Page 37 of Pioneer Summer

“N-no,” stammered Yurka. “I don’t know how.”

“Too bad ...” Volodya said, pursing his lips, then lay down next to Yurka on the discarded sleeping bag and heaved a sigh of pleasure. “This feels so good ...”

Yurka lay still, afraid to move a muscle. Volodya’s shoulder with its black “SA” insignia pressed close to his own. Yurka could neither ignore this touch nor move away to end it. Meanwhile, Volodya didn’t even notice, apparently. He rolled over onto his side, looked at Yurka, and narrowed his eyes. Yurka looked away.

“What’s that you’ve got there ...” He stretched his hand toward Yurka’s tousled hair, but Yurka shrank away from him. Even as recently as yesterday he wouldn’t have done that for anything, but after everything that had happened, he felt Volodya’s touch too keenly, as though it were piercing him from head to toe. It scared him.

“Grass?” said Volodya. “Why do you have grass in your hair?”

“‘And sawdust in my head,’” joked Yurka awkwardly, quoting the beloved Soviet version of Winnie-the-Pooh. “I was a spy. I spent all day slinking around the forest.”

“Well, I spent all day in Central Command being pestered by my kids about coming out here to the forest. As soon as lunch was over, they all started up at once: ‘We want to be like the big kids,’ ‘We want to fight in Summer Lightning, too,’ ‘We want to sleep out in tents!’ Lena was about ready to scream.” Volodya folded his hands behind his head. “Sashka and Olezhka kicked up such a fuss that I had no choice but to bring them out here.”

Yurka was trying to listen to him, but it wasn’t working very well. The meaning of what the troop leader was saying was lost in Yurka’s desire to touch him ... but Yurka turned away emphatically and mumbled, “Ira was saying that just a few kids were coming with you. What about the rest?”

“I told them I’d only take whoever did their best while they were working at Central Command.”

“Did many of them do their best?”

“No. I was strict about who I picked. Mostly kids from our drama club. A few got upset, of course, so I had to give them a choice: either a few kids go, or nobody goes at all. Because I wasn’t willing to take on that kind of responsibility. And then Lena promised she’d take the rest of them to the movie theater tonight and show them cartoons.”

Yurka stood up and looked down at Volodya, who was relaxed and showed not the slightest sign of being tired. It made sense, since Volodya wasn’t the one who’d been running around in the bushes and attacking the enemy base; still, the kids could wear you out just as bad ...

Seeing him stand, Volodya said, “Oh, did you want to go to the campfire? We’re going to tell some good stories here in a minute.”

“Scary stories again?” grumbled Yurka, grasping for something to pin his mood on.

“Had enough of them, huh?” said Volodya. “Me too. But no, it doesn’t have to be scary stories. Although, if they ask, I’ve got one about the Queen of Spades.”

Volodya smiled warmly. Playful little sparks danced in his eyes. All of a sudden Yurka was filled with a painful longing. “Let’s go,” he grunted, and shot out of the tent like a bullet. Because it now seemed to him, after that morning, as though there was some kind of subtext to Volodya’s behavior, as though it was not weariness that had made him lie down next to Yurka, not curiosity that had made him reach out for Yurka’s hair. But that was all just Yurka’s own imagination! Volodya couldn’t actually know any of what he was thinking. He couldn’t! He hadn’t seen anything, after all, and as for any improper thoughts of his own ... well, Yurka would bet his eyeteeth that such thoughts had never troubled Volodya’s good, honest Komsomol head.

Volodya came out of the tent after Yurka and gazed after him, puzzled. Olezhka and Sasha immediately swarmed the troop leader and pulled him over to a spot they’d specially prepared for him. Yurka, taking advantage of the momentary separation, sat down at some distance from the campfire.

As they listened to Ira Petrovna, the kids grew so quiet that her soft voice carried all the way out to Yurka: “... and the first Pioneer camps appeared in the twenties. They were field camps, meaning that the first Pioneers livedin tents, not cabins. Remember the movieThe Bronze Bird, about the Pioneer camp right next to an old manor house?” All the kids nodded. “It was exactly like that. If they could find a building suitable for a camp, the Pioneers would use it, of course. Anyway, the Pioneers’ main task at that time was to help villagers do their work and teach village children to read and write—”

“So they could crank out denunciations and get rewarded with a trip to Artek, the most famous Pioneer camp of all,” mumbled Yurka to himself. Ira Petrovna went on: “The main event in Pioneer camps was the campfire assembly, where the Pioneers discussed the results of their day’s activity: how many people they’d taught to read and write, how many people they’d helped, what they’d built or repaired. And they made plans for the next day. All by themselves, without any grown-ups, the Pioneers decided who had earned their praise as well as who to reproach, and they did educational work ...”

The history of Pioneer camps bored Yurka. Ira told it every single session, because there were always some campers who didn’t know it yet. This time Volodya’s kids were the primary audience, especially Olezhka, who was so captivated by the story that he just sat there, wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The rest remained politely silent. Yurka did, too. But as he gazed out into the evening darkness, he was glad to listen to a story he was heartily sick of, just so it would drown out the internal voice that was nagging him again.

All of a sudden he clearly heard a soft rustle behind him. He located the source of the sound and tensed. There was some kind of animal rustling around in the bushes just a couple of meters away from him! Without saying a word to anyone, he tiptoed up to the bushes. A very soft peeping noise came from somewhere low down and to the right, almost underneath the bushes. Yurka peered down, mystified. There was movement in the decaying carpet of last year’s leaves covering the ground ... Yurka’s heart fell and a cold shiver ran up the back of his neck.What if it’s snakes?he thought, horrified. Time seemed to stop. Slowly, trying not to make any sudden movements, he stepped backward away from the bushes.

Yurka had seen those beguiling reptiles more than once and knew to avoid getting anywhere near them. He knew that during the day vipers, which were cold-blooded, liked to warm their bodies in the sun. He also knew that June was their breeding season, so they also liked to collect intobig balls in their nests. Phrases he’d heard in school during pre-military training and in biology class flew through his mind: a viper works like a windup mechanism, where the closer you get to it, the tighter it curls up, and then it’s like a coiled spring releasing, it jumps up and bites you. And the closer the bite is to your head, the more dangerous it is.

And here was Yurka, the idiot, who’d completely forgotten about snakes and gone traipsing bravely off into the bushes in the middle of the night without telling anyone. He was about to shout to the troop leaders that he might have stumbled into a nest of snakes, and he’d already made his peace with his impending death and prepared himself to be attacked by an enraged viper, when a reddish-brown maple leaf shifted aside and out from underneath it came ... a little button nose. And then Yurka heard a soft snuffling sound.

“A hedgehog!” Yurka sighed in relief when the prickly round body followed the nose out of the leaves.

Yurka squatted down on his heels and reached his hands out, ready to grab the animal. But surprisingly, it didn’t run away. On the contrary, it came out from under the bushes to him and poked a curious nose into his sneakers. After a greeting like that, Yurka just couldn’t leave the little guy under a bush: he was so cute, so brave. Yurka definitely had to show his unexpected guest to the little kids. He chuckled as he took off his jacket, wrapped his new friend in it, and carried him back to the campfire.

The hedgehog was a genuine sensation, for Troop One every bit as much as for Troop Five. The seated kids stopped listening to Ira to jump up and huddle around Yurka. They took the hedgehog out of his jacket and started passing him around, each one trying to tickle or pet him. They loved his funny snuffling and christened him Snuffly. Nobody, not even Snuffly, had any objections to the name.

After the initial surge of excitement waned, they had to decide Snuffly’s fate. Ira announced a vote on how to proceed: let him go, or bring him to the camp’s Red Corner, a nook devoted to the local flora and fauna, full of books, posters, and live specimens. The vote was unanimous: Feed the hedgehog first, then keep him overnight and bring him to the Red Corner the next day. But when everyone was completely calm again, they realized there was nowhere to keep the hedgehog until morning.

“I saw boxes of canned beef in the field kitchen,” Volodya remembered. “I don’t think Zinaida Vasilyevna would have anything against us taking one of the boxes.”

“A cardboard box? Won’t he chew through it?” Ira Petrovna said with exaggerated distrust. Her tone reminded Yurka yet again that she and Volodya still hadn’t made peace with each other.

Zhenya interceded: “Even if he does chew through it, nothing bad will happen. He’ll just run back into the woods, that’s all.”

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