by Craig Cliff
‘Canoe. Sank.’
‘Where’s Barry?’
‘He ran off. I’ll check on him once I’m changed.’
He made towards the front door but Sophie called, ‘Wait, Danny, this is Mitch.’
‘Mitch?’ He instantly thought of Mitch Buchanan in Baywatch.
‘Hello,’ Mitch said, and held out a hand, but Danny mimed I’m soaking wet and the hand was withdrawn.
‘You from the States?’
‘Warrington.’
‘He’s here about Emily’s job,’ Sophie said.
‘I see. Well, welcome, Mitch Buchanan.’
‘It’s Fullerton.’
‘Of course.’
That night, Danny called an urgent meeting of the Camp Grant Management Committee, which consisted of him and Sophie sitting around the kitchen table.
‘Yes, but can we really afford another trainer?’ he asked.
‘It’s not another trainer. We’ll still be paying four, just replacing Emily with Mitch.’
‘He’s willing to work for Emily’s salary?’
‘He sounded keen.’
‘Is he, you know, normal?’
‘Do you mean is he a pervert?’
‘No. But is he?’
‘Would I be hiring him if he was?’
‘But do we need him?’
‘Danny, the girls are struggling as it is. And although you’re doing your best big brother impression for Barry, there are other boys here. They’re complaining that the rec activities are too girly. Mitch has ideas.’
That night he lay awake thinking about Mitch. He tried to think about how this would change the dynamics of the camp and serious things like that, but most of the time he just saw Mitch running in slow motion on the edge of the loch carrying a bright orange floatation device.
Three days later Danny was called to the gym to help fix the elliptical trainer. At least when Mitch starts, I won’t be expected to fix everything, he thought. When he entered, Barry was standing with his hands in the front pocket of his hoodie, watching Sophie and Amanda inspect the upturned machine.
‘What’d you do, Barry?’ he asked, thinking it sounded friendly.
‘Lay off him, Danny,’ Sophie said. ‘He was exercising.’
‘These things happen,’ Amanda said, then dropped her side of the elliptical trainer to answer the cellphone that hung from a lanyard around her neck.
‘I was working out,’ Barry said, looking down.
Danny nodded, trying to find words of encouragement which would skirt around condescension.
‘He’s lost two pounds already,’ Sophie said.
‘I don’t want to sink next time,’ Barry added.
‘You want to try for the island again?’
‘When I’ve lost two stone.’
‘Jeez, two stone.’
‘It flies off when you have a reason,’ Sophie said, scowling at Danny.
The day Mitch moved up to the camp he was surrounded by a swarm of boys. As he strode around on the dual pretence of inspecting the camp and stretching after the drive north, the boys puffed to keep up while firing off questions.
‘Were you in the army?’
‘How much can you deadlift?’
‘How many girls have you got pregnant?’
Barry was there too, but from Danny’s vantage on the steps of the dining hall, it didn’t look as if he was asking any questions.
Perhaps he’s just tagging along for the workout? he thought, but it soon became clear that Barry had a new role model. When the other boys grew bored after a few days of Mitch’s stories of gym mishaps and scripted-sounding words of encouragement (‘There’s a smaller person inside you all’; ‘Baby steps can take you up a mountain’), Barry’s tolerance seemed limitless. He followed Mitch everywhere he went. Worked out when he worked out. Ate when he ate — even letting Mitch control his portion size.
For Danny this meant two things: he’d lost his chocolate bar salesman, and he had to find something else to fill his time. New ideas didn’t come so he fell back on the internet café to counter both deficits created by Barry’s desertion. He dragged the mattress back against the wall of his office, printed off dozens of small-print stories and settled back into his role as content watchdog and curmudgeonly timekeeper.
‘Are you sure you’re not, you know, damaging your eyes?’ Sophie asked one night in bed.
‘What?’
‘Reading such small print.’
‘Oh. I thought —’
‘You’re not —’
‘No.’
The surge in their sex life had subsided by this time. Six months, he supposed, was enough time to erase the last elements of dream from any dream job. She still appeared to enjoy it, but the power was no longer novel — no longer jacked her libido.
He had a minor brainwave one morning as he rushed through the bank reconciliation before letting the campers use the internet. It was not quite in the league of Barry’s money-making schemes, but selling the lost property left by past residents to current ones managed to cover his latest chocolate order.
But the property box was soon empty, save for the odd socks and Bob the Builder lunchbox no one wanted, and he hadn’t found another camper who he could trust as his ally on the black market as he had trusted Barry. Besides, everyone except Barry seemed to leave for good after their one- or two-week stint at Camp Grant.
How long had Barry been there now? he wondered, trying to count weeks on his fingers.
‘Isn’t there a law saying kids his age have to be in school?’ he asked Sophie at lunch.
‘Yes, but the council knows about his situation. People are looking for schools, but it’s hard to get any to make room for a kid who’s been expelled so young.’
‘What’d he do?’
‘You’re telling me you’ve spent all this time with him and you don’t know? What do you do, Danny? What do you talk about?’
Slumped in his hospital bed posture he read stories by Bukowski and Ballard, Cheever and Chekov, Philip K Dick and Lydia Davis. When he came to the H’s, he read a story by Barry Hannah called ‘Getting Ready’ in which the hero builds a pair of eight foot stilts and wades around a local lake screaming obscenities at the rich people in motor boats.
The longest identical pieces of wood Danny could find in the woodpile between the long-drop and his cabin were four feet in length. In real life, he decided, a person would actually make a shorter pair of stilts to practice on land, and in the shallows, then progressively work their way up to eight foot stilts, and possibly higher — he had no idea of the depth of his loch beyond where Barry had sunk with the canoe.
It only took an afternoon, punctuated with two breaks to smoke ladyfingers, to knock up the practise stilts.
The next day, he let six campers have half an hour each on the internet and kept himself amused by sketching radical new stilt designs: bamboo, as modelled by a panda; telescopes, as modelled by a Merlin-bearded Copernicus.
After lunch with Sophie in the dining hall (Moroccan couscous with skinless chicken), he went to the loch, strapped on his four foot stilts and crawled on his knees to a sycamore, which he used to edge himself up to a standing position. Sitting in his office, he had thought the small shingle beach at the loch would be the best place to learn how to walk on stilts but now, with his head almost ten feet above the earth, the shingle looked uninviting. I will just learn to stand, he decided.
The thing about standing on stilts, he soon learnt, is the only stationary points are those in contact with the ground — every part of his body was moving, from the discordant arcs traced by his feet to the sudden, involuntary pitching of his head, the body in between a ripple of convulsions. He thought about what Sophie had said to him the night before.
‘Danny? I think you’re depressed.’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘You’re acting strange, you’re not talking to people, you have these little obsessions.’
He hadn’t told Soph
ie about the stilts and wondered how she knew.
‘I wish you’d talk to me,’ she continued. ‘I don’t want this to come between us. I thought this camp would be good for both of us. I thought it would be good to get you out of the office. You always talked about how much you hated it.’
‘I did.’
‘What? Hate it, or talk about hating it?’
‘I thought I hated it. If I went back I’d hate it.’
‘Why are you so miserable here?’
‘I’m not.’
‘You are.’
‘I have things on my mind, that’s all. I never see you except for at night. I miss you, I guess.’
He felt her hand feel for his face in the dark.
‘What’s that?’ she asked.
‘My eye socket.’
‘Oh.’
‘Sophie?’
‘Yeah.’
‘—’
‘Danny?’
‘Nothing. I love you.’
From the path back to camp, he heard someone call out, ‘Hey!’
The distant blur of orange congealed into Barry, followed closely by Mitch, who had been growing a moustache for two weeks, though it fell short of what Danny expected.
‘What are you doing?’ Barry asked. Mitch stood with his arms crossed. Danny wobbled from time to time, still resting one hand against the tree.
‘What does it look like I’m doing?’ A wobble thrust his crotch uncomfortably close to Mitch’s face. Mitch did not flinch. ‘Sorry. I’m learning to walk on stilts.’
‘I’ve lost two stone,’ Barry said.
‘Wow.’
He still wore the orange hoodie so it was hard for Danny to tell.
‘I thought we could try to get to the island again. Mitch will help.’
‘Oh.’
‘Just to hold the boat steady while we get in and stuff.’
He looked at Mitch and saw the expression of someone who was fulfilling their part of a bargain. He’d pulled that expression enough himself to recognise it instantly.
‘You want to try now?’ he asked.
‘It’s only two o’clock.’
‘I kind of had plans,’ he said, playing hard to get.
‘What? Join the circus?’ Barry asked.
‘Help me down then,’ he said, looking at Mitch.
‘How’d you get up?’ Mitch asked.
‘Tree,’ he said, patting the trunk.
‘Okay, well,’ Mitch said, ‘why don’t you just … No, I’ve got it.’ He walked between Danny and the tree, chopped the insides of his knees with a forearm while sweeping the stilts with a foot and Danny fell into his arms like a bride about to be carried across the threshold.
‘Gay,’ Barry said.
Close up, the blond hair of Mitch’s fledgling moustache shimmered. ‘Martial artist?’ Danny asked.
‘Tae kwon do.’
‘You can put me down now.’
‘Right.’
Of the three canoes lying on the beach, two had already sunk. Only the light brown one remained untested. The colour reminded Danny of prosthetic limbs. He sat rubbing his ankles while Mitch and Barry circled the vessel.
‘Do you think she’ll float?’ Mitch asked. Barry just shrugged, crouched over and gently lifted one side to peek under.
‘Checking for crabs?’ Mitch asked.
‘Chocolate wrappers.’ He shot a conspiratorial look at Danny, who replied with a look of discomfort. But the comment did not appear to register with Mitch. ‘All clear,’ Barry said, and flipped the canoe over.
Already in bare feet, Danny waded into the water to hold the boat while they saw if it sank.
It did not.
‘What about life jackets?’ Mitch asked.
‘More hassle than they’re worth,’ Danny said.
‘You should just stay here on the beach,’ Barry said, ‘and get help if something goes wrong.’
‘Which it won’t.’
‘But if it does.’
Mitch made a show of not caring how cold the water was as he strode in to hold the canoe steady.
‘Hey, Mitch, you wouldn’t happen to know what sort of trees those are?’ Danny asked, nodding his head towards the island.
‘They look like limes.’
‘Lime trees?’
‘Not the citrus. Lime trees are something different. They’re limes, I’d wager.’
‘I think I underestimated you.’
‘Okay.’
With Mitch holding things steady, it was much easier to get into the front of the canoe. He and Barry were both seated, both ready to go, and there was no sign of sinkage, but something was amiss. ‘The paddle!’ he exclaimed.
Mitch sighed and turned to look at the beach, in the process swinging the canoe with him. The only paddle lay between the two other canoes.
‘Would you be so kind?’ Danny asked.
Mitch pulled the canoe into the shallows and dashed up to get the paddle. By the time he returned to the water’s edge, Danny and Barry had drifted ten yards out.
Barry whooped. He and Danny dipped their hands into the cold water and scooped towards the shore.
Danny grabbed the paddle. ‘Thanks, Mitch.’
‘See you when we see you,’ Barry said.
Mitch put his hands into the pockets of his flimsy football-style shorts, assuming a waiting posture, and Danny dug the paddle into the water, spinning the canoe around to face the island.
At the halfway point, he asked if Barry wanted to paddle.
‘Nah.’
‘What about the workout?’
‘I’ve lost two stone.’
‘But —’
‘Just paddle, Danny.’
There was no reciprocal beach on the side of the island they always saw, so he paddled them around the back.
‘It just looks the same,’ Barry said.
‘What did you expect, a McDonald’s?’
‘I dunno. Some different trees?’
The two rows of lime trees, if Mitch’s botanical knowledge could be trusted, were the only proper trees on the island. The circumference was fringed by dense shrubs which reached down and touched the water. Just as the beach and Mitch came into view again, there was a break in the island’s shrubbery.
‘Go there!’ Barry shouted.
‘All right, all right.’
He built up speed and rammed the nose of the canoe into the island. He gave the boat a little wobble — it seemed to be lodged on the bank — passed the paddle overhead to Barry and gently eased himself out. The water came up to his knees.
‘Your turn,’ he said, taking the paddle back.
‘All-rye, all-rye,’ Barry said, mocking Danny’s accent.
Once they were both on the island and had dragged the canoe up, he wondered what had been so mysterious about this small, eight-treed island.
‘I guess we should look around,’ he said.
They pushed through a layer of vines stretching between two clumps of shrubs and found themselves in the aisle of lime trees. Six foot high shrubs obscured any view of the loch or the beach. It was its own little world, with its own micro-climate — not exactly Mediterranean, but warmer than anywhere else they had been that day.
‘What’s that you’ve found?’ He came up behind Barry, who was rubbing his hand over the bark of one of the lime trees. Carved into the tree was a love heart containing the inscription:
P + H
4EVA
‘We certainly aren’t the first,’ Danny said, and walked into the middle of the clearing. He crouched in the long grass and rapped his knuckles on the hard ground.
Barry walked towards him, but his thoughts seemed miles away.
‘I think it’s bricks.’ Danny pulled out a clump of grass, roots and all. ‘Yup. Bricks. The grass is growing through the gaps.’
‘Do you think there’s something under there?’ Barry asked.
‘Don’t know.’
They set about pulling up the grass, Danny workin
g in a slowly growing circle, Barry pulling random clumps as he walked around the clearing, soon losing heart.
‘If you stay in one spot —’ Danny said.
Barry put his hands on his hips. ‘There’s nothing underneath, is there? It’s just brick on dirt.’
‘But it’s still something we didn’t expect.’
‘This could have been a prison.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Do you think people died here?’
‘I don’t know.’
Danny sat cross-legged in his crop circle and pulled a ladyfinger and his lighter from his top pocket. The cigar drooped when placed in his mouth and the lighter tore at his thumb but didn’t light.
‘Guess I got wetter than I thought.’
Barry joined him in his circle and sat down.
‘So,’ Danny said. ‘Do you have a new school lined up yet?’
‘Yeah.’
‘You do? When are you leaving?’
‘Soon.’
‘That’s good. I mean, for you.’
Barry reached behind him and pulled a clump of grass from the outer rim of Danny’s circle and began tearing each blade into inch-long strips.
‘Danny?’ he said, not looking up. ‘How did you know Sophie liked you?’
‘Shit, I mean, gee. That’s a good question, there, Barry. Is there someone here —’
‘No!’
‘Someone at your old school?’
Barry gathered all the torn pieces of grass into a pile, reached behind him and pulled out another clump.
‘Well,’ Danny said, ‘I think I knew Sophie liked me when I asked her out and she said yes. It was pretty clear cut.’
‘How’d you know you should ask her? How’d you know you liked her?’
Danny swept a lock of hair behind his ear and tried to remember a time before Sophie. A life without her. All he got was a golf ball of apprehension in his chest — this was how he’d felt without Sophie. Was he doing the wrong degree? Was he funny looking? Where was he going? But when he met Sophie, these questions weren’t around. She melted the golf ball in his chest and everything felt open and exciting. There was nothing scary about asking her out. Nothing scary about talking to her, or kissing her, or the prospect of fumbling with her bra the first time. He’d just asked. But how to explain this to a twelve-year-old kid?