Surviving Summer Vacation

by Willo Davis Roberts

  “Ouch,” I heard Alison say when we had finally turned off the light. “She kicks.”

  At least Harry didn’t kick.

  I woke up about dawn to find Alison standing at the foot of the couch, straddling Billy’s feet. I knew she wasn’t up that time of day for nothing.

  “What’s the matter?” I asked groggily.

  “Ariadne must have had too much to drink after all,” she said. “She wet the bed. And me. These are the only pajamas I brought.”

  Harry didn’t wet the bed, either. It made me feel guilty to be the lucky one. “Why don’t you just put on the clothes you were going to wear in the morning,” I suggested. “Are there clean clothes to put on Ariadne?”

  “Yes. I’ve already changed her, but the sleeping bag on the bottom has a wet spot.”

  “I saw Mrs. Rupe put a stack of towels in the cabinet in the bathroom. Fold one of them to put over the wet spot so you won’t feel it, why don’t you.”

  “I’m glad it was her sleeping bag, not mine,” Alison muttered as she went to get a towel.

  I hadn’t gone back to sleep yet—Harry flopped over on his stomach and stuck his elbow in my ear just as I started to doze off—when I heard somebody walking around outside.

  We were in a campground with about a hundred other rigs, so I knew there were other people close by. But it was early, and I wondered why anybody was so close to our motor home when the nearest trailer was at least thirty feet away.

  I rose and looked out the open window beside me. I could just barely make out a figure in the dim light because the guy was wearing a white shirt. He was sort of sneaking along, right beside our coach.

  I tried to remember if Mr. Rupe had left anything outside that somebody might try to steal, but I didn’t think so. He’d packed away the folding chairs and all that stuff so we’d be ready to leave right after breakfast.

  The guy stopped suddenly, as if he were listening, and for a minute my heart raced, because he seemed to be looking right at me through the window, though I knew he couldn’t possibly see me. There was no light inside at all.

  Then he moved again, and seconds later I heard him hit the supporting bar of the awning Mr. Rupe had forgotten to retract. It caught him right in the middle of the forehead, and I heard him grunt, and then he swore under his breath.

  Across the coach, from the bed on the dinette, Alison said, “What was that?”

  The guy outside dropped like a stone. I couldn’t see him anymore, but by pushing my face against the screen I caught a glimpse of his shirt as he scuttled away and finally stood up when he got into the nearest trees. Then he disappeared, and I couldn’t see where he went.

  “Lewis?”

  “Some guy who was lost,” I guessed. “He whacked his head on the awning support. Swore when it hurt.”

  “Oh. It does hurt. I did it too the first time I walked around that side of the coach. Let’s go to sleep, Lewis.”

  “Okay,” I muttered, and poked Harry so he’d roll over and get his arm out of my way so I could lie down again.

  When we got up, Mrs. Rupe didn’t seem surprised that Ariadne had wet the bed. “I was afraid she was drinking too much,” she said. “When we get to camp tonight, we’ll wash everything. Even the sleeping bag’s washable.”

  At home we usually have cereal and fruit for breakfast, except on Sunday mornings when Dad often makes pancakes or waffles. Mrs. Rupe had brought frozen waffles that we heated in the toaster, and nobody told me not to use so much syrup. Harry and I ate six apiece; they weren’t very big.

  We had to fold up the couch and stash all the sleeping bags and pillows back in the underneath compartment. That morning we got back on the freeway without running over anything or having anyone honk at us. I hoped that meant Mr. Rupe was getting the hang of driving the big rig.

  Harry loaded a movie in the Blu-ray machine, and we watched a movie on the small TV in the back, all of us kids sprawled on the bed. Ariadne and Billy were intrigued by the way the toilet flushed, so they kept having to go potty. Alison usually went with Ariadne, so she missed parts of the movie, but it was one she’d seen before, so it didn’t matter too much.

  Every little while Harry would make a foray into the kitchen for refreshments. It wasn’t easy to walk around when the coach was moving. If the driver slammed on the brakes or swerved out to pass, you got thrown around if you weren’t hanging on well enough.

  Billy didn’t want to watch the movie, so he climbed off the bed and looked for other entertainment. I guess the rest of us weren’t paying too much attention to him, because the next time Alison got up to get something to drink, she discovered he’d emptied all the drawers in the nightstands. Mr. and Mrs. Rupe’s underwear was scattered all over the floor.

  Alison scolded him a little, and when he refused to pick any of it up, she did it herself, folding it neatly before putting it back in the drawers. She nudged me when she folded the last pair of shorts.

  I checked them out. “Cute,” I said, as she put them in the drawer. Little red hearts all over them.

  “Maybe besides swimming we need to teach them to mind better,” Alison said, after looking toward Harry to make sure he was absorbed in the movie. “Like they should pick up the messes they make.”

  “What do you mean, we?” I asked.

  My sister gave me a look. “You’re not going to desert me, are you, Lewis? I’m not sure I can keep track of these two all by myself.”

  “Well, okay. You teach them some manners, and I’ll teach them to swim,” I compromised. “Where’s Billy now?”

  Alison ducked her head around the corner to look. “Come out of there, Billy. You can’t keep flushing the toilet.”

  “But I want to,” Billy responded.

  “But you can’t,” Alison said firmly, and hauled him back into the bedroom by his shirt.

  “I’ll tell Ma you’re being mean to me,” Billy threatened mutinously, his lower lip jutting out.

  “Not if you want us to take you swimming when we get to the next camp,” I said, leaning my face down close to his. “You want me to give you another swimming lesson tonight?”

  He thought it over. “Before supper?”

  “If there’s time. I don’t know when we’ll get there.”

  “Okay,” Billy said. Suddenly he reached up and grabbed my glasses. “What is this thing?”

  I yelped and grabbed them back. “My glasses. I need them to see with, and if you take them off that way, it hurts, okay? I need them on again.”

  “I want them,” Billy said, unwilling to let go.

  “You can’t have them. Without them I’m too nearsighted to see very far,” I told him, prying his fingers off the bow.

  “Let him look through them, Lewis,” Alison suggested. “Then it will satisfy his curiosity.”

  So I put them on his little nose and held them in place. He stared at me through them. “You have hairs on your face.”

  “Hairs? You mean my eyebrows? Everybody has eyebrows. Even you do. See?” I put out a finger and traced his.

  He rolled his eyes, trying to see upward. “Show him in the mirror, Lewis,” Alison said, so I slid off the bed and took him into the bathroom. There was a full-length mirror in there, and Billy leaned up close to it. First he looked through my glasses, then when I took them off he practically put his nose on the glass and felt his eyebrows.

  “Hairs,” he said.

  “Yeah. Now come on,” I said as I settled my glasses into place, “let’s go back and watch the rest of the movie.”

  “I’m hungry,” Ariadne said when we returned to the bedroom.

  “I’ll ask your mother what you can have,” Alison said.

  “Candy,” Ariadne told her.

  “I’m not sure about that. It’ll be lunchtime soon,” Alison warned her, but after she consulted with Mrs. Rupe, she s
hrugged. “She says they can have anything they want, even candy bars. I brought one for each of the rest of us, too. For all I know, maybe this is lunch.”

  It wasn’t, though. We pulled into a rest stop. Mrs. Rupe said, “Everybody fix your own sandwiches. Alison, dear, you’ll fix Billy’s and Ariadne’s, won’t you?”

  Outside, a horn tooted. Mr. Rupe had pulled crossways in about five parking spaces, and someone who wanted to use one of them was glaring in our direction.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Mr. Rupe said. “Can’t he see it takes this much space to park a rig this size?”

  Harry had his face pressed against a window. “Uh, Dad, I think RVs are supposed to park on the other side, where the trucks are. They have longer parking spaces, and you don’t have to back up to pull out of them.”

  “Oh. Well, I’ll do that next time. Is that what that sign means, with the pictures of cars and trucks on it? You’d think they’d put some words, so you could tell what they meant. Ada, make me a couple of pastrami sandwiches, will you? I’m going to get out and stretch my legs for a minute.”

  It was a jam-up in the kitchen, so Harry and I got out to walk around too. A lot of ­people had stopped to use the restrooms and the picnic tables. Several people gave us dirty looks, and it was sort of embarrassing. Two cars went on through the rest area without finding a place to park, because we were taking up so much space.

  A light blue Crown Victoria had taken the last parking slot, right alongside us. There were two people in it, but I didn’t pay any attention to them except to wonder why they stopped. They weren’t eating, and they didn’t get out to use the restrooms.

  When we got back in the coach, everybody else was wolfing down sandwiches. We fixed ours, and put plenty of ice in our pop, and Harry opened another bag of chips. I wondered what my mom would think about splitting a big bag every time we wanted a snack. Nobody ever seemed to think Harry was overdoing it. For the first time in my life, I was getting all the snacks I wanted, so I wasn’t complaining.

  After we gathered up all the trash and carried it out to the garbage can, we were ready to go again.

  “Everyone sitting down? Okay, here we go,” Mr. Rupe said. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, that car is in my way. I’ll have to back up to get out. Harry, look and see if I can go straight back without hitting anything.”

  We checked, and he could, but he didn’t back up quite far enough. When he went to pull forward, he came within about an inch of touching the Crown Victoria. I got a glimpse of the driver’s horrified face as we skimmed by without actually scraping any of his paint. Sheesh! I hoped we’d park on the truck side next time, so he didn’t have to go into reverse.

  Ariadne wanted to watch cartoons, so Harry and I stayed up front. We were going down the mountain now, into eastern Washington, and instead of all kinds of green trees and little waterfalls everywhere, we got into dryer country. Apple and cherry orchards, mostly, and when we saw a big sign, FRESH CHERRIES, Mrs. Rupe insisted we stop and get some.

  They were delicious, and nobody told us how many we could have. We just ate all we wanted. I wondered what it was like to have parents who let you do whatever you wanted. I guessed I’d never know.

  We got bored after a while, with no decent scenery to watch after we passed the orchards and got out into naked hills. The grass was all turning brown under the summer sun. I knew it wouldn’t be like that at Yellowstone, because we were supposed to see a lot of wild animals there. It didn’t look as if even a jackrabbit could survive out here.

  The road began to wind down to the level of the Columbia River, far below us. It was a really steep grade. Mrs. Rupe got nervous, and I sort of did too.

  “Milton, we’re going awfully fast, aren’t we? Slow down! There’s another curve coming up!”

  “Do you think I don’t know there’s one curve after another? I know we’re going fast, but I don’t want to use the brakes all the time or they’ll get hot and then we won’t have any brakes!” Mr. Rupe sounded so cross that nobody else said anything for a minute.

  And then I could smell it. Hot brakes. Ours, or someone else’s?

  Most of the other people on the road were in cars, not in a motor home, and none of them seemed to be having any trouble. Every minute or so we’d catch a glimpse of the river, still quite a long way down.

  What if we lost our brakes and couldn’t stop at the bottom?

  “Uh—” I started to say, and strangled on the words. How can a kid tell a grown-up how to do something the kid can’t really do?

  “What?” Harry asked, and when I looked at him I thought he was getting a little bit scared, too. “You’ve been over here before, haven’t you, Lewis? Didn’t you say your grandpa has a camper?”

  “Yeah,” I said, feeling as if my mouth were full of dry cornflakes. “A little one on his pickup.”

  “Did you ever go down this steep a grade in it?” Harry demanded, watching the speedometer as we picked up speed.

  “Yeah. Grandpa says instead of using the brakes to slow you down on this kind of road, you use . . . uh, the gears. Like you shift into a lower gear and the engine helps slow you down, you know?”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Harry said, but raised his voice. “Hey, Dad, shift down and it will keep us from going faster and faster!”

  “What do you know about it?” Mr. Rupe said, but his wife reached over and grabbed his arm.

  “Milton, for heaven’s sake, try it! This is frightening the kids!”

  “Oh, for pete’s sake,” Mr. Rupe said, but to my relief he did shift down. And we could all feel the coach slowing.

  I let out the breath I’d been holding when we finally reached the bottom and headed across the bridge at a reasonable speed. And then, when we started to climb up out of the canyon on the other side, we slowed way down. So slow that practically every other car passed us, everybody but the trucks.

  “Maybe I should have let them trade us motor homes,” Mr. Rupe said, sounding more frustrated than ever. “This one sure doesn’t seem to have much power.”

  I saw a puff of black smoke up ahead of us. If we came to a complete stop we’d be stuck out here miles from anything, and I’d figured out by now that Harry’s dad had probably never driven anything that wasn’t completely automatic. Another puff of smoke rose from the 18-wheeler in front of us. “Uh, Mr. Rupe, that truck driver up there is shifting down to climb the grade, just like you did to get a slower speed coming down. That’s what we need to do too, I think. My grandpa says you shift down on any grade, whether you’re needing the extra power to climb or need the engine to hold you back.”

  I was afraid he’d tell me to mind my own business, but he was scaring me enough so that it might be worth it if he took my ­suggestion.

  “Try it, Milton,” Mrs. Rupe urged. “We can’t be doing more than ten miles an hour this way.”

  A car whizzed past us, a light blue Crown Victoria, and I saw a blur as a face looked out at us, and then it surged on ahead and passed the truck, too.

  Alison was sitting opposite me, holding ­Ariadne on her lap, and she looked as tense as I felt. I heard her sigh when without any comment Mr. Rupe tried shifting down. We didn’t go any faster, but at least we didn’t stop altogether.

  “I didn’t know any of that stuff about the gears,” Harry said. “How come you know? Do they teach you that in driver’s ed?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not sure. I learned about it from my grandpa. He likes explaining things to me when we’re together.”

  “Are we going to make it to the top?” Mrs. Rupe asked anxiously. “I never expected this trip would make me so nervous.”

  She lit another cigarette and took a long draw on it. Nobody in our family smoked, and the smell of it was starting to make me kind of desperate for some cleaner air.

  “They should give you an instruction manual with these
things,” Mr. Rupe said, and I wondered if he was as nervous as the rest of us. I sure would have been, trying to drive something this big for the first time. Eventually we came to the top, and I let out a long breath.

  Ahead were more dry hills. Nothing to look at, so we went back and watched a Disney animated movie. We took the cherries with us, but that was a mistake.

  “Lewis,” Alison said after a while, “I think you’d better put the cherries away. Billy’s getting juice all over everything, and I’m afraid he’ll get sick.”

  It was a long way to Yellowstone. Even eating and watching movies wasn’t enough to keep it from being kind of boring after a few more hours.

  “You’ll like this next campground,” Mrs. Rupe told us when the little kids complained. “It has a petting zoo. Baby animals you can touch, Billy. Billy likes to touch things,” she explained to us.

  Alison and I refrained from saying we’d noticed.

  “I want to swim,” Ariadne announced.

  “You can swim, too. When I made the reservations I chose all the places with heated pools. Sit down, Billy, or you’ll fall.”

  Right then Billy lost his footing and slammed into Harry’s lap, spilling the box of cherries he’d managed to get hold of again after Alison had taken them away.

  We all scrambled around, picking up cherries and trying not to squash them. Somehow just the sight of them made me feel queasy.

  The campground was all we’d been promised, though. We swam first, and I took time to give Billy a lesson. He caught on pretty quick. Ariadne learned how to open her eyes underwater, and she was all excited about it.

  Then we walked over to the petting zoo. Billy was enchanted with the baby miniature goats, and even Harry and I thought they were pretty cute. They stuck their heads through the fence so you could rub them. There were llamas, too, and donkeys, with a baby one that made a sound like a squeaky gate, and a baby miniature horse that was smaller than lots of dogs, and all kinds of peacocks and ducks and geese that would come running for the food you could buy for them.

  “Let’s go see if supper is ready yet,” Harry said finally, and we headed back toward our campsite.