Page 16 of Pioneer Summer

Yurka nodded solemnly. And when he left the mess hall after dinner, he headed right over to the junior cabins to invite Volodya. A deal was a deal.

CHAPTER FOUR

GOOD NIGHT, BOYS AND GIRLS!

Yura, lost in reminiscence, came back to himself and erased the sad smile from his face. Nostalgia and a painful, sad longing had pierced him to the depths of his soul, especially here inside these walls. He’d wanted so badly to come back here, but to the “here” of twenty years ago, where he could once more hear music, and children’s laughter, and Volodya’s stern voice. But Yura had to keep going, to find what he’d come to Camp Barn Swallow today to get.

He got up from the squeaky seat, brushed the dust off his trousers, surveyed the stage one last time, and went to the theater exit.

By some miracle, the paved path to the junior cabins had remained intact. The cabins had once been pretty, painted in bright colors and decorated with patterns so they looked like little huts from Russian fairy tales. But now they looked pitiful. The majority had collapsed into heaps of wet, rotten boards that still had traces of old paint on them. Only two of the little cabins—Yura couldn’t remember their troop numbers anymore—were more or less intact. In one of them, the roof and the left-hand wall had fallen in, while the other one was almost sound, except that it had settled over time and gone crooked. But it was definitely not worth peeking inside: the porch had sunk more than the rest of the cabin, creating a gap, and the front door had fallen out, leaving a dark, scary, gaping chasm instead of an entrance. The junior troops had always been housed in these cabins, far from the dance floor and movie theater. Yura had lived here in one of his first camp sessions.

As he walked past the playground, Yura winced at a mournful metallic screeching sound. The wind was moving the rusty merry-go-round. It seemed as though the slowly turning disk was still waiting, after all this time, for the little kids to come back so it could bring them joy. But therehadn’t been any children here for a long time, and the playground was overgrown by tall weeds.

Yura used to adore this place. The flat lawn around the merry-go-round had been covered by a thick carpet of dandelions that would start out yellow and green, then go pure white, then turn into a fluffy cloud of fuzzy dandelion heads. You could rip up a whole armful of them and run around camp blowing dandelion fuzz into the girls’ hair, and they’d get so hilariously mad, and shout at you, and chase after you to get even.

But the dandelions had withered now, with only a few bald little stem ends sticking up here and there from the weeds. Yura bent over to pick one that still had a few little fuzzy parachutes on it. He scoffed bitterly and blew on it, but only a few of the parachutes came off. Unwilling and unwieldy, heavy with damp, they flew all of half a meter before coming to rest on the dark pavement.

Yura tossed the flower to the ground and walked through the thick, wet clusters of weeds to the merry-go-round. Although in disrepair, it was still sturdy. Without understanding why he did it, without even asking himself that question, Yura sat on one of the merry-go-round’s seats and pushed off lightly with his feet. It creaked as it started rotating, exactly the same way it had back then, and the sound dragged him down into a whirlpool of memories.

The dandelions that had gone to seed spread over the playground in a thick white blanket. Fuzzy little seeds came off and floated around in the air, tickling his nose. Yurka breathed in a lungful of fresh evening air and turned onto the path to the junior cabins.

It was quiet all around. The children were already asleep, lights-out for them having been a little while ago, but no light was coming from the windows of the troop leaders’ rooms, either. Yurka pondered: Volodya wouldn’t be asleep yet, and troop leaders could stay up even past that if they wanted to—but where would he have gotten off to? Had Volodya really gone to the dance all by himself? Baffled, Yurka looked around, listening to the nighttime silence broken only by the whispering wind and chirring crickets. “If Volodya goes there without me, will that count as me keeping my end of the bargain?” he mused. “Will I get my kiss?”

Suddenly, quick steps sounded among the night’s quiet rustlings. Then the porch creaked. Yurka turned toward the cabin and saw a small, tiptoeing figure in pajamas with rockets on them. The stout little boy coming down the stairs of the Troop Five cabin tripped, gasped, and wobbled precariously before catching himself. Yurka recognized the rule breaker as Sasha, the squirming victim he and Volodya had carried to the first aid station the day before.

Yurka flattened himself against the wall of a neighboring cabin. Hiding in the shadows, he cut a wide circle around the little boy, then in two steps came up right behind him. With one hand Yurka touched the boy’s shoulder while with the other he covered the boy’s mouth, cutting off his yelp of fright.

“What’s up with this wandering around after lights-out, huh?” Yurka hissed menacingly into the boy’s ear.

Sasha ducked his head and squeaked something, getting spit all over Yurka’s palm. Yurka frowned and said, “Promise you won’t yell if I let you go. Otherwise I’ll drag you into the forest and throw you into a nest of black vipers!”

Sasha nodded, and Yurka removed his hand from Sasha’s drooly mouth.

“I just—I just wanted some currants,” stammered the little boy. “I saw two currant bushes by the first aid station, so ...”

“Sheesh, Sashka!” Yurka was barely able to keep from laughing. He made his voice stern and said, “How can you want currants in June? Right now, the only berries by the first aid station are on the daphnes, but they’re poisonous!”

Sasha scowled: obviously he didn’t believe it. Yurka hemmed, musing, then asked, “Why did you go after the currants at night, anyway?”

“Because!” pronounced Sasha firmly. “What am I supposed to do, show everybody where I found the currants? Just you wait, they’ll take them all for themselves!”

“Grandpa Lenin did tell us all to share, Sash!”

Sasha pouted and refused to reply, glowering sullenly.

“How’d you get out of the cabin?” Yurka asked. “Don’t they lock the door?”

“Volodya can’t get us to sleep. I left while he was trying to convince Kolka to stay in bed.”

“Why, you little ...” Yurka imagined the utter panic that would seize Volodya the instant he saw the empty bed, then increase with each passing minute. “We’re heading back. Get going.”

He took hold of the squealing Sasha by the ear and dragged him into the cabin, heedless of his complaints.

As soon as Yurka eased open the door to the boys’ room, he saw Volodya standing in the light of a dimmed flashlight above an empty bed and staring blindly ahead, eyes perfectly round in horror. He was surrounded by whispering children who obviously had no intention of going to sleep.

“Did you lose this?” asked Yurka softly, dragging Sasha into the room.

Volodya turned around, nonplussed, but his face lit up as soon as he saw the escapee. “I was sure I was done for,” he sighed in relief. Then he hissed at Sasha: “Get in bed, you! Right now! What were you trying to do, run away?”

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