Camp Wild

by Pam Withers

  “Hi, Wilf. Whatcha doin’?”

  I swing around. His head is poking out from under the longest canoe, and he’s grinning all over.

  “Hey, Charlie. Just making sure all the gear’s ready for class tomorrow. What are you doing here?”

  His beady little eyes bore into me. He squeezes out from under the canoe and brushes dirt off his overalls. “Spying.”

  “Yeah? Well I wouldn’t spy from under there. Probably mice or rats in this shed.”

  He grins wider. “You can’t scare me.”

  It’s too true. I pull a stick of gum from my shirt pocket and offer it to him. He grabs it, then tears out of the shed like I might change my mind.

  “I hate kids,” I mutter as I jam a stick of gum into my own mouth and head down to the river. “Especially that one.”

  chapter four

  “Wilf, Herb, wake up guys.”

  Patrick’s voice wafts through our cabin’s screen door, but I know for a fact it’s not seven o’clock yet. How do I know? Because the camp’s obnoxious wake-up bugle hasn’t blasted through the chill morning air. And the sun hasn’t yet cast beams of light on the clothes Herb and I have left scattered about our tiny cabin. (That’s the only thing we have in common, I’ve decided.)

  “Go away,” I mumble, and sink deeper into my sleeping bag.

  Patrick takes this as an invitation to step in.

  “Sorry you two, but one of our canoe and kayak instructors is ill this morning. I’d normally take over for him, but I have to run into town on business. I’m wondering if you can help out. Just one class: the little kids.”

  “No thanks,” I say.

  “You bet!” Herb pronounces at the same time. I feel the entire bunk bed sway as he sits up above me.

  I lift my feet and push up on the mattress beneath him in the hope he’ll take it back. But he’s such a suck-up to Patrick, I know he won’t.

  “Ow! Wilf, stop doing that. You heard Patrick. He needs help.”

  “Wilf, are you in?” Patrick’s voice sounds a little muffled from inside my sleeping-bag cocoon. “I’ve noticed you’re both strong paddlers. Claire would really appreciate your help.”

  Claire? I pop my head out of its shell. As it turns out, I’m suddenly sooo available to help juniors with their J-strokes. “Sure, why not? Does that get us out of arts and crafts?”

  “If you like,” Patrick says. “Thanks, guys. It’ll be good training if you want to be junior counselors next year, you know.” The screen door slams, the bugle sounds, the sun creeps in to expose our messy cabin.

  “Like we want to be junior counselors,” I gripe. I crawl out of bed and splash water on my face from the dirty washbowl I was supposed to empty last night.

  “Wilf, you’d make an awesome one if you wanted to be. You know exactly how the camp runs, and the kids love you.”

  The kids love me? “Like cats who jump on the laps of people allergic to cats.”

  “Yeah, well the kids never talk to me.”

  “Maybe if you talked at them less, Herbie.”

  “Wilf, why are you always so negative? This place is a blast. Relax and enjoy it. It’ll be fun teaching this afternoon. Bet the cook will even give us extra portions at supper.”

  Ah, a second thing we have in common. A desire for more food than we’re allotted. But my agenda is long-term and more noble. Well, okay, maybe not so noble.

  The morning drags by. Finally it’s the kiddies’ canoe and kayak class. Claire’s on the shore fitting out the munchkins in puffy orange lifejackets. I admire her pierced navel from afar, not for the first time.

  “Wilf, Herb! Thanks guys, for being willing to help out,” she calls. As we come close, she adds in a lowered voice, “This group can be a handful for just one person.”

  “Aw, they’re just normal kids with good energy,” I say smoothly as I help her lift some kayaks from the upper racks of the boat shed. Herb’s eyebrows slant in confusion at my remark before he shakes his head and starts rummaging around the rack of paddles.

  “Charlie, can you help me carry these?” I hear him shout.

  “Nah, I’m gonna help Wilf,” he says, appearing beside me. For a split second, I feel the throb of where I extracted that tick yesterday.

  “Charlie, dude, let’s see if you can carry more paddles than Herb and I can,” I say.

  He eyes me carefully, then falls for it. Competitive little devil, I think. Soon we have seven little water rats on the river, four in canoes and the rest in kayaks.

  “Everyone switches boats in half an hour so we all learn both types of paddling,” Claire reminds them.

  “Not me,” declares Charlie. “I only want to kayak.” Claire ignores him.

  I dig my knees into my canoe’s foam kneepads and demonstrate the art of crossing the river’s mild current, as Claire in her kayak and Herb in his canoe do the same. One by one, our little ducklings imitate our best forward, back and sweep strokes, crossing and re-crossing the river. The canoeists demonstrate their J and crossbow strokes as well, some a little shakily. Now and then, a student gets washed downstream, prompting Claire and Herb to give chase and coax the kid back up the eddies. Once, a timid girl capsizes in her kayak, ejects and comes to the surface gasping.

  “You should of rolled,” Charlie chastises her from his bright orange kayak.

  “Now, Charlie, you know you’re the only one in this group who knows how to roll,” Claire says.

  “You can roll?” I ask, surprised.

  In response, the ten-year-old makes sure I’m watching before capsizing and righting his kayak three times in a row.

  “Show-off,” his wet classmate mumbles as she eases herself back into her kayak.

  “Awesome, buddy,” I say to Charlie with a thumbs-up, only because it makes Claire smile warmly at me. “That’ll come in real handy when you do rapids. Speaking of which, Claire, what’s downstream of here?” I remember talk from past summers about wild whitewater, but I never registered the details.

  Claire smiles indulgently, allows the kids to paddle into a sort of huddle in the biggest eddy and stabs her paddle in the direction I’m looking.

  “It’s nice, gentle-flowing water for about half an hour, which is what makes this site such a safe place to learn. Then the river starts dropping faster and becomes rapids with boulders the size of cars that you have to maneuver around.”

  “Cool,” Charlie inserts, but some of the tykes are clutching their paddles and looking behind them nervously.

  “And then?” prompts Herb.

  “Then it drops into a narrow canyon with steep walls on both sides and non-stop rapids for hours. It’s really, really intense.”

  “You’ve canoed it?” the little girl with wet hair asks, wide-eyed.

  “I have,” Claire says solemnly, staring at the dark water beside her canoe as if it’s replaying the footage. “I did it with a bunch of crazy guys last summer. I’d never do it again.”

  “Why?” the kids shout together as they inch closer to her, the same way they do when she tells ghost stories around the evening campfire.

  Claire’s eyes glow with a faraway look. “Because there’s a killer waterfall at the end of the canyon, and you have only seconds to get out before you reach it. Plus you need ropes to climb down from there to the last rapids before the river dumps into a wilderness lake. It’s not safe, and we should never have done it,” she says solemnly.

  I mentally add rope to my equipment list. I want to ask about those last rapids before the lake, but I don’t want to make her suspicious. So I turn to order the kids back to their paddling exercises. Claire tosses me a grateful look. One by one, our charges return to paddling Camp Wild’s decidedly un-wild river bend. All except Charlie, whose eyes, squinting beneath the wet spikes of red hair sticking through his kayak helmet’s drain holes, refuse to leave my face.

  chapter five

  Today is D-Day, as in time to defect from this camp. That puts me in such a generous mood that at the brea
kfast buffet, I load one Danish into my mouth, two more into my pockets and deliver a fourth to Herb. He is hunched on the bench that pulls up to the long mess-hall table.

  “Herbie, buddy, extra rations for you,” I say cheerfully, dropping it on his plate.

  “No thanks,” he says glumly, stirring a spoon listlessly in his oatmeal.

  Wait a second. What’s wrong with this picture? I’m the glum guy; he’s always Mr. Happy.

  “What’s up? Got up on the wrong side of your bunk?” Not technically possible, but hey, I’m being real nice this morning ‘cause in just hours I’ll never share a bunk with him again.

  “Got toilet-cleaning duty today, and Patrick won’t let me trade. What’d you draw?”

  “K.P. Want me to snitch some chocolate bars for you?” Getting kitchen patrol is like winning the lottery at Camp Wild. Even though it means scrubbing pots for an hour, it also means potential access to the pantry’s box of chocolate bars. Never mind that Cook makes you whistle the whole time you are in the pantry. (That way you can’t stuff anything in your mouth.) She also checks your pockets when you come out. But the best-informed campers know she does not check socks or hats.

  Toilet-cleaning duty, on the other hand, is losing the lottery. Poor old Herb. I watch him frown and shake his head.

  “Flag time,” Patrick announces in his booming voice as he stands at the front of the room. I silently order the moose antlers on the wall above him to fall on his skull, but they don’t cooperate. So I file out behind Herb to where two juniors are proudly unfolding the flag and getting ready to run it up the pole. Did I do stupid stuff like this a few years ago? Do my parents really think I am still a kid? Are their careers really so much more interesting than their own offspring?

  I try to regain my cheerfulness by reminding myself that tonight, the minute Herb starts snoring, I’ll be turning tail on this poor excuse for a daycare center. I can paddle down to the rapids by moonlight, hide in the woods till dawn and be into the canyon before tomorrow’s bugle blows. I’m figuring on a waterfall portage by sundown tomorrow. After that, I’ll set up my hideaway on the lake. I’ll get fresh water from the creeks that run into it, and I’ll make myself a nifty lean-to. The only classes I’ll attend are sleeping in, sunbathing, swimming and fishing. Someone will find me eventually, of course, no matter how well I hide the canoe. But I’ll have my fun until they do, and my parents will get the point. For a couple of days, maybe even longer, I’ll be an explorer, Robinson Crusoe, Daniel Boone, whatever.

  “Patrick has turned mean,” Herb interrupts my daydream as flag time wraps up, and we drift back toward our cabin.

  “Patrick, the guy you like so much?” I dig.

  “Yeah, he made me spend an hour this morning cleaning up our cabin. Said we need to set a better example for the juniors.”

  “How come he didn’t haul me in to help?”

  “‘Cause you’d snuck off somewhere, as usual. Then Cook caught me swiping a cinnamon bun before breakfast. For punishment, she made me wash dishes.”

  “This surprises you?”

  “I tried telling her that they don’t give us enough food at this camp, and she calls Patrick in. He lectures me in front of all the little kids lined up for breakfast, and they start laughing and calling me fat. What a bunch of brats. They’re all Patrick really cares about. It’s no fun being the only seniors, is it?”

  “You’re being very negative about Camp Wild,” I can’t resist digging some more.

  “And the classes are getting boring.”

  What? Is this Herb Green, my insufferable cabin mate, or has his evil double just walked onstage? I shrug and look at him more closely.

  “Hey, let’s skip out of archery and go skip rocks on the river,” Herb suggests.

  I’m shocked, awed, impressed. “Sure.” I’m such a good-hearted guy that, half an hour later, I even let him win a couple of times. Never mind that I’m capable of launching pebbles that hovercraft all the way to the other side of the river.

  “I don’t want to do toilet cleaning. Why should we have to do chores when we pay for the rotten experience of being stuck here for two weeks? This place sucks.”

  Whoa. Boy Scout poster-boy has turned in his badge. I’m amused. “So what was your first clue?”

  “Look, I know you don’t like me, Wilf, but you know I can canoe. In fact, I’ve had way more whitewater experience than you, so you need me if you’re heading downriver to get away from this place. Let me go with you.”

  My jaw feels like a support piece has just fallen out. “What’re you talking about, Herb?”

  “The big food stash under the floorboards in our cabin. The little notebook with a list of all the supplies you’ve been stealing or hiding. And especially the canoe and paddle you’ve stashed in the bushes downstream of camp.”

  I rub my chin, struggling to come up with a clever response. Sadly, I produce nothing but silence and sweat.

  “You hate the place, and you’ve been planning an escape for days. I’m not as dumb as you think, Wilf. I can report this to Patrick and Claire, or you can take me with you. Choose wisely, cabin mate.” He turns and studies me, evil eyes unblinking.

  “I don’t have enough food for two.” I say. I feel panic start to set in.

  “You’re on K.P. today. That’ll make it easy, Wilf. Anyway, between us, we’ll have plenty by tomorrow. And from what Claire said, no one would dare follow us downstream. They’ll probably drive to that lake and paddle across it, hoping to catch us there. We can be hiding in the woods by then. I suggest leaving tomorrow night.”

  A turkey vulture’s squawk from a branch above startles me. Is it laughing at me or signaling that someone may be eavesdropping nearby? I survey the woods around us and satisfy myself that we’re otherwise alone. I feel like a cornered animal, but I’m working it all out fast. He can canoe. I have K.P. today. Tomorrow night is only one day past a full moon. Most importantly, I can ditch him after we’ve escaped. To do that, though, I’ll need to persuade him to paddle his own canoe. I nod slowly, extend a hand to Herb. We shake hands. He follows me to a shed near the canoe house.

  “Last year, the camp bought a bunch of new double canoes,” I tell him. “To make room for them in the boathouse, they dumped a couple of the oldest solos in this shed. It’s locked, but there’s a hole in the back wall we can fit through. The hole’s big enough to get the canoes out too. That’s how I got the canoe I’ve hidden. It’ll take them longer to notice two stolen singles from here than a double from the boathouse. Are you okay with that?”

  “Sure, I like paddling solo,” Herb says.

  “Don’t forget to grab a wetsuit, helmet and two paddles,” I say as we climb through the hole. “A spare paddle is important.”

  chapter six

  “Charlie, you’re coming out of the eddy at nine o’clock. I said eleven o’clock, or you won’t get across the river without getting swept down.”

  I’m referring, of course, not to the time, but the angle of his kayak bow as it crosses the upstream/downstream line of current just off shore. Luckily, he’s a smart kid (not just a smart-ass kid). He adjusts his eddy exit technique and works his little biceps on the sweep stroke till he’s sitting pretty on the far side of the river.

  “Nice going, buddy,” Claire calls out approvingly. “See, everyone? That was a perfect example of a ferry. Who’s next?”

  Herb and I glance at our watches. We’re being model campers and class helpers today, and why wouldn’t we be, with only five hours to go before departure time?

  “Charlie,” I direct as he strokes the water impatiently across the river, waiting for another turn. “See that big flat rock in the middle of the river? I’m going to purposely brush its upstream side on the way over to you. I want you to watch how I lean hard downstream onto it to prevent my canoe from getting stuck against it or tipping. Remember, kids, how we talked about that safety maneuver? Charlie, try it after me to show the others how it works in a kayak, okay? We’r
e all right here if you have problems.”

  That lights up his little face. The second I’ve finished my demonstration, he shoots out of his eddy like a torpedo. Of course, he leans downstream too early and flips over. But like a battery-operated toy, he rolls and pops back up almost faster than the water can get his face wet. His boat washes neatly around the rock. The kid is hot in a kayak, even if he can be really irritating.

  “Good stuff, Charlie,” Claire says. “Okay, kids. It’s five o’clock. Quitting time.” As the other juniors pump to shore, I watch Charlie work his way back upstream and attack the rock again. He gets it right this time. He’s a determined little cuss.

  As soon as Claire, Herb and I have made sure all the equipment is back on its racks, Claire turns and blocks our way out of the boathouse door.

  “Guys, you’ve been a real help with the kids. The other instructor is back tomorrow, so you can go back to being just campers. But I really hope you decide to do the junior counselor thing next summer. You’re both naturals.”

  “Thanks,” Herb replies, blinking big-time.

  “You never know,” I say, unable to meet those hazel eyes and long lashes. “It’s been real, anyway.” Like, real tempting to ask you out and real humiliating being a camper.

  Five hours later, Herb and I pull on our wetsuits and pack the stuff we’ve filched from supper into a waterproof bag. I sling it over my shoulder as we slink out the cabin door. Everything’s dark and quiet, save for where the moon shines. And the moon doesn’t shine on the route we pick to our hidden canoes. Nor does the turkey vulture call out as two canoes slip silently into the inky water. With one last glance behind us, we whisper good riddance to the kiddie kingdom in the woods. Here we come, real adventure.

  “Ever paddle by moonlight before?” Herb whispers fifteen minutes later, as we draw up beside one another in the gentle current.

  “Nope. Have you?” I ask, one eye on the black water ahead.

  “Yes, when my parents and I were late getting to our takeout point one day. It’s fun when there are no rapids, at least until the moon goes behind a cloud.”