Page 52 of Pioneer Summer

And the wiggly ol’ worms will love us forever.”

And then glum again:

“You’ll press your yellowed bones close,

You’ll kiss my skull tenderly ...”

“That’s not the right one!” protested Pcholkin indignantly. “It’s the one about ‘The cold wind howls in the graveyard, something something forty below, an old man sits in the graveyard, something something down below ...’ You know it! And then the gravedigger gets diarrhea, and the corpse crawls up out of his coffin and yells at him!”

Yurka sighed. “Fine.” And he began reciting it.

Yurka knew the poem, of course. And Pcholkin knew it. Everybody knew it. And everybody was pretty darn tired of it. It’s just that Pcholkin was obviously getting a kick out of seeing a grown-up recite it.

Once Petya had heard his fill and stopped pestering him, Yurka saw that the camp director had let Volodya go. Volodya was standing there looking around for someone. Yurka ran over to him to tell him about Ira, but first he inquired, “What did Palych want?”

“He wanted to apologize. He couldn’t do it in front of everyone. It seems he’s the quiet type when he’s not yelling profanity in your face.”

“He cussed you out?” Yurka figured he must’ve misheard. It wasn’t possible that Pal Palych, the camp director, was capable of something like that. But evidently he was.

“He did. Piled it on, an hour ago, in front of the kids. Great pedagogy there, huh? What kids are going to listen to a troop leader after the director yells at him in front of them?”

“Well, he’s just a—”

“Watch your mouth! There are children here!” barked Volodya angrily. But now Yurka knew why he was so irritable and didn’t take it personally.

And there were indeed four girls from Troop Five next to them, shouting a tongue-twister at the top of their lungs: “ONCE THERE WERE THREE HANDSOME BROTHERS: YAK ...”

Yurka frowned. “Why was he yelling at you?”

“... YAK-TSEEDRAK, AND YAK-TSEEDRAK-TSEEDRAK-TSEEDRONY ...”

“Because of the show. Camp Barn Swallow Day is on Friday, but we don’t have a single thing ready for it. It wasn’t so much about a thing as about a person, though ...”

“... ONCE THERE WERE THREE LOVELY SISTERS ...”

“Was it me?” asked Yurka, horrified.

“Not you ... another inmate ...”

“Who?”

“Guess.”

“... TSEEPA, TSEEPA-DREEPA, AND TSEEPA-DREEPA-DREEPAMPONI ...”

“Pcholkin?”

“You got it.”

“What a pest. So what’s up, is there just no way to keep him under control?”

“He’s the director’s nephew. Any other questions?”

“... THEN ALL THREE BOYS WED ALL THREE GIRLS: YAK AND TSEEPA, YAK-TSEEDRAK AND TSEEPA-DREEPA, YAK-TSEEDRAK-TSEEDRAK-TSEEDRONY AND TSEEPA-DREEPA-DREEPAMPONI ...”

“Can we step away?” begged Volodya.

They moved off a little to where it was more calm and quiet. The girls shouting their tongue-twister had made Yurka forget what it was he’d been waiting to tell Volodya. As he tried to remember it, he blurted out the first thing he could think of: “Why doesn’t that Pcholkin come to drama club?”

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