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Authors: John Barth
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crackers, at bottom Ambrose approved of their exclusion. Let little kids into your Occult Order: there would go your secrets all over school.
And the secrets were the point of the thing. When Peter had mentioned one evening that he and the fellows were starting a club, Ambrose had tossed the night through in a perfect fever of imagining. It would be a secret club-that went without saying; there must be secret handshakes, secret passwords, secret initiations. But these he felt meant nothing except to remind you of the really important thing, which was—well, hard to find words for, but there had to be the
real
secrets, dark facts known to none but the members. You had to have been initiated to find them out—that’s what
initiation
meant—and when you were a member you’d know the truth of the matter and smile in a private way when you met another member of the Order, because you both knew what you knew. All night and for a while after, Ambrose had wondered whether Peter and the fellows could understand that that was the important thing. He ceased to wonder when he began to see just that kind of look on their faces sometimes; certain words and little gestures set them laughing; they absolutely barred outsiders from the Jungle and said nothing to their parents about the Occult Order of the Sphinx. Ambrose was satisfied. To make his own position bearable, he gave Perse to understand that he himself was in on the secrets, was in fact a special kind of initiate whose job was to patrol the beach and make sure that no spies or brats got near the Den.
By the time he came downstairs from changing his clothes Peter and the gang had gone on ahead, and even at a run he couldn’t catch up to them before they had got to the seawall and almost into the Jungle. The day was warm and windy; the river blue-black and afroth with whitecaps. Out in thechannel the bell buoy clanged, and the other buoys leaned seaward with the tide. They had special names, red nun, black can, and sailors knew just what each stood for.
“Hey Peter, hold up!”
Peter turned a bit and lifted his chin to greet him, but didn’t wait up because Herman Goltz hit him one then where the fellows did, just for fun, and Peter had to go chase after him into the Jungle. Sandy Cooper was the first to speak to him: they called him Sandy on account of his freckles and his red hair, which was exactly as stiff and curly as the fur of his Chesapeake Bay dog, but there was something gritty too in the feel of Sandy Cooper’s hands, and his voice had a grainy sound as if there were sand on his tonsils.
“I hear you run home bawling today.”
Sandy Cooper’s dog was not about, and Peter was. Ambrose said: “That’s a lie.”
“Perse says you did.”
“You did, too,” Perse affirmed from some yards distant. “If Wimpy was here he’d tell you.”
Ambrose reflected on their narrow escape from the Cave of Hounds and smiled. “That’s what
you
think.”
“That’s what I know, big sis!”
One wasn’t expected to take on a little pest like Perse. Ambrose shied a lump of dirt at him, and when Perse shied back an oystershell that cut past like a knife, the whole gang called it a dirty trick and ran him across Erdmann’s cornlot. Then they all went in among the trees.
The Jungle, which like the Occult Order had been named by Ambrose, stood atop the riverbank between the Nurses’ Home and the new bridge. It was in fact a grove of honey locusts, in area no larger than a schoolyard, bounded on two of its inland sides by Erdmann’s cornlot and on the third by the East Dorset dump. But it was made mysterious by rank creepers and honeysuckle that covered the ground and shrouded every tree, and by a labyrinth of intersecting footpaths. Jungle-like too, therewas about it a voluptuous fetidity: gray rats and starlings decomposed where B-B’d; curly-furred retrievers spoored the paths; there were to be seen on occasion, stuck on twig-ends or flung amid the creepers, ugly
And the secrets were the point of the thing. When Peter had mentioned one evening that he and the fellows were starting a club, Ambrose had tossed the night through in a perfect fever of imagining. It would be a secret club-that went without saying; there must be secret handshakes, secret passwords, secret initiations. But these he felt meant nothing except to remind you of the really important thing, which was—well, hard to find words for, but there had to be the
real
secrets, dark facts known to none but the members. You had to have been initiated to find them out—that’s what
initiation
meant—and when you were a member you’d know the truth of the matter and smile in a private way when you met another member of the Order, because you both knew what you knew. All night and for a while after, Ambrose had wondered whether Peter and the fellows could understand that that was the important thing. He ceased to wonder when he began to see just that kind of look on their faces sometimes; certain words and little gestures set them laughing; they absolutely barred outsiders from the Jungle and said nothing to their parents about the Occult Order of the Sphinx. Ambrose was satisfied. To make his own position bearable, he gave Perse to understand that he himself was in on the secrets, was in fact a special kind of initiate whose job was to patrol the beach and make sure that no spies or brats got near the Den.
By the time he came downstairs from changing his clothes Peter and the gang had gone on ahead, and even at a run he couldn’t catch up to them before they had got to the seawall and almost into the Jungle. The day was warm and windy; the river blue-black and afroth with whitecaps. Out in thechannel the bell buoy clanged, and the other buoys leaned seaward with the tide. They had special names, red nun, black can, and sailors knew just what each stood for.
“Hey Peter, hold up!”
Peter turned a bit and lifted his chin to greet him, but didn’t wait up because Herman Goltz hit him one then where the fellows did, just for fun, and Peter had to go chase after him into the Jungle. Sandy Cooper was the first to speak to him: they called him Sandy on account of his freckles and his red hair, which was exactly as stiff and curly as the fur of his Chesapeake Bay dog, but there was something gritty too in the feel of Sandy Cooper’s hands, and his voice had a grainy sound as if there were sand on his tonsils.
“I hear you run home bawling today.”
Sandy Cooper’s dog was not about, and Peter was. Ambrose said: “That’s a lie.”
“Perse says you did.”
“You did, too,” Perse affirmed from some yards distant. “If Wimpy was here he’d tell you.”
Ambrose reflected on their narrow escape from the Cave of Hounds and smiled. “That’s what
you
think.”
“That’s what I know, big sis!”
One wasn’t expected to take on a little pest like Perse. Ambrose shied a lump of dirt at him, and when Perse shied back an oystershell that cut past like a knife, the whole gang called it a dirty trick and ran him across Erdmann’s cornlot. Then they all went in among the trees.
The Jungle, which like the Occult Order had been named by Ambrose, stood atop the riverbank between the Nurses’ Home and the new bridge. It was in fact a grove of honey locusts, in area no larger than a schoolyard, bounded on two of its inland sides by Erdmann’s cornlot and on the third by the East Dorset dump. But it was made mysterious by rank creepers and honeysuckle that covered the ground and shrouded every tree, and by a labyrinth of intersecting footpaths. Jungle-like too, therewas about it a voluptuous fetidity: gray rats and starlings decomposed where B-B’d; curly-furred retrievers spoored the paths; there were to be seen on occasion, stuck on twig-ends or flung amid the creepers, ugly
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