Page 50 of Pioneer Summer

“Well ...” Ira faltered. Instead, she gave the girls’ room one last look. “Hey, see that? Ulya has more flowers. Not half a session in and she’s already swimming in admirers.”

But Yurka kept pressing her: “Volodya didn’t send me. I came myself. This is his first session as a troop leader. You’re the professional here, but he ... Come on, please forgive him. He was tired, exhausted ...”

“Okay, okay. Just tell him he has to come say he’s sorry himself and then I’ll forgi—” She broke off and corrected herself: “Then we’ll see.” She smoothed a blanket, surveyed the room again, and smiled in satisfaction. “We did a good job. You are free to go, Yury Ilych.”

Yurka was proud of himself. As he walked out of the cabin, he decided to hold off on the script; instead of working on it, he’d go to his secret hiding place to celebrate his win with a victory smoke.

The year before, Yurka had made a hole for himself in the fence around the unfinished barracks. At the time, there was only a flat spot ready for construction, but now a hulking four-story building loomed there, like the ones in the big sanatoriums. In the spring, during active construction on the site, Yurka’s hole in the fence had been filled in, but even so, the site of the new building, surrounded on all sides by a tall fence, was the emptiest spot in the whole camp and still offered tons of hiding places. So Yurka found a place in a pile of broken concrete pavers to hide his cigarettes.

His whole body vibrated from the rush of adrenaline as he pulled the prized little package out from under a paver. He didn’t even like smoking that much. It was the secrecy that made it attractive: getting the pack in the first place, and then, so his hands wouldn’t smell, finding a slender twig, breaking it almost all the way in half, setting the cigarette in the middle, and lighting it. He didn’t even have to smoke it, just light it and look around to see whether anybody might have seen him. And then, if anybody had, he’d take off so fast that even if they had seen him for sure, they’d never be able to catch him.

He stuck his hand under the paver and pulled out the pack, already anticipating his “sacrament.” He found a twig, bent it in the prescribed manner, inserted the cigarette, and was getting ready to light it when he saw Pcholkin digging around in a pile of construction debris by the path leading from the unfinished barracks to the Avenue of Pioneer Heroes.

“Hey!” Yurka shouted, then froze, but too late: the cigarette was still in the twig, and the twig was still in his hand.

“Aha! I’m gonna tell everybody you smoke!” Pcholkin crowed.

“And I’ll tell everybody you go poking around in the unfinished barracks. What are you doing here?”

“I’m looking for treasure! But you’re here smoking!” Pcholkin stuck out his tongue.

“I’m not smoking. I’m just holding it. I mean, it’s not even lit,” replied Yurka as he thrust the cigarette in his pocket.

“I’m telling anyway! Or, wait—if you sing me a song with cusswords in it, I won’t tell anybody.” Pcholkin had stooped to blackmail.

“You aren’t big enough for cusswords yet. I’ll sing you whatever else you want,” said Yurka, knowing that if the little boy told on him, he’d get intoso much trouble at home that being kicked out of camp and separated from Volodya would seem like trifles in comparison.

Without condescending to respond, Pcholkin took off down the Avenue of Pioneer Heroes, shouting at the top of his lungs: “Yurka’s a dummy, his cigarette is crummy, he smokes and steals and sneaks around, he flunks and fails and sleeps on the ground.”

Yurka raced after him. Pcholkin turned toward the tennis courts. Using his short height to his advantage, he didn’t run around the swings, steps, and athletic equipment; he just ran right underneath, easily darting through or behind them. But Yurka had to go around. If it hadn’t been for that, he’d have caught Pcholkin right away, but as it was, he just shouted helplessly, “Stop! You’d better stop!” In reply he heard, “Yurka’s a dummy!”

“Yura! Petya!” He heard the names, but his mind didn’t process them. He ran and ran until at last Pcholkin was no more than half a meter away. All he had to do was stretch out his arm and grab him. But then a terrible voice thundered right in his ear: “Konev! Pcholkin! Attention!”

Both Pcholkin and Konev stopped dead in their tracks, giving in to their automatic, unconscious reaction ofYou hear an order, you obey it!Volodya walked briskly toward them across the tennis court. His face was pale, his fists were clenched, and he was glaring at Pcholkin as though he could strangle him just by looking at him.

“What’s the meaning of this, Petya?! Where have you been?”

Pcholkin looked questioningly at Yurka, a mischievous grin spreading his lips. Yurka sighed. “Fine, I’ll sing you one. But no cuss words.”

“The one about the graveyard, then.”

“Fine. The one about the graveyard.”

“Deal!”

“What are you conspiring about?” interjected Volodya. “What are you planning? Yura?”

As soon as Yurka looked at Volodya’s face, he understood the difference between an angry Volodya and a furious Volodya. So he hastened to, if not calm down the troop leader, at least distract him: “We aren’t planning anything. I saw Petya on the path to the unfinished barracks. He was digging in the trash pile from the construction—”

“What for?!” interrupted Volodya, fixing Pcholkin with a hard stare. “Any injuries?”

“I was looking for treasure,” squeaked Pcholkin as he displayed his healthy and uninjured knees, elbows, and palms to the troop leader.

“Petya, there is no treasure in the camp,” Volodya ground out through gritted teeth. Yurka could tell that he was trying to calm down. But it wasn’t working very well.

“But Yurka told us about it himself.” Pcholkin gave an offended sniff.

“That treasure’s made-up. Yura will confirm it.”

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