Neil was surprised that no one asked why he’d never kept in touch after high school. Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure he could provide an adequate answer if they had. Best to just change the subject. “The camp’s been shut down for what, two years?”
Steve nodded. “Just a little over that.”
“Is everything still standing?”
“Yeah. Charlie Wilcox kept the place in good shape right up until he died.” Steve twisted the top off another bottle of Corona. “The archery range is still there, the boat house too. The canoes still float.” He gestured behind himself into the darkness. “There’s even a zipline that still works.”
“A zipline? Damn, we never had that when we were here. Kids these days get all the good shit,” said Jeremy.
Patrick tossed his empty beer bottle into the fire, sending sparks shooting upward. “The zipline is all yours.”
“What? Can’t handle a little dangerous living?” said Jeremy.
Leaning back, Patrick clasped his hands behind his head. “Does bungee jumping from the Cheat River Bridge in West Virginia count as dangerous living?”
Neil closed his eyes, trying to suppress a shudder. The thought of dangling over the side of a bridge was enough to make him queasy. He swallowed a mouthful of saliva, then opened his eyes again.
Jeremy was still looking at Patrick. “Really?”
“Last summer.”
Jeremy laughed. “Damn, sweet!”
The conversation died away, allowing nature to fill the gap left by their silenced voices. The fire crackled before them, the crickets chirped somewhere off in the darkness, and the breeze rustled the tree branches overhead. Neil glanced around the fire, noting the expressions on each of their faces. Steve looked complacent, Patrick seemed deep in thought, and Jeremy was amused. Rob, whose face held a puzzled gaze, broke the silence. “Do you remember that ugly woman who worked in the camp office?”
Jeremy shot him a confused glance. “What?”
Rob touched his nose. “The one with the huge wart on her nose. What was her name?”
“Ms. Schlappi!” Neil said.
“Yeah, that was her!” Rob laughed. “Remember when we pasted her picture on every target in the archery range?”
The uproar echoed through the trees, filling the otherwise empty camp with raucous laughter. Patrick was doubled over in his chair, and Jeremy stomped his foot on the ground in a hysterical fit.
“She was such a bitch!” said Steve, sending them all into more fits of laughter.
Patrick took a deep a breath. “Whose idea was that anyway?”
“Who do you think?” Jeremy pointed across the fire at Neil. “Our fearless leader!”
He felt their eyes turn toward him, watching the broad smiles form on his friends’ faces. Neil feigned an innocent look and pressed a hand to his chest as if surprised by the accusation. “I cannot tell a lie. What am I saying? I’m a lawyer. Of course, I can tell a lie.” Neil paused for a moment. “You can’t prove it was me.”
Patrick laughed again. “What about the time we swapped that Disney video for a porn movie?”
“Oh my god! That was hilarious! Movie night was never more exciting,” said Steve.
“My god, those kids got an eyeful,” said Rob. “No one could get the tape to stop playing fast enough.”
“Especially since we stole the batteries from the remote,” Neil added.
“What movie was that, Neil?” Jeremy asked.
“Bambi.”
Jeremy raised his hand, flipping him the bird. “Not the Disney film, jackass! The porno!”
Neil shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t remember.”
Rob lifted the lid to the ice cooler near his chair and pulled out another bottle. “You should. Didn’t it come from your dad’s collection?”
Setting an empty bottle down beside his chair, Neil replied, “It’s been over eighteen years. I can’t remember shit like that.”
“Judy McIntyre,” Patrick suddenly blurted out.
Steve gave him a puzzled look. “What?”
“I was trying to remember the name of that counselor from the girls’ cabins,” Patrick explained. “You know, the one we always went skinny dipping with on the far side of the lake. Judy McIntyre, I think.”
Jeremy’s lips formed a bawdy grin. “Yeah! I remember her. Blonde. Nice ass. Big tits.” He cupped his hands in front of his chest for emphasis.
The name brought a smile to Neil’s face as well. Judy, a year younger than he, had been at Camp Tenskwatawa for only one summer, but what a wild summer it had been.
“She was such a slut. I think we all slept with her at one time or another,” said Rob.
Jeremy nodded toward Patrick. “Everyone except Patrick.”
Patrick’s hands shot up, flipping up both middle fingers. “Go to hell.”
“Yeah, he was saving himself,” Neil said, laughing. “How’d that work out for you?”
Sighing, Patrick folded his arms across his chest. “Just fine, if you must know.”
The other three laughed while, for a moment, Patrick glared at Neil. His friend’s eyes once again appeared dark and malevolent. His answer to Neil’s quip had been abrupt. A tension hung in the balance between them, one that Neil couldn’t explain. But as before, it lasted only for a second.
He’d hit a nerve with his wisecrack and should have dropped it then and there. That would’ve been the decent thing to do. But as always, Neil couldn’t just let it go. “Finally got laid, did you?”
Turning his head away, Patrick gazed into the darkness and then, without warning, laughed. But it seemed a bit too contrived, leaving Neil to speculate that his friend wasn’t having as much fun as the rest of them. Patrick had always been the odd man out among his friends. Where Neil and the others had known each other prior to high school, Patrick had moved to Princeton just before their freshman year. He’d fallen in easily enough with Neil and his friends, but Patrick lacked that “mutual history” that had truly defined their group.
Jeremy rose from his chair to lay another log on the campfire, while Rob reached into the cooler and pulled out another bottle of Corona. He handed it to Neil. “Have another cold one.”
More than an hour had passed since his arrival, and most of it had been spent drinking, laughing, and reminiscing. When he’d left Camp Tenskwatawa, Neil had left everything behind, his four friends included. Moving on to bigger and better things had meant leaving behind any baggage that might get in the way, like his friends. As he twisted the cap off the beer bottle, Neil realized, for the first time in his life, that being a selfish bastard wasn’t necessarily all it was cracked up to be.
Placing the bottle to his lips, Neil took a long sip. “Do you guys remember Stinky Bateman?” When no one responded, he added, “Come on, you gotta remember him. That skinny kid. He was a counselor the same time we were. Damn, we gave him hell every summer.”
The memories caused Neil to laugh. He hadn’t been kidding when he said that they’d given Stinky Bateman hell every summer. There was no one that Neil remembered who they’d tormented more during those three summers. He and his friends had found endless ways to embarrass and humiliate Bateman before the entire camp. If there had been an opportunity to ridicule the boy, Neil had found it and exploited it to the extreme. He’d become the bane of Stinky Bateman’s existence for three long summers. If there had ever been a person who received the most contemptible treatment that Neil could dish out, it had been Bateman.
What had surprised Neil was that the boy seemed to just take it all, never exposing him or his friends to the camp owners. Bateman simply allowed it to continue day in and day out. At the time, Neil figured that the kid just wasn’t very smart. Maybe he thought he had no choice but to endure the ongoing harassment. Whatever the reason, Bateman had remained tight-lipped for three summers.
> “Remember when we dragged him from his cabin late one night? Taped his mouth shut and hogtied him?” Neil asked, attempting to jog their memories. “Then we tossed him in a canoe and rowed him out into the middle of the lake. We left him floating there until morning, hands and feet tied, mouth gagged!”
Glancing around at his companions, Neil couldn’t understand their silence and the solemn looks on their faces. “Or what about the time we shot arrows at him when he was supposed to be cleaning up the archery range? He went hightailing it out of there! I’m surprised we never got kicked out for that.”
He chuckled at the memories, expecting to hear additional voices joining in, but the only sound came from the crackling campfire. His laughter died away. He glanced at his companions, noticing the grim looks on their faces, each avoiding eye contact. Patrick rose from his chair, walking away from the fire with his head down.
“What the hell’s going on?” he asked. “Why the long faces?”
“I guess you didn’t hear,” said Steve.
“Hear what?”
Steve bowed his head, rubbing his creased forehead with his fingertips. “That last summer—if you remember—you left the camp two weeks early.”
Neil remembered it very well. Before he headed off to Harvard, his parents had sent him on a two-week tour of France and Italy. The timing had worked out in such a way that he had to leave prior to the end of camp season. After his departure, he’d heard nothing further about his friends, or Camp Tenskwatawa. “Yeah, I remember. But what’s that got to do—”
Steve interrupted, saying, “It happened the week after you left. They found him, early in the morning. Out along one of the trails. He’d hung himself.”
Chapter Ten
As a defense attorney, Neil had grown accustomed to surprises and shocking revelations, learning to take everything in stride with his usual callousness. Not much disturbed him these days, which left him to wonder why he found himself at a loss for words over the news of Stinky Bateman’s suicide. No snide remarks. No cynical words of dismissal.
For a moment, Neil felt as if he were on trial. A thick atmosphere of unspoken reprehension surrounded the fire, and he felt as if it were directed at him. But it only lasted a moment.
“Suicide?” Neil said. He paused for a moment, and then asked, “Who found him?”
“Patrick,” replied Steve.
Patrick had drawn back toward the fire, returning to his seat. Neil caught sight of his eyes, once again cold and dark. “That must’ve been a shock,” he said.
Patrick nodded, then looked away.
“Wilcox was called over, but he was too broken up to do anything,” explained Steve.
Rob added, “They sent all the kids home early that week. The police were called. They ruled it a suicide.”
“Did he leave a note?” Neil asked.
“Nothing was found,” replied Steve. “No one knew why he did it.”
“They allowed the summer’s last group of kids to come that following week, but . . .” Rob trailed off. He took a long drink from his Bud Light, and then added, “None of the counselors really put their hearts into it. They were all still too much in shock. Everyone was glad when the summer was over.”
“After that, things started going downhill. Several of the younger counselors refused to come back the next summer,” Jeremy explained. “Once word got around about the suicide, some parents canceled their kid’s reservations altogether. The camp never really recovered. The owners kept it limping along for years, but they never could get things back to where it was before the suicide.”
Neil heard a genuine sense of loss in their voices, as if they’d lost a dear friend. He assumed that they must be mourning the loss of the camp—surely it wasn’t over Bateman. The camp’s closure represented the end of an era, of which they’d all been a part. Even Neil was experiencing a mild whimsical longing for the days of his youth. Grieving for the past he understood. But grieving for Bateman?
As silence fell around the fire, Neil mulled over their words. No note. No way to know why he’d killed himself. It could’ve been anything. There was nothing to say that his or his friends’ actions had anything to do with Bateman’s death. If the kid couldn’t hack being teased a little, that was his problem. After all, he hadn’t even been in the camp when it happened. If anything, Bateman’s suicide just proved what Neil had suspected about the boy all along—Bateman was nothing but a coward.
Glancing at his companions again, Neil found an absence of the accusatory stares that he thought he’d seen earlier. Perhaps he’d imagined it, just his mind playing tricks.
“Well, it doesn’t really surprise me,” Neil said.
“What doesn’t?” asked Rob.
“That Stinky Bateman committed suicide. It doesn’t surprise me.”
Patrick glared across the fire at Neil. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“You know, he was weak, a little pansy,” Neil replied.
With sudden abruptness, Patrick rose from his chair, sending it tumbling out from underneath of him. The scowl on his face was brimming with rage, the malicious dark eyes reflecting the glimmering firelight. His fists clenched and unclenched repeatedly while his biceps and triceps twitched and strained against the fabric of his white t-shirt. Steve was on his feet in an instant, placing a restraining hand on Patrick’s shoulder. Patrick shrugged it off almost immediately.
“Patrick, take it easy,” Steve said.
“A pansy, huh?” growled Patrick.
Without taking his eyes off of Patrick, Neil lifted the beer bottle to his lips, taking a long sip. The calm nature of the action only seemed to enrage Patrick further. With a broad smile crossing his face, Neil found his friend’s fury not only amusing but downright funny. It took all of his strength not to laugh. He didn’t understand why Patrick was angry, and in all honesty, he didn’t care. It amused him to see his friend worked up. It was worth the entertainment value alone. As he stared at Patrick over the white-orange flames, he wondered how much goading it would take to get his friend to take a swing at him.
“Come on, you were there. You know what he was like. Insecure, dim-witted, introverted,” Neil said. “No one really liked him, not even the little kids. Bateman was a sniveling little wimp with less brains than I’ve got in my little finger. If he hadn’t offed himself, he’d probably be serving up burgers at McDonald’s. That’s about the best he’d be able to do.”
Patrick remained silent, his indignation manifesting itself as gritting teeth and deep breaths. His trembling, clenched fists gave Neil an unspoken measurement of how close Patrick was to that threshold between inaction and angry reaction. He was too close to let up now.
“Besides, I’m sure Bateman was a little faggot. We all thought that. Don’t you remember what I did to him the final week I was in camp? God, that was funny!” He paused for a moment just for effect, and then opened his eyes wide. “Oh, do you think I pushed him over the edge?” Feigning surprise, Neil placed his hand over his mouth. Then he shook his head, giving his best over-the-top impression of someone suddenly realizing the error of his ways. “I should be so ashamed.”
To Neil’s delight, over the threshold he went.
Patrick took a step forward, exclaiming, “You bastard!”
Jeremy was out of his seat in an instant, as was Rob, both joining Steve to hold Patrick back. Shrugging off their grasps, Patrick tried to push forward, but their hands gripped his shoulders and arms. Neil remained seated, serenely sipped at his Corona, and watched with interest as his companions struggled to hold Patrick at bay. Pushing against their arms, Patrick tried to wrestle free from their grasp. Arms thrashed and shoved in a simultaneous effort to extricate and subdue. Shouts for calm were intertwined with curses as Neil’s four companions grappled before him.
“All right! All right!” Patrick said after a few moments. “I’m
fine!”
The ruckus subsided as Steve, Jeremy, and Rob cautiously released Patrick from their grasp. Sweat dripped from their faces, and, despite Patrick’s assurance, the trio remained guarded, not stepping far from him in case things should turn violent again.
Pointing across the campfire, Patrick said, “You’re a goddamn jackass, Brewster. Do you know that?”
Neil smiled. “I think we’ve all known that for years.”
Turning away from the fire, Patrick abruptly strode away into the darkness, his shoulders hunched forward and his head bowed.
“Where are you going?” shouted Jeremy.
“For a walk,” replied Patrick without turning around.
Steve asked, “You want a flashlight?”
As Patrick disappeared in the night, he replied, “I don’t need a fucking flashlight.”
When Patrick had vanished into the darkness, Neil’s remaining three companions returned to their seats, each silently watching the flickering fire and lost in their own thoughts. For several minutes, the crackling of the flames was the only sound heard. Neil let out a soft sigh of satisfaction, still recovering from the euphoric rush he’d received watching Patrick lose control. For him, it was better than drugs.
“You couldn’t just leave it alone, could you?” Jeremy said.
“Three years ago, I defended a drug addict named Gregory Harrison. Not my usual type of client, but he had friends in high places,” said Neil. “The guy beat an old woman to death with her own cane for two-hundred and fifty dollars. All so he could score a little more coke. When I met him the first time, he was still suffering from withdrawal. Nasty son of a bitch. Threw a chair against the wall. Got in my face a dozen times. Probably could’ve snapped my neck with his bare hands.”
“Your point is?” asked Rob.
Neil reached his arms behind his head, clasping his fingers together. “Patrick’s little outburst can’t hold a candle to Harrison’s.”
Steve laughed, gestured over his shoulder in the direction that Patrick had walked, and then said, “He doesn’t need a fucking flashlight.”
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