The Hearts of Men Read online

  Nelson all but took Jonathan by the hand, leading him out into the backyard. Clete slumped down in a chair fuming, thrusting deviled egg after deviled egg into his furiously working jaws while Dorothy smoothed the tablecloth with her trembling hands. Smoothed it, again and again, as if her palms were two hot steaming irons.

  Nelson’s birthday guest stayed on for about twenty-five minutes. Enough time to shoot a few moderately well-aimed arrows, and then to join Nelson and his parents in an all-too-earnest rendition of “Happy Birthday.” Enough time for a slice of cake and a scoop of melted vanilla ice cream. Time enough for Nelson to open the box and discover there a birch-bark basket.

  “I made that, actually,” Jonathan said. “I, ah, made it for you.”

  Nelson’s hands held the basket reverently. “You made this for me?” he stuttered.

  “Yeah, sorry the weaving isn’t tighter, but . . . I’ve only made two. Yours was the first one.” He blushed in the gaffe of this honesty. “I gave my granny the other,” he added solemnly, though, in truth, his second attempt had been presented to Peggy Bartlett, a girl he hoped to ask to the Homecoming Dance that October.

  “Oh, it’s beautiful!” Dorothy exclaimed, making one, two, three small claps with her hands. “Such a talented young man!”

  “Well,” said Jonathan, extending the width of his hand to engulf Nelson’s, “happy birthday, old chum.”

  “Thank you,” said Nelson, still marveling at the basket. “Thank you so, so much.”

  And now the older boy fled back down the driveway while Nelson remained where he was, holding the basket, noting its lightness, the imperfection of its plait, wondering what he could fill it with that might be meaningful enough to complement his older friend’s extraordinary generosity.

  He set it on the picnic table, beside the presents his parents had bought him: a new pair of trousers, a build-a-working-clock kit, and a chapter book about the Civil War. But it was the basket his eyes kept coming back to, this beautifully imperfect little crown.

  2

  THE KETTLE HISSES AND NELSON PULLS IT AWAY FROM the flame before quickly bringing it into his tent, where he aims the kettle at his uniform, spitting hot water and sputtering steam out at the olive fabric. There are many ways to iron clothing without the aid of an actual iron, and Nelson is well practiced in a few different methods. His other preferred technique is to spritz vinegar on a wrinkly garment, though this lends both uniform and Scout a certain olfactory signature, and already he is struggling to gain friends.

  Two times, he rushes with the kettle between bonfire and tent, applying steam to the shirt and shorts hanging from the line inside his tent. Satisfied at last that his uniform is impeccable, and aware that the eastern horizon has begun to faintly brighten, he walks the one-mile path to Camp Chippewa’s central parade ground. This gives him time to warm up his lips, to practice his horn without fear of waking his troop, his leaders, or his father, who has agreed to act as chaperone for the week’s stay at Camp Chippewa, though Nelson has seen little actual chaperoning from his father, who prefers to return to the campsite after each meal, where he sits at an aged picnic table reading a biography of the Chicago Cubs Hall of Famer Gabby Hartnett, of all people, or untangling the unruly knot of fishing line perennially dogging his reel. He does not even commiserate with the other fathers that much; the other fathers who follow behind their sons as the boys run from one camp activity to the other: perfecting their cooking skills, navigating an orientation course, fashioning a coin purse from a few ragged scraps of leather. For so many of these fathers, it seems to Nelson, camp may be a vacation from their jobs, their wives, the rest of their lives. Even the dads who go through the motions seem barely involved in the week’s activities, rarely offering any kind of guidance or wisdom, except perhaps to say, “We could use some more wood for the fire.” Or, “Careful, I heard a coyote last night.” Always with a jocular elbowing, a conspiratorial wink.

  Nelson has set a goal of earning no less than five merit badges during this week. He would like to earn the rank of Eagle Scout before his sixteenth birthday. Clete was a lackluster Boy Scout; Nelson has seen his father’s moth-eaten uniform, its low-level badges of rank and honor. Deep into his cups, though, his father always reminds him of what counts: that he served with honor in the Second World War, moving north from Africa into Italy, and thence on to France, before being honorably discharged at the age of twenty-two with the rank of corporal. In his gut, though, Nelson feels that the skills accrued here at Camp Chippewa, and at his troop’s weekly meetings inside the narthex of St. Luke’s Lutheran Church, are already preparing him for a hallowed future in the United States military. He just needs his body to play catch-up with his brain. Maybe that would make his father proud of him, a life in the military, though Nelson has really no idea what such pride would even look like—let alone feel like. A hug, perhaps? More likely: a firm handshake and a grim smile to accompany it. Still, something to work toward.

  The bugle in Nelson’s smallish hands comes from his grandfather, who served in the First World War, a full half century ago. For the first several years of Nelson’s life, the bugle sat on the fireplace’s dusty mantel, beside a folded American flag, framed all in oak, and encased in glass. It had taken Nelson months of pleading with his father before Clete would allow the boy to play the horn, in his bedroom, with the door closed. It’s been with him ever since, and he keeps its brass to a shine, a thing of beauty.

  Most nights at camp, Nelson sleeps with his instrument, fearing the other boys might try to steal his horn; not because they are jealous of the bugle, but because they know how precious it is to him. He sees them pointing at him during meals from the other side of their mess hall table. Just as he sees that his own father does little to dispel their pointing, no more than the other fathers, or troop leaders, who sometimes eat with the boys, but as often as not seem to congregate at their own table. Nelson cannot imagine their conversation, these grown men in little-boy uniforms, eating the same chow, mumbling the same prayers and campfire songs, oaths and incantations. The only voice Nelson ever hears rise in his defense, as it does every so often, is Jonathan Quick’s, and even he seems to react more out of irritation or boredom, revulsion even, or a desire to be contrarian, than any particular allegiance or compassion.

  “Shut up, fellas,” he’ll say. “We’re a troop, all right? Let’s act like it.” Or, “The next person who wants to tease Bugler can tease me, see how they like what happens next.”

  That is what the other boys call him, he now knows, Bugler. Not to honor the job for which he is known, but rather, just a nickname, spoken with derision. Another way to write him off.

  THE PATH WENDS BETWEEN POTHOLE LAKES left by steamroller glaciers. From the safety of trees, deer spy on Nelson, fidget, and then bound off deeper into the woods. Once, a skunk scurried right past him, but thankfully left his tail lowered as he passed. The path opens up to the parade ground near the staff campsite, and already he hears activity coming from that direction: indistinct voices, cabin doors clapping shut, water splashing. Counselors and other staff live in small cabins, and there is talk that someday, even campers will move into such digs.

  The fog is so thick he cannot see the flagpole some two hundred yards in the distance, the air heavy enough that he wonders if it was fruitless to iron his shirt. He marches forward, his leather boots slick with dew. At the flagpole, he consults his pocket watch, runs through a series of scales, and then, at precisely seven o’clock, slides his two feet together, stands perfectly erect, and raises his bugle to his lips to blow out reveille.

  The horn sounds out over the parade ground, a plain of grass draped before the hillock where the flagpole stands atop a fieldstone base surrounded by a horseshoe of tall maples behind it. No matter what anyone else might think, Nelson revels in this responsibility. This sanctioned brass musical power he holds in his hands, blown deep from his belly and diaphragm, these bursts of notes that slice through the fog and into the
forest, rip through those canvas tent walls, startle the forest creatures from their foraging, tingling even the dense white ear follicles of the camp’s Scoutmaster, Wilbur Whiteside, a man aged some eighty years, who at the joyful sound of Nelson’s blasts will practically leap from his narrow bed in the administrative lodge, towels jauntily wrapped around his neck and narrow waist, a giant pair of goggles making his eyes as oversize as a frog’s, and tiptoe lightly down to Bass Lake, where, parting the cattails, he will lunge naked into those serene waters, there to swim one down-and-back, his old-man arms slicing the water. Nelson has never seen Wilbur’s morning circuit, of course, but he’s heard about it; an older boy, perhaps, up early to fish, startled by the sight of pale old Wilbur, cutting his way through the lake.

  BY NOW, Nelson sees a few of the camp’s counselors making their way toward the tent pole; stuffing shirt flaps into shorts, cinching belts, hiking olive-green socks high up on skinny-kneed legs. They come toward him talking hoarsely, laughing low. He can hear their boots squeaking over dewed grass, their pocket-change music, their hocks and loogies. If asked to label his admiration of these young men, he would call them heroes. But no one, of course, does ask him, and so his regard for them stays secret. A few of them consider him a brownnosing toady, but most of them are affable enough and kind in their interactions with him.

  They are, of course, what he is striving to be: taller, stronger, more sun-browned, more capable, ready with a joke, bold, devout, kind. Some of them serve as acolytes, others altar boys. Some are mock senators or UN ambassadors. Others are team captains, class presidents, newspaper editors. These young men, they do not cut him from the herd for his weakness, and they do not mock his otherness. They just move beside him at picnic tables, or on the archery range, instructing him, sharing the complex maneuverings of handy knots, how to tune a ham radio, where to divine water when there is none. They point to constellations in the sky, name certain stars, identify various manner of cloud in their west-to-east comings and goings, and what these celestial migrations mean for the next day’s weather. They know the tracks of animals, the songs of birds, the husbandry of pigeons and rabbits. And, on most mornings, as they approach the flagpole, they acknowledge him with the kind indifference of an older brother. A few nods of the head, or perhaps a “Hey, Bugler” or a warm “Nelson.” He has always longed for a brother.

  Now he plays reveille for a second time and shortly thereafter more and more boys appear through the fog with their disorganized laughter, pounding feet, and play-punches. They assemble themselves by troop into two long lines facing the flagpole. Some idly twirl lengths of rope, or practice their knot tying. From Nelson’s vantage they might be an army at the end of a long and desperate war when young boys and old men have become the only conscripts. Forming a separate line on the flagpole ridge, facing the downhill campers, are the counselors, cooks, and administrators, their posture noticeably stiffer, the hair on their kneecaps darker and coarser, their aftershave heavy on the air. Nelson notices his own troop take its position at the eastern edge of the parade ground and near the marshy shore of Bass Lake. His father is there among them, his morning beard not yet shaved, Scout kerchief askew, stretching his stiff arms in the air and offering the careless public yawn of a bored silverback gorilla with all the time in the world to forage.

  Scoutmaster Wilbur is striding toward the line of counselors now, hands held at the small of his straightened back, and Nelson blows the final reveille. A few stragglers come bursting through the lifting fog as if fleeing some forest foe. They, too, stand at attention, now red-faced and out of breath. A color guard approaches the flagpole with utmost respect; Wilbur insists on this. And now, with the delicacy and deliberation of the nation’s finest hotel staff making a bed, the flag is unfolded and then clipped to a lanyard and smartly, evenly raised up into the sky. Wilbur tolerates no herky-jerky movements as the Stars and Stripes makes its ascent, and it is something to behold, the flag rising so smoothly and purposefully it seems impossible to imagine that the machinery behind its flight is nothing but a team of teenage boys.

  As the color guard retreats, everyone in camp raises a hand to his heart and recites the nation’s pledge of allegiance. Then Wilbur delivers the morning messages. For many boys whose stomachs are grumbling quite loudly, these incessant messages are the most trying and mundane moments of the day. They simply cannot conclude fast enough for that mad dash to the mess hall, that great stampede of hunger.

  “Scouts,” Wilbur begins, “we have been blessed with beautiful weather this week and I certainly hope that you will all utilize your time effectively.” He paces the grass near the flagpole, Nelson stiffening at his approach. “Because, as Benjamin Franklin once asked us, ‘Dost thou value life? Then guard well thy time, for time’s the stuff life’s made of.’ Scouts, I know that the sunset of your lives feels like a distant, distant thing, but I am here to tell you, our lives are mere instants, and I would hate to think any Scout amongst you would be spending his precious time here at Camp Chippewa idling away.”

  And now, a look of disquiet crosses old Wilbur’s wizened face.

  “I have heard some troubling reports, Scouts. Reports, truth be told, that predate your arrival this week here at Camp Chippewa, but nonetheless have reached my ears once again even as recently as last night. I don’t have the full picture yet, but here and there have heard tell from upset and confused boys of clandestine meetings, vulgar happenings . . . It seems,” and here he pauses, pressing a neatly clipped and filed finger to his dry lips, the very tip brushing his white, handlebar mustache, “that some amongst you have been participating in some rather disturbingly uncouth behavior, behavior totally unrepresentative of the Scouting Way. Behavior I find troubling, and, frankly, deviant. Furthermore, I fear this behavior is not being brought into the camp by young men, by young Scouts, but may in fact be perpetrated by my very own counselors—dare I say, my staff.”

  The parade ground is suddenly so, so, quiet. The sound of the flagpole’s rope and lanyard—even the snap of cloth as the flag flaps in the slight breeze—seems deafening. There is an edge of gathering fury to Wilbur’s voice behind a delivery that aches of crestfallen heartbreak. His small shoulders droop perceptibly inside his uniform.

  “It may be,” he continues, “that I cannot correct the behavior of those who I fear are organizing these most unfortunate events. It may be that something inside them is so twisted, it cannot be untwisted. But it is my duty as this camp’s Scoutmaster to address those of you whose hearts remain devout, whose compasses remain true.

  “It is a difficult thing, you see, to strive to be a good man. The whole world will try their level best to make you swerve, to bend your principles. I don’t need to provide you with specifics. But if you’ve read your handbooks, you’ll know what it is I’m talking about.

  “Now, here is the thing: You are this nation’s knighthood. You are the ones with a code, with a sense of duty, of right and wrong. It is you who will be challenged, asked to cheat, tempted to corrupt. And for those of you out there before me now, those of you true of heart, I want you to know, there is a reward in being good, in being decent, in being kind. It is this: You need not lie about your behavior, you need not hide anything, or be ashamed. You need never to apologize. You will be the leaders and the defenders. Those in our society who are weak, who are downtrodden or hard on their luck, their faces will turn to you for help or guidance. Which is why you must persevere, why your spirit must endure.”

  Now he turns his face toward the Boy Scouts of Camp Chippewa, and to his own counselors, to the secretaries of his office and to the cooks of the mess hall, some of whom have attended the morning flag ceremony in the stead of their peers, who even now are frantically scrambling eggs by the dozens and dozens, or frying pounds upon pounds of bacon and sausage.

  “I am too old to even speak about the sort of behavior that has been reported to me. And too many of you young men out there, I fear, are too young, too innocent, too p
ure to be introduced to it all at this point in your impressionable lives. The truth is, I’m ashamed to stand up here amongst you, with this filthy cloud lingering over us all. It isn’t Scout-like. My hope, then, is that my words this morning will be enough to put a stop to it—to put a stop to this abhorrent behavior. To make those of you complicit in the crime so ashamed, so chagrinned, that it will all come to a full and decisive stop.”

  He touches the waxed curls of his mustache.

  “And now, to the wonderful volunteers working each evening after dinner on our network of paths, our canteen area, the Bass Lake lavatory facilities, and the old amphitheater, fixing its stage and seating,” Wilbur says in summation, “I give you my thanks. There is no greater glory than that of a volunteer whose back burns with the honest work of labor given without reward.

  “One final announcement. Please make your ropes ready.”

  At this, every boy in attendance holds his three-foot length of hempen rope in front of him, one hand on each end with the middle dangling below.

  “Now,” Wilbur says, “tie a square knot.”

  Hundreds of boy-hands begin tying. Nelson wishes with all his being that he could be included in this rite—who, after all, could tie one faster, or tighter?—but because he has been tasked with holding a horn each day, he is duly excused. Still, every part of his being recites, Over under through; over under through: Voilà!

  By and by, boys begin holding their knots skyward, until every Scout has completed this most elementary task.

  Giving a cursory survey across their ranks, Wilbur nods with satisfaction. “That is all, gentlemen.”

  THE PROCESSION TO THE MESS HALL is more somber that morning. No boys racing ahead of the pack to queue up outside the mess, huffing in the greasy smoke of sizzling bacon and hissing sausages. No younger boys kicking at puddles or hunting through the tall grass for garter snakes or frogs.