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Once again I dabble in autobiography here. No, I wasn’t the model for Teedaw, thank you. But the story had its origin in my days in summer camp in 1949 and 1950, when one of the six boys in our bunk was a fat, slow, pudgy fellow, a complete misfit in our reasonably athletic group. We treated him cruelly, as fourteen-year-old boys are known to do, and even now, a long lifetime later, I shudder at the sort of things we did. (I comfort myself with the thought that I was not the worst of his tormentors, but I remain abashed at my role in the whole thing.) The real Teedaw bore our scorn with remarkable patience, perhaps because everyone had treated him that way all his life and our cruelty came as no surprise. The Teedaw of my story, as you will see, was rather less capable of tolerating the pain we inflicted on him.
This is one of the few stories in this collection that didn’t originally appear in Trapped or Guilty, though it certainly could have. I’m not sure of its history, other than I wrote it in April 1959. My guess is that I thought it had the potential to sell to Manhunt, and gave it to my agent, Scott Meredith, to submit to that top-ranking magazine rather than turning it in to W. W. Scott for the automatic sale to Trapped or Guilty. If that was my strategy, it backfired, because it didn’t sell to Manhunt (I never had anything published there) and very quickly someone in the Scott Meredith office shipped it over to the editorial domain of Web Detective Stories, the absolute bottom of the crime-fiction field, which used it in its September, 1959 issue. Web paid a cent a word —$30 for “Teedaw”, less the ten percent agent’s commission—which is $15 less than Scottie would have paid me for it, and $15 was a significant amount of money in 1959. I suppose the editor of Web, whoever he was, found himself short of 3000 words for his September issue and called Scott Meredith, who found my story of exactly that length sitting on his desk and sent it right over. Scott had a bad habit of doing favors for editors at the expense of his own clients.
Anyway, I think that’s how one of the most serious of my crime stories emerged in print in that utter dreg of a magazine, one that had a policy of affixing an exclamation point to each story title to provide, I guess, greater thrills for the reader. So “Teedaw’s Revenge” was published as “A Slob Can Hate!” in the same issue as “Love Nest in Hell!”, “Reserve My Hot Seat!”, and “Fear Finds a Mate!”
Whatever Teedaw was, he wasn’t a slob—just an awkward, overweight kid making his way through what surely was a terrible adolescence. And so I have restored my original title here. With no exclamation point!
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TEEDAW’S REVENGE
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Teedaw evened the score, all right. He gave us one unforgettable moment of nightmare that evened the tally for a whole summer of small torments, and the memory is going to be with all of us a long time.
I was fifteen, that summer, and so was Teedaw, and so were Davie and Leo and Marv. We were in the same bunk at camp. We didn’t intend to cause any real suffering by tormenting Teedaw. We weren’t the sort of kids who set fire to old men in parks and beat up one-legged cripples. It was simply that by making life hell for poor Teedaw we were in some measure reassuring ourselves of our own new masculinity.
There’s probably a Teedaw in every bunk at a children’s summer camp—a misfit, a pudgy and awkward kid who by his very clumsiness virtually compels his bunkmates to tease him to distraction. Teedaw’s real name was Theodore; Theodore Reese. He was new to the camp, and the four of us had been together for five summers, an unshatterable clique. Teedaw was foredoomed.
We met him for the first time at Grand Central Station on the first of July, that magic day when we finally embarked for camp. We four stood together, clutching baseball bats and gloves and swapping tales of the past ten months, while Sandy, our counselor, was busily talking with four adults who surrounded a fat red-faced boy. We all knew from that moment what the summer was going to be like.
Sandy put his arm around the red-faced boy and drew him away from the gaggle of parents and aunts and uncles who had come to see him off to camp. He led him over to us and said heartily, “Fellows, here’s your new bunkmate. This is Theodore Reese.”
“Call me Ted,” the boy said with what he probably thought was a devil-may-care tone. I sounded pathetic.
Davie, the tallest and strongest of our bunch, smiled patronizingly down at the newcomer. “Hello, Teddy,” he said with deliberate malice.
The first hostilities had begun.
–
We called him “Teddy” for the first week of camp, though from time to time he plaintively asked to be called Ted. He was a champion patsy, expressly designed for the special malevolent attentions of the rest of us.
He had never been to camp before. He had only the most rudimentary notions of how to make a bed or fold his clothes, and it was obvious that at home there were women to do such things for him. He suffered from hayfever and sneezed copiously and ridiculously. He was fifteen, but his voice was still high and unbroken, and he revealed truly stupendous ignorance of sex in our first bull-session.
A patsy, in other words. He was two inches shorter than Leo, who was the shortest member of the clique, and he weighed as much as Davie, who was the tallest. He could never comb his hair properly without applying gallons of stickum first. When sufficiently goaded, he would utter a little gargling cry and break into girlish tears. Whatever had impelled the camp director to toss a lamb like this into a tight clique of camping veterans, no one knew.
We regarded it as providential. Teedaw had been sent for our special amusement. In him we saw plainly all the lurking defects we feared in ourselves. In our callous fifteen-year-old way, we intended to make Teedaw suffer for his woeful inadequacies.
The nickname “Teedaw” came to us providentially too. It was the first weekend of the camp season, when parents and relatives were allowed to visit their darlings, and it seemed the entire Reece clan had turned out to see their Theodore. Uncles and aunts galore, each bearing a bundle of candy or games or comics, and with them one withered old grandmother, who addressed him loud enough to be heard across the camps as “Teedaw.”
It stuck. The name was infinitely sillier than “Teddy” and he hated it. All the next week camp echoed to shrill cries of “Teedaw! Teedaw!” If Theodore Reese had any hope of getting anyone to call him “Ted,” he forgot it. He was Teedaw to stay.
–
Without even trying, we found ways to harry and chivvy poor flabby Teedaw. There was the day we hid his Kleenex supply. There was the night we paid a visit en masse to the bunk of fifteen-year-old girls at the far end of our coeducational camp. Teedaw came with us reluctantly. We were intercepted halfway by a counselor on night patrol and of course, it was Teedaw who was the one who got caught. We four legged it swiftly back to the bunk and were deep under the covers, feigning sleep, when a flashlight glared suddenly and Teedaw arrived, collared by an angry counselor, who pushed him derisively into the bunk.
“All the rest of you here? Good.” He flashed the light blindingly at Teedaw. “Get to sleep, Romeo. And keep away from the girls’ camp till you learn how to run.”
We called him Romeo for a couple of days. But it wore off, and he reverted to being Teedaw.
We were without pity. We four were all excellent athletes, good dancers, experienced campers. Teedaw was a dub. By the second week of camp he seemed to have realized that we were deliberately baiting him to stress our own superiority. Hate and resentment began to boil up inside that awkward body. But we were only fifteen then, and we didn’t know when to stop.
Late at night, after hours, we would lie awake in our beds, telling each other of real or imaginary prowess with girls, boasting of our base-hits on the ball-field that afternoon, discussing our bunk’s chances in a forthcoming competitive camp carnival. Teedaw would say nothing, because he had learned we would invariably mock his contribution. But he would remain awake. In the moonlit half-darkness we could see his bright eyes glimmering as he lay back, staring at the rafters, storing up hate for his four tormentors.
Sandy, our counselor, would try to reason with us privately to beg us to leave Teedaw alone.
“For Pete’s sake, guys—stop pushing him! Can’t you see he’s building up a charge? One of these days he’s just going to blow up and do something bad.”
I was the spokesman for our group. I shrugged and said, “We don’t do anything deliberately. He makes trouble for himself.”
Sandy let the discussion drop. I think he hated Teedaw too, hated him for his spoiled ways, his fat and his inability to fit into our smoothly-running-bunk.
On the cookout, it was Teedaw who let his dogs burn to charcoal. It was Teedaw who hit a baseball solidly only once all summer—and hit into a triple play. It was Teedaw whose canoe capsized pitifully while the rest of us easily passed our lake tests.
We were the Flawless Four—the oldest boys in camp, the strongest, the best athletes. Teedaw was a fifth wheel. But he hardened during those early weeks of camp. He grew crafty. He learned how to hide his Kleenex too well for us to steal them; he learned how to throw the door open wide before entering the bunk, in case we had perched a bucket of water about the doorframe for him.
He learned. He toughened. Three weeks of constant mockery put a backbone where a lump of gristle had been before. And we didn’t see it happening.
–
The fourth weekend of camp was the big social, for the older campers. The four upper bunks on each side of the camp—every boy and girl above the age of twelve—took part in the shindig.
We four were looking forward to that Saturday night social. Each of us was “going steady,” with a girl from the oldest girls’ bunk, and we anticipated taking the traditional liberties with them after the dance: snatching kisses in the dark, perhaps putting a hand, for a fleeting instant, where it didn’t belong. Innocent stuff, but tremendously exciting to us at age fifteen.
Teedaw, of course, had no girl. A few girls on the other side of camp did not have steadies, but not one, not the fattest nor the ugliest of the lot, was willing to face camp-wide ridicule by being known as Teedaw’s Girl. He could dance, after a clumsy fashion, but generally he spent our minor social get-togethers sitting on the sidelines with the twelve-year-olds who noisily shunned girls. Naturally he had no interest in the big social coming up that night.
At five in the afternoon, after a hectic day on the ball-field, it was time for us to take showers and dress for the evening. The boys’ showerhouse was at the foot of the hill, some fifty yards below our bunk, and the five of us trooped down for a soap-session. Teedaw was still at it when we were through. He was soaping painstakingly behind each ear as he had no doubt been taught at home.
We left him and went back to the bunk to dress. We were nearly ready when Leo pointed through the bunk’s rear window and shouted. “Hey! Here comes Teedaw! Let’s get him!”
Teedaw was coming up the hill from the showerhouse. He carried his soap-tray in one hand and his comb in the other. All he wore was a towel wrapped round his pudgy middle.
We went into action smoothly. Like a team.
Davie and Leo cruised out of the bunk and downhill toward the hapless Teedaw, approaching him from opposite sides. I stationed myself on the bunk porch, armed with our broom. Marv circled in back of the bunk and streaked for Teedaw from the rear.
While Davie and Leo heckled him from the sides, Marv laughingly yanked off his towel. The nude Teedaw yelped in outrage, dropped soap and comb, and sprinted ponderously for the bunk—where I waited, warding him away from the door with the broom.
Leo and Davie were determined to drag him down toward the girls’ camp. Fleeing, Teedaw ran screeching around the bunk. They caught him and started pulling him, pink and kicking, out of the shrubbery in which he was cowering.
Suddenly we heard high-pitched laughter. There they were, a hundred yards above us on the main roads: the entire bunk of oldest girls, five of them, all dressed up, on their way up front to decorate the Social Hall. They had seen the whole incident.
When Teedaw realized they were watching him, he went into a frenzy, kicking and clawing wildly. I think we were all a bit frightened, thinking perhaps that we had gone too far this time. Leo and Davie released him. Teedaw rushed toward the bunk entrance and I stood to one side, letting him pass.
He was red-faced and panting when we entered the bunk. He glared at us out of small glittering fat-ringed eyes.
“You bastards. I’ll get even with you for that. You lousy no-good bastards! I’ll show you!”
And then he started to cry.
–
The whole thing blew over an hour later. Teedaw calmed down, at least outwardly, and it appeared that he would forgive and forget as he had done so many times before. The excitement of what was to come in the evening kept us from reflecting on our cruelty of the afternoon. Already, a new Teedaw-baiting plan had been conceived.
It was Marv’s idea. Marv, dark, a slick dancer, the best looking of us, was going steady with Jacqueline Lee, the camp’s belle. After dinner I saw him draw Jacqueline aside and whisper urgently to her; when he persuaded her, he came over to explain his plan to us.
And then he approached Teedaw.
“Do me a favor, old man?”
“What kind of favor?” Teedaw asked, sullenly, suspiciously.
Marv grinned. “I’m barred from the dance tonight, Teedaw. Seems Sandy found out about—about this afternoon. He’s making me stay in the bunk tonight.”
“Why just you?” Teedaw seemed pleased. “All four of you ought to be punished.”
Marv shrugged stoically. “My luck to be singled out. But I guess I deserve it. Only—it isn’t fair to Jacqueline to have to miss out on the dance, is it?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Well, I spoke to her just now. Since I can’t go tonight, would you take her to the dance for me?”
“That isn’t funny, Marv.”
“I’m not joking. Look, you take her, you dance with her—even neck with her afterward, if she’ll let you. On the straight, Teedaw. Go over and ask her.”
Teedaw hemmed and hawed and turned beet-red, but finally let himself be shoved over to Jacqueline. He invited her to the dance, and, of course, she accepted. That was part of the whole deal. Teedaw had trouble looking Jacqueline in the eye, because she was one of the girls who had seen him running around in his birthday suit that afternoon. But at last it was all agreed: Teedaw would squire her to the dance in Marv’s place.
I’m sure Teedaw never realized until the very last that Marv’s motives had been less than noble. As for Teedaw’s motives in going through with it—well, I suppose he wanted to show us that he could be one of the gang after all. That he knew what to do when he was alone with a girl.
After dark the gong rang, and we straggled up to the Social Hall. The place was decorated with crepe paper, and the camp director had provided punch and refreshments. A big stack of records was presided over by one of the wallflowers. Excitement hung in the air; this was the big mid-season social event.
Marv was not there. He had told Sandy that he felt tired, and was going back to the bunk to lie down. Somehow he had made it sound convincing.
I was hardly interested in the dance, or in Kathie, my partner. She knew about the joke too—all her bunk did—but she seemed upset by our planned cruelty. She was rather remote all evening.
–
Teedaw performed nobly. He danced with Jacqueline as if it was an everyday thing for him to be squiring the camp beauty, and Jacqueline, gliding gracefully in his arms, actually made Teedaw look a good dancer. It was his hour of glory. Jacqueline whispered soft things in his ear and his eyes glowed. For the first time in his life, he could regard himself as a human being. I believe he seriously thought he had a chance of taking Jacqueline away from Marv for good. He seemed to be floating a foot off the ground. It would be great fun when the deflation came.
Nine-thirty arrived: breakup time. The music ended, the lights dimmed, and, couple by couple, we left the Social Hall. The campers who were batching it were supposed to return to their bunks immediately. Couples were allowed to stroll down the main road to the flagpole that was the boundary between the girls’ camp and the boys’, and there they were to part.
Dave, Leo, and I made it a hasty parting that night. We got the expected goodnight kiss, and perhaps might have gotten more. But we were in a hurry. We wanted to spy on Jacqueline and Teedaw. So we sent our girls on their way alone.
The most daring thing a couple could do after a social was to take the back road, leading down to the lake, instead of going to the flagpole. We had incited Teedaw to try inviting Jacqueline down to the lake. Coached by Marv, she had led him on. They were down there now. A couple could sneak successfully down there and neck under highly romantic circumstances, out on the long dock under the moonlight. We stopped off at our bunk to get Marv, and then the four of us loped through the darkness to the waterfront to watch the fun.
They were there, all right.
They were sitting on the instructor’s bench at the far end of the dock, a hundred feet out where the deep-water swimming area was. They were sitting side-by-side, and we could see, as we crouched in the shadows at the edge of the lake, that Teedaw had his arm over the back of the bench, not quite touching Jacqueline’s shoulder.
They were whispering, but at that distance their words were inaudible. Teedaw looked elated. There he was, alone at the lakefront with the loveliest girl in camp, a full moon above, frogs croaking on the water. Perhaps, we thought, he would dare to ask for a kiss.
–
We waited. Five minutes, ten. Still they whispered, and Teedaw’s pudgy hand stole closer to Jacqueline’s soft shoulder. Marv was getting fidgety. It was, after all, his girl out there; what a colossal humiliation it would be if Teedaw actually stole her from him!
But that was inconceivable.
Another minute passed. Then another. The time had come for us to complete the prank, spring out of hiding, shout mockingly at Teedaw and his false-hearted beauty.
Then a flashlight glared fiercely behind us. We whirled, blinking. It was Sandy. And he was angry.
“What are you doing down here? I’ve been hunting all over camp for you! You want to get me fired?”
We were silent. Then Davie said, “We came down here to watch Teedaw necking.”
“You what?”
Davie started to point through the shrubbery at the couple on the dock. But suddenly we heard Teedaw’s high-pitched nasal voice crying grotesquely, “I love you! I love you! Kiss me!”
We stood as if frozen, hearing Jacqueline’s giggle and her amused outburst: “Kiss you, you fat clown? Why it’s all a big joke! Marv put me up to this!”
There was a kind of terrible strangled grunting sound that we had heard before; Teedaw’s cry of animal frustration. Only now it was unbearable, a cry from the depths of a despondent soul. Then we heard a tiny whimper of fear, and the sound of a scuffle—
And then an enormous splash.
We broke from our trance, we four and Sandy, and raced out onto the dock. We were too late. The dock was empty. Teedaw and Jacqueline were gone, and only the sudden turbulence of the deep water told where they might be.
Sandy kicked off his shoes and dove in. Numb with fear and rising shock, we stripped off our clothes and followed him. For aching minutes we dove through the dark water, not daring to speak.
By the time we found them, it was much, much too late. Teedaw had been betrayed in what he thought was his finest hour, and unable to face the raw truth, had lashed out at the world. For an instant he had ceased being a patsy and had become his own angel of revenge against the world of laughing boys and lithe girls from which he was barred.
We brought them up, still locked together: Jacqueline’s dead face a mask of fear, Teedaw’s expression one of final fierce triumph. With his one terrible deed he had evened the score with his tormentors and with the tantalizing girl who had goaded him to this breaking point. In their party finery, they had gone under like two dead weights, leaving us behind with our burden of guilt. Teedaw’s rigid hands were clamped desperately to the girl’s white throat, and his ghostly smile was terrible to behold.