Sunshine Days - Chapter 27
Avery, Joey, and Henry finally left the tabby cat alone after a harsh interrogation, which in all lasted less than five minutes. It had felt a lot longer to Jonathan as he'd been on the receiving end of the aggressive examination. The silence that followed seemed to last an eternity.
He sat on the bench with his arms wrapped around his legs, rocking himself lightly. He whimpered occasionally but no more tears came. Even though his eyes burned, he was fresh out of them for the time being. Everything hurt. His belly, his right shoulder, his cheek. But the worst pain he felt in those silent moments was the shame for what he had done.
In his weakness and panic, he'd told Avery everything that he knew about the Shindig. The information had come spilling out of his muzzle so freely. And all it took was a few punches to the gut and the threat of having lewd photos of he and David spread around camp. He felt so stupid and angry that he had been so cowardly and spineless. He had a chance to lie but he didn't.
He wasn't as broken up about ruining the Shindig though. While he'd been on the fence about going, he still felt a little bad about it. He was more concerned for his cousin. He had no clue what was going to happen to Vince and he wasn't keen to find out. He wondered how he was even going to bring himself to look at Vince after that. 'This must be what Judas felt like after he betrayed Jesus...' Jonathan thought to himself.
The sound of footsteps came from around the side of the cabin. Jonathan's fur prickled, thinking for a second that Avery and his buddies were coming back for another round. It only sounded like one pair of feet though but the dread returned when he remembered that he'd told David he would meet him out behind the cabin after he was done talking with Leader Eddie.
The walkman that he had 'borrowed' from David was smashed. He'd kept it in his pocket during the altercation and as a result, it became a casualty of the ambush. He wasn't sure how he'd be able to face David, let alone his own cousin after everything. He considered running around the other side of the cabin but he knew there was no way he could avoid them forever.
"Yo Jonathan! You'll never guess what..." David froze when he laid eyes on the disheveled and anguished feline.
Jonathan looked a complete mess. His hair and fur were tousled and dusted with dirt and pine twigs. His clothes were dirty. He had thick lines of dirt running from his eyes to his cheeks where tears had turned into mud. His glasses were still lying on the ground where Avery had smashed them with his foot.
"Jonathan! What happened?" David said as he ran over to Jonathan's side.
Jonathan hid his face in his arms again, crossing them around his legs as he made a protective ball of himself on the bench. The pup's paws shook his shoulder, coaxing him to come out and explain what had happened. He shook his head lightly in response.
Avery's parting warning echoed in his head._ "If you tell anyone what we did to you, we'll come back. And next time, Henry's_ really going to beat the shit out of you. Got it?"
"Jonathan, seriously. You have to tell me what happened. Did you get hurt? Did someone do this to you?"
Jonathan didn't respond other than to clam himself up tighter.
"Was it Avery?" David asked, his voice lower and a little darker.
Jonathan sniffed and shook his head.
David wasn't convinced. He knew that Jonathan wouldn't have done this to himself and this sure as hell didn't look like an accident. The kitty looked too roughed up for it to have been anything else. Even if Jonathan had tripped over himself, or even jumped off the cabin roof and landed on the ground, he wouldn't have looked as bad as he did. And he certainly wouldn't have been so traumatized.
David's paws clenched into tight fists. He didn't need Jonathan to confirm his suspicions that Avery and his shithole friends were behind it.
"Come here..." David said in a softer voice. He pulled the ball of kitten in and hugged him close. The ball loosened and clung to him, trembling.
He stayed with Jonathan for a little while longer, letting him hold on and hide his face against his shoulder. He rubbed his paws along his back and nosed at his ears gently and comfortingly. He felt the anger boiling and rising again as he contemplated what happened to Jonathan, how he could have prevented it from happening, and what he was going to do to the bastard rottweiler once he got his paws on his scrawny ass. He suppressed a growl, not wanting to upset his friend anymore than he already was.
After a minute he pulled back and rubbed the smaller boy's shoulders, "Hey, come on...Let's get you cleaned up."
Jonathan sniffled and looked away. David went to turn his chin upward to face him but Jonathan shrunk away and kept looking down.
David frowned. "What's the matter?"
"I broke your walkman..." Jonathan's face tightened and he lowered his muzzle again, starting to cry dry tears.
"Dude..." David said, trying not to laugh, "I don't give a shit about that. I give a shit about you. Come on. We're going to go straight to Leader..."
"NO!" Jonathan shouted so suddenly that it startled the pup. "No! We can't go to anyone about..."
"About what?" David pressed.
Jonathan shook his head, drawing back into himself. David sighed and swore under his breath, vowing to make them pay for what they did to Jonathan. He rubbed Jonathan's shoulders again and said, "Don't worry, kitty. I'm not going to let anything happen to you, no matter what. Okay?"
Jonathan looked up at him with wet, doe-like eyes. David looked back at him with intense honesty, his eyes aflame with anger.
"I know who we can talk to."
"No, we can't..." Jonathan started.
"Yes," David said firmly, gripping Jonathan's aching shoulders hard enough to make him wince. "We're not going to the Leaders, okay? We're going to go talk to Vince. He'll know what to do."
He saw the panic stirring in the feline's face again, seeing his eyes widening fearfully at his statement. He figured Jonathan had been threatened by Avery and his pals not to tell but there seemed to be something else going on. Something Jonathan was not telling him.
"You can trust us," David said, holding Jonathan's face lightly in his paws and wiping the mud off his cheeks with his thumbs. "Whatever Avery and his friends did to you or threatened you with, you can still trust us not to tell. Okay?"
Jonathan closed his eyes. He hesitated for a moment before giving a conceding nod. David pulled him close again and held him tight.
~~~
After getting Jonathan cleaned up in the bathroom and changed into a fresh set of clothes, David and Vince finally coaxed Jonathan into telling them everything that had happened. Though their interrogation was far less intimidating, Jonathan had still been afraid of telling them about how he'd basically ratted them all out.
In the Helper's Cabin, Jonathan sat on the edge of Vince's bed while Vince paced around with a concentrated look on his face. David leaned against a wall with an equally vexed expression. There were a few other guys and a girl in the room with them, all looking quite tense about everything they'd just learned.
Chuck, the agnostic raccoon boy Jonathan had met with Andrew, was there. Jamie, a gecko and one of the Helpers; Roy, a skunk; Andre, an otter; and Jess, a vixen and the token female of the small group were all there. They all were looking towards Vince like he was their leader.
Finally, Vince spoke up. "So...what you're telling me is that Avery and his friends cornered you, beat you up and threatened you with pictures unless you told them about the Shindig...And you told them I was in charge, Jamie and Roy were lookout, when and where it would be held...Did you tell them anything else?" He recanted everything by counting them out on his fingers.
"That's all I know..." Jonathan said quietly, his head lowered in shame.
Vince seemed to processing the information, still frowning and pacing. He sighed and sat down on the bed opposite of his younger cousin.
"I'm really sorry, Vince. I really am." Jonathan said, gulping lightly. He looked exhausted and weary as he said it.
Vince shook his head and said, "Don't be sorry, Johnny. As far as anyone in this room's concerned, you're the victim here."
"Yeah, that Henry guy probably could've killed you," Chuck added, "He looks like he walloped your head pretty good."
"Yeah, that guy's seriously creepy..." Jess added. "He makes inappropriate comments towards the girls in my class and leers at our breasts."
Jonathan remembered that thick bulge that had pressed into his back while he was getting beaten up, getting the chills again.
"You're lucky you didn't get killed, little cuz," Vince said, giving a supportive smile. "You did the right thing by telling them what they wanted."
Seeing that no one in the room really blamed him for what happened was reassuring to Jonathan but it didn't help that almost everyone in the room could be getting in serious trouble later. The tone was grim overall.
"Guys," Vince said after a brief pause. "We all knew this was going to happen eventually. I honestly hoped that it wouldn't but...it was eventually going to." He gave a defeated sigh and added with finality, "It's time to enact Operation Closure."
The deafening silence that followed was broken by Jonathan asking, "What's Operation Closure?"
"It's a plan that some of the guys came up with in case something like this happened," Jamie said, "It's a sort of endgame."
"If it all goes according to plan," Vince interjected, "Nobody will be going home in trouble. But...we'll never be able to throw another Shindig after this. This would technically be the last year we ever hold it."
Andre saw the look of guilt on Jonathan's face and said, "Listen kid, it's not your fault. That Durham's been on our ass for a long time."
"We've been as careful as we could," Vince added, "We've taken all the precautions we could but we all knew this was inevitable. The good times can't last forever."
Everyone nodded solemnly in agreement.
"But it will be held this year. The Shindig is still on whether or not they like it or not. While I'm sad that this will be the last year for it, I'm still happy for all the years that we've had. And who knows, maybe the next generation of campers will be able to bring it back. At least...as long as Durham isn't in charge."
The room fell into another silence as everyone acknowledged the imminent fate of the sacred camp tradition.
"So...how does the plan work?"
Vince and the others filled him in on the details of the plan.