by Cary Fagan
I thought of going up and talking to her at the campfire one night, but then I was embarrassed that she might have noticed me looking at her, and so I didn’t.
And now she was watching Leonard and me acting like idiots in a rowboat.
“You stupid goof,” I said.
“Hey, what are you so mad at? Are you going to row this tub or not?”
I put the oars into the metal oarlocks and started to heave them through the water.
Leonard leaned back, his hands behind his head.
“Ah, this is the life. Once around the park, Jeeves.” The boat moved like it was going through wet cement, but I kept rowing until we were a good distance out.
Then I pulled in the oars and held one blade over Leonard so that the cold lake water dripped onto his head.
“What the...!”
“Sorry. It was an accident.”
“Yeah, and so was the Kennedy assassination. And it’ll be an accident when I put your hand in a glass of warm water while you’re sleeping tonight.”
“What does that do?”
“You don’t know? It’s an old camp trick. Makes you pee in your bed.”
“Don’t even think about it.”
“Sleep lightly tonight, my friend,” Leonard cackled. We drifted in the boat, the voices from the shore sounding miles away. From somewhere on the lake came the call of the loon, a shivery rise and fall of notes. I’d heard it often but had never seen the loon, and the sound made me feel a little lonesome.
I looked over at Leonard, whose eyes were closed while his nose twitched.
“Hey, Legs.”
“Hmm?”
“Did you ever like a girl?”
“I hate my sister. She screams if I touch her stuff.”
“I don’t mean a sister.”
“Oh, you mean a girl.” He opened his eyes and grinned. “You like somebody! Who is she? Tell me. Pinky likes a girl, Pinky likes a girl...”
He sang out the words, and although I was pretty sure that we were too far from shore for anyone to make out what he was saying, my face grew hot.
“Shut up, Leonard, before I brain you with an oar.”
“So tell me.”
“Never mind.”
“What did I do?”
I picked up the oars again and started to row, moving us parallel to the beach. The oars made a plonk sound as they entered the water.
It was hard to stay mad at Leonard. It wasn’t his fault he was an idiot.
“Hey, look,” he said.
I stopped rowing. “Don’t tell me, it’s a mermaid.”
“No, really. Over there.”
I looked toward the shore. Up the beach, past the row of thin birches, was Old Man Klopschitz’s white Jeep. I watched him get out, cigar in his mouth.
A moment later two more people got out of the Jeep: a man in a suit and a kid. The man kept his hand on the kid’s shoulder, as if he was worried the kid might suddenly bolt. Old Man Klopschitz was using his cane to point out the various facilities, but the kid kept his head down the whole time.
After a moment the man in the suit took his hand off the kid’s shoulder.
The kid didn’t run. He didn’t do anything.
Then the man in the suit put his hand on the kid’s shoulder again and steered him back into the Jeep, and Old Man Klopschitz got into the driver’s seat, and the Jeep backed down the path and out of sight.
5
THE UPPER BUNK
IT WAS GETTING DARK BY the time we tied up the boat, and Leonard was worried that we would be late for evening roll call. He dropped the oar he was trying to place back in the rack and hurried up the path without waiting for me.
But I caught up and followed him into the cabin, catching the screen door with the flies mashed in it as he let it go.
Inside were all the other guys.
Also Jerry and the kid from the Jeep.
“You’re late,” Jerry said. “Okay, everybody. This is our new cabin member, Zachary Sapoznik. Zach was at another camp but he’s going to spend the rest of August with us. I’m sure everyone here is going to make him feel welcome. The first thing we need to do, Zach, is find you a bunk. You can choose whichever empty one you want. There’s one beside Brickhouse over there, another under Carrots — ”
“What’s with the nicknames?” Zach said.
I had expected somebody bigger, but he had narrow shoulders and was almost delicate looking, with dirty blond hair and long eyelashes.
“All the guys have nicknames,” Jerry said. “We can come up with one for you.”
“I don’t want a nickname.”
“Hey, that’s cool,” Jerry said. I could tell he was nervous, almost as if he was afraid of this kid. Mind you, Jerry wasn’t much of an authority figure. He walked like a duck and had bad acne. “Anyway, like I was saying, the first thing is to get you a bunk.”
“There’s a bunk above me,” I said.
I had the lower bunk by the door, but the top was empty. I could see Legs making faces at me, as if to ask whether I’d gone crazy, but I ignored him.
“So what’s your nickname?” Zachary asked me.
“It’s, ah, Pinky.”
“Pinky? You’ve got to be kidding. All right. I like a top bunk anyway.”
“That’s settled then,” Jerry said. He patted me on the shoulder. “You don’t have to unpack everything now, Zach. Just pull out your pajamas and wash kit. The rest of the guys will take you to the wash house. After that it’s lights out. We’re having an early night. I’m going to check in at the office but I’ll be right back. Okay, everyone, move it.”
We changed into our pajamas and picked up our kits. I remembered going to the camping store with my mom and buying the plastic soap container, the toothbrush tube, the folding hairbrush — everything small and neat and in its place inside the vinyl kit. Now it was a mess of dried soap and toothpaste and sticky hair, everything jumbled inside, the zipper broken.
We filed out of the cabin and down the porch steps into the dark, but then Carrots, who was at the front of the line, halted.
“Why don’t you want a nickname?” Carrots said to Zachary. “We’ve all got them.”
“Yeah, and stupid ones, too.”
“What did you say?”
Carrots pushed Zachary, and Zachary stumbled before catching his balance again.
It wasn’t like Carrots to be mean, and I didn’t know why he was acting this way. Maybe he wanted to prove himself, to show that nobody was going to take his place. Not that it looked like Zach even wanted to.
“Leave me alone,” Zach said.
“Maybe we should nickname you Car Crash. Or how about Dog Killer. Or maybe — ”
But he didn’t get to finish because Zachary punched him in the side of the head. Carrots twisted backwards to the ground, and Zachary jumped on top of him.
I had never seen a real fight before. I’d always thought Jewish kids didn’t have a clue how. But now they were struggling in the dirt, more wrestling than boxing, until Zachary got a free hand and smacked Carrots in the nose with a short punch.
Even in the dark I could see blood pour from Carrots’ nose.
Jerry arrived. He tried to push the two boys apart and got kicked in the stomach by Carrots. But he somehow managed to get between them, dragging them to their feet.
The ground was littered with toothbrushes and shampoo bottles. Carrots had blood down his pajama front, and he was holding his hand against the side of his nose. Both boys were breathing hard and trembling.
“Who started this?” demanded Jerry.
“That’s pretty hard to say,” Legs offered. “I mean, Carrots pushed him, but Zachary threw the first punch.”
“Oh, shut up,” Ti
ger said.
“Did anybody outside our cabin see this?” Jerry asked. It was hard to believe that somebody else didn’t see or at least hear it, but nobody was around.
What Jerry really wanted to know was, would anybody tell Old Man Klopschitz.
“Just us,” Flap Ears said.
“All right.” Jerry wiped the sweat from his forehead. “Any teeth loose? No? Let’s go wash up. Carrots, take off that top. We’ll rinse it in the sink.”
We all trudged silently toward the wash house.
I had seen a fight and it was nothing like in the movies. It was clumsy and scary and stupid.
And I’d found myself rooting for the new boy, Zachary Sapoznik.
6
WAVES
THE GENERAL CONCLUSION among my cabin mates was that Jerry wanted to keep the fight secret because he was afraid Old Man Klopschitz would fire him. Zachary’s father had probably paid three or four times the regular camp fees just to have his son at White Birch for the last three weeks of the season. Old Man Klopschitz would not want to have to expel the kid and give back the money.
The next couple of days made me wonder whether they might be right. Zachary was the last person in the cabin to get up in the morning. He would slouch into the mess hall while everyone else was already chowing down. Stuart, the camp director who made the announcements, never made some wise-guy crack about him coming in late the way he did for everyone else. “Couldn’t find a clean pair of underwear, Chapman? No place to plug in your hair dryer, Greenbaum?” But for Zachary, not a word. The camp staff acted as if they’d been instructed to treat him with kid gloves.
For the most part, though, Zachary was on pretty good behavior. True, he showed zero interest in any activity other than free time, when he would either go to the lake and swim laps, doing the crawl or the butterfly, or just lie on his upper bunk, invisible to anyone who came in. But he didn’t refuse to participate in the scheduled activities, either. And he acted as if nothing had happened with Carrots. That is, he ignored Carrots the way he ignored the rest of us.
I didn’t think he hated us. I just thought that we weren’t very interesting to him.
But he was interesting to me, like he was some kind of mystery I needed to figure out. So I would watch how he swung a bat, or I would try to guess whether he would eat the chocolate pudding. There was something even about the way he combed his hair in the wash-house mirror, as if he didn’t care how he looked but did care at the same time.
Free time came right after the swimming lesson. Most kids stayed by the water and went swimming for fun, or else sailing or canoeing, but I usually headed over to the arts and crafts or nature huts, or maybe just found a shady spot to read or do nothing.
Leonard came up to me rubbing his hair with a towel like he wanted to rub it off.
“You feel like going for a row?” he said.
“Nah, not today.”
“Aw, come on, what else have you got to do?”
“I don’t feel like it.”
“Then I’ll find somebody else.”
“Okay.”
“Come on, Pinky. We’ll throw stones at the ducks.”
“See you later, Leonard.”
“Spoilsport.”
He turned around with a huff and marched off. I veered off to a side path and headed to the nature hut, touching branches with my fingers as I walked.
I saw something move on the path and stopped.
It was a tiny snake, a garter snake maybe six inches long. It slid over some dry leaves and became still.
I took a step toward it. Another. I crouched down and leaned forward, held my breath and lunged.
The snake was in my hands. I cupped them and ran to the nature hut, careful not to trip. On the porch of the hut were a lot of glass Mason jars, and I leaned down and carefully dropped the snake into one.
It immediately tried to slide up the side and over, but I put a lid with holes on it.
I sat on the porch step and held up the jar to take a better look.
The snake slid up and then fell sideways along the curved glass. It had a sort of black diamond pattern running down its back, with a lighter stripe on each side. Its eyes were large for its small head, while the end of its tail was thin and delicate.
“What have you got?”
I looked up. It was Amber Levine. She was holding a basketball. Her hair was tied back with one of those scrunchie things. She was looking at the jar.
“A garter snake. It’s just a baby. Want to see?”
“Sure.” She put down the ball and sat beside me.
I held the jar up and she put her hand on the back. Her finger was just touching mine.
“It’s really beautiful,” she said. “It doesn’t bite?”
“A big one could, but it wouldn’t hurt you or anything.”
“What are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing. Just look at it and then let it go. I don’t think it’s right to keep a wild animal.”
She nodded firmly. “When are you going to let it go?”
“Now, I guess.”
“Can I watch?”
“Sure.”
I stood up and walked to the edge of the path. Amber came up beside me. Then I unscrewed the lid and lay the jar on the pine needles just off the path.
For a minute the snake didn’t move. Then the head glided out and finally the rest of it, moving over the pine needles and disappearing under a fallen branch.
“I love the way it moves,” she said. “So graceful. Oh, what am I doing? My cabin’s waiting for the ball.” She scooped it up, half turned to say, “See you,” and ran off.
I walked back to the cabin as if my running shoes were floating off the ground.
Amber coming by at just that moment had been the most amazing luck. To be able to show her that I knew something about animals and that I was caring and unselfish because I wanted to let it go.
I’d never looked that good to anybody before.
I walked back to the cabin, whistling the whole way. I let the screen door slam behind me.
At first I thought the cabin was empty, but then I noticed Zachary’s legs dangling over the side of his top bunk. I changed into a T-shirt and jeans, threw my wet bathing suit on the porch rail and slammed the door again, whistling the whole time.
Zachary was sitting up on his bed now. He had an earphone in one ear, the wire traveling down to a portable cassette recorder in his hand.
I didn’t know anybody who owned a portable recorder. The closest thing was my father’s office Dictaphone, which he used to leave letters for his secretary to type. Zachary’s tape recorder was black and chrome and the size of a shoebox, with buttons like piano keys.
He pulled the earphone out of his ear.
“What’s happening, Pinky?”
“Not much.”
“Where’s Legs?”
“I don’t know. I don’t hang around with him that much anymore.”
He picked something off his bed, broke it in two and tossed it to me.
I had to juggle it against my chest to catch it.
Half an O Henry bar.
“Where’d you get it?” I asked.
“I brought a stash with me.”
He took a bite of his half and the two of us chewed in silence for a minute.
“Your black eye is fading,” I said. I hadn’t seen Carrots land a punch during their fight, but the evidence was there the next morning.
“It doesn’t hurt so much except when I touch it.”
“I’m pretty sure you won the fight.”
“Yeah, like big deal.”
“You don’t care?”
“I don’t like getting mad like that. I always feel sick after, like I�
�m going to throw up.”
I thought about what he’d said.
“Did you really do that to a dog?”
“What do you think?”
“Then why do they say those things about you?”
“You got me.”
“You sure are a good swimmer.” A stupid thing to say.
“Yeah, well, it helps to have an indoor pool. It’s the only thing about my house that I like.”
“But you have a pool table and a Ping-Pong table and a movie theater.”
“A movie theater? Give me a break. I’ll tell you what I like best. Swimming in the ocean. Going far out from shore and riding the waves back in. You know, I’ve been thinking I might try the Big Swim. To the island and back. I hear nobody our age has ever done it. Not that I care about that.”
“That would be amazing.”
“I guess. One day I’m going to learn how to surf and then I’ll live by the ocean with, like, nothing. A shack, a guitar, a beat-up Volkswagen Beetle and a surfboard. That’s all I’m going to need.”
I could see Zach just as he described it — on the beach, maybe with a fire going, and the moon over the water.
“What are you listening to?” I asked. “The music, I mean.”
“Buddy Holly.”
“Who’s Buddy Holly?”
“He was this rock and roll singer from the fifties. His songs are really great. He died in a plane crash when he was twenty-two. They buried him in his home town. Lubbock, Texas.”
“Texas,” I repeated, as if I planned to go there myself, as soon as I’d learned to surf.
“He’s got the same birthday as me.” Zachary put the earphone back into his ear and lay down on his bunk so that he vanished from view.
I thought of not just asking questions, but of telling him something that he might be interested in. Like about Amber, and the luck of her coming by. But with his earphone in he might not hear me and, anyway, it felt too weird.
So instead I reached under my pile of T-shirts and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook and a pen. The notebook was about half full of stories I’d written, poems, other things that couldn’t be called one or the other.
