering, his eyes closed as his hands pretend to search through the muck and every time he delves deeply into those depths, he just as quickly wrenches his hands up to vomit. Every second an hour.

  “Pull him up,” some of the Troop #16 boys are saying now. “Pull him up for Christ’s sake.”

  “No,” Jack insists, “a deal’s a deal.” He leans down over the seat of the latrine, rubbing at his shiny forehead.

  “We’ve won the bet; come on now. Pull him up.”

  “No!” Jack bellows, his newly basso voice pushing the boys back.

  Now Jonathan grabs at Jack’s shirt, a handful of fabric in his fist, and he pushes Jack out of the latrine, saying, “Pull him up now, or I swear to God, I’ll knock your block off.”

  “And how will you explain that to Wilbur?” Jack grins. “That you made a big-money bet and agreed to a set of terms that would send one of your boys down a latrine? You’ll be dead meat, too. Go right ahead.”

  Jonathan loosens his grip of Jack’s shirt, takes a single step away from the redhead, and then turns back, slugging him deep in the stomach. The two troops erupt with the excitement and curiosity that always encircles a fight, and now Jonathan has tackled Jack to the dusty ground and is hammering away at him as he pins the other boy to the earth and pounds and pounds. And all the while, from deep down in the latrine, Nelson screams, “I found it! I found it, fellas!”

  Jonathan runs back to the privy and begins pulling on the rope that a younger boy held in his small hands. “Help me, goddamnit!” Soon Jim is there, too, wrenching at the rope, until Nelson’s head surfaces at the seat, his glasses streaked with shit, shit and paper in his hair, and smelling so, so very foul. But in his right hand, clenched between thumb and forefinger, a nickel, and despite the shit, Nelson smiling white, as if he’s just dived to the very bottom of the ocean to collect the world’s most priceless pearl.

  12

  NELSON’S TROOP UNIFIES AROUND HIM IN ALL THE ways that they have been trained to, and yet for so long, failed to do. Two boys snatch together soap, shampoo, toothpaste, and mouthwash, and Jonathan escorts Nelson to the showers, standing guard outside the building while he scrubs and scrubs. A pocketknife is donated, and a pair of fingernail clippers, a compass, a leather belt, and even a watch. These offerings are dropped into a hat stationed immediately in front of Nelson’s newly reassembled tent.

  Jonathan leans into the doorway of the shower room and yells, “You got about twenty minutes before taps, Bugler!”

  Nelson turns the showerhead off and reaches for a fresh towel. His eyes still sting in a disturbing way, and even after an hour of brushing his teeth and gargling mouthwash he can still taste the latrine. He wonders if he’ll ever feel clean again. Clutched in his right hand: the nickel. He feels he will never let it go. Nelson dresses quickly, strides out of the shower room, and walks across the campground to his tent. Jonathan follows him closely.

  “Nelson,” he says, “Nelson, I’m sorry. I should have never agreed to that bet. I know that. I just hope you’ll forgive me, you know? And I hope this can stay, you know, between us. Within the troop, I mean. Nelson?”

  Nelson disappears inside his tent, reappears a moment later, replacement horn in hand, walking efficiently toward the parade ground. Jonathan jogs a few paces to catch up to him.

  “Nelson? Jesus, Nelson!”

  But Nelson does not acknowledge the older boy—just blows out some test notes and occasionally spits into the forest.

  “Nelson, remember, old chum: I’m the one who gave you that nickel. All right? I’m the one who saved you.”

  Nelson stops abruptly, lowers the horn, and with his back still turned to Jonathan, says in a quiet voice, “I remember.”

  “Just like you gave me that baseball card!” Jonathan’s voice is almost frantic. “We’re friends, see? We’re in this together!”

  “When I think very hard,” Nelson says, running a hand through his hair, over the soft lines of his jaw, tugging at his ears, “when I really concentrate and try to remember, I don’t know that I’ve ever had a friend. My mom, maybe . . .” He thinks of her just then, their time together in the mornings, before school, when she prepares him breakfast, always setting a piece of toast before him, slathered in marmalade or her homemade raspberry jam, her body just behind him, so warm, almost as if she radiated her own light and heat, as if her heart were a crystal emanating unabashed love . . .

  He turns to Jonathan. “I should have held on to one nickel. We all should have. You were just the only one who remembered, but trust me, Jonathan, I’ll never forget.”

  “Forget what?”

  “The motto.”

  “The motto?”

  “Be prepared. I don’t think you were necessarily thinking ahead, Jonathan. I think you were being greedy.” He held up the nickel like a talisman. “Tell me,” Nelson orders, a new strength and sadness in his voice, “how much money do you have left in your pockets?”

  “None, bu— None Nelson, I swear.”

  “Pull them out, then. Pull out your pockets. Show me.”

  Jonathan stares back at him.

  “I heard you,” Nelson says. “I heard you, as I was pulled up. I could hear the coins in your pocket, as you ran. I’m not stupid.” Then, the rage rising, “I’m not stupid! I know now! I understand everything!”

  “I’m sorry,” Jonathan says quietly, staring at the ground. “We failed you, buddy. I failed you.”

  “And that’s it,” Nelson says. “That’s the lesson.”

  “What?”

  “That everyone will fail you. Everyone.”

  “I’m sorry, Nelson.”

  “Tell me something, was there ever any doubt that I was the one going down into the latrine? Ever any doubt that I’d be the sacrificial lamb?”

  Jonathan looks at the ground.

  Nelson, trembling, continues: “Because you sure as hell weren’t going down, were you? You made the bet, but I was the one who kept it. I kept the bet. I kept your word. And you failed me. Failed me.”

  He turns and walks down the path, and for the first time that week, he blows his bugle loud—loud, as if he were rallying the cavalry toward one final, epic ride.

  13

  AFTER DINNER, NELSON DECLINES TO LIGHT HIS troop’s fire. He doesn’t need to. Another boy hurriedly gathers kindling and kneels down beside the fire ring, busily assembling the bonfire’s structure. Nelson stays in his tent, staring at the central pole, up which a spider creeps. The lantern is a comfort, the steady low throb of its combustion.

  Before dusk, Counselor Tim announces his presence
by clearing his throat.

  “Come in,” Nelson says.

  Tim lifts the tent’s flaps and shrugs inside, sinks down to one knee, and then appraises the tight space.

  “You’ve got a good spot here, Nelson,” he says. “Real tidy. I shouldn’t be surprised, though. Like I said, you’ll be running this place someday.”

  Nelson sits up off his cot. Tim has brought a canvas bag full of provisions: two cast-iron Dutch ovens, flour, salt, sugar, powdered milk, canned peaches, vanilla, even a box of matches.

  “Fine,” he says. “The old amphitheater?”

  “You know the way?”

  “Not really,” Nelson says, tiredly.

  “I’ll show you,” Tim offers. “Here—follow me.” He stands, and begins to leave the tent, then turns, “But play it cool, Nelson. I mean, it’s okay to tell people you’re volunteering to work on the theater, but don’t broadcast it, okay? Our parties are sort of top secret. The labor isn’t, of course, you can talk about that. But the parties are something different. Like a reward for our work, see? You’re in the know now, sure, but we can’t have just any old tenderfoot coming to these things, you understand?”

  Nelson’s eyes are clear and cool. “I understand,” he says. “But does Scoutmaster Wilbur know about your . . . parties? How do you keep it a secret?”

  “Oh, that old goat,” laughs Tim. “C’mon, I’ll explain when we get there.”

  Now the sun is sinking fast in the west, like a quickly collapsing magenta balloon. Tim and Nelson walk side by side down the canopied path toward the parade ground, Tim occasionally turning back to survey whether or not they are being watched.

  “Did you tell anyone?” he asks.

  Nelson shakes his head, exhausted. “No.”

  “Good.” He pushes the younger boy into the woods. “Follow me.”

  The path is old, overgrown by ferns, but still there, like the bed of a very old, dry stream. Occasionally, they pass an ancient white pine, where Nelson touches a blaze carved into the thick bark.

  “Did you know this trail?” Tim asks, pushing steadily forward.

  “No,” Nelson murmurs, “I don’t think so.” He knows many trails that even his older fellow Scouts do not, but he’s only been to the old theater once, and it was along a different route. Still, he has made it a point, even before his first visit to Camp Chippewa, to study the topography of the land, so that if ever lost, he could orient himself simply by knowing the lay of the land. This is a path he has seen only on old maps, and knows leads to an old outdoor theater where once induction ceremonies were supposed to have been held for secret Scout societies, societies populated by older boys, their fathers and uncles, and even grandfathers, old men who had joined the movement in its earliest, purest days. Men, Nelson thinks, like Wilbur. The newer theater, complete with a modern sound system and lighting, was constructed just five years ago on the shores of Bass Lake.

  It is difficult to measure time. Occasionally, Tim stops, and either backtracks or slowly peers around at the tree trunks close to them. Then, just as quickly, they march forward in the darkness, until, at last, the forest opens into a clearing and above them, the innumerable stars sizzle and blink, with some of them, suddenly unmoored, arcing out across all of that dark, dark blue, and Nelson stands, dumbstruck, as he always is, by the stunning immensity of it all, the stupefying gravity of suddenly having the cosmos illuminate your own smallness; to think that only hours ago, he was this putrid sewer rat of an organism, sent down into an unholy murk to go fishing for so small a treasure that many adults he knew would not trouble themselves to bend over to pluck its insignificant value off a clean, dry sidewalk. That was who he was. A star sliced loose from its berth and went scuttling out into the void, turning and turning without ever a hope of gaining traction again.

  I am cut loose, he thinks. And, To hell with them all.

  And suddenly there they are: ten rows of sun-bleached, weather-rotten benches rise up out of a gulley, and nestled deep in the depression, a small stage. There seems nothing nefarious about the amphitheater. Just a beautiful little place deep within the forest.

  “I’ll pay you tomorrow night,” Tim says. “Just bring your famous cobbler here tomorrow night, nine o’clock. I’ll have your money and if you’d like, you can even hang around.”

  “Hang around? What do you do? Smoke cigarettes?” Nelson stammers. “Some mary jane?” He feels proud to use this term, to know it, at least in name if not in meaning.

  “Oh sure. But it’s the movies, mainly. We really set it up. It’s something. One of the counselors found these canisters of films in his dead uncle’s basement. He took them. You’ll see . . . Anyway, come on, let’s get back.”

  Nelson still doesn’t quite understand—what’s so taboo about some silly movies? “Say, Tim,” Nelson says, “how do you keep your parties a secret? I mean, Scoutmaster Wilbur knows you’re all out here. He even commends you on your work. I don’t understand.”

  Tim slaps him on the shoulder. “Aye, but that’s just it. When he visits, he always comes at the same time. Just before dark. Like clockwork. So we don’t begin our parties until well after he’s gone. That way we can be sure. I mean, what are the chances an old soldier is going to break his routine? Why would he pay us two visits in one night?” Now he rubs at Nelson’s shoulder. “What? You’re not nervous, are you? There’s no need to be. Heck, at the beginning of the summer we even appointed spies that kept eyes on all the trails around the theater. Nobody has ever even come close. This whole thing is both out in the open and way too far off the beaten track. It’s perfect.”

  “Smart,” Nelson says. “Very smart.”

  “We’re prepared, is all.” Tim grins. “Right?”

  The two depart each other’s company at the main trail and Nelson finds his own way back to camp, walking very deliberately through the dark.

  WILBUR SITS BESIDE THE FIRE, alone, a stick in his hands nudging the coals, arranging flaming logs. His face betrays nothing. The boy sits down beside him, wonders where his own father is. The camp is quiet.

  “I won’t ask where you’ve been,” Wilbur says. “Looking at the stars, maybe.”

  Nelson stares up into Wilbur’s face, the old man’s long, sharp nose outlined by the fire in crimsons and golds.

  Nelson decides to more or less tell the truth: “I was with Counselor Tim. He was showing me the progress on the old outdoor theater.”

  Wilbur runs a hand over his face and nods obliquely. “Oh, yes,” he said, “a fine job they’re doing out there, those boys.”

  Nelson recognizes the truth in what Tim had told him. The old man suspects nothing of them, their parties.

  “I sent four boys home today. You know why? One of them was pulling the legs off a live frog. Another shot an owl, not far from your camp—a barred owl. You imagine?” He shakes his head in disappointment. “The other two . . . It pains me to say, but they were smoking cigarettes. Cigarettes! Scouts don’t smoke cigarettes. Not cigarettes, not pipes, not cigars, nothing. It is a boy’s job, his responsibility to strengthen his body with exercise and games and a smart diet. Now, tell me how inhaling smoke is going to make your body stronger, Nelson? Please tell me that, because maybe I’m just too old, and I don’t understand the way of things anyway. Can you explain it to me?”

  Nelson kneels beside his bench, snags a log from the pile he’s stowed there in the morning, and sets it on the fire.

  “I’m sorry, Scoutmaster Wilbur.”

  “What for? You did nothing wrong, Nelson.”

  Nelson is quiet. Tries to decide whether or not to tell Wilbur about Thursday night’s festivities, whatever they are. Unsure he wants to hand the old man another burden, another disappointment, especially without certain knowledge of anything inappropriate at those happenings.

  “I never had any children,” Wilbur says quietly. “Never been married. I don’t know why. I became Scoutmaster of this camp after I came back from the war. It was nothing back then. A
thousand acres of tamarack swamp and a rotten cabin we bought for a song. I put everything into this camp. Everything. Every drop of strength and smarts I have. And the thought of having children, of getting married, I can’t say it ever passed through the transom of my mind. Because over time, more and more boys came to this camp. More young fathers. And they became my family. I could watch them grow, watch them change. Some of them became like sons to me, even invited me to their houses for Christmas and Thanksgiving.

  “But if they were really my children, my own children I mean, I know that there would be something else . . . Something deeper, stronger. The feelings, the sensations I have, they would be more natural perhaps, more amplified, on some molecular level even. Something ingrained in me. I guess this is what people call love.

  “But the thing is, Nelson, I know you don’t love me. You might like me. You might respect me. But you don’t love me, not the way you love your mother or father, or your grandparents. When I am gone, you will perhaps feel an absence, but it will be like a favored book lost from your collection, a space on your shelf. You will miss it, but you may find another. Or not.”

  Wilbur stands from the fire. “If you have something you need to tell me, Nelson, perhaps tomorrow morning would be a good time. Before reveille. In fact, there’s something I would like to share with you.”

  Nelson nods up at Wilbur, and then listens, as the old man walks into the darkness, leaving him alone to tend the fire.

  14

  NELSON DOES NOT SLEEP WELL. THE WEIGHT OF THE week’s events weighing on him combined with a sneaking homesickness form a new kind of unnamable existential uncertainty. And now Counselor Tim’s party—he has no idea what to expect exactly, but there is the sense that the secret nature of the party itself, Tim’s advance forest spies, the way he talked about Wilbur—none of it seems to add up to anything wholesome.