Now and again my dad coaxed me away from playing the piano and tried to engage me in a game of pitch and catch. The spastic way I threw a ball embarrassed him; eventually he stopped asking. I was a kid who didn’t have any sports heroes but I envied Nancy Drew with her abilities to figure things out. I admired the Disney TV cowboys, Spin and Marty, and the way they intuitively knew how to befriend the teens who showed up at the Triple R Ranch.
Shortly after my eleventh birthday Dad attempted to nudge me in a more manly direction by contacting his Army friend Jack Carter. Jack, Dad’s handsome friend, was the Scoutmaster for the troop that met at my parochial school. On meeting him, I didn’t grasp why his rugged jaw, blue eyes, and sandy blond hair mesmerized me. I half-heartedly agreed to become a Boy Scout, but was soon outfitted with scouting paraphernalia—shirt, pants, belt, handbook, and my dad’s dented Army canteen. Twice a month on Thursday evenings I moseyed off to meetings in my school’s cafeteria.
One summer Sunday afternoon with puffy cotton candy clouds suspended in a crisp blue sky, three months after I’d made the rank of Tenderfoot, we drove the nearly twenty miles to get to the Boy Scout campground in our beige Chevy coupe. Since he’d grown up in Carroll County, the county adjacent to where Camp Tuscazoar was located, Dad didn’t need a map. Nor did he find it necessary to tell me how he hoped I’d be transformed. He knew to follow rural Route 800 which paralleled the Nimishillen Creek (from Native American ni meaning stream and missilla meaning black alder). As I sat in the passenger seat in the warm car, I opened an Ohio state map and ticked off the few small towns we passed through and tracked the number of times we crossed that creek. I asked him what it was like to camp in Army tents in Germany.
Silence.
He changed the subject by reminding me the Nimishillen Creek was the same stream where he’d taught me how to catch crawdads just a few blocks from home.
In the weighty quiet that sagged between us, I reflected. His eyes were gray-green; mine were light brown outlined with a thin circle of light blue. He liked dressing in shades of taupe; striped tee-shirts were my choice. He was a quiet guy; I was shy and awkward. He was a thrifty fellow who taught himself how to use barber clippers. Every four weeks he trimmed my brown hair into a flattop which stood upright with an application of butch wax. His one splurge was on his cordovan shoes which he kept so spit-shined such that he could see his reflection.
When we got to Camp Tuscazoar, named after the Tuscarawas River and the village of Zoar, Dad checked me in and helped take my gear to my cabin. He handed me his childhood baseball mitt implying he hoped I’d participate in some games. Before departing he gave me a light hug and encouraged me to look for Indian arrowheads.
My days at camp were uneventful, except for showing proficiency in the three skills needed for receiving the camp’s Pipestone. I don’t remember mixing with older scouts and other campers in learning the expertise required to pass those tests, but I must have. I walked along gravel paths with plants and trees labeled with their names, which I memorized for the first test. I had no trouble identifying buckeye trees, as they grew in the city park near home. Poison ivy was the easiest to spot. Next to it was a posted marker: Do not touch. I attended a class on learning to untangle ropes and transform them into named knots for the second skill. Plying my body the length of the small swimming pool got me in shape for the last test. Passing those tests was my forte. The bright, humid days enlivened me. I liked learning a few new skills and felt carefree about avoiding all group sports. An older scout from my troop asked me to take part in a nighttime pantomime skit behind a back-lit bed sheet. In silhouetted images a trumpet player wooed his girlfriend. I declined to take part for fear of making a mistake during the performance.
If I took some ribbing for not joining in all of the camp activities, I remained untroubled.
I was odd. I didn’t dwell on it, nor was I aware of my standoffish awkwardness. Secretly I hoped for an adult or an older scout to coach me in the art of being part of a group, how to go about making friendships. It’s likely that other kids like me were there, but to me they were invisible.
I found a quiet spot near the lodge next to the mess hall where I sat beneath a lone buckeye tree. I propped Dad’s baseball glove between me and the tree’s scruffy trunk, and wrote postcards to a couple of cousins. I’d remembered to bring four 2¢ stamps from home. What I really wanted to do was get absorbed in reading a Nancy Drew mystery, but I wasn’t allowed to bring her along. I daydreamed about growing up as her younger brother and sidekick. I believed she’d show me how to recapture the closeness. The closeness I once had with Dad on our fall outings to Nimishillen park to collect buckeyes. He’d toss his mitt up into a tree, dislodging them. We’d take them home, extract them from their hulls, shine them, and then admire their luster. Me wishing they were edible.
I knew I was supposed to come home having used that mitt. Become a bit more guy-like. I looked through the canopy above me, marveled at the dappled yellow sunshine, and mused why I didn’t take naturally to sports or to making friends.
During one of my solitary swims on a breezy sunny afternoon, I figured out that behind my back Dad had arranged with Jack Carter for me to attend this summer camp. I didn’t know where he found the wherewithal to do this, but I was happy to be at camp and away from his scrutiny.
While drying off, the breeze made me shiver. My fingernails were beginning to grow. I was unaware I’d stopped biting them.
On the last night of camp, those of us who passed all three scouting skills tests were sequestered near the camp’s flagpole around 8:45. Tenderfoot badge pinned to my left shirt pocket, I was milling around with the six other Scouts who qualified for the ceremonial Pipestone. Faint pink and orange streaks painted the dusky sky, casting into silhouette the rounded canopies of the nearby buckeye trees. Three older Scouts, clad as Indians in loincloths with tall feathers strapped to their heads, summoned us with hand signals and we trailed them up a serpentine, dusty path to ceremonial grounds. There was barely enough twilight to glimpse one of the guide’s thighs beneath his loincloth. The tanned, shadowy skin I saw electrified me. Was it possible that someone could get wrapped up in their leather cloths? Tingly pulses coursed through my lower abdomen and a sense of riskiness hovered in my gut. Could I snare those ephemeral moments of excitement within the chain of square knots and granny knots that I had learned how to tie?
Around the blazing wood fire Scout Masters gave speeches about the skills needed for meriting a Pipestone and explained the meaning of the stick figure etched on it. The small terra cotta stone depicted a figure holding a skinny tree branch high above his head, meaning, I have found it. I took my eyes off the speakers and spotted the Indians standing erect. Prickly pleasurable sensations returned as I stared at their bare, sweaty chests. Their thighs and war-painted faces were glistening from the crackling heat of the fire. My body shuddered, responding to their near nakedness.
I’d found something. I didn’t know its name because I didn’t speak the language of my torso. On the ride home Dad asked what I did at camp. When I told him I was awarded the Pipestone, he nodded. He didn’t ask to see it. Instead, asked if I used his baseball glove. I shook my head no. I filled the arid unease between us by imagining Jack Carter was my father.
Dad asked, “You’re smiling?”
“I’m proud of earning my Pipestone.”
“What did you have to do?”
I told him about passing the tree and plant identification test, the rope knot test, and swimming the length of the pool.
“Everyone got a Pipestone, right?”
“No, Robert and many others didn’t.” Robert was a year older than I and failed the swim test. I wished I’d been plucky enough to encourage him.
Dad grinned, reached over and perfunctorily patted my knee.
My reaction to the older Indian scouts didn’t propel me to the next step— finding a simpatico guy and exploring our bodies together. In a more understanding place and time, say 2005, I may have found those chaps through a safe place at school. In the late 1950s, I instinctively knew to keep my attraction a secret.
For the next year and a half I avoided wearing green and yellow clothes on Thursday because I’d overheard a whispered buzz among guys on the playground. Wearing those colors on that day was a sign—code for a fag. Unsure what that meant, I steered clear of that color combo. I believed I was doing a good job hiding my secret, until one day in the spring of eighth grade, an impulse seduced me to smudge my mom’s stubby brown eyebrow pencil atop my left eye. In the bathroom as I was getting ready for school, for no apparent reason, that pencil leapt into my fingers and smeared a mark through my eyebrow. Perhaps, innocently, I thought since my eyebrows were dark brown what I’d done wasn’t noticeable. However, at recess that day, while standing on the playground, one of the boys in my class leaped in front of me and swiped his index finger across his forehead and leered at me. I wanted to vanish. It took days to construct a wall of denial around that incident and get back to believing my secret was safely camouflaged.
I wasn’t deceiving my eighth grade teacher, either. On another balmy spring day Sister Elizabeth Ann startled me during afternoon recess.
“You’re going to try out for the new basketball team, right?”
I hadn’t planned on it because I was uncoordinated and non-athletic. Staring at the brick school building behind her, I shrugged. Glad I was alone.
“I’ll not have any sissies in my class,” she said with a severe look that softened into a frown as she strode away. How far I’d fallen from her good graces. One of the best in class at doing her daily mental arithmetic quizzes, an essay contest winner, and a high scorer on a standardized vocabulary test, I believed I was one of her star students. I’d even volunteered to give an oral book report on the life of Father Damien, who lived with and treated the lepers cast ashore on Molokai.
When the basketball team formed I was a reluctant part of it. I caught myself comparing my physique to my classmates’ naked bodies in the locker room. If I stared too long at them, no one ever called me out. Those tingling feelings I had at the scout campfire returned and I tried to extinguish them. I found myself looking forward to changing in the locker room. With furtive glimpses I caught sight of newly emerging pubic hair on a few of the boys.
In a real game, where we were losing by 17 points, the coach put me on the court for the last three minutes. The ball was passed to me and I was fouled. As I stood anxiously at the free-throw line, with my dad sitting in the bleachers, watching expectantly, I heaved the orange orb toward the hoop. It arced far short of the rim. Coach took me out of the game. Sitting on the bench was my position for the rest of the season. Thank God.
On the ride home, Dad didn’t say a word about my missing a free throw. My playing any sport should have been a bonding activity and drawn us closer. He witnessed one more time that I had no aptitude for sports. I knew he was aware of my inclinations toward reading, roller skating, jumping rope with my girl cousins, and playing the piano, but I was unaware of how my interests might have bewildered him.
Two months after I turned fourteen, on Easter Sunday, 1959, we were enjoying a baked ham dinner. The ham was scored with cloves and glazed with a mustard and brown sugar sauce. Its sweet and spicy aroma whetted my appetite. A lace tablecloth covered our mahogany table. In the center was a custard-yellow baking bowl filled with pastel-colored eggs. Placed next to my chair was an Easter basket overflowing with jelly beans and marshmallow peeps. After Mom placed a tray of hot cross buns on the table, we said, Bless us O Lord and these thy gifts. When Dad passed the platter of ham slices he announced.
“We are moving to St. Louis in June.”
“Why?” I asked, dumbstruck.
“I’ve accepted a promotion.”
“Can’t I stay here and go to Central Catholic High School and live with Aunt Margaret and Uncle Harry?”
“Don’t see how that’s possible,” he said. “I’m counting on you to look after things while I’m out on the road. Like you’ve done here for the past two years.” There wasn’t any extra space for a teenage boy in their household.
“What about your apple trees?” I asked. Last fall he planted a dozen dwarf apple trees in our small back yard. He liked to think of himself as a modern day Johnny Appleseed.
“I’ll leave them for the new home owners.”
I bit my tongue.
A week later I brought up the move again, trying to finagle a reason from him. “We’re moving to a bigger city because the cost of living will be cheaper, right?” I figured St. Louis was a manufacturing town and store-bought goods were cheaper there. Cutting our living expenses made some sense to me.
“Nope,” he said.
What was he not telling me? The next day I asked, “We’re taking Raff?” Raff was a small bird dog, white with a smattering of black markings and a black patch above one eye. Dad had given her to me as a birthday present a year earlier.
“No. I’ve found a nice family who’ve agreed to adopt her.”
“What?” I wanted to point out to him how cruel this was for Raff and me.
No answer.
Two days went by and while he was paying bills, I asked, “What about my piano?”
“It’ll have to stay here. There’s no way it can be hauled out of the basement. You know that.”
“You’re not telling me something.”
“Your mom …” he looked back down at his desk and shook his head.
“Mom’s what?” My voice hit its upper register.
“I can’t explain it. Moving to St. Louis is the best option for us.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to. Please get on board.”
I skulked down to the basement and sat at the piano that was staying behind. I fought back tears and banged out “Blueberry Hill” followed by “The Great Pretender.” I hoped Dad sensed my anger as I hammered out these songs over and over and over.
That night I had trouble drifting off to sleep and my head was filled with racing, looping thoughts of how to talk Dad out of moving to St. Louis. Feelings of not being smart enough to understand him got entangled with my anger. Worry about Raff unnerved me. I tried to imagine any good reason for the move. I started gnawing at my thumbnails.
The thought that my parents might be embarrassed by my sissy tendencies never occurred to me. Even though I was a sensitive kid, I never picked up on the fact I might be one of the underlying reasons for the move. I knew I had to keep hidden who I was. I didn’t yet understand that my parents might have had concerns about what their friends and relatives were thinking about them.
I tried calming my mind by repeating, I found my thrill on Blueberry Hill, which morphed into I found my thrill on Campfire Hill. This took me back to the electric twilight when my knees nearly buckled under me as I caught sight of those older scouts dressed as near naked Indians. I puzzled over whether I’d ever get naked with another guy.
Still wound tight and my mind spiraling, I switched to repeating the lyrics of “The Great Pretender.” Too real when I feel what my heart can’t conceal. That then changed to, Too real when I feel what my heart can’t reveal.
Tiny sparks of opposition pushed my thoughts toward running away or staying behind. I re-imagined asking my favorite aunt if I might finish my four years of high school while living with her. Where she or where I’d get the money to do this didn’t enter the picture. This cozy fantasy pushed aside some of my fears of the major upheaval ahead of me.
It was impossible to imagine myself thriving in a new, strange environment. Exhausted. Fatigued. I eventually got to sleep after locating my Nancy Drew books with a flashlight and stashing them in the back of a closet with my other keepsakes. I didn’t want to risk them getting left behind.
On departure day June 29, 1959, we piled into our pistachio green Ford station wagon. “Broken Hearted Melody” blared out from nearly every radio station we picked up. Sarah Vaughn’s sassy, aching voice expressed my grief for the familiarity I was leaving. Six hundred miles and two days later we were setting up a new household in Webster Groves, an older suburb of St. Louis.
Solving the mystery that was me was not on the horizon.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Rick Trushel is moved to write because he believes stories, narratives and serendipity deepen our understanding of our lives and purpose. He often procrastinates because he mistakenly believes it improves his writing. His essays and short stories have appeared in The Sun magazine and on-line at Menda City Review, 101 Words, and Eunoia Review.