Page 24 of Pioneer Summer

“Don’t lie to me! He was not! I know because I walked around your cabin and there were no lights on!” Ira spat triumphantly. “Well now, Volodya! I never expected this from you! Whereas you, Konev: I’ve taken a lot from you, but this is the limit! Tomorrow I’m going to formally request your expul—”

“Ira. Hold on.” Volodya spoke in low tones, trying to bring her back to reason. “Yura really was with me and the boys from my troop. If you need witnesses, we have plenty. And anyway, why are you beginning an inquiry here? Why not at the staff meeting?”

“Because I just now found out!”

“But what the hell was Masha doing staying out all night?” cut in Yurka. “And why are you chewing me out, but not her? Why doesn’t she get in trouble for it?”

“Because you ... because she ...”

“Because you’re used to Yura always being your whipping boy!” exploded Volodya. “And why are you so worried about him, not Masha? Why are you so fixated on him? Are you in love with him or something?!”

Everyone stopped dead in their tracks. Volodya glared malevolently. Yurka sat hard on the seat he’d just broken, barely keeping from falling down. Ira Petrovna pressed her lips together into a thin line as she went pale and started trembling. Anybody with eyes could see the seething rage inside her would burst out any second in a flood of tears—or curses. But the troop leader held herself in check. She pressed her lips together so hard they started turning blue, then she spun on her heel and walked out without a word.

Volodya clenched his hands into fists and sat on the seat next to Yurka, who asked quietly, “So what do you think? Is this it for me?”

Volodya shook his head. “Just let her try saying something at the staff meeting! I’ll put her in her place ... This is beyond the pale! What kind of troop leader is she if she doesn’t even know what’s going on in her own troop?”

Yurka’s heart filled with a sort of inexpressible lightness. “Thank you, Volod,” he said, imbuing the words with as much gratitude as he could possibly express.

“Only question is where the hell Masha got off to?” Volodya said slowly, instead of answering.

As they walked from the theater to the mess hall, Yurka’s mind shifted far away from Ira and Masha until he was thinking only about his empty, growling stomach. In contrast, Volodya was still grumbling: “Yura, you have to remember to get Irina’s permission to leave ... ‘Best girl Pioneer in the troop,’ my foot ... ‘Best girl Pioneers’ should go to sleep at night, not go traipsing all over camp ...”

Hearing him, Yurka suddenly remembered: “Volod! While you were running the rehearsal, Petlitsyn tried to get me to get up in the middle of thenight and go toothpaste the girls. I said no way, but then he went and talked to Sashka and Sashka nodded. I think they’re planning a sneak attack!”

Volodya stopped short: “Petlitsyn? But he’s from Troop Two, and Sashka’s in Troop Five! What does he care about little kids like Sashka?”

“What do you mean, what’s he doing? It’s fun to get the little kids involved!”

“Nothing fun about it! It’s dangerous!”

“Oh, please, give me a break! Remember what it was like to be Petlitsyn’s age! And don’t act like you never tried to goad the younger campers into doing that kind of thing!”

“Actually, I didn’t, Yura. Nobody dared to play jokes on me, nor did I ever pick on anybody else. What about you? Don’t tell me you were some kind of hooligan?”

“A hooligan? Of course not!” lied Yurka without missing a beat. But in reality, oh, what nasty tricks he’d played, what awful things he’d done, whenever he found himself with far too much free time on his hands.

His mother had always told him, “Nature abhors a vacuum,” and Yurka had learned the truth of this the hard way. When music disappeared from his life, the vacuum it left behind swallowed up all his emotions, leaving only anxiety and anger. Without music, Yurka felt orphaned. He’d tried to keep himself busy with something, anything, whatever would keep him from thinking about it. He’d collected stamps, made model airplanes, soldered simple electronics, carved wood, set up an aquarium—but he had found it all bland and boring. In search of any diversion that could fill music’s joyless absence, Yurka started spending time with the boys from his apartment building who hung out in the courtyard. They were anything but boring. And although they weren’t exactly hardened street toughs, they were definitely not the best influence on Yurka. What good did it do him to learn how to do card tricks (and cheat at card games)? Or memorize a bunch of dirty songs and off-color couplets? Or waste time hanging around with his buddies in a building entryway, stealing light bulbs and covering the walls with a whole Talmud of bad words? Or set off several calcium carbide plastic bottle bombs and a couple of smoke bombs at school?

The kids from his building taught him less destructive pranks, too, of course. And last year at camp, in just that one session, Yurka had managedto get almost all the little kids hooked on playing tricks on each other, to the point that something happened in every cabin every morning. In one cabin, a victim would be tied down while still asleep, then be woken up by a gout of cold water he couldn’t escape; in another cabin, the perpetrators would sneak up to their sleeping victim and throw a sheet over his head, shouting “The ceiling’s caving in!” to make the victim scream like all get-out; in a third cabin, the troublemakers would hide behind the camp washstand, and while their victim was washing his face, they’d tie his shoelaces together so that once the victim tried to walk away, he’d fall flat on his face. And who needs reminding of the “nighttime classics” like toothpasting sleeping campers, or putting cold, wet noodles under people’s pillows, or surreptitiously yanking on the curtains while somebody’s telling a scary story? The kids were scared out of their wits and had the time of their lives, but Yurka soon grew bored with even the most sophisticated practical jokes.

What had already gotten old for him last year was all the more stale now. And Volodya obviously got no joy from pranks himself. The troop leader’s expression was a conflicting jumble of bafflement, worry, and irritation as he said, “Well ... darn it ... I sure got stuck with some little scoundrels ...”

After supper, Volodya fished Yurka out of the mass of Pioneers leaving the mess hall.

“Listen, Yur—you are coming tonight, right? I wanted to ask you something.”

“What?”

“I keep worrying about that toothpaste. They’re still little kids, they don’t know it could cause an injury.”

Yurka nodded. “That’s pretty much true ... A couple of years ago, some smart aleck toothpasted me right in the eye. It burned so bad, I thought I’d go blind. My eyelid was swollen for a week.”

Upon hearing this, Volodya’s expression changed so drastically that Yurka immediately regretted his words. To reassure Volodya, he quickly added, “But don’t you worry! We know about their dastardly plan, so we can put a stop to it.”

“But stopping it won’t help. We keep them from playing their trick today, they’ll just do it tomorrow. The important thing is that they know never totoothpaste anyone in the eyes, ears, or nose. So I realized we need to tell them a scary story about toothpasting.”

“Ah, but yesterday you didn’t want me to scare the little squirts.”

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