CHAPTER 13

END OF SUMMER

A trumpet has three little valves. They are for the fingers of the player. They look like this:

By pushing them down in the right order, the player can produce all the notes of the musical scale. Louis had often examined these three little valves on his horn, but he had never been able to use them. He had three front toes on each foot, but, being a water bird, he had webbed feet. The webbing prevented him from using his three toes independently. Luckily, the valves on a trumpet are not needed for bugle calls because bugle calls are just combinations of do, mi, and sol, and a trumpeter can play do, mi, and sol without pressing down any of the valves.

“If I could just work those three valves with my three toes,” he said to himself, “I could play all sorts of music, not just bugle calls. I could play jazz. I could play country-and-western. I could play rock. I could play the great music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Sibelius, Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Brahms, everybody. I could really be a trumpet player, not just a camp bugler. I might even get a job with an orchestra.” The thought filled him with ambition. Louis loved music, and besides, he was already casting about for ways of making money after camp was over.

Although he enjoyed life at Camp Kookooskoos, Louis often thought of his home on Upper Red Rock Lake in Montana. He thought about his parents, his brothers and sisters, and about Serena. He was terribly in love with Serena, and he often wondered what was happening to her. At night, he would look up at the stars and think about her. In the late evening, when the big bullfrogs were calling trooonk across the still lake, he would think of Serena. Sometimes he felt sad, lonely, and homesick. His music, however, was a comfort to him. He loved the sound of his own trumpet.

Summer passed all too quickly. On the last day of camp, Mr. Brickle called his counselors together and paid them what he owed them. Louis received one hundred dollars—the first money he had ever earned. He had no wallet and no pockets, so Mr. Brickle placed the money in a waterproof bag that had a drawstring. He hung this moneybag around Louis’s neck, along with the trumpet, the slate, the chalk pencil, and the lifesaving medal.

Louis went to Sam Beaver’s tent and found Sam packing his things. Louis took off his slate and pencil.

“I need another job,” he wrote. “Where should I go?”

Sam sat down on his bed and thought for a while. Then he said, “Go to Boston. Maybe you can get a job with the Swan Boat.”

Louis had never been to Boston, and he had no idea what the Swan Boat was, but he nodded his head. Then on his slate he wrote: “Do me a favor?”

“Sure,” said Sam.

“Take a razor blade and slit the web on my right foot, so I can wiggle my toes.” He held out his foot.

“Why do you want to wiggle your toes?” asked Sam.

“You’ll see,” wrote Louis. “I need my toes in my business.”

Sam hesitated. Then he borrowed a razor blade from one of the older counselors. He made a long, neat cut between Louis’s inner toe and middle toe. Then he made another cut between Louis’s middle toe and outer toe.

“Does it hurt?”

Louis shook his head. He lifted his trumpet, placed his toes on the valves, and played do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do. Do, ti, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do. Ko-hoh!

Sam grinned. “The Swan Boat will hire you, all right,” he said. “You’re a real trumpeter now. But with your web cut, swimming will be harder for you. You will have a tendency to swim in circles, because your left foot will push better than your right foot.”

“I can manage,” wrote Louis. “Thanks very much for the surgery.”

Next day, the campers left. The canoes had been hoisted onto racks in the boathouse, the float had been hauled onto the beach, the windows of the lodge had been boarded up against bears and squirrels, mattresses had been packed into zipper bags; everything was snug and ready for the long, silent winter. Of all the campers, only Louis stayed behind. His flight feathers were growing fast, but he still couldn’t fly. He made up his mind he would remain at camp, all alone, until he was able to take to the air again, and then he would fly straight to Boston.

The lake was lonely without the boys, but Louis didn’t mind being alone. For the next three weeks he took life easy. He grew his flight feathers, dreamed of Serena by day and by night, and practiced his trumpet. He had listened to music all summer—several of the boys had radios and record players—and now he practiced the songs on his trumpet. Every day he got better and better. One day, he composed a love song for Serena and wrote the words and music on his slate:

He was really thinking of Serena, but he left her name out of it and kept it impersonal.

His plumage was beautiful now, and he felt great. On the twenty-first of September, he tried his wings. To his great relief, they lifted him. Louis rose into the air. The trumpet banged against the slate, the slate knocked against the moneybag, the lifesaving medal clinked against the chalk pencil—but Louis was airborne again. He climbed and climbed and headed for Boston. It was wonderful to be in the sky again.

“Flying is a lot harder than it was before I acquired all these possessions,” thought Louis. “The best way to travel, really, is to travel light. On the other hand, I have to have these things. I’ve got to have the trumpet if I am to win Serena for my wife; I’ve got to carry this moneybag to hold the money to pay my father’s debts; I’ve got to have the slate and pencil so I can communicate with people; and I ought to wear the medal because I really did save a life, and if I didn’t wear it, people might think I was ungrateful.”

On and on he flew, toward Boston, which is the capital of Massachusetts, and which is famous for its baked beans, its codfish, its tea parties, its Cabots, its Lowells, its Saltonstalls, and its Swan Boats.