Page 4 of Pioneer Summer

Hanging the strings of lights wasn’t hard. It only took them an hour to wrap several of the surrounding trees in lights and stretch the best strings of lights above the stage. The only thing left was to put up some lights on the apple tree. Yurka appraised the tree with a professional eye and got on the ladder. He wanted to make his beloved apple tree not only the prettiest tree there but also the most accessible one, so that when he was climbing it later he wouldn’t get tangled in the lights. Holding one of the bulbs in one hand, he firmly graspeda tree branch with the other. Then he stepped off the ladder up onto a limb so he could set the string of lights as high as possible.

There was a dry crack. Alyosha shouted, and then something scratched Yurka’s cheek hard and the world went blurry for a couple of seconds, and then pain shot through his back and backside. Everything briefly went black.

“Oh my goodness! Konev! Yurka! Yur, are you hurt? Are you alive?” Ira was bent over him, both hands over her mouth.

“I’m alive ... ,” he croaked, sitting up and holding his back. “I landed hard ... It hurts ...”

“What hurts? Where does it hurt?! Your arm? Your leg? What?! There?!”

“Ahhh, I broke it!”

“What did you break?! Yura, what’s broken?!”

“I broke the string of lights, that’s what ...”

“Who cares about that?! The main thing is—”

Yurka got to his feet. All twenty-odd people who’d been decorating the main square for the celebration had surrounded the victim and were gazing at him expectantly. Rubbing his scraped, bruised palm, Yurka grinned, trying to hide the pain behind a smile. He was deeply afraid of losing his reputation as a brave, unflappable guy. The last thing he needed to do now was complain about his boo-boo and look like a crybaby. It’d be fine if it were just his hand and his back that hurt, but his damn tailbone was aching, too. No way he could admit that, though, since everyone would just make fun of him: Konev busted his butt!

“What’s that you said? ‘Who cares about that’?” interjected Olga Leonidovna, the educational specialist. She was tough as nails and had been out to get Yurka for two years now. “What’s that supposed to mean, Irina?! That string of lights is camp property! Who’s going to pay for it? Me? Or maybe you? Oryou, Konev?!”

“What am I supposed to do if your ladders are rickety?”

“Oh, so the ladders are rickety! Is that it?! Or is it your own fault, you good-for-nothing! Just look at yourself!” She jabbed her finger sternly in Yurka’s chest. “A Pioneer’s neckerchief is one of his most valued possessions, but yours is dirty and torn, and the knot is crooked! You should be ashamed, walking around camp looking like that ... attendingassemblylike that!”

Yurka hastily plucked up one of the ends of his swatch of red fabric and examined it. Itwasdirty, actually. But how’d that happen? Was it from falling out of the apple tree? He defended himself: “It was straight when I was at assembly! It got crooked because I fell!”

“Because you’re a parasite and a vandal!” Olga Leonidovna’s spit was flying. Yurka was flabbergasted. Unable to think of anything to say in reply, he stood listening mutely as she belittled him. “You outgrew the Pioneers two years ago! But here you are, a great big sixteen-year-old lug, and you’re not eventhinkingabout joining the Komsomol! Or is it that they won’t take you? Is that it, Konev? You haven’t earned it? You don’t do any public service work, your grades are abysmal—of course they won’t take you! The Komsomol doesn’t take hooligans!”

Yurka would’ve been gleeful—at last, he’d gotten the senior specialist to show her true colors, and in front of everyone!—but that last bit made him too mad.

“I’m not a hooligan! It’s your fault that everything in this camp of yours is all flimsy, all creaky, but you—you—”

He was about to let loose and tell her exactly what he thought of her. Yurka leaped to his feet, took a lungful of air, got ready to yell, and—abruptly choked it all back when somebody poked him right in his aching spine, hard. It was Ira. She widened her eyes at him and hissed: “Quiet!”

“What did you stop for, Yura?” the educational specialist said, narrowing her eyes. “Keep going. We’re all listening to you very attentively. And after this, I’ll call your parents, and I’ll write you up a character reference that’ll keep you from ever seeing the Komsomol, much less the Party!”

The very skinny, very tall Olga Leonidovna towered over him, furrowing her eyebrows and emitting sparks of fury from her eyes. She was showing zero signs of subsiding. “You’re going to end up sweeping floors your whole life! You should be ashamed of yourself for disgracing your name!”

Yura flushed; it wasn’t his fault he had the same last name as the great general Ivan Konev.

“But, Olga Leonidovna ... you told us yourself never to shout at a child ... ,” Ira ventured reproachfully.

There had already been a large group around them from Yurka’s fall, but more people gathered when they heard the shouting. The educationalspecialist was chewing out not only Yurka but a troop leader, too, in front of all of them.

“It’s the only thing he understands!” the tall woman countered, then continued her accusations: “Earlier today you went on a rampage in the mess hall, and now you’re breaking our lights!”

“That was an accident! I didn’t mean to!”

Yurka truly hadn’t meant to cause a fuss, and certainly not in the mess hall. But while he was clearing his plate at lunch, he’d accidentally smashed half the camp’s dishes. He’d dropped his plate on a wobbly stack of other people’s dirty dishes, and it slid off and crashed into other dishes, which then also slid and crashed into more dishes, and finally everything spilled to the floor and smashed to pieces, making a huge racket. Of course, everyone noticed. Half the camp had come running at the noise. But he just stood there, open-mouthed and red-faced. Yura never wanted any attention, to the point that back home he even went to the store in the next village over, not the closest one, just to avoid seeing people he knew. And now this: he’d fallen out of a tree and was getting a tongue-lashing over some lights while everybody watched.

“Olga Leonidovna, please go easy on him,” Ira intervened again. “Yura’s a good kid. He’s grown up since last year, he’s gotten better, right, Yur? It wasn’t his fault, the ladder was rickety. He should go to the first aid station—”

“Irina! Now that’s too much! You should be ashamed of yourself, lying right to my face—and me a thirty-year member of the Communist Party!”

“No—I didn’t—”

“I saw Konev step off that ladder onto the tree limb with my own two eyes. I’m officially issuing you a severe reprimand, Irina! That’ll teach you to cover for sabotage!”

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