Voices of a Summer Day Read Online Free PDF Page A

“sometimes I’m blue. Sacco, Vanzetti, what did you do? Dear Mr. Governor, can’t you be fine, And turn the juice on some other time?”
    Somehow, by humming or going fast over the rough spots, Cohn managed to make his words fit the beat of the music and he grinned at the shout of laughter that greeted his cleverness.
    “Now,” he said, “all together…”
    “Sometimes I’m happy…” the young voices sang over the noise of the motors. And, “Sacco, Vanzetti, what did you do?”
    Only Benjamin sat silent. Everything’s a joke to that sonofabitch, he thought bitterly, knowing that all the boys in the truck would call him a sorehead from then on and not caring.
    “Dear Mr. Governor, can’t you be fine, And turn the juice on some other time?”
    The voices sang louder and louder as the boys learned the words, and they were bawling the song out when the trucks stopped at one o’clock in front of the post office and general store of a small village and Bryant went in to call the director of the camp.
    The village green, with its bandstand, was in front of the general store, and all the boys got out and stretched their legs and sat on the grass or on the steps of the bandstand and ate the sandwiches and oranges and drank the manufactured-tasting milk from thermos jugs that had been sent along by the camp cooks with their lunches.
    Bryant took a long time, and while waiting for him Cohn taught his new song to the boys from the other trucks. The village was almost deserted, since it was lunchtime, and there was only a farmer or two passing through to listen puzzledly to the strange sound of more than forty boys in camp uniforms singing, in voices that ranged from childish soprano to uncertain bass: “Sacco, Vanzetti, what did you do?”
    When Bryant came out of the general store he had a ponderous, self-important look on his face, like the manager of a baseball team walking out to the mound to send a pitcher to the showers. Everybody knew, before Bryant said a word, that the news was bad. “Boys,” he said, “I’m afraid Boston’s out. Both those guys were electrocuted an hour ago. Now let’s forget it and go to Canoga and show those fellers what kind of a ball club we have playing for us this season.”
    “God damn it,” Cohn said. “We shoulda just stayed home.” Profanity was punishable under the camp rules, but Bryant put his arm consolingly around Cohn’s shoulders and said, “Boris, I know exactly how you feel.”
    They piled once more into the trucks and started for Canoga. Benjamin sat near the open end of the truck again, on the verge of vomiting after the thick sandwiches and the thermos-bottle milk. The knowledge that within an hour or so he would be playing a ball game, something that usually filled him with excitement, gave him no pleasure today, because he knew the rest of the team would be playing resentfully and that they would remember that he was the only one among them who had wanted to play the game. They would look for signs of smugness and triumph, and Benjamin knew that no matter how he behaved and whether anybody said anything about it or not, a good deal of their resentment would be turned against him. Hell, he thought, I haven’t got a friend in this whole lousy camp. I’m going someplace else next summer.
    They lost the game that afternoon. The whole team played stodgily. Years later, when Benjamin was in college, an unusually literate backfield coach had told him, “I don’t care how much ahead you are or how good you are or how easy it is, I want players who play with passion. Without that, don’t bother to suit up. You might as well go sit in the library on Saturdays and improve your mind. You’re not going to do me or anybody else any real good out there on the field.” Federov was nineteen at the time and considerably more blasé than when he reached fifty and he had smiled secretly at the coach’s using a word like “passion” in connection with a boy’s game.