Bless the Beasts & Children Read Online Free Page B

to the boy's things, Sid and Sammy inspected the camp facilities, Sid puffing a panatela and Sammy biting his fingernails. Sid even stayed for lunch, making jokes about the availability of kosher food in the Wild West, and after lunch did a benefit standup half-hour while Sammy, who was already fat, had seconds and thirds of everything on the menu. All the campers had seen Sid Shecker on television, and although his material was largely lifted from that of other Jewish funnymen, his Arab-motherhood-Nazi-bagel-Brooklyn routines broke them up. Leaving them laughing, Sid went into the kitchen, tipped the cooks $20 each so Sammy shouldn't starve, took a counselor aside and tipped him $50 so Sammy should always have a friend, and offered the Director $100 so Sammy should have the best horse in the corral. This the Director refused, but there were no hard feelings and after spraying several ethnic one-liners for a boffo finish, the comedian roared off in his leased limousine and a
chutzpah
of dust
.
    Around the S-curve, where they had earlier caught up with the runaway, they posted, and came to the wooden, roadwide camp gate. The rest reined in as Cotton, bending, unlatched the gate and rode it open. But they did not proceed. They treated themselves to a moment. It was as though they felt a redhot revelation coming on.
    Under his army helmet Cotton reviewed his troops. Under the headband and golf cap and Afrika Korps cap and tramp ten-gallons they gauged him, then glanced at the burnt pillow under the arm of Lally 2, at the head of the bull buffalo between Goodenow's thighs, at the rifle barrel pointed over Teft's pommel, and then, longest, at each other. They were impressed. One was fifteen years old, four were fourteen, one was twelve. But they were tremendously impressed, by themselves and by what they were about to attempt.
    They were mad for western movies. They doted on tales told with trumpets and ending in a pot of gold, a bucket of blood, or a chorus of the national anthem. The finest movie they had lately seen, the only one that summer in fact, was
The Professionals
. It had been a buster, a dollar-dreadful, a saga of some men expert with weapons, a handful of colorful, heroic characters who rode into Mexico on a mission of mercy—to rescue a voluptuous babe from the clutches of bandits who had abducted her for foul, they were sure, purposes. It was a fundamental film, they knew it in their souls, a yarn innocent and scabrous, brutal and principled, true and a liar, as old as the hills and as new as the next generation. You did not watch it. You sucked on it. For this is the marrowbone of every American adventure story: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous. Whether it be to scout a continent in a covered wagon, to weld the Union in a screaming Wilderness, to save the world for democracy, to vault seas and rip up jungles by the roots and sow our seed and flag and spirit, this has ever been the essence of our melodrama: some men with guns, going somewhere, to do something dangerous.
    And so they were.
    They looked at each other. Cotton grinned, ear to ear. Teft, Shecker, Goodenow, and the Lally brothers grinned at him. He nodded and gigged his horse about before them. They battened down their hats. Suddenly, as one man, they lashed with reins and banged the outraged animals in the bellies. Away the Bedwetters went, charging through the gate and over the silver screen and into history like cavalry. "Eee-yah! Eee-yah!" they yelled. "Eee-yah!"
     

5
    They booted at full gallop until the nags, unaccustomed to such shenanigans, were near collapse. Lally 2 had also dropped his pillow and would not go on without it. They waited for him near the paved highway into town, thanking their lucky stars they still had arms and legs, then swung right and let the animals weave at a drunkard walk along the gravel shoulder of the highway, blowing hard and slobbering.
    One morning last autumn Goodenow was gripped by