“I do,” Phil said. “She’s smart. I can talk to her. That’s light-years hotter in my book.”
“I just don’t see it,” Mark said. “She’s like somebody’s cousin.”
Phil thought about this, feeling it well-observed on Mark’s part, but said nothing.
“Rachel, now she was gorgeous,” Mark continued. “Brown hair, tall. Those green eyes. Christ, she was out of my league.”
Phil had to bite his tongue. Rachel was, in fact, one of the ugliest girls he’d ever seen in his entire life. After he’d gotten to know her, he softened on this because her personality more than made up for it and he genuinely understood what Mark saw in her.
But gorgeous? Not by anyone’s yardstick, which is why he sometimes forgave Mark’s outright misogyny when he spoke about other women as it was obviously shtick.
“How about a hike around the lake?” asked Mark, exasperated enough to suggest anything to get them out of the cabin. “Promise to stop and flirt if we find Faith?”
Phil thought about this, then nodded and got off his bunk. “Sounds like a plan.”
As they headed out of the cabin, the division between the two types of campers at Easley were distinct and on display. Down by the water, you had the football game going on – seven-on-seven – David Boss quarterbacking. As Mark had guessed, a number of the more popular Church of the Lamb girls were gathered around watching, many of them dressed down in the skimpiest of bikinis, some borderline indecent. The counselors and the campers knew this kind of swimwear would be frowned on by just about any parent or church council member who might see, but as snapshots of such things didn’t exactly make it into the online wrap-up or the church bulletin board at the end of summer, Father Billy took a live-and-let-live approach.
“I don’t think policing wardrobe is our job, frankly,” he had now-famously (and oft-quotedly) remarked one summer when confronted by an offended counselor – a somewhat holier-than-thou fellow – who claimed to be particularly aggrieved on behalf of the congregation. “I say we just let it go and let them decide what they’re comfortable with. Trust the group.”
The counselor left in a huff and hadn’t come back the following year. No one seemed to mind.
Not that the counselor didn’t have a point. There were plenty of guys and girls who let their minds wander to matters of sex, including a number who treated the church camp as their own private summer getaway. There were whispers every spring-into-summer about which girls were planning to lose their virginities at that year’s camp, but a lot of that turned out to be apocryphal. There were make-out sessions, sure, some heavy petting, definitely a few attempts at oral sex (some less than successful, as in the case of Cindy and Whit), but incidents of actual intercourse were few and far between, even among the counselors.
For the counselors, they mostly kept up an unspoken agreement that even though they knew they could get away with it, they abstained from sex – for the most part, at least. There were some isolated incidents, usually amongst the ones that hadn’t come to the camp as couples and ended up in clumsy, late-night embraces out of loneliness or boredom, but after a barrage of single- and double-entendres from the other counselors the next morning, one night stands usually stayed just that.
But then, there were plenty of campers on the opposite end of the spectrum where the likelihood of sexual coupling was almost non-existent. This group generally kept their clothes on that first Sunday and could be found wandering around the camp aimlessly, reading, chatting or just hanging out, some because they didn’t know anybody else or didn’t fit in with any clique, but others because they fit into a subgroup of campers there solely for Bible study and were at a loss on days without classes.
The undisputed leader of this non-group was a 15 year-old pinch-faced boy named Douglas Perry who was also president of the Young Men’s Fellowship Group at Church of the Lamb. He didn’t try to hide his ambition to graduate into becoming a counselor the following year, even though that privilege was generally reserved for high school graduates. He was devout, had considered becoming a priest himself, but was now leaning more towards going into to the military at some point which better suited his martinet of a personality, likely after first going ROTC at SMU, his college of choice (partly, it was assumed, because it would allow him to continue living at home with his mother and father).
Of course, even Douglas and his group had their detractors.
“I can’t stand that guy,” Mark said every time he and Phil saw him, a running joke.
“Which guy, that guy?” Phil would always retort.
“Yeah, that guy-that guy,” Mark would reply. “I can’t stand that guy.”
And so on.
Of course, there were leftovers from the jocks and the Bible-thumpers; first-time campers who had never been away from home before, teens who figured this was the best way around a summer job or just wanted to get away from their parents, or general weirdoes, nerds and outcasts. After one summer at the camp, when they realized there really wasn’t much of a place for them there, most didn’t return. Mark and Phil were among the exceptions to that rule.
“You see her anywhere?” Phil asked, scanning the campsite for Faith as they walked a slow circuit around the cabins.
“Nope,” replied Mark, whose gaze was focused squarely on Leilani’s bikini-clad ass whenever it came into view. “Where would she be?”
“Dunno,” said Phil, but then got an idea. “The Rocks?”
“Ah, yeah. You’re probably right.”
Though the grounds around Lake Carlisle were fairly woodsy and flat, there were some areas of gradation including a short Cliffside dubbed The Rocks, which rose high over a particularly deep part of the lake. The water directly below The Rocks was deep enough to allow diving, for the most part, but the counselors frowned on it as there was no telling what kind of underwater obstacles might have made their way into the lake and secreted themselves in the murky water below the cliff during the storms and bad weather of the just-previous winter. Of course, this kept no one from trying their hand at cliff-diving, just most let a few of the bravest souls go first to test it out each new year.
Phil and Mark made the quick, five hundred yard trek to The Rocks, shadowing the lake from just within the dense thicket, filled with tall pines, blackjack oaks and red cedars. The trail was pretty sandy as long as there were trees, but then it began filling with rocks, building up towards the craggy outcropping known as the Rocks, which blocked the trail and could only be circumnavigating by swimming around it in the lake or hiking a good ways deeper into the woods. Most simply climbed up and over them as this seemed to be the shortest route around the boulder pile, but it resulted in a great number of skinned shins and palms.
“Dammit!” cried Phil, slipping off a particularly large chunk of granite and bashing his knee into a tree branch laying on the trail. He made the mistake of looking to Mark for sympathy; Mark who was overall slightly more athletic and agile.
“Piece of cake,” Mark exclaimed, making a point of bouncing up the rest of the short rocky path to the summit. Phil kept hoping his friend would miss at least one step, but sure enough, Mark was able to negotiate his way to the top like a mountain goat and swiftly disappeared from sight.
When Phil joined Mark atop The Rocks a few minutes later, any residual pain from the climb fell away as he found his hypothesis proven out as not only were Faith and Maia there, they were both reading books and it appeared that they’d been there for some time. Maia had her shirt off, revealing a distinctly unrevealing bikini top and Mark, squatting next to the two girls, kept stealing glances at her bare, chestnut skin.
Faith squinted up at Phil as he crested the boulders and smiled. “Hey, Phil.”
“Hey. Guess I was wrong about having The Rocks to ourselves today.”
“Guess so, but we won’t kick you out,” Faith said this last part with a taunting grin, which Phil seemed to feel was an invitation to sit, so he did.
“What are you reading?” he
asked. Faith showed him and he nodded. “Wow. I probably checked those out just before you. Really cool stuff.”
“Did you read all four?” she asked, duly impressed.
Phil nodded and was about to offer his critical assessment when he was interrupted by Mark.
“Yeah, for weeks every time I’d go to his house, he’d be there in his mom’s hammock in the backyard, like he was reading the phone book or something,” Mark said. “Could barely tear him away.”
Phil grimaced, but liked that Mark gave him and Faith something to mutually eye-roll about.
From out of nowhere, they suddenly heard screaming echoing up from the direction of the camp and they all quickly looked over only to see that the football game had devolved into some sort of water rugby-cum-wrestling match with the boys throwing each other into the sandy water before going after the girls. The scream had come as one of the boys had gone after Becca Roy, one of the smallest girls on the cheerleading squad, and had raised her all the way over his head before throwing her back into the water. That by itself didn’t elicit the scream, however; it was the fact that her bikini top was almost torn off in the process.
But the second she bobbed out of the water, Becca ran up to the cackling perpetrator, yanked his bathing suit down before he knew what happened and her screams turned to hysterical laughter as she pointed at his pale, zit-covered ass.
“These guys all go to your school?” Maia asked, looking at Mark, voice full of derision.
“Yeah, pretty much,” he replied. “They’re the most popular kids. Our version of glitterati.”
“Really?” Maia asked, surprised. “Well, that’s wild.”
“How come?” asked Phil, having believed the hierarchical status afforded to jocks and cheerleaders was pretty much universal.
“I grew up on Army bases where the Catholic kids were never the popular kids,” Maia explained. “In fact, they were usually down at the bottom of the pecking order next to the Jews and Jehovah’s Witnesses. Protestants – they ruled the roost for the most part.”
Maia’s words might as well have been in a foreign language as Phil, Mark and Faith were all pondering this in the same manner. The idea that there could be a pecking order based on religion just wasn’t something they were familiar with or, at least, not that they’d noticed. And Catholics on the bottom? Crazy!
“Where do you go to school now?” Phil asked.
“Crocker in Cedar Hill,” Maia said, to which Mark nodded.
“My mom substitute taught there a couple of times. Tough school.”
“Not really,” Maia shrugged. “Well, you three wouldn’t last five minutes there, but it’s not so bad.”
Mark smirked. “You think we’d get shot or something?”
“Or something,” Maia replied, sizing Mark up. “You don’t strike me as the brave type.”
This took Mark aback. He didn’t exactly relish people piercing the ever-present bubble of cocksure confidence he worked so hard to exude.
“You want to see brave?” Mark asked, a smirk in his voice. “Watch this.”
Mark got to his feet, kicked off his shoes and walked to the edge of the cliff. Phil quickly jumped up and went over next to him.
“Oh, come on,” Phil whispered. “Don’t be retarded. No one’s gone in yet.”
But Mark continued scanning the water below. Finally, he turned a grin on his onlookers.
“Then the thing to do is to not think about it, riiiiigh...?” Mark said, before stepping off the edge.
Phil instinctively grabbed for his friend, but then caught his balance and took a few steps back from the rocks.
“Oh, my God...!” Faith said, her eyes going wide as she and Maia leaped to their feet and ran to the edge.
The drop was between four and five stories straight down, but it felt like a lifetime before they heard Mark hit the water with a tremendous splash. Phil watched him the whole way down with a mix of terror and exhilaration. Out on the beach, the cavorting jocks and cheerleaders all heard the splash and were looking out towards The Rocks, wondering who had the stones to go first that year.
“Whoooooaaaa!” cried Mark as he rocketed back to the surface. “It’s fucking cold!!”
“Whooooo-hooo!!” yelled Maia in response before shedding her shorts to reveal the rest of her rust-colored bikini. She turned to Faith and grinned. “You coming?”
“Never in a million years,” Faith replied, giving her a look of and-I-can’t-believe-you-would,-either.
“Okay. Try not to miss me!”
With that, Maia backed up a few feet to get a running start, then dashed out over the edge, launching herself a couple of yards out past the cliff before gravity took over. Faith watched her all the way down as Mark, noticing he might be in the landing zone, quickly swam a few feet away.
“I can’t believe she just did that,” Faith said, finishing her sentence as Maia smacked into the lake, sending up a shower of water drops that rained down on Mark. “What if there was something under the surface?”
Phil just shrugged. “They’re lunatics, our friends.”
Down below, Maia broke the surface, pushing her tangled hair out of her eyes as she smiled up to Faith and Phil. “Oh, my God – he was right! It’s freezing!”
“More reason to stay up here in the sun!” Faith cried back.
“Whatever!” Maia yelled, splashing her way over to Mark who was still surprised that she’d so easily followed him down as he thought what he’d done required the height of courage.
Phil watched as Mark and Maia dared each other to swim underwater or race or something, but then looked back at Faith, shaking his head. “They’re made for each other.”
“You think she likes him?” Faith asked.
“What’s not to like?” Phil replied. “But he’s still stuck on that girl, Rachel and probably will be for awhile.”
“Oh, yeah,” Faith nodded. “They were a thing, right? I couldn’t stand her.”
“Hah,” Phil said. “She was okay. That said, not sure your friend is really his type.”
“Because she’s funny?” Faith asked. “Or because she’s black?”
“But she’s not black, right?” Phil countered, not realizing Faith was joking. “Not all the way, anyway. Maybe black and Mexican, but then something else. She did say she was military, so maybe she’s half-Vietnamese.”
Faith shrugged. “I don’t know what she is, but I do think she’s pretty.”
“Oh, me, too,” Phil said quickly, realizing what he was saying. “I’m just thinking about for Mark.”
Faith didn’t reply and Phil looked down at his shoes, knowing how awkward he’d made the back-and-forth when all he’d wanted to do was have a nice couple of moments with Faith to tee-up something for later. He thought about apologizing for sounding like an outright bigot, but Faith was just staring out at the lake, perhaps giving him an exit, probably wanting him to leave.
“Hey, I didn’t mean in the way it sounded,” Phil began. “I know she’s your friend. I wasn’t trying to be racist.”
But before Phil could finish, a number of the jocks who had formerly been tossing the football around on the beach bounded up the boulders to do some cliff-diving of their own.
“Watch this!” cried one of the guys, a big, linebacker-type, who did a comical kind of skydiver-style leap, arms straight out, stomach exposed for the world’s worst belly flop, which — just at the moment before striking the water – he rolled into a clean, thread-the-needle-style dive, barely making so much as a splash as he plunged beneath the lake.
Naturally, this was followed by a host of one-upmanship boastings by his comrades, all of whom began flying off the cliff into the water in a variety of dives, ranging from the clumsy to the passably expert. Faith, whom the jocks didn’t seem to notice any more than Phil, rose to her feet and picked up her book.
“It’s fine,” she said to Phil, quick and dismissive as she retreated towards the trail leading down.
Phil tried to come up with something to say back, something that would fix his error and restart the conversation, but came up dry.
“Dammit!” he cried, getting him a couple of looks from the pack of jocks that stood on the cliff’s edge.
“What’s wrong, man?”
Phil looked up and saw that one of the jocks was actually a skinny, deeply-tanned boy named Colby Keating who Phil had known since they were either five or six and who’d always been a friend to him.
“Nothing,” Phil shrugged under-his-breath, before heading down the path after Faith.
Father Billy thought he’d been about nine or ten when he’d learned that what killed you in a crucifixion wasn’t the fact that you had long spikes driven into your ankles and wrists that made you bleed out, but had been told that death was actually caused when the body succumbed to asphyxiation as it became increasing difficult over time for a victim to inhale. It was only much later that he heard that this wasn’t the case either and that most of those crucified died from rapidly-spreading infection resulting from exposure or hypovolemic shock due to dehydration. This kind of death took days and during that time, that those crucified, a word that came from the same Latin root that brought “excruciating” to the language, also endured the public humiliation of not only being nude while on the cross, but also having to urinate and defecate in front of others as they slowly died.
It seemed like an utterly humiliating way to go.
Father Billy thought about this when he’d gone to the church council to explain why he felt the giant wooden crucifix he’d only bought a couple of years before now had to be lowered, checked and later re-hung, he ran into some resistance as most believed there was nothing wrong with it. Only after he explained that he was afraid that he’d pulled it loose from its moorings when he’d grabbed for it during his fall and that it might one day collapse down on a parishioner did they decide to go along with his plan.
After professional movers had lowered it from the wall and loaded it into the truck of a parishioner named Jay Berger, Father Billy had it driven to his house where he had offered to clean it thoroughly before replacing it on the wall behind the altar. With the help of a couple of neighbors, Father Billy set it up on a pair of saw horses in his garage, thanked everyone profusely, then closed the garage door and covered the windows.
Sunday Billy Sunday Page 5
