by Gabe Sluis
Chapter 2- The Camping Trip
All four windows of the pickup were down as it sped up Highway 1 on a bright summer night. The heater was on full blast and the stereo’s volume joined in harmony. Chris slid the four-door truck around the winding curves of the two lane coastal highway with reflexive skill. The words to Ludo’s “Lake Pontchartrain” were being sung at the top of the trio’s lungs, in an attempt to overcome the roaring wind and the blaring music. Jake, in the passenger seat, occasionally reached over to drum on Chris, keeping time with percussive points in the song. Chris tilted and stretched his head to the center of the vehicle singing along with the high notes. Donny, who was not as familiar with the song, sat in the middle of the back seat, grinning and drumming along. This was the only way to listen to good music on a road trip up north on a cool summer night.
The song ended and Donny reached up and tapped Chris. “How much further you think?”
“We are almost to Fort Ross, so it shouldn’t be much further. Ten minutes?” he said.
“Hey, pull over when you see a spot,” Jake said. “I gotta take a piss.”
The roar of deceleration on gravel signaled Chris had found the requested turnout. All three climbed out, their surroundings temporarily black as their eyes adjusted to the lack of non-ambient light. Chris tucked a chair deeper into the gear-packed bed on his way over to the nominated bathroom area. The wind was at their backs, sweeping down from the mountains, out to the vast sea below. Jake warned the other two about their position near the drop off point of the sea cliff. Down below, the moonlight reflected off the white water created by the ocean crashing against the rock outcroppings. After they were done, they all stood still and looked around.
“The stars are so bright out here. You can see the milky way so clearly,” Donny said.
“Yeah, we are pretty far from the bright lights of the city,” Jake added.
“I wonder how many whales are totally just swimming out there right now!” Donny brought up, out of nowhere.
“Probably a lot, D.B.,” Chris said as if he was speaking the obvious.
“When are Steve and them supposed to get there?” Jake asked.
“I don’t have any reception out here,” Chris said. “They said that they were going to leave as soon as Matt got off work. So I expect they are only a half-hour behind us. We aughta get back on the road so we can get up there soon. I hope we can find a site in the dark.”
“Yeah, I’ll get the fire going as soon as we find a spot,” Jake said and took the lead back to the truck. “I’m glad we found a weekend to get away, guys. I love it up here.”
“Yeah, I miss you guys. We don’t hang out as much as we should.”
“Oh, Donny. We hang out plenty. Work and school just keeps us busy. Growing up sucks,” Chris said as doors slammed.
The truck was thrown in gear and dust filled the spot where it had a moment ago rested. “I know, I just miss all the good times when we played video games together all the time and had no cares.”
They had the highway to their lonesome and Chris took advantage by riding the roads rather than the lines. Through the dark night they sped all the way to the campground that was tucked back up in the costal forest.
The fire was going and chairs surrounded the glow when a second car arrived. The new three shouted irreverent greetings as they began to unload their gear and set up their own tent. Beers were cracked, food was impaled on roasting sticks, and the six guys sat around the fire as the night truly began.
“This is a pretty good spot,” Dan said. He was the largest of the group, with a big frame and goofy grin. “Its pretty far out though. How did you find out about this place?”
“My dad used to take the three of us out here on camping trips, when we were younger. He said it used to remind him of when my grandpa took him back to where he grew up on the coast of Ireland,” Chris said
“That’s pretty cool,” Matt said and laughed. Matt laughed a lot, which was the best thing about him. You never wanted to see the usually quiet Matt angry, but mostly, he was always laughing.
“So exactly how long have you three known each other? I know you all went to school together…” Steven asked.
The fire was warm in the cool night. Everyone was wrapped in a jacket or hoodie, slouched comfortably in their camping chairs. Jake rotated his stick with a bratwurst on the end and answered.
“Well these two,” he said, motioning to Chris and Donny, “Both went to Almond Knoll together from, what, kindergarten?”
“Yeah,” Donny agreed. He grabbed himself and Jake another beer as the story continued.
“So they were friends by the time I showed up in sixth grade. My parents thought I wouldn’t be able to handle public school, so they sent me there. We were all in the Star Wars nerd group. We used to bring our toys and build bases at recess. We all collected Star Wars cards and I meshed right in with Chris and Donny. The funniest part, is Donny didn’t even like me at first!”
That got Donny laughing.
“Yeah! I thought you were a jerk because you wouldn’t trade me an R2-D2 and some two other cards. I don’t eve remember what they were, they were probably junk, but you had two R2’s and I really wanted one!”
“And I didn’t even know this until, like three years ago. It had just always felt to me like we’ve always been friends, so I totally forgot about that part. But I get it, I was probably a bossy little dickhead when I was eleven.”
“You totally were!”
“But you guys used to be so mean to me, you would intentionally do stuff to set me off! You guys thought you were so funny. Like the time I almost killed Chris with my sword…”
“Whoa! What? I never heard about this,” Dan said.
“So we are all over at Jake’s house, and he was playing our favorite video game,” Chris began.
“Breath of Fire Four,” Donny added in.
“Yeah. So, in this game, you can go fishing, with different rods and lures and stuff. There was this one lure, a really basic lure, that never caught anything good, and I kept saying to him, ‘Use the frog lure! Use the frog lure!’ I was sitting behind him, right, and I’d keep poking him and telling him to use the frog lure, and Jake looses his fucking marbles! He starts yelling incoherently and out of nowhere pushes me backwards in my chair and I almost cracked my damn skull on the corner of his metal bed frame! He didn’t even care that he just hurt me, but kept on playing the stupid game.
“This was back when Donny lived with Jake for a year or so, so I think we were all there. It made me so mad, I peed on his bed.”
Everyone was laughing hard at this point. One half in disbelief, imagining the teenage versions of their friends acting crazy, and the other three remembering the situation from their perspective on the past.
“And let me tell you,” Jake jumped in. “When I turned around to see why Donny could barely contain himself and then saw Chris covering himself with my blankets in a peeing position, I really lost it. My bed was sacred to me. I wouldn’t let anyone on it, always kept it clean and smelling nice…”
“With rose petal squeezings!” Donny said.
“One time dude! Febreeze, mainly,” he admitted. “…It was my one sanctuary and Chris fuckin’ peed on it!”
“When I saw the rage in his eyes, I just ran! Jake grabbed this sword that he had made and came after me. As I was struggling past all the obstacles and out his door, he has the stupid homemade thing out and is stabbing at me. He totally stabbed right into the wall, narrowly missing me!”
“Yeah, he got out into the main room and I grabbed some spray starch that was in the clutter. Chris had his hands out trying to get me to calm down so I sprayed it right in his eyes. Then I broadsided him with the sword right in the balls and jumped on his back, choking him with my arms and legs. Spider-man style!”
“We did pick on you pretty hard,” Donny said. “Anytime we found something that got to you, like your bed, we were totally all
over it. But, to our credit, the reason we did all this stuff was cuz were hoping that one day you would just chill out rather than go nuts!” He laughed to himself and went on, “Another time Ryan and I went down to the creek that ran under the highway and caught all those crawdads. Jake was at work and after we ate them we put the plate of shells under his bed.”
“It smelled horrible for a week! You and my little brother, man,” he said to Donny, “You guys loved to team up against me.”
“That so funny,” Matt said. “Its so hard to imagine you freaking out like that. You seem like nothing like that would get to you now,” he said to Jake.
“Yeah, well, one day I just stopped letting it get to me. I remember making a decision to stop overreacting and they didn’t find it so funny anymore,” he concluded. “Donny and me messed with Chris really bad too. This one time in eighth grade, back when Chris was going out with Amber, we tried to stab him in the back pretty hard. Chris was just too smart for us.”
“Back in eighth grade, all the cool kids switched over to wearing boxers,” Chris began, knowing the story Jake was bringing up. “But I still liked the support of briefs. So my solution was to wear boxers over my whitie-tighties.”
Everyone was laughing hard at this. Jake and Donny laughed mainly at the disbelieving reaction from Dan, while Matt and Steven thought it a very typical Chris logic. Once it died down, Donny took over.
“So we were on a school trip to Six Flags and we were trying to be cool kids; I just started dating Marie, and you Amber,” he said to Chris. “And we were all sitting around this table, a big group of us, and Chris goes off to use the bathroom. For some reason we decide to tell everyone this fact that we had recently found out, totally betraying our best friend. The girls found it hysterical, and when he comes back, they confront him about it.
“He looks all guilty and denies it, and they make him prove it. He is in public, so he slides his waistband down slowly, with everyone watching and there are only his boxers. Jake and I are totally perplexed and look like the jerks we were.”
“We ask him about it later and he was so mad at us! He told us he stopped doing that along time ago. But one of us saw them on him that day, or something. Finally, he admitted that he heard us tell the girls as he was walking away and tore them off in the bathroom and flushed them down the toilet before we could bust him!”
Chris sat smugly in his chair with his arms crossed.
“He may not look like much, but Chris is a sneaky devil, sneakier than me sometimes,” Jake laughed. There was a pause in the conversation as new beers were passed out.
“And when we weren’t all messing with each other, we messed with Ryan,” Chris said.
“You met my brother through home school, right?” Jake said to Steven.
“Yeah, we had weekly classes that we went to together. Back when we were the same size.”
“I remember little Ryan, back when he was home schooled. He was such a little spaz!” Donny said. “Jake and I came home from school, when I lived there, and we are walking up to the front door, and this skinny blond kid pops up in the front window with his shirt around his head like long hair. He starts making clucking sounds like a parrot or something,” he laughed.
“Yeah, we were the two little skater punks in our class. We were like little twins, except for the opposite color hair. Its crazy how big he has gotten since he has been in the Army, I wish I had a late growth spurt,” Steven said.
“Its so funny to watch all our old skate videos and see Ryan screaming at us in his high pitched voice!” Donny said.
“Its funny, that’s how I know all of you guys,” Jake said, speaking of the other three, “through my brother. I just remember coming home from basic training and hanging out with all you guys cuz you all worked at the bowling alley with Chris and Ryan.”
“And look at us now, better friends with you even after Ryan left to play Army in Kentucky,” Chris said.
“What exactly is he even doing out there?” Matt asked.
“He is in a Pathfinder unit,” Jake told them. “They are pretty elite. Teams of six jump ahead of the main force and set up landing zones for the regular troops that air-assault in by helicopter. I have a sergeant in my company that did the same thing before he went National Guard. It sounds like a totally awesome job. They get a lot of opportunities for extra schools and stuff.”
“How much longer is he in for?”
“I think he has two years left on his last enlistment. He says he is going to get out, but I don’t believe him. He is a lifer. He likes it too much.”
The night was moving along nicely. Logs were added to the fire, bratwursts and biscuits were cooked on sticks, and no one was without a cool beverage. The guys were all enjoying reliving the memories from their past, which they infrequently would pull out and share on nights like this. These were the events that shaped their young lives, and they were important because they were the foundation on which their unbreakable friendship was built.
“Alright, what’s another good one? How about the time I walked in on you in the shower!” Jake said. Donny was again barely able to begin through his laughter.
“This was also back when I used to live with Jake. So I went to Rio Oso High for my sophomore year, and I left to catch the bus an hour before Jake left for Almond Knoll.” He kept laughing remembering the joke before it could be told. “You tell it, man. It’s funny when you tell it.”
“So, I get up, just like any day and stumble down to our shared bathroom. Just like any morning… I’m half asleep and go in, not even realizing that the door is closed and the light is on. I’m standing in front of the shower and I pull my clothes off. Out of nowhere I hear, ‘Jake?’” he mimicked in a crackly voice. “I had never moved so fast! I jumped back away from the shower doors towards the toilet, naked as the day I was born! Donny had fallen asleep sitting in the tub!”
“I just remember waking up because the fan had came on and saw this butt through the frosted glass! Jake ran out of there so fast! The two of us didn’t even talk for the rest of the day cuz we were both so embarrassed!”
“It’s even funnier looking back on that now because Donny has no problem walking out of Chris’s shower, all wet with one hand over his junk, saying, ‘Hey, you guys seen my towel?’ He always does it like we are really going to find it funny the tenth time. But back when we were fourteen, or whatever, being naked in front of you best friend was traumatizing!
“It also prolly didn’t help that I thought that Donny was just the coolest dude, back then. When we were younger, that year he went to public school, he didn’t have to follow the same dress code we did, and we just thought he was so hard-core. I remember one time we were hanging out, probably skateboarding, and he was like, ‘You know what’s a funny thing to say? Sick Fuck!’ And I’d just about die busting up laughing. I tried to be cool too and was like, ‘Oh yeah? What about, fat Fuck!’ It is so stupid now, but we were pretty edgy back then!”
“I totally forgot all about that!” Donny said.
“And Donny would smoke cigarettes he rolled from the unsmoked tobacco he collected from butt trays outside stores,” Jake continued. “I would show him some CD I got of a band and he would be like, ‘Just play me their hardest song,’ and judge the merits of this band based solely on that. Donny drank, and partied. He was the bad kid.”
“I wasn’t all bad,” Donny said. “You were the one who burnt the field down!”
“We should have rolled in it!” Jake said.
“We should have rolled in it!” Donny echoed.
Responding to the quizzical looks from the other three, Jake explained.
“When we were fifteen, Donny and I were up skateboarding one summer day. So, we walked back down the hill from our skate spot and across this vacant lot to get to my house. The guy who owned it dumped a bunch of trash from a burned down trailer his mom lived in, or something. We had sorted through it in the past week or so and this time as we were walking back
, I found some paper on the ground.
“To this day, I can’t remember what was on it, something I didn’t like, like a legal notice or something. So, I balled it up and lit it on fire. I was a total little pyro kid and always carried a book of matches on me. I wasn’t trying to burn anything down, I just wanted for it to burn out in the dirt, but the wind caught it and the small fire spot we tried to stomp out just kept getting bigger.”
“That’s why we always kicked ourselves for not sacrificing our bodies and just rolling on it to snuff it out. We tried to bat it out with our skateboards, but it made it worse,” Donny said.
“So we ran for it, all the way back to my house, saying every curse word we knew, and called 911.”
“Yeah,” Donny said excitedly, “I was like, ‘Fire! There’s a fire! Down the road! Fire! Fire!’ I was so out of breath and scared. The operator kept telling me to calm down. I had never called 911 before…”
“And then, for some dumb reason we went back. The fire engines were all there and a huge column of smoke… We made up this story we would tell them on our way back, that we were just walking by and a piece of glass from the trash must have magnified the sun just right and started it and we were the good guys who called it in.
“But, of course they immediately separated us, and I stuck to the story. I figured Donny would too. But he cracked, and I kept on going even though they told me they knew what really happened. I thought they were just trying to break us, but they already had. I remember this one fire-girl, patting Donny on the head, telling him he was a good kid and glaring at me. I almost went to juvie that night.”
“That’s crazy. I remember hearing your brother mentioning stuff about that, but never heard the whole story,” Steven said. “Whatever happened?”
“Donny had to do some community service and I had to go tell the guy who owned the property what I had done and almost didn’t get my license on time. I also had to go to peer court and do some community service…
“I just remember being so mad at Donny. He was the bad kid! He smoked and drank and I was the good kid! I felt like he caved on me for the longest time. But, that’s Donny. He tried to be this hardcore dude, but he has such a soft heart underneath. Be not fooled!” he finished.
“Yeah, Donny has a good heart and Ryan has the craziest luck,” Chris started his own story. “I went to Australia with Jake and Ryan a couple of years ago and almost drowned. We decided to try to swim out past the where the waves were breaking on our first day there, what beach was it?”
“Some beach south of Sydney,” Jake responded.
“Anyway,” Chris continued, “It was really dumb, when we got out there and the waves were really hitting us hard and a riptide made it really hard to swim back in. I wasn’t used to swimming like that and got super tired. We finally came to the conclusion that it was time to turn around. I was so tired that Jake had to help swim me back in, but I almost drowned him in the process. A lifeguard on a long surfboard saw us and came out to help me, but the funny part of this story was that I got rescued; Jake had to swim himself in, and Ryan! He catches a perfect wave and body surfs all the way to shore, like it was nothing! We all entered to win this big TV in a drawing at the store, this one time, and out of probably a thousand people, he wins!”
“Your right, too,” Jake said. “When we were kids, and my mom would make us pick a number between one and ten, to see who would get something, he would always win. My mom began to think that he was just good at reading her face for what number she would pick, so she would make it out of twenty-five or fifty. Still, more often than not, he would win.”
Dan agreed, “That’s Ryan, when we were in our bowling league, he was defiantly good. Regardless if it was luck or skill, he acted like it was all him, not like, ‘Hey look, I just got a really lucky roll.’”
“Its like he has been lucky his whole life and he is just used to it being there,” Steven added.
“Yeah, it comes off as cockiness too. That’s probably why we gave him such a hard time as a kid. It was too easy to pick on him. And it was okay, cuz my little whelp of a brother just deserved it!”
The conversation started to lull. The guys were all a few beers deep and the fire was warm on all their faces. The night was getting to be late, and Jake settled on telling one last story that half the group hadn’t heard. Chris and Donny immediately perked up at the beginning of the last and best story of the evening.
“Like we have been saying,” Jake began, “We were hard on Ryan growing up. It’s prolly why he is so damn tough now. But this last one, we don’t tell to too many people, this last one it a bit shameful and hilariously debasing at the same time. This was the worst thing we ever did to Ryan.”
Everyone was listening now. Dan popped a fresh beer, Steven and Matt sat up on the front of their camping chairs. No one interrupted or added critical observations. Jake alone had control over the flow of the narrative.
“So back when we were sixteen, this was the summer after the fire, we all could finally drive, and so we started to find a bunch of new river spots. We scoped out this spot down by the river near Chris’s house, and since it was close, it became our main spot. It had some decent rocks to jump off, it was secluded, and most of all, it was our own. We would bring some girls and a couple other friends occasionally, but no one else ever went there, as far as we ever saw.
“So, one summer day, we are down at the river, and it’s the three of us,” he motioned to Chris and Donny, “and Ryan was there. On the walk down, Donny and I started this weird tradition of pissing ourselves on the way to the water. It was a funny thing because, that is so unacceptable, right? But we were in the water right away and wet, so it was just a gag. I guess that was the gateway prank to this whole mess.
“So, we got up to the spot and began to enjoy the hot day. We would jump off rocks and then climb back up to the main ledge by this one route. This way had another big rock behind it, so you couldn’t jump back and into the water if you wanted to bail out. It wasn’t that high, but once you started the climb, you went up or had to climb back down to the water.
“Ryan is climbing up the rock, and Chris… Chris decided to just whip it out and piss all over him as he tried to climb up the rock! We are all at the top, cracking up as he clings to the rock and shrieks in his high pitched voice. Chris is laughing so hard he can barely keep his stream flowing! It ended and Ryan’s hollering quit eventually. But, unfortunately, it got worse.
“The next level, I brought it to. We were on this wild streak, and I spotted some dog shit. I have no idea where it came from, maybe one of our dogs we brought some other day, but I picked up this old turd, and hucked it right at Ryan! He screamed and leapt into the water, I don’t know if I hit him. But it was the concept. I opened the floodgates. And then it just happened.
“I shit in my hand and threw it at my little brother.
“Then Chris did, and so did Donny. I don’t know what had possessed us; it was as if we didn’t know that we were acting like a bunch of wild beasts. I just clearly remember seeing shit hit Ryan in the chest and it splattering there. He yelled and yelled and I think he had to go a ways up the river to get away from us. We just thought it was the funniest thing in the world.”
After the laughter had dried up, the group all called it a night. They left the coals of the fire burning and climbed in their tents. They were full of food and drink and happy after an evening surrounded by friends. Chris brought his five-man tent and he, Jake, and Donny lay shoulder to shoulder in their bags. It felt like the old days when they were in junior high, having sleepovers.
“We should have brought a strobe light!” Donny whispered sleepily.
“Yeah, and watched some ‘Air Force One’ and then play some Star Fox,” Chris agreed.
“Good old days…” Jake said and yawned. “I remember the first time I came over to your house, my mom dropped me of at like six in the morning for some reason. It was raining and I didn’t see anyone insid
e, so I knocked quietly. And no one came so I did again, and turned to sit on the step, to wait for people to wake up. Suddenly your dad opened the door like I was going to be a burglar or something, and I was so scared. He was huge, and you know how he is the first time you meet him. I told him I was supposed to go to the mall with you today and he looked at me like it was three in the morning. He finally let me in and I had to sit on the couch until you finally got up at like nine.” A pause. “How is your dad doing?”
“Work is getting stressful. Business is slowing down. He has Clyde and three other on and off workers, but it seems like he is always busy running around to different jobs. He works too hard and has to overdraw the account every month just to pay the guys,” Chris said.
“What? I don’t get it.”
“He gets paid for the jobs after the work and just has to take the hits on the overdraft fees when he has to pay his employees in the mean time. Its such a bad way to run his business, but he says its just until things pick back up again.”
“It’s like you with those payday loans, Donny,” Jake said.
“I don’t use those anymore,” Donny said, almost asleep. “I was in deep with them for a second. You are going to school for accounting, why don’t you take over your dad’s books?”
“My dad doesn’t want me to follow in his footsteps, running the family business. He would rather me get a good job with a set retirement. I don’t blame him. He is having a really hard time these last couple years. He has been really stressed out lately, especially with this guy he is doing some contract work for.”
“Donny’s snoring. I’m out of gas too, man. Breakfast and a hike down to the water tomorrow?”
“Yeah, night buddy.”
“Night…”
