Page 81 of Pioneer Summer

“Okay, then what about like this?” He spread his fingers apart a tiny bit. Yurka could see the keyboard.

“There we go! That’s more like it!” Yurka laughed. He looked around to make sure that the dance floor was completely deserted, then leaned his head back and rested his head on Volodya’s stomach. He looked up at him and smiled. Volodya was smiling, too.

They played that way until Volodya suddenly jerked his hands down and lurched away. Yurka flinched in surprise, opened his eyes, and watched him go. At the edge of the stage, a pale Masha was clutching a broom and staring at them, her eyes wide.

It made Yurka uncomfortable. But he took one look at the frightened Volodya and that fear passed to Yurka, too.

“Where’re you flying off to?” blurted Yurka, trying to relieve the tension and turn it all into a joke.

“What?” replied Masha angrily.

“On your broom,” explained Yurka. “You’re standing here pretending you’re sweeping a completely clean square.”

“You think this is funny, Konev? Do you want to tell me what this is all about?”

“What do you mean? The fact that you’re a witch? Or the fact that you’re asnitch?!”

“Quit it, Yura!” intervened Volodya. “You too, Masha! I already told you he was joking. Yura’s going to play just the Lullaby, not the accompaniment for the whole show.”

“Then why did he tell the girls he was—”

They were interrupted by the bugle signaling the end of quiet hour. If it weren’t for that, Yurka would’ve started tearing into Masha, he was so mad at her.

Soon Mitka’s voice over the loudspeaker announced it was time for the ceremonial assembly.

The day flew by. First came the assembly: the flag, the Pioneer salute, singing the Pioneer anthem. Then everyone ran over to the athletic fields for the competitions. There were sack races, a tug-of-war, relay races—Yurka actually beat one of the Troop Three leaders—and a ball game called lapta. Then all the senior boys, including Volodya, were called over to play soccer. Yurka focused solely on the soccer ball and the goal, promising himself he’d beat the troop leaders’ team even if he had to do it all by himself, but it came out a tie.

The last part of the celebration, the talent show, was the part Yurka was least excited about. Partly because performing was always more interesting than just watching, but also because in this case there wasn’t even anything worth watching. The only thing that caught his attention and made him laugh was the Troop Five piece, when the kids did a skit about a rocket launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome. Sashka was pilot and spaceship all rolled into one. He’d been encased in a gray cardboard tube from head to toe and proudly surveyed the audience from a round hole cut in the tube for his face while he waggled the tip of the gray cardboard cone perched atop his head. Pcholkin stood at the control booth mashing his finger into a red button, also made of cardboard. At Sashka’s signal—“Fshoom!”—he was launched into space, where little girls, the stars, ran circles around him, and all the rest of the boys from Troop Five sang a song about the Earth seen through a spaceship window.

Yurka didn’t have the foggiest idea what this had to do with celebrating Camp Barn Swallow Day, but it was funny.

The next troop’s performance was boring. Yurka started shifting in his seat, looking around to find Volodya. It didn’t take him long: Volodya was sitting two rows back, his head bent, his eyes either lowered or closed. He looked exactly the way he sometimes looked at rehearsal: as though he were reading a notebook on his lap. But this wasn’t rehearsal, and he had no notebook in his lap. Troop Two’s skit ended, and everyone clapped, and Volodya’shead fell heavily, then he shook himself, then he jerked his head up. From the way he was blinking, Yurka could tell the troop leader had fallen asleep. He hadn’t been able to fall asleep in the quiet underneath the weeping willow with his head in Yurka’s lap, but he could here, at a noisy performance, sitting right next to Olga Leonidovna.

There was no way she wouldn’t notice that, of course. And she did. She immediately gave Volodya a look of concern and asked him something, but once she heard the answer, she didn’t start chiding him, as Yurka had expected. Just the opposite: she called Lena over, whispered something in her ear, and nodded toward Volodya. He stood up immediately and walked off. Yurka guessed where he was going: to sleep.

And it’s a good thing, too, thought Yurka. He resigned himself to listening yet again to the sad, listless children’s song about the enthralling horizon.

Yurka longed for evening like it was manna from heaven.

Once the celebratory dance party started that night, he ran straight for the Troop Five cabin. Once inside, he took only a couple of steps into the dark hallway when he jumped out of his skin: somebody had run into his stomach and then squeaked from surprise.

“Sasha? Why aren’t you in the boys’ room, sleeping? Are you going hunting for currants again?”

“No, it’s not that,” puffed Sashka, trying to catch his breath. “Volodya’s sleeping, so Zhenya’s sitting with us, telling scary stories. I went out to pee.”

Yurka smirked. “What, are they that scary?”

“No, it’s not that,” repeated Sashka listlessly, clearly having missed the joke. “It’s just the opposite. He’s telling the one about DSC. It’s so boring! Save us, Yura!”

Torn between his desire to go to Volodya’s room—all the more so since Volodya was there alone—and his duty to help the slumbering troop leader get the kids to bed, Yurka wavered. Ultimately, he came back to himself when he realized he was at the door to the boys’ room. He didn’t realize right away that Sashka was no longer next to him.

It was dark in the boys’ room. Zhenya was sitting on a chair by the door, holding a flashlight and intoning, in a spooky voice, “The car was labeled DSC, for Death to Soviet Children! It stopped next to the little boy, and a man came out. He walked up to the little boy and started telling him to getinto the car, promising him a puppy, and candy, and toys. But the little boy wouldn’t do it. He got scared and ran away, but the car drove off after him—”

“Yuwka!” screeched Olezhka happily.

The phys ed instructor jumped. The little boys babbled excitedly: “Come sit with us!” “Tell us a scawy stowy!” “Are there really cars like that?”

“Now, let’s all listen to Zhenya,” suggested Yurka as he sat down on Sashka’s empty bed, frantically sorting through his options for what to do now. Yurka wasn’t thrilled at the possibility of spending the bit of the day that was left until lights-out with the boys, then spending the night all alone.

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