Look Upon My Neckerchief and Know that I Am Eagle! (Cont.)

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Outside Magazine February 2002

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Look Upon My Neckerchief and Know that I Am Eagle! (Cont.)

WHEN I WAS 11, I JOINED the Legions of Pottsylvania, a gang of kids named after the Balkan-style homeland of Boris and Natasha in the animated Rocky and Bullwinkle television show. I eventually rose to the top through seniority and dumb luck displayed during dirt-clod wars with other gangs, and thus became Pottsylvania's general. But under the autocratic rule of the new supreme commander, defections increased. Finally, Arthur Lemon, my trusted aide-de-camp, announced that he would no longer have any time for Pottsylvania either; he'd joined the Boy Scouts. He was wearing a khaki uniform with a black scarf tied around his neck in a dapper, squared-away manner. There were official insignia sewn to his shoulders, and on his chest flashed a shiny piece of bronze. This was so far beyond our puny efforts to cast Pottsylvania in a military mold that I was instantly smitten with envy.

"You should join," he said. "I'm gonna ride up there right now."

"Up there" was a sprawling house on a bluff above the Missouri River owned by a heart surgeon. When David, the surgeon's son, announced that he wanted to be a Scout, the good doctor decided that rather than ferry the kid into town he'd bring the Scouts to David. So they organized a unit they called the Skull Patrol, and designed a scarf featuring a phosphorescent skull-and-crossbones on a field of black silk.

"So who's this, Arthur?" The intense block of a man who was shaking my hand spoke like Orson Welles and looked like Jimmy Cagney. He smelled of pipe smoke and horses and bay leaf, and emanated such confidence and goodwill that whatever it was the Boy Scouts were all about, I knew I just had to be part of it.

The following summer the sun sparkled on the impossibly blue waters of Lower Saint Mary Lake on the Blackfeet Indian Reservation just outside Glacier Park, causing the Second Class badge on the chest of my new uniform to flash agreeably. I was kneeling in the stern of a canoe working on the J-strokes you must perform in order to qualify for the Canoeing merit badge. The final test would be the next morning at dawn. I would be asked to name the parts of the canoe, show the counselor all the strokes, and, finally, overturn my boat in these bone-numbing waters and prove that I knew how to right the craft and slosh the water out of it in the single deft move all the candidates had been taught. (Canoeing turned out to be one of the few skills I would ever master.) In the bow, David had turned around to coach me, and to recite an inspirational limerick from the stores of doggerel he had committed to memory. There was a young woman from Kent...

After David's father abandoned the Skull Patrol and ran off to California with his nurse, I was surprised when my old man caved in to my pleas to serve as our scoutmaster. You'd think my badges would have flowed like wine, but when I went to him for the Painting badge after a bit of labor on our picket fence, he told me that if I wanted it bad enough I'd have to do the house. To this day the smell of paint makes me gag. Also. the color turquoise.

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