Charles Frost's Draft

The Box In the end, it was like pages of a journal being ripped from its binding and thrown about the room. Every page on that journal was etched with a secret, the tendrils of stories that I hadn’t seen in the lives of others as they passed before me. People for whom I’d been an extra in their grand play as they were in mine. It had been a high shelf and the cardboard box was heavier than I had realized. As it fell over my head and slid through my hands I realized that there wasn’t a lid. There were the sounds of flapping paper, binders, and other objects hitting the wood floor of the bedroom that Dad had turned into a library once we kids had left. Turning about all I could see on the flooring were emotions and moments in time dropped; and I feel like I need to explain. There’s something important from where I’ve been to how I’m here and that maybe that there were no excuses, but perhaps no blame either. To explain to a person that might have been standing watching bits of my life lay on the floor, to explain the mess that it had created. That there was a higher truth to what I’ve been learning, observing, that couldn’t be taught but had to be recognized, experienced. Everyone in my life seemed to have been trying desperately to explain as well; in their silences, the pauses between their monologues. My sister called out, she was helping mom cook dinner upstairs, asking if everything was alright. It’s alright, I had called back, it’s nothing. I realize that I’ve picked up the habit of pausing myself. I start picking through the piles of notes, papers, and letters and photos with a descriptive phrasing and dates, explaining the image. The more I picked through the pile the bigger it seemed to have gotten. If there was any order to the pile on the floor, leafing through it just seemed to make it worse. I realized that the handwriting changed but that at one point it had been mine. Hand writing neat enough to be mistaken for a girl’s. It was in the a’s and s’s. So different that it was another person’s writing jotting down shadows on the wall and now I was translating them. Another person telling me what to think and what to feel, but I’m them as well. Old writing went from soft cursive to plain print. Penmanship getting bigger, pencil point pressed harder on the paper. From pencil to ink. Finally from print, to scrawls. I finally left the mess. They’re always easier to leave and forget and come back later when they’ve lost their importance, the immediate chaos begging for commitment. I went upstairs and went into the kitchen. Mom and my sister stood side by side at the stove and counter, one frying beef and the other making salad. Dad was at the table, his hair turning white at the sides of his hair and then sprinkling pin points of white against black on the top of his head. He had a mug of coffee, decaffeinated for medical reasons. I grabbed a mug from a cabinet and got coffee. I stood there blowing on it. Dad looked up from the paper; brow furled looking into me-trying to look into me and says: you’d make a good communist. His eyes cast downward and a decompressed smile froms, making dimples in his cheeks. Almost got it cleaned out? His moment of inspection done, I stood there for a moment. I don’t even have enough faith to believe in nothing. I’m really just making more of a mess. I left then, going back down the stairs. I set the box upright, placing the mug on the floor beside me, and decide to just start piling the incident away and sorting it out later once I unpack at my place. I started to gather the heavy stuff together, the three ring binders that where tearing at the creases with the plastic pulling back, exposing the cardboard skeleton inside it. Inside, from the fall, the papers are starting to fall out, ripped from the inside. If I moved too quickly over the papers, air would flow between them and wood flooring and they would drift further out across the room. Being slow kept it slightly neater. Some of the notes were crinkled and others looked brand new. There was a spiral note book resting at the edge of the pile with a black front cover. Tenderly I opened it up to see what was inside, what had been so important to punch holes in and seal in protected covering. Inside was a printed off email that I had sent to my grandfather once I’d finished school explaining a little about my summer at a camp when I was starting my first year away at school. I set the binder aside for a moment and picked up a photograph a little over a decade old of a counselor that I had known. On the side of the box that was against the wall were the words ‘Jesus Land’ scrawled in permanent marker with a slanted cross off to the side. I picked up the binder again and started to read and a different self begins to speak. I notice that I had signed it using my full name, and not the nick name. Very few individuals call me by the formal name, a hand full of old friends, a few professors when I was in school, and close friends who try to impress upon something important. You begin to rediscover this other self. HMI August ‘06 Austin comes stomping across the dinning hall’s floor yelling your name and saying that an idiot is running him off his job, and he’s pissed. He’s never complained about anyone running him off a job before so you smile to yourself. It’s a little thing. You know that he has his arms straight by his sides, hands balled into fists, knees coming up to his waist as they pump on to the old linoleum floor. His twelve year old face is contorted into a mask and voice is elevated. He always has had a flair for the dramatics and he’s your biggest fan. You’re the brother he never had and possibly the father figure he’s always wanted. As you come around the corner from the kitchen you see him jut out his arm, finger pointing to a young man following him. “He’s running me off my job!” he cries. This would have been less comical in your mind if Austin wasn’t coming off his meds and didn’t have the constant kool aid mustache that has stained the corners of his mouth. You look over to the young man beside him. He is older than you by a few years and actually has muscles. His shirt is tight across his body, has a collar and is slightly unbuttoned. You see his chest hair and are glad that you’re wearing another one of you oversized shirts that hides your belly and hairless chest. The over sized clothes also make you look older than your seventeen years. You don’t recognize this staff member of the camp, he’s apart of Hockey Ministries Incorporated who is actually running the camp this week. Some rental detail, it’s Big Boulder Jesus Camp only in name. The young hockey instructor is pissed as well, and you know that Austin did something yet again, solidifying his reputation at the camp. The hockey player speaks, he drowns out Austin’s accusations and makes some of his own, “I’ve told this punk to be quiet. I’ve asked him twice. I’m just asking him to have some respect; we’re having an altar call down here. I’ll take down the chairs myself.” You realize that this situation could turn violent, mainly because of the way the man is pointing in the air and gesturing wildly. You ask him to calm down. Off in a side room of the dining room the cooks are playing board games after the day’s work. In the back you see the alter call. Old men and little kids, with a few teenagers, are sitting around the back tables with bibles and pamphlets. Some might be praying. You look back to the hockey player, he feigns hurt feelings and says that he is calming down. The pores in his face open and close and his muscles ripple, you might smell testosterone. He begins to continue his case, “We’re trying to save souls for Jesus Christ here and this punk is causing distractions”. “I’ll handle Austin, you go back to saving souls for Jesus Christ.” You’re angry that he’s yelling at you, angry at the cooks for not noticing, and annoyed with Austin and the other boys for not finishing cleaning up after the meal faster. Ultimately you’re sorry. You call the workcrew boys out of the washroom where they are scrubbing pots and pans, hands in gloves that never seem to dry out, with sweat dripping down there adolescent faces. The noise bothering process of securing souls ends, and then you and your crew are outside, sitting on the boardwalk. The girl’s workcrew chief sits by you as does your LT. Her name is Holly and you’ve always have had a crush on her. Typical blond. She actually talks to you though, one of the few. The adrenaline that was running through your system begins to die in your own muscles and veins and your body just shakes. Emotionally, you’ve been drained. You’re falling in love with the residing recovering junky, been supervising four to six boys for eight weeks for 23 hours a day, six days a week. And you are tired. She tells you that you did good handling the situation. You begin feel your eyes drowning and liquid spilling over your lids. Slowly, the first sob turns into a laugh, full and deep. The boys, Holly, and the LT look at you, then look away; studying the gravel road, looking at the clouds. Trying to give you privacy for your inside joke. You wonder why they aren’t laughing with you. Everything is one big fucking joke. Thirty minutes go by while you sit there on the boardwalk after finishing your laughter, and you assume that the saving of souls has ended and that angels are praising and celebrating in heaven for the return of lost sheep. The boys know that something happened, but they don’t quite know what. They all go back to their respective jobs and everything run smoothly in the back. Austin goes back to the chairs. He comes back to you again, telling you that people want to talk to you. You ask who, but he doesn’t know. You follow him out to the dinning room, and sitting in the back where the alter call had been there are four men and the hockey player. They are sitting around a circular table. Bibles and yellow legal pads on the surface. You approach and they ask you for your name and Austin’s name. you give them both without thinking and one of them writes them down on a notebook in front of him. You respond well to orders. After you do this, you realize that you’re at a disadvantage, because now you know that you are in a court. A council of the wise with grey bolding men and a young man of theirs. These men were playing hockey when it was still old magazines for knee pads and baseball gloves for goalie mitts. You demand their names, names that you hear and forget once the sounds enter your ears. Secretly you wish you had something to write on, something that would legitimize your authority. The hockey player gives out his name and you remember it: Whit. You add a suffix to the end of the name to remember it: Whitless, and you think you’re clever. You hold this inside and it gives you strength. He begins to speak: “I found it really disrespectful that I asked the kid to be respectful of the alter call twice, and continued to put the chairs down on the floor loudly. And then you told me to go back to saving souls. It was disrespectful. But. I forgive you.” You stand there and ponder. It’s not an apology. It’s not an excuse. You realize after looking at all their faces: the wrinkles, the scars, the eyes; that they are waiting for you to ask for forgiveness for sinning against Whitless. You search your soul but find that you’ve misplaced it in the last week. It might be in the pages of your bible that you pretend to read of the summer, could be in the novel that you’re slowly reading, but you admit that Britney has it. You open your mouth and speak, adrenaline is resurrected and your voice shakes. “Let me tell you about Austin Murry, he’s a tough kid to look after. His mother dresses like a whore and she works in a bar. He’s on Ritalin. When his mother drops him off at camp it’s not, ‘have a good week, I hope you have fun’, it’s ‘now can I have my week vacation?’. He doesn’t have a father. He left his mother. When the mother comes to pick him up she doesn’t tell him she misses him and asks how his day is going, it’s ‘let’s go’.” They just sit there and you want to hit them. You want to go on. You want them to know what you mean, what you know, what you think. What you’ve seen this summer. Instead you walk off. Five steps later you think of all sorts of things to tell them. But you’re committed to walking away. You want to clean up and go to sleep. You’re not quite sure, but perhaps this is for the best. You’ll leave them with something to think about. If they cared for saving souls for the glory of the Lamb, perhaps they’d of cared for the soul of Austin Murry you think to yourself. Mitch June 2007 You and Mitch are friends. You and Mitch are both addicted to cigarettes. Last year you worked together, this year you are a cook and he’s still an LT. You make small talk and he asks you if you’ve ever smoked and says that it’s a bitch to quit. You agree. He’s eyes light up, and his head turns in a slight manner that’s inquisitive, accusing, and begging all at the same time. You smile. “You wouldn’t happen to have any would you?” You and Mitch are walking in the woods now, away from the buildings and people and others that might possibly see you. He eagerly followed you past the girls’ cabins and climbed over fallen trees and through brush. Finally the two of you decide that it safe to light up. Cars can be heard over near the Sterling Highway. This is the first time that you have gone in the woods to do a bad thing. You’ve heard of other stuff that summer volunteer staff have done. Pot. Sex. Booze. General debauchery. But this is your first time and you have a cohort. It’s the first time that he’s done it too. Salsa “Britney is sort of a mess at the moment,” Bob had said. He was in his mid fifties and had a mustache that curved around the sides of his mouth down to his chin. He was out of the western garb that he usually wore in years past. You referred to it as his costume, it made him fit in around the barn and the horses that were at Solid Rock Bible Camp referred lovingly as the Dark Side for there was no heat or electricity in the cabins oppose to Lake Side. It was called Wagon Train. You were on a week’s break from being the workcrew chief and were sent over to be a councilor. Bob and you talked about things, things from history to the many views on hell and if angelic hosts could be forgiven of transgressions. He was always cryptic on the subject of this girl. Bob eyes usually went moist on this subject, he wore his heart on his sleeve; concealing a sorrow of sorts. Britney had worked at the camp as a wrangler in training years back in her preteens and early teens before the family (or what had passed for one had moved down. The one person who had really connected with her in those years was a woman called Emily. She worked as a baker for the camp. This is the part of the story were it gets complicated. Everything that you know from her is suspect. Omissions, lies, and fiction that Britney had invested in were often told through her teeth as truth, a self professed psychological liar – personally you wouldn’t believe it. She was in trouble and Emily had called her on a whim. She was broke, addicted to a fist full of illicit drugs, and was headed towards working at a strip club to make money fast. That is what she told you. Or she was a dealer using her product and indebted to her contacts and needed to be away for awhile. That is what Bethany told you. Either way Emily bought her a ticket and had her work in the kitchen as a prep cook for the summer. They had been close at one point, but that had been a while ago. “I’m a rebel, I rebel against everything,” she told you once. you had been silent for a moment or two, “Then you rebel against nothing”. It was a half thought voiced in retrospection to her self-evaluation. Now, talking to Bob it solidified into something whole. “She needs a cause.” Bob looked at you smiled and nodded, “I’ve been thinking on it myself, but that sums it all up. I didn’t know how to word it. Hopefully it will be a cause for Christ”. You nodded; his eyes told you to be careful. His statement that she was a mess had been a warning to keep distance. You suppose it was obvious that you were developing a fascination with her that was developing into an infatuation. He was the only person that talked ever so slightly about her to you, but always cryptic and surface generalizations. At times you could see him constraining himself from really talking, or perhaps asking you questions concerning her. She was loaded when she was pouring the salsa from the serving container into the plastic Tupperware. You’re not quite sure how the girl managed to get the salsa on the ceiling, it had to be a good four feet or so from the top of the counter to florescent bulbs and the rectangular panels stained yellow from the oil that evaporated from the flat top stove. You have the mental image of her standing on one of the three kitchen’s stools with the salsa above her head, contemplating the physics of liquid with chunks of tomatoes and chopped cilantro floating together within the clarity of speed. Perhaps she closed one of her eyes to kill her depth perception, and at this point, tipped the container over. You’re sure she was totally transfixed as the liquid poured from the corner of the container and watched as it arced in the air and hit the bottom of the plastic with a splatter. Once the liquid filled the bottom the tomatoes followed in chunks and hit the watery soup of spiced juice and she witnessed a visual phenomenon of the salsa defying gravity and latching onto the ceiling. Or she could have been on top of the counter, on her knees with the salsa held high as if raising it to praise as the campers took their rest period. You’re positive it had to be beautiful to watch. You’re sure she has and will continue to see things that you can only dream about. She was the prep cook. You were seventeen and she was eighteen. She had been working at the camp since you were a camper at twelve at the barn as a wrangler. After that year she had gone to California because her family moved or so you had gathered. She didn’t have a mother. The mother had died when she was young. “Have you seen the mess in the kitchen?” one girl asked another at the waterfront where campers played in the water or canoed. “No,” the other replied. You were down there supervising the workcrew boys while they played on their time off. Your ears perked up at this turn in the conversation, you were in charge of general clean up around the camp, especially the kitchen area. You pictured drips or drops, small bits, of salsa on the ceiling. You figured it wasn’t that bad. They kept talking about it and how that one girl had made the mess. She had a name, she was a person. They continued to talk about other things such as annoying campers or other irritants. Eventually we headed back up for dinner and I saw the mess myself. It was something impressive. By this time it had already hardened and cemented itself to the foam tiles and plastic light cover. You see her later that day when she had made the mess, while you herded the boy’s workcrew from one work project to the next through one of the trails about the lake. Her eye liner magnified her already dilated pupils; seeming so wide that one could see the soul she so carefully hid behind torn jeans, apathy, anarchy, and vague cryptic retrospection reserved for the ancient and remorseful. She wore grey sweat pants pulled up to her knees and her blood stained white smock and white shirt. Her hair was in partially formed dreadlocks, ratty and rank. You smiled and said hi as you all passed by each other; she gazed at you as if to say ‘help’ or maybe ‘look at you, what cha think now?’ If that was so, you didn’t know what to think or do. That fall you went to school up in Fairbanks, you didn’t hear a word from or about her. Neither did the people who lived at the camp all year round. During the Christmas break you went down to the camp and visited for a few days at while they were having their winter camp, the salsa stain was still hugging the ceiling. The more you looked at it, the more it seemed to have been a suicide attempt; someone jamming the cold of a pistol barrel under their chin, grimacing in perceived pain and mashing down their eye lids and then squeezing the trigger. Just dried blood and brains on the ceiling. Maybe she thought they’d have fired her after that incident. That spring you went back up to Fairbanks and took your first creative writing class. That summer you applied to be a cook in the kitchen, you had been promised a position. As it turned out, you didn’t get the position you were promised and phone calls were never returned. On what seemed to be your fiftieth call you finally got a hold of the head cook, George. He told you he would like to have a stocker and a weekend cook to do leftovers, you said yes. The salsa was still there and there was another girl for the prep cook. By that point you knew you were going to clean and wipe it away. It took you a month to get to that point. You went over to talk to Bob once I was back. He was putting up electric fence and I helped. Bob was said it was for bears and to keep the horses from getting into the lake. Part of you thought it was to keep the campers in. There’s something that loves a fence. You talked about life in general then he asked, “Have you kept in touch with Britney? I know you two talked a lot.” It was the first time someone had mentioned her since you had been back. “No, I haven’t. I was hoping that maybe she kept in touch with camp.” Bob just shook his head, “We haven’t heard anything.” That was a lie, though perhaps not on his part. Emily had said she had received a letter from Britney. Apparently she hadn’t shared the letter with anyone. “She seems to be a taboo subject. You’re the first person to ask or talk about her.” “She’s not a taboo subject.” He paused a from securing the fence to the tree. “Some people were stepped on in the whole deal.” “What about Emily?” “She was the most hurt over it. Another person cannot save or change another person, only Christ can. She was mad at God for how things turned out and she blamed herself.” Bob returned to putting the fence back up. “And the others?” you asked. Bob turned and give you the spool of fence and several claps, “Could you, move it over to that tree there?” That was the end of that conversation. That day you got a stool, a rag, a bottle of 409, along with a bag of resentment. The prep cook watched you as you sprayed the 409 and began to scrub. It was if you were wiping away every last trace that she had ever been there. The last mark that was left from her stay and you were taking it away. The cooks and other would never walk through that door again and have that mess glaring right back at them and they would have to worry about getting dirty to clean it up. It was the closest to closure that you ever got. It took a week before Emily noticed it was gone. Sometimes you regret cleaning it. The Dungeon summer 2004 You call it the dungeon. It’s actually the men’s restroom on the first floor of the chapel building. The building is old, probably back from the fifties and remodeled once or twice. You have no idea. It was been here on the camp since the eighties, perhaps before that. To you it’s as ancient and important as a pyramid. It’s your job to clean the restrooms with all the rest of the LTs. Boys do their side, girls do theirs. You go to the cleaning closet and get latex surgical gloves, LTP, rags, toilet brush, toilet bowl cleaner, and a sense of detachment from the sterile smell of chemicals. You then walk into the restroom. The ventilation is poor and the toilets are old. Ancient. Probably form the turn of the last decade. They don’t flush well and whatever is in them just sits there in the humid air from the showers. The porcelain thrones are the first on your list to tackle. The showers and floor are easy and nobody else wants to touch the toilets. There are two of them sitting in stalls against the right wall of the dungeon. It’s hot and you want to leave the door open. Outside in the hall you hear the voices of other LTs walking back and forth. There is an hour between chapel and whatever else there is on the list of things to do with the campers. In the handicapped stall you find the most pleasant surprise. The turd in the bowl has liquefied from the previous day. It’s a brown soup with bright bits of yellow corn, broccoli, green peas, and carrots floating in it. You flush the toilet. The sound of the water going through pipes and the dibble of water is what awards you. It’s not going to go down in the pipes and into the septic system and now the brown stenchy soup is beginning to rise towards the lip of the toilet. In this moment you realize that you need a weapon. You rush back to the cleaning closet, looking for a plunger. Something to force the refuse down in to the pipes where it belongs. You don’t find anything. Just more bottles of cleaning solutions and gloves. That’s when you notice that that past the laundry room is a darkened area. You’ve never been back here before and perhaps what you search for is in there. The light is turned off and you don’t know where the switch is located at. There are mop buckets, mops, canisters of chemicals, old crusty rags, and dust. The mops are all different sizes and styles. Some are the traditional mop head, like that of a hippy with dreadlocks, others are more laidback look like it’s pieces of fabric tuckered into the plastic. Buckets are everywhere. Some are on wheels, some are hand held, and some are the standard five gallon buckets. You start rummaging through the pile, and you imagine the murky soup spilling over the side of the toilet, seeping across the tile floor and you know you’ll be the one to clean it up. You survey the mess and see a black plastic handle jutting up from the buckets. You grab it and it feels like it belongs in your hand. After tugging on the handle you loosen up the buckets that have it entrapped. It comes free and you behold the most kickass plunger you’ve ever seen in you entire life. The entire piece is back and the plunger head is the size of a cooking pot and it has the bendy effect of straws. This is an Excalibur and it needs a name. Everything else has taken a back seat in the world as you marvel at this monument to the engineering prowliness of the plumbing world. You name it, The Plunger of Throne. You walk back into the dungeon with purpose in your step. The other LTs look at you and stop talking. It’s as if you stepped out to the closet with an M-6o slung over your shoulder and had it resting at your waist with a bandana tied across your forehead. The plunger work in two tries and the toilet drains, and you move on to the next one and unclog it as well. Next you scrub them down and the urinals on the opposite wall and the list continues. It’s a fair sized restroom and if everyone works on it, it would take less than twenty minutes to clean. But that never happens and you sometimes spend the entire hour inside these walls. Slowly through the summer, with the Plunger of Throne at your side, you raise the cleanliness of the restroom as a whole, till the girls are jealous of the scent. Noah summer 2001 You’re twelve and it’s your second year at camp. You practically own the camp. One day in the week your counselor approaches you and bribes you to drench one of the barn staff. It’s like being sent on a secret mission; like in North by Northwest where the CIA approaches Carry Grant and asks him participate in the Cold War against the godless communists. You go into the cafeteria of Wagon Train and find a pitcher used for water behind one of the counters and turn on one of the spickets. You let the water run and dip your finger into the water, testing to make sure that the water is as cold as it can possibly get. It turns your finger numb after dipping it into the flow and you decide that it’s as cold as it could possibly get. You then set off. Noah is the barn staff member that you have to drench, he’s seventeen, but he’s bolding. He looks like he could be the age of an uncle, the fat happy one that’s always dropping in and out of the family reunions on his way across the country doing cowboy work. He’s always wearing white button up shirts that are tinted brown from dirty and sweat, a leather cowboy hat with a bent brim, and pointed boots that look like snake skin. He looks tough and doesn’t talk much, at least to you. He’s standing outside on his porch with his hands above his head, resting them on a support beam under the roof’s overhang. There is a semi-circle of girls talking to him so you figure that he’ll be distracted; you could sneak up from behind him. As you get closer you realize that isn’t going to work. So you put on a face, start mumbling about the mess in the cabin that the girls made as a prank and walk through the mists of them. As you start to pass Noah, he backs up and asks about the water. You give him the canned speech you’ve been practicing and pass him. Out of the corner of your eye you realize that he’s relaxing again so you pivot and throw the water on him. His shirt is drench and the dirt is started to stream down the fabric. He starts to chase you. You throw the pitcher at him and run. You run like hell. This is the only word you’ll allow yourself to say, because, really, it isn’t a cuss word. Hell is a place. Noah trips and you continue to dash off, circling the cabins. You notice he’s no longer chasing you and look back, you see him coming out of the cabin with your sleeping bag blanket. Everyone is paying attention to this now, nothing exciting happens on this side of the lake like this. Everyone is smiles and laughing. He shouts at you, “Either you are going in the lake, or this is.” “Oh, hell.” You say to yourself. A counselor standing next to you looks over and her smile disappears and she says to watch your mouth. You don’t understand why this makes her angry. But the thought disappears as you see Noah walking down to the lake; he looks like he’s going to do it. However, you are a secret agent that was sent on a mission and you have back up, one of your friend Chris grabs it and starts to run off with it. Except Noah catches him. Now he’s going in the lake and your sleeping bag is laying in the dirt. It reminds you of Noah’s shirt. You run and grab the bag and stow it in your bunk. Why you think it’s safer now than before you really don’t know, but it is. Then you rush out to save Chris. By now he’s on the dock, and Noah is waiting for you. This is the moment where the good guy comes into the epic face off with the villain. The entire movie has been building up to tell this moment in time, everything before is to allow you to understand the complexities and background of this confrontation. You start to walk down to the docks, down the small hill to the water front. Every camper and staff member is watching. They are waiting to see the inevitable end of this engagement. The victor is the one that walks back from the dock dry. Now, instead of being North by Northwest, it’s a world war two movie and it’s the end of the film. Where all the good guys are caught and lined up for execution. Chris is standing there worn out from his struggle and so is Noah. He then quickly pushes Chris into the water without a seconds thought and the poor bastard never saw it coming. Noah is now right on top of you and he’s reaching out to push you. It’s now time to act; you make a grab for his arm but miss and end up going into the lake without him. Perhaps he was the good guy. You disappear under the water and come back up. Film credits role. Later you are changing your clothes in the cabin with Chris, congratulating yourselves on your defeat. After this is all said and done, you feel that perhaps you haven’t done the right thing. Perhaps you should bring a peace offering to Noah. He might be really pissed and this is the first time you’ve actually thought about it. You grab a can of Pringles, the bar-ba-que flavored ones that you really don’t like and strike off to the barn. For some reason the act of mercenary seems ridicules and somehow underhanded. You feel like you’ve cheated the opponent. As you cross the field you see a girl walking towards you. She’s a WIT, a wrangler in training, she has red hair and freckles. She’s thirteen and steps right in your way. “Hey, smile.” You looked up from you’re preoccupation with the small weeds and earth. She has stopped walking and stands directly in your path, arms out in the air. Under her hat you can see her red hair pulled back into a ponytail and the face under freckles under dirt that makes the eyes alive. “Why?” you asked. “Because I said so”, she replies You smirk but you are programmed. She smiles bigger and your smile becomes real. After that she steps out of your way and you watch her walking away. You think she cares, she wanted to make you smile. You drop off the Pringles and everything is right in the world. Sunday Dinner June 2007 It’s your first day working in the kitchen; George is showing you around the kitchen and describing your duties. These are the ovens, this is the refrigerator, the freezer. This-is-what-I-want-you-to-clean speech. He then looks at you and asks if there is anything you have questions about and if you’re going to have problems. You have a fear of ovens and always envision yourself falling into them, like in the fairy tales that you hear. That a witch is secretly waiting for you to trip inside and she’s going to close the doors. It’s ridicules, the ovens aren’t that big. You don’t bring this up. You might be sent back into working with the kids and you want a break from them. George then begins his training. He tells you the amount of noodles that you’ll need to have and how much salt you’ll need. He shows you how to start browning the beef for the sauce and how to make a large salad. George then leaves you standing in the kitchen sorting your thoughts and he goes to enjoy his Sunday. Tonight the dinner is dependent on you. It’s ten in the morning and you have till six to have everything prepared for two hundred people. You follow all the directions. He comes back around sometime after noon and tells you the next steps, checks the condition of the meat and the sauces. “The noodles are next, while waiting on the water to boil work on something else, like the salad.” Then he’s gone again into the day. The hours go by quickly, you’re always just little behind. But it’s your first day, you’re not too worried about it. Usually there’s two people working in the kitchen on Sunday, but this weekend and the seven next are all up to you to fulfill. Lettuce gets everywhere and falls unto the floor. Water drips and splashes and there are puddles on the floor. You stir the sauce too hard and it sloshes onto your cook’s jacket and you sleeve dips into it. When draining the noodles you mess up and handfuls end up on the floor. You are chaos and you hope that this won’t end too badly. George comes back in, and shows you how to make French toast and ignores everything else that you are doing to his kitchen. He then leaves and it’s only a couple of hours till the dinner. You have to wait to toast the bread at the last minute; otherwise the French bread will be cold or hard by dinner. You also have to watch them toast like an eagle. Otherwise you’ll end up with bricks of coal. Soon you imagining yourself running around one of the islands in the kitchen in a panic in your underwear, sauce painted across your chest holding a fistful of raw beef in one hand and a cleaver in the other, while noodles are all in your hair. There’s a voice from off to your side and you turn, it’s the girls’ workcrew chief for the summer, Caitlin. “You’re not doing so well are you?” It’s full of critique, like she’s evaluating you performance, which just perhaps she’ll take that cook’s jacket off your back and put it on herself. You look at her indignantly. “I’m doing just fine, thanks very much,” you say. “Everything is going according to plan.” The words come out to fast and too pitched in the higher octaves to sound convincing. You get the food out onto the serving table and the campers come through. They take large portions and then you realize that you’ve forgotten about desert. The French bread came out of the ovens dried out. You are ready to clean up and not show your face. After everyone has gone through, you grab a plate and sit at the staff tables to eat. Craig tells you that the sauce is too thick, and the bread is cold. You think about telling him you like it thick and that he should have come earlier to hot bread. Other people tell you there isn’t enough salt. You tell them about the four cups of salt that you poured into the water and they don’t want to eat more. After this you realize that nobody can agree on what they want and they don’t know if it’s good or not. Like they were expecting it to be bad for the sake that it was a new cook. It’s fascinating and infuriating all at the same time. You decide cooking is for the birds. George Grossman He’s cutting carrots with a knife as you take the trash out. His eyes follow you as you head to one of the forty gallon trash cans and begin to pull up at the bag. You’re fourteen and just the right size to haul out the plastic bags that are a third of your body weight. They’re filled with neglected food. He doesn’t miss a beat with the knife and he’s studying you. He doesn’t smile or nod, just watches. The carrots are even and proportional. George’s hair is cut down close to his scalp and his beard as several days’ growth to it. He has an ear plug in his left ear and the other dangles at his side into the pocket of the faded blue apron that he is wearing. On his head is a sock hat, yellow with a blue elephant on it. He never says a word to you or the other workcrew boys so you begin to give him a past. He’s a Vietnam veteran and he killed with knives, it would explain the carrots. He’s a big man, the size of a decent refrigerator. His forearms are as big as his biceps. But if he is from the military, he’s defiantly gained some weight since being out of the service. There is little doubt in your mind at all about the fact that this man is a killer and you wonder why he’s at a summer camp cooking for kids. You finally pull the bag out of the can and begin to tie it off. After you do that, you put an empty bag in its place. George is still staring at you, except now he’s onto another carrot and his speed seems to be picking up. You lift the bag and begin to walk out of the kitchen toward the trash trailer. You hear the sound of the knife on the cutting board and the crunch of carrots. The fans in the kitchen kick on and the sound of George is buried in the background. You avoid further eye contact with the man. Occasionally you see George around the lake of the camp, playing fetch with his dog. Perhaps he’s in retirement trying to do some good for the world. Like Mister Roger. Everyone knows that that kindly old boring man who likes children had over a hundred confirmed kills and his arms were covered in tats. George doesn’t like kids cause he is not on national television. His dog is named Obi-Wan Kanobi; but they just call him Ben. Emily Grossman You think she might be a witch. Her husband doesn’t talk, but Emily does. She’s the one that comes into the back to yell if she thinks her pots are being dented and scratched by you and the other boys on the workcrew. She looks older then George. It looks like she might have strands of white hair mixed with her darker, brown, really almost a peculiar grey hair. The color might be just flower. She looks like she doesn’t eat and this amuses you because she’s always baking cookies or the deserts for dinner. Her arms are slim and her waist is wide for her body, not that it’s a wide waist. You try not to look at it when you walk by or when she bends over. George might just beat the crap out of you, even though you’d never stand a chance with Emily. You’ve seen her play the piano in the staff room when she thinks no one is in the dining hall, you just stand there trying not to look at her in case she notices that she isn’t alone. She makes a mistake, which sounds just as awesome as the rest of the piece that she was playing. She says something to herself, something harsh that you can’t make out and then turns and looks at you. She scratches her nose, makes a face, stands up and leaves. She looks younger sitting at the piano as though she might be the same age as George. After witnessing this you begin to consider George and Emily and how they met. They don’t act like they are married, not like the other fulltime staff members here at camp. You begin to expect that perhaps they are married because they have to be married to be fulltime staff. What would a witch and a Vietnam vet marry for anyway? Perhaps they aren’t married, and just pretend to be for the sake of the camp, from the way they act, you wander if the cooks of this bible camp are actually Christians. Ted McKinney If reincarnation was indeed occurring across the globe, Ted would have to be Socrates. He had the high receding hairline and that curved up in the shape of the half moon. He looks like your grandfather, at the upper back, being hunched over at an odd angle that seemed would never straighten itself. Even if you took a steamroll and leveled him out. His smile is more peculiar than any smile you’ve encountered in your life. Sometimes it seems that the smile is for something else, not the sarcasm that Ted is renowned for, the clever and brilliant things that go through his head. It’s a smile at a thought or a realization that occurs three or four levels into the psyche. He says one thing, on the surface talking around a subject, then encircles the percept in relation to the consequence from the previous statement, and then leads to a final conclusion. If what the smile is for doesn’t show in the person’s eyes, you notice that he says, ‘let’s put it this way’ and goes on in a logic proof. You don’t like this smile, but if you say something youthfully stupid a genuine one comes out. Sometimes, out of the blue, he talks about a thought that he has, and when he talks, you have the feeling that he’s mentioned this to everyone that he’s come across; and he’s sorting through all the responses that he has gotten so far. You imagine that sometime when he was thirty his head grew bigger just the forehead; and perhaps the hair didn’t stretch along with the rest. You nod and follow his thoughts, but it seems like he’s talking to himself and you’re just observing. Then he looks at you with that smile of a smile, and you feel like you should have reached the same conclusion. If he knew you were thinking these thoughts (like you know he does), and if perhaps he knew you were laboring to solidify them from the realm of Forms (like you know he’s counting on) you might be hesitant to continue. But, you’re youthfully stupid and ultimately, you’re aiming to crack that smile into a frown, or perhaps just maybe-a genuine smile. Craig Schwartz He’s tall, maybe over six feet. And if Arnold Schwarzenegger was a T-100 model, Craig Schwartz would be a T-150. More compact, more logic circuits, a chip or two more personality, and a better English language program. He’s always dressed in sports shorts and a t-shirt a size or two too big. The shirts that are years old drape over his body and around his muscles and the bottom of them fall past his crotch. Then there are the tennis shoes, which either go with or without socks. When he smiles, you see all of his teeth; the real ones and the gold and silver fake ones. There is a goatee that he continues to grow, and then once it reaches the point of maximum entropy, he shaves it off and you think that he could be an extremely developed teenager. The face is friendly enough, but you wish those teeth weren’t there. If he was actually missing some of them, things might actually be better. The conacts that he wears come and go and are replaced with glasses the size half-dollars. You can’t remember when the last time you smelt deodorant on him. Outside and in the big chapel you hardly notice it. When Craig walks, it’s on the balls of his feet. It’s like a statue conveying energy, you know that at any moment in time his body could break into a run or climbing up a wall and hang off the ceiling. His arms go from his arms don’t move when he walks. It’s deceptive, for he looks weightless and powerful all at the same time. If it there was a choice between Arnold and Craig gunning for you in 1984, you’d have chosen Arnold. His passion is sports, and one time you were on his team and he pulled you into a circle to talk strategy. “There’s a problem,” he says making eye contact with each and everyone on his team, and he isn’t smiling, “we’re losing. I don’t like to lose. Some of us are going to have to make up for the lack of talent and skill with a desire to win.” He pointedly looks at several people and you. The team doesn’t lose, Craig never loses. Bob Menich He the man that looks old but is youthful, he’s fifty something years old and has a full mustache that curves from the bottom of his chin, over his mouth, down the other side like a crescent moon. It’s part of his outfit. When you were a camper you saw him all the time in dirty jeans, cowboy boots, brimmed hat, and button up shirt. In fact, you thought the guy had hair on the top of his head. You and your friends have had to approached him once or twice to seek permission for pranks as campers. If you ask Bob, he will look at you solemnly, shake his head, and gently tell you no. The pranks you ask permission for are stupid, and juvenile. They’re about getting people wet by throwing them in the lake. One even includes horse manure in a bucket mixed with hot water under one of the girls’ cabins. It’s all about pulling a prank on Friday night in the cabin with the cutest, or most annoying girl there. That way on Saturday night they can’t get you back cause you’ll actually be home and you’ll actually will be able to have a shower. Finally, when you grow up a bit, you will learn that Bob has more than cowboy clothes that he wears. In fact, he doesn’t wear many cowboy clothes at all. Usually, when he’s over at Lake Side. You don’t know this at the time, but Bob is something like you. He’s quiet, nerdy, moody, and loves Stargate the TV show. He’ll actually talk to you about religion, faith, views on Christianity, his struggles within the faith, about his continual commitment till the end. In some ways you are not like Bob. And this makes you sad. Above all, he was your friend; you doubt you’ll ever see him again. One time he was telling you about the way he likes to view stargate. Humans are humans. Go’ulds as demons. Asgard as angels. Different universes, wanting there to be, but not thinking it’s so. Hell as the finally way for God to grab people’s attention and not a lasting place for punishment, but of course that wouldn’t be biblical. The desire for mercy and love in Bob, you find overwhelming, and you want to hug him. You begin to distrust God. Big Chad Chad is the size of a vending machine, and then some. He’s so big that he can’t tie his sneakers. He’s always walking around with them untied. You occasionally see suspenders under his t-shirts that could be used as parachutes to air drop humves from high altitudes. You try to think how he wipes his ass after he’s taken a dump. They have to be the size of two liter coke bottles. He doesn’t have a chin and his air is always closely shaven to his skin, but sometimes you’ve seen him with a week’s growth of hair on his head and face. The hair on his head and neck makes his nose seem less prominent. In the end you decide he’s quite substantial. He wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time in a much more violent life, Chad was dangerous. He recalls his past, in a testimonial format. He didn’t have a happy childhood. Typical Indiana up bringing involving guns, cars, and booze; he tells this story on the beach, or in the staff dining room. You’ve heard this story many times, though you can’t always remember the details. It’s hard to imagine that the obese man sitting in the chair before you, labored breathing that comes through his nostrils, was once trim and fit. Chad begins the story informing you that he did it all. Sex, drugs, alcohol, and not to mention rock and roll; if there was a God, if there was a Hell, the Big Man Up Stairs would have to come down off the throne with shackles and whips to bring him to eternal justice. Chad says that he just about killed a man that he and his friend got into a fight. There was a bottle and it was being beaten over his friend; bottles don’t break like in the movies. He picked up this kid and threw him into a windshield. Another person he punched so hard that his head flew back and hit concrete. You see Big Chad big around the biceps, big around the chest, slim around the waist, and big hands. You’ve seen him hold his little daughters with those hands. He had life around the neck, and he was strangling it. The fight could have been over a woman, it could have been over just a dirty look he never meant to give. It was a fight and in the end, he says, it’s stupid. People get hurt, and people get killed. Death never entered his mind till one of his friends got himself killed. Chad doesn’t use names, so it could very well be the same friend he was in the fight with. It involved a motorcycle and an eighteen wheeler on a highway. The details are sketchy, Chad wasn’t there. Perhaps the driver fell asleep at the wheel and the foot became lead weight on the accelerator. Perhaps his friend was stopping for some intoxicated reason. Either way, the rear wheel of that particular motorcycle’s rear tire ended up touching the front bumper of that truck. The boy’s head flew back, and the helmet hit the hood of the truck and the next thing happening is breaking and stopping and silence. The bike is totally destroyed a little ways back, run over by the rig. The body of the boy is just fine. No cuts or bruise except that the kid’s brain summer salted inside the skull, freeing it’s self from the stem to contemplate things without having to worry about involuntary motor functions. It was just a lump of flesh breathing and pumping blood. Eyes, ears, and nose useless. You and the other kids are just silent as Chad explains the mechanics of this. Recognition in the eyes of others tell you that this is opening new light into the mundane life of Big Chad, camp maintains. He goes on to tell you about the technical school he went to, the job offer of the navy for him to become a mechanic on a nuclear sub. He tells you how he met this girl and began to clean up and go to church with her where he surrendered his life to Christ. The drinking goes away, cussing slowly disappears, and he prays. There’s where Chad met Craig. From the bet on a game of pool, which Chad lost, Craig and him fill out application forms and send them up to Alaska. Then Chad is sitting in a circle during staff training in the late 90’s listening to everyone talk about their Christian faith. The woman next to him tells the group she’s been a Christian since she was four years old. Chad’s turn to speak. “I’ve been a Christian for four months.” Ben Fisher You’ve decided that Ben is the most intense person that you will ever meet in your entire life and so far, you’ve been right. Conversation 2006 You come into the dining room on one particular day and its 3:00pm. Britney is leaving the kitchen for the day. She was wearing a knit hat. You see bulges where she forced her hair under it. The white shirt and half apron she is wearing is still stained red, it looks like tomato sauce but you could be wrong. Her jeans have two slits on the knees; the edges have yet to fray since she cut them. Something about fashion you’re sure. Under the harsh florescent lighting in the kitchen as she fills out her time, you swear you can make out the straps of a black bra. Her eyes make contact. They are not intense, they do not jump, they do not sing. But they are deep, dense, pure; they carry weight. “Wanna talk?” You answer with a yes. The two of you find a seat at the nearest table and sit. The tables are round and they have gum underneath them from all the campers, perhaps from the counselors; you can never be too sure. She has her purse with her and she sets it down on the table and proceeds to dump it out. It’s a bag made from Capri Suns with a cloth handle. You can see that it’s been sewn together. Sometimes you wonder if she made it herself or if there was an amount of proof’s of purchase she had to send into the company for it. Just maybe she made it herself. On the table are hair ties, wads of cash, cigarette stamps from cartons, tongue studs, a few CDs that she has borrowed from people here at camp, and a few other things you can’t really remember. There’s a CD player with headphones coming out of the jack, a tangled mess and the cases are cracked. Britney begins to straighten out all the bills that she has on the table. It’s an exorbitant amount of ones and probably some fives. She begins to count them out then looks at you, “There’s forty-eight for the rest of the month”. She starts to pick all the cigarette stamps from around the pile and count them out as well. “Twenty more till a free pack. They are so expensive up here. Down in the states its four dollars for a pack.” “I see.” She then starts to put things back into the purse. One of the tongue studs starts to roll on the table in your direction. This is the first hint to you that the floors are skewed. She’s still putting things back into her purse and doesn’t notice the wayward piece of jewelry so you pick it up and move it to back the pile. It comes back to you two more times, a slow rolling that you can hear as the metal glides over the fake plastic wood finish on the compressed wood tables. The last time you move it you realize your mistake and turn it on its side. This is also when you realize that that piece of metal goes inside her tongue and you wonder why you’re even touching it. “Here, give it to me.” Your hand is away and she picks it up and drops it inside the Capri Sun purse. “What does it do for you? Having a tongue stud?” She looks at you and blinks with an expressionless face. She turns back to her sorting and says, “It’s not what it does for me, it’s what it does for others. But that’s for later. Anyway, that will fall through the hole I have now. That’s ten, the one I have is eight.” You’ve heard that she can stick her pinkie through her tongue, amazing that she can talk. Then the implications of a tongue stud and how it could help others hits you. “You know I could be a fatal attraction for you? I’d corrupt you.” She says. “Sounds like fun. Is it the drugs?” You reply, thinking it’s clever and shows that the past isn’t a deterrent. “No . . . I’m done with fucking chemicals. I’m not a good girl. You’re not the usual boy I attract. It’s different.” She finishes putting all the worldly possessions on the table and rests her elbows on the table and clasps her hands. She then rests her chin upon them and looks at you, “Why are you so uncomfortable?” You must be blushing again, your face turning a nice shade of maroon as deep as cherry, sweet to the bite but with a hard center. You’re blushing just like when she told you that “we should hang out sometime”. She takes off her knit hat and runs her hands through her hair. Her finger nails have taken on a yellow tinge. She sees you eyeing the cases. “I’ve been getting into the emo stuff; it’s Coldplay. It’s really chilled. They’re British.” She says this like the chilled fact is directly related to Britain. The Sex Pistols aren’t that chill. “What do you usually listen to?” “Metal. Metallica. Emily doesn’t like me listening to them because it’s what I would listen to when on speed.” She annoyed at this and you can see it plainly on her face as her eyes focus on something else entirely. “What’s it like having been saved?” you ask, “I mean taken from a situation and given the opportunity to start again?” She looks at you with open eyes and slacked face again, “Is that what they call it now? I’m a Christian, but I don’t act like a Christian. I’m not a good girl.” “Why don’t you, if you are?” “It’s not the type of people I hang out with. It’s a cover, I suppose. You’re attractive and good looking.” She leans back into the chair and moves her hand straight and steady through the air, “You’re like this, straight, consistent, a steady flow. It’s what I like about you. Why haven’t other girls taken an interest in you? Why haven’t they approached you?” You look at the table, avoiding her eyes, “They just haven’t.” You’ve begun to view the preverbal fish filled ocean from the inside of a canoe. The bait is dead and the boat is leaking. “Have you ever kissed someone?” “Huh. Virgin lips . . . some people are attracted to that.” Britney mumbles something that you can’t make out. She’s been doing this a lot lately and you wish she’d speak up. She must know that she does it, because she usually speaks directly to you when she makes conversation. You suspect that she is just thinking aloud and the polite thing to do is not to interrupt her while she sorts thoughts. With one arm lying on the table, the other one is propped up on the elbow. She twists her hair between her finger and thumb; trying to hurry the forming of her dreadlocks. She has said that they are coming back into fashion this fall and having never been interested in fashion, you suspect that perhaps she is an expert. With her looking out the window, you smell the perfume that she has put on, just enough to take the bite off her hopeless hair. Weekend 2006 She invited you to come over to George and Emily’s place Saturday evening, and now she’s sleeping in your lap while you watch Samurai Champloo. It’s the first anime you’ve ever seen and it’s taking the top of your head off. Before this you had no clue that something so violent, bloody, and quirky could be drawn. It had everything; pirates, guns, explosions, katanas, near deaths, tragic ends, martial arts, and an awesome failed execution sequence with dialogue that rivaled ‘well don’t make a bloody mess of it’. She turns from your lap and asks if it’s too strange for you. You tell her you’ve never seen anything like it. Soon she’s in a deep sleep. This is new to you as well. You’ve never had a girl sleeping in your lap, and you’re unsure if you should put your arm around her, so you just keep it at your side. You suppose that she might be more comfortable, but this sort of contact is all new and strange. You can smell her partially formed dreadlocks. The smell is sweet sewage. You get hard and hope she doesn’t feel it through your jeans on the side of her head. The episodes head and you just sit there with her sleeping. After a bit she wakes up and tells you she was tired. Obi-Wan has your hat and you haven’t noticed, she gets up and saves it, and then walks over to the computer that’s in the living room. She turns on some music, Coldplay. She sits down on the couch and sings you Don’t Panic. The volume is so loud and the guitars so clear that it engulfs the atmosphere of the entire room. Then she plays Yellow, it’s her favorite. The words ‘and it was all yellow’ are forever scorched into your mind by her lips and eyes. She then asks you if you have a CD. It’s on a chair away from the couch you’re sitting on. You get up and move to get it and you’re still hard. You have enough wood to hit a home run. She sees the pup tent of your jeans, red comes back to your face. She tells you that she’s sorry like it’s her fault you can’t control yourself. Worse things have happened in life. She invites you over to the computer to show you pictures of her friends. They have tattoos and piercings. She shows you one and says that this girl helped her get help with her addiction. They are all in bikinis, and all tanned. Must have been a California thing. After a bit she goes to the porch outside the sliding glass doors of the house. The road that curves around half the lake can be seen. Britney sits down and pulls out a cigarette from her back pocket and lights up. Blowing smoke into the air in evening air. You watch from inside the house, then move out to sit by her. You don’t say anything, nor does she. She just continues to smoke, her bare feet on the grass. For some reason you remember that there were leaves on the ground. They were probably from the previous fall that didn’t get raked up yet. Or perhaps it was later in the summer than you actually remember. Part of you is curious about the cigarette. Britney has it scissored between two fingers in her left hand. The smoke moves over and you can smell it. She begins to speak to break the silence and you think that she is about to offer you a drag but she doesn’t. She just mumbles something to herself then says, “Don’t start smoking. At least up here, its way too expensive.” You just nod, “Are you doing okay?” “Yeah. Just thinking.” “I spent hours picking through the carpet of my apartment one day. Looking for another crystal to burn. Man . . . I was wasted. It’s different though. Amazing really. I was picking apart all the individual threads, taking it an inch at a time.” You just watch her shake her head. “That’s why I would prefer the tattoo artist to be high. They take their time and do it right.” Her eyes are distant now, remembering. “It really focuses you.” She then stands up and heads back in and you follow. She turns off the computer and gets her sandals and you slip on your green converse shoes and you head back to the main buildings. On the way back she randomly says to you, “I don’t belong here. I break rules. I rebel against everything and they are trying to fix me.” She turns her head to you and gives you an expression asking you for thoughts with a slight smile. You’re silent for a moment, contemplating the ramifications of this. “I think you end up rebelling against nothing then.” Britney chuckles, “I suppose. I’m meeting Katie to swim. We’ve been doing it in the evenings and its almost time.” “Interesting, I wouldn’t think she’d do that. She’s a life guard.” A more amused smile than daring smile is now stretched across her face, “Breaking rules, huh?” It’s the small things that matter. Notebook Britney has left her spiral notebook out on one of the staff tables again. Just sitting there, you’ve seen her flipping through it before; she’s shown you a couple of pages. There are drawings in there. You look around and nobody is around. You go over and open the book. It has a black front cover. The first page is a picture of a moon. It has eyes and a mouth. The eyes are staring off to the far corner of the page. Little doodles of everyday objects are scattered around, hammers, nails, lighters, pens, and bullets. The lines on the page are thick and deep. Britney told you she went through two pens a day. The lines and positive space on the page is depressed and on looking closer you see so many crisscrossing lines that the picture becomes distorted. On other page is a hand. It looks to you as if she held her right hand up in the air and drew it as a simple three-dee wire frame then slowly added skin. The thumb and middle finger are perfectly bisected and now they are just stubs ending in a perfect circled. White paper and black ink, somehow it’s surgical. The next page is a body of a man. Muscled and highly defined. This one reminds you of Michelangelo’s paintings. He is in anatomical position and the lines are thin and deep. The head is different. It’s not even human and proportion has been neglected and the lines are wide and dark. The eyes are bulging and blood shoot. The back of the head has a hair that’s stringy and falls past the shoulders but the rest of the head is hairless and there are horns. There is a bottom jaw. The penis falls down past the knees. The next page is one of a perineal view of a woman. The lines are light this time and sketchy, the ends of the thighs are again cut flat. The lips of the vagina are pulled back and you can peer inside. It looks like a perfect copy of a text book. The curves, the bulges-everything. The phrase ‘blood & body’ are scribbled everywhere about the page. It looks like liquid in the process of dripping out of form. There’s a picture of a face with the eyes rolled up into the head and cigarettes jammed up into the nostrils and smoke being puffed through the mouth. A torso with the head missing. A jagged flower wretchedly beautiful in the grotesque format. Pages of ink and ink, and yet other layers of ink; sometimes blue though it’s mostly black. You begin to recall what she said about zoning into what she was doing when heroin or crystal was in her blood and body. Once you’re done flipping through the spiral notebook, you set it down. It feels like you just came from the edge of perception, the lasting evidence of an enlightened mind. You close the covers and set it back the way it was. It wasn’t the subject matter, or the context in which they were drawn in, it was the ink. The obsessive lines and coloring in. You notice how the paper doesn’t even bend and flex, just a saturated hardened plane of pulp. You remember her looking at you with a wistful smile and dead eyes as she’s sitting with a cheap pen in her hand, “If this is what I can do when spun out, imagine what I could do sober.” “Why don’t you try?” There is no reply and the she changed topics. Tales from ‘Nam 2007 “I honestly thought you were a Vietnam vet.” you tell George. He as a grin on his face that you can see through his massive goatee. “That’s funny. I was born shortly after that particular war. It’s harder for younger people, particularly, to judge age.” After hearing this, you and the prep cook began to tell the workcrew boys about George and his fictional combat experience. The next day, this is what you hear from George: There are times, where you would run out of supplies. Or Charlie would put some rounds into your ovens and you’d have to improvise. See, I was never in direct combat I was on this little known hill that was never officially designated. However, there were some close calls in the Tein Offensive. When things like that would happen to the equipment, you still had to put food out. Have you ever heard of the G.I. cupcake? You can take the metal cup from the canteens and put a mixture of hot chocolate and hershey bars. Then I’d go to a jeep that had been running, and pop the hood and stick it in there. Fifteen minutes or so you go in there with a shirt wrapped around your hand, you have a cake. We used phosphoresce grenades as well, to cook eggs and pancakes. We’d dig out a little pit in the dirt and find some armor plating. The kind off of aircraft and trucks. We’d lay that over the small pit after chucking a couple of those phosphoresce and stand back. In this case, you’d need to wait for the armor plating to cool down for a bit, after that you could cook for hours on that metal. Once, this happened probably a little after the midway point of my first tour, an opportunity came up to leave and work in Japan. One of the South Vietnam generals, who will remain nameless, was going to be traveling to Nippon for conference and planning; perhaps some PR stuff as well. He was looking for a cook that could make the best Mongolian beef, and whoever won would become part of his staff. It was a chance to see the world that I was supposed to be seeing instead of the bottom of pots and pans and the dirt we were constantly hitting. Simple enough, huh? I heard about this and made a jump for it. I know I was going to be in competition with some of the best local and fellow Americans to make this. The only think I was missing was the fact I had no Mongolian beef. The first thing I did was head to Saigon. By this time in the war many of the people had pulled back into it. Everything was for sale and it was one of the most packed places I’ve ever been to. I spent a couple of days searching, but I never came across this Mongolian Beef. I figured that the completion had already beaten me to it, or that the venders were lying, trying themselves to win the general’s approval. I went back with my hands empty; but I wasn’t beat yet. I knew I could out cook anyone there, bar none and fulfilling patriotic duty in a less hostile place appealed greatly to my growing sensibilities. See, there was this German Sheppard that this one Marine had. That mutt would get into everything. Me and a buddy of mine decided that it could better fulfill its roll to the cause so when that Marine was in the shower, we coaxed the mutt with a piece of jerky and used a board and a gunny sack. Time here was of the essence because the general was on his way to taste this Mongolian beef. We had to drain and prep the pooch and have everything done by that night. The general sat down to take a bite, after that he looked up to me and said that I had the job and then finished the meal. Apparently he had been taking bites of Mongolian beef around the country and walking away. So that’s how I got that job. This is how I lost it. That Marine was missing his dog and went all around the hill calling that thing’s name. Finally he went to the kitchen and noticed fur and bones and came to make his accusation. Needless to say the general wasn’t pleased that he’d been duped. So after some fast talking and fast running I got out of that situation and didn’t ever make it to Nippon. There was only one time where death came knocking on the kitchen door on my hill. It was during the Tet Offensive. I spent three days hiding in the oven; I had a couple of metal spatulas with me that I had sharpened hurriedly. Charlie shelled the hill, but I figured that I was safe. The thing that really made the Tet Offensive so surprising was that it happened on a holiday after a cease fire agreement and with the massive use of tunnels. Anyway, a gook came into the kitchen and I hear him routing through the pots and pans, probably looking for something to eat. He came over to the oven and opened it up, but I was ready for it. I used the spatula and got him in the throat. Then I closed the oven again. I figured that the cut was so small and slim that if any other gook came by they wouldn’t know what had happened to him, and I could use the trick again. That’s how I survived the Tet Offensive. You stand there just as riveted by the stories and physical presence that George created with these stories as the workcrew boys do. Partly fulfilling suspicion, partly entertained by the entire telling. One of the workcrew boys looks to you after George goes back to cooking for the camp and asks, “Is that all true?” “Why wouldn’t it be?” you ask back. “Well, he doesn’t look that old. How old is he?” You begin to panic, you want to keep this illusion real. If these kids believe it, it means that you can pretend to believe it yourself without filling trapped in fantasy. You what something to believe, “You’ll have to ask him, George has been here at camp since I first started coming here. I don’t see how he wouldn’t be old enough. Some people look younger than they are.” You don’t tell the boy that that is the exception in the world and that most people look older than they actually are. Later the boy approaches George and asks, “Where you really in Vietnam?” George looks at the kid and his voice becomes a tad disgruntled, slightly annoyed, “Of course I was in Nam.” George then makes eye contact with you and smiles. The smile you can see through his goatee. Departure One day Britney just left. She disappears one morning without a word to anyone as to where she is going. You walk around the lake to take your daily shower, the hour you are finally getting off everyday now that you’re not the workcrew chief this week. First you stop by the kitchen and it’s Monday, her day off. The next day you stop by and it’s Tuesday, when she starts her week and she’s not there. You walk up to the dinner cook for this summer and ask him if he knows, “No. Man, I wish people would ask me where I am and want to talk to me when I’m missing.” The funny thing is, you do talk to Matt Ransun. You talk to him a lot. You’re about to tell him it’s because he’s not a girl but decide it’s best not to at this moment in time. After hearing this you just sit down on one of the kitchen stools and comfortably share silence with him. You’re comfortable in the kitchen; it’s where you like to be. Emily comes in to check up on a few things, she looks at you says, “You never leave here, do you?” For a day the cooks asked each other if they had seen her. Bethany and you talk, she tells you that she hasn’t seen her and she just left. Then she smiles, because she’s the laundry lady, and says, “Did you know that you are one of two guys here at camp that have a full set of underwear for the week? You learn a lot by doing laundry. I thought I’d share that with you.” You called a number she had given you and never reached her. Instead you hear George’s voice, groggy as if he’s just woken up. You know that he gets up at five every morning to cook the breakfast meal so it makes sense he would be taking a nap. He doesn’t recognize your voice and asks who’s calling. You tell you that you’ve dialed the wrong number The mess on the ceiling continued to glare at those who passed under it. The cooks never lifted a finger to clean it up that summer. End of Summer 2007 Britney came back and left within a day back to California. You didn’t say good bye, at the time you were an emotional wreck and couldn’t really be in the same room as her without seams tearing. Emily’s Blog 2007 At the end of the summer, you are surfing the web and looking at Emily’s blog that she mentioned to you. You see her artworks and they are amazing. Then you come across this and begin to read: Now that it’s over, I suppose I can begin. Seven years ago, God put a special place in my heart for an 11-year-old girl named Britney. We met here at camp during the most depressed point in my life, just as things were beginning to change for the better. She’d recently lost her mother to breast cancer, and was up from California for the summer, visiting relatives and working at our summer camp’s barn with me. It was an unlikely situation, a 24-year-old finding herself befriended by someone so young. I cannot say what drew me to her, or what compelled her to seek me through the following years. Except, it seemed we’d been cut from the same hunk of clay. She left Alaska, and during the next few years she would call periodically from California, as though begging for a scolding for her impulsive and foolish behavior: first eating disorders, then boys, then alcohol, then drugs. One night, she called frightened because she had mixed the wrong drugs and was having a bad trip. At that point, I began to make plans to get her out of her situation. On May 22nd, she wound up on a flight to Anchorage so she could work with me in the kitchen for the summer. I hoped it would work. At the very least, I could buy her some time At first, I believed that I could somehow be strong enough to fight for her. If I could just explain it just right, if I could give a convincing speech, if I could pour out enough love and time into her, she would grow strong and healthy. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who believed this. Friends from all over came to visit and showered her with gifts and flowers and phone calls. When she felt weak, I would stay up and listen and talk, or just hold her quiet so she wouldn’t leave in the middle of the night. Perhaps I could change her mind. Perhaps I could make her laugh with my silliness, or perhaps I could distract her just long enough to stay another day. We listened to Clair de Lune and played silly duets on the piano. We turned the radio up loud and drove for miles, and climbed the high peaks and laughed about pixie sticks and imaginary bears. We talked about pain and God and truth and freedom. And when I could think of nothing else to say, I played the violin as she cried on the floor in the dark. I loved her. For a while, I believed her, too. I felt I had no choice but to trust her, and she felt she had no choice but to lie in order to protect her vice. The day she confessed she’d been on speed the entire previous week, I was completely dumbfounded. I don’t think I’ve ever been betrayed like that before. What do you do once someone has proven to be a liar? How can you ever believe another word they utter? What kind of relationship can you have with a fictional character? From that point onward, I watched the bond we’d shared slowly disintegrate. People told me that you can’t change someone who is not yet ready to change, and Britney was not ready to change. Says who? I thought to myself, and I continued to try, though the forces that work against good were larger than I thought. Old contacts in California had bought her a plane ticket home, and every time I talked her out of using it, she held it over my head, postponed until the next impulse arose. I stopped trying to convince her to stay and told her if she chose to leave, the door was open. But if she walked away, I wanted no further contact from her until she had been sober for one year; she could not have both drugs and a relationship with me. I think that ultimatum may have glued her feet down at least a couple of times, but after five of her attempts, I knew that the departure was inevitable. No amount of my tears would change her heart. Though the entire summer has been rainy and cool, with only five days of sunshine since it began, this week’s cold, breezy drizzle marked the close of the season, and the fireweed blossoms began to work their way up the stalks. Last night, as I drove to town with Britney for a soda, I asked her about her latest contact, a former-camp-counselor-turned-heroine-dealer living in Girdwood. He’d taken her out earlier, and I suspected his intentions were not good. As usual, she casually explained it away, and again I wanted to believe her. I wanted to so much, that I actually did. Even so, I offered her my couch for the evening, inviting her to watch a movie, enticing her with freshly washed blankets to block out the dreary damp. “Don’t go with him,” I urged. She paused as she stepped out of the car. “I can handle myself.” The next morning, when Britney didn’t show up for work, I went up to her room to see. A bag of garbage. A pile of bedding. A selection of my borrowed belongings scattered on the bed. A bouquet of roses, a card, and a pastel mug on the dresser, all from various friends, all addressed to Britney. She was gone. I’m not her savior. I don’t claim to be. I can’t be. She wants none of that, anyway. She is angry, and she is in love with her addiction, and for now she’s hoping that it will save her. And now I will sleep a long slumber, and try to forget how good she had it, and how she threw it back at me and ran away anyway. Britney, if you happen to read this, you know that my couch is always open, and you know the conditions. You also know I love you unconditionally. You finish reading this and the image you had of the girl has changed. She’s deeper and now touched by reality. Also, you want to leave that small island of Soldovia, get your hands on that pistol you once considered loading for yourself, and unload it into the fucker in Girdwood. You go outside and smoke four cigarettes one after another and contemplate violent thoughts. Camp is family. You don’t betray it. One of your own helped in Britney’s relapse. You tell yourself all night long, that it isn’t over. Not yet. Somewhere inside, you decide that this is what hatred feels like. Mama Moose 2006 You and the workcrew boys are at the bone yard splitting wood. You and the LT set and split the logs with the wood splitter while the boys pick up the wood and restack it aside wood that needs to be split. They are eleven, twelve, fourteen, and fourteen. You notice how feminine they are. They’re arms aren’t much thicker than normal branches. They’re voices are cracking. A few have bad acne. They think you’re cool, they think you’re mean, and they think this is stupid; we could be pretending to work and taking a nap. The motor of the hydraulic splitter is loud and to carry on a conversation you have to shout. You and the LT are cranking them out so fast that the kids aren’t keeping up with the task. Sometimes they are and they just stand around waiting, bored. It’s late in the summer and this one has been particularly cold. Josh is the oldest of the group. He wears his hat backwards and an over sized shirt that could perhaps fit Chad, usually white. He wears skater shoes and baggy pants and is skinny and lanky. As you’ve spent the summer with him, you’ve decided that he’s the one in control of the group, a default leader. You control him; you control the group and other fall in line. You’ve humiliated him in front of the group once, and it seems to have worked. There is movement in the woods and it’s a baby moose and the mother isn’t that far off. You just ignore it and the boys work for a bit more. The moose begin to circle around the clearing where you are all working. For some odd reason you see Josh bend over and pick up a rock and pitch it at the moose. You don’t turn to notice if it hit the animal, you’re entranced at the stupidity and lack of self-preservation that the boys have, amazing you with yet again. Darren, one of the native kids bends over and chucks a rock as well. Darren is more physical then Josh and you know that he will hit his target. The boys are now bunching together, laughing but not out of amusement. They are possessed in the moment of youthful invincibility daring the mama moose to leave or trample them to death. You can see them shouting and pointing but the motor is drowning out the sound. You yell at them to stop. All you can think of is the student years ago trampled to death by a moose while others filmed it. The stories in elementary school of moose chasing kids who threw snowballs at them. Plus, you’ve read Cheating Death and how a moose broke the body of a hunter. You want the boys to stop, besides which, you don’t have a camera. They don’t hear you. But they do turn their heads and it looks like they are just busy ignoring you. Josh is slacked mouthed as are the rest of them. You move to break their spell of defiance of the beast weighing over a thousand pound being showered with rocks. You step up in front of them, between their line of fire and the moose and scream, “Do you want to die? Do you want to die?” Josh stops looking at the moose and looks at you and finally registers what you are asking him. The energy disappears from them all and they stand with their arms at their sides. Josh answers like you’re the one that stupid for assuming so, “No.” You are still yelling at the boy. “Then stop throwing the freaking rocks!” You head back to the wood splitter. The boys are still standing there. “Why are you standing there? Get back to work.” As they work you give them disgusted looks. Family Cartel [needs work . . .] Ted is the camp executive director. He has been there since the 70s. Ted’s wife Val is the water front director and office assistant. She was born there. Craig is the program director and is Ted’s son in law. He been there since the late 90s Noah works at the barn and is married to another one of Ted’s daughters. He’s been there from 01. Noah’s wife works at the barn. She was born there. Bob is the program coordinator and is married to the secretary. He’s been there since the 80s. Matt Sedian works the wilderness program and is married to one of Ted’s daughters. Chad is Craig’s dear friend and is married to a once counselor. He’s been there since the late 90s. George is married to Emily. He’s been there since the late 90s. The Box I stood back up from the floor. My feet were asleep for sitting on them for so long. I put my hand against the wall to steady myself and waited for the blood to begin to flow back into my legs. The sensation went from numbness to a tangle, to a slight pain. I then picked up the empty mug and went back upstairs to get more coffee. Mom and Christine were done prepping the dinner and were waiting for the food to finish cooking in the oven. Mom was sitting on a stool and my sister was sitting on a small chair meant for young children, a table and chair set Mom never threw away. As I poured more coffee I realized that I must have gotten my pack rat tendency from her, though my junk was in my head. Mom looks up and says: dinner is almost ready. Okay What is it? Just going through boxes. You know you can leave some of that stuff here, don’t you? I don’t like leaving things behind. Have you spoken with your dad? He loves you. No, I haven’t. I went back down stairs. They box was beginning to be re-inhabited by the stuff again. I was beginning to move from binders and doodles and notes to objects like a lighter and photos. I picked up a photograph that had been sent to me in the winter of 06 of me and Jim. It had been taken by Jim’s sister or mother secretly. Like a spy. It seemed wishful. Jim wore a black baseball cap and was holding a lifeguard’s floatation device. The two boys had been in deep conversation over something or other. One was studying the dock intently and the one with the baseball cap was eyeing him, holding the whistle in his mouth. On the edge of the picture where green blotches, they where leaves. The picture was an outsiders view, hidden and secretive. Did they know the conversation? The two boys talking were caught in an intimate moment that seemed to be betrayed by the existence of the photograph and the negative. It was somehow documented; proof that people are always watching and waiting and observing. I turned and dropped it into the box. Old camp stuff? The question came from the doorway. It was Dad. He had his hand against the door frame that he had installed. I turned and said, hi. You would come back from that place so depressed. It wasn’t because I left. It was because I came back. He nodded and left. The door frame creaked from the absence of his weight. I went back to sorting through the pile. Alone again listening to the other. Rags and Buckets 2006 Tyler came and asks you to check over his and Josh’s mopping job of the kitchen. You point out there’s a huge tomato sauce on the floor near the can opener. He goes and fills up the mop bucket and mops again and finds you again. The tomato stain is still there. You ask him to redo it once more. Greg is vacuuming the half of the main dining room that isn’t linoleum, and the other three are scrubbing the pots and pans in the back. It’s been over an hour and the workcrew girls have already left for the night. Tyler comes back with Josh and they say they are done once more. You walk back and that same tomato stain that you pointed out three times to the kid is still there. Red on with. You turn to Tyler and Josh and Darren who just finished mopping the dining room. “It’s obvious that you two cannot see the floor while standing and using a mop. You are going to get down on your hands and knees and scrub it.” “Whoa there. We can get the stain.” “Yes, you are. And the entire kitchen floor and back there in the washrooms. You guys have been here all summer and I know what you can do.” You bring them a bucket and two fistfuls of rags. “Scrub.” They get down on their hands and knees and begin to grumble and complain. They look like Cinderella in their jeans with holes and their torn up shoes. They scrub with both hands on their knees. When they talk you shut them up. They insult and curse you under their breaths, you feel like your father. You put on your most angry face. More than disappointment, disgust. And they stop talking and scrub. You hear the vacuum go off and you go to Greg. He was born with complications from alcohol. He is overweight and puggy and has sticks for arms. Tears are running down his face and snot is dripping from his nostrils and he’s slumped in his chair. Elbows on the table. You go over to him, “What’s wrong.” Greg looks up at you, “I’m do. ing. the best I can.” It comes out in sobs and choked gulps of air. You reach over and grab a napkin out of a dispenser. The napkin is upside down and it annoys you. You finally jerk it out and gently hand it to Greg and take a deep breath, blowing the angry out. You tell him you understand, “I know you’re doing your best. I’m not mad at you. Seriously. It’s okay. I’m sorry. I’m upset with the others.” “Really?” You nod. You stand up and pat the boy’s back. “Go ahead and take your time, they’re not going to be done for a while.” Your LT pulls you aside and says, “What you’re doing is wrong.” After laughing, you reply, “No. It’s actually not. Craig once made the workcrew scrub the dining room with toothbrushes. These kids have rags. It’s okay.” Tyler, Josh, and Darren are now halfway done with the kitchen and that stupid tomato sauce is finally gone. Ben, Bethany, Drew, and Clair are sitting at a table, telling these horror stories to the LT. How the workcrew had to scrub bird droppings from the docks. They congratulate you on fascist tactics with the workcrew. You just smile. Inside you’re actually enjoying it. You walk back to check their progress. They are talking to themselves. Joined together by their common suffering task. Finally they finish and you walk the length of the kitchen and washrooms. You haven’t seen them cleaner in years and suddenly you are proud of the trio and you tell them so. After they are done, Josh and Tyler come to you one at a time without the other knowing that they are. They apologize for the disrespect and the slacking. This is actually the moment when you and Josh become friends.