The Big Swim

by Cary Fagan

“Are you looking for him?”

  “Not really. Well, I guess.”

  “He isn’t here. Were you supposed to meet him?”

  “I think so. I’m not sure exactly.”

  “He can be like that. Vague, I guess I mean.”

  “Are you a friend of his?”

  I thought about it. “Maybe. I’m not sure exactly.”

  She laughed. “He’s kind of hard to get, if you know what I mean. He’s not like other guys. I mean, you’re easy to understand, right?”

  “Oh, sure. I’m totally easy.”

  “Do you have a towel? I’m kind of drowning here.”

  “Sure.”

  My towel hung on a nail by my bed. I gave it to her. She dried her hair, her face, her neck and her arms. There were goosebumps on her skin.

  “Thanks,” she said, handing it back to me. I just held it as I stood there.

  She said, “I hear you write good stories. A bit weird, but good.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “Zach.”

  “But he’s never read them.”

  “Oops. Maybe I wasn’t supposed to say anything. I think you left a notebook on your bed.”

  “I can’t believe he just opened my notebook and started reading. That’s my private property.”

  “He said they were good. Could I read them?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Nobody said anything.

  “What’s your name, anyway?”

  “You don’t know my name?”

  “No. Have you got a nickname, like the other kids in the cabin?”

  “It’s Pinky. But you can call me by my real name.”

  “When everyone else gets to call you Pinky? No way. I had a goldfish named Pinky when I was a kid.”

  “Most people name their goldfish Goldy.”

  “I know, but when we went to the pet store to get it I was disappointed that they didn’t come in pink. Kids are so stupid.”

  “I know. I used to think that the people in the grocery store had to put the peels on the bananas before they sold them.”

  “I’d better go. If you see Zach, could you tell him that I came by? Don’t make a big thing out of it — ”

  “No, I won’t.”

  She smiled and opened the door and headed back into the rain.

  Only after the screen door shut did I realize that I was still holding the towel.

  10

  WAR

  THE RAIN DIDN’T LET UP, so after dinner we all spent the evening in the cabin. Overhead the electric lights flickered off, on, then off again. Thunder made us jump in our bunks. The guys read old copies of Mad or played cards by flashlight, but I just lay on my mattress and went over the conversation with Amber in my head.

  I’d thought about not giving Zach the message about her coming by, but in the end I did. He nodded but didn’t say anything.

  In the morning, a hazy light came in through the window. We dressed and went out to find a crowd gathered around the charred stump of a pine tree. Lightning had struck it and the tree had crashed, just missing the wash house. Even Zachary came to have a look.

  Then Jerry called us aside.

  “All right, guys. Today is the day that we’ve been waiting for.”

  “We’ve been waiting for a tree to get hit by lightning?” Flap Ears said.

  “No, for a day after rain. You know what rain makes?”

  We all just looked at him.

  “You dunderheads. Rain makes mud. And a night like last night makes tons of mud.”

  “So?” said Brickhouse. “We’re going to make mudpies?”

  Jerry sighed. “How did I ever get this cabin? No, we are not going to make mudpies. I want everybody to wear running shoes that can be hosed down after. White T-shirts. The rest you’ll hear at breakfast. Now, listen up, cabin. I expect you to be tough. I expect you to be ruthless. I expect you to show no mercy.”

  “What the heck are you talking about, Jerry?” said Presto.

  “Now get to the mess hall. March!”

  On the way, we were surprised to see two buses parked on the road to the office. All the girls and their counselors were lined up waiting to climb on. Including Amber Levine, who stood talking to her friends.

  Zach went over to speak to her and the two stood aside, their heads close. I looked away, but when Jerry called him I turned back and saw him say one last thing to her before he joined us.

  The girls, it turned out, were being shipped out to visit the nearby waterfall, because the planned activity was supposed to be inappropriate for them.

  What Old Man Klopschitz had planned for us was a squirt war. He had heard of this game where you filled plastic squirt guns with food dye. Leonard said he was always looking for a program to put on late in the summer that would make everyone want to come back next year.

  After breakfast, we were divided up into teams or, as Stuart called them, “companies.” Each company was made up of six kids from different cabins. I was in D Company, along with a nine-year-old named David, a ten-year-old named Ralph, an eleven-year-old named Stanley, and two kids who were older than me, Norm and Jack.

  The rules of the game were simple. Each company started at a different location on the edge of camp and had to end the game at another location somewhere on the camp’s other side. The more of your company still playing by the end, the more points your team got. Because you were bound to cross paths with other companies, fire fights were sure to take place. The mud was bound to make these encounters “even more fun.” You lost two points for every company member who got squirted and earned a point for every enemy player you knocked out of the game.

  “If you are hit your shirt will be stained. And if you’re stained, you’re out of the game,” Stuart told us. “Make your way back to the mess hall. There are no other rules. Everything else is up for negotiation, understand? Just use your common sense.”

  “Squirt war! Squirt war!” we chanted.

  Me and my fellow company members hurried to our starting place, the main woodpile. I felt nervous and excited and I knew the others felt the same. On the way we passed three other companies.

  “We’re going to kick your butts!”

  “You’re history!”

  “Better start writing your wills!”

  The woodpile was made of three long stacks of wood, each protected by a lean-to. Here we looked over our weapons — clear plastic handguns with blue liquid inside.

  It seemed only natural that Norm and Jack, being the oldest, should take command and work out our strategy.

  “Okay, men,” Jack said, “we want to win this. But it means being smart and fast. We’ll hold to a loose formation with me in front and Norm here covering the rear. Don’t waste your ammo by shooting when the enemy is too far to hit. Remember to be as quiet as you can and then to yell like crazy when we attack. That’ll strike fear in their hearts.”

  Our destination was the ski docks, and we worked out a route that took us through the forest, along the edge of the baseball diamond, and between the girls’ cabins to the beach.

  My position was right flank, with orders to keep scanning the side. I kept my gun close to my body as I moved, just like Jack, who seemed to know a lot about the military.

  When we got to the forest I felt relieved to be under cover. But we were only twenty or so paces into the trees when the crashing sound of another company came from our left. Turning, I saw them charge toward us, guns held out, faces ugly.

  I had to control my urge to run away. Instead, we all charged, or rather Jack charged and we followed him, yelling like madmen.

  We must have been fifteen feet away when the first enemy squirt arced through the air. Then guns were squirting everywhere. Stanley got hit right in
the face and yelped, putting his hands over his eyes.

  Being on the right, I was protected by the rest of my company and nobody could get an aim on me. My one shot hit the ground before I slipped on the mud and leaves and landed hard on my butt.

  When I looked up again the other company was already running away.

  We had two men down: Stanley and also David, the youngest, who had a blue line across his shirt and was blubbering quietly.

  “Oh, it’s all right,” Norm said in disgust. “You can go to the mess hall for ice cream.”

  David and Stanley trudged off along with the one soldier that Jack had hit who turned out to be Flap Ears.

  As he walked away, Flap Ears muttered, “I can’t believe I hit a tree. I killed a tree.”

  On we walked through the forest, listening for another attack but seeing nothing. The kid named Ralph tried to squirt a squirrel, but Jack told him off for wasting ammunition. The forest floor was a soggy mess, and leaves stuck to my shoes. I was splattered with mud and my clothes clung to me as I walked.

  Twice we heard rustling, and once the shouts and cries of a battle, but we managed to skirt around them.

  After a while the ground began to rise and the trees thinned out. Here and there outcroppings of granite and sparkling quartz broke through the ground. A redwing blackbird sang peacefully.

  The land rose up to a ridge ahead of us. Jack raised his hand. We halted, crouching low together.

  Why had we stopped?

  Then I heard it, too. Whispering from just beyond the ridge.

  Jack signaled for me to scout ahead, taking my gun so that I could move more easily. I didn’t like giving it up, but I slithered on my stomach until I reached the edge.

  I could see them kneeling in a clearing against a stack of wooden flats left over from some drama production. The flats shielded them from the other direction, but not from behind where we were.

  I recognized the four kids who remained in the company (like us, they must have lost two), including Leonard Hornsbloomer. It was his voice that rose the most as he argued with the oldest boy. Leonard kept bobbing his head up over the flats, and the older boy kept pulling him down.

  I snaked backwards off the ridge to give my report.

  “Good work,” Jack said, giving me back my gun. “We’ve got a chance to score some big points. So here’s the plan. We crawl to the edge of the ridge. Each one of us takes a bead on the soldier directly below. When I give the signal we rush them. Got it?”

  We crawled up the ridge. Jack looked over and then turned to me and gave me the thumbs up. It was just as I had said.

  Jack raised his hand and pointed.

  Go!

  Scrambling to our feet, we hurled ourselves over the ridge. My heart pounded in my chest. I went over on my ankle but recovered. My own target was Leonard, my former best friend.

  We weren’t halfway down the hill when the youngest boy looked up and spotted us. His eyes widened but he froze, unable to speak. Leonard noticed him and looked our way.

  “Sneak attack!”

  We screamed for blood. Norm fired first, even though he was at least twenty feet away. But his stream arched up and came down — splooch — on the oldest kid’s shoulder. They started squeezing their triggers but, shooting up the hill, their streams fell short. I saw a blue streak cut across the pant legs of the youngest kid. I tried to aim at Leonard, but he was scrambling over the top of the flats and I couldn’t get a shot before he dropped behind them.

  Heaving for breath, we pulled up before the flats. I hadn’t seen their third member get hit in the back as he tried to climb, too, but I’d heard him swear. None of us had been hit, while their whole company had been wiped out except for Leonard, who was cowering behind the flats.

  “All right,” Jack called to him, “come out of there.”

  Slowly Leonard rose with his hands in the air. “Don’t shoot me.”

  “Prisoners aren’t worth points,” Norm said. “Go ahead, Pinky. Plug him.”

  But I hesitated. It seemed too mean just to squirt him like that and, besides, I knew that Leonard would hold it against me.

  “Maybe,” I said, “we could let him join our company.”

  Jack looked at me. “That isn’t in the rules.”

  “Remember what Stuart said? Everything else can be negotiated. That means we can make deals. If Leonard joins we’ll be back up to five men. He’s worth two points to us alive but only one dead.”

  “Pinky’s got something there,” Norm said.

  “Yes, yes!” Leonard pleaded. “And I’ll be one more gun at your side.”

  “Come on, then,” Jack said.

  As we began to move again, Leonard took up a place behind Jack and Norm like he was third-in-command. Jack and Norm began figuring out our point score and talking in low voices about our chances of winning.

  We snuck between the deserted girls’ cabins and then headed for the beach. All we had to do now was follow the shoreline to the ski dock. I could hear other skirmishes going on, but none was nearby. Somehow we had managed to slip past most of the other companies.

  “Halt,” Jack called. “What’s this?”

  Somebody was sitting on a turned-over canoe. He was facing the lake, the low sun a halo around his body. Now I could hear him, humming under his breath.

  Zachary. Not only humming but lightly beating the rhythm on the canoe. His squirt gun lay on the sand.

  The five of us stood there looking at him.

  “This could be a trap,” Jack whispered. “Keep on the lookout, men. Approach with caution.”

  Slowly we moved toward Zach, squirt guns at the ready as we watched out for an ambush. But nobody else was around. We got so close that he must have heard us but he still didn’t turn around. So we went around to face him.

  “Hey,” Jack said. “What’s up with you?”

  “Nothing.” He kept beating on the canoe.

  “Where’s your company?”

  “Funny thing, I seem to have lost them.”

  “A deserter,” Norm said.

  Zachary stopped drumming. “I think of myself as a conscientious objector.”

  “What does that mean?” Jack asked.

  I said, “It means he doesn’t believe in war.”

  “But you beat the crap out of Carrots,” Leonard reminded him.

  No reply.

  “You’re a hippie,” Jack said.

  “I’m not a hippie. I’m not anything.”

  “Jeez,” Stanley said, lowering his gun. “What do we do with him?”

  “Squirt him,” Leonard said. “He’s still worth a point in the game.”

  “But he doesn’t want to play,” I said. “Just leave him alone.”

  “He has to play,” said Leonard.

  “I don’t know,” Jack said. “Seems too cold-blooded just to squirt an unarmed person if he isn’t even trying. What do you think, Norm?”

  “Maybe if we took him prisoner — ”

  A blue stream hit Zachary in the stomach. It made a widening stain on his shirt.

  “You’re dead,” Leonard said.

  “No kidding.”

  I stared at Leonard, his squirt gun still pointed at Zach. He stared right back at me and didn’t blink.

  Only when Jack told us to fall out did we look away from one another.

  We continued along the beach. I walked along with the squirt gun hanging by my side. I didn’t look out for enemy soldiers.

  11

  THE BEAR

  I DIDN’T SPEAK TO LEONARD for the rest of the day. I knew it was me who was refusing to talk, even though I could tell by the way he deliberately turned away with a snort that he wanted to pretend it was the other way around.

  Now I u
nderstood that the only reason he had been nice to me at the start of camp was because he wanted to capture me before I saw what a loser he was.

  Just before dinner the squirt-war awards were given out (we came in second but I didn’t care), and then the buses arrived with the girls. After dinner we lined up at the tuck shop to get our weekly allotment of chocolate bars and candy, and then I went back to the cabin looking for Zachary.

  But he wasn’t there. Only the tape recorder lying on his bunk.

  I wanted to listen to Buddy Holly but I didn’t have the nerve, so I went out again and wandered down to the docks, hoping that I might see Amber somewhere. But maybe she was with Zachary because I didn’t see her, either, only Leonard out in a rowboat with Stanley, the younger kid from our company in the squirt war. I didn’t want Leonard to see me, so I turned back up.

  All I knew was that everybody seemed to have somewhere to go but me. I wasn’t like Zachary. If he was alone it was because he wanted to be.

  I’d never felt more sorry for myself than I did trying to get that hour to pass as the sun finally went down.

  People began to go by me on their way to the bonfire beside the baseball diamond. I got to the fire pit where the logs were already burning and kids and counselors were sitting on bark-stripped logs that formed a rough hexagon around the flames. Smoke and sparks rose up.

  I could see some of my cabin mates on the other side, and Zachary, too, with Amber sitting beside him. A couple of counselors were playing chords on their guitars, and people were singing “The Circle Game.”

  Stuart got up to throw another couple of logs onto the fire, causing a shower of sparks to rise.

  “I could tell ‘The Monkey’s Paw,’” he said.

  Groans. “We already heard that story,” Flap Ears said.

  “Well, does anybody else have a story to tell?”

  There was just the popping noise from the new logs.

  Almost against my will, I spoke up.

  “I have a story.” People turned to look at me. “It isn’t a story, actually, because it’s true.”

  “Stand up and tell it,” Jerry said, motioning with his hand for me to get up. “And speak louder.”