Deep in the wilderness, the children made their own rules. They played out stories from myth, legend, fairy tales…or whatever George happened to scribble in his notebook the night before.
Jane, who was a little older than Charles and a little younger than George, turned out to be a good match for both brothers. She declared herself a royal princess and claimed dominion over all she surveyed. Charles indulged his usual obsession with Superman. George told them the story of the Three Musketeers—Athos, Porthos, Aramis—and the way they always fought as an inseparable unit, protecting each other from all harm. He taught them to say “one for all and all for one” in French. The Three Musketeers became their favorite game.
Despite the disapproval of George’s mother, the three became fast friends. The Gordons didn’t approve of the threesome any more than the Bellamys did. They, too, believed the hosts and guests should never mingle socially, but Mrs. Gordon was usually too busy running things to enforce many rules.
Their favorite expedition was the hike to the summit of Watch Hill. From the very top, all of Willow Lake could be seen, even the town, ten miles away on the opposite end of the lake. They could see the curvy lakeshore road that hugged the perimeter of the vast lake. From this perspective, Camp Kioga resembled a miniature model fort from colonial times. Spruce Island, the wooded atoll in the middle of the lake, rose up like a mystical green enchanted isle.
George had been getting headaches for a few weeks running, but he didn’t tell his mother, because he didn’t want to be confined to his cabin. Today the pain was stabbing like a knife. Ignoring it, he crept out on a rocky outcropping and sat with his knees drawn up to his chest, watching the progress of a shiny black car on the road, far in the distance. You didn’t see too many cars in these parts, what with gas rationing in force, just the occasional farm vehicle or bus, and quite often, a horse and buggy. Even wealthy people left their cars at home as a sign of patriotism.
“What are you looking at?” inquired Jane, sitting beside him.
He gestured. “That car.”
The approaching car gleamed with importance. It was as black as a hearse, and left a trail of dust behind it.
They watched for a few minutes. The sun was just starting to slant toward afternoon, and its heat was so intense it seemed to pulse. Crickets sang in the tall grass, and the green smell of summertime rode the breeze. Bees browsed in the wildflowers that covered the hillside. Beside him, Jane was very still. She had a smell, too—her mother’s homemade soap, scented with evergreen. For a few seconds, it was so quiet he could detect the cadence of her breathing. It was even and slow.
And then she gasped, startling him so that he nearly fell off the outcropping. “That car is turning up the camp road!”
She jumped up and George gave a curt command to Charles—Let’s go—and for once his little brother didn’t argue or demand an explanation.
The three of them ran hell-for-leather down the hill. George told himself not to think or speculate. A reporter didn’t judge or prognosticate until he had all the facts. George didn’t let himself imagine what he would do if the car brought news of his father.
But the car kept rolling past the camp.
And that was when George knew. He knew Jane understood, too, because he could hear her gasping with sobs.
When they got to the Gordon house, the polished official vehicle was already there. They were too far away to hear what was being said. But in the end, it didn’t matter. They could see it playing out before them—an officer in fancy dress uniform, cap removed and tucked ceremonially under his elbow. His posture straight, arm snapping in a smart salute.
Jane’s mother, coming out into the yard with her apron still on.
There was a brief exchange. Mrs. Gordon sank to the ground as though her bones suddenly melted, her own strength not enough to hold her up. The officer scrambled awkwardly to help her.
Jane turned to Charles and George, her eyes already haunted with unbearable knowing. “I have to go,” she said. She spoke with a curious dignity that made her seem older. Wiser. As if the girl who had gone up the hill was a different person from the one who had come down it.
“I have to go,” she said again. “My mother needs me.”
The news made its way slowly through Camp Kioga— Stuart Gordon was dead. He’d gone to the Pacific to fight in the war, and at the age of eighteen he’d been killed in action “in the performance of duty and service of his country,” according to the hand-delivered telegram.
George kept seeing Stuart in his mind’s eye, twirling a laughing Jane around and calling her Sunshine. He imagined similar scenarios unfolding all around the country. Families were interrupted in the middle of dinner, the middle of the night, the middle of their lives, to be told somebody young and strong and beloved was dead.
Charles started having nightmares. He would thrash and whimper in his bunk and wake up crying for his father.
Someone said Mrs. Gordon was suffering from a terrible heartache and would be going to New Haven to stay with relatives for a change of scenery. Losing her son was simply too tragic for Mrs. Gordon to contemplate the future without him.
Jane tried to explain. “Everything here reminds her of him. I heard my aunt Tilly say it’s causing a nervous disorder.” She scuffed her bare heel into the dusty ground. “That’s a code word for crazy.”
George paid closer attention to accounts of the war in the newspaper. That was when he realized what he ought to do with his life. He ought to write for newspapers and magazines like Mr. McClatchy did. Somebody had to tell the world what was going on. Somebody had to tell the story behind the casualty numbers. If more people understood the true price being paid for the war, they might find a way to end it.
Jane was going away with her mother. Her father would stay and run Camp Kioga, but her mother couldn’t bear to be here, where memories of her lost son lurked around every corner. Jane came to tell the Bellamy boys goodbye and said there was time for one more expedition through the forest, to their special place high on Watch Hill.
George felt cranky and out of sorts. He had that same headache, the one that pounded hard no matter whether or not his mother gave him a headache powder. He felt sleepy, too, but it was a beautiful day and he was not about to stay inside.
He didn’t exactly know how to act around Jane. He felt like he should treat her differently because she was different. She seemed more serious to him, maybe a little quieter, a noticeable change since she was usually so animated and bubbly.
The hike to the top of Watch Hill made him especially tired. He felt more hot and sweaty than he’d ever been in his life. He and Charles and Jane stood at the summit, surveying the view below like gods of myth and legend.
There was something wrong with George’s vision. The entire landscape blurred together like a watercolor—the lake in the woods. The sky and the long squiggle of the road. Everything spun like a pinwheel. The voices of the others sounded hollow, like echoes shouted down a tube.
“My mother doesn’t want to help run the camp anymore,” Jane was telling them. “She told my father it makes her too sad. Pa and I love Camp Kioga, though. It was started by my grandfather, and I want it to be mine one day, and I aim to make that happen.”
She sounded adamant, like she was in one of the melodramas they put on at camp.
George thought he should commend her for her loyalty and lofty commitment. The words swirled around in his head. He must have made some kind of noise, because the others turned to stare at him. Their faces expanded and contracted as though viewed in a fun house mirror. Their voices sounded funny, too, like the Victrola when it needed a turn of the crank.
And even though George meant to tell Jane she was brave and strong and that he admired her, something else came out. He fell to his knees while vomit erupted with undeniable force.
He had just barely enough consciousness left to feel humiliated.
He lost track of time and forgot where he was. Jane yelled something and Charles sped off down the hill. Then Jane crouched beside him and tried to give him water from her round, flat canteen. George couldn’t swallow the rusty-tasting liquid. Could barely even open his mouth. Could see only pinholes of light. He felt the water dribbling away, could hear Jane crying, and he wanted to tell her it was all right but that would be a lie. It was not all right. Something was terribly wrong and he was just as scared as she.
An eternity passed. A lifetime. Maybe he slept. Maybe he died. No, sleep, because he became aware of a shadow falling over Jane, an eclipse plunging her into darkness, swallowing her whole.
Help. He couldn’t say it, but he thought it. He needed Superman, not Clark Kent.
The hulking forms of strangers surrounded George. Somebody scooped him up. Maybe he was being swooped to safety by Superman.
But he wasn’t safe. Things melted together and things fell apart. He had only blurred impressions, couldn’t tell what was real and what was in his head. He sensed Jane Gordon being snatched away, reeled in, kept at a distance, growing smaller and smaller…disappearing. His own brother Charles was pulled away, too, disappearing, separated from him, forbidden to go near him.
Vague impressions floated past George, and he struggled to separate the real images from the nightmares. He thought he saw men in special vulcanized coats arriving and shutting down everything—the dining hall, the cabins, the sporting facilities, the pool, everything.
Official signs from the health department were posted everywhere: Quarantined by the Ulster County Board of Health.
George was shrouded in blankets, piles and piles of them, even though his head was on fire.
He was plunged into a zinc tub filled with icy water.
He saw white lights. Naked bulbs staring down at him like monster eyes. His skinny, bloodless body no longer belonged to him.
Too weak to cry out. But his soul cried out. His heart cried out. Nobody heard him. There were noises in his head, sounds and voices. He didn’t know what was real and what was in the comic book.
All around him, white light. White sheets in the hospital room, white blinds on the window, a long white passageway with no end.
His father. Concerned frown, lower half of his face wearing a surgeon’s mask, sleeve tied up at his left shoulder where his arm used to be. Why? Why? What was Father here for?
Voices in the stark echoing hallway. Highly contagious… Commonly transmitted via contaminated food… They spoke as if he could not hear. Maybe he couldn’t. Or maybe this was just something else from the comic book in his head. The voices, though. He knew them. Mother, crying—long, desperate sobs. Father, coughing. No, not coughing. He was sobbing, too. George had never heard his father weep before.
And the doctor had not yet spoken the dreaded word—the true diagnosis. It was as if Mother and Father already knew. A scream came from his mother like a howl of pain from a wounded animal.
George told the ringing bells in his ears to be still so he could hear. He concentrated very hard on what the doctor was saying. A good reporter did that. He listened. He concentrated. He did not miss anything.
“I’m afraid…” The doctor—Bancroft was his name— Dr. Bancroft cleared his throat and started again. “Mr. and Mrs. Bellamy, I’m so sorry. I’m afraid it’s the worst possible news,” he said. There was a pause, filled with the sounds of George’s parents, still weeping.
“It’s polio.”