Death and Love at the Old Summer Camp

by Dolores Maggiore

  “Eh, c’mon. No one wanted to mess with him after the…uh…what happened to Regina.”

  We could hear the flimsy stools scrape against the floor.

  “Uh, I cringe when I think I lacked the balls to find out what really happened to make her leave.” Katie’s dad’s voice was all choked up.

  “Whoa, Ron, all I knew for sure was that a guy was seen leaving Regina’s bunkhouse. Maybe Butch, maybe you. The Square group kept me in the dark.”

  “Gimme some more of that stuff,” Doc slurred. “But you were part of the Square too; we were supposed to be protecting the little kids, no?”

  “Yeah, but sometimes they left us out of the smaller loop. Remember all that crap about our ‘old, monied families’ and how the Square group didn’t want to ruin our ‘Ivy League destiny?’ C’mon, you gotta remember all that elitist crap.” Bud belched.

  “Maybe…maybe I had a vague idea someone was hitting on Regina. Maybe everyone did, and no one wanted to tell me…to protect me? Or…? What’d they think I’d do?”

  “Easy, guy. It was a different time. We’re the good guys, remember. Jack Daniels, 100 Proof says so.” We heard Bud take a gulp of that Jack Daniels.

  “Yeah, yeah. What about your cousin, Butch?” Doc hiccoughed.

  “Right. The bad guy. My family said my cousin Butch never came back from camp, that he ran away because there was a warrant out for his arrest in New York. He was such a thug, really a slick, mean son of a gun. You know, his family, the Judge’s friggin’ family was ousted from the Bedford Country Club. People talked.”

  When they were slurring their words and totally blotto, we heard Doc stretch out on the floor.

  Then we heard a few loud clunks as something fell to the floor. Katie blanched; I froze.

  Bud screamed, “That’s my knife; it’s my knife that was stolen and an old shirt.”

  I felt sick. I could hear more scrambling above. The sound of pages flapping. Oh God! Our notebook.

  “What is this?” Bud asked, and we heard more pages turning. “It’s some kind of book…‘what we know’, and…ah damn! It’s your daughter’s. Look, here. ‘Signed super sleuths, Katie McGuilvry and Pina Mazzini.’”

  We’d been found out. Katie and I traded looks, planning a silent getaway, but we stayed just long enough to hear the rest.

  Doc was cursing, saying he had a lot of explaining to do to Katie. The slur was gone from his speech, and he coughed that strange cough again.

  I gave Katie a tight hug as she began to cry. Then, I quietly strong-armed her out under the cabin, carefully guiding her down the slope to the lake. Maybe there’d be some relief there.

  ****

  I left Katie down by the lake, a bit off to the side of the guest beach. She had calmed down, but she wasn’t ready to face her family at lunch. I concocted a plan to find both of our parents and beg them to let us have a picnic day. Occasionally, the cook would prepare a box lunch for us, and our folks usually welcomed the break from our “teenageness.” I knew I could convince Catherine, Katie’s mom. Her father was probably recouping with Bud some place and hadn’t returned yet.

  Catherine, dressed in a proper white crepe short-sleeved blouse and a straight, linen skirt, sat smoking her Kent and flipping through “Ladies Home Journal” on her porch. She lifted her pale eyes from her magazine with a blank look, a look that was ready to agree to anything as long as it left her alone. She said yes to the picnic immediately, as did my mother. The cook liked me; the rest was simple.

  Within a half-hour, I was back at Katie’s side on the sand with a picnic box of tuna fish sandwiches, chips, lemonade, and chocolate chip cookies. Katie smiled and briefly touched my hand as I finished showing off the spoils of my “hunting and gathering.”

  Leaning up against the grassy slope, head in hands, Katie said, “We can’t not do this.”

  I also knew we couldn’t stay away from the thick of things. The mystery was bound to get messy.

  “You sure?” I quickly wiped the smudge of mayonnaise off my cheek.

  “Blasted square tattoo or whatever the heck! I mean, he’s involved.”

  “Katie, eat something, please.”

  Katie slowed down. She squished up bits of soft white bread and popped them in her mouth, wiping off her hands on the grass.

  “Katie, it sounds like your dad, well…he kind of wasn’t…” I tried to be careful; I needed just the right word.

  “Wasn’t what?”

  “Well, he sounded really upset. Not like he killed or attacked anyone or…” I just wanted to eat my cookie and rest.

  “Sorry, Pin. I gotta know how much of a liar he is…” Katie bit her lower lip.

  “They’ve all got their heads in the sand. All our folks.” I kinda hoped we could stop. I was tired and afraid of what other horrid things I might have to experience in my dreams. Tired…but I knew I needed to help clear her father in her heart.

  We finished our food and Katie decided that maybe the tire held more answers. We launched the nearby canoe and started to paddle out to the spot where my dad and I found the tire. I was weary. I needed rest. What was I thinking, agreeing to pursue this now?

  We paddled out to the lily pond where yellow and white petals embraced us. Rubbery, sweating lily pads swirled in widening circles around us. We were weak and wrung out from the humidity, and our paddling got sloppy. Katie’s paddle got stuck on something underwater, and I had to hold onto her to keep her from falling out of the boat while I tried to yank the paddle free. It was then we spotted the chain attached to the tire.

  The last links of a chain clunked against the wall of the canoe, making that hollow thumping sound I knew so well. Sometimes it meant cool, fresh water and a great swim with splashy games. Sometimes, it meant I was too close, dangerously too close to jagged rocks.

  I looped my paddle around one of the chain links and started to pull the tire in. Katie grabbed on to help. We both heaved for a bit, with little luck.

  Katie brushed a sweaty lock of hair out of her face and sighed. “I can’t. It’s too heavy.”

  We had lifted part of the tire. I was straining, my muscles burning from the effort.

  I saw something, canvas, no, leather. A glove. I tried to reach it. God, there was something in it.

  “Grab it.” Katie was leaning over the edge of the canoe, but it was too far away.

  “Dang.” I made one last lunge. I felt everything give. The glove and its contents in my hand, I pitched forward, my body following my chest out of the canoe. The canoe tipped after me. Katie, in the stern, managed to right the canoe, but got dumped in the water in the process.

  Water overcame us. We thrashed around, occasionally kicking the tire in our struggles. We couldn’t find our way out. There was a ringing in my ears as panic and loss of blood pressure took over. We both knew we had to get back in the canoe. With whatever willpower and consciousness was left, I pulled the glove free of the tire. Its contents spilled out, several bones drifted back down into the deeper water. I grabbed the gunnel, glove and all, and hoisted myself into the canoe.

  I turned to look for Katie. I could just make her out below the surface: her legs were stuck in the rocks inside the tire. I managed to pull her by the hair. Her hands reached up to find mine, and I braced my legs against the wall of the canoe to yank her in.

  Neither of us spoke for quite some time as the canoe drifted lazily. A light breeze dragged it closer to shore. The familiar short boardwalk came into view, and the underside of the canoe grated along the gravel alongside the dock. We pitched headlong onto the sand and simply allowed ourselves to let go of outside things: sights, sounds, smells, sensations. The glove lay tucked inside my short’s pocket, some nubby contents inside, intact.

  Chapter Fourteen

  GIVE ME A HAND

  Alive in the sand next to Katie, I felt my eyes rolling about unfocused in my head. Nothing else seemed to be functioning up there.

  I sensed myself slipping into another dream. My
chest was burning, and someone was pinching me. I rolled over on my back. A faraway part of me, the one in the real world, twitched with sand fleas, but otherwise didn’t move.

  In the dream world, I scrambled backwards over the sand, my hands clutched at my chest, cupping my throat. I was pierced over and over again. I was mutilated, carved. My hand was severed from my body, and I was wet with blood. I screamed. My bone protruded from my wrist; I screamed again. Hands pulled at me. They dragged me back across the sand. Sounds faded, only a vacuum in my ears. My body was rolled over, and something hard slapped my face. Then only blackness.

  “Wake up. Wake up.” Katie shook me.

  I tasted warm, salty drops. This was not blood. Katie lifted my eyelids, one at a time. Water splashed my face; Katie had poured it on me, trying to rouse me from my stupor. I stared at my hands, struggling to focus. They were both there. My left hand was wearing the glove. The glove that held the hand, the bones…were they mine? It was all coming back. My eyes sought Katie’s with a plea to tell me the truth. Katie looked as crazed as I felt. We embraced.

  “You were screaming that it was your hand.”

  “They cut my hand off, cut my chest, cut me…”

  “We’ve got to get help. No more secrets, I’m begging you.”

  My fog took over. I passed out again, and again. Katie managed to drag me a bit, hoisting me upright. I shuffled along, my dead weight leaning on her almost the whole path back from the beach. I started to feel calmer. Katie’s touch was the best medicine.

  As we got to her cabin, Katie yelled for her father. He entered the room and looked me over, interrogating me with his stare.

  “What happened here?” he asked Katie, “She’s bleeding. What are these welts on her face?”

  “I don’t know! She kept scratching at herself and muttering about ‘clearing the fog.’”

  “It’s okay,” Doc said. “I have you, Pina.” He carried me over to Katie’s bed. “I’ll get your parents. Katie, what happened?” Up close, in his arms, I saw him blanch when he noticed the faraway look on Katie’s face.

  My parents seemed to appear suddenly at my side.

  I just sobbed, repeating over and over through spasms of choking, “Mommy, Mommy, Daddy, Daddy.” I let myself be hugged, but their questions didn’t make sense. I just stared ahead. I stared at Katie’s dad as he told my parents he would observe me overnight. He said some doctorly things about knowing better in the morning. What? Knowing what? Needing to go to the hospital?

  My mother protested, “But, but, but.”

  My father answered, “Let’s do as the doc says.” My eyes tracked the doctor pulling my father aside. Their whispering wasn’t low enough.

  “Barney, come here a sec. The girls have been messing around in this Butch story. I don’t know what they’ve done or what happened, but calm, quiet, and rest will help, and we’ll be able to get some info tomorrow. They’ve been traumatized, not physically, but emotionally.”

  Doc gave my mother a sedative, and Dad managed to convince her to go back to their cabin and lie down. Once she was gone, my father hesitated to leave. He debated with Doc about the ER, but relented when Doc reminded him that the nearest hospital was two hours away.

  Doc took my father by the shoulders. “Barney, I promise, at the first sign of distress, I will call you and we will make the trip to the hospital. Right now, the jostling of the two-hour drive would do more harm than good.”

  I felt my father brush his lips against my forehead, and then I faded.

  I awoke the next morning with Katie lying next to me, buried under tons of comforters on her bed. The sweet smell of sweat and Dove soap combined was a heady perfume. I felt Katie’s arm next to mine. I stroked it back and forth, loving the sensation of her dark, soft hair.

  Everyone was just letting us sleep and wake and sleep and wake. We had the radio on with tons of Everly Brothers and Buddy Holly songs and often dozed to the notes of Dream. Everything now seemed as calm as the morning air, soft warmth drifting in through the window behind the bed.

  We attacked the food Doc had left: blueberry muffins and sausages, as well as Katie’s mom’s pancakes and my mom’s chocolate. Our appetites pleased them all and they left us in peace for a bit. Neither one of us was thinking or remembering, just stuffing and slurping. We did overhear Katie’s dad outside the screened windows telling my father to put off talking to anybody. No police, no one until he could find out what happened to us. I heard my father agreeing.

  Katie and I licked our fingers and gobbled crumbs off the flannel sheet blankets with their pinecone motif. We felt the presence of Doctor McGuilvry, Katie’s father in all his official capacity. He seemed huge, blocking the doorway with his full head of thick, wavy white hair. He had a kind smile, but we knew there’d be no getting away from telling it all.

  I recounted my hysterics. I really and truly physically felt my hands cut off. I felt those boys’ bodies, hands, and blades, but could not see their faces. As I relived it all again, I began to weep. Katie’s dad wrapped an arm around me as I wailed and wailed.

  As my sobs began to ease, I felt lighter. I heard a chickadee and a finch outside the screen. They felt extra real somehow, as if I was done with that confusing dream world once and for all.

  I snapped out of my reverie when I felt Katie’s tears. She was begging her father to tell her he wasn’t involved, and tell her about the square tattoo…

  Doc ran his hands through his thick hair. He appeared almost disheveled, which was unheard of for him. He let himself sink into the easy chair next to Katie’s bed. He told us about the scar. Back at the camp, a group of older boys had banded together to protect some of the younger boys who were getting beat around.

  “Katie, I swear to you,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about any violence. Some of the guys tried to keep me in the dark, knowing I was supposed to be going to Harvard in a few months. I want answers now too. I need to find out more about this, but you two absolutely need to stay out of it.”

  Doc wrapped his arms around Katie and buried his face in her hair. He pulled away and turned her face to him. Holding her that way, just inches from his face, he whispered, “I love you. You’re the most precious thing in the world to me. That’s all you have to know.”

  Convinced for the moment, a tear-stained Katie urged me to tell her father about the dreams. I did, starting with more details about that one on the beach.

  When I started talking about the hand, my eyes felt like they were sinking back, back, into my skull, back away from the room. Noises became distant, muffled. The room smelled like a hospital, and I started screaming again.

  I came back to Katie’s room once more, but the pain didn’t stop. I ripped open my pajama top and made the Doctor look at the stab wounds. He held me tight, stroking my hair away from my forehead.

  “There’s nothing there. I’m looking, but I see nothing,” he said. The kindness in his voice made me start weeping again. He stroked me, and Katie’s mother brought me a glass of water. He leaned forward, cradling me in his arms.

  I was back again, totally cool. I saw that there was no blood. I spoke one word at a time, as the courage to look deeper came slowly.

  I looked up at Doc. His face was calm, his light blue eyes the same as Katie’s; the eyes I could swim in. He could have been Santa Claus, maybe God. I let myself go.

  “I didn’t know…” I examined my hands, hoping my lifeline would supply answers as I tried to explain. “I did not know whether these were mine. They felt, really felt cut…cut off. A blade…something sharp, but not too, was sawing away at my hands.”

  “Go slow, Pina.” Doc stroked my hand as much with his voice and his words as with his soft touch. I pulled my hand away with no explanation.

  I spread out the fingers of my right hand. “Then my other hand, this hand, became different. I felt it grip a knife. I…was cutting into something…I was slicing. I could feel the tip of a dull blade through…well, like a tough piece
of meat. I became all these people, a whole cast of cutters and victims.” I looked back up at Doc. A part of me felt almost normal, as if I had just told him about my favorite food.

  Then, Doc asked me about Regina. I hid my face in my hands. It was too real again.

  I told him, “My body hurts.” I muttered something about boys bothering me. I cleared my throat and tried to spit out. “A boy did stuff to me.” My face felt like stone again; my stomach, a quarry. Cold.

  “There’s no rush,” he whispered. He continued to rock me. He pushed himself up and off the bed and puttered around the room a bit. He padded out of Katie’s room and into his own, returning with chocolates and another big pillow, all the while checking to see how I was.

  He told Katie, “I want you to sit with Pina. Do something; comb her hair, paint her nails. Just…just hold each other,” he said. He looked the way I felt.

  Katie managed to get my foot, paint my big toe nail with her mother’s True Crimson polish, play this little piggy, and distract me. The chocolate and chocolate chip cookies helped too.

  We were smiling again. I felt as if this was a fever dream, everything slow and warm honey, tea and Social Teas. We smelled smoke as Doc opened the door to the porch. My father must have been outside smoking. We heard Doc explaining something about a pill. They agreed on half a pill and chamomile tea and more sleep.

  Catherine knocked on Katie’s door to see if we were still awake. She served us tea in two beautiful china teacups, brought from home, filled with warm water that tasted like lemon and pee. Still, it felt good to drink.

  From outside, I overheard a lot of hushed ‘hms’ and ‘ahs’, but nothing made sense. Katie was jumping for joy, bouncing up and down on the bed. Maybe she drank the pee water and the pill too? It wasn’t supposed to wake you up though. She said we were going to have another pajama party that night.

  We ate lots of ice cream, butter crunch to be exact, with big pieces of nougat. This sick thing did get us lots of goodies, and that chamomile made everything seem better, as if we didn’t have a care in the world. That night, Katie and I slept side-by-side, warm and sweaty and melting into one another. That is, until Katie unwrapped her arms and her legs from around me. She tapped roughly on my shoulder. I awoke immediately and saw her stare down at me.