City Boy

by Herman Wouk

  Mr. Gauss became violently agitated. “Someone save that boy! I knew this was sheer folly! Don't let that paddle drift away! Dismantle this thing immediately! Find the rowboat!” he shouted, waving his arms in many directions and running two full circles around the stupefied handy man. While he was engaged in this useful activity, Uncle Sandy, Ted, and Cliff trampled down the hill, and Clever Sam loped after Cliff, trailing his towing harness. When this strange rescue cavalcade reached the shore, it became evident that lifesaving would not be part of its duties. Herbie floundered to shallow water and began wading sadly ashore, dragging the paddle. Behind his back the rowboat rose to the surface with bloated laziness and rolled over, its greased bottom, adorned with two parallel rails, rocking gently just above the water. The whole scene was a study in the ludicrous, worthy to be sketched by a good-natured painter and titled “Failure.”

  The feelings of the drenched boy as he stumbled ashore under the eyes of most of the girls' camp, which had gathered at the news of the mishap, cannot in charity be examined. But Ted and Cliff heard him muttering fiercely, “I deserve it! Deserve it! Deserve worse than that,” over and over, as he doggedly sloshed up the hill, declining assistance.

  “Don't take it too hard, Herb,” said Uncle Sandy, striding beside him. “All of us have ideas that don't come off. It was a swell try.”

  Herbie did not answer.

  “What happened, Herb?” said Elmer Bean, coming down to meet him.

  “Elmer, the doggone boat just hit the water an' kept goin' straight down.” Herbie leaned on the handy man's arm for a moment, pulled off a shoe, and poured a stream of muddy water out of it. He did the same with the other shoe, and padded along the grass in his waterlogged stockings, holding the shoes in one hand. “Somethin's wrong with the whole business, Elmer. There's a curse on me. It ain't never gonna work.”

  “Don' give up that easy, Herb.”

  “I ain't givin' up easy. But you can't fight a curse. I got all this comin'.”

  They were at the top of the slide now, and the large semicircle of spectators stared silently at the boy. He was brought too low to be an object of jokes. Felicia pushed to the front of the crowd and cried, “Herbie, are you all right?”

  “Sure I'm all right. Water don't hurt nobody,” the sopping boy answered shortly, and turned away from her.

  Mr. Gauss's arms were still waving, but more slowly and in fewer directions as he drew near. “Splendid camp spirit, Herbie. You're taking defeat like a man. Not injured a bit, are you? You look just fine. No need to notify your parents, I'm sure. Why upset them? All you need is dry clothes and a nice hot supper. Yes, yes, Herbie, you deserve honorable mention for your idea. It is not a failure, my boy. Look on it as a success, a moral success in which you learned many lessons.”

  Few things could have been less palatable to Herbie at this point than a dose of Gaussian victory.

  “Guess I'll go change my clothes,” he mumbled. As he turned to the narrow path to Company Street, he saw Lucille Glass standing close behind Mr. Gauss, peeping at him with round, sympathetic eyes. She gave him her most winning smile and nodded encouragement. But suddenly she seemed only a gawky little girl in white blouse and blue bloomers, with carroty hair. She had a great many freckles, and when she smiled her upper row of teeth showed crooked, one on each side being set far back in the gum. The thought that for this creature's favor he had undergone all his vain giant labors was preposterous to Herbie. He could not summon up an answering smile. He trudged away, stooped and dripping. The last thing he heard was the camp owner's order, “Start the dismantling right after supper, Elmer. I want this lawn clear by morning,” and Elmer's reply, a morose “Um.”

  Mr. Gauss sat on the veranda of the guest house that evening, listening with pleasure to the sawing, ripping, and banging in the darkness on the hill. To the uninitiated it was harsh noise, but to him it was a sweet song of lumber acquired free of charge. He mused a while on the amazing burst of energy of young Herbie Bookbinder, which had brought into being the useless structure now being demolished. Boys were powder kegs, he concluded, veritable powder kegs. The quietest of them could go off with a great bang when properly ignited. What had enabled the small fat boy to work so hard and even to infect the comatose Elmer Bean with his fanaticism? Why would boys never show such fine spirit in the little tasks he set them? Mr. Gauss sighed, and slapped a mosquito into the hereafter. Another hummed up to take vengeance. Mr. Gauss was in no mood for the nightly duel with the fauna of Manitou. He rose and retreated to his room, where he fell asleep with the sound of hammer and crowbar still in his ears, and a vision of a neat pile of boards in his mind's eye.

  In the morning he was awakened by a hail outside his window: “Mr. Gauss! Hey, Mr. Gauss!” Rolling his reluctant body out of bed, he noticed with blinking surprise that the battered one-legged tin clock on his dresser read only ten minutes after seven. Nobody ever disturbed him until eight.

  “Take a look out here, Mr. Gauss!”

  The voice was the handy man's. Mr. Gauss shuffled to the window, looked out at the lawn, and came wide awake with astonishment and anger. Herbie's Ride stretched down to the water exactly as before. The rowboat was fastened with a slipknot again at the top of the slide, with Clever Sam happily cropping grass nearby. Ted, Cliff, and Herbie sat on the seats of the boat. Elmer stood up in it, with the running end of the knot in his hand. As soon as the handy man saw Mr. Gauss's head he shouted, “She's O.K. now, Mr. Gauss. Watch us go!”

  “Elmer, I forbid you!” yelled Mr. Gauss, but even as he uttered the words the handy man pulled the line free and dropped to a seat. The rowboat began sliding. A quarter of the way down the hill it picked up speed, and raced. Just as it came to the water's edge it seemed to jump upward. The boys raised canvas flaps on either side of the gunwales to protect themselves from the splash. The boat flew off shore, hit the water as gracefully as a gull, with a small burst of spray, and coasted to a halt. As soon as the splattering was over the boys dropped the flaps, took up paddles, and waved them gleefully at Mr. Gauss.

  The camp owner, trembling with mingled relief and annoyance, dressed and hurried out to the slide. When he arrived the rowboat was already back at the top, and Cliff was releasing Clever Sam from the tow.

  “Next ride fer you, Skipper!” said the handy man, saluting him gaily.

  “Elmer, my orders were distinctly—”

  “Shucks, Mr. Gauss, I knew fer sure you din' wanna make them kids unhappy after all that work, not if we could help it. There's four o' them, see, an' we want 'em to come back next year, don't we? Well, there wasn't nuthin' wrong with the old slide, 'cept I fergot to put in the old ski-jump tilt to the bottom, see? Boat was headin' straight down when it hit water 'stead o' comin' in belly up like a bird. We fixed it easy last night. Jest a little scaffoldin' an' a short ramp.”

  “Please, Mr. Gauss,” said Herbie, looking at him with dog's eyes, “take a ride. We tried it eight times already. It's great. You'll be our first real passenger.”

  “Very well, Herbie.” Mr. Gauss smiled broadly and patted his head. “You have real camp spirit. My hat is off to you.” He stepped majestically into the boat and sat. Elmer released the rope and Mr. Gauss had the luxury of a fine thrilling ride, and not a drop of water splashed on him, either. Ted in the bow, and Herbie in the stern, swiftly paddled the boat to the pebbly beach, and helped the camp owner alight. Mr. Gauss watched admiringly as the boys pulled the boat into place on a greased ramp, fastened the towing harness of Clever Sam to a mooring ring in the stern, and guided it up into place on the up-tilted rails at the foot of the Ride. The horse began dragging the boat up the hill smoothly and easily.

  There is no arguing with success, and Mr. Gauss knew it. “Herbie, I congratulate you,” he said, walking up behind the lad. “You have performed a wonder, my boy.”

  “I ain't the one. Elmer an' Cliff an' Ted—mostly Elmer—they done it. I can't even do half as much work as Ted. I'm just no good at it.”


  “But you, my boy, you had the vision. The vision and the enterprise. Did I build Camp Manitou, my boy? Why, I did not nail one stick to another. Yet it is my camp. And this is your ride. Herbie's Ride.”

  Herbie would have thanked Mr. Gauss to compare his ride to something better than Camp Manitou, but he realized that the camp owner was exerting himself to be pleasant. So he said, “Sure glad you enjoyed it, Mr. Gauss—er, Skipper,” and hurried away up the hill.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The Triumph of Herbie

  And so it was that Herbie's Ride came into being after all. Four days ago it had been a cloudy notion in a small boy's mind, a ridiculous dream of a rowboat on wheels coasting downhill. Now, real and working, the slide dominated the landscape of the girls' camp. Elmer added a handsome frill: an archway at the top, bearing the words “HERBIE's RIDE” cut out of a semicircular frame of cardboard in letters a foot high, with bright red electric lights behind it. Delighted with his handiwork, he drove hastily into town and returned with an electric interrupter switch which he attached to the lights. When dusk fell and the boys and girls turned out in gay costumes for the Mardi Gras, this sign, flashing on and off, on and off, was a striking sight. It was the first thing visitors saw, driving into the camp or crossing from the boys' grounds to the girls' lawn. There was nothing as splendid anywhere else in Manitou. When the other booths, games, rides, and entertainments had hardly been visited, a line of twenty children and adults already stretched before the Ride.

  Directly under the archway stood Herbie in Elmer's sailor cap and blouse. The cap tended to drop down over his ears, and the blouse was loose enough to have held Cliff inside it, too, but the nautical effect was fine nevertheless. At first Herbie made a few efforts in the way of a cry: “Step right up, folks, best ride you ever been on! Slip down the slide on the slippery slope for only a quarter, twenty-five cents, the fourth part of a dollar,” and so forth. But within a few minutes, with two dozen paid passengers waiting their turns, more coming each moment, and a large crowd watching the Ride and exclaiming in admiration, the cry seemed unnecessary, and he gave it up.

  Thereafter the night was one of swimming pleasure for him. Money and congratulations poured in. Many passengers came up the hill from their first ride and walked into line for another. The Ride went smooth as oil. Ted and Felicia stayed in the rowboat, paddling it back to shore. Cliff and Clever Sam accomplished recovery with more and more ease as the evening wore on. Herbie collected fares and stored them in a cigar box, and tied up and released the boat with a slipknot, as Elmer had taught him. All four children felt the luxurious pride of participation in a great success, and even Clever Sam was in mellow good humor, and accepted much petting and light thwacks from the onlookers with friendly rolls of the eyes.

  In this hour of exalted happiness Herbie's conscience packed up and departed. He amassed fifty dollars in less than two hours. The “borrowing” episode would be erased from the Book of Sins in the morning. The curse was forgotten. All was well. “Boy, you win Skipper sure!” was said to him perhaps a hundred times. Vision and enterprise had carried the day. Heaven had decided mercifully that stealing wasn't really stealing sometimes, and had suspended the Eighth Commandment for Herbie Bookbinder's benefit. What a wonderful old world it was, to be sure!

  Yes, and even Lucille came around. Herbie's triumph had been in swing for three hours, and he was quite drunk with praise and profits, when he felt a timid tug at his oversize sleeve.

  “Congratulations, Herbie,” said a caroling voice.

  The boy looked round at a beautiful little red-headed pirate dressed in a ragged gold shirt, a crimson sash, and short black trousers carefully torn at the bottom. She carried a little dagger and wore a black silk patch over one eye, but the other eye shone with enough admiration and love for two. Herbie, who had thought yesterday he was cured of his romantic affliction, suddenly wondered if he really was. Lucille, the radiant Lucille, was humbling herself to him, and it was a sweet sensation.

  “'Lo, Lucille. 'Scuse me a minute.”

  He made change for a batch of eight passengers as they boarded the boat, and flourished the cigar box so that Lucille had a long look at its overflowing green and silver contents. Then he pulled the rope with careless ease, and the boat thundered away down the slope.

  “Gosh, Herbie.” The girl's voice was awed, crushed. “However did you think up such a thing? You're wonderful!”

  “Aw, Elmer Bean an' Cliff done it all. I ain't so hot,” said Herbie. He paused, glanced at her and, as it were, took aim. Then he slowly added, “I can't even dip.”

  The pirate's cheeks all at once became the color of her sash. She pulled the patch off her face, evidently judging she needed both eyes for the work at hand, and said softly, looking at him with innocent appeal, “Herbie, I'm sorry I been so bad to you. You know what, I haven't even talked to Lennie all night. Except once he wanted to take me on your ride, an' I said I wanted to go alone.”

  Herbie's congealed affections were melting in the warmth of her voice, low, musical, almost whispering. But he called up the memory of his injuries and said indifferently, “Wanna ride now?”

  “Yes, Herbie.”

  “O.K. You kin go free. An' you don't hafta wait on line.”

  The flashing sign showed surprise, darkness, disappointment, darkness, then a winsome smile that remained on the girl's face through several flashes. “Won't you come with me?”

  “Heck, no, Lucille. See, I gotta take care o' the finances.”

  “Oh. Maybe after a while you'll come to the dancing at the social hall. I'd like to dance with you.”

  “Maybe.”

  Lucille fell silent, and watched Clever Sam towing the rowboat back to the top. Herbie made a great show of counting the money—there was a hundred seven dollars now—and wished Lucille would grovel a little more; but she didn't. So he said at last, “How's the rest of the Mardigrass, Lucille? I ain't had a chance to see it.”

  “Terrible. Everybody says your ride is the only good thing.”

  “How's Yishy's freak show?”

  The girl sniffed contemptuously in answer.

  “What's Lennie doing?”

  “Oh, he's got a baseball suit on with ‘New York Yankees’ on it, an' a pillow in his stomach, an' goes around saying he's Babe Ruth. What a dumb idea!”

  Herbie silently compared this inspiration with his own, and concluded that there were rare moments when brawn did not automatically rule the world. It did not occur to him that Lennie, at least, had not stolen the baseball suit.

  The rowboat came creaking to the top of the slide. Herbie lashed it to the stake as Cliff freed Clever Sam. Then he gallantly handed Lucille into the boat, while several boys and girls waiting in line squealed a protest. Felicia, sitting in the bow, looked around, and said, “Humph! Starting all over again.” She threw down her paddle and stepped out of the boat.

  “Hey, Fleece, where you goin'?” said Herbie.

  “As long as we're getting romantic again,” snapped his sister as she stalked away, “I'm going to dance for a while at the social hall.”

  “Never mind, Herbie.” Ted spoke up from the stern. “I can handle it myself.”

  “Thank you for the ride, Herbie. I hope I'll see you later,” said Lucille demurely. Now the other passengers piled in, thrusting money at the boy. Lucille all the while gazed up at him worshipfully. Herbie felt foolish and happy and warm, and at the pinnacle of life and time. It was with reluctance that he tripped the rope and sent the boat rumbling downhill with its lovely burden.

  Not long afterward three prolonged blasts of Uncle Sandy's whistle echoed through the camp, signaling the end of the Mardi Gras. Grumbling, a line of about a dozen passengers disbanded, all of them campers awaiting a second or third ride, except for a stout lady from the village with a dismal white-headed child. Herbie counted the receipts again while Ted beached the boat and Cliff returned the horse to the stable. Felicia came up from the dance in a glowing, happy mood. W
hen all the colleagues were gathered again under the flashing sign, Herbie announced gaily the income from their labors: a hundred thirteen dollars and fifty cents.

  “Holy smoke, we're rich,” said Ted.

  “How do we divvy it?” said Felicia.

  “First of all I owe seventy-five bucks for materials,” said Herbie. The others nodded. “That still leaves almost forty bucks, or ten bucks apiece.”

  Mr. Gauss appeared out of the darkness, smiling broadly. He was carrying half a dozen cigar boxes similar to the one in Herbie's hands.

  “Well, well, the gold mine,” he said cheerfully. “Let me have your box, Herbie. I'll keep it in the safe overnight for you. I'm doing the same for all the boys that made any real money.”

  “Gee, thanks, Mr. Gauss,” said Herbie, huddling the box protectingly against his side, “but I can take care of it O.K.”

  “Nonsense, my boy. We don't want to tempt sneak thieves, you know.” He grasped the box firmly and pried it out of Herbie's arms. “The safe is the only place for so much money as you made. I'll send for you first thing in the morning and return it to you. Congratulations, all of you!” He walked off toward the guest house.

  “Good-by, hundred thirteen bucks,” croaked Ted, loud enough for the camp owner to hear him, but Mr. Gauss padded obliviously away.

  “G'wan,” said Herbie. “He wouldn't take that money for himself.”

  “He couldn't!” said Felicia.

  Cliff said, “Even Mr. Gauss ain't that low. He'll give us some back, anyway.”